(vibrant electronic music) >> Welcome back to SuperCloud2. You know, this event, and the Super Cloud initiative in general, it's an open industry-wide collaboration. Last August at SuperCloud22, we really honed in on the definition, which of course we've published. And there's this shared doc, which folks are still adding to and refining, in fact, just recently, Dr. Nelu Mihai added some critical points that really advanced some of the community's initial principles, and today at SuperCloud2, we're digging further into the topic with input from real world practitioners, and we're exploring that intersection of data, data mesh, and cloud, and importantly, the realities and challenges of deploying technology to drive new business capability, and I'm pleased to welcome Ash Naseer to the program. He's a Senior Director of Data Engineering at Warner Bros. Discovery. Ash, great to see you again, thanks so much for taking time with us. >> It's great to be back, these conversations are always very fun. >> I was so excited when we met last spring, I guess, so before we get started I wanted to play a clip from that conversation, it was June, it was at the Snowflake Summit in Las Vegas. And it's a comment that you made about your company but also data mesh. Guys, roll the clip. >> Yeah, so, when people think of Warner Bros., you always think of the movie studio. But we're more than that, right, I mean, you think of HBO, you think of TNT, you think of CNN. We have 30 plus brands in our portfolio, and each have their own needs. So the idea of a data mesh really helps us because what we can do is we can federate access across the company, so that CNN can work at their own pace, you know, when there's election season, they can ingest their own data. And they don't have to bump up against, as an example, HBO, if Game of Thrones is goin' on. >> So-- Okay, so that's pretty interesting, so you've got these sort of different groups that have different data requirements inside of your organization. Now data mesh, it's a relatively new concept, so you're kind of ahead of the curve. So Ash, my question is, when you think about getting value from data, and how that's changed over the past decade, you've had pre-Hadoop, Hadoop, what do you see that's changed, now you got the cloud coming in, what's changed? What had to be sort of fixed? What's working now, and where do you see it going? >> Yeah, so I feel like in the last decade, we've gone through quite a maturity curve. I actually like to say that we're in the golden age of data, because the tools and technology in the data space, particularly and then broadly in the cloud, they allow us to do things that we couldn't do way back when, like you suggested, back in the Hadoop era or even before that. So there's certainly a lot of maturity, and a lot of technology that has come about. So in terms of the good, bad, and ugly, so let me kind of start with the good, right? In terms of bringing value from the data, I really feel like we're in this place where the folks that are charged with unlocking that value from the data, they're actually spending the majority of their time actually doing that. And what do I mean by that? If you think about it, 10 years ago, the data scientist was the person that was going to sort of solve all of the data problems in a company. But what happened was, companies asked these data scientists to come in and do a multitude of things. And what these data scientists found out was, they were spending most of their time on, really, data wrangling, and less on actually getting the value out of the data. And in the last decade or so, I feel like we've made the shift, and we realize that data engineering, data management, data governance, those are as important practices as data science, which is sort of getting the value out of the data. And so what that has done is, it has freed up the data scientist and the business analyst and the data analyst, and the BI expert, to really focus on how to get value out of the data, and spend less time wrangling data. So I really think that that's the good. In terms of the bad, I feel like, there's a lot of legacy data platforms out there, and I feel like there's going to be a time where we'll be in that hybrid mode. And then the ugly, I feel like, with all the data and all the technology, creates another problem of itself. Because most companies don't have arms around their data, and making sure that they know who's using the data, what they're using for, and how can the company leverage the collective intelligence. That is a bigger problem to solve today than 10 years ago. And that's where technologies like the data mesh come in. >> Yeah, so when I think of data mesh, and I say, you're an early practitioner of data mesh, you mentioned legacy technology, so the concept of data mesh is inclusive. In theory anyway, you're supposed to be including the legacy technologies. Whether it's a data lake or data warehouse or Oracle or Snowflake or whatever it is. And when you think about Jamak Dagani's principles, it's domain-centric ownership, data as product. And that creates challenges around self-serve infrastructure and automated governance, and then when you start to combine these different technologies. You got legacy, you got cloud. Everything's different. And so you have to figure out how to deal with that, so my question is, how have you dealt with that, and what role has the cloud played in solving those problems, in particular, that self-serve infrastructure, and that automated governance, and where are we in terms of solving that problem from a practitioner's standpoint? >> Yeah, I always like to say that data is a team sport, and we should sort of think of it as such, and that's, I feel like, the key of the data mesh concept, is treating it as a team sport. A lot of people ask me, they're like, "Oh hey, Ash, I've heard about this thing called data mesh. "Where can I buy one?" or, "what's the technology that I use to get a data mesh? And the reality is that there isn't one technology, you can't really buy a data mesh. It's really a way of life, it's how organizations decide to approach data, like I said, back to a team sport analogy, making sure that everyone has the seat on the table, making sure that we embrace the fact that we have a lot of data, we have a lot of data problems to solve. And the way we'll be successful is to make everyone inclusive. You know, you think about the old days, Data silos or shadow IT, some might call it. That's been around for decades. And what hasn't changed was this notion that, hey, everything needs to be sort of managed centrally. But with the cloud and with the technologies that we have today, we have the right technology and the tooling to democratize that data, and democratize not only just the access, but also sort of building building blocks and sort of taking building blocks which are relevant to your product or your business. And adding to the overall data mesh. We've got all that technology. The challenge is for us to really embrace it, and make sure that we implement it from an organizational standpoint. >> So, thinking about super cloud, there's a layer that lives above the clouds and adds value. And you think about your brands you got 30 brands, you mentioned shadow IT. If, let's say, one of those brands, HBO or TNT, whatever. They want to go, "Hey, we really like Google's analytics tools," and they maybe go off and build something, I don't know if that's even allowed, maybe it's not. But then you build this data mesh. My question is around multi-cloud, cross cloud, super cloud if you will. Is that a advantage for you as a practitioner, or does that just make things more complicated? >> I really love the idea of a multi-cloud. I think it's great, I think that it should have been the norm, not the exception, I feel like people talk about it as if it's the exception. That should have been the case. I will say, though, I feel like multi-cloud should evolve organically, so back to your point about some of these different brands, and, you know, different brands or different business units. Or even in a merger and acquisitions situation, where two different companies or multiple different companies come together with different technology stacks. You know, I feel like that's an organic evolution, and making sure that we use the concepts and the technologies around the multi-cloud to bring everyone together. That's where we need to be, and again, it talks to the fact that each of those business units and each of those groups have their own unique needs, and we need to make sure that we embrace that and we enable that, rather than stifling everything. Now where I have a little bit of a challenge with the multi-cloud is when technology leaders try to build it by design. So there's a notion there that, "Hey, you need to sort of diversify "and don't put all your eggs in one basket." And so we need to have this multi-cloud thing. I feel like that is just sort of creating more complexity where it doesn't need to be, we can all sort of simplify our lives, but where it evolves organically, absolutely, I think that's the right way to go. >> But, so Ash, if it evolves organically don't you need some kind of cloud interpreter, to create a common experience across clouds, does that exist today? What are your thoughts on that? >> There is a lot of technology that exists today, and that helps go between these different clouds, a lot of these sort of cloud agnostic technologies that you talked about, the Snowflakes and the Databricks and so forth of the world, they operate in multiple clouds, they operate in multiple regions, within a given cloud and multiple clouds. So they span all of that, and they have the tools and technology, so, I feel like the tooling is there. There does need to be more of an evolution around the tooling and I think the market's need are going to dictate that, I feel like the market is there, they're asking for it, so, there's definitely going to be that evolution, but the technology is there, I think just making sure that we embrace that and we sort of embrace that as a challenge and not try to sort of shut all of that down and box everything into one. >> What's the biggest challenge, is it governance or security? Or is it more like you're saying, adoption, cultural? >> I think it's a combination of cultural as well as governance. And so, the cultural side I've talked about, right, just making sure that we give these different teams a seat at the table, and they actually bring that technology into the mix. And we use the modern tools and technologies to make sure that everybody sort of plays nice together. That is definitely, we have ways to go there. But then, in terms of governance, that is another big problem that most companies are just starting to wrestle with. Because like I said, I mean, the data silos and shadow IT, that's been around there, right? The only difference is that we're now sort of bringing everything together in a cloud environment, the collective organization has access to that. And now we just realized, oh we have quite a data problem at our hands, so how do we sort of organize this data, make sure that the quality is there, the trust is there. When people look at that data, a lot of those questions are now coming to the forefront because everything is sort of so transparent with the cloud, right? And so I feel like, again, putting in the right processes, and the right tooling to address that is going to be critical in the next years to come. >> Is sharing data across clouds, something that is valuable to you, or even within a single cloud, being able to share data. And my question is, not just within your organization, but even outside your organization, is that something that has sort of hit your radar or is it mature or is that something that really would add value to your business? >> Data sharing is huge, and again, this is another one of those things which isn't new. You know, I remember back in the '90s, when we had to share data externally, with our partners or our vendors, they used to physically send us stacks of these tapes, or physical media on some truck. And we've evolved since then, right, I mean, it went from that to sharing files online and so forth. But data sharing as a concept and as a concept which is now very frictionless, through these different technologies that we have today, that is very new. And that is something, like I said, it's always been going on. But that needs to be really embraced more as well. We as a company heavily leverage data sharing between our own different brands and business units, that helps us make that data mesh, so that when CNN, as an example, builds their own data model based on election data and the kinds of data that they need, compare that with other data in the rest of the company, sports, entertainment, and so forth and so on. Everyone has their unique data, but that data sharing capability brings it together wherever there is a need. So you think about having a Tiger Woods documentary, as an example, on HBO Max and making sure that you reach the audiences that are interested in golf and interested in sports and so forth, right? That all comes through the magic of data sharing, so, it's really critical, internally, for us. And then externally as well, because just understanding how our products are doing on our partners' networks and different distribution channels, that's important, and then just understanding how our consumers are consuming it off properties, right, I mean, we have brands that transcend just the screen, right? We have a lot of physical merchandise that you can buy in the store. So again, understanding who's buying the Batman action figures after the Batman movie was released, that's another critical insight. So it all gets enabled through data sharing, and something we rely heavily on. >> So I wanted to get your perspective on this. So I feel like the nirvana of data mesh is if I want to use Google BigQuery, an Oracle database, or a Microsoft database, or Snowflake, Databricks, Amazon, whatever. That that's a node on the mesh. And in the perfect world, you can share that data, it can be governed, I don't think we're quite there today, so. But within a platform, maybe it's within Google or within Amazon or within Snowflake or Databricks. If you're in that world, maybe even Oracle. You actually can do some levels of data sharing, maybe greater with some than others. Do you mandate as an organization that you have to use this particular data platform, or are you saying "Hey, we are architecting a data mesh for the future "where we believe the technology will support that," or maybe you've invented some technology that supports that today, can you help us understand that? >> Yeah, I always feel like mandate is a strong area, and it breeds the shadow IT and the data silos. So we don't mandate, we do make sure that there's a consistent set of governance rules, policies, and tooling that's there, so that everyone is on the same page. However, at the same time our focus is really operating in a federated way, that's been our solution, right? Is to make sure that we work within a common set of tooling, which may be different technologies, which in some cases may be different clouds. Although we're not that multi-cloud. So what we're trying to do is making sure that everyone who has that technology already built, as long as it sort of follows certain standards, it's modern, it has the capabilities that will eventually allow us to be successful and eventually allow for that data sharing, amongst those different nodes, as you put it. As long as that's the case, and as long as there's a governance layer, a master governance layer, where we know where all that data is and who has access to what and we can sort of be really confident about the quality of the data, as long as that case, our approach to that is really that federated approach. >> Sorry, did I hear you correctly, you're not multi-cloud today? >> Yeah, that's correct. There are certain spots where we use that, but by and large, we rely on a particular cloud, and that's just been, like I said, it's been the evolution, it was our evolution. We decided early on to focus on a single cloud, and that's the direction we've been going in. >> So, do you want to go to a multi-cloud, or, you mentioned organic before, if a business unit wants to go there, as long as they're adhering to those standards that you put out, maybe recommendations, that that's okay? I guess my question is, does that bring benefit to your business that you'd like to tap, or do you feel like it's not necessary? >> I'll go back to the point of, if it happens organically, we're going to be open about it. Obviously we'll have to look at every situations, not all clouds are created equal as well, so there's a number of different considerations. But by and large, when it happens organically, the key is time to value, right? How do you quickly bring those technologies in, as long as you could share the data, they're interconnected, they're secured, they're governed, we are confident on the quality, as long as those principles are met, we could definitely go in that direction. But by and large, we're sort of evolving in a singular direction, but even within a singular cloud, we're a global company. And we have audiences around the world, so making sure that even within a single cloud, those different regions interoperate as one, that's a bigger challenge that we're having to solve as well. >> Last question is kind of to the future of data and cloud and how it's going to evolve, do you see a day when companies like yours are increasingly going to be offering data, their software, services, and becoming more of a technology company, sort of pointing your tooling and your proprietary knowledge at the external world, as an opportunity, as a business opportunity? >> That's a very interesting concept, and I know companies have done that, and some of them have been extremely successful, I mean, Amazon is the biggest example that comes to mind, right-- >> Yeah. >> When they launched AWS, something that they had that expertise they had internally, and they offered it to the world as a product. But by and large, I think it's going to be far and few between, especially, it's going to be focused on companies that have technology as their DNA, or almost like in the technology sector, building technology. Most other companies have different markets that they are addressing. And in my opinion, a lot of these companies, what they're trying to do is really focus on the problems that we can solve for ourselves, I think there are more problems than we have people and expertise. So my guess is that most large companies, they're going to focus on solving their own problems. A few, like I said, more tech-focused companies, that would want to be in that business, would probably branch out, but by and large, I think companies will continue to focus on serving their customers and serving their own business. >> Alright, Ash, we're going to leave it there, Ash Naseer. Thank you so much for your perspectives, it was great to see you, I'm sure we'll see you face-to-face later on this year. >> This is great, thank you for having me. >> Ah, you're welcome, alright. Keep it right there for more great content from SuperCloud2. We'll be right back. (gentle percussive music)

(modern music) >> Welcome back, everyone to theCUBE's live coverage here in San Francisco for VMware Explore, formerly VMworld. theCUBE's been here 12 years today, we've been watching the evolution of the user conference. It's been quite a journey to see and, you know, virtualization just explode. We got two great guests here, we're going to break it all down. Ash McCarty, director of Multicloud Product Management Dell Technologies, no stranger to the VMworld, now VMware Explore, and Josh Prewitt, Chief Product Officer at Rackspace Technology. Great to see you guys, thanks for coming on. