>> From Boston, Massachusets, it's The Cube. Covering Actifio 2019: Data Driven, Brought to you by Actifio. >> Welcome back to Boston, everybody. We're here at the Intercontinental Hotel at Actifio's Data Driven conference, day one. You're watching The Cube. The leader in on-the-ground tech coverage. My name is is Dave Valante, Stu Minamin is here, so is John Ferrer, my friend Frank Gens is here, he's the Senior Vice President and Chief Analyst at IDC and Head Dot Connector. Frank, welcome to The Cube. >> Well thank you Dave. >> First time. >> First time. >> Newbie. >> Yep. >> You're going to crush it, I know. >> Be gentle. >> You know, you're awesome, I've watched you over the many years, of course, you know, you seem to get competitive, and it's like who gets the best rating? Frank always had the best ratings at the Directions conference. He's blushing but I could- >> I don't know if that's true but I'll accept it. >> I could never beat him, no matter how hard I tried. But you are a phenomenal speaker, you gave a great conversation this morning. I'm sure you drew a lot from your Directions talk, but every year you lay down this, you know, sort of, mini manifesto. You describe it as, you connect the dots, IDC, thousands of analysts. And it's your job to say okay, what does this all mean? Not in the micro, let's up-level a little bit. So, what's happening? You talked today, You know you gave your version of the wave slides. So, where are we in the waves? We are exiting the experimentation phase, and coming in to a new phase that multiplied innovation. I saw AI on there, block-chain, some other technologies. Where are we today? >> Yeah, well I think having mental models of the6 industry or any complex system is pretty important. I mean I've made a career dumbing-down a complex industry into something simple enough that I can understand, so we've done it again now with what we call the third platform. So, ten years ago seeing the whole raft of new technologies at the time were coming in that would become the foundation for the next thirty years of tech, so, that's an old story now. Cloud, mobile, social, big data, obviously IOT technologies coming in, block-chain, and so forth. So we call this general era the third platform, but we noticed a few years ago, well, we're at the threshold of kind of a major scale-up of innovation in this third platform that's very different from the last ten or twelve years, which we called the experimentation stage. Where people were using this stuff, using the cloud, using mobile, big data, to create cool things, but they were doing it in kind of a isolated way. Kind of the traditional, well I'm going to invent something and I may have a few friends help me, whereas, the promise of the cloud has been , well, if you have a lot of developers out on the cloud, that form a community, an ecosystem, think of GitHub, you know, any of the big code repositories, or the ability to have shared service as often Amazon, Cloud, or IBM, or Google, or Microsoft, the promise is there to actually bring to life what Bill Joy said, you know, in the nineties. Which was no matter how smart you are, most of the smart people in the world work for someone else. So the questions always been, well, how do I tap into all those other smart people who don't work for me? So we can feel that where we are in the industry right now is the business model of multiplied innovation or if you prefer, a network of collaborative innovation, being able to build something interesting quickly, using a lot of innovation from other people, and then adding your special sauce. But that's going to take the scale of innovation just up a couple of orders of magnitude. And the pace, of course, that goes with that, is people are innovating much more rapid clip now. So really, the full promise of a cloud-native innovation model, so we kind of feel like we're right here, which means there's lots of big changes around the technologies, around kind of the world of developers and apps, AI is changing, and of course, the industry structure itself. You know the power positions, you know, a lot of vendors have spent a lot of energy trying to protect the power positions of the last thirty years. >> Yeah so we're getting into some of that. So, but you know, everybody talks about digital transformation, and they kind of roll their eyes, like it's a big buzzword, but it's real. It's dataware at a data-driven conference. And data, you know, being at the heart of businesses means that you're seeing businesses transition industries, or traverse industries, you know, Amazon getting into groceries, Apple getting into content, Amazon as well, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, so, my question is, what's a tech company? I mean, you know, Bennyhoff says that, you know, every company's a sass company, and you're certainly seeing that, and it's got to be great for your business. >> Yeah, yeah absolutely >> Quantifying all those markets, but I mean, the market that you quantify is just it's every company now. Banks, insurance companies, grocers, you know? Everybody is a tech company. >> I think, yeah, that's a hundred percent right. It is that this is the biggest revolution in the economy, you know, for many many decades. Or you might say centuries even. Is yeah, whoever put it, was it Mark Andreson or whoever used to talk about software leading the world, we're in the middle of that. Only, software now is being delivered in the form of digital or cloud services so, you know, every company is a tech company. And of course it really raises the question, well what are tech companies? You know, they need to kind of think back about where does our value add? But it is great. It's when we look at the world of clouds, one of the first things we observed in 2007, 2008 was, well, clouds wasn't just about S3 storage clouds, or salesforce.com's softwares and service. It's a model that can be applied to any industry, any company, any offering. And of course we've seen all these startups whether it's Uber or Netflix or whoever it is, basically digital innovation in every single industry, transforming that industry. So, to me that's the exciting part is if that model of transforming industries through the use of software, through digital technology. In that kind of experimentation stage it was mainly a startup story. All those unicorns. To me the multiplied innovation chapter, it's about- (audio cuts out) finally, you know, the cities, the Procter & Gambles, the Walmarts, the John Deere's, they're finally saying hey, this cloud platform and digital innovation, if we can do that in our industry. >> Yeah, so intrapreneurship is actually, you know, starting to- >> Yeah. >> So you and I have seen a lot of psychos, we watched the you know, the mainframe wave get crushed by the micro-processor based revolution, IDC at the time spent a lot of time looking at that. >> Vacuum tubes. >> Water coolant is back. So but the industry has marched to the cadence of Moore's Law forever. Even Thomas Friedman when he talks about, you know, his stuff and he throws in Moore's Law. But no longer Moore's Law the sort of engine of innovation. There's other factors. So what's the innovation cocktail looking forward over the next ten years? You've talked about cloud, you know, we've talked about AI, what's that, you know, sandwich, the innovation sandwich look like? >> Yeah so to me I think it is the harnessing of all this flood of technologies, again, that are mainly coming off the cloud, and that parade is not stopping. Quantum, you know, lots of other technologies are coming down the pipe. But to me, you know, it is the mixture of number one the cloud, public cloud stacks being able