(bright music) >> Hello, and welcome to today's session of the 2021 AWS Global Public Sector Partner Awards. I'm your host, Natalie Erlich and today we'll highlight the best cybersecurity solution. I'm very pleased to welcome our next guests. They are Tina Thorstenson executive public sector strategist at CrowdStrike and Jennifer Dvorak information security architect for the State of Arizona. Thank you so much for being with me today. >> Thanks for having us. >> Yep, thank you. >> Perfect. Well you know obviously a really wild year with COVID and it certainly pushed a lot of boundaries. Cyber security resiliency also a hot topic as ransomware really spiked up. How have you addressed this concern and really accelerated this push with COVID-19 in the backdrop? I'd love it if either one of you would just like to jump in here. >> Well, CrowdStrike was one of our initiatives for 2020 and it was significantly increased, accelerated due to COVID. So we had to roll out in a matter of weeks when we had a matter of months previously and it really provided us the visibility that we needed for folks taking their computers home. We had no way of triaging any of our incidents when the computers were at home. So rolling out CrowdStrike as quickly as possible it gave us remote access, it gave us visibility and that was huge for our organization. >> Tina, if you could weigh in on this as well, that would be terrific. >> Sure absolutely. And you know, Jen with the State of Arizona is one of our premier customers but across the board with the 2021 global threat report that we issue each year, what we saw there was a fourfold increase in the number of intrusions. So to your point about the threat activity and it's not getting better. So what CrowdStrike is on a mission to do is stop regions and protect organizations against these bad actors so that they're, that we minimize disruptions. It's really been tremendous to see and build a ecosystem from a platform approach that started with visibility on the end point that Jen was just alluding to. >> And Jennifer, I'd love to get your insight how the public sector and the private sector can work better in tandem with each other in order to protect customers and also communities against ransomware attacks and other kinds of cybersecurity threats that we've seen coming from Russia for instance. >> Certainly so our state CISO Tim Roemer, he has definitely encouraged us to make partners with our private vendors. So that's one of his strategic initiatives and we really want partners in the private sector. We want folks that are going to come alongside us and help us with our security goals. And CrowdStrike has been one of those vendors. We don't want to just spend money and then the vendor runaway, we want somebody that's going to be with us every step of the way. We've had some incidents this past year and CrowdStrike was the first team to alert us because it was a different agency or a different part of our organization that we don't typically work with a lot. And that was really helpful because we were able to act quickly and address the issues that arose. So just having somebody that's looking out for your best interests and being a true partner is what we're really looking for. And that's the only way that we can circumvent these ransomware attacks. >> And Tina I'd love it if you'd weigh in as well. How do you see your role in this effort to protect the public evolving now in 2021? >> So I love that question and especially with the role of my role brand new in COVID interestingly enough, to create this bi-directional executive alignment with our customers and our internal teams and overall at CrowdStrike our goal, as I said is to stop breaches and it's really to bring, to minimize the frustration that comes sometimes with rolling out security tools. I've been at this a long time and tools like CrowdStrike are really game changers for security teams that are really about protecting organizations. And essentially what we do is we brought a single platform where when it, when the, when our software is deployed to an organization across their laptops, desktops, server and cloud infrastructure, we were born in the cloud kind of before it was cool and now we serve more than 11,000 customers. And that threat activity goes to a single AWS instance where we look across all of the threat activity. And then when we see activity in one area, we can protect all of our customers. That's the power of the cloud. >> Perfect and I'd love Jennifer's insights here too. What steps are you taking now to keep the public protected and the state cyber ready? >> And I like Tina's point about being born in the cloud. So State of Arizona is a cloud first state. We are also looking for solutions in the cloud, and I think by leveraging cloud solutions, we're able to be more nimble. We're able to pivot our approach to security and address anything that comes up more quickly. So being cloud first, even though it's, it wasn't embraced initially, I think that it's something that we've been driving towards and looking for more partners that support that cloud first initiative that we have. >> And Tina what's top of mind? What are some of the key initiatives that your team and teams are going to be focused on in the years ahead? What's the next phase for cybersecurity? >> Great question and we've talked quite a