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah, thanks so much, thanks for having us. >> So, you know, the theme this year is multicloud, but it's really all about vSphere 8's out, you got VxRail, you got containers, you got the magic going on around cloud native, which it really points to the future state of where this is going, which is agile enterprises, infrastructure as code, high performance under the hood, I mean, all the things that you guys have been doing for many, many years and decades and business, but now with VMware putting it all together, it feels like, this year, it's like you got visibility into the value proposition, people have clear line of sight into where the performances are from the hardware software and now Cloud, it's kind of coming together, feels like it's coming together. Let's talk about that and the relationship between you guys, Rackspace and Dell and VMware. >> Perfect. That sounds great. Well, thanks so much for having us. You know, I'll sort of kick that off. We've got a huge lifelong partnership and relationship with Dell and VMware and the technologies that these guys create that we're able to put in front of our customers are really what allows us to go drive those business outcomes. So, yeah, happy to dive into it. >> Yeah, and I think to add to that, we understand that customers have a tremendously complex challenge ahead of them on managing their infrastructure. That's why with VxRail, we have intelligent infrastructure. We want it to simplify the outcomes for customers no matter if they're managing VMware or if they're managing the actual hardware infrastructure underneath it. >> Yeah, one of the things that we always talk about, you know, you read about it on the blogs and the news and the startup world, is "Oh, product-market fit," and, well, it kind of applies here, if you think about what's going on on the product side with the Edge emerging, hybrid cloud on pace with private cloud, and obviously, cloud native is great too if you have native applications in there, but now, putting it all together, you're hearing things like the telco cloud, I hear buzzwords like that, I hear supercloud, which we promoting, which you see in companies becoming cloud themselves, with the CapEx being handled by either public cloud or optimized on premise or hosted hardware. I mean, this is now, this is not all about everything's going to the cloud, this is now cloud operations on premise and in hosting hardware, so I'd love to get your perspective on that because you guys are huge hosting, you've got huge experience there, modernizing all the time. What does the modern era look like for the customer? >> Yeah, yeah, so, I mean, I think it's very clear to everybody that it's a multicloud world, right? I think the main question is, are you multicloud as a strategy, or are you multicloud as a situation? Because everybody's multicloud. That ship has sailed, right? >> Yeah, exactly. >> And so, when I look at the capabilities that we have with the partnership with Dell and the VxRail technologies, you know, life-cycle management that you have to go and perform across your fleet can be extremely difficult, and whenever you take something like the VxRail and you add, you know, you have the hardware and you have the software all fully integrated there, it makes it much easier to do life-cycle management, so for a company like Rackspace, where we have tens of thousands of nodes that we're managing for customers across 29 global data centers, and we're all over the place, the ability to have that strength with Dell's hardware, the VMware platform improve life-cycle management makes it so much easier for us to manage our fleet and be able to deliver those outcomes even faster for customers. >> So assuming that VxRail isn't a virtual railroad that delivers data to Rackspace data centers, if it's not that, what is it, Ash? Give us a little premier on what VxRail is. >> Well, VxRail is the first and only jointly engineered HCI system with VMware, so everything we do with VMware is better. >> So hyperconverged infrastructure. >> Hyperconverged infrastructure. >> What we used to call a server because all the bits are in the box, right? >> All the storage is computed in there. >> Everything's in there. Right. >> Simplifies management. And we built in with the VxRail HCI system software, which is really our secret sauce, we built in to actually add those automation capabilities with VMware, so it allows you to scale out very quickly, scale up very quickly. And one of our big capabilities is our life-cycle management, which is full stack, meaning it life-cycles the entire vSphere stack as well as the hardware infrastructure underneath as one continuously validated state, meaning that customers can focus more on their business outcomes and driving their business forward versus spending time managing their infrastructure. >> And when you talk about customers, it's also the value proposition that's flowing through Rackspace because Rackspace, when you install these systems, how long does it take to spin up to have a VM available for use when you install one of these systems? >> Oh, so you can have the system up and running very quickly. So we automate all the day one deployment, so you can have the system up and running in your labs, in your data centers in 45 minutes, and you can have VMs up in provision very shortly after that. >> So what do you do with that kind of agility? >> Oh my gosh, so we've actually taken that, and we've taken the VxRail platform and we've created what we call Rackspace Services for VMware Cloud, and this is our platform that is based on VxRail, it's based on vCloud Director from VMware, and by having the VxRail is already RackStacked, ready to go for our customers, we're able to sign a customer up today, and then, within a matter of minutes, give them access to a vCloud Director portal where they can go in and spin up a new VM anytime they want, but then, it also integrates into all of those cloud management platforms and tools, right? It integrates into your Terraform, so you've got, you know, your full CI/CD pipeline, and so you have that full end-to-end capability. If you want to go click around on a portal, you can using vCloud Director and using vSphere and all that great stuff. If you want to automate it, you can do that too. And we do it all in the backs of that VxRail hyperconverged infrastructure. >> Talk about the DPU dynamic. We're hearing a lot about DPUs. VxRail, you guys have some HCI-like vibe there with DPUs. How is that impacting performance, can you guys see? 'Cause we're hearing a lot of buzz around the VxRail and the VMware DPUs really making things much faster. >> I mean, it's the thing we talk about most with customers now is their challenges with scaling their infrastructure, and VxRail is going to be the first and only jointly engineered system that will have vSphere 8 with DPUs functionality and will have the full life-cycle management, and what this really empowers customers to do is, as they're growing their environments that they're scaling out their workloads in the data center, they need a way to scale to that next generation of networking and network security, and that's what DPUs allow you to do. They give you that offload and that high performance capability. >> Talk about the... I'd love to get your guys' perspective, while we're just riffing on this real quick sidebar for a second, if VxRail has these capabilities which you guys are promoting it does and some of the things go on in the modern era, the next gen apps are going to look a lot different. We're kind of calling it supercloud, if you will, for lack of a better description. Yeah, multicloud is a state, I agree. It's a situation and a state, but supercloud is really the functionality of what cloud does. So what do you guys see as, maybe it's tea leaves reading now or dots connecting, what are some of those next gen apps? I mean the Edge is there with, "Oh, the Edge is going to explode," and I can see the Edge having new kinds of apps that we've never seen before, whether it's on premise building lights and however they work or IoT changing. What do you guys see as the next gen app/apps coming out that's not looking the same as now, or how are apps today changing for next gen? 'Cause you get more performance at the Edge, you get more action, you get more co-locations in GEOS, so it's clear multicloud multi-presence is happening too, right? So what are you guys seeing? What's this... >> Yeah, I would say two areas that resonate most with customers is customers transitioning to their cloud native journey, so beginning it and using things like Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations, which we fully support and have a white paper out there list for customers, another area is really in the AIML space, so we've been partnering with both VMware and Nvidia to simplify how customers deploy new AIML infrastructure. I mean, it's challenging, complex, a lot of customers are wanting to dive in because it really enables them to better operate and operate on insights and analytics they get from running their business. >> Josh? >> And, you know, I think it really comes down to, whether you want to call it Edge or IoT or, you know, smart things, whatever, right? It all comes down to how we are expected, now, to capture all of the data to create a better user experience, and that's what we're seeing the modern applications being built around, right, is how do you leverage all of the data that's now at your fingertips, whether it's from wearables, machine vision, whatever it may be, and drive that improved user experience. And so that's the apps that we're seeing now, right? You know, of course, you still have all your business apps, all your ERP capabilities that need to exist and all of that great stuff, but at the same time, I also expect that, whenever, you know, now, whenever I'm walking into a store and their machine vision picks me up and they're pinging my phone and pushing me push notifications, I expect to have a better user experience. >> And do a database search on you too, by the way. >> Yeah, exactly, right? >> No search warrants out for 'em, you know, you're good. >> That's exactly it, so, you know, you kind of expect that better user experience and that's where I'm seeing a lot of the new app development. >> Yeah, it's fun, as these cases are intoxicating to think about all the weird coolness around it. The thing that I want to get your thoughts on is, we were just talking on the analyst session earlier in theCUBE, if DevOps is here and won, which we believe it has and infrastructure as code is happening, the cloud native discussion, shifting left CI/CD pipeline, that's DevOps in my mind, that's like cloud native developers, that's like traditional IT in my mind, so that's all part of the coding. DataOps and Security Ops seem to be the most robust areas of conversations where that's the new Ops, right? So, I mean, I made the term up, but new Ops, in terms of the focus, what are you making more efficient? What are you optimizing for? What's your guys reaction to that? Because all the conversations that we talk about is data, security, and then the rest seems to be cool, all good on the developer's side. Yeah, shift left events happening up there, Kubernetes containers, but all the action on the Ops side seems to be data and security. >> Yeah. >> What's your reaction to that? Is that right? >> So personally, I do think that it's right. I think that, you know with great power comes great responsibility, right? And so the clouds have brought that to us, all of your infrastructure as code has brought that to us. We have that great power now, right? But then you start to see, kind of, the pipeline attacks that are starting to become more and more popular. And so how you secure something that is as complex as, you know, a cloud native development pipeline is really hard, it's really challenging, so I do think that it warrants the attention. Then on the data side, I think that that matters because when I talked about those examples of a better user experience, I don't want my better user experience tomorrow, I don't want it 20 minutes from now. I want that real time capability, and so with that comes massive requirements from a compute and hardware perspective, massive requirements from a software perspective, and from, you know, what folks are now calling DataOps perspective >> Data addressability, having the data available to be delivered in real time. >> You know, there there's been a lot of talk, here at the conference, about the disaggregation of, you know, the brainularism, if we're going to make up words, you know, the horsepower that's involved, CPU, DPU, GPU. I'll make up another word. We're familiar with the thermometers used during COVID to measure temperature. Pretend that I've invented a device called a Care-o-meter and I'm pointing at various people's foreheads, who needs to care about DPUs and GPUs and CPUs? You know, John was referencing the idea of security at the Edge, data. Well, wow, we've got GPUs that can do things. Who needs to care about that? Obviously, we care about it. You care about it. You care about it. You're building this stuff, you're deploying this stuff, but at what level in the customer stack do they need to care about it? Are you going in, is RackSpace engaging customers and saying, "Look, here's the value proposition: we understand your mission to be this. We believe we can achieve your mission." How far down in the organization do you go before you get to someone where you have to have the DPU conversation? 'Cause we didn't even define DPU yet here, which is always offensive to me. >> I think I defined it actually. >> Did you define DPU? Good. Thank you John. >> Yeah, yeah. >> But so who should care? Who should really care about that? >> Oh, that's such a complex question, right? Because everybody, Rackspace included >> But a good one. But a good question. >> Oh, it's a great question. >> Thank you. >> Great question. (laughing) >> Everybody, Rackspace included, is talking about selling business outcomes, right? And ultimately, that is what matters. It is what matters, is selling those business outcomes to the customer. And so of course we're dealing with our business buyers who are just looking for, "Hey, improve my KPIs, make this run faster, better, stronger, all of that great stuff," but ultimately you get down to an IT staff, and to the IT staff, these things matter because the IT staff, they all have budgets that they have to hit. The realities start to hit them and they can't just go and spend whatever they want, you know, trying to hit the KPIs of the marketing department or the finance department, right? And so you have your business buyers that do care significantly about buying their outcomes, and so we're having, you know, the business outcomes conversations with them and then, oftentimes, they will come back to us and say, "Okay, but now we need you to talk to this person over in our IT organization. We need you to talk with our CIO, with our VP of infrastructure," whatever that may be, where we really get down to the nuts and bolts and we talk about how, you know, we can stretch the hardware coming from Dell, we can stretch the software coming from VMware, and we can deliver a higher caliber experience, a lower TCO, by taking advantage of some of the new technologies coming out. >> Yeah, so there's a reason why I ask that awesome question, and it's because I can imagine a scenario where, and this speaks to RackSpace's position in the market today and moving forward and what your history has been, people want to know, "Well, why should I work with Rackspace instead of some mega-hyper-monster-cloud?" If part of the answer is: well, it's because, for very specific application environments, like healthcare we talked about earlier, that might be a conversation where you're actually bringing in Dell to have a conversation about how you are specifically optimizing hardware and software to achieve things that otherwise can't be achieved with t-shirt sizes of servers in a hyperscale cloud. I mean, is that part of the Rackspace value proposition moving forward, that you can do things like that with partners like Dell that the other folks aren't going to focus on? >> Absolutely, it is, right? And a lot of the power of Rackspace is that, you know, we're the best-in-class pure play cloud solutions provider, and we can talk to you about your AWS, your Azure, your GCP, all of that great stuff, but we can also talk to you about private cloud solutions that are built on the backs of Dell Technologies, and in this multicloud world, you don't have that one size fits all for every single application. There are some things that run great in a hyperscale provider, and we can help you get there, but just exactly like you said, there are these verticals where you have applications that don't necessarily run all that well or they're not modernized, they haven't been refactored to be able to take advantage of cloud native services. And if all you're going to do is run that on bare metal in VMs, a hosted private cloud is, by far, the best way to do that, right? And Rackspace provides that hosted private cloud on the backs of Dell technology, on the backs of VMware technology, and we can go deliver those custom bespoke solutions to customers. >> So the infrastructure and the hardware still matters, Ash, yes? >> Absolutely, and I think he just highlighted, while what he does with his customers and what's important to his internal organization is being to deliver faster outcomes, better outcomes, give those customers, to meet those KPIs of those customers consuming their infrastructure at Rackspace, so I think, really, what the DPU and the underlying infrastructure enables is all that full stack integration to allow them to quickly scale to the demands of those customers and what they need in their infrastructure. >> Guys, while we got you here, what do you think about this year's VMware Explore, a lot of anticipation around how many people are going to show up and, you know, all kinds of things around the new name and Broadcom. Big attendance here, I mean, I was very surprised about the size of the attendance and the show floor, the ecosystem, this train is not stopping. I mean, this is VMware's third act, no matter what the contextual situation is. What's your observation of the show? Do you agree, or is there anything that you could want to share about for folks who didn't make it, what they missed? >> Yeah, I mean it really highlights, I mean, you've seen the breadth of the show, I know people that aren't here that aren't able to see it are really missing the excitement. So there's a lot of great announcements around multicloud, around all the announcements, around the vSphere 8 with the DPUs, the vSAN Express Storage architecture, ton of new exciting technologies that are really empowering how customers, you know, the future of how customers are going to consume their workloads in their data centers. >> Josh, they're not short on products and stuff. A lot of moving parts. vSphere 8, a bunch of new stuff. And the cloud native stuff's looking pretty good too, off the tee. >> You know, it does feel like a focus on the core, though, in a way. So I don't think there's been a lot of peripheral noise at the show. Sometimes it's, you know, "And we got this, and this, and this, and this." It's vSphere 8, vSAN 8, cloud software, you know, really hammering it home and refining it. >> But you don't think of it as a little bit of a circus act. I mean the general keynote was theatrical, I thought, I mean, I thought they did a good job on that. I think vSphere 8 was buried a little bit, I thought they could have... They checked the box at the beginning. >> That's true, that's true. >> I mean, they mentioned it, but we didn't see the demos. You know? Demos are usually great. But that's my only criticism. >> Well, that's why we supplemented it with the VxRail announcements, right? With our big announcements around vSphere 8 and with the DPUs as well as the vSAN Express Storage architecture being integrated into VxRail, so I think, you know, it's always that ongoing partnership and, you know, doing what's best for our customers, showing them the next generation and how they consume that technology. >> Yeah, you guys got good props on VxRail. We had a great chat about it yesterday. Rackspace, you guys doing good? Quick update on what's happening with you guys. Give a quick plug. What's going on at Rackspace? What's hot? What's going on? Give a quick plug for what the services are and the products you got going on there. >> Yeah, absolutely. So we are that end-to-end cloud provider, right? And so we've got really exciting offers in market, helping customers take advantage of all the hyperscale providers, and then giving them that private cloud experience. We've got everything from single-tenant running in our data centers on the backs of vSphere, vCloud Director, and VxRails, all the way through to, like, multi-tenant burstable capability that runs within our own data centers as well. It's a really exciting time for technology, a really exciting time for Rackspace. >> Congratulations, we've been following your journey for a long time. Dell, you guys do continue to do a great job and end-to-end phenomenal work. The telco thing's a huge opportunity, we didn't even go there. But Ash, thanks. Josh, thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. >> Yeah, thanks so much. Thanks for having us. >> Thank you very much. >> Okay, thanks for watching theCUBE. We're live, day two of three days of wall-to-wall coverage. Two sets here in Moscone West on the ground level, in the lobby, checking out all the action. Stay with us for more coverage after this short break. (modern music)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE's continuing coverage of Snowflake Summit '22 live from Caesar's Forum in Las Vegas. I'm Lisa Martin, my cohost Dave Vellante, we've been here the last day and a half unpacking a lot of news, a lot of announcements, talking with customers and partners, and we have another great session coming for you next. We've got a customer and a partner talking tech and data mash. Please welcome Mitesh Shah, VP in market strategy at Elation. >> Great to be here. >> and Ash Naseer great, to have you, senior director of data engineering at Warner Brothers Discovery. Welcome guys. >> Thank you for having me. >> It's great to be back in person and to be able to really get to see and feel and touch this technology, isn't it? >> Yeah, it is. I mean two years or so. Yeah. Great to feel the energy in the conference center. >> Yeah. >> Snowflake was virtual, I think for two years and now it's great to kind of see the excitement firsthand. So it's wonderful. >> Th excitement, but also the boom and the number of customers and partners and people attending. They were saying the first, or the summit in 2019 had about 1900 attendees. And this is around 10,000. So a huge jump in a short time period. Talk a little bit about the Elation-Snowflake partnership and probably some of the acceleration that you guys have been experiencing as a Snowflake partner. >> Yeah. As a snowflake partner. I mean, Snowflake is an investor of us in Elation early last year, and we've been a partner for, for longer than that. And good news. We have been awarded Snowflake partner of the year for data governance, just earlier this week. And that's in fact, our second year in a row for winning that award. So, great news on that front as well. >> Repeat, congratulations. >> Repeat. Absolutely. And we're going to hope to make it a three-peat as well. And we've also been awarded industry competency badges in five different industries, those being financial services, healthcare, retail technology, and Median Telcom. >> Excellent. Okay. Going to right get into it. Data mesh. You guys actually have a data mesh and you've presented at the conference. So, take us back to the beginning. Why did you decide that you needed to implement something like data mesh? What was the impetus? >> Yeah. So when people think of Warner brothers, you always think of like the movie studio, but we're more than that, right? I mean, you think of HBO, you think of TNT, you think of CNN, we have 30 plus brands in our portfolio and each have their own needs. So the idea of a data mesh really helps us because what we can do is we can federate access across the company so that, you know, CNN can work at their own pace. You know, when there's election season, they can ingest their own data and they don't have to, you know, bump up against as an example, HBO, if Game of Thrones is going on. >> So, okay. So the, the impetus was to serve those lines of business better. Actually, given that you've got these different brands, it was probably easier than most companies. Cause if you're, let's say you're a big financial services company, and now you have to decide who owns what. CNN owns its own data products, HBO. Now, do they decide within those different brands, how to distribute even further? Or is it really, how deep have you gone in that decentralization? >> That's a great question. It's a very close partnership, because there are a number of data sets, which are used by all the brands, right? You think about people browsing websites, right? You know, CNN has a website, Warner brothers has a website. So for us to ingest that data for each of the brands to ingest that data separately, that means five different ways of doing things and you know, a big environment, right? So that is where our team comes into play. We ingest a lot of the common data sets, but like I said, any unique data sets, data sets regarding theatrical as an example, you know, Warner brothers does it themselves, you know, for streaming, HBO Max, does it themselves. So we kind of operate in partnership. >> So do you have