to travel anywhere in the world. So take the cloud on the road. So it's even, I would say, not even just scale, I think of, that's almost like a mount of compute power. Which could happen inside multiple hyperscale data centers. I'm also thinking about scale in terms of the horizontal. >> Bringing that model anywhere. >> Take me out to the edge. >> Wherever your data lives. >> Take me to a Carnival cruise ship, you know, take me to, you know, an apple-powered autonomous car, or take me to a hospital or a retail store. So the public cloud stacks where all the innovation is basically happening in the industry. Jail-breaking that out so it can come, you know it's through Amazon, AWS Outpost, or Ajerstack, or Google Anthos, this movement of the cloud guys, to say we'll take public cloud innovation wherever you need it. That to me is a big part of the cocktail because that's you know, basically the public clouds have been the epicenter of most tech innovation the last three or four years, so, that's very important. I think, you know just quickly, the other piece of the puzzle is the revolution that's happening in the modularity of apps. So the micro services revolution. So, the building of new apps and the refactoring of old apps using containers, using servos technologies, you know, API lifecycle management technologies, and of course, agile development methods. Kind of getting to this kind of iterative sped up deployment model, where people might've deployed new code four times a year, they're now deploying it four times a minute. >> Yeah right. >> So to me that's- and kind of aligned with that is what I was mentioning before, that if you can apply that, kind of, rapid scale, massive volume innovation model and bring others into the party, so now you're part of a cloud-connected community of innovators. And again, that could be around a Github, or could be around a Google or Amazon, or it could be around, you know, Walmart. In a retail world. Or an Amazon in retail. Or it could be around a Proctor & Gamble, or around a Disney, digital entertainment, you know, where they're creating ecosystems of innovators, and so to me, bringing people, you know, so it's not just these technologies that enable rapid, high-volume modular innovation, but it's saying okay now plugging lots of people's brains together is just going to, I think that, here's the- >> And all the data that throws off obviously. >> Throws a ton of data, but, to me the number we use it kind of is the punchline for, well where does multiplied innovation lead? A distributed cloud, this revolution in distributing modular massive scale development, that we think the next five years, we'll see as many new apps developed and deploye6d as we saw developed and deployed in the last forty years. So five years, the next five years, versus the last forty years, and so to me that's, that is the revolution. Because, you know, when that happens that means we're going to start seeing that long tail of used cases that people could never get to, you know, all the highly verticalized used cases are going to be filled, you know we're going to finally a lot of white space has been white for decades, is going to start getting a lot of cool colors and a lot of solutions delivered to them. >> Let's talk about some of the macro stuff, I don't know the exact numbers, but it's probably three trillion, maybe it's four trillion now, big market. You talked today about the market's going two x GDP. >> Yeah. >> For the tech market, that is. Why is it that the tech market is able to grow at a rate faster than GDP? And is there a relationship between GDP and tech growth? >> Yeah, well, I think, we are still, while, you know, we've been in tech, talk about those apps developed the last forty years, we've both been there, so- >> And that includes the iPhone apps, too, so that's actually a pretty impressive number when you think about the last ten years being included in that number. >> Absolutely, but if you think about it, we are still kind of teenagers when you think about that Andreson idea of software eating the world. You know, we're just kind of on the early appetizer, you know, the sorbet is coming to clear our palates before we go to the next course. But we're not even close to the main course. And so I think when you look at the kind of, the percentage of companies and industry process that is digital, that has been highly digitized. We're still early days, so to me, I think that's why. That the kind of the steady state of how much of an industry is kind of process and data flow is based on software. I'll just make up a number, you know, we may be a third of the way to whatever the steady state is. We've got two-thirds of the way to go. So to me, that supports growth of IT investment rising at double the rate of overall. Because it's sucking in and absorbing and transforming big pieces of the existing economy, >> So given the size of the market, given that all companies are tech companies. What are your thoughts on the narrative right now? You're hearing a lot of pressure from, you know, public policy to break up big tech. And we saw, you know you and I were there when Microsoft, and I would argue, they were, you know, breaking the law. Okay, the Department of Justice did the right thing, and they put handcuffs on them. >> Yeah. >> But they never really, you know, went after the whole breakup scenario, and you hear a lot of that, a lot of the vitriol. Do you think that makes sense? To break up big tech and what would the result be? >> You don't think I'm going to step on those land mines, do you? >> Okay well I've got an opinion. >> Alright I'll give you mine then. Alright, since- >> I mean, I'll lay it out there, I just think if you break up big tech the little techs are going to get bigger. It's going to be like AT&T all over again. The other thing I would add is if you want to go after China for, you know, IP theft, okay fine, but why would you attack the AI leaders? Now, if they're breaking the law, that should not be allowed. I'm not for you know, monopolistic, you know, illegal behavior. What are your thoughts? >> Alright, you've convinced me to answer this question. >> We're having a conversation- >> Nothing like a little competitive juice going. You're totally wrong. >> Lay it out for me. >> No, I think, but this has been a recurring pattern, as you were saying, it even goes back further to you know, AT&T and people wanting to connect other people to the chiraphone, and it goes IBM mainframes, opening up to peripherals. Right, it goes back to it. Exactly. It goes back to the wheel. But it's yeah, to me it's a valid question to ask. And I think, you know, part of the story I was telling, that multiplied innovation story, and Bill Joy, Joy's Law is really about platform. Right? And so when you get aggregated portfolio of technical capabilities that allow innovation to happen. Right, so the great thing is, you know, you typically see concentration, consolidation around those platforms. But of course they give life to a lot of competition and growth on top of them. So that to me is the, that's the conundrum, because if you attack the platform, you may send us back into this kind of disaggregated, less creative- so that's the art, is to take the scalpel and figure out well, where are the appropriate boundaries for, you know, putting those walls, where if you're in this part of the industry, you can't be in this. So, to me I think one, at least reasonable way to think about it is, so for example, if you are a major cloud platform player, right, you're providing all of the AI services, the cloud services, the compute services, the block-chain services, that a lot of the sass world is