bit about the end point but where we're headed and really where we've invested heavily the last couple of years and we'll continue moving forward is now that we have, we've brought this game-changing visibility to our security teams on the end point of each one of the systems in their environment where we've expanded the platform to now include cloud services like I mentioned. Now include indicators of misconfigurations which are so detrimental to teams working in a hybrid cloud environment. And then we've also moved into the identity protection space. And essentially what we're doing there is the same thing we've been doing to protect workloads coming from desktops and laptops across the country and around the world and moved to a model where we're also in a zero trust principles way looking for threat activity coming in through identities, through people logging into these systems and doing the same real-time continuous monitoring and taking proactive action to protect organizations where we see malicious activity. >> Terrific, well, in light of COVID-19, we saw a big spike in ransomware and I'd love to hear specifically from Tina why do we need trusted partners rather than software vendors in this fight? >> You know, it's so important to get out in front of all of the adversaries and most recently that we've seen huge growth in the e-crime actors that are taking advantage of the tools that are unfortunately in the market today, sometimes even free that allow them to hold organizations hostage. And the reason that's so important to partner with organizations and companies like CrowdStrike, is that we've been thinking ahead and we are designed in a way to stop an individual, a breach or adversary attack from occurring but we've been watching how their adversary works and now we can see their activity very early on before they have a chance to gain a foothold in an organization's server or laptop or even a phone or a tablet. And really what we're doing is we're providing protection so that it doesn't even need to move to an analyst to do further review. We just stop it right at the gate before it causes harm. And the reason that this is so important probably is obvious, but we're about making sure that the organizations like the State of Arizona can continue on their business and without these kinds of disruptions. So we haven't designed against one particular adversary but we really designed an approach that works across them all because we've been watching so closely how they move through environments for years. And we use the power of artificial intelligence delivered from the cloud to protect against all things including ransomware. >> Right it's really an evolving process. You constantly have to be vigilant for the next threat. Now I'd love to hear how you see things change with your tech partners and providers at the moment. >> So from a CrowdStrike perspective, we aim to be absolutely the best in class for the products and services that we provide whether that's your products that you can purchase like our endpoint solutions or whether that's services like our 24/7 threat hunting teams or Falcon Complete Teams that basically serve as an extension of an organization's team. But it's absolutely critical that we move this direction and not try to be the best at everything and instead partner. So we have extensive partnerships with Zscaler and Proofpoint and so many others, Okta. I mean the list goes on and on with now hundreds. And we also have a CrowdStrike store. So once you're a customer we've reduced the friction to taking on and trying out new modules, either from us or new options that maybe you haven't considered before from our trusted partners, much like the AWS marketplace we've got the CrowdStrike store and it's a growing set of partnerships where we build those integrations. So, my prior life I was the CISO for Arizona State University most recently. And we spend an awful lot of time integrating these solutions in a CrowdStrike. We're about building those integrations so that the teams within the organizations that can get on to doing innovative things within their space, rather than having to spend all their time tying these technologies together. >> Yeah now shifting to Jennifer late last year we learned that suspected Russian hackers broke into the US government agencies including a county in Arizona. So what measures has the State of Arizona put in place now to ensure that something like that won't happen again or that at least the state is very vigilant and ready to protect citizens and the government against these threats? >> We're definitely partnering with products like or vendors like CrowdStrike. That's what we, we're looking to extend those partnerships. And not only that we're developing our information sharing program across state, local and territorial governments. So we're looking to partner with the cities, the counties. Cybersecurity is a team sport. Cybersecurity is, it takes everyone. It takes the whole state working together. And that's one of the things that we've been trying to build. So working in conjunction with the state fusion center, the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center, we've been working to do more indicators of compromise sharing, any intelligence that we've been gathering from these counties that maybe did have an incident or a