a centralized data team and also decentralized data teams, right? >> That's right. >> So I love this conversation because that was heresy 10 years ago, five years ago, even, cause that's inefficient. But you've, I presume you've found that it's actually more productive in terms of the business output, explain that dynamic. >> You know, you bring up such a good point. So I, you know, I consider myself as one of the dinosaurs who started like 20 plus years ago in this industry. And back then, we were all taught to think of the data warehouse as like a monolithic thing. And the reason for that is the technology wasn't there. The technology didn't catch up. Now, 20 years later, the technology is way ahead, right? But like, our mindset's still the same because we think of data warehouses and data platforms still as a monolithic thing. But if you really sort of remove that sort of mental barrier, if you will, and if you start thinking about, well, how do I sort of, you know, federate everything and make sure that you let folks who are building, or are closest to the customer or are building their products, let them own that data and have a partnership. The results have been amazing. And if we were only sort of doing it as a centralized team, we would not be able to do a 10th of what we do today. So it's that massive scale in, in our company as well. >> And I should have clarified, when we talk about data mesh are we talking about the implementing in practice, the octagon sort of framework, or is this sort of your own sort of terminology? >> Well, so the interesting part is four years ago, we didn't have- >> It didn't exist. >> Yeah. It didn't exist. And, and so we, our principle was very simple, right? When we started out, we said, we want to make sure that our brands are able to operate independently with some oversight and guidance from our technology teams, right? That's what we set out to do. We did that with Snowflake by design because Snowflake allows us to, you know, separate those, those brands into different accounts. So that was done by design. And then the, the magic, I think, is the Snowflake data sharing where, which allows us to sort of bring data in here once, and then share it with whoever needs it. So think about HBO Max. On HBO Max, You not only have HBO Max content, but content from CNN, from Cartoon Network, from Warner Brothers, right? All the movies, right? So to see how The Batman movie did in theaters and then on streaming, you don't need, you know, Warner brothers doesn't need to ingest the same streaming data. HBO Max does it. HBO Max shares it with Warner brothers, you know, store once, share many times, and everyone works at their own pace. >> So they're building data products. Those data products are discoverable APIs, I presume, or I guess maybe just, I guess the Snowflake cloud, but very importantly, they're governed. And that's correct, where Elation comes in? >> That's precisely where Elation comes in, is where sort of this central flexible foundation for data governance. You know, you mentioned data mesh. I think what's interesting is that it's really an answer to the bottlenecks created by centralized IT, right? There's this notion of decentralizing that the data engineers and making the data domain owners, the people that know the data the best, have them be in control of publishing the data to the data consumers. There are other popular concepts actually happening right now, as we speak, around modern data stack. Around data fabric that are also in many ways underpinned by this notion of decentralization, right? These are concepts that are underpinned by decentralization and as the pendulum swings, sort of between decentralization and centralization, as we go back and forth in the world of IT and data, there are certain constants that need to be centralized over time. And one of those I believe is very much a centralized platform for data governance. And that's certainly, I think where we come in. Would love to hear more about how you use Elation. >> Yeah. So, I mean, elation helps us sort of, as you guys say, sort of, map, the treasure map of the data, right? So for consumers to find where their data is, that's where Elation helps us. It helps us with the data cataloging, you know, storing all the metadata and, you know, users can go in, they can sort of find, you know, the data that they need and they can also find how others are using data. So it's, there's a little bit of a crowdsourcing aspect that Elation helps us to do whereby you know, you can see, okay, my peer in the other group, well, that's how they use this piece of data. So I'm not going to spend hours trying to figure this out. You're going to use the query that they use. So yeah. >> So you have a master catalog, I presume. And then each of the brands has their own sub catalogs, is that correct? >> Well, for the most part, we have that master catalog and then the brands sort of use it, you know, separately themselves. The key here is all that catalog, that catalog isn't maintained by a centralized group as well, right? It's again, maintained by the individual teams and not only in the individual teams, but the folks that are responsible for the data, right? So I talked about the concept of crowdsourcing, whoever sort of puts the data in, has to make sure that they update the catalog and make sure that the definitions are there and everything sort of in line. >> So HBO, CNN, and each have their own, sort of access to their catalog, but they feed into the master catalog. Is that the right way to think about it? >> Yeah. >> Okay. And they have their own virtual data warehouses, right? They have ownership over that? They can spin 'em up, spin 'em down as they see fit? Right? And they're governed. >> They're governed. And what's interesting is it's not just governed, right? Governance is a, is a big word. It's a bit nebulous, but what's really being enabled here is this notion of self-service as well, right? There's two big sort of rockets that need to happen at the same time in any given organization. There's this notion that you want to put trustworthy data in the hands of data consumers, while at the same time mitigating risk. And that's precisely what Elation does. >> So I want to clarify this for the audience. So there's four principles of database. This came after you guys did it. And I wonder how it aligns. Domain ownership, give data, as you were saying to the, to the domain owners who have context, data as product, you guys are building data products, and that creates two problems. How do you give people self-service infrastructure and how do you automate governance? So the first two, great. But then it creates these other problems. Does that align with your philosophy? Where's alignment? What's different? >> Yeah. Data products is exactly where we're going. And that sort of, that domain based design, that's really key as well. In our business, you think about who the customer is, as an example, right? Depending on who you ask, it's going to be, the answer might be different, you know, to the movie business, it's probably going to be the person who watches a movie in a theater. To the streaming business, to HBO Max, it's the streamer, right? To others, someone watching live CNN on their TV, right? There's yet another group. Think about all the franchising we do. So you see Batman action figures and T-shirts, and Warner brothers branded stuff in stores, that's yet another business unit. But at the end of the day, it's not a different person, it's you and me, right? We do all these things. So the domain concept, make sure that you ingest data and you bring data relevant to the context, however, not sort of making it so stringent where it cannot integrate, and then you integrate it at a higher level to create that 360. >> And it's discoverable. So the point is, I don't have to go tap Ash on the shoulder, say, how do I get this data? Is it governed? Do I have access to it? Give me the rules of it. Just, I go grab it, right? And the system computationally automates whether or not I have access to it. And it's, as you say, self-service. >> In this case, exactly right. It enables people to just search for data and know that when they find the data, whether it's trustworthy or not, through trust flags, and the like, it's doing both of those things at the same time. >> How is it an enabler of solving some of the big challenges that the media and entertainment industry is going through? We've seen so much change the last couple of years. The rising consumer expectations aren't going to go back down. They're only going to come up. We want you to serve us up content that's relevant, that's personalized, that makes sense. I'd love to understand from your perspective, Mitesh, from an industry challenges perspective, how does this technology help customers like Warner Brothers Discovery, meet business customers, where they are and reduce the volume on those challenges? >> It's a great question. And as I mentioned earlier, we had five industry competency badges that were awarded to us by Snowflake. And one of those four, Median Telcom. And the reason for that is we're helping media companies understand their audiences better, and ultimately serve up better experiences for their audiences. But we've got Ash right here that can tell us how that's happening in practice. >> Yeah, tell us. >> So I'll share a story. I always like to tell stories, right? Once once upon a time before we had Elation in place, it was like, who you knew was how you got access to the data. So if I knew you and I knew you had access to a certain kind of data and your access to the right kind of data was based on the network you had at the company- >> I had to trust you. >> Yeah. >> I might not want to give up my data. >> That's it. And so that's where Elation sort of helps us democratize it, but, you know, puts the governance and controls, right? There are certain sensitive things as well, such as viewership, such as subscriber accounts, which are very important. So making sure that the right people have access to it, that's the other problem that Elation helps us solve. >> That's precisely part of our integration with Snowflake in particular, being able to define and manage policies within Elation. Saying, you know, certain people should have access to certain rows, doing column level masking. And having those policies actually enforced at the Snowflake data layer is precisely part of our value product. >> And that's automated. >> And all that's automated. Exactly. >> Right. So I don't have to think about it. I don't have to go through the tap on their shoulder. What has been the impact, Ash, on data quality as you've pushed it down into the domains? >> That's a great question. So it has definitely improved, but data quality is a very interesting subject, because back to my example of, you know, when we started doing things, we, you know, the centralized IT team always said, well, it has to be like this, Right? And if it doesn't fit in this, then it's bad quality. Well, sometimes context changes. Businesses change, right? You have to be able to react to it quickly. So making sure that a lot of that quality is managed at the decentralized level, at the place where you have that business context, that ensures you have the most up to date quality. We're talking about media industry changing so quickly. I mean, would we have thought three years ago that people would watch a lot of these major movies on streaming services? But here's the reality, right? You have to react and, you know, having it at that level just helps you react faster. >> So data, if I play that back, data quality is not a static framework. It's flexible based on the business context and the business owners can make those adjustments, cause they own the data. >> That's it. That's exactly it. >> That's awesome. Wow. That's amazing progress that you guys have made. >> In quality, if I could just add, it also just changes depending on where you are in your data pipeline stage, right? Data, quality data observability, this is a very fast evolving space at the moment, and if I look to my left right now, I bet you I can probably see a half-dozen quality observability vendors right now. And so given that and given the fact that Elation still is sort of a central hub to find trustworthy data, we've actually announced an open data quality initiative, allowing for best-of-breed data quality vendors to integrate with the platform. So whoever they are, whatever tool folks want to use, they can use that particular tool of choice. >> And this all runs in the cloud, or is it a hybrid sort of? >> Everything is in the cloud. We're all in the cloud. And you know, again, helps us go faster. >> Let me ask you a question. I could go on forever in this topic. One of the concepts that was put forth is whether it's a Snowflake data warehouse or a data bricks, data lake, or an Oracle data warehouse, they should all be inclusive. They should just be a node on the mesh. Like, wow, that sounds good. But I haven't seen it yet. Right? I'm guessing that Snowflake and Elation enable all the self-serve, all this automated governance, and that including those other items, it's got to be a one-off at this point in time. Do you ever see you expanding that scope or is it better off to just kind of leave it into the, the Snowflake data cloud? >> It's a good question. You know, I feel like where we're at today, especially in terms of sort of technology giving us so many options, I don't think there's a one size fits all. Right? Even though we are very heavily invested in Snowflake and we use Snowflake consistently across the organization, but you could, theoretically, could have an architecture that blends those two, right? Have different types of data platforms like a teradata or an Oracle and sort of bring it all together today. We have the technology, you know, that and all sorts of things that can make sure that you query on different databases. So I don't think the technology is the problem, I think it's the organizational mindset. I think that that's what gets in the way. >> Oh, interesting. So I was going to ask you, will hybrid tables help you solve that problem? And, maybe not, what you're saying, it's the organization that owns the Oracle database saying, Hey, we have our system. It processes, it works, you know, go away. >> Yeah. Well, you know, hybrid tables I think, is a great sort of next step in Snowflake's evolution. I think it's, in my opinion, I, think it's a game changer, but yeah. I mean, they can still exist. You could do hybrid tables right on Snowflake, or you could, you know, you could kind of coexist as well. >> Yeah. But, do you have a thought on this? >> Yeah, I do. I mean, we're always going to live in a time where you've got data distributed in throughout the organization and around the globe. And that could be even if you're all in on Snowflake, you could have data in Snowflake here, you could have data in Snowflake in EMEA and Europe somewhere. It could be anywhere. By the same token you might be using. Every organization is using on-premises systems. They have data, they naturally have data everywhere. And so, you know, this one solution to this is really centralizing, as I mentioned, not just governance, but also metadata about all of the data in your organization so that you can enable people to search and find and discover trustworthy data no matter where it is in your organization. >> Yeah. That's a great point. I mean, if you have the data about the data, then you can, you can treat these independent nodes. That's just that. Right? And maybe there's some advantages of putting it all in the Snowflake cloud, but to your point, organizationally, that's just not feasible. The whole, unfortunately, sorry, Snowflake, all the world's data is not going to go into Snowflake, but they play a key role in accelerating, what I'm hearing, your vision of data mesh. >> Yeah, absolutely. I think going forward in the future, we have to start thinking about data platforms as just one place where you sort of dump all the data. That's where the mesh concept comes in. It is going to be a mesh. It's going to be distributed and organizations have to be okay with that. And they have to embrace the tools. I mean, you know, Facebook developed a tool called Presto many years ago that that helps them solve exactly the same problem. So I think the technology is there. I think the organizational mindset needs to evolve. >> Yeah. Definitely. >> Culture. Culture is one of the hardest things to change. >> Exactly. >> Guys, this was a masterclass in data mesh, I think. Thank you so much for coming on talking. >> We appreciate it. Thank you so much. >> Of course. What Elation is doing with Snowflake and with Warner Brothers Discovery, Keep that content coming. I got a lot of stuff I got to catch up on watching. >> Sounds good. Thank you for having us. >> Thanks guys. >> Thanks, you guys. >> For Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live from Snowflake Summit '22. We'll be back after a short break. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE's continuing coverage of Snowflake Summit '22 live from Caesar's Forum in Las Vegas. I'm Lisa Martin, my cohost Dave Vellante, we've been here the last day and a half unpacking a lot of news, a lot of announcements, talking with customers and partners, and we have another great session coming for you next. We've got a customer and a partner talking tech and data mash. Please welcome Mitesh Shah, VP in market strategy at Elation. >> Great to be here. >> and Ash Naseer great, to have you, senior director of data engineering at Warner Brothers Discovery. Welcome guys. >> Thank you for having me. >> It's great to be back in person and to be able to really get to see and feel and touch this technology, isn't it? >> Yeah, it is. I mean two years or so. Yeah. Great to feel the energy in the conference center. >> Yeah. >> Snowflake was virtual, I think for two years and now it's great to kind of see the excitement firsthand. So it's wonderful. >> Th excitement, but also the boom and the number of customers and partners and people attending. They were saying the first, or the summit in 2019 had about 1900 attendees. And this is around 10,000. So a huge jump in a short time period. Talk a little bit about the Elation-Snowflake partnership and probably some of the acceleration that you guys have been experiencing as a Snowflake partner. >> Yeah. As a snowflake partner. I mean, Snowflake is an investor of us in Elation early last year, and we've been a partner for, for longer than that. And good news. We have been awarded Snowflake partner of the year for data governance, just earlier this week. And that's in fact, our second year in a row for winning that award. So, great news on that front as well. >> Repeat, congratulations. >> Repeat. Absolutely. And we're going to hope to make it a three-peat as well. And we've also been awarded industry competency badges in five different industries, those being financial services, healthcare, retail technology, and Median Telcom. >> Excellent. Okay. Going to right get into it. Data mesh. You guys actually have a data mesh and you've presented at the conference. So, take us back to the beginning. Why did you decide that you needed to implement something like data mesh? What was the impetus? >> Yeah. So when people think of Warner brothers, you always think of like the movie studio, but we're more than that, right? I mean, you think of HBO, you think of TNT, you think of CNN, we have 30 plus brands in our portfolio and each have their own needs. So the idea of a data mesh really helps us because what we can do is we can federate access across the company so that, you know, CNN can work at their own pace. You know, when there's election season, they can ingest their own data and they don't have to, you know, bump up against as an example, HBO, if Game of Thrones is going on. >> So, okay. So the, the impetus was to serve those lines of business better. Actually, given that you've got these different brands, it was probably easier than most companies. Cause if you're, let's say you're a big financial services company, and now you have to decide who owns what. CNN owns its own data products, HBO. Now, do they decide within those different brands, how to distribute even further? Or is it really, how deep have you gone in that decentralization? >> That's a great question. It's a very close partnership, because there are a number of data sets, which are used by all the brands, right? You think about people browsing websites, right? You know, CNN has a website, Warner brothers has a website. So for us to ingest that data for each of the brands to ingest that data separately, that means five different ways of doing things and you know, a big environment, right? So that is where our team comes into play. We ingest a lot of the common data sets, but like I said, any unique data sets, data sets regarding theatrical as an example, you know, Warner brothers does it themselves, you know, for streaming, HBO Max, does it themselves. So we kind of operate in partnership. >> So do you have a centralized data team and also decentralized data teams, right? >> That's right. >> So I love this conversation because that was heresy 10 years ago, five years ago, even, cause that's inefficient. But you've, I presume you've found that it's actually more productive in terms of the business output, explain that dynamic. >> You know, you bring up such a good point. So I, you know, I consider myself as one of the dinosaurs who started like 20 plus years ago in this industry. And back then, we were all taught to think of the data warehouse as like a monolithic thing. And the reason for that is the technology wasn't there. The technology didn't catch up. Now, 20 years later, the technology is way ahead, right? But like, our mindset's still the same because we think of data warehouses and data platforms still as a monolithic thing. But if you really sort of remove that sort of mental barrier, if you will, and if you start thinking about, well, how do I sort of, you know, federate everything and make sure that you let folks who are building, or are closest to the customer or are building their products, let them own that data and have a partnership. The results have been amazing. And if we were only sort of doing it as a centralized team, we would not be able to do a 10th of what we do today. So it's that massive scale in, in our company as well. >> And I should have clarified, when we talk about data mesh are we talking about the implementing in practice, the octagon sort of framework, or is this sort of your own sort of terminology? >> Well, so the interesting part is four years ago, we didn't have- >> It didn't exist. >> Yeah. It didn't exist. And, and so we, our principle was very simple, right? When we started out, we said, we want to make sure that our brands are able to operate