using. That, somebody could argue, well, if you get too strong in the sass world, you then could be in a position to give yourself favorable position from the platform. Because everyone in the sass world is depending on the platform. So somebody might say you can't be in. You know, if you're in the sass position you'll have to separate that from the platform business. But I think to me, so that's a logical way to do it, but I think you also have to ask, well, are people actually abusing? Right, so I- >> I think it's a really good question. >> I don't think it's fair to just say well, theoretically it could be abused. If the abuse is not happening, I don't think you, it's appropriate to prophylactically, it's like go after a crime before it's committed. So I think, the other thing that is happening is, often these monopolies or power positions have been about economic power, pricing power, I think there's another dynamic happening because consumer date, people's data, the Facebook phenomenon, the Twitter and the rest, there's a lot of stuff that's not necessarily about pricing, but that's about kind of social norms and privacy that I think are at work and that we haven't really seen as big a factor, I mean obviously we've had privacy regulation is Europe with GDPR and the rest, obviously in check, but part of that's because of the social platforms, so that's another vector that is coming in. >> Well, you would like to see the government actually say okay, this is the framework, or this is what we think the law should be. I mean, part of it is okay, Facebook they have incentive to appropriate our data and they get, okay, and maybe they're not taking enough responsibility for. But I to date have not seen the evidence as we did with, you know, Microsoft wiping out, you know, Lotus, and Novel, and Word Perfect through bundling and what it did to Netscape with bundling the browser and the price practices that- I don't see that, today, maybe I'm just missing it, but- >> Yeah I think that's going to be all around, you know, online advertising, and all that, to me that's kind of the market- >> Yeah, so Google, some of the Google stuff, that's probably legit, and that's fine, they should stop that. >> But to me the bigger issue is more around privacy.6 You know, it's a social norm, it's societal, it's not an economic factor I think around Facebook and the social platforms, and I think, I don't know what the right answer is, but I think certainly government it's legitimate for those questions to be asked. >> Well maybe GDPR becomes that framework, so, they're trying to give us the hook but, I'm having too much fun. So we're going to- I don't know how closely you follow Facebook, I mean they're obviously big tech, so Facebook has this whole crypto-play, seems like they're using it for driving an ecosystem and making money. As opposed to dealing with the privacy issue. I'd like to see more on the latter than the former, perhaps, but, any thoughts on Facebook and what's going on there with their crypto-play? >> Yeah I don't study them all that much so, I am fascinated when Mark Zuckerberg was saying well now our key business now is about privacy, which I find interesting. It doesn't feel that way necessarily, as a consumer and an observer, but- >> Well you're on Facebook, I'm on Facebook, >> Yeah yeah. >> Okay so how about big IPOs, we're in the tenth year now of this huge, you know, tail-wind for tech. Obviously you have guys like Uber, Lyft going IPO,6 losing tons of money. Stocks actually haven't done that well which is kind of interesting. You saw Zoom, you know, go public, doing very well. Slack is about to go public. So there's really a rush to IPO. Your thoughts on that? Is this sustainable? Or are we kind of coming to the end here? >> Yeah so, I think in part, you know, predicting the stock market waves is a very tough thing to do, but I think one kind of secular trend is going to be relevant for these tech IPOs is what I was mentioning earlier, is that we've now had a ten, twelve year run of basically startups coming in and reinventing industries while the incumbents in the industries are basically sitting on their hands, or sleeping. So to me the next ten years, those startups are going to, not that, I mean we've seen that large companies waking up doesn't necessarily always lead to success but it feels to me like it's going to be a more competitive environment for all those startups Because the incumbents, not all of them, and maybe not even most of them, but some decent portion of them are going to wind up becoming digital giants in their own industry. So to me I think that's a different world the next ten years than the last ten. I do think one important thing, and I think around acquisitions MNA, and we saw it just the last few weeks with Google Looker and we saw Tab Low with Salesforce, is if that, the mega-cloud world of Microsoft, Ajer, and Amazon, Google. That world is clearly consolidating. There's room for three or four global players and that game is almost over. But there's another power position on top of that, which is around where did all the app, business app guys, all the suite guys, SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, Adobe, Microsoft, you name it. Where did they go? And so we see, we think- >> Service Now, now kind of getting big. >> Absolutely, so we're entering a intensive period, and I think again, the Tab Low and Looker is just an example where those companies are all stepping on the gas to become better platforms. So apps as platforms, or app portfolio as platforms, so, much more of a data play, analytics play, buying other pieces of the app portfolio, that they may not have. And basically scaling up to become the business process platforms and ecosystems there. So I think we are just at the beginning of that, so look for a lot of sass companies. >> And I wonder if Amazon could become a platform for developers to actually disrupt those traditional sass guys. It's not obvious to me how those guys get disrupted, and I'm thinking, everybody says oh is Amazon going to get into the app space? Maybe some day if they happen to do a cam expans6ion, But it seems to me that they become a platform fo6r new apps you know, your apps explosion.6 At the edge, obviously, you know, local. >> Well there's no question. I think those appcentric apps is what I'd call that competition up there and versus kind of a mega cloud. There's no question the mega cloud guys. They've already started launching like call center, contact center software, they're creeping up into that world of business apps so I don't think they're going to stop and so I think that that is a reasonable place to look is will they just start trying to create and effect suites and platforms around sass of their own. >> Startups, ecosystems like you were saying. Alright, I got to give you some rapid fire questions here, so, when do you think, or do you think, no, I'm going to say when you think, that owning and driving your own car will become the exception, rather than the norm? Buy into the autonomous vehicles hype? Or- >> I think, to me, that's a ten-year type of horizon. >> Okay, ten plus, alright. When will machines be able to make better diagnosis than than doctors? >> Well, you could argue that in some fields we're almost there, or we're there. So it's all about the scope of issue, right? So if it's reading a radiology, you know, film or image, to look for something right there, we're almost there. But for complex cancers or whatever that's going to take- >> One more dot connecting question. >> Yeah yeah. >> So do you think large retail stores will essentially disappear? >> Oh boy that's a- they certainly won't disappear, but I think they can so witness Apple and Amazon even trying to come in, so it feels that the mix is certainly shifting, right? So it feels to me that the model of retail presence, I think that will still be important. Touch, feel, look, socialize. But it feels like the days of, you know, ten thousand or five thousand store chains, it feels like that's declining in a big way. >> How about big banks? You think they'll lose control of the payment systems? >> I think they're already starting to, yeah, so, I would say that is, and they're trying to get in to compete, so I think that is on its way, no question. I think that horse is out of the barn. >> So cloud, AI, new apps, new innovation cocktails, software eating the world, everybody is a tech company. Frank Gens, great to have you. >> Dave, always great to see you. >> Alright, keep it right there buddy. You're watching The Cube, from Actifio: Data Driven nineteen. We'll be right back right after this short break. (bouncy electronic music)

