>> Narrator: Live from Orlando, Florida. It's theCUBE! Covering .conf18. Brought to you by Splunk. >> Welcome back to Orlando, everybody. Splunk .conf18. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host, Stu Miniman. Carnival Cruise Lines is back. We heard from them yesterday, we heard them on the main stage of .conf. CEO is up there with Doug Merritt. Sheldon White is here. He's an enterprise architect at Carnival Cruise Line And Alex Taberras, who's the director of threat intelligence at Carnival. Gents, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Doing a lot of talk on security today. They've lined us up, which is great. We love the conversation. So much to learn. Alex, I'll start with you. When you think about security and threat intelligence, what are the big changes that you've seen over the last, whatever, pick a time. Half a decade? Decade? Couple of years even. >> Alex: So, it's just the amount of threats that are coming in now and how fast they're coming in, right? We can't seem to be keeping up with everything that's happening in the environment, everything that's happening outside, trying to get into our environment and cause all that damage, right? So, that's why Splunk is awesome, right? I get to see everything come in, real time. I'm able to quickly pinpoint any action I need to take, send it to my team and have them immediate right away. >> So, Sheldon, yesterday we had ship and shore from Carnival and he was talking about really different problems. You know, the folks on the ship, they got 250 thousand people on the ocean at any one point in time collecting data, trying to make a better experience, keep them connected. Folks on the shore, obviously, websites and things like that. Where do you fit into that mix of ship and shore? >> Sheldon: Right, so there's an entire value stream that we map out as enterprise architects. And so, what we do there is analyze all the customer touch points. And then we aggregate all of that information into a pipeline that we then address our audiences with those critical KPIs. Operational and infrastructure, the entire stack. >> Dave: You guys obviously have very strong relationship with Splunk. We heard from your CEO, Arnold Donald, right? >> Alex: Correct. >> Interesting name, I haven't messed that up yet so. (laughing) And so, where did that relationship start? Did it start in SecOps? Did it start in IT operations management? >> Alex: So, it really started in Devops, right? And they started... They purchased Splunk, I think back in like 2007, 2008. And they started looking at it, right? And I think I was talking to one of our other architects and it was one gig is what we started at, right? Now, we're upwards of 600 gigs. Just for security. So, it started there and it just kind of morphed into this huge relationship where we're partnering and touching all aspects of our business with Splunk. You know, and the Cloud and everything else. >> So, we heard, I don't know if you guys saw the key notes today, but we saw some announcements building on yesterday's Splunk next announcement. We heard some business workflow and some industrial IOT. I would think both of those are relevant for you guys. Not industrial IOT, but your IOT. Do you see Splunk permeating further into the organization? I guess, the answer's yes. You kind of already said that. But I'm interested in what role you guys play in facilitating that ? Are you kind of champions, evangelist, experts, consultants? How does that work? How do you see that (mumbles)? >> Sheldon: So, we see ourselves as internal consultants. We have our internal customers that depend on our guidance and our end-to-end view of the business processes. So, and now as enter our Cloud journey, into the second year of our Cloud journey, just we're able to accelerate our time to value for our internal customers to gain even greater insights into what's happening ship and shore. >> Dave: I wonder how, if you can talk about, how enterprise architecture has changed over the last decade even. You know, it used to be you were trying to harden the two tier or three tier architecture and harden top, don't touch it, it works. And then, of course, we all know, it created a lot of different stove pipes and a lot of data was locked into those stove pipes. That's changed, obviously. Cloud, now the Edge. Maybe because you guys were always sort of a distributed data company, you approached it differently. But I wondered if you could gives us (mumbles)? >> Sheldon: No, that's an interesting question. Because the evolution is not so much enterprise architect as it is eco system architect, right? So, now you have these massively distributed systems. So, you're really managing an eco system of internal and third party. And then all the relevant touch points, right? Like Alex mentioned, all that perimeters constantly shifting now. So, yeah, our focus is always aligning with the on-time business process and our internal customers. >> Yeah, wonder if we could dig into the Cloud a little. Alex, can we start with you? How does Cloud fit into your world of security? >> Alex: So, for me, the Cloud, as far as Splunk goes, it allows me to expand and contract as needed, right? So before, we used to have our on premise hardware, very finite RAM memory, I mean, disk space everything. So now, with the Cloud, I'm able to expand my environment as I move across all my North American brands, European brands, to be able to gather all that data, look at it and take action on it, right? >> Stu: And Sheldon, you're using AWS. We see they're, every software provider lives in AWS. It's often in the marketplace. We been seeing a lot this week that there's a deeper partnership. There's actually a lot of integration. Maybe give us your viewpoint on what you've seen on how Splunk and AWS work together to meet your requirements. >> Yeah. So, that's an interesting evolution as well of that partnership, right? So, you're starting to see things like the S3 API integration. So that you're removing storage from the critical path. And now that opens up different scale of possibilities, right? And internal opportunities. But yes, as you can see, leveraging the machine learning toolkit. I saw that one coming. It's going to be interesting to see how that keeps evolving, right? And also, like I was speaking to Alex, about the natural language capability. So, that also is well brought into the dimension of how our senior leadership with interact with these operational platforms. >> Yeah, I got to thank you. You're going to have your customer's natural language has to get into some of their rooms. It's definitely future. >> Sheldon: Oh, it's going to be apart of that value chain. Yeah, for sure. >> Dave: How does the S3 API integration affect you guys? Obviously, you got to put Syntax in an object store, which is going to scale. What does that mean for you guys? >> Sheldon: So, using the Splunk developer Cloud, we could develop all sorts of solutions to manage it intelligently how our storage, right? In near real time. So, we can completely automate and that end-to-end just integration with Splunk, how it ingest, how long that data stays relevant and how we offload it into things like Glacier. >> Dave: In the enablement, there is the S3 API. So, you're taking advantage of all the AWS automation tooling. >> Sheldon: Correct. >> Is that right? >> Sheldon: Correct. >> Alright. >> Sheldon: That's another example of that side integration. Not only with the S3 API. Lex, for