independently with some oversight and guidance from our technology teams, right? That's what we set out to do. We did that with Snowflake by design because Snowflake allows us to, you know, separate those, those brands into different accounts. So that was done by design. And then the, the magic, I think, is the Snowflake data sharing where, which allows us to sort of bring data in here once, and then share it with whoever needs it. So think about HBO Max. On HBO Max, You not only have HBO Max content, but content from CNN, from Cartoon Network, from Warner Brothers, right? All the movies, right? So to see how The Batman movie did in theaters and then on streaming, you don't need, you know, Warner brothers doesn't need to ingest the same streaming data. HBO Max does it. HBO Max shares it with Warner brothers, you know, store once, share many times, and everyone works at their own pace. >> So they're building data products. Those data products are discoverable APIs, I presume, or I guess maybe just, I guess the Snowflake cloud, but very importantly, they're governed. And that's correct, where Elation comes in? >> That's precisely where Elation comes in, is where sort of this central flexible foundation for data governance. You know, you mentioned data mesh. I think what's interesting is that it's really an answer to the bottlenecks created by centralized IT, right? There's this notion of decentralizing that the data engineers and making the data domain owners, the people that know the data the best, have them be in control of publishing the data to the data consumers. There are other popular concepts actually happening right now, as we speak, around modern data stack. Around data fabric that are also in many ways underpinned by this notion of decentralization, right? These are concepts that are underpinned by decentralization and as the pendulum swings, sort of between decentralization and centralization, as we go back and forth in the world of IT and data, there are certain constants that need to be centralized over time. And one of those I believe is very much a centralized platform for data governance. And that's certainly, I think where we come in. Would love to hear more about how you use Elation. >> Yeah. So, I mean, elation helps us sort of, as you guys say, sort of, map, the treasure map of the data, right? So for consumers to find where their data is, that's where Elation helps us. It helps us with the data cataloging, you know, storing all the metadata and, you know, users can go in, they can sort of find, you know, the data that they need and they can also find how others are using data. So it's, there's a little bit of a crowdsourcing aspect that Elation helps us to do whereby you know, you can see, okay, my peer in the other group, well, that's how they use this piece of data. So I'm not going to spend hours trying to figure this out. You're going to use the query that they use. So yeah. >> So you have a master catalog, I presume. And then each of the brands has their own sub catalogs, is that correct? >> Well, for the most part, we have that master catalog and then the brands sort of use it, you know, separately themselves. The key here is all that catalog, that catalog isn't maintained by a centralized group as well, right? It's again, maintained by the individual teams and not only in the individual teams, but the folks that are responsible for the data, right? So I talked about the concept of crowdsourcing, whoever sort of puts the data in, has to make sure that they update the catalog and make sure that the definitions are there and everything sort of in line. >> So HBO, CNN, and each have their own, sort of access to their catalog, but they feed into the master catalog. Is that the right way to think about it? >> Yeah. >> Okay. And they have their own virtual data warehouses, right? They have ownership over that? They can spin 'em up, spin 'em down as they see fit? Right? And they're governed. >> They're governed. And what's interesting is it's not just governed, right? Governance is a, is a big word. It's a bit nebulous, but what's really being enabled here is this notion of self-service as well, right? There's two big sort of rockets that need to happen at the same time in any given organization. There's this notion that you want to put trustworthy data in the hands of data consumers, while at the same time mitigating risk. And that's precisely what Elation does. >> So I want to clarify this for the audience. So there's four principles of database. This came after you guys did it. And I wonder how it aligns. Domain ownership, give data, as you were saying to the, to the domain owners who have context, data as product, you guys are building data products, and that creates two problems. How do you give people self-service infrastructure and how do you automate governance? So the first two, great. But then it creates these other problems. Does that align with your philosophy? Where's alignment? What's different? >> Yeah. Data products is exactly where we're going. And that sort of, that domain based design, that's really key as well. In our business, you think about who the customer is, as an example, right? Depending on who you ask, it's going to be, the answer might be different, you know, to the movie business, it's probably going to be the person who watches a movie in a theater. To the streaming business, to HBO Max, it's the streamer, right? To others, someone watching live CNN on their TV, right? There's yet another group. Think about all the franchising we do. So you see Batman action figures and T-shirts, and Warner brothers branded stuff in stores, that's yet another business unit. But at the end of the day, it's not a different person, it's you and me, right? We do all these things. So the domain concept, make sure that you ingest data and you bring data relevant to the context, however, not sort of making it so stringent where it cannot integrate, and then you integrate it at a higher level to create that 360. >> And it's discoverable. So the point is, I don't have to go tap Ash on the shoulder, say, how do I get this data? Is it governed? Do I have access to it? Give me the rules of it. Just, I go grab it, right? And the system computationally automates whether or not I have access to it. And it's, as you say, self-service. >> In this case, exactly right. It enables people to just search for data and know that when they find the data, whether it's trustworthy or not, through trust flags, and the like, it's doing both of those things at the same time. >> How is it an enabler of solving some of the big challenges that the media and entertainment industry is going through? We've seen so much change the last couple of years. The rising consumer expectations aren't going to go back down. They're only going to come up. We want you to serve us up content that's relevant, that's personalized, that makes sense. I'd love to understand from your perspective, Mitesh, from an industry challenges perspective, how does this technology help customers like Warner Brothers Discovery, meet business customers, where they are and reduce the volume on those challenges? >> It's a great question. And as I mentioned earlier, we had five industry competency badges that were awarded to us by Snowflake. And one of those four, Median Telcom. And the reason for that is we're helping media companies understand their audiences better, and ultimately serve up better experiences for their audiences. But we've got Ash right here that can tell us how that's happening in practice. >> Yeah, tell us. >> So I'll share a story. I always like to tell stories, right? Once once upon a time before we had Elation in place, it was like, who you knew was how you got access to the data. So if I knew you and I knew you had access to a certain kind of data and your access to the right kind of data was based on the network you had at the company- >> I had to trust you. >> Yeah. >> I might not want to give up my data. >> That's it. And so that's where Elation sort of helps us democratize it, but, you know, puts the governance and controls, right? There are certain sensitive things as well, such as viewership, such as subscriber accounts, which are very important. So making sure that the right people have access to it, that's the other problem that Elation helps us solve. >> That's precisely part of our integration with Snowflake in particular, being able to define and manage policies within Elation. Saying, you know, certain people should have access to certain rows, doing column level masking. And having those policies actually enforced at the Snowflake data layer is precisely part of our value product. >> And that's automated. >> And all that's automated. Exactly. >> Right. So I don't have to think about it. I don't have to go through the tap on their shoulder. What has been the impact, Ash, on data quality as you've pushed it down into the domains? >> That's a great question. So it has definitely improved, but data quality is a very interesting subject, because back to my example of, you know, when we started doing things, we, you know, the centralized IT team always said, well, it has to be like this, Right? And if it doesn't fit in this, then it's bad quality. Well, sometimes context changes. Businesses change, right? You have to be able to react to it quickly. So making sure that a lot of that quality is managed at the decentralized level, at the place where you have that business context, that ensures you have the most up to date quality. We're talking about media industry changing so quickly. I mean, would we have thought three years ago that people would watch a lot of these major movies on streaming services? But here's the reality, right? You have to react and, you know, having it at that level just helps you react faster. >> So data, if I play that back, data quality is not a static framework. It's flexible based on the business context and the business owners can make those adjustments, cause they own the data. >> That's it. That's exactly it. >> That's awesome. Wow. That's amazing progress that you guys have made. >> In quality, if I could just add, it also just changes depending on where you are in your data pipeline stage, right? Data, quality data observability, this is a very fast evolving space at the moment, and if I look to my left right now, I bet you I can probably see a half-dozen quality observability vendors right now. And so given that and given the fact that Elation still is sort of a central hub to find trustworthy data, we've actually announced an open data quality initiative, allowing for best-of-breed data quality vendors to integrate with the platform. So whoever they are, whatever tool folks want to use, they can use that particular tool of choice. >> And this all runs in the cloud, or is it a hybrid sort of? >> Everything is in the cloud. We're all in the cloud. And you know, again, helps us go faster. >> Let me ask you a question. I could go on forever in this topic. One of the concepts that was put forth is whether it's a Snowflake data warehouse or a data bricks, data lake, or an Oracle data warehouse, they should all be inclusive. They should just be a node on the mesh. Like, wow, that sounds good. But I haven't seen it yet. Right? I'm guessing that Snowflake and Elation enable all the self-serve, all this automated governance, and that including those other items, it's got to be a one-off at this point in time. Do you ever see you expanding that scope or is it better off to just kind of leave it into the, the Snowflake data cloud? >> It's a good question. You know, I feel like where we're at today, especially in terms of sort of technology giving us so many options, I don't think there's a one size fits all. Right? Even though we are very heavily invested in Snowflake and we use Snowflake consistently across the organization, but you could, theoretically, could have an architecture that blends those two, right? Have different types of data platforms like a teradata or an Oracle and sort of bring it all together today. We have the technology, you know, that and all sorts of things that can make sure that you query on different databases. So I don't think the technology is the problem, I think it's the organizational mindset. I think that that's what gets in the way. >> Oh, interesting. So I was going to ask you, will hybrid tables help you solve that problem? And, maybe not, what you're saying, it's the organization that owns the Oracle database saying, Hey, we have our system. It processes, it works, you know, go away. >> Yeah. Well, you know, hybrid tables I think, is a great sort of next step in Snowflake's evolution. I think it's, in my opinion, I, think it's a game changer, but yeah. I mean, they can still exist. You could do hybrid tables right on Snowflake, or you could, you know, you could kind of coexist as well. >> Yeah. But, do you have a thought on this? >> Yeah, I do. I mean, we're always going to live in a time where you've got data distributed in throughout the organization and around the globe. And that could be even if you're all in on Snowflake, you could have data in Snowflake here, you could have data in Snowflake in EMEA and Europe somewhere. It could be anywhere. By the same token you might be using. Every organization is using on-premises systems. They have data, they naturally have data everywhere. And so, you know, this one solution to this is really centralizing, as I mentioned, not just governance, but also metadata about all of the data in your organization so that you can enable people to search and find and discover trustworthy data no matter where it is in your organization. >> Yeah. That's a great point. I mean, if you have the data about the data, then you can, you can treat these independent nodes. That's just that. Right? And maybe there's some advantages of putting it all in the Snowflake cloud, but to your point, organizationally, that's just not feasible. The whole, unfortunately, sorry, Snowflake, all the world's data is not going to go into Snowflake, but they play a key role in accelerating, what I'm hearing, your vision of data mesh. >> Yeah, absolutely. I think going forward in the future, we have to start thinking about data platforms as just one place where you sort of dump all the data. That's where the mesh concept comes in. It is going to be a mesh. It's going to be distributed and organizations have to be okay with that. And they have to embrace the tools. I mean, you know, Facebook developed a tool called Presto many years ago that that helps them solve exactly the same problem. So I think the technology is there. I think the organizational mindset needs to evolve. >> Yeah. Definitely. >> Culture. Culture is one of the hardest things to change. >> Exactly. >> Guys, this was a masterclass in data mesh, I think. Thank you so much for coming on talking. >> We appreciate it. Thank you so much. >> Of course. What Elation is doing with Snowflake and with Warner Brothers Discovery, Keep that content coming. I got a lot of stuff I got to catch up on watching. >> Sounds good. Thank you for having us. >> Thanks guys. >> Thanks, you guys. >> For Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live from Snowflake Summit '22. We'll be back after a short break. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE! With digital coverage of Actifio Data Driven 2020. Brought to you by Actifio. >> We're back, This is theCUBE's coverage, our ongoing coverage of Actifio's Data Driven, of course we've gone virtual this year. Ash Ashutosh is here, he's the founder, president, and CEO of Actifio. Ash, great to see you again. >> Likewise, Dave, always, always good to see you. >> We were at a little meetup, you and I, in Boston, I always enjoy our conversations. Little did we know that a few months later, we'd only be talking at this type of distance, and of course, it's sad, I mean, Data Driven is one of our favorite events, it's intimate, it's customer content-driven. The theme this year is, you call it the next normal. Some people call it the new abnormal. The next normal, what's that all about? >> I think it's pretty fascinating to see, when we walked in in March, all of us were shocked by the effect of this pandemic. And for a while, we all scrambled around, trying to figure out, how do you react to this one? And everybody reacted very differently, but most people had this tendency to think that this is going to be a pretty brutal environment with lots of unknown variables, and it is important for us to try to figure out how to get our hands around this. By the time we came around about six weeks into that, almost all of us have figured out, this is not something you fight against, this is not something you wait for it to go away, but this is one that you figure out how to live it, and you figure out how to work around it. And that, we believe, is the next normal. It's not about trying to create a new abnormal, it's not about creating a new normal, but it's truly one that basically says "There is a path forward, there's a way to create this next normal," and you just figure out how to live with the environment we have, and phenomenal outcomes of companies that have done remarkably well, as a result of these actions, Actifio being one of them. >> It's quite amazing, isn't it, I mean, I've talked to a lot of tech companies, CEOs, and their customers, and it's almost like, the first reaction was of course they cared about their employees and their broader families. Number one, number two was, many companies, as you know, saw a tailwind, and initially didn't want to be seen as ambulance chasing, and then of course the entrepreneurial spirit kicked in, and they said, "Okay, hey, "we can only control what we can control." And tech companies in particular have just done exceedingly well. I mean, I don't think anybody really predicted that early on. >> Yeah. I think at the heart we are all human beings and the first reaction was to take care of, four constituencies, right? One, take care of your family, take care of your community, take care of your employees, take care of your customers. And that was the hardest part. The first four to six weeks was to figure out how do you do each of those four. Once you figured that part out, or you figured out ways to get around to making sure you can take care of those, you really found the next normal. You really started figuring out how to continue to innovate, continue to support each of those four constituencies, and people have done different things. I know it's amazing how CUBE continues to operate. As far as a user is concerned, they're all watching remote. Yes, we don't have the wonderful desk and we all get to chat and look in the eye. But the content, the message is as powerful as what it was a few months ago. So I'm sure this is how we're all going to figure out how to make through. There's a new next normal. >> Yeah, and digital transformation kind of went from push to pull, I mean every conference you'd go to, they'd say, "Well, look at Uber, look at Airbnb," and they put up the examples. "You have to do this too." And then all of a sudden the industry dragged you along. So I'm curious as to how, and I guess the other point there is digital means data. We've said that many, many times, if you didn't have a digital strategy during the height of the lockdown, you couldn't transact business and still many restaurants are still trying to figure this out, but so how did it affect you and your customers? >> Yeah, it's really interesting. And we spend a lot of time with several of our customers who are managing some of the largest IT organizations. And we talk about a very interesting phenomenon that happened somewhere beginning of this year, about 20 years ago, we used to worry about this thing called the digital divide. Those who have access to the network and internet, and those who don't. And now there is this data divide, the divide between organizations that know how to leverage, exploit, and absolutely accelerate the business using data, and those who don't. And I think we're seeing this effect show very clearly among organizations that are able to come back and address some of this stuff. And it's fascinating. Yes, we all have the examples of the likes of people who are doing delivery. People who are doing E-tailing, but there are so many little things, you're seeing organizations, and just the other day, we had a video from Sentry Data Systems, which is helping accelerate COVID-19 research because you're able to get copies of the data faster, they're able to get access to data, to their researchers much, much faster, sometimes from several days to a few minutes. It's that level of effect, it's not just down to some subtle, you know, you almost think of it as nice to have, but it's must have life threatening stuff, essential stuff, or just addressing today, I was reading a wonderful article about this supercomputer and that's doing analysis of COVID-19, and how it's figured out most of these symptoms, then able to figure it out by just crunching a ton of data. And almost every one of those symptoms the supercomputer has predicted, has been accurate. It's about data, right? It is absolutely about data, and which is why I think this is a phenomenal time for companies to absolutely go change, make this transformation about data acceleration, data leverage, data exploitation. And there's a ton of it all around us. >> Yeah, and part of that digital transformation, the mandate is to really put data at the core. I mean, we've certainly seen this with the top market cap companies. They've got data at the core, and now, as I say, it's become a mandate. And you know, there's been several things that we've clearly noticed. I mean, you saw the work from home required laptops and, you know, end point security and things of that, VDI made a comeback, and certainly cloud was there, but I've been struck by the reality of multi-cloud. I was kind of a multi-cloud skeptic early on. I said many times, I thought it was more of a symptom than it was a strategy, but that's completely flipped. Recently in our ETR surveys, we saw multicloud popping up all over the place. I wonder what you're seeing when you talk to your customers and other CIOs. >> Yeah. So fascinating. No, we released our first cloud product sometime around 2018, end of 2018. >> Dave: GO, right? >> Yeah, Actifio GO, OnVault, which is a phenomenal way to completely change the way you think about using object storage in the cloud. For over two years, we saw about 20% of our business, by the beginning of this year, 20% of our business was built on leveraging the cloud. Since March, so that was the end of our, almost the end of the Q1, to now, we're just in the middle of Q3. In six months, we added 12 more percent of the business. Literally we did it in six months, what we did not do before for 18 months before that, significantly more than what we did for a year and a half