breach. We want to make sure that the information is disseminated to everyone so that we can be stronger and protect against it. Additionally, we we're always looking for grants that we can extend so that we're able to extend our products that we use to some of the smaller cities and towns and counties so that they can leverage some of the same technologies like CrowdStrike in their environments at a fraction of the cost or paid for by a grant. >> Terrific, well, Tina how does your experience as a CrowdStrike customer now come into play in your current role? >> Well, how's it come into play? Well, I think that it makes it really easy for me to be a liaison internally and help internal teams understand what it's like to sit as a CISO or as a CIO or deputy CIO. And to understand the kinds of challenges that these teams are (indistinct) these leaders of these teams are facing as they're moving forward with their innovation agenda while making sure to make sure that they're gaining those operational efficiencies that are so important today and wowing their customers all the while, right? So I think really what I bring to it is that level of experience to make sure that the voices of our customers are heard internally and that we continue to build products and services that make sense for the needs of our customers additional capabilities. Like we just released Falcon X Recon is an example of one of our newer capabilities where we're basically looking at their deep and dark web activity and bringing that together in the single platform, single event console that we've leveraged for years now. And in highlighting that activity many, in many cases, pre breach. So before you'd ever see it hit your, in your organization's operational environment, we would detect it through that service. So, I think it's those, all those things combined. >> Terrific well, CrowdStrike won a number of key accolades this year, and I was curious, Tina what you attribute to this huge success. >> Well, I have to tell you that I've been in the security space for far too long. And what I can say is that until CrowdStrike came along, there wasn't a solution, a security solution that we could get software running on an end point that wasn't just frustrating across the board. There were conflicts with other software running or the software would work great for one platform but it wouldn't work for the other. So we really have this new approach. And I think that that's what's made us, in fact I'm sure it's certainly what made me a wildly happy customer is that staff, faculty, employees, if we hadn't told them the software was being rolled out, they wouldn't have even noticed. You know it doesn't impact the machines and it's really provided this amazing experience and bringing all that with 150 different adversary groups that we track and we take that on for the customers and just bring visibility for the immediate things they need to take action on. I think those are all of the things that got us to this point in building out this platform is going to be really amazing to see in the years to come as we expand across other areas within the security space, either developing our own or really driving partnerships to make it easier for our customers. >> Yeah, terrific. Well, I pulled up the stat here for us to examine because I think it's really important for our viewers to understand just how important cybersecurity is and how it's going to be even more important for customers and for the private citizens and public citizens. According to Cybersecurity Ventures, cyber crime costs will grow by 15% per year reaching 10.5 trillion by 2025. That's just in about four years. And not only that, cyber crime will become the third largest economy in the world after the United States and China. So, I mean, it's really terrific that you're stepping up. You know just if you could both, perhaps Jennifer can go first and then Tina, what are the key lessons that you have for even the federal government to take a more proactive stance against these threats? >> Well, I think it's clear that this is a very lucrative venture, business venture. It's treated like a business venture by these criminal actors and they have a formula and it works. So I don't see that it's going to be changing anytime soon. And it's also not something that is highly sophisticated, highly technical. It's very easy. It's very much phishing, you know, users clicking on emails and vulnerabilities and environments. It's really a very easy formula that they continue to repeat. So I think until the federal government has more ways to recoup some of these ransomware payments, or we're able to stop some of these ransomware as a service products from being used, I think it's going to continue. So we're defenders so we need to make sure that we're ready for anything that comes and using products that keep us safe is really the best way and training our users. >> Terrific and Tina? >> Thank you. So we are so passionate about making sure that our customers can sleep better at night. When it comes down to tips it really comes back to the basics in many regards but the basics are sometimes really hard to do. So they sound simple, but they aren't so easy to do. And it's basics like making sure your systems are patched. Every organization has just a growing number of devices and pieces of software and