the natural language. Obviously, TensorFlow and the machine learning toolkit. So, I think you're going to see that type of... those type of capabilities expanding as Splunk evolves. Next year, I'm sure they're going to have a ton of more, you know, announcements around how this evolution continues, right? >> Dave: So, you know, I was interested in the TensorFlow and Spark integration. And Stu and I were talking in an earlier segment. It's great, developers love that. We saw a lot of demos today that was like, looks so simple. Anybody could do it. Even I might be able to do it. But as practitioners of Splunk, is it really going to be that easy? Are business users actually going to be able to pick this stuff up and what are they going to have to do in order to take advantage of Splunk? Some training involved? >> Sheldon: Right, right. >> What's the learning curve going to be like? >> Sheldon: That's a great question, because there's a dual focus to this, right? First, is offloading from the developer. All that heavy lifting of creating this user interface and the dashboards, per say. Now, its all API driven. So, as you saw, maybe in the keynote this morning, that within the demo, was an API driven dashboard came together in several minutes. But one is offloading that and the second part is just enabling the business user with other capabilities, like natural language process. And they don't necessarily need to be on that screen. They can get acception reporting through emails and voice commands. So, training is also part of it, obviously. So, it's a multifaceted approach to leveraging these new capabilities. >> Dave: Are you guys responsible for the physical infrastructure of your ships? I mean, is that part of your purview? Okay. So, really there's is an industrial IOT component big time for you guys. >> Absolutely. >> Alex: And there's a huge push now for Maritime security, right? We saw what happened with Maersk and NotPetya virus, right? So, how it took them out of operation for about three weeks. So, this IOT is very, I think, awesome, right? I was speaking to some of the Splunk guys yesterday about it. How we could leverage that on our ships to gather that data, right, from our SCADA systems. And from our bridge and engine control systems to be able to view any kind of threat. Any kind of vulnerability that we might be seeing in the environment. How we can control that and how we can predict anything from happening, right? So, that's going to be very key to us. >> Dave: So, Splunk is going to take that data right off the machines. Which Stu and I were talking, that to us is a huge advantage. So many IT companies are coming and saying, "Hey! We're going to put a box at the edge". That's nice, but what about the data? So, Splunk's starting with the data, but it's the standards of that data. They're really driven by engineers and operations technology folks. Is Splunk sort of standard agnostic? Can they be able to ingest that data? What has to be done for you guys to take advantage of that? >> So, we'll have to ingest that data. And we'll have to, you know, look at it and see what we're seeing, right? This is all brand new to us as well. >> Dave: Right. >> Right. This whole Maritime thing has risen up in the past year, year and a half. So, we're going to have to look at the data and then kind of figure out what we want to see. Normalize it, you know, we'll probably get some PS services or something to assist us. Some experts. And then we just go from there, right? We build our dashboards and our reports. >> Dave: And predictive maintenance is a huge use case for you guys. >> Alex: Absolutely. >> I mean, to me, it's as important as the airlines. >> Alex: Absolutely, yes. >> So, I would think, anytime you... Well, first of all, real time during a journey. But anytime that journey is completed, you must bring in the inspectors and, I'm sure, very time consuming and precise. >> So, I know that some of our senior leadership, especially in the Maritime space, has now looking towards Splunk to do some of that predictive maintenance. To make sure that we have that right nuts and bolts, right? Per say, on the ship. To be able to fix any issue that might arise at sea while we're on there. >> Dave: Now, it's expect that the drive is going to be for human augmentation and of drive efficiency. >> Alex: Correct. >> You're not just going to trust the machines right out of the box. No way, right? >> Alex: No. But it's empowering those engineers, right? As we see with some of the dashboards that they're coming up with at the keynote. Empowering some of the those engineers that are in the engine room. That are in bridge. To be able to see those issues come up, right? And be able to track. >> Dave: Plus, I would imagine this is the kind of thing like an airline pilot. You're double checking, you're triple checking. So, you might catch misses earlier on in the cycle. >> Alex: Yeah. I could see it having huge impact. >> Stu: Yeah. Sheldon, I was just thinking through the other next announcement. I wonder if Splunk business flows sounds like something that might fit into your data pipeline? Get insights, understand satisfaction. Seems like it might be a fit. Is that of interest to you? >> Sheldon: Yeah, it sure is. Because we definitely want to, since we've evolved with kind of fragmented systems. We still have main frames, we still have whole call center environment that we need to ensure that it's parts of the end-to-end guest experience. So, for sure, we're getting into the whole early adopter program on the process flow. >> Yeah. Can you give us little insight? What kind of back and forth do you have with Splunk? What sort of things are you asking that would help make your jobs easier going forward? >> So, going forward, I know they're addressing a lot so the ingestion and data standardization. And now, with the decoupling of the storage, which is awesome, makes our lives a lot easier. But the evolution of the natural language and the integration with AWS natively is huge for us, as well as our Cloud program matures. And we start enabling Serverless architectures, for example. So, yeah. No, it's a very important part. >> Stu: Yeah. I mean, Serverless is actually something we're pretty interested. What are some of the early places that you're finding value there? >> Well, many people don't know this, but Carnival's also one of the largest travel agencies in the United States. So, we have the whole... Well, it's the whole global air travel platform that we're currently migrating to a Serverless architecture, integrates with Sabre. So, we're looking at things like open trace for that. And I know that our friends at Splunk are enabling capabilities for that type of management. >> Dave: And what's the business impact of Serverless there? You're just better utilization of resources? Faster time to value? Maybe you could describe. >> Yeah. Near real time processing. Scaling up and scaling down seasonally. Our key aspects of that. Removing the constraints of CPU and storage and-- >> Dave: Alex, has it changed the security paradigm at all? Serverless? How does it change it? >> Alex: So, it does. It let's me not have to worry so much about on premise stuff, right? As I did before. So, that helps a lot, right? And being able to scale up and down quickly as much data as we're ingesting is very key for us. >> Dave: You guys are heavy into Cloud, it's obvious. I wonder if you could share with us how you decide, kind of, what