before that. And there are really three reasons, and you see this over and over again, we have a large customer we closed in January. Ironically we were deploying out of UK, a very large marketing organization, got everything deployed. They were running their backup and DR in a separate data center. And they had a practical problem of not being able to access the second site, literally in the middle of deployment, we steer that customer to GCP, or Google Cloud, because there was simply no way for them to continue protecting the data, being able to develop new applications with that data, they simply had no access. So there was, this was the number one reason, the inability for an organization to physically access or put their employees at risk, and have portal for the cloud be the infrastructure. That's number one. So that first of all drove the reason for the cloud. And then there's a second reason. There are practical reasons on why some cloud platforms are good at one workload. The other ones are not so good at some of the workloads. And so if I'm an organization that has, that spans everything, I've got a power PC, an X86 machine, a VM, I've got container platforms, I got Oracle, I got SAP. There is no single cloud platform that supports all my workload as efficiently, it's available in all the regions I want. So inevitably I have to go adopt different cloud platforms. So that's the second practical reason. And then there's a strategic reason. No vendor, no customer, wants to be locked into any one cloud platform. At least two, you're going to go pay, more likely three. So those are the reasons. And then interestingly enough, we were on a panel with us global CIOs. And in addition to just the usual cloud providers that we all know and love inside the US, across the world, in Europe, in Asia, there's a rise of regional cloud providers. So you take all these factors, right? You've got absolute physical necessity. You got practical constraints of what can the cloud provider support, the strategic reasons of why, either because, I don't want to be locked into a cloud provider, or because there's a rise of, you know, data nationalism that's going on, that people want to keep their data within the country bounds. All of these reasons are the foundations of why multicloud is almost becoming a de facto. It's impossible for a decent size organization to assume they would just depend on one cloud anymore. >> The other big trend we're seeing, I wonder if you could comment, is this notion of the data life cycle, of the data pipeline. It's a very complex situation for a lot of organizations. Their data is siloed. We hear that a lot. They have data scientists, data engineers, developers, data quality engineers, just a lot of different constituencies and lines of business, and it's kind of a mess. And so what they're trying to do is bring that together. So they've done that, data scientists complain, they spend all their time wrangling data, but ultimately the ones that are succeeding to putting data at the core as we've just been discussing, are seeing amazing outcomes, by being able to have a single version of the truth, have confidence in that data, create self-serve for their lines of business and actually reduce the end to end cycle times that's driving your major monetization, whether that's cost cutting or revenue. And I'm curious as to what you're seeing, you guys do a lot of work, heavy work in DevOps and hardcore database. Those are key components of that data life cycle. What are you seeing in that regard regarding that data pipeline? >> Yeah, that's a phenomenal point. If you really want to go back and exploit data within an organization, if you really want to be a data driven organization, the very first thing you have to do is break down the silos. Ironically, every organization has all the data required to make the decisions they want to. They just can't either get to it, or it's so hard to break the silos that it's just not worth trying to make it happen. And 10 years ago, we set out on this mission, rather than keep these individual silos of data, why don't we flip it open and make it into a pipeline which looks like a data cloud, where essentially anybody who's consuming it has access to it based on the governance rules, based on the security rules that the operations people have set. And based on the kind of format they want to see data, not everybody may want to see the data in a database format. Maybe you want the database format converted to a CSB format before you run analytics. And this idea of making data the new infrastructure, this idea of having the operations people provide this new layer container. It's finally come to roost. I mean, it's fascinating. I was looking at the numbers last quarter. We just finished up Q2. Now 45% of our customer base uses Actifio for, or reuses the backup data for things that accelerate the business, things that make the business move faster, more productive, or even survive. That was the mission. That was what we set out to do 10 years ago. You know, we were talking to an analyst this morning and now there's this question of, you know, "Hey, looks like there's a theme of backup data being reused." We said, "Yeah, that's kind of what we've been saying for 10 years." Backup cannot be an insurance, backup cannot be a destination. It has to be something that you can use as an asset. And that I think is finally coming to the point where you can use backup as a single source of truth, only if you designed it right from the beginning for that purpose, you cannot just, there are lots of ways to fake it, make it, try to pretend like you're doing it, but that was the true purpose of making data the new infrastructure, making it a cloud, making it something that is truly an asset. And it's fascinating to see our businesses. You take any of our large accounts, and the way they've gone about transforming, not just basic backup and DR. Yes, we are the world's fastest backup and most scalable DR solution. That's a starting point. But to be able to use that to develop applications eight, 10 times faster, to run analytics 100 X faster? The more data you have, the more people who use data you have, the better this return becomes. >> You know, that is interesting to hear you talk about that, because that has been the Holy Grail of backup was to go beyond insurance to actually create business value. And you're actually seeing some underlying trends, we talked about that data pipeline, and one of the areas that is the most interesting is in database, which was so boring for so many years, and you're seeing new workloads emerge. They take the data warehouse beyond, you know, reporting, never really lived up to its promise of 360 degree view. You mentioned analytics, that's really starting to happen. And it's all about data. You know, John Furrier used to say that data is the new development kit. You call it the new infrastructure and it's sort of the same type of theme. So maybe some of the trends you're seeing in database, I'd love to talk about that for a little bit, and then pick your brains on some other tech like object storage is another one that we've really seen take off. >> Yeah, so I think our journey with object storage began in 2016, 2017, as we started to adopt cloud platform in response to the user requirements, we did more like most companies have done and unfortunately continue to do, we take the on-prem product and then just move it onto the cloud. And one of the things we saw was there was a fundamental difference of how the design points of a cloud engineering is all about, what the design it for. Object storage is one of those primitives, the fundamental storage primitives that the cloud providers actually produced, that nobody really exploited. It was used as a graveyard for data. It's a replacement for the place where data goes to die. And then we look at it really closely and say, "Well, this is actually a massively scalable, very low cost storage, but it has some problems." It has an interface that you cannot use with traditional servers. It has some issues around, you know, not being able to read, modify, write the data, so it feels like you're consuming a lot of storage. So we went on to solve those problems. It took us a good two years to come back with something called OnVault, that fundamentally treats object storage like this massively scalable high performing disk. Except for just ridiculous low cost and optimize the capacity. So this thing called OnVault, as we patent it, has really become the foundation of how everything in cloud works without using CPU. Today there is simply nothing at a lower TCO, that actually, if you want to do basic backup, the more importantly use that to do this massive analytics. Now you're talking about data warehouse, data lakes, right? Because now there's something called data lakehouse. All of these are still silos. All of these are people trying to take some data from somewhere, put it into another new construct and have it be controlled by somebody else. This is autosync, it's just, you just move the silos from someplace to another place, and sort of creating a pipeline. If you want to really create a pipeline, object storage has been an integral part of that pipeline, not a separate bucket by itself. And that's what we did. And same thing with databases. You know, most business, most of the critical business runs on databases, and the ability to find a way to leverage those and move them around, leverage in terms of whichever format the database is accessed, whichever location it's accessed, doesn't matter how big it is. Lots of work has gone into trying to figure that one out. And we had some very, very good partners in some of our largest customers who helped take the journey with us. Pretty much all of the global 2000 accounts you see across the board, were an integral part of our process. >> You know, you mentioned the word journey and it triggered a thought, your discussion with Ravi, the CIO of Seagate, who's a customer of yours. And what he said, I liked what he said, he, of course he used the term journey, we all do. But he said, "You know what? I kind of don't like that term because I want to inject a sense of urgency," essentially what he was saying, "I want speed." You know, journey's like, "Okay, kids get in the car, we're going to drive across country. We're going to make some stops." And so while there's a journey, he also was really trying to push the organization hard. And he talked about culture as some of the most difficult things. Like many CIOs said, "No, the technology is almost the easy part. It's true when it works." >> That's true. >> I thought that was a great discussion that you had. What were your, some of your takeaways? >> I think Ravi's a very astute IT executive who's been around the block for so long. And one of the fascinating things, when I asked him this question about, "Hey, what's the biggest challenge, we've just gone through this a couple of times, what is the biggest challenge?" Taking an organization as venerable, as well known as Seagate is, I mean, this is a data company. This is at the heart of half the world's data is on Seagate stuff. How do you take this old company that's been around for long, in the middle of Silicon Valley, and make it into a fast growing transformation company that's responding to the newer challenges? And I thought he was going to come back with, "Well, you know, I got to go through these pieces, I pick this technology that technology," and surely that's exactly what I expected he would end up with. He goes "It has nothing to do with technology." In this day and age, when you can have an Elon Musk can send a car to Mars, there's not many technologies that we can't really solve. Maybe COVID-19 is the next frontier we got to go solve. But frankly, he hit upon the one thing that matters to every company. It is the fundamental culture to create a bias to action. It's a fundamental culture where you have to come back and have a deliverable that moves the ball forward every day, every month, every quarter, as opposed to have this series of, like you said, a journey that says, and we all know this, right? People talk about, "Oh, we're going to do this in phase one, we're going to do this in phase two and do this in phase three," nothing ever happens in phase three. Nobody gets around to phase three. So I think he did a great job of saying, "I fundamentally had to go change the culture." That was my biggest takeaway. And this, I've heard this so many times, the most effective IT execs who've made the transformation, it actually shows in the people that they have. It's not the technology, it's the people. And his history is replete with organizations that have done remarkably well, not by leveraging the heck out of the technology, but truly by leveraging the change in the people's mindset. And of course that mindset leverages technology where appropriate, but Ravi is a insightful person, always such a delight to talk to him, it's a delight for him to have chosen us as a foundational technology for him to go pull his data warehouses and completely transform how he's doing manufacturing across the globe. >> Yeah, I want to add some color to what you just said, because some key takeaways from what you just said, Ash, is, you know, you're right. When you look back at the history of the computer industry, there used to be very well known processes, but the technology was the big mystery and the big risk. And you think about with COVID, were it not for technology, we didn't know what was coming. We were inventing new processes literally every day, every week, every month. And so technology was pretty well understood, and enabled that. And when you think, when we talked earlier about putting data at the core, it was interesting to hear Ravi. He basically said, "Yeah, we had a big data team in the US, a big data team in Europe." We actually organized around silos. And so you guys played a role, you were very respectful about, you know, touting Actifio with him. You did ask him, you know, what role you play, but it was interesting to hear him talk about how he had to address that both culturally and of course, there's technology underneath to enable that unification of data, that silo busting, if you will. And you guys played a role in that. >> Yeah, well, I always enjoy conversation with the folks who have taken a problem, identified what needs to be done, and then just get it done. And that's more fascinating than, yeah, of course Actifio plays a small part in a lot of things, and we're proud to have played a small part in his big initiative. And that's true of the thousands of customers we talk about, but it's such a fascinating story to have leaders who come back and make this transformation happen and to understand how they went about making those decisions, how they identified where the problem was. These are so hard when we all see them in our own lives. We see there's a problem, but sometimes it takes a while to try to understand how do you identify them and what do you have to do? And more importantly, actually do it. And so whenever I get an opportunity with people like Ravi, I think understanding that, and if there's a way to help, we always make sure that we play our own small part and we're privileged to be a part of those kinds of journeys. >> I think what's interesting about Actifio and the company that you created is essentially that we're talking about the democratization of data, that whole data pipeline, that discussion that we had, the self service of that data to the lines of business, and, you know, you guys clearly play a role there. The multicloud discussion fits into that. I mean these are all trends that are tailwinds for companies that can help sort of flatten the data globe, if you will. Your final thoughts, Ash? >> Yeah, you said something that is so much at the heart of every IT exec that we are talking to. If data truly is the fundamental asset that I finally end up with as an organization, then democratization of data, where I do not lock this into another silo, another platform, another cloud, another application, has to be part of my foundation design. And therefore my ability to use each of these cloud platform for the services they provide while I am able to move the data to where I need it to be, that is so critical. So you almost start to think about the one position an organization now has. And we talked about this with a group of CIOs. There might be some pretty soon, not too far off, but if data is truly an asset, I might actually have a data market, just like you have a stock market, where I can start to sell my data, imagine a COVID-19, there's so many organizations that have so much data, and many of them have contributed to this research because this is an existential issue, but you can see this turning into a next level. So yes, we have got activists help move the data to one level higher where it's become a foundational construct for an organization. The next part is, can I actually turn this into an asset where I actually monetize some of this stuff? And it will be not too long when you and I could talk about how there's this new exchange and what's the rate of data for this company versus that company, and there'll be future trading options, who knows, it's going to be very interesting. >> Well, I think you're right on, this notion of a data marketplace is coming and it's not that far away. Well, Ash, it's always great to talk to you. I hope next year at Data Driven, we can be face to face, but I mean, look, this has been, we've dealt with it. It's actually created opportunities for us to kind of reinvent ourselves. So congratulations on the success that you've had and thank you for coming on theCUBE. >> No, thank you for hosting us and always a big fan of theCUBE. You guys, we've engaged with you since the early days, and it is fascinating to see how this company has grown. And it's probably many people don't even know how much you've grown behind the scenes and all the technologies and culture that you've created yourself. So it's hopefully one day we'll switch the table and then I'd be on the other side and ask you about transformation, digital transformation of CUBE itself. >> I'd love to do that, and thanks again, and thank you everybody for watching our continuous coverage of Actifio Data Driven. Keep it right there. We'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. >> Ash: Thank you, Dave. (calm music)

>>from around the globe. It's the cue with digital coverage of active Eo data >>driven 2020 >>brought to you by activity. Okay, Ash, tell us what's in it for me as an attendee of active FiOS data driven day. What's what's in it for you at Data Driven is very, very simple. You have probably one of the most unique events that is completely customer driven. The presentations, the discussions, the shading of talks, the platforms, the topics. They're all decided by the costumers act. If he was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to host this, provide a platform and there's a reason why recorded data doing we didn't call it active. Yo next or active, feel something else. It is truly about being able to share, learn, and you'll not hear a single presentation that talks about our road map. Our new lunch. We could have all the time talk about that at some point in future. But the ability to have this concentrated time you have some of the most notable industry executives talk about should listen. So what they have done to change their business things have done in terms of people technologies. Fascinating. I would not miss it. Oh, sure,