>> Live from Orlando, Florida its theCUBE covering Enterprise Connect 2019. Brought to you by Five9. >> Hello from Orlando, Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman theCUBE. We are live, day three at Enterprise Connect 2019. We have been in Five9's booth all week and we're very excited to welcome to the program for the first time Harry Moseley the CIO of Zoom Video Communications. Harry thanks so much for joining Stu and me on The CUBE today. >> Lisa, Stu its a pleasure to be here, thank you for having me. >> And you're a hall of famer, you have been inducted into the CIO Magazine's hall of fame and recognized as one of the world's top 100 CIO's be Computer World >> Yes that's right >> So we're in the presence of a VIP >> (chuckles) Well thank you for that it's, as I say its all credit back to the wonderful people that have supported me throughout my career. And I've worked with some amazing people and leaders and, who have supported me and the visions that I've created for their organizations. And so, I understand its about me but it's also about the great teams that I've worked with in my past. I can't make this stuff up, yep. >> Harry, we love talking to CIO's especially one with such a distinguished career as yours 'cause the role of CIO has gone through a lot of changes. IT has gone through a lot of changes. You know we've been doing this program for nine years. Remember reading Nick Carr's IT, does IT matter? And you know, we believe IT matters more than ever Not just IT, the business, the relationship maybe give us a little more of your view point as to the role of the CIO and technology, at a show like this. We hear about the CMO and the business and IT all working together. >> Yeah so its actually, in my opinion, there's never been a better time to be a CIO, irrespective of the company you are in, whether its a tech company like where I'm, you know Zoom Video Communications or any one of the prior companies I worked for, professional services, financial services. But even when you think about it like trucking, You think about trucking as an industry, you think about trucking as a company, its like it was a very sort of brick and mortars? But now its all about digital, right? A friend of mine runs a shipping container company and to think that they load five miles of wagons every day. And so I said to him, "how long does it take to load a wagon on a truck?" "It takes four minutes, and you know what Harry, "we're working that down to three. "And that'll increase our revenue by 20 to 25 percent.' And so its just fantastic. And the pace of change, you know it's just growing exponentially. It's just fascinating, the things that we can actually do today we only dreamed about them a year ago. And you think about it sort of' I can't wait to be back here next year, 'cause we're going to just lift the roof off this place in terms of the capabilities. And so its fantastic, yeah it's just absolutely fantastic. >> So looking at, a lot of us know Zoom for video conferencing and different things like that, but you said something very interesting in your fireside chat this morning that I hadn't thought about, and that is when, either going from audio to video, when you're on a video chat you really can't or shouldn't multi-task. So in terms of capturing peoples attention, enabling meetings to happen maybe more on time, faster, more productive. Thought that was an interesting realization, I thought, you're right. >> It just clicks, it just works. You know mobile, you know when I go back to my you know sort of' going back and again, thank you for the recognition from the key note. But when I go back earlier in my career it's like dialing that number, dialing that ten digit number, misdialing that number, what happened? I got to' hang up, I got to' get a dial tone, I got to' dial the numbers again. Now I'm like two minutes late and I know I'm late more often than I'd like, but when its late because of something like that, that's frustrating. That's really frustrating. And so the notion that you can just click on your mobile device, you can click on your laptop, I have no stress anymore, in joining meetings anywhere. I love telling the story about how I had a client meeting, I was in O'Hare Airport and I joined the client prospect meeting. I joined the prospect meeting on my phone using the free wifi service at O'Hare Airport. Put up my virtual background on my phone I just showed you this Stu, with our logo shared the content off of my phone 18 minutes into this 30 minutes call, the person I was talking to, the CIO for this firm called a halt to the meeting. This is what exactly what happened. Enough, I've heard enough. (announcement in background) >> Keep going. >> Keep going, okay. Enough, I didn't know what enough meant. And so I was a little spooked by that if you will. He goes, "you're on a phone, you're in O'Hare Airport, "you've got a virtual background, "you're sharing content, its all flawless. "Its like this is an amazing experience "that we can't get from all the technology "investment we've done in this space "for our company. "So guys, enough. "We're starting a proof of concept on Monday. "No more discussions about it. "Harry, looking forward to being a business partner." >> Does it get better than that? >> It doesn't get better than that. Its like you know, you hop through security, you get on a plane, and its cruisin' all the way home. >> Yeah I mean Harry, I do have to say, you know disclaimer, we are Zoom customers I'm actually a Zoom admin and its that simplicity that you've built into it is the experience, makes it easy. >> And then when you, and Stu, sorry to interrupt you but I got really excited about this stuff as you can tell. But, and then you look at the enterprise. So you're admin? You get into the enterprise management portal and its like Stu, I had a really bad experience. Oh let me look that up, oh yeah, okay. Where were you? You know, I was in outer Mongolia Ah okay, about five minutes into the call you had some packet loss, its like yeah it wasn't. But it still maintains the connection, right? So you can actually, so our Enterprise Management Portal is awesome. >> Yeah so that actually where I was going with the question, is you know I remember back, I actually worked for Lucent right after they spun out from AT&T. And we had videos talking about pervasive video everywhere, in my home in the business. Feels like we're almost there but still even when I have a team get together my folks that live in Silicon Valley, their connectivity's awful. You know when they have their, and its like oh well my computer or my phone don't have the cycles to be able to run. Maybe we have to turn off some of the video Are we