goes? If you're not all in on Cloud, right? It's not 100 percent Cloud? >> Sheldon: No, we could never be all in. >> No. >> Dave: And we've put forth that notion for years. We call it "true private cloud". That what you want to do is bring the Cloud experience to your data, wherever that data lives. There's certain data and workloads that you're not just going to put into the Cloud. >> Sheldon: That's correct. >> So, you would confirm that. That's the case. Like, you just said it. >> Correct. >> Dave: You're never going to put some of these workloads on Cloud. >> Well, we have floating data centers. So, we'll always be in a hybrid model. But there is a decision framework around how we create those application, migration pipelines. And the complexity and interdependencies between these platforms, some are easier to move than others. So, yeah. No, we're quite aware of-- >> Dave: And so, my follow up question is are you trying to bring that Cloud experience to those... to the floating data centers, wherever possible? And how is the industry doing? If you had a grade them in terms of their success. I mean, you certainly hear this from the big tech suppliers. "Oh, yes! We've got private Cloud" and "It's just like the public Cloud". And we know it's not and it doesn't have to be. >> Sheldon: Right. >> But if it can substantially mimic that public Cloud experience, it's a win for you guys. So, how is the industry doing in your view? >> So, I think it's a crawl, walk, run type of thing. Obviously, you have these floating cities and satellite bandwidth is a precious resource that we have to use wisely, right? So, we definitely are Edge computing strategy is evolving rapidly. What do we act upon at the Edge? What do we send to the Cloud? When do we send it? There also some business drivers behind this. For example, one of our early Cloud forays was in replicating a guest activity aboard the ship. So, we know if somebody buys a margarita off the coast of Australia, we know it five seconds later. And then, we could act upon that data. Casino or whatever data it may be in near real time. >> So, a lot of data stays at the floating data center, obviously. >> Correct. >> Much of it comes back to the Cloud. When it comes back to the Cloud is a decision, 'cause of the expense of the bandwidth. What do you do? You part the ship at the data center and put a big fire hose in there? (laughing) >> Alex: I wish it was that easy. >> You got a bunch of disc drives that you just take and load up? That's got to be a challenge. >> So, there business requirements, right? So, we have to figure out what application is more important, right? So, usually like our ship property management system, right. Where we have all our guests data, as far as their names, birth dates, all that stuff. That takes priority over a lot of other things, right. So, we have to use, like Sheldon said, that bandwidth wisely. 'Cause we don't really own a lot of the ports that we go into. So, we can't, just like you say, plug in a cable and move on, right? We still rely heavily on our satellites. So, bandwidth is our number on constraint and we have to, you know, we share it with our revenue generating guests as well. So, obviously, they take priority and a lot of factors go into that. >> Dave: And data's not shrinking. So, I'll give you guys the last word, if you could just sort of summarize, in your view, some of the big challenges that you're going to try to apply Splunk towards solving in the next near to mid term. >> Alex: Well, I'm more security focused. So, for me, its just making sure that I can get that data as fast as possible. I know that I saw yesterday at the keynote, the mobile app. That for me is going to be like one of the things I'm going to go like, research right away, right? 'Cause for me, its' getting that alert right away when something's going on, so that I can mitigate quickly, move fast and stop those threats from hitting our environment. >> Dave: Sheldon? >> Yes, I think the challenges are, like you mentioned earlier, about the stove pipes and how organizations evolve. Now, with this massive influx of data, that just making sense of it from a people, technology and processes standpoint. So that we could manage the chaos, so to speak, right? And make sure that we have an orderly end-to-end view of all the activity on the ships. >> Dave: Well, thank you guys. Stu and I are like kids in a candy shop, 'cause we getting to talk to so many customers this week. So, we really appreciate your time and your insights and the inspiration for your peers. So, thank you. >> Oh, thank you very much. >> Alex: Thank you for having us. >> Dave: You're welcome. Alright, keep it right there everybody. Stu and I will be back right after this short break. You're watching theCUBE Live from .conf18. Be right back. (techno music)

live from Orlando Florida it's the cube covered conf 18 got to you by Splunk welcome back to our land Oh everybody I'm Dave Volante with my co-hosts two minima and you're watching the cube the leader in live tech coverage we're brought here by Splunk toises Splunk off 18 hashtag spunk conf 18 Susan st. Leger is here she's the president of worldwide field operations at Splunk Susan thanks for coming on the cube thanks so much for having me today so you're welcome so we've been reporting actually this is our seventh year we've been watching the evolution of Splunk going from sort of hardcore IT OPSEC ops now really evolving in doing some of the things that when everybody talked about big data back in the day and spunk really didn't they talked about doing all these things that actually they're using Splunk for now so it's really interesting to see that this has been a big tailwind for you guys but anyway big week for you guys how do you feel I feel incredible we had you know we've it announced more innovations today just today then we have probably in the last three years combined we have another big set of innovations to announce tomorrow and you know just as an indicator of that I think you heard Tim today our CTO say on stage we to date have 282 patents and we are one of the world leaders in terms of the number of patents that we have and we have 500 pending right so if you think about 282 since the inception of the company and 500 pending it's a pretty exciting time for spunk people talk about that flywheel we were talking stew and I were talking earlier about some of the financial metrics and you know you have a lot of a large deal seven-figure deals which which you guys pointed out on your call let's see that's the outcome of having happy customers it's not like you turn to engineer that you just serving customers and that's what what they do I talk about how Splunk next is really bringing you into new areas yeah so spike next is so exciting there's really three three major pillars if you will design principles to spunk next one is to help our customers access data wherever it lives another one is to get actionable outcomes from the data and the third one is to allow unleash the power spunk to more users so there really the three pillars and if you think about maybe how we got there we have all of these people within IT and security that are the experts on Splunk the swing ninjas ful and their being they see the power of spunk and how it can help all these other departments and so they're being pulled in to help those other departments and they're basically saying Splunk help us help our business partners make it easier to get