infrastructure and all of those things need to be patched nearly immediately to stay out in front of today's adversaries. And Jen's right, Some are sophisticated, some are not but the reality is if we leave those windows open, we will have adversaries, oh, you know walk into our house if you will. So the basics like that also making sure that you have great backups, right? So if you do run into an instance of a ransomware where your systems are locked that you have the ability to recover quickly, being proactive and making sure that you have the partnership arrangement ahead of time is a third really important thing to do. Many organizations now have IRR retainers that they, incident response retainers that you can use proactively in years where you don't find yourself on your heels in a reactive situation but then it's there when you need it. Sometimes it's hard to find great services when there are the flood of ransomware attacks like we've seen in recent months. And then lastly, and I should have started with this 'cause it's the most important part, train your people. It's so important to make sure that security is just a culture, a part of the culture, just like you lock your car and you lock your house. Making sure that you're thinking about those things that will help keep you safe and your organization safe. >> Really excellent points. Thank you both so much for your insights. That was Tina Thorstenson executive public sector strategist at CrowdStrike, as well as Jennifer Dvorak, information security architect for the State of Arizona. Again, really appreciate your insights. This was a fantastic conversation with you. And that's all for the 2021 AWS Global Public Sector Partner Awards or in this session of that. I'm your host Natalie Erlich and see you very soon. (bright music)

>> From the Amazon Meeting Center in downtown Seattle, it's theCUBE! Covering IMAGINE: A Better World, a global education conference sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Seattle, Washington at the AWS IMAGINE education event. First time ever as part of the public sector series. Theresa Carlson kicked it off earlier today. 900 registered people watched this thing grow, like every other Amazon event that we've ever covered. And really, this is all about education. We're excited to be here. Our next guest has been working on this for awhile, He's Lou Pugliese, he's the Senior Innovation Fellow and Managing Director of Technology Innovation at Action Lab, Arizona State. Welcome. >> Thanks for letting me interview here. >> Absolutely. So just before we get started, kind of general impressions of this event? >> You know, it's amazing. I was just saying just a few minutes ago that you go to a lot of conferences, and you know, you go to so many conferences that the goal is to sort of try to meet 80% of the time new people. And you don't ever do that. Here you do, you know. And so there's a lot of people here that I've known for years, that I haven't seen. And there are a lot of new faces here too, so it's great. >> Right. It's really interesting, we cover a lot of conferences and kind of the lifecycle as they grow. But when they're small like this and just getting started you know, it's so intimate. There's so much hall conversations going on, there's so much just genuine sharing of best practices 'cause everybody's still trying to figure it out. >> Exactly, exactly. That's what you're doing here now. >> Absolutely. So, one of the things you're involved in, that caught my eye doing the research for this, is working on research based approach to really understand what works for the student learning experience. So there's all kinds of conversations we can have about higher education. Does it work, does it not work, is it broken? There's a lot of interesting things. Here, you know, it's been really interesting to focus on community colleges specifically and this kind of direct path between skills and getting a job. And it almost feels like the old apprenticeship model, kind of back in the day. You're at a big four year institution and really exploring. What is changing in the education interaction between kids and teachers, kids and curriculum, and how that stuff gets communicated and what's effective? 'Cause it's a new world, it's not the old world. >> No, it is. And you know, at ASU, what's interesting is is that there's a significant digital presence. You know, 35 thousand students very historically, back to 2009. So with that comes a significant amount of footsteps, digital footsteps, that students have taken. And so now you have the ability to be able to analyze that at a much higher level. And so now what we can do, and the part of what we're doing at the Action Lab is: looking specifically at the efficacy of these digital programs, finding out what course design elements do work, and what needs to be changed. And that gives us the ability to sort of feed that information back into the instructional design process, and continue to iterate on that improvement. The unique thing about the lab is that, it's a persistent lab. Most universities are sort of stop and start research initiatives, and they learn a lot and they publish a lot of papers. We've been around for three years, and we'll be around for 10 more, and it's a persistent examination of what we're doing at a digital environment, and we're taking it one step