getting there, will 5G solve some of these issues? Will the next generation of phones and computers keep up with it? Because it's, I'm sure you can guess we're big fans of video. It's a lot of what we do. >> Because video is the new voice, right. We like video. If I can only hear you and I can't see you, then when I make a statement I can't see you nodding. If I say something you like, you nod. So we get that concurrency of the experience Again it comes back Stu, where were we a year ago? The capabilities we had, where will we be a year from today? Whether its AI, whether its the power in the device in front of us whether its the network, you know, 5G is becoming a reality. It's going to take some time to get there but you've got sort of great technologies and capabilities, that you know, you look at the introduction of our real-time transcription services. I mean how cool is that? I'm sure there's lots of questions, so lots of people would ask about that real-time transcription in terms of, well what's next? I'm not going to talk about what's next. But as they say in life, watch this space. >> Yeah, just you made some announcements at the show with some partners I actually believe Otter AI is one of the ones you mentioned there. I got a demo of their thing, real time, a little bit of AI built in there. Can you talk about some of those partnerships? >> Yeah so we have great, we love our partnerships right? Whether its on the AI space, with Apple and Siri and Amazon and Otter. We also love our partnerships with Questron and Logitek and HP, and Polly of course. Again its the notion of, we have terrific software. You guys realize that, right? Its terrific software, proprietary QOS proprietary capabilities, its like its a fantastic experience every time on our software. These partners have great technologies too. But they're more on the hardware side, we are software engineers at our core. As Andreson said, I think it was about ten years go, "software is the easing thing in the world "so you take terrific software "you imbed it in terrific hardware "with terrific partners and what happens "is you get exceptional experiences." And that's what we want to deliver to people. So its not about the technology, its about the people. Its about making people happy, making easy, taking stress off the table. You go to the meeting, you light it up, you share the content, you record it, you can watch it later, its just terrific. >> So the people, the experiences you about we've been hearing that thematically for the last three days. As we know as consumers, the consumer behavior is driving so much of this change that has to happen, for companies to not just digitally transform, but to be competitive. We're in Five9's booth and they've mentioned they've got five billion minutes of recorded customer conversations. You guys can record, but its not just about the recording of the voice and the video and the transcription. Tell us about what you're doing to enable the context, so that the data and the recordings have much more value. >> Yeah so , I mean its the notion of being able to sort of rewind and replay. I'll give you another example if I may. Coming out of an office in Palo Alto jumped in the Uber, going back to San Jose for a client meeting. I'm a New Yorker as we talked about a few minutes ago and, I don't know the traffic patterns in Southern, in the Valley. And its about 5:00 o'clock, 5:15. San Jose meetings 5:45. Normally it would be fine, but its rush hour, what do I know about rush hour? I know a lot more now than then. I realize I'm not going to be able to make it on time. Put up the client logo, virtual background on the phone, in the Uber, client gets on the call, Harry where are you? I'm in the back of an Uber. Again, the same sort of experience. Then he asks the question, "well with this recording capability, "can I watch it at 35,000 feet?" Of course you can. And that was it. That was the magic moment for this particular client, because he said "I'm client facing all the time. "I don't get it in time, "I don't always make my management meetings "so I won't have to ask my colleagues what happened "and get their interpretation of the meeting. "I can actually watch the meeting "when I'm at 35,000 feet on a plane, going to Europe." So that's what this is all about. >> Alright, well Harry obviously this space excites you a bunch. Can you bring us back a little bit? This brought you out of retirement and the chase, the space is changing so fast. We come a year from now, what kind of things do we think we'll be talking about, and what's going to keep you excited going forward? >> So lets talk about the first part first and then sort of' break it into two. So yes I had a fantastic career and I retired and so when I met Eric and I met the leadership team at Zoom and I dug into the technology and I understood sort of' A, the culture of the company which is amazing. When I understood the product capability and how this was built as video first, and how we would have this maniacal focus if you will on sort of being a software company at our core. And how it was all about the people. That was sort of a very big part of my decision. So that was one. Two is, look we have a labor shortage right? We can't hire enough people, we can't hire the people, we have more jobs than we have people. So and so, retaining talent is really important. Giving them the technology and the studies that have been done, if you make an investment in the technology, that helps with retention. That helps with profit. It helps with, product innovation. So investment in the people. And the ability to collaborate. It's very hard to work if you don't collaborate, right? It just makes it really, very lumpy if you will. So the ability to collaborate locally, nationally, and globally, and people say, well what's collaborating locally? It's kind of like we can just walk down the corridor. Yeah, well if you're in two different buildings how do you get there? And then it gives us, a foot of snow between you, its makes it really hard. So collaborating locally, nationally, and globally is super important. So you put all that together that was the, what convinced me to say okay you know what, retirement, we're just going to put a pause button on that. And we're going to gave some fun over here. And that really has been, so I've, over a year now and its been absolutely amazing. So yes, big advances. What's in the the future? I think the future, you know there's been a lot of discussion around AI. We hear that its like, all the time. And we've seen from a variety of different providers this week in terms of their, their thoughts around how they're going to leverage AI. Its not about the technology, its about the end of the its about the user experience. And you look at the things that we started to do, we talked about real-time transcriptions a few moments ago, you look at the partnership that we have with Linkedin where you can hover over the name and their Linkinin profile pops up. You're going to see this, I just see this as an exponential change in these abilities. Because you have these building blocks today that you can grow on an exponential basis. So, the world is our oyster, is how I fundamentally think about it. And the art of the possible is now possible, And so lets, I think the future is going to' be absolutely amazing. Who would have, sorry Lisa, who would have thought a year ago, you could get on a plane using facial recognition? Let me just throw that out there. I mean, that's pretty amazing. Who would have thought a year ago that when you rent a car, you can just look at the camera on the way out and you're approved to go? Who would have thought that? >> So