there to help them unleash the power spunk for them so they don't necessarily need us for all of their needs and so that's really what's what next is all about it's about making it again access data easier actionable outcomes and then more users and so we're really excited about it so talk about those new users I mean obviously the ITA ops they're your peeps so are they sort of advocating to you into the line of business or are you probably being dragged into the line of business what's that dynamic like yeah it's definitely we're customer success first and we're listening to our customers and they're asking us to take them that should go there with them right there being pulled that they know that what we what we say with our customers what are what our deepest customers understand about us is everybody needs funk it's just not everyone knows it yet and I said they're teaching their business why they need it and so it's really a powerful thing and so we're partnering with them to say how do we help them create business applications more which you'll see tomorrow in our announcements to help their business users you know one of the things that strikes us if we were talking it was the DevOps gentleman when you look at the companies that are successful with so-called digital transformation they have data at the core and they have sort of I guess I don't want to say a single data model but it's not a data model of stovepipes and that's what he described and essentially if I understand the power of Splunk just in talking to some of your customers it's really that singular data model that everybody can collaborate on with get advice from each other across the organization so not this sort of stovepipe model it seems like a fundamental linchpin of digital transformation even though you guys haven't been using that overusing that term thank you sort of a sign of smug you didn't use the big data term when big data was all hot now you use it same thing with digital transformation you're a fundamental it would seem to me to a lot of companies digital transformation that's exactly if you think about we started nineteen security but the reason for that is they were the first ones to truly do digital transformation right those are just the two the two organizations that started but exactly the way that they did it now all the other business units are trying to do it and that same exact platform that same exact platform that we use there's no reason we can't use it for those other areas those other functions but but if we want to go there faster we have to make it easier to use spunk and that's what you're seeing with spunk next you know I look at my career the last couple of decades we've been talking about oh well there's going to we're gonna leverage data and there's go where we want to be predictive on the models but that the latest wave of kind of AI ml and deep learning what I heard what you're talking about and in the Splunk next maybe you could talk a little bit about why it's real now and why we're actually going to be able to do more with our data to be able to extract the value out of it and really enable businesses sure so I think machine learning is that is at the heart of it and you know we we actually do two things from a machine learning perspective number one is within each of our market groups so IT security IT operations we have data scientists that work to build models within our applications so we build our own models and then we're hugely transparent with our customers about what those models are so they can tweak them if they like but we pre build those so that they have them in each of those applications so that's number one and and that's part of the actionable outcomes right ml helps drive actionable outcomes so much faster the second aspect is the ML TK right which is we give the our customers in ml TK so they can you know build their own algorithms and leverage everything all of the models that are out there as well so I think that two-fold approach really helps us accelerate the insights that we give to our customers Susan how are you evolving your go-to-market model as you think about Splunk next and just think about more line of business interactions so what are you doing on the go-to-market side yeah so the go to market when you think about reaching all of those other verticals if you will right it's very much going to be about the ecosystem all right so it's it's going to be about the solution provider ecosystem about the ISV ecosystem about the big the si is both boutique and the global s is to help us really Drive Splunk into all the verticals and meet their needs and so that will be one of the big things that you see we will obviously still have our horizontal focus across IT and security but we are really understanding what are the use cases within financial services what are the use cases within healthcare that can be repeated thousands of times and if you saw some of the announcements today in particular the data stream processor which allows you to act on data in motion with millisecond response that now puts you as close to real-time as anything we've ever seen in the data landscape and that's going to open up just a series of use cases that nobody ever thought of using spoil for so I wonder what you're hearing from customers when they talk about how do they manage that that pace of change out there I really like I walked around the show floor stuff I've been hearing lots people talking about you know containers and we had one of the your customers talking about how kubernetes fits into what they're doing seems like it really is a sweet spot for spunk that you can deal with all of these different types of information and it makes it even more important for customers to come to you yeah as you heard from Doug today in our keynote our CEO and the keynote it is a messy world right and part of the message just because it's a digital explosion and it's not going to get any slower it's just going to continue to get faster and I know you met with some of our customers earlier today and if'n carnival if you think about the landscape of NIF right I mean their mission is to protect the arsenal of nuclear weapons for the country right to make them more efficient to make them safer and if you think about all of it they not only have traditional IT operations and security they have to worry about but they have this landscape of lasers and all these sensors everywhere and that and when you look at that that's the messy data landscape and I think that's where Splunk is so uniquely positioned because of our approach you can operate on data in motion or at rest and because there is no structuring upfront I would I want to come back to what you said about real-time because that you know I oh I've said this now for a couple years but never used to use the term when Big Data was at its the peak of what does a gardener call it the hype cycle you guys didn't use that term and and so when you think about the use cases and in the Big Data world you've been hearing about real time forever now you're talking about it enterprise data warehouse you know cheaper EDW is fraud detection better analytics for the line of business obviously security and IT ops these are some of the use cases that we used to hear about in Big Data you're doing like all these now and sort of your platform can be used in all of these sort of traditional Big Data use cases am i understanding that problem 100% understanding it