(upbeat music) [Narrator] Live from Las Vegas, It's theCUBE Covering Informatica World 2019 Brought to you by Informatica >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Informatica World here in Las Vegas. I'm your Host, Rebecca Knight. Along with my Co-Host, John Furrier. We have a CUBE alum joining us Graeme Thompson. SVP and CIO of Informatica. Thank you so much for coming, for returning to theCUBE. >> Pleasure to be here. >> So one of the themes we talk a lot about on theCUBE, It's the 10th anniversary of theCUBE, is the changing role of the CIO and you are a CIO so you are well positioned to answer this question. In addition to the changing role there's also the perception of what it is versus the reality. Can you talk a little about how you see the role having evolved both at Informatica as well as your other peers at other companies as well as sort of what the industry is expecting or maybe those not in the industry thinks you do versus actually what you do? >> Yeah that's a long frustration thank you >> I'm sorry >> You're keeping me on my toes here Yeah so a lot of things, the outcomes are the same but with different methods so vendor management has always been important, cost management has always been important but as it moves from being predominantly on prem to be primarily in the cloud The dynamics of how these deals are put together changes so you need a different kind of approach to how you manage the portfolio of cloud applications. Security if different in the cloud it's still important it always has been always will be. But it's different in the cloud you have to look much more as vendor risk management make sure that you're comfortable with the risk posture of the vendors you are sourcing your applications from. So those things I would put in the category of You're trying to accomplish the same thing you're just doing it differently because your application work load is more likely to be in the cloud. Things that are different though, completely different are expectations. So everyone can see the power of data and the power of having speed and agility in the cloud but they want it immediately and they don't want to do the hard work to get there so I find that the CIO sometimes has to be the educator or the evangelist for change to explain that if you want all this data to generate all these miraculous new outcomes you have to focus on the process and then you have to enable that process within an application that's going to meet your needs today and tomorrow. You have to think end to end which means you have to integrate applications like Marketo and Salesforce. Then you need to find a way to get it all in your data lake That is completely different it's a completely different sport From what we were playing as CIOs 5 years ago and it's definitely the biggest area of change I've seen both internally and talking to PIOs >> Graeme, we've talked in the past, goo to see you again. You are a CIO your work for Informatica so you're the CIO of Informatica so you don't need to be sold on the value of data You're in the data business. You have a data company that thinks hard and has been building products for years in private, in retooling, you see the wave, we've talked about it you've been on the same wave, a great wave, for 4 years everyone else is now on it. SO as a CIO who works for a company that's you know you're not going to get in trouble for doing a data driven project what are some of the things that you've got going on because you do have relationships with all the different cloud providers you do have a great on premises large install base and now you guys as a company what are some of the projects you're doing that would a nice guiding light to folks watching who were really kicked in the tires on digital transmission, not just like talking about it but like okay architecure, roadmap, really thinking through all the hairy problems of what's coming down the pipe for them. What are you working on? >> Yeah so I think our marketing team has done a really good job framing things in the four journeys. So talk about it within that context. So the first one is next gen analytics. So a lot of companies go into this thinking Right all I have to do is find out where the data lives, ingest the data into my data lake or data warehouse, put Tableau on top of it and job done. Not the case, right? So as soon as you start shading data across more than one function, marketing are really good at knowing their data. They know how its generated. They know how it can be used. As soon as you let someone else loose on marketing's data, it's use at your own risk. Right so that introduces the need for governance. If you're going to use data in one organization that was generated in another one, you have to agree on the definition of terms. You have to agree on calculations so that you don't get the finance team and the sales team debating what the renewal rate is. So the next gen analytics journey for us has been an interesting one. We started with an on-prem data warehouse that's now on AZUR. The tipping point for us was when most of the data is generated in the cloud, why move it back on-prem just to do analytics on it? So we made a decision to build that on the cloud with AZUR. >> So leave it on the cloud, it's there. >> Yeah >> and then have the on-premise piece >> Go onto the cloud. >> It's where the MDM it's where the pieces kind of come together? >> Yep >> All right so... >> So that's the analytics journey. >> So I'll give you another curve bal here. So as you come in here, you say okay great the next step is well you know I need to actually make my AI work. Your clear, you know "the clarity starts here" it's a nice slogan. Nice play on words there but AI is ultimately where everyone wants to get to. >> Yeah >> AI is fed by data, machine learning, other things, really kind of feeding the outcome for AI. But without good data, and/or data can can help the AI get smarter. This kind of brings up the conversation of more data or diverse data - different data sets. So accessing data sets actually is a new dynamic that people are getting into and proving it adds value to AI. >> Yeah >> How do you see that playing out because this is really kind of brings up the real complex question which is that as you mentioned earlier; terms, rights, marketplaces, sharing data, uh you know, all these new things? What's your view on this notion of having more data sets feeding intelligent AI? >> So part of the increase in enthusiasm about AI and ML is really the convergence of.. the technology's actually ready to help, its not a science project off to the side anymore. And the need for it has never been greater. There's no way a human can keep up with all the data that's being generated even at a company like ours. So if you want to find out where the data is created, where it's used, who has access to it, then your going to have to apply some AI to it otherwise there's no shot. You'd need an ever increasing team of humans who would fail to do the job adequately. >> So you see data sets merging... not merging but like being merchandised, if you will, for lack of a better word? >> Yeah well you have to manage the linage of it. >> All right. So you have to know where it's created, where it's used, you know, who has access to it? Is that access appropriate? Uh... all those thing have to be taken into account. Especially when you look at all the compliance and privacy things that we're all faced with now that 18 months ago we weren't all that concerned about. >> And that really goes back to what you said earlier in our conversation in that the role of the CIO is so much as an educator and an evangelist. So can you talk a little bit about what you've learned in terms of making that message really sink in with employees in terms of understand where the data lives, who has access to it, all the obstacles that you just talked about? >> Yeah so part of it is those managing the IT team and then those managing the relationships with your business constituents. So let's take the IT team first. Really good IT people, like really good engineers, will work on the most interesting problem available. It's our job as a CIO to make sure that the most profitable problem is also the most interesting one. Fight number one is getting people working on the right things cause IT people with work incredibly hard . You just need to make sure they're working incredibly hard on the right stuff with a focus on the right outcome at the end of it. So that's the IT part. Then working with the business stakeholders, its really setting expectations. Cause quite rightly, they want everything as soon as they can describe it, it should be available. There's often a lot of technical dept that we have as organizations, you know? We had a more than 10 year old deployment of sales force, you got to believe there was a ton of technical debt in there because it was built to perfection for our old business. It wasn't built for our new business. So you have to work with the buiness stakeholders. Bring them along with you on what to do first, what to do next, what the dependencies are, ' and focus on setting exceptions that its not going to be done overnight. >> So about governance. Obviously governance has been around for awhile, we've talked about it before. But now more than ever your seeing in the news first anniversary of GDPR, I predicted that would be... I won't say it... I said like, months before... bad words.. BS basically. But it's reality. More privacy stuff your seeing more and more, um, regions in cloud dealing with certain restrictions. So when it hear regulation, I hear constrained data. That goes in my mind, I hear oh my god. Regulation and innovation are always sometimes at odds. So it's a balancing act. What are you guys doing to address that? What's the solution today and how do you see that playing out because SAS is about data and agility and that's why SAS has been so popular and that's what digital transformation is going to get to is these SAS-like benefits. Agile, risk-taking, high reward. Low-risk, high reward kind of things. How do you get the balance between, you know, regulation, compliance, risk, and innovation? >> Yeah, so I can talk about how we look at it internally and then a little bit about how our customers look at it. So, for us you can look at it like a tax. As a tax on innovation. Or, if you look at a little bit more optimistically, who wouldn't want to honor the customer's right to be forgotten? Who wouldn't want to consult their customer on where you use their data? So you can also look at it as way that by implementing the GDPR or the California Privacy Standard or whatever it is, it makes your company better. It allows you to be the company that you would like to aspire to be. So you don't have to just look at it as a tax. Now I'm