with that speed I'm curious to get your take on how Zoom is facilitating adoption. You mentioned some great customers examples where your engagement with them via Zoom Video Conference basically sold the POC in and of itself, with you at an airport >> That's a great questions. >> I guess O'Hare has pretty good wifi. >> What's that? >> O'Hare has pretty good wifi. >> A little choppy but, but it worked. >> It worked. >> Because of our great software, yeah. >> There you go, but in terms of adoption so as customers understand, alright our consumers are so demanding, we have to be able to react, and facilitate collaboration internally and externally. How, what are some of the tools and the techniques that Zoom delivers to enable those guys and gals to go I get it, I'm going to use it, And I'm actually going to actually use it successfully? >> This is a question, I don't know how many clients, CIOs, CTOs, C suite execs I talk to, and they all say, they all ask me similar sorts of questions. Like we're not a video first culture. Its like video, its kind of like we're a phone culture. And then I, so I throw that right back at them and I say and why is that? Because we don't have a good video platform. Aha. Now, when you have good video, when it just works when its easy, when its seamless, when its platform agnostic. IOS, Andriod, Mac, Windows, Linux, VDI, web. When you have this sort of, this platform when you're agnostic to the platform, and its a consistent high quality experience, you use it. So its the notion of, Lisa, it's the notion of would we rather get into a room and, would we rather get into a room and have a face to face meeting? Absolutely. So why would you get on a call and not like to see the people you're talking to. You like to see the people. Why, because its a video first. >> Unless its just one of those meetings that's on my calender and I didn't want to be there and I'm not going to listen. But I totally agree with you Harry. So, another hot button topic that I think we're at the center of here and that I'm sure you have an opinion on. Remote workers. So we watched some really big companies I think really got back in the dialogue a coupla' years ago when Yahoo was like okay, everybody's got to' come in work for us and we've seen some very large public companies that said you need to be in your workforce. and as I said, I'm sure you've got some pretty strong opinions on this >> I don't know what's going on here, quite honestly Stu but its like I think you're reading my brain because these are things I love talking about. So yeah, its. Sorry repeat the question? >> Remote workers. >> Remote workers, yeah. So first of all, I was at an event recently we talked about remote work. We didn't like the term. Its a distributed workforce. >> Yes. Because if you say you're a remote worker its kind like, that doesn't give you that warm feeling of being part of the organization. So we call it, so we said, we should drop calling people remote workers and we should call them a distributed work force. So that's one. Two is, I'm in New york, I'm in Orlando, I'm in Chicago, I'm in Atlanta, I'm in Denver. I'm on planes, I'm in an Uber. I don't feel disconnected at all. Why? Because I can see my colleagues, and its immersive. They share content with me. I'm walking down Park Avenue and I've got my phone and they're sharing content and I'm zooming in and I can see them and I can hear them and I'm giving feedback and I'm marking up on my phone, as I'm walking. So I don't feel, and then when I go to, its fascinating, and then I go to San Jose and I'm walking around the office and I'm seeing people physically. It doesn't feel like I haven't seen them, its really funny. I was in San Jose last week, Wednesday and Thursday in San Jose, took the red-eye back. Hate the red-eye but, I don't like flying during the day, I think it's inefficient, a waste of time. Took the red-eye back, now I'm on calls Friday morning from my office at home with my green screen, Zoom background and everybody's got, it's like I'm talking to the same people I was talking to yesterday but they were in the flesh, now they're on video. It's like Harry where are you, why didn't you come to the room? Well I'm back in New York. It's just just that simple, yep. >> That simple and really it sounds like Harry, what Zoom is delivering is a cultural transformation for some of these newer or older companies who, there is no reason not to be a video culture. We thank you so much for taking some time >> Thank you, thank you >> To stop by theCUBE and chat with Stu and me about all of the exciting things that brought you back into tech. and I'm excited to dial up how I'm using Zoom. >> Well we can take five minutes after this and I can show you some cool tricks >> Wow, from the CIO himself. Harry Moseley, thank you so much for your time. >> Thank you, thank you >> Great to have you on the program. For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin and you're watching theCUBE (upbeat tune)

>> Announcer: Live, from the Javits Center in New York City, it's The Cube! Covering Inforum 2017. Brought to you by Infor. >> Welcome back to The Cube's coverage of Inforum, I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. Along with my co-host, Dave Vilante. We are joined by Charles Phillips, the CEO of Infor. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Great to be here. Thank you guys for coming. >> So you're fresh off the keynote. A big deal. Thousands of people here at the Javits Center. What would you say is the most exciting to you about being here and what you really want us participants, attendees to come away with? >> Well, there's a lot of energy at the conference. And people can see the investments we've been making. All the innovation. And just the feedback we're getting is just keep doing what you're doing. You guys just really change the industry. The idea of a network commerce and a network ERP coming together is something new. They like the fact that we kind of find these new areas on our own. People are buzzing about Coleman, our new AI announcement, that platform as well. So it's been fun getting the feedback. >> So talk a little bit about Coleman. Talk about the naming of Coleman. >> Yeah, so it's named after Katherine Coleman Johnson, who is one of the early pioneers in NASA. She was a researcher mathematician there to calculate a lot of the orbital fractions that were needed for reentry. And John Glenn relied on her. And she's in the movie, Hidden Figures. And got to know that movie pretty well, because along with about 30 other African American executives, we raised enough money to send almost 30 thousand kids to see the movie for free. We screened it probably three months before it hit the theaters. And a lot of buzz. We didn't know a lot about it ourselves, so we learned a lot about them. So I was excited to say, if we're going to have an AI platform, why not name it after her? Such a pioneer. And it worked out. Her family was at the event and they were just blown away. And they're asking, can I get copies of everything? And taking pictures with us. So, I thought it was the highlight of the show. >> You know, I liked your first slide today and yesterday in the analysts meeting. It basically was your strategy in a nutshell. Micro verticals was sort of the starting point, the decision to go AWS cloud, The GT Nexus network component, burst analytics and then Coleman AI. Just fit together so nicely and it sounds great. And then you also said, look. Cloud and mobile and social, that's table stakes today. It's really sort of a new ball game. So my question is, you know, the slide's nice. It sounds great. How fully baked is it? >> Yeah, well, we're, I