properly you know Splunk has again really evolved and if you think about again some of the announcements today think about date of fabric search right rather than saying you have to put everything into one instance or everything into one place right we're saying we will let you operate across your entire landscape and do your searches at scale and you know spunk was already the fastest at searching across your global enterprise to start with and when we were two to three times faster than anybody who compete it with us and now we improve that today by fourteen hundred percent I don't I don't even know where like you just look at again it ties back to the innovations and what's being done in our developer community within our engineering and team in those traditional use cases that I talked about in big data it was it was kind of an open source mess really complex zookeeper is the big joke right and always you know hive and pig and you know HBase and blah blah blah and we're practitioners of a lot of that stuff that's it's very complex essentially you've got a platform that now can be used the same platform that you're using in your traditional base that you're bringing to the line of business correct okay right it's the same exact platform we are definitely putting the power of Splunk in in the users hand so by doing things like mobile use on mobile and AR today and again I wish I could talk about what's coming tomorrow but let's just say our business users are going to be pretty blown away by what they're going to see tomorrow in our announcements yeah so I mean I'm presuming these are these are modern it's modern software micro services API base so if I want to bring in those open source tool tools I can in fact what you'll actually see when you understand more about the architecture is we're actually leveraging a lot of open-source and what we do so you know capabilities a spark and flink and but what we're doing is we're masking the complex the complexity of those from the user so instead of you having to do your own spark environment your own flink environment and you know having to figure out Kafka on your own and how you subscribe to what we're giving you all that we're we're masking all that for you and giving you the power of leveraging those tools so this becomes increasingly important my opinion especially as you start bringing in things like AI and machine learning and deep learning because that's going to be adopted both within a platform like use as yours but outside as well so you have to be able to bring in innovations from others but at the same time to simplify it and reduce that complexity you've got to infuse AI into your own platform and that's exactly what you're doing it's exactly what we're doing it's in our platform it's in our applications and then we provide the toolkit the SDK if you will so users can take it to another level all right so you've got 16,000 customers today if I understand the vision of SPARC next you're looking to get an order of magnitude more customers that you of it as addressable market talk to us about the changes that need to happen in the field is it just you're hitting an inflection point you've got those you know evangelists out there and I you know I see the capes and the fezzes all over the show so how is your field get ready to reach that broader audience yeah I think that's a great question again once again it will I'll tell you what we're doing internally but it's also about the ecosystem right in order to go broader it has to be about this this Splunk ecosystem and on the technology side we're opening the aperture right it's micro services it's ap eyes it's cloud there's there's so much available for that ecosystem and then from a go-to-market perspective it's really about understanding where the use cases are that can be repeated thousands of times right that the the the big problems that each of those verticals are trying to solve as opposed to the one corner use case that you know you could you could solve for one customer and that was actually one of the things we found is when we did analysis we used to do case studies on Big Data number one use case that always came back was custom because nothing was repeatable and that's how we were seeing you know a little bit more industry specific issues I was at soft ignite last week and you know Microsoft is going deep on verticals to get specific as to you know for IOT and AI how they can get specific in those environments I agreed I think again one of the things that so unique about Splunk platform is because it is the same platform that's at the underlying aspect that serves all of those use cases we have the ability in my opinion to do it in a way that's far less custom than anybody else and so we've seen the ecosystem evolve as well again six seven years ago it was kind of a tiny technology ecosystem and last year in DC we saw it really starting to expand now you walk around here you see you know some big booths from some of the SI partners that's critical because that's global scale deep deep industry expertise but also board level relationships absolutely that's another part of the the go-to markets Splunk becomes more strategic this is a massive Tam expansion that where we are potentially that we're witnessing with Splunk how do you see those conversations changing are you personally involved in more of those boardroom discussions definitely personally involved in your spot on to say that that's what's happening and I think a perfect example is you talk to Carnival today right we didn't typically have a lot of CEOs at the Splunk conference right now we have CEOs coming to the spunk conference right because it is at that level of strategic to our customers and so when you think about Carnival and yes they're using it for the traditional IT ops and security use cases but they're also using it for their customer experience and who would ever think you know ten years ago or even five years ago of Splunk as a customer experience platform but really what's at the heart of customer experience it's data so speaking of the CEO of Carnival Arnold Donald it's kind of an interesting name and and so he he stood up in the States today talking about diversity doubling down on diversity as an african-american you know you frankly in our industry you don't see a lot of african-americans CEOs you don't see a ton of women CEOs you don't see the son of women with with president in their title so he he made a really kind of interesting statement where he said something to the effect of forty years ago when I started in the business I didn't work with a lot of people like me and I thought that was a very powerful statement and he also said essentially look at if we're diverse we're gonna beat you every time your thoughts as an executive and in tech and a woman in tech so first of all i 100% agree with him and i can actually go back to my start i was a computer scientist at NSA so i didn't see a lot of people who looked like me and so from that perspective I know exactly where he's coming from and I am I'll tell you at Splunk we have a huge investment in diversity and not because it's a checkbox but because we believe in exactly what he says it's a competitive edge when you get people who think differently because you came from a different background because you're a different ethnicity because you were educated differently whatever it is whether it's gender whether it's ethnicity whether it's just a different