>>from around the globe. It's the cue with digital coverage of active EO data driven 2020. Brought to you by activity. We're back. This is the cubes coverage. Our ongoing coverage of active FiOS data driven. Of course, we've gone virtual this year. Ash. Ashutosh is here. He's the founder, president and CEO of Active Eo. Great to see you again. >>Likewise, They always always good to see you. >>We have We're in a little meet up, You and I in Boston. I always enjoy our conversations. Little did we know that, You know, a few months later, we would only be talking at this type of distance and, uh and of course, it's sad. I mean, a data driven is one of our favorite events is intimate, its customer content driven. The theme this year is you call it the next normal. Some people call it the new abnormal, the next normal. What's that all about? >>I think it's pretty pretty fascinating to see when we walked in in March, all of us were shocked by the effect of this pandemic. And for a while we all scrambled around trying to figure out How do you react to this one, and everybody reacted very differently. But most people have this tendency to think that this is going to be a pretty broom environment with lots of unknown variables, and it is important for us to try to figure out how to get a get our hands on this. By the time we came on. For six weeks into that, almost all of us have figured out this is Ah, this is not something you fight again. This is not something you wait, what, it to go away? But this is one. Did you figure out how to live in and you figured out how to work around it? And that, we believe, is the next long. It's not about trying to create a new abnormal. It's not about creating a new normal, but it's truly one that basically says that is it. That is a way, perhaps packed forward. There's a is a way to create this next normal, and you just figured out how to live with the environment, behalf and the normal outcomes of companies that have done remarkably well as a result of these actions. Fact. If you're being one of them, >>it's quite amazing isn't it? I mean, I've talked to a lot of tech companies, CEOs and their customers, and it's almost like they feel the first reaction was course they cared about their there, their employees and their broader families. Number one number two was many companies, as you know, saw a tailwind, and it initially didn't want to be seen as ambulance chasing. And then, of course, the entrepreneurial spirit kicked in and they said, Okay, we can only control what we can control and tech companies in particular just exceedingly Well, I don't think anybody really predicted that early >>on. Yeah, I, um I think of the heart, We're all human beings, and the first reaction was to take it off. Four constituencies, right? One. Take care of your family. Take it off your community, take care of your employees, take care of your customers. And that was the hardest part. The first 4 to 6 weeks was to figure out How do you do each of those four. Once you figured that part out or you figured out ways to get around to making sure you can take it off those you really found the next mom, you really start forgetting our out of continue to innovate Could, you know to support each of those four constituencies and people have done different things. I know it's amazing how, um, Cuba continues to operate As far as a user is concerned, they're all watching anymore. Yes, we don't have the wonderful desk, and we all get to chat and look in the eye. But the content of the messages asked powerful as what it waas a few months ago. So I'm sure this is how we're all going to figure out how to make through this new next normal >>and digital transformation kind of went from from push to pull. I mean, every conference you go to, they say, Well, look at uber, you know, look at Airbnb and it put up the examples you have to do this to, and then all of sudden the industry dragged you along. Some Curis esta is toe. How and and I guess the other point there is digital means data. We've said that many, many times. If you didn't have a digital strategy during the height of the lock down, you couldn't transact business and still many restaurants is still trying to figure this out, But so how did it affect you and your customers? >>Yeah, it's very interesting. And I we spend a lot of time with several of our customers were managing some of the largest I T organizations. We talk about very interesting phenomena that happened some better beginning of this year. About 20 years ago, we used to worry about this thing called the Digital Divide, those who have access the network and Internet and those who don't. And now there is this beta divide, the divide between organizations that know how to leverage, exploit and absolutely excellent the business using data and those adorable. I think we're seeing this effect so very clearly among organizations that unable to come back and address some of this stuff. And it's fascinating. Yes, we all have the examples off the lights off. People are doing delivery. People are doing retailing, but there are so many little things you're seeing organizations. And just the other day, he had a video from Century Days Is Central Data System, which is helping accelerate Cohen 19 research because it will get copies of the data faster than they would get access to data so that these are just much, much faster. Sometimes you know, several days to a few minutes. It's that that level of effect, it's not just down to some seven. You know, you almost think of it as nice to have, but it's must have life threatening stuff. Essential stuff or just addressing. Korea was running a very pretty in a wonderful article about this supercomputer in That's Doing an Aristo covert 19 and how it's figured out most of these symptoms they're able to figure out by just crunching a ton of data. And almost every one of those symptoms that the computer has predicted Supercomputer is predicted has being accurate. It's about data. It is absolutely about data, which is why I think this is a phenomenal time for companies. Toe Absolutely go change. Make this information about data exploration, data leverage, exploitation. And there's a ton of it all over all around us. >>Yeah, and and part of that digital transformation, the mandate is to really put data at the core. I mean, we've we've certainly seen this with the top market cap companies. They've got dated at the core, and and now, as they say it's it's become a A mandate. And, you know, there's been several things that we've clearly noticed. I mean, you saw the work from home required laptops and, you know, endpoint security and things of that. VD. I made a comeback, and certainly Cloud was there. But I've been struck by the reality of multi Cloud. I was kind of a multi cloud skeptic early on. >>Yeah, >>I said many times I thought it was more of a symptom than it was a strategy, but it's that's completely flipped. Ah, recently in r e t r surveys, we saw multi cloud popping up all over the place. I wonder what you're seeing when you talk to your customers and other CEOs. >>Yeah, So fascinating, though really is the first flower part of sometime in 2018. End of 2018 >>Go right, Yeah, >>the act if you'll go on world, which is a phenomenal way to completely change the way you think about the using object storage in the flower for two years that we saw about 20% of our business. By the end of two years, the beginning of this year, 20% of our business was built on never it in the cloud since March. So that was end of our almost ended the Q one. So now we just limit left you three in six months. We added 12 more percent of the business literally weeded in six months. What we did not do before for 18 months before that, right? Significantly more than what we did for a year and a half before that. And there are really three reasons and we see this old nor again, we have a large customer. We closed in January. Ironically, were deploying out of UK, a very large marketing organization. Got everything deployed, running the they're back up and beyond and a separate data center. And they had a practical problem of not being able to access the second sight literally in the middle of deployment. Mystere that customer, Did you see me Google Cloud? Because they were simply no way for them to continue protecting their data, being able to develop new applications with that data that simply had no access. So there was. This was the number one reason the inability for already physically access, but put their their employees at rest and have before the plow would be the infrastructure. That's number one, so that first of all, drove the reason for the cloud. And then there's a second reason there are practical reasons. And why some clerk platforms that good one working the other ones are not. So where, uh, some other more fuels. And so if I'm an organization that has that spans everything, I've got no power PC and X 86 machine A vm I got container platforms. I got Oracle. They got a C P. There is no single cloud platform that supports all my work loaders efficiently. It's available in all the agents I want. So inevitably I have to go at our different about barefoot. So that's a second practical visa. And then there's a strategic reason. No, when no customer what's really locked into anyone card back at least two. You're gonna go pear more likely? Three. So those are the reasons. And then, interestingly enough, have you were on a panel with as global Cee Io's and in addition to just the usual cloud providers of you all know and love inside the U. S. Across the world, in Europe, in Asia, there's a rise off the regional flower fire. See you take all this factor. So have you got absolute physical necessity? You got practical constraints of what can the club provided support the strategic reasons on why either Because I don't want to be locked into a part for better or because there is a rise off data nationalism that's going on, that people want to keep their data within the country bombs all of these reasons. But the foundations or why multiplier is almost becoming a de facto. It's impossible. What a decent size organization to assume. They were just different on one car ready. >>The big trend we're seeing, I wonder if you could comment. Is this this notion of the data life cycle of the data pipeline? It's a very complex situation for a lot of organizations, their data siloed. We hear that a lot. They have data scientists, data engineers, developers, data quality engineers, just a lot of different constituencies and lines of business. And it's kind of a mess. And so what they're trying to do is bring that together. So they've done that data. Scientists complain they spend all their time wrangling data, but but ultimately the ones that are succeeding to putting data at the core is, we've just been discussing are seeing amazing outcomes by being able to have a single version of the truth, have confidence in that data, create self serve for their for their lines of business and actually reduce the end and cycle times. It's driving your major monetization, whether that's cost cutting or revenue. And I'm curious as to what you're seeing. You guys do a lot of work. Heavy work in Dev ops and hard core database those air key components of that data Lifecycle. Yeah, you're seeing in that regard regarding that data pipeline. >>Yeah, it's a It's a phenomenal point if you really want to go back and exploit data within an organization. If you really want to be a data driven organization, the very first thing you have to do is break down the silos. Ironically, every organization has all the data required to make the decisions they want to. They just can't either get to it or it's so hard to make the silos. That is just not what trying to make it happen. And 10 years ago we set out on this mission rather than keep this individual silos of data. Why don't we flip it open and making it a pipeline, which looks like a data cloud where essentially anybody who's consuming it has access to it based on the governance rules based on the security rules that the operations people have said and based on the kind of format they want to see data. Not everyone even want to see the data in a database. Former, maybe you want the database for my convert CSP for my before you don't analytics And this idea of making data, the new infrastructure, this idea of having the operations people provide this new layer for data, it's finally come to roost. I mean, it's it's fascinating. I was the numbers last quarter. We just finished up. You do now. 45% of our customer base is uses activity or for reuse is the back of data for things that excellent. The business things that make the business move faster, more productive or you will survive. That was the mission. That was what we set out to do 10 years ago. We were talking to an analyst this morning, and now this is question off. You know, it looks like there's a team of backup data being reused, said Yeah, that's kind of what we've been saying for 10 years. Backup cannot be an insurance back up in order to your destination. It has to be something that you could use as an asset and that I think it's finally coming to the point with you can use back up a single source of truth only if you designed it right from the beginning. For that purpose, you cannot just lots of lots of ways to fake it. Make it try to pretend like you're doing it. But that was a trooper was off making date of the new infrastructure, making it a cloud, making it something that is truly an ask. And it's fascinating to see our businesses. You take any of our larger counts and the way they've gone about transforming not just basic backup. India. Yes, we are the world's glasses back up in most Kayla will be our solution. That's that's a starting point. But do we will be used after Devil applications 8, 10 times faster? Ron Analytics, 100 ex pastor. The more data you have, the more people who use data you have, the better this return makeups. >>You know, that is interesting to hear you talk about that because that has been the holy Grail of backup. Was toe go beyond insurance to actually create business value. And you're actually seeing some underlying trends We talked about that data pipeline in one of the areas that is the most interesting is in database, which was so boring for so many years. Ah, and you're seeing new workloads emerge. Take the data warehouse beyond your reporting. Never really lived up to its Ah, it's promise of 360 degree view. You mentioned analytics. That's really starting toe happen. Ah, and it's all about data John, for Used to say that your data is that is the new development kit. You call it the new infrastructure, and it's sort of the same same type of theme. So maybe some of the trends you're seeing in ah in database enoughto talk about that for a little bit and then pick your brains and some other tech like object storage is another one that we've really seen takeoff? >>Yeah. So I think our journey with object story began in 16 4017 as we started or Doctor Cloud platform in response to the user requirements, Uh, we did more like most companies have done and unfortunately continue to do to take the in print product. And then it's smooth under the cloud. And one of the things we saw was there was a fundamental difference off how the design points of flower engineering is all about what they're designed it for object story, that one of those one of those primitives fundamental stories, primitives that the cloud providers actually produced that we know really exploited. There was. It was used as a graveyard for data. It's a replacement for me, please, where data goes to die. And then we look at it really closely and say, Well, this is actually a massively scalable, very low cost storage, but it has some problems. It has an interface that you cannot use with traditional servers. Uh, it has some issues around not being able to read, modify right the data. So it feels like a consuming a lot of stories. So we're going to solve those problems because a good two years to come back with something on world that fundamentally creeds objects the lady like this massive use capable high performer disk? Yes, except it is ridiculously low cost and optimize the capacity. So this finger on world that patented has really become the foundation of how everything in our works without using CPU Ray, that is simply nothing at a lower PCO that if you wanted to basic backup, the, uh, more importantly, use that to do this a massive analytics and you don't know more data warehouse data leaks. It is not a good deal of Lake House aladi. All of these are still silent. All of these are people trying to take some data from somewhere put into one of the new construct and have it being controlled by somebody else. This is artist thing. It's just you just move the silos from some place to another place instead of creating a pipeline. If you want to really create a pipeline object story has been integral part of the pipeline, not a separate bucket by itself. And that's what we did. And same thing with databases, you know, most business, most of the critical business and I was on a daily basis, and the ability to find a way to leverage those. Move them on our leverage in terms of whichever format databases access. Which location or Saxes doesn't know how big it is. Lots of work has gone into trying to figure figure that one out. And we we had some very, very good partners in some of the largest customers who help take the journey with us. I'm pretty much all of the global 2000 accounts you see across the board, but an integral part of a process. >>You mentioned the word journey and triggered a thought. Is your discussion with Robbie, the CEO of of Seeing >>A. It was a customer years. >>Ah, and what he said. I liked what he said. He course he used the term journey. We all do. But he said, You know what? I kind of don't like that term because I want to inject the sense of urgency essentially what he was saying. I want speed, you know, journeys like Okay, kids get in the car, were in a drive across country. We're gonna make some stops. And so, while there's a journey, he also was was really trying to push the organization hard and he talked about culture. Ah, as some of the most difficult things and it goes like many. See, I said, Now the technology is almost the easy part. It's true when it works. Oh, I thought that was a great discussion that you had. What were some of your takeaways >>with thinking? Robbie's is very astute. Ah, I t executive was being around the block for so long and one of the fascinating things, but a asking this question about what's the biggest challenge was just gone through this a couple of times. What is the biggest challenge? Taking an organization as vulnerable as well known A C gate is. I mean, this is a data company. This is This is the heart of the Oliver Half the world's data is on seeing stuff. How are you today was, or company has been around for long in the middle of Silicon Valley and make it into ah into a fast growing transformation company that's responding to the newer challenges. And I thought he was going to come back with Well, you know, I gotta go to the abuses. I picked this technology that techno in. Surely that is exactly what I expected he would end up with. There's nothing through technology in this day and age when you can have an Elon Musk and send a card of Mars. It's not many technologies that we can really solve many covered 19 ism. Next one Do we gotta go solve? Well, frankly, he kid upon the one thing that matters to every company. It is the fundamental culture to create a biased of action. It's a fundamental culture where you have to come back and have a deliverable that moves the ball forward every day, every month, every quarter, as opposed to have this CDs off. Like you said, a journey that say's and we all know this right? People talk about, we're going to do this in face one. We're gonna do this and face to and good food release and face three nothing and what happens Invasive. Nobody gets a number feast. I think he did a great job of saying I fundamentally had to go change the culture that was my biggest take away, and this I've heard this so many times the most effective I D execs wait a transformation. It actually shows in the people that they have. It's not the technology, it's the people. And some. This history is replete with organizations that have done remarkably well, not by leveraging the heck out of the technology, but truly by leveraging the change in the people's mindset. And, of course, that at that point that leverages technology where a proper here. But Robbie's a insightful person, always such a They lied to talk them, said they like for him to have chosen us as a its information technology for him to go pull his data warehouses and completely transformed how I was doing manufacturing across the globe. >>You know, I want to have some color of what you just said because some key keep takeaways that from what you just said, ashes is You know, you're right when you look back at the history of the computer industry used to be very well known processes, but the technology was the big mystery and the and the big risk and you think about with Cove it were it not for Technology Way didn't know what was coming. We were inventing new processes literally every day, every week, every month. It's so technology was pretty well understood. It and enabled that. And when you when you think when we talked earlier about putting data at the core, it was interesting to hear Robbie. He basically said, Yeah, we had a big data team in the U. S. A big tainted TV in Europe. We actually organized around silos and and so you guys played a role you were very respectful about, you know, touting active video with him. You did ask him, You know what role you play, But it is interesting to hear and talk about how he had to address that both culturally. And of course, there's technology underneath to enable that unification of data that silo busting, if you will. And you guys played a role in that. >>Yeah, I always enjoy, um, conversation with folks who have taken a problem, identified what needs to be done and then just get it done. And its That's more fascinating than you. Of course, I video plays a small part in a lot of things, and we're proud to have played a small part in his big initiative, and that's true of know the thousands of customers we talk about. But it's such a fascinating story to have leaders who come back and make this transformation happen, and to understand how they went about making those decisions, how they identified where the problem with these are so hard. We all see them in our own life, right? We see there is a there's a problem, but sometimes it takes a wider don't understand. How do you identify them and what do you have to do and more importantly, actually do it? And so whenever use, whenever I get an opportunity with people like Robbie, I think understanding that there's a way to help, uh, we always make sure that we play our own small part, and we're privileged to be a part of those kinds of journeys. >>Well, I think what's interesting about activity on the company that you created is essentially that. We're talking about the democratisation of data, that whole data pipeline, that discussion, that we had the self service of that data to the lines of business and, you know, you guys clearly play a role there. The multi cloud discussion fits into that. I mean that these air all trends that are tail winds for companies that can that can help sort of you know, flattened the data globe. If you if you will, your final thoughts. >>Yeah, I know you said something that is so much at the heart of every idea Exactly that you're talking to, if they truly is. The fundamental asset that I finally end up with is an organization. The democratization of data. Where I do not lock this into another silo, another platform, another ploughed. Another application has to be part of my foundation design and therefore my ability to use each of this cloud platform for the services they provide. While I and they were to move the data to where I needed to be. That is so critical. So you almost start to think about the one possession and organization now has. And we talked about this with a group of CEOs. They might be some pretty soon. Not too far off, but data stolen asset. I might actually have our data mark data market, just like you. I was stopped working, but I can start to sell my data. You know, imagine a coup in 19. There's so many organization that have so much data, and many of them have contributed to this research because this is an existence of issue. But you can see this turning into a next level. So, yes, we've got activities, will move the data toe one level higher where it's become a foundation construct for the organization. The next part is gonna actually done. This is the one asset would actually monetize someone stuff. And it will be not too long when you need to talk about how there's this new exchange and what's the rate of data for this company? Was, is that company in the future trading options? Who knows is gonna be really interesting. >>Well, I think you're right on this notion of a data. Marketplaces is coming, and it's not not that far away, Blash. It's always great to talk to you. I hope next year a data driven weaken we could be face to face. But I mean, look, this has been we we've dealt with it. It's it's actually created opportunities for us toe to reinvent ourselves. So congratulations on the success that you've had and ah, and thank you for coming on the Cube. >>No, thank you for hosting us and always a big fan off Cube. You guys, you engage with you since early days, and it is fascinating to see how this company has grown. And it's probably many people don't even know how much you've grown behind the seats, technologies and culture that you created yourself. So it's hopefully one day we'll strict the table that I would be another side and asking of our transformation. Digital transformation of Cuban cell >>I would love to. I'd love to do that index again. And thank you, everybody for watching our continuous coverage of active fio data driven keeper Right there. We'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. >>Thank you.