think we're, you know, we've had some time now. We're building the network. And so we've been working on figuring out the right integration points and where the value add was. And so, we're already able to kind of ship things like ASM directly to our ERP. And we showed in context where you can click on the order, an M3, for example, and see where it is on an ocean container. So we've already done a lot of that work. And there's only more to come. We want to, we didn't mention it today, but we want to attack the EDI market and commoditize that and have it be a free service. Because we already have a network. We can ship packets around it. Doesn't cost us anything. And we do that for some customers today. So we have more that we could have talked about that we didn't get to. So a lot of it's real today. >> We also heard at the analysts meeting, in great depth, and a little bit today, you had the CFO of Koch industries up there, made a large $2 billion plus investment. Koch is also a customer. And was a customer prior to the announcement of the investment. How did that all come about? Can you share that sort of story with us? >> Yeah, so we had a very successful project at Georgia Pacific. They brought us in because they were frustrated with SAP. It's too expensive, taking to long. We had the micro vertical reaches that could get going quickly. And we collaborated with them and added a few other things they wanted. So that went very well. And kind of, word travels when you come in under budget. (laughter) And one thing led to another. Made a trip to Wichita at their invite, and hit it off very well with Charles Koch. He understood what we did, he's an MIT grad, very technical. So, wasn't sure what I was kind of getting into. But once I started talking to him, he clearly understood everything else. And the more technical the conversation became, the more animated he got. So, clearly he's our kind of guy. We're product people. And so, we hit it off very well. >> And they're becoming a larger customer. You're getting deeper and deeper into that account. But there's an old saying, you know, God created the world in six days but he didn't have an install base. And so, you guys have emerged as this really viable alternative to SAP and Oracle. But how do you go from where they are to this cloud native platform that you guys have developed? >> Well, it'll be one of the largest global implementations ever. Of any financial project, of any HCM. 130,000 employees, which is great. So a project of that scale, that happens usually top down. When they're invested and ready to go. So they have four members on our board. And including the CFO, including the president of Georgia Pacific, and many other important executives. And so the guys who run the divisions, many of them are on our board and learning this stuff and excited. So they're actually pushing us right now. Which we think is great. We have a weekly cadence call with all these senior execs of all the projects to make sure here's where we are, are you getting what you need, are people responding. I mean, they are driving. These people know how to execute. And that's why they're $115 billion. It's great for us, great for them. They're pushing us. So I'm not too worried about that, given what I've seen so far. >> When you think about the long term strategy of Infor, you're now one of the most well-funded unicorns along with Uber and Air B&B. Where do you go? What do you sort of see as sort of the long term play here? >> Yeah, post world domination? (laughter) Then after that, we have other industries we want to get into. There's a few acquisitions we probably will consider. We want to expand our network. These networks grow up by vertical and by industry. There's a few other vertical we want to get into. But the list of things that we could build and what people are asking us to build is almost endless. You know? And they like the way we do these kind of digital transformation projects. There's lots of those out there. And so, we just want to make sure we have the ecosystem where we can implement. That's why it's so important to get a censure, Cap Jim and I, and Grant Thorton and Deloit, they're all taking training as we speak. Filling out their practices. Which we didn't have a year ago. So, that was our kind of constraint to scaling. We just couldn't take on so many projects. But now we can. >> I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the structure of the industry, the software industry specifically. I mean, you're fairly famous for having sort of predicted consolidation, and then orchestrating that consolidation. Mark Andreson's famous for saying software's eating the world. I think Bennioff said there's going to be more non tech companies that are SAS companies than tech companies. Do you expect we'll just see a sort of de-consolidation of software? Or maybe a bi frication? Where maybe some of the enterprise guys acquire, but there's all these burgeoning, blooming flowers of software companies emerging. What's your point of view on the software industry and its structure? >> I think you'll see more industrial companies wanting to own software. I think you'll see software executives running non software companies. Most companies think they have to get digital. And a lot of the board of directors recognize that and recognize they don't have the expertise to do that. And so a lot of software executives get asked to run non tech companies for that reason. Because you can learn retail faster than they can learn how to program. And if you've been building the applications for those verticals, you actually kind of know the vertical pretty well. So I think you'll see some of these domains over time where people have to become more technology fluent. And the way to do that is to bring in tech people. >> The other thing I wanted to ask you sort of as a follow up on that, you see Amazon buys Whole Foods and is getting into grocery, they're a content company. Apple's get the financial services. And you know it's because of digital. It allows you to sort of jump industry value chains. But for decades, people just stay within their own little value chain silo. Do you expect that to change as well? Where executives are able to traverse industries? >> I think so. Technology is causing that. There's enough disruption and fear where people are willing to consider something completely different than they were before. And that helps us, because usually we need someone to either take an action because they see an opportunity or because they're worried about getting disrupted. That's how these big projects get started. That's part of the reason why our growth is so good right now. >> Is that's what's driving it? Is it the fear of being left behind? >> It's probably equal amount of both. They see opportunity, I should be doing something, but I don't know what. So we have to tell them the what. Or, I'm worried about what everybody else is doing. I don't want to get Ubered out. And we tell them how not to be in that position. So we're getting an audience at senior levels that we couldn't before. Just because it's top of mind for everybody. >> How about, talk about MNA a little bit. And what you look for in an acquisition candidate. You have a platform, that's probably dogmatic about running on that platform. But talk a little but more about what you look for. >> We usually want next generation thinking in a technical platform that we don't have to completely rewrite. Because we don't to kind of pollute our architecture. If it's a modern architecture where we can graph it on to our information OS, as we call it, that's fine. So we don't buy things just for scale. And that was kind of early