approach to thinking all differentiation puts a different lens and and that way you don't get stove you don't have stovepipe thinking and I what I love about our culture at spunk is that we we call it a high growth mindset and if you're not intellectually curious and you don't want to think beyond the boundaries then it's probably not a good fit for you and a big part of that is having a diverse environment we do a lot of spunk to drive that we actually posted our gender diversity statistics last year because we believe if you don't measure it you're never going to improve it and it was a big step right to say we want to publish it we want to hold herself accountable and we've done a really nice job of moving it a little over 1% in one year which for our population is pretty big but we're doing really unique things like we have all job descriptions are now analyzed there's actually a scientific analysis that can be done to make sure that the job description does not bias whether men are women whether men alone or whether it's you know gender neutral so that that's exciting obviously we have a big women in technology program and we have a high potential focus on our top women as well what's interesting about your story Susan and we spent a lot of time on the cube talking about diversity generally in women in tech specifically we support a lot of WI t and we always talk him frequently we're talking about women and engineering roles or computer science roles and how they they oftentimes even when they graduate with that degree they don't come into tech and what strikes me about your path is your technical and yet now you've become this business executive so and I would imagine that having that background that technical background only helped in terms of especially in this industry so there are paths beyond just the technical role one hundred percent it first of all it's a huge advantage I believe it's the core reason why I am where I am today because I have the technical aptitude and while I enjoyed the business side of it as much and I love the sales side and the marketing side and all of the above the truth of the matter is at my core I think it's that intellectual curiosity that came out of my technical background that kept me going and really made me very I took risks right and if you look at my career it's much more of a jungle gym than a ladder and the way you know I always give advice to young people who generally it's young women who ask but oh sometimes it's the young men as well which is like how did you get to where you are how do I plan that how do I get and the truth of the matter is you can't if you try and plan it it's probably not going to work out the exactly the way you plan and so my advice is to make sure that you every time you're going to make a move your ask yourself what am I going to learn Who am I going to learn from and what is it going to add to my experience that I can materially you know say is going to help me on a path to where I ultimately want to be but I think if you try and figure it out and plan a perfect ladder I also think that when you try and do a ladder you don't have what I call pivots which is looking at things from different lenses right so me having been on the engineering side on the sales side on the services side of things it gives me a different lens and understanding the entire experience of our customers as well as the internals of an organization and I think that people who pivot generally are people who are intellectually curious and have intellectual capacity to learn new things and that's what I look for when I hire people I love that you took a nonlinear progression to the path that you're in now and it's speaking of you know the the technical I think if you're in this business you better like tech or what are you doing in this business but the more you understand technology the more you can connect the dots between how technology is impacting business and then how it can be applied in new ways so well congratulations on your careers you got a long way to go and thanks so much for coming on the queue so much David I really appreciate it thank you okay keep it right - everybody stew and I'll be back with our next guest we're live from Splunk Don Capcom 18 you're watching the cube [Music]

>> Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering .conf18. Brought to you by Splunk. >> Welcome back to Splunk .conf18, #splunkconf18. You're here watching theCUBE, the leader in live-tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm with my cohost, Stu Miniman, and we're going to take a cruise with the data. Curt Persaud is here. He's the director of IT for Guest Technology at Carnival Cruise Lines. So, he's the ship. And Ariel Molina is here. He's the Senior Director of web development and enterprise architecture at Carnival Cruise Line. He's the shore. Gents, welcome to theCUBE. Good to see you. >> Happy to be here. Very, very. >> Thanks for having us guys. >> Dave, I sea what you did there. (laughs) >> Yeah, Stu, it's pretty good, huh. Well, this is kind of, you know, Splunk is known for a little tongue in cheek. >> Alright, let's keep this interview on course. >> (laughs) Alright, you got it. So Arnold Donald, your CEO, was on stage today with Doug Merritt, a very inspirational individual. You guys have an amazing company. You see those ads and just go "wow." Just makes you want to go. But Ariel, let's start with you, your role, what you guys are doing here. Just kick it off for us. >> So, no, it's fantastic, great to be here. Great energy in the conference today. The keynote was fantastic. It was great to see our CEO up there and really represent our company, really talk about, sort of, where we're heading and how Splunk helps us along that journey when it comes to data. Things are changing, they're moving faster every day, right? We're pressured into delivering more value, delivering innovation at a faster pace, and Splunk is a key enabler of that, for us. >> And Curt, at any one point in time, you guys said you have like 250,000 guests on the seas around the world. Wow! And everybody wants to be connected these days. So that's kind of your purview, right? >> Yeah, absolutely. Five, 10 years ago, what sold cruises was the ability to be disconnected. Right now, people want to be connected more than ever. So what we try to do, beyond just the connectivity, and giving them better bandwidth, and stuff like that, was to try to develop products onboard that helps them be connected, be social, but not miss out on the product that we're actually selling, which is the ship, the people, the crew, and the actual entertainment and the staff onboard. So we're trying to make people social, but not anti-social with some of the technologies that we're bringing onboard, as well. >> Doug Merritt said today, "we're all data emitters." And I think the number was you guys will service 13 million guests in any given year? So a huge, huge number of data emitters. And of course, Ariel, you obviously are analyzing a lot of data, as well. So, how has the use of data changed over the years at Carnival? Maybe you could kind of take us through that. >> Well, ultimately I think it's about personalizing the experience. So, how do we use the data to better understand what folks are looking for in that guest journey? We call the guest journey everything from planning a voyage, purchasing a voyage, purchasing all the auxiliary items that are up for sale, and then ultimately