going to look at our customers. They fall into 2 categories: those that have to do it because they're in a regulated industry like financial services or healthcare, and then there's those that do it because they know it will help them serve their customers better. And you see a lot of governance and compliance projects starting from a place of defensiveness. They have to do it because they have to comply with new regulations that apply to them and often its companies that are really trying to make the best use of their data but they want to do it in a really responsible way. Um - if done properly and responsibly, it can be something that's good for everyone, I believe. >> I just have one final question about the skills gap. And this is something we've been really talking a lot about here. What are you doing to address it? And is the problem really as bad as the headlines are making it out to be? >> Yeah so there's the macro problem of aging workforce and where are the new people coming from? There's that one - it's been with us for awhile and applies across all functions. Then there's specific skills areas in IT that are always a shortage. Security is one - it's really, really difficult to find really good IT security.. information security people. Often these groups can be ivory tower-ish so its hard to find people who are really practitioners. It's hard to select them and it's hard to retain them because they always want to build and then move on and build something new. So security is one. Obviously data and analytics is a huge one. Finding people that can, that know a little bit more than what an oric in our warehouse does is a challenge and then once you get those people, you have to make sure they are working on things that they find are worthy of their time so that they are motivated to work as hard as you need them to work. And other areas like managing cloud vendors is I think a skill set that will start to grow up. Um - these cloud contracts get really expensive as you scale and there's no friction at the point of consumption. You know, we've got engineers that aren't allowed to order a stapler from Amazon without approval. But they can sign the company up for tens of thousands of dollars worth of compute cost obligations. You need governance and skills to manage uh - that. If you ask an engineer do you want slow or fast and big or small, they're going to pick fast and large, right? >> Just a dumb follow up on that skills gap question. For the folks who are graduating collage, high school, elementary school.. ..education is obviously kind of a little bit linear but you know people have argued that there's no one playbook for the kinds of courses you would take to get into the data kind of world there. Is there any pattern your seeing where the folks who are really excelling in this new environment have certain skills and classes? So if someone is going into collage maybe honing a class on you know on a particular class or dicipline? Have you seen some things that work? >> No >> No? >> What I have seen that works is finding people who have a track record of solving important business problems and using that to select the people that you hire. Cause the.. having a sound education in technology is one thing. You got to understand the business domain and the problem that you are trying to solve. That's where the value comes from. The business stakeholders value someone that can understand the problem they are trying to solve or the opportunity that they are trying to take advantage of. So finding those people that have a track record of solving meaningful problems, uh to me, has been a way to find the right folks in that area. >> Multitalent is then.. it's early, too, I mean, Berkley just had their first graduating class of you know, Data Sciences, kind of gives you an idea of how early this is. >> Yeah and it takes 2 to 4 years to have a University course accredited. By the time you've done that it's out of date. >> It's out of date. >> So that has to change. >> My final question for you, Graeme, is what's the um... For the folks that aren't here at Informatica World 2019 whats the summary in your view? The theme of the show? What's the key highlights that people should walk away with this year for the focus of Informatica World 2019? >> So it's not a new theme, it's more of a expansion on the' theme from the last couple of years. So the importance of the platform is key. You can go off as an IT professional and source one product to solve one problem and before you're done I guarantee you'll have found an adjacent problem and you're going to wish you'd chosen a platform instead of an individual product. So if you listen to Anneals Keynote this morning and Ahmet got into more detail, its really about the platform and the power of Claire and the AI part as part of that overall platform - that's really the theme - but its not new. It's not something we just came up with last week it's been our strategy for at least 24 months so we just continue to build on it. >> Bad data or no data, there's no AI, or bad data is bad AI and no data is no AI? That's essentially the reality as AI becomes mainstream. >> Yeah. >> All right, thank you. >> Great. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, Graeme >> Pleasure. >> You're watching theCUBE's live coverage of Informatica World 2019 I'm Rebecca Knight and John Furrier. Thanks for staying tuned. (upbeat music)