strategy for the company 10 or 15 years ago. We buy things because it's a specific value proposition for customers or fills a hole we think we need to fill. >> Okay. >> I would rather buy something that is small, maybe not much traction, not much revenue, but a great product. Because we have a huge distribution channel and we can grow it pretty quickly. We can fix all those other problems if the product is there. >> Well, the burst acquisition is very interesting because you saw the ascendancy we were talking about earlier, Rebecca. Saw the ascendancy of tableau, and Christian Chabeau, very articulate, would talk about the slow BI companies and really de positioning them. You're positioning is actually quite compelling. Not the old, takes forever to build a cube. And not the lightweight version of just a visualization. You're sort of the best of both worlds. Maybe unpack that a little bit. >> Yeah, that's the attractions we saw in Berson's. You need some of those enterprise features to understand fragmented and enterprise scale data. That's a hard problem. Having a nice desktop tool that can only handle a single table or gives you conflicting information so you can't have any semantic meaning across different data sources. It's nice to get answers quickly, but if they're wrong, that doesn't help you. So, we need somebody who could handle the back end. Our customers were asking us to do that. They want us to be the analytic layer, a system of record for analytics, because other companies don't want to do that. SAP or Oracle will say, just use all my stuff. I don't want to connect to anybody else. And we know that we have to coexist. And if we can build that analytic layer, we think that's strategic high ground. Let's own that. And if we can replace some of the underlying systems later, great. You know? >> I was just going to talk about, I was going to switch gears entirely and talk a little bit about politics. Before the cameras were rolling, you were on Obama's economic recovery board, which was led by Paul Volker. You've been to Washington, met with Trump, met with Pence. I'm curious about how you view the roll of business in advising government. In which directions to take, and the approach. >> I think it's increasingly important in a sense that, especially with the current administration, they should respect business opinion. Because he's a business guy. Secondly, so many of our institutions people don't trust any more. THey've kind of lost some of that credibility. I hope we can turn that around. But in the interim, we have to have other people who can fill in for some of that. And, especially tech companies. People want to know what tech companies think. And so, I think we almost have a duty to try to fill in some of that. And every part of the economy and the government has been effected by technology. They want to understand it. We can help them do that. >> And so many of your customers are in fact municipalities, and cities, and public school systems. >> That's a good point. We have 1500 state and local governments and federal customers. And that's a fast growing part of our business right now. And we're rooting a lot of federal agencies as we speak. Because they're going through an upgrade cycle as well. Something called Fed Round they have to get certified in. And they want to move to the cloud. And we're doing both of those with them. >> Now, you also talked about how you see technology executives perhaps moving into other industries. Do you see them also moving into public service? Do you see that as a possibility? >> That's going to take longer. That's probably later in their careers because of the economics of that. But every now and then, you'll see one do it, yeah. >> So, a question on cloud. It was almost by necessity, I would argue, that you gravitated toward AWS. Smart move. Others have said, you know, Oracle in particular, we're going to own the whole stack. We can make a lot of money owning the whole stack. If you had to do it again, would you pursue that same strategy, and why? >> Well, when we got there, the company was just trying to build a cloud business. We were doing it traditional. Trying to own data centers and, you know, doing data sharing. We could have done that and continued with that over time. But I just thought it wouldn't provide the elastic compute and the scale of data management that I thought was coming. We looked at all the platforms that we out there at the time. We met with Microsoft, IBM, you name it. And at the time, AWS was just so much further along in terms of services available, capabilities, entrepreneurial spirit, scale, it wasn't even close. In our minds, anyway. And so, they were great partners to work with. For us, it's been the right decision. They've helped us a lot. >> Yeah, and seeing your arc as maybe a question. But you're pretty technical. Maybe a better question for Duncan or Soma, but I'll ask you. Because you're more technical than I am. When you look at your architecture slides, there's a lot of Amazon in there. >> There is, yeah. >> There's like this dynamo dv, looks like some kineses, there's S3, there's all kinds of flywheel oriented tech. I wonder if you could sort of elaborate on that in terms of the impact that that has not only on you, but ultimately on your customers. >> Yeah, no. That was by design, by my direction. I wanted to take advantage of every single serviture we could on AWS. Because every time we do that, that's less work for my developers. I don't want them to worried about infrastructure. Just write the application and be an industry expert. So any time they come out with a new service, you name it. Whether it's Promethium, archiving, backup. We were one of the early customers of RedShip. We take advantage of it. Because it's cheaper for us to do it that way and we get the scale that we need. And we get it in multiple countries. So when any other strategy than that, we have to replicate things in multiple places and we have to figure out how to make it work on AWS. >> And I know we're limited on time, but if software's eating the world, software's going to eat the edge. So talk about your edge strategy. >> Well, it depends on what you mean by edge strategy. I think that software eating the world is true. Maybe it's helping the world, is a better way to put it. But almost every product that we see its inside of now. That's actually good for us, being the largest vendor for asset management. Every IOT company is coming to us because all that data is meaningless unless you can generate a work order or requisition and get something fixed, schedule someone to come. That's what we do. So all of that data needs to end up on a repository. That can effect the business process. And we own that business process. >> Well, something that we've said on the Cube since the early days of so-called big data is the practitioners of big data are the guys who are going to do well. It's not necessarily the guys selling big data infrastructure. And that's proven true. You guys never talked ever, I don't think, about big data. But you're a data company now, first. >> Yeah, and we've collected a lot more data than we ever thought we would. And so, now we've got to figure out how to use that. >> How to parse it, how to use it. >> Exactly. Which is why we added the next two layers of that stack. >> That will be next year's summit. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Next year's Inforum. Well, Charles Phillips, thanks so much for joining us. It was a pleasure. >> Great. Thanks you guys. >> See ya, thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Dave Valante, we will have more from the Cube's coverage of Inforum after this. (upbeat music)