making it into the ship. So, what we're doing these days, is looking at mining this data, and looking for opportunities. On the dot-com side of things, obviously it's about resiliency and personalization. How do we deliver innovation through multiple releases, and then do so in a resilient way? And a lot of those innovations, typically, are around personalization. And we see that move the needle. We're incentivized to have more folks book online. That's ultimately good for the bottom line. So, data's a big part of that. Personalization, resiliency. >> Yeah, it's one of those interesting things we look at. Most people probably think of cruise ships as you're vacation or transportation, everything like that. You're a technology company now. You're tied in, you've got multiple mobile apps, before and during. Maybe bring us a little bit inside what that's like. >> Over the past three years, we've seen a great transformation in terms of the technologies that we're bringing on board. You name it, whether it's very high end tools, like Splunk and other APM tools that we use, to cutting-edge technology like AI, chatbots, facial recognition. We're using the full breadth of all these innovations, in terms of technology, to try to enhance guest experience. And to Ariel's point, the focus is really on trying to be very personal, trying to personalize this information, trying to personalize the guest experience, and using all those data points that we're capturing to really target what a custom experience looks for you. It's really interesting, because one of the things that we try to do in that personalization is try to manage those micro-moments. We're trying to get you what you want, we're trying to get you the feedback that you need in that micro-moment, so that you can do your transaction and move on to enjoying your cruise. >> There's something that you mentioned. You want a balance. You want people to take advantage of what's there. You used to think of a vacation like this, you'd disconnect yourself. Help understand that balance. >> You'd be surprised. We were just recently on a cruise, my family and I, and we don't cruise as often as you would imagine. >> Because you work for the company. >> Even though, when you do, it feels good to be a customer, right? There's so much activity going on on a ship on a given day. It's very hard to understand where to be at a certain point in time, and some people find that overwhelming. What things like the app does is really allow you to curate your day. To say hey, you like music? Let's focus on events that are music-oriented and that's going to be in Location XYZ on the ship. And they're going to be sequenced. So, that's personalizing the experience. But it's also ensuring that folks are really taking advantage of the full product. >> From our perspective, the technology should be in the background. It's more complementary. The real product is really the ship, the crew members, the activities, the entertainment on board. That's the product we really want people to really connect to. The stuff that we do is auxiliary in terms of, let me help you maximize those experiences on board. And that's what we're really trying to do. If we can get that done and accomplished, than we have done our jobs. >> So the app is the digital conduit to the physical experience >> Exactly. >> If you have a good app, it makes all the difference in the world. If you're at Disney, and you're trying to figure out what's next, what do the lines look like? You get a lot of people on a ship, and you want to prioritize. You all call that curating your experience. It's all about the app, as they say. What's the state of the app? The 1.0 probably needed a little work. Where are you know in the evolution? >> We're in a 2.0 release version of it. The original version, we started with what we called the meat and potatoes. The very basic stuff, that hey, where can I get food? What is the entertainment lineup for the day? We started off with some innovation in terms of being able to generate, we did a chat, kind of like, communication, so people could chat with their families onboard without having to purchase a plan or have any bandwidth needs. And then, as we evolved that, then we started to go into things that are more transactional. So, you're able to purchase your photos digitally through the app. We leveraged facial recognition software, so that if a photographer on a ship takes a picture of you, it recognizes that as you and puts your photo in your photo stream and your photo album. So, very, very convenient. We do things like sell shore excursions in terms of transactional stuff. You can sit at the pool and say "oh, tomorrow's a port day, "I'm going to be in the Bahamas. "Let me see what shore excursion I want to do. And you can do it directly from the app without even moving. So now, as we evolve that now, as Ariel said, now we're trying to leverage all that data now, to go beyond the transactions, and make things even more personalized. So, I know that you favor the casino, maybe you're a spa person, you want a facial. We'll target you and say hey, on your previous cruise you did this. Let's target you because we might have something special waiting for you onboard. >> And then carry that across the journey, right. So now they leave our ships. And how do we get them to come back to our ships? How do you create that conversation that's ongoing, notifications about what's going on on our ships. People follow their favorite cruise director. People follow a lot of the unique experiences there. How do you bring that to the online, to the dot-com experience? So that when they're thinking about that next cruise, they can remember what that last cruise was about, and they can know what's happening on each one of our ships in real-time. It's a journey. And technology definitely is a huge enabler for us and the experience. >> So what's the data architecture look like on there? We always talk on theCUBE about the innovation sandwich of the future. It used to be Moore's Law, doubling every two years. Okay, great. Now, it's data, plus machine intelligence, and you scale with the cloud. What's your data architecture look like? >> Well, I think it's early days. I think it's, I mean, they're all over the place, right? I think there's silos within the enterprise that are really maximizing data. I think that that trend continues to happen. But I think there's got to be, and the enterprise architecture world is sort of about wrangling that, and figuring out how data from different dispersed touch points affect that. So, it's early days. I do think that you're starting to see that machine learning algorithms do play a part. I'm seeing it personally, more in the operations side of the world. So all these systems, at the end of the day, they need to be resilient and they need to have high service levels. So, what I'm seeing now is tools, and at Splunk, you saw that today, being able to be really predictive about where the anomalies are. Traditionally, you were having to log errors and then interpret errors, and then that would be the way you action some of these things. The predictive nature of some of these tools are such that you're being proactive. So when you talk about data there's so many different places you can go. If you think about our technology stack, and that guest experience point of view, it's all about really maintaining that SLA's, resolving issues as quickly as possible. And there's a ton of data