further, we're trying to understand how students behave in a digital environment. We know a lot about how students behave in a classroom or traditional learning setting, but we don't know how they how they learn in a digital environment. >> Right. I love, you said digital footprints, not digital exhaust, (both laugh) and it kind of reminds me of kind of these older you know, long term longitudinal studies, because it's still pretty early days in trying to figure out how these educational tools and mobile and stuff are impacting the way these kids learn. But we know they spend so much time on them, that is their interface to the world. It's almost like your remote control to life is actually this little thing that you carry around in your hand. So I'm curious, what are some of the things you've discovered that are working? What are some of the things that maybe that were kind of surprising that didn't work? What's some of the early findings that's coming out of that research? >> Sure, so in the early studies, we looked specifically at how demographic populations succeed or don't succeed in an environment. And what we found out is: there are certain demographics of students that flourish in an online environment, and consistently perform well. There are some that don't. The second thing we learned specifically is: what types of design features within a course, like the interaction within students, or exposing learning objectives, or getting students to really understand what rubrics of measurement, how content is being used and paced throughout our curriculum. A lot of really detailed information that faculty need to reorient and redesign their instruction, and so we can see a direct predictive value of improvement based on those changes. >> Right. So are you getting stuff out now that's impacting curriculum development? Or are you still kind of pulling the data together and there has not been enough time to really implement it? >> We are doing that, absolutely. One of the elements that we're introducing into the research now is: this notion of, it sounds like a fancy term, non cognitive or social and emotional learning; things that are a predispositions of learning about a student in their, you know, sort of soft skills world. Grit, determination, goal orientation, a variety of different soft skills, and their disposition, and how that impacts how they learn, and how they succeed in a classroom. >> And how important is that? I would imagine it's got to be super important. >> It's a field that is just still early in its science, but we're learning a lot. Not necessarily just about how students will succeed in a course environment, but those types of social/emotional learning skills that are required for them to be successful in a workplace environment. >> Right, right. And then the other factors that were discussed earlier in the key note are some of the, you know, what's happening at home? You know, there's all these other factors that are in a student's life that aren't directly tied to their education, but it can have a significant impact on their ability to learn, either temporarily, or-- >> They're all predispositions, yeah absolutely, yeah. >> Yeah, or full time. That's great. So, as you look forward now, and I think it came up too in the keynote, there's no shortage of data (chuckles) in this education environment. It's really been the time to grab it, analyze it, and put it to work. So, how are, you know, your engagement with Amazon kind of helping you to move your objectives forward? >> Well the Amazon engagement allows us to sort of off load all of the technological constraints, and gives us ultimate possibilities of not necessarily focusing on the tough stuff; the hardware, the integration, the specific tool sets that are required to extract data and analyze data, and focusing specifically on the research. So ultimately, it allows us to redirect our focus in what's really important in our world, because it's not necessarily about the technology, it's how the technology can point and draw a direct line between what the data says and how we create an intervention with students. >> Right. So I'm just curious to get your perspective. You said before we turned on the cameras, you've been involved in this field for a long time, trying to figure out how people can learn, how they can learn better, more effectively. Are there some big, kind of macro themes, that maybe people don't think about enough, that you've seen repeated time and time again, that people should be thinking about when they think about effective education and how to get kids to actually learn what we're trying to teach them? >> Sure, so a couple things. I mean, what we're focused on is not necessarily what we call big data, what we typically know big data as, it's really more about small data, which shows us causality. So for instance, one of the things that we are learning is that peer-to-peer engagement is really, really important in many courses in engaging in asynchronous and synchronous organizations within the course to learn from peers. Also avenues specifically to faculty, so faculty can actually look at the map of the entire classroom and understand who's achieving and focus just only on those people. >> Interesting. Well, good stuff, and, I'm sure, as you get more and more of the digital footprints, the insights will only increase by leaps and bounds. >> Absolutely. >> Alright, Lou, well thanks for taking a few minutes of your time >> Thank you. and we'll look forward to catching up next year and getting some new information. >> Thanks. >> He's Lou, I'm Jeff, thanks for watchin', we're in Seattle, signing off from AWS IMAGINE educate, See ya next time. (upbeat techno music)