>> From Boston, (upbeat music) Massachusetts, it's the Cube, covering Actifio 2019, Data Driven. Brought to you by Actifio. >> Welcome back to Boston everybody. You're watching the Cube, the leader in on the ground tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante. Stu Miniman is here. John Furrier is also in the house. This is Actifio's Data Driven conference, the second year that they've done this conference, #DataDriven19. Ash Ashutosh is here. He's the founder and CEO of Actifio, a good friend to the Cube, great to see you again. Thanks for coming on. >> Likewise Dave. Always good to see you. >> Yeah, so second year. You chose Boston, that's great. Last year was Miami at the very swanky Fontainebleau Hotel. >> Yup. >> It's a great location. >> Yup. >> Right in the harbor here. So you've got a nice crowd, and you guys focus on the substance, you know. Not a lot of Actifio marketing stuff coming out, as you market through substantive content. Explain that theory. >> Yeah. Well, I think from inception, there's a very fundamental culture the company has had is about driving customer success, and that is the number one and probably the only one that we drive by. And if you truly are focused on customer success, when you bring a whole bunch of customers together, having more customers talk about their success, so that they help and share with other customers who are looking for some of these initiatives, almost becomes natural. People become tired of seeing and sometimes even participating in our own user conferences, where you would bring a whole bunch of very enthusiastic users, lock the doors, and start talking about your vision, and start talking about your roadmap, your new line, your new partnership. One, we believe we should be doing that throughout the year with our customers. Two, we felt it was a lot better if the customer actually talked about how it mattered to them versus how it mattered to us as Actifio. So that was the theme for why Data Driven, in general, and even before that, you used to have some colleague cloud summit as you were transitioning into use of hybrid cloud in 2016. Across the board, I think this is one theme you'll hear from Actifio and the users who are here is we pay a very, very close attention to what users want, and we give them a forum to explain that to share with other users across the world. >> Well, it sounds like a great way to build a company, you know, focus on the customer and the customer success. Sounds simple, it's not. It's very challenging, and you've been a successful entrepreneur. When I've asked you in the past and David, you know, kind of why you started the company, you focused on a problem, and you guys created the category of copy data management, which is a problem. We had copies everywhere, copy creep, and you felt as though, okay, we can help people not only organize that but maybe even get more out of their data. >> Yeah. >> And so, and that has evolved, and obviously on that journey, people wanted to use you for backup. I mean, that's the big problem. >> Yeah. >> And so you created the category. You kind of monetized the backup space and tried to change the way people thought about that, and then all of a sudden, all this VC money sort of flowing into the whole space. >> Yup. >> From your standpoint, what's going on in the marketplace? Why is it so hot today? >> Yeah. Well I think, as you'll see at this conference, there is absolutely no doubt about how data is a strategic asset, and you'll see the more reason acquisitions of Tableau, of Looker, or even Qualtrics, where the use of data, which is what actually users see, has become one of the killer apps for anybody who is running a cloud. Your own business here, right. It's a use of data, and that's the first app that's out there, that's happening across the board. But right behind that, there's an entire ecosystem about supplying that data to these applications that becomes really important. And we figured this out almost nine years ago. We figured out that for an enterprise, having data available as a strategic asset, wherever, whenever they need, and whoever, as long as it complies with the operations requirements. Instantly is absolutely what we should provide. Now in order to do that, the first place to make it available for users was to capture it. And the best place to start was backup, and we always treated copied data, journey begins with capturing data, and backup happens with the best use case, one that you already spend money on. And that's how we always treated backup as a starting point for the journey. We have over 3,600 enterprise users who range from some of the largest financial services, energy, retail, airline industries, service providers, and the focus has been on companies that are at least $500 millions of (mumbles) more normally for a billion or more who really view data as a strategic asset in their digital transformation. And almost 78 percent of our business now comes from people, they are (mumbles) applications faster. So a small person did almost 20 percent now is coming from people using Actifio data for running machine only analytics faster. And almost 100 percent of them obviously collect the data from backup. That's how we view the market. We view it as application, analytics, machine learning, DevOps, down, and infrastructure happens to be a place where you start. It's not lost on anybody in the market that data is important. It's not lost on investors who see this as an opportunity to pursue in a different way. And so you have different approaches being taken, one that starts with more infrastructure, (mumbles) has provided infrastructure to keep all this (mumbles). And we've always focused on the one thing that really matters to the customer, which is applications, and one that matters to every other application that's using this application, which is the data for this application the point in time. So you see a lot of backup-centric appliances. You see a lot of consolidation appliances. So it's a bottom-up approach. It's a great approach for people who want to buy another single-purpose storage. We fundamentally believe you're not going to be a lot on the storage system. We think this, there's a lot of companies who do a phenomenal job, and we're better off being suppliers of a multi-cloud data management, multi-cloud copy data management, and to leverage all this infrastructure. >> No box. >> Completely no box. In fact, that is the reason why we think 2016, when we saw the emergence of cloud in our user community, it took us two years, but we have the world's best multi-cloud, just copy data and data management. The largest software company, enterprise software company in the world uses Actifio today to manage their SaaS offerings in four different public-wide platforms. We couldn't do that if you had a box. You could not. I mean-- >> Because it wouldn't scale. >> Well, firstly, you can't take your box and go into a cloud. They already have infrastructure. >> Right. >> You can't bring the scale out stuff, because they already have scale out. You can't take your scale out and put in another scale out. And if you start from bottom up, you're fundamentally providing infrastructure on top of an infrastructure that's already provided as a service. What you really needed to do was to allow the applications to come back and use any infrastructure that is most relevant for their workload, for their use case, and most importantly, for that particular time. It's really important, especially if data is persistent. It stays there for 20, 30, forever. And the opportunity for me to come back and leverage infrastructure there just happens to be the right one. That's what we try to describe. >> We always say at the Cube that the difference between a business and a digital business is how the business uses data, how it leverages data. >> Yeah, yeah absolutely. >> So that's been a real tailwind for you. You guys have been on the, you know, data virtualization, it was part of that. You know, it seems to me that one of the challenges that incumbents have is their data is locked inside. Frank James talked about it today, and sort of his maturity model. Actually no, it was Brian Regan, >> Yup. >> talking about the extension maturity model. >> Yup. >> Through the early stages, it's siloed. And it's not easy to go, you know, from that siloed data that's built maybe around a modeling plant or a bank, you know, to sort of this virtualized vision. So that's something that you guys caught early on. Clearly, digital transformation has been a tailwind for you guys, but how are your customers capitalizing on your solutions to transform themselves into a data driven company? >> Yeah, well the first thing you're seeing is, as I mentioned 2016. In 2016, 100 percent of our use cases were people who wanted a backup NDR solution that was a 100x faster and 50 percent or 90 percent cheaper and manage large sets of data. From 2016 into now, we have a massive shift of almost, between 56 percent on DevOps, another 20 percent on machine (mumbles). Think about it, you have a bunch of customers, large enterprises, whose number one focus is now around how to use data, and these are people who are consumers of data, not custodians of data, who are our previous customers. The best part is as you saw their own evolution of DevOps, the merge of the consumers and custodians managing as an agile system, that's exactly what's happening in our customer base. These are people who maybe have a role of a chief data officer, whose job is to supply data but also make sure it complies with governance rules. So there's a big shift of how data is now the new infrastructure. Data is now the one that I have to provide and enable access to wherever I need. And that does require a very, very different approach then build a box, you know, build something that centralizes all this silos into one place. When you build a box, fundamentally, you create another silo, 'cause you just broke in the whole idea about I need something that just drops down that is more global as a single lane space versus you know a box that is providing a single lane space and somehow, I'm going to assume that nobody else exists in the world. >> Yeah. I want to come back to sort of building a company and your philosophy there. A couple of questions I have for you. So you mentioned cloud and how you embraced cloud early on. You know, Amazon announces a backup service. You know, we talk to the backup vendors, and they say, yeah, but it's recovery, it's wonky, it's, you know, it's really not that robust. But it's Amazon, and you know, if you don't move fast, you know Amazon's going to gobble you up. You saw with the (mumbles), you know. It was down to cloud era, and (mumbles) reeling, it's like, that was going to take over the world. How do you think about that, maybe not in terms of competition, but in terms of staying ahead, of getting, you know, Uber'd by Amazon? >> Yeah. >> Thoughts on that. >> I think, number one, as Amazon and every other cloud provider has proven, and one that started nine years ago, enterprise cloud is hybrid. It's hybrid not just on frame and cloud, but it's also on frame and multi-cloud. Number one. Two, it's about applications. It is not about infrastructure. It is not about providing a single function that ties to a single platform. I as a customer, and we have several of those, I want to be able to manage my enterprise applications exactly the same way whatever cloud platform I choose to have, and that opens up a very different engineering, marketing, sales challenges, and most importantly, keeping the focus on the user. Now if I'm Amazon, I have a focus on my platform, not exactly the 50 other platforms you want to support. >> Right. >> And that's what we focus on. We focus on the 50 other platforms you want to support at the moment. Second, you know, there's this whole notion of a stacked fallacy. You might have heard of this paradigm where it's a lot easier for people on top of the stack to come down. It's a lot harder to go from bottom up. So if you're Amazon, and you're trying to drive infrastructure as a service, it takes a little while to go up the stack. It's a lot easier for somebody like us to come down from the stack, which is why we also announced Actifio GO, our SaaS offering. >> Right. >> That today, our version runs in Amazon, providing a much more robust, much more multi-cloud, much more heterogenous, and much more enterprise class and enterprise grade solution. And we also announced one for Actifio GO for TCV for IBM cloud. >> Yeah. >> And that's how our customers want it. >> And it's a much more facile experience for the customers. It seems to me that it makes sense what you're saying is you're happy to build on top of Amazon's infrastructure. For them, you know, frankly, people always say, oh, is Amazon going to get into apps? To me, yeah, maybe some day. They don't have to. Give developers tools to build apps seems to me. Last question I have is just the philosophy of building a company. You know, you've raised I think $200 million since inception. That's a lot of money. Software's a capital efficient business, but it fails in comparison to some of what the west coast companies have done. You know, you guys, you know, I'm from Massachusetts, where maybe more conservative. You are very deliberately building a company. How do you think about, you know, the craziness in the west coast. I call it craziness, but it obviously works. You (mumbles) storage, you know, they hit escape velocity, TSX had a very successful IPO. >> Yeah. >> You're kind of slow and steady. Your philosophy there, explain that. >> Yeah, I think a couple of things. One, it was about creating a sustaining company that was growing responsibly. And two, it's also the speed of how much our customers in the market can absorb a paradigm like what we are trying to drive. And most importantly, the class of customer you're focused on. These are, like I said, $1 billion plus in revenue and above. >> Yeah. >> Sales process for them is longer, which is actually where the money goes. The money isn't on software development. It's about supporting these customers on their initiatives. Any of these customers are somewhere about eight years with us and continue to expand. Some of the largest financial institutions have started with about $500,000 and almost $20 million with us. So that journey of making the customer successful costs money, but it builds long-standing customer whose foundation is built on Actifio. We are the data provider for these customers. We are not a widgit who throws something in there and calls you in three years when your maintenance is up. That is not the business we're building. So I don't think it's about east coast, west coast as much as it's about what we deliver requires being at the customer's side, working with them for years, as they go through the transformation, and I don't think we can do that by supporting 10,000 users at the same time. Maybe we can support 1,000, 2,000. And that's just the product and the market is going now. >> True to your mission, close to the customers, you know, clear differentiation at the app levels, I'm going to just say top down. You guys didn't talk about it, but you know, database affinity, some of the unique things you have going on there. Ash, it's great to see you. Congratulations on all your success, and you'll keep it going. Really appreciate it. Have a good day. >> All right, you're welcome. >> Thank you again. Welcome again for Data Driven 19. >> All right. It's great to be here. Actifio Data Driven 19, day one, the Cube, from Boston. We'll be right back right after this short break. >> Thank you. (upbeat music)

>> Live from Mountain View, California It's theCUBE covering DevNet Create 2019, brought to you by Cisco. >> Hi, welcome back to theCUBE's continuing coverage, day one at CISCO DEVNET CREATE 2019, I'm Lisa Martin with John Furrier, we are at The Computer History Museum at Mountain View. We're pleased to welcome to theCUBE Ash Seddeek, strategic business consultant and story telling coach. >> Yes. >> This is an interesting combination, story telling coach with a bunch of developers. So first of all, talk to us about what it is that you, who do you help learn how to tell stories and then what your work is with Cisco. >> Fantastic. So, primarily at Cisco, I work with a lot of leaders in a coaching environment where we are looking at what they are trying to achieve with the organization and how they can articulate that message in an energetic and inspiring way. And we find stories are the best way to engage the audience. I'm working with one leader, he keeps telling me, the last talk he gave, the one thing people remember is the story. So, everyone is sort of realizing that if I want to tell them something about how we're transitioning from one technology platform to another, if I can find a metaphor, an analogy, a story, I have much better luck connecting with them and giving them something that they can remember. >> Is this like a personal story that they need to share and kind of open up some some vulnerability? Or just some other metaphor that everybody would understand? >> Yes, we actually sometimes use one or the other. Like in one case, we're using the car racing metaphor to talk about how teams come together to create amazing results. So then in that case, it's not about just the driver of that car or the team at the pit changing the tires and how fast they do that, but how they collectively then, have that success at the end of the race. Or, maybe to your point, maybe it's a personal story that then shows them, hey, I went through a lot of challenges and I know as engineers, you're going through a lot of challenges, and I can see us getting past it. So we also try to tap into what they've been able to achieve in the past. So then he can actually call on their memory, we've been able to produce these products for Cisco. Now, the customer expectations are changing and we need to get them to the market sooner, therefore, we need to figure ways where we can build some high preforming teams and get these products to the market much sooner. >> You know Ash, since hearing about your story telling here on theCUBE, as we do a lot of story telling, is that in the tech world, designed thinking has been a big part of the discipline around building products. >> Yes. >> How has some of the things that you're bringing to this kind of design story telling, >> Yes. >> Kind of ethos and thinking, >> Yes. >> Into the story telling creation process, not just, like hey I created this thing, now let's go bolt a story onto it. Is there an integration point inside the construction of the creative process, >> Yes. >> That might feed that. Can you take us through your state of the art thinking around this? >> Absolutely. It's actually, it was very comforting to find that the very first step in designed thinking is empathize, which essentially means, you have a particular target audience that you're trying to serve with a particular solution. We actually use the word hero to think about that audience and then we basically say, if she's a mom walking into the hospital lobby with her baby, what is the experience for that mother? Can we really empathize? Can we find out what the story is? What's been happening at home? The way she's going into the hospital, now she's driving into the lobby, how is she being received in that lobby, in the service level. And then we basically describe the story again of where things are today, which we can call experience number one. And then we basically talk to them about how can we envision a beautiful, delightful, experience for that mom? That becomes experience number two, and we use these stories between one and two to really energize us, to really help people understand we need to come up with a much better solution. >> I want to get your thoughts on Steve Jobs always said story telling was critical. It was his mantra before he passed away. I had a chance to interview John Chambers at his house recently. >> Yes. >> He's got a new book coming out and he's always been about trends and being on the right wave, so between the two, you had one product leader with Steve Jobs, you have a trend seer with John Chambers. How much of the DNA