in that space, right? I mean, it's everywhere, there's a ton of signals. >> Well you guys know, we tend not to throw stuff away in technology. You sort of have to figure out how to integrate. >> A signal via the customer is probably one of those, as well. So at the end of the day, what more information are we collecting about our guest to ultimately personalize that experience? It's centered around that. >> And that's challenging, I mean, look at the airlines. And your app, which you love the airline apps. I mean, you're not, like, tethered to them. But the phone experience, and even the laptop experience, are a little bit different. Because of the data, it's very, very challenging. Have you figured that out? Or are you sort of figuring that out? >> That's API's, right? It's that experienced API layer. Being able to activate that data which is sitting in distinct silos and then do so across those experience apps, the experience channels, which is dot-com, the app, the chatbot, there's so many interfaces out there. But, yeah, it's a solid, mature API strategy that's going to get us there. >> And I think one of the things that our challenge is, as technology partners, is the ability to build those platforms so that the next wave of conversions, as you mentioned, there's some disjointed experience across the desktop view versus the mobile view, is to try to bring those conversions together. And in order to that, like Ariel said, maybe making some API extraction layers figuring out how to mine the data better, figuring out how to leverage insights from different tools or machines and sensors, we have a ton of sensors on these ships as well. And bringing all those things together to be able to put us in a position that when we do finally get a seamless conversion, we're ready for it from a technology and a platform perspective. >> It's obvious why data is important for your business. You actually did a press release with Splunk. Maybe explain a little about how Splunk Cloud fits into this discussion that we've been having? >> Well, Cloud really removes the barriers of experimentation. How do you right-size a problem you don't understand very well? I think Cloud really helps with that. We're looking forward to being able to be flexible. Flexibility in architecture, flexibility in infrastructure. So that's absolutely the use-case I think security's got a number of use-cases. You see it every day in the news. So yeah, more opportunities, I would say, it scales that flexibility that's taken us the cloud route. >> When you think Splunk, you think security. You got guys in the Knock. That's not where you guys are. You're kind of closer to the business. And so you're seeing Splunk, as I said before, permeate into other parts of the organization. You kind of expected somebody else to do that. I don't know, the Hadoop guys. And it's interesting, Splunk never used to talk about big data. Now that the big data era is, sort of, behind us, Splunk talks a lot about big data. It's kind of an interesting flip. >> I would say it's democratizing the data. That's the stuff I liked, that I heard today. How do you get these tools away from the IT operators that are writing these complex queries to get insights? And how do you elevate that up to the analysts, and the product managers? And how do they get access to those interfaces? You know, drag-and-drop, whatever you want to call it. But I think that where I see this happening more so than, machine learning, that's great and predictive. But just empowering others to really leverage that data. I would say Splunk is leading there and it's good to see some of that stuff today. >> Absolutely. It's putting the power where it really needs to be, where it's the end users, the guys making decisions, it's the product owners, the product managers, that are making those slight tweaks to that interface, or to that design, or to that experience, that makes a difference. And that's what we're trying to do, and leverage with tools like Splunk, as well. >> Even the simple visualization, right, the stuff that's out of the box is really important for the business user, right? >> The out of the box part's another thing that I saw today, which is more, sort of, curating for particular use-case, and saying hey, we're going to build that end-to-end and really turn it on and activate it a little sooner. So that infrastructure product we saw today, I think that's a big step forward. Where you're a platform, but at some point you're going to have to start being a little more vertical in the way that you bring to market, the way that they did with security. >> And Doug talked about, you know, Doug Merritt, that is, talked about data is messy, and the messiest landscape is the data. And then he talked about being able to organize that data in the moment. So, I think about, okay, just put it in the, we like to call data ocean, right, and just capture it. But then having the tools to be able to actually look at it in whatever schema you want, when you want it, is a challenge that people have. My question is, did he describe it accurately? I think yes. But then, can you actually do that with this messy data? >> I think it's a great concept. I'm interested to see how that plays out going forward. But I think in our world, we have several use-cases where that makes sense. We have a very captive audience for seven to 10 days. So we really have a very limited amount of time to make a really good impression. So, it's not only about attracting first-time cruisers; it's trying to get a repeat cruiser. So that limited time frame that we have to leave a really lasting impression is very limited. So things like recovery, in terms of getting metrics or data real-time, and being able to act on it immediately. Say you had a bad experience at the sushi bar. If we're able to grab that information, whatever data points that allow us to understand what happened, and then do a quick recovery, we may have a guest for a repeat cruise. Those are the things that we're trying to do. And, if what Doug is saying is something that they've kind of solved, or are able to try to solve in a good way, that is very powerful for us as well, and we definitely see leverage in that. >> Last question, Ariel, you're saying off-camera it's kind of early days. What's the future hold? I mean, that's going to blow our minds. Blow our minds! >> Oh, it's the predictive thing, right? It's bringing you your favorite drink before you're ready to have it, or something. I don't know. The cruise line business, the travel and hospitality space is a very fun space to work in. We get to really see our guests enjoy the product. And us, as technologists, we get to see how technology moves the needle. Continued innovation, right? If you're in the development side of the world, challenging yourself to deploy more often, to deliver more value more often. And if you're on the data side, how to get aggregated, compile all this this data, for ultimately what we're looking for, which is to enhance the guest experience. >> I mean, that real-time notion that you were talking about Curt, you can see that coming together and completely transforming the guest experience. So guys, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. It was great to have you. Congratulations on all your success and good luck. Alright keep it right there everybody, we'll be back at Splunk .conf18. You're watching theCUBE. Dave Vellante with Stu Miniman. we'll be right back! (upbeat music)