>> From Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Covering LiveWorx 18, brought to you by PTC. >> Welcome back to Boston, everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage, and we are here, day one of the PTC LiveWorx conference, IOT, blockchain, AI, all coming together in a confluence of innovation. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host, Stu Miniman. Wolfgang Ulaga is here. He's the AT&T Professor of Services Leadership and Co-Executive Director, the Center for Services Leadership at Arizona State University. Wolfgang, welcome to theCUBE, thank you so much for coming on. >> Thank you. >> So services leadership, what should we know? Where do we start this conversation around services leadership? >> The Center of Services Leadership is a center that has been created 30 years ago around a simple idea, and that is putting services front and center of everything a company does. So this is all about service science, service business, service operations, people and culture. When you touch service, you immediately see that you have to be 360 in your approach. You have to look at all the aspects. You have to look at structures and people. You have to look at operations with a service-centric mindset. >> I mean, it sounds so obvious. Anytime we experience, as consumers, great service, we maybe fall in love with a company, we're loyal, we tell everybody. But so often, services fall down. I mean, it seems obvious. Why is it just not implemented in so many organizations? >> One of the problems is that companies tend to look at services as an afterthought. Think about the word after-sales service, which in my mind is already very telling about how it's from a cultural perspective perceived. It's something that you do after the sale has been done. That's why oftentimes, there is the risk that it falls back, it slips from the priority list. You do it once, you have done all the other things. But in reality, businesses are there to serve customers. Service should be the center of what the company does, not at the periphery. >> Or even an embedded component of what the company, I mean, is Amazon a good example of a company that has embraced that? Or is Netflix maybe even a better example? I don't even know what the service department looks like at Netflix, it's just there. Is that how we should envision modern-day service? >> It excites me at the conference at LiveWorx. We see so many companies talking about technology and changes. And you really can sense and see how all of them are thinking about how can they actually grow the business from historic activities into new data-enabled activities. But the interesting challenge for many firms is that this is going to be also journey of learning how to serve its customers through data analytics. So data-enabled services is going to be a huge issue in the next coming years. >> Wolfgang, you're speaking here at the conference. I believe you also wrote a book about advanced services. For those that aren't familiar with the term, maybe walk us through a little bit about what that is. >> Earlier this morning, I presented the book "Service Strategy in Action", which is a very managerial book that we wrote over 10 years of experience of doing studies, working with companies on this journey from a product-centric company that wants to go into a service and solution-centric world and business. Today we see many of the companies picking up the pace, going into that direction, and I would say that with data analytics, this is going to be an even more important phenomenon for the next years to come. >> A lot of companies struggle with service as well because they don't see it as a scale component of their business. It's harder to scale services than it is to scale software, for example. In thinking about embedding services into your core business, how do you deal as an organization with the scale problem? Is it a false problem? How are organizations dealing with that? >> No, you're absolutely right. Many companies know and learn when they are small and they control operations. It's easy to actually have your eyes on service excellence. Once you scale up, you run into this issue of how do you maintain service quality. How do you make sure that each and every time to replicate into different regions, into different territories, into different operations, that you keep that quality up and running. One way to do it is to create a service culture among the people because one way to control that quality level is to push responsibility as low as possible down so that each and every frontline employee knows what he or she has to do, can take action if something goes wrong, and can maintain that service quality at the level we want. That's where sometimes you see challenges and issues popping up. >> What role do you see machines playing? You're seeing a lot of things like Chatbox or voice response. What role will machines play in the services of the future? >> I think it's a fascinating movement that is now put in place where, machine, artificial intelligence, is there to actually enhance value being created for customers. Sometimes you hear this as a threat or as a danger, but I would rather see it as an opportunity to raise levels of service qualities, have this symbiosis between human and machine to actually provide better, outstanding service for customers. >> Could you share some examples of successes there or things that you've studied or researched? >> Yeah so for example, if I take a consumer marketing example. In Europe I worked with a company, which is Nespresso. They do this coffee machines and capsules. In their boutique, they don't call it a store, by the way, they call it a boutique, they have injected a lot of new technology into helping customers to have different touchpoints, get served the way they want to, at the time they want to, how they want to. So this multi-channel, multi-experience for customers, is actually a growing activity. When you look at it from a consumer perspective, I get more opportunities, I get more choices. I can pick and choose when, where, and how I want to be served. A similar example is Procter & Gamble here in the United States. P&G has recently rolled out a new service business, taking a brand, Tide, and creating Tide Dry Cleaners here in America. It's a fascinating example. They use technology like apps on a smartphone to give the customer a much better experience. I think there's many of these example we'll see in the future. >> When we talk about IOT, one of the things that caught our ear in the keynote this morning is, it's going to take 20 to 25 partners putting together this solution. Not only is there integration of software, but one of the big challenges there, I think, is how do you set up services and transform services to be able to live in this multi-vendor environment. I wonder if you could comment on that? >> I agree, I agree. What I see, which makes me as a business professor very excited and that is, of course there's technology, of course there's hardware and software. But one of the biggest challenges will be the business challenges. How do you implement all of these offers? How do you roll it out? One of my talk topics today were how do you commercialize it? How do you actually make money with it? How do you get paid for it? One of my research areas is what they call free to fee. How do you get the r out of the free, and make customers pay for value you create? What I find, especially in the digital services space, there's so much value being created, but not every company is able to capture the value. Getting adequately paid for the value, this is a huge challenge. In sum, I would say it's really an issue about business challenges as much as it's a technological issue or technical challenges. >> I think about IOT, so many of the different transfer protocols, it's open source, that free to fee. Any advice you can give to people out there as to how they capture that value and capture revenue? >> I think you have to be super careful where the commoditization will kick in. If over time, something that was a differentiator yesterday, with the open sources and everything, will become not so much differentiator tomorrow. So where is your competitive edge? How do you stand out from competition? I know these are very classic questions, but you know what? In the IOT and digital space, they resurface, they come back, and having the right answers on these questions will make the difference between you and competition. >> Last question, we got to go. The trend toward self-service, is that a good thing, a bad thing, a depends thing? >> I think everything that allows customers to have choices. Customers today want to be in charge. They want to be in control. They, in fact, want all of it. They want to have service when they want it, but they want to have a non-self-service option if they feel like. So I think the trick is to know, how can I be nimble and give customers all of these choices so that they are in charge and pick and choose. >> Wolfgang, thanks so much for coming to theCUBE. >> Appreciate it, >> It's a pleasure having you, >> thank you very much, >> good to see you. All right, keep it right there, everybody. Stu and I will be back with our next guest right after this short break. We're here at the PTC LiveWorx show, you're watching theCUBE. (electronic music)

(calm pop music) >> From Phoenix, Arizona, theCUBE. At Catalyst conference. Here's your host, Jeff Frick. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here in Phoenix Arizona, at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Fourth year of the conference. Going to be back in the Bay Area next year, but again as we've said before, something in the water here in Phoenix because we were here two years ago for the Grace Hopper Conference as well. So a lot of good women in tech action happening in Phoenix. So, we're really excited to have the brainchild behind this whole thing. The force who's really making it happen, Adriana Gascoigne. Welcome. >> Thank you. Good to be here. >> Thanks for having us down. So Adriana, tell us the story of Girls in Tech and Catalyst specifically. >> So Catalyst was an inspiration based on when I worked in intel. We invested, or sponsored a conference, for Oprah. It was called Oprah's O Conference, and what was super compelling about that conference, was that there were 10,000 women in the Moscone Center in San Francisco, and they were engaging and raising their hand, and sharing their own personal stories, trials and tribulations, and speaking about really interesting hot button topics. Such as building a business, or finances, or interior design, things that really were compelling to them. And so what really struck me about this environment is that women actually had a voice. They were encouraged to raise their hand and speak up. And I wanted to do this in the tech world because in a very, gender-scare world, it's important for us to have both voices, right? So, I think this environment enables women to speak up and share their feelings and their passions openly. >> And I think I heard your story early on, where you were at a startup, and you were like the only woman. And then they hired more people, and you were still the only woman, and they hired more people and (chuckles), you were still the only woman. So you kind of lived it firsthand. >> Yeah. So that was sort of the impetus behind Girls in Tech, and I felt that the company, the startup I was working at, wasn't doing enough for recruiting. And recruiting, not just women, but just diverse groups of people, which does affect product development. You need many different perspectives, many different experiences and backgrounds, in order to have a comprehensive product. So I decided to take matters into my own hands, and I started Girls in Tech in 2007, and nine plus years later, we're in 60 cities around the world, and six continents, and 36 countries, with over 40,000 members. So it's awesome to see the growth. I'm now doing it full-time, and the sky's the limit. >> So how do people get involved. What's your kind of, corporate mission statement? And then, if people are watching from some city that you either are in, or maybe you're not, how do they get involved? What does it mean to be involved in Girls in Tech in city X. >> Yeah, so our tagline is, empowerment, engagement, and education of women in tech. So this is an inclusive organization, for both high-tech women who want to learn more about entrepreneurship and leadership, and for women that are in startups that want to be employees, or leaders, or start their own companies. So we've developed curriculum that we prototype and pilot in Silicone Valley, perfect it, and then deploy it to our 60 chapters around the world in electronic press kit format. This is great because we get to customize it with the teams on the ground, and do everything from coding and design boot camps, entrepreneurship boot camps, to the Catalyst Conference, to our lady pitch night competition. Pitch night, not anything else (laughs). >> Yeah, yeah, I got that. Pitch, it's pitch. >> It's pitch. >> You know, we're a PG show, no problem. (laughs) >> And we do an exchange program that brings 20 to 30 female entrepreneurs to Silicone Valley to really experience the nuances of this tech ecosystem, what makes it thrive, learning skills on how to become entrepreneurs, meet and greet with VCs and influential people in Silicone Valley. And we have a few other programs that you can check out on the website. But it's exciting, because it's not one size fits all approach. It's, I'm a woman and there are many different changes I have in my career lifetime. So we want to be there for you within your junior, middle career, as well as a leader. >> Right, and we certainly heard that over and over with the guests that we've had on today, about people changing tracks, changing careers, changing industries, and really this theme of continual learning, continual growing. It's a long journey. We have a saying at our company, you're never there, you're only here, there is still there, and you keep moving down the road and it just keeps moving further out. So a couple three-day conference. What are some of your takeaways, some surprises, over the last three days that you'd like to share? >> Wow, where do I begin? I mean the soundbites are all so stellar, inspirational, skills, best practices, but the thing that really stood out, I think in this year specifically, was people's stories. Their emotional stories, their passions. The things that wake them up in the morning. And they say, yes, I want to change the world and make an impact and love my life while doing it. It was very candid, you know, some of these women really shared difficult situations. And these situations help fuel energy and their fire to make change in their life, to help and pay it forward with up and coming women, and leaders in the tech industry. So it was powerful from the candor, and the friends that were made, and the passions that were shared. >> Awesome. Well I know you got to get back to the conference, you're the master of ceremonies, keeping everything on track. (laughs) So I appreciate you taking a few minutes out of your time to stop by >> It's my pleasure. >> Again, thanks for inviting us to this conference. We're really excited to come down, and we'll look forward to next year's. >> Yeah, next year's going to going to be in the Bay Area. So, in your neck of the woods. >> Awesome. >> Yeah. >> Adriana, again thanks for inviting us. Running a great show, the Girls in Tech Conference. I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE. Thanks for watching. We'll catch ya next time. (upbeat pop music)