of the person you are coaching, that their natural talent shapes how you engage with how they could be a better story teller? >> Yeah, what I'm finding a lot, especially also with technical leaders, a lot of the time they are very sort of reserved. They sort of walk in the building a all of a sudden have this sort of character where I am not as, you know, charging ahead as I should be and a lot of the time I basically say, hey, can we get this voice to have a little bit of character? Can we get some vocal variety in here? Can we actually tell a story? Can you actually get up, stand up, and open up and really you know, tell us something about who you are and why you want to do this project to lead this team forward. So to your point, I really help them find out that they're actually like any other average citizen, they have so much energy and power within them, they just come into the corporate office and think, oh, I need to have a corporate character, then I come back and say, you know what, I actually need you, I need John to be here, in person, with all the stories that you can tell. And I tell them, go back into your old child and let's figure out some of those stories so that when you're talking about those stories, you remember the excitement, you remember the people that were there. And then all of a sudden, there's a bit of life in them, you know, so that's sort of, what I help them discover is that actually they have these stories. And they are engaging, they are inspiring, if they actually let them come out. >> I imagine that's got to be easier with some guys and girls than others. Some of those who really, maybe don't like public speaking or having to explain something that can be quite (inaudible) to certain audiences. >> Yes. >> What are some of the things that you've learned about working with some of these technologists that have helped kind of refine your methodology for cracking that surface and unleashing this energy and this sort of, natural passion. >> Yes. >> That's hidden inside. >> Absolutely and you know what's happening here at Cisco, especially at Cisco, where you see technology being used to do a lot of communication, a lot of them are realizing, if I don't articulate my message, I'm not going to get the funding. I'm not going to get the best resources. So they realize that communication became part of how do I influence up and make sure that my stakeholders understand that we have a critical project, so there is part of it where they know that there is a lot on the line if they don't speak up. And then they come to someone like me and say, Ash, how can we do this? So we then talk through what are you trying to accomplish with this team? What's that vision and how can we build it, a case for change and that becomes the thing that energizes them first and then we energize their teams and we think about, how do you take this message to executives that can give you the funding that you're looking for. >> So you talked about, before we went live, this program at Cisco, this sort of shark tank-like program, >> Yes. >> Where you're working with very technical men and women. >> Exactly, yeah. >> Who might have a brilliant idea, but in terms of articulating that to be able to get, like you said for, get funding or sponsorship for programs, Can you give us, maybe, one of your favorite examples of a, when you started with experience one or phase one, where it took you about a half an hour to figure out, that's the goal. To getting to the ah, there's the story. >> Yes, that's a good question. >> Tell us something that really sticks with you. >> YGreat question, so the program is called Hack It IT and it's an incubator program, as I mentioned. And one example, a team in China actually, was working on the idea of how do we reduce the number of customers that could be thinking about walking away from Cisco? So the technical term for that is customer churn. So I got on the phone with them, and of course, there are some challenges when it comes to speaking English by a lot of our Chinese colleagues. But then I listened in and I paid attention and then I started asking them, what got you interested in this idea? But we started to really kind of break down the fact that they have figured out that there is a way to listen into the data within Cisco and figure out that once they actually identify certain signals, they can help the sales teams realize they need to go talk to John, because John, if he doesn't have someone talking to him very soon, he or she might actually shift and go to another company, and then I said, well, what percentage do you think that churn is right now? And we found out that maybe like about 7% and with the technology they are building, we could bring it down to three 3%. I was like ding, ding, ding, ding! Earnings per share, number of customers, dollars per quarter, it was just an amazing opportunity and once they came out and communicated clearly, it was the winning idea at the end of the day. >> So you're helping take these technical folks, start to understand the business impact, >> Absolutely, yeah. >> And communicate-- >> And how big it is. >> Right. >> And how big it is. >> That can be pretty transformative for I think anybody in any field, right? >> And I remember on the call, I said, guys did we take a look at the industry averages on the churn? You know, what's the situation at Juniper? What's the situation at HPE? How does Cisco compare? How can we make sure that Cisco is much better off? Phenomenal opportunity for Cisco to listen in and catch things before they happen. >> What would be your advice to folks watching around? How to be a better story teller? Because you can really reel people in, get their attention and then deliver the pay load, whether it's venture funding, >> Yes. >> Or getting a project funded inside a corporation. There's always people interested in how they could be better story tellers, what's your playbook? >> Absolutely. So, the reason I talk about what I do is, I help people become chief excitement officers, which means we need to find the excitement, once we find the excitement, it's like finding gold in a very, very tough mountain and once we find the gold, then we can extract it out and then we can showcase it, right? So I think a lot of the time we're having difficulty finding out where the gold is. And that's one of the things that I help them with, but if they sit with their teams and really brainstorm what opportunities do we have? What are the sizes? How can we get some of these ideas out? Then all of a sudden that idea, that gold starts to show up and they are much more equipped to talk about it. And I have on the executivegreatness.com/storytelling, there is a nice cheat sheet that people can download and use to start really crafting these stories by first using a template in the beginning and then once they do it once, twice, three times it gets easier and better and if they can build a culture around story telling, it makes life so much easier. >> So you've got the, I think you mentioned it, but I want to make sure our viewers heard it. The executive greatness institute is something that you've created. >> Yes. >> And that people could go to that and find that template that you were just mentioning. >> Exactly, so executivegreatness.com/storytelling and they can download that template, it should be a very easy fill-in process in the beginning and it's a fantastic experience to really get that visual story. >> Find that gold, make some fine jewelry make some bars. >> Yes. Its amazing, there's so much potential because-- >> So this must be for anybody, and sorry to interrupt, in any industry. >> Absolutely yes. >> Anybody who can learn to find a way to connect with whomever, whatever, but it sounds like a lot of, kind of, horizontal benefits for anybody. >> Absolutely. >> And any level of their career. >> Totally because what we're finding is the clarity of the message once people get it, then you can actually ask them to do things for you or with you, but until then, there's a huge divide. People sit in these, in all hands meetings, the executive speaks, he or she speaks, they're not really catching on, you know, it's not so clear. >> It's about connecting. >> It's about connecting and clarity is the passage and story becomes the fantastic bridge. >> Yeah. >> To really do that connection. >> And really making it about being part of the same story, >> Yes, exactly. >> That connection creates more retention, success, one proposal versus the other. >> Exactly. >> Could be a swing, the swing could be the story. >> Yes, exactly, 'cause what, when we're working with these teams, we found out that if they can't communicate it, we could be losing out on a multi billion dollar idea. >> You know one thing I want to hear your thoughts on while your here because, >> Sure. >> It's as if I feel like I'm in a counseling session 'cause all we have to try to do is figure out how to tell our story better and our customers who come on theCUBE, they have social media channels, they have more channels. >> Yes. >> The story is broken down into little highlights and small video clips, so companies are challenged, not just individuals, to have a brand. >> Exactly. >> In social media. >> Absolutely. >> How do you take the gold, that excitement, and break it up, >> Yes, into a branding story-- >> Share the story in all channels possible. >> Absolutely. >> Do you have any opinion on that, or? >> It's a lot of tough work, but to your point, we need to find what that brand story is and make sure that everybody's actually clear on it 'cause a lot of times to your point, when you bring them together, each one has a different story. >> Absolutely. >> You know, so I think part of it is to really come together and say, let's get the story, let's honor it, by then, spreading it across the organization, >> And in a consistent way. >> And then we use it on the website, we use it in our marketing and our sales conversations. And if you started with that story with customers, you have something that's a whole lot more engaging, >> Get that story out there in a digital footprint. >> Exactly, yeah, exactly. >> Awesome. >> And I wonder if even what you're talking about in terms of you're right, it's about connection, is even more important as the world gets more and more and more connective with devices, and we get so focused on talking to a device, we've got to kind of come back to your sort of, bringing people back to the basic communication. >> With the human connection, so yeah. >> Exactly, which is, thankfully still needed and to your point, I think, what you were able to show your customers is a tremendous business impact, >> Yes. >> That this connection, this basic human connection in story telling can make. >> Absolutely. And the fact that you are really talking about human beings at the end, those experiences at the very end are touching somebody and we need to get excited, we basically, one of the executives from GE basically said, we need people who can go to the future and then get so excited and then come back, kind of keep that excitement on their face and walk around the organization, keep telling them, you know, when we get to Yosemite, you're going to see these waterfalls, the fresh air is amazing, I've been there, I saw it. I can't wait to get you guys there. And that's what they do on a daily basis, they're just walking around with that bug inside of them, they can see what it's like, and they can't wait to get everybody there. >> This is also somebody that can really breed and foster cultural transformation within a GE, an organization that has been around and has so many moving parts. >> Yes. >> Cultural transformation is essential for any company to transform digitally and that's a hard thing to do. >> Yeah, exactly. >> But it sounds like if, you know, you can, I like-- >> It's a big part of it. >> I like chief excitement officer, I think my dog is my chief excitement officer. But being able to maintain that and sustain it from a cultural transformation perspective is huge. >> Absolutely, 'cause all the digital transformation efforts are about that vision of the future, whether it's healthcare, to your point, or automotive industry or any other industry. It's about what kind of experience, much better experience are we going to create? >> Ash, great talking with you, exciting topic. >> Yes. >> Thank you for giving some time to John and me today at DevNet. >> Absolutely, thank you so much. >> We appreciate it. >> Thank, John, thank you so much. For John Furrier, I am Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE live at Cisco DevNet Create 2019. Thanks for watching. (outro music)

>> Live from Boston, it's theCUBE. Covering IBM Chief Data Officer Summit. Brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of the IBM Chief Data Summit here in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight along with my co-host Paul Gillin. We're joined by Ash Dhupar, he is the Chief Analytics Officer at Publishers Clearing House. Thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you Rebecca for calling me here. >> So Publishers Clearing House is a billion-dollar company. We think of it as the sweepstakes company, we think of the giant checks and be the Prize Patrol surprising contestants, but it's a whole lot more than that. Tell our viewers a little bit, just explain all the vast amount of businesses that you're in. >> Sure, so, in a nutshell, we are a media and entertainment company with a large base of customers, about 100 million customers who are motivated with the chance to win. That's the sweepstakes angle to it. And we have, you can categorize the business into two buckets. One is our media and entertainment side, which is the publishing side. And then the other is our retail side which is where we sell merchandise to our customers. Think of us as a catalog and an e-commerce company. On the media and entertainment side, we have a very good engagement with our customers, we get about two billion page views on a monthly basis on our website. We, about 15 million unique customers on a monthly basis are coming to the site and they spend a considerable amount of time with us on an average, anywhere between 12 to 15 minutes, depending on, you know the type of the customers. Some of our very heavily-engaged customers can spend as much as about two hours a day with us. (Rebecca and John laughs) >> Trying to win that, that either the big prize or there are small prizes like, if you go on our site, there's a winner everyday, like there could be 1,000 dollar winner everyday playing a certain type of a game. So that's the media and the entertainment side of our business, that's completely ad-supported. And then we are the retail side of the business is we are in direct mail, so the traditional, we would send someone a direct mail package. And an e-commerce company as well. Just as a small nugget of information, we are. We send almost about 400 million pieces of physical mail which is including our packages that are sent and so on and so forth and though also still a large direct mail company. Still profitable and still growing. >> I'm sure the US Postal Service is grateful for your support. (laughs) They need all the help they can get. You collect, essentially, the prize money, is your cost of data acquisition and you have a huge database you told us earlier before we started filming of about 100 million people, that you have data on just in the US alone. Now what are you doing at the upper limits of what you're able to do with this data. How are you using this strategically other than just you know personalized email? >> Sure, so I think using data is a core asset for us. We are utilizing in giving our customers better experiences by utilizing the data we have on them. Marrying it with other data sources as well. So that we can personalize the experience. So that we can make your experience when you come on the site better. Or if we are sending something to you in mail, we give you products that are relevant to you. So to bring it down to a little more tactical level, in case of when you are on our site, then on our e-commerce site, there's a product recommendation engine, right? Which goes in and recommends products to you on what products to buy. Those product recommendation engines drive a significant amount of sales, almost about 40% of our sales are driven by the prior recommendation engines that is all understanding of the customer, what you're buying, what you're likely to buy and the algorithms behind it are built with that. >> Can you give another example though, of how, if I were, I mean you said all these customers are united by a common desire to win and to play a game and to win. >> Right. >> But what are some other ways beyond product recommendation engines, which are now sort of old hat. >> Right. >> What other ways are you enhancing the customers experience and personalizing it? >> Sure, sure. So, I'll give you a recent example of where we are utilizing some of the data to give a more relevant experience to the customer. So when a customer comes on our website, right when you're coming to register with us. So, as you register, as you fill in the form, after you give your name, address and your email address and you hit submit, at that very second, there are some algorithms that are running behind the scenes to understand how are you likely to engage with us. How are you going to, let's say, because we have a diverse business, are you likely to buy something from us? Or are you not likely to buy something from us? And if you're not likely to buy something from us, which means I can get you to, and you know not waste your time in showing you merchandise, but I can give you an experience of free-to-play games and you can, within free-to-play games, what type of games like understanding the persona of the person. We could say, hey, you probably are a lotto player or you are a word game puzzle player and we could give you and direct you to those experiences that are more relevant to you. In case of, if you're going to buy something from us, are you likely to buy, you know highly likely to buy or less likely to buy. Depending on that, should I show you just 10 or 15 products or should I show you like more than that? Are you more likely to buy a magazine? So making it more relevant for the customer experience is where it is all about. We use a lot of this data to, to make that happen. >> So analytics is really core to your business. It's the, completely strategic. Where do you sit in the organization, organizational layout, how is that reflected in the way your job is integrated into the organization? >> Sure, so, it is, I'm part of the C-Suite. And I think our CEO, he had this vision, thing he started. He loves data first of all. (laughs) >> Lucky for you. (laughs) >> Thank you. And he truly believes that data and analytics can drive growth and bring innovation from different areas if we utilize it in the best possible way. So A, I am part of that team. And work very closely with each of the business owners. That's the key, out here is like you know, it is, analytics is not in one corner but in the center of all the, all the business areas giving them either insights or building algorithms for them so that we can make either better decisions or we can power growth, depending on which way we are looking at it. >> You're the Chief Analytics Officer and we're here at the Chief Data Summit here, of here. How different are the roles in your mind and do they work together? I mean you have a CTO that is responsible for sort of Chief Data Officer. >> Yes. >> Responsibilities. How do you two collaborate and work together? >> It is a very tight collaboration. And they're two separate jobs but it is a very tight collaboration, we work hand in hand with each other. And the best part I would say is that you know, we're all focused and we're all driving towards how can we drive growth? That's the bottom line, that is where the bucks stops for all of us in the companies. Are we building projects? Are we doing things that is going to grow the company or not? So the collaboration with the CTO is A, a critical piece. They own the infrastructure, as well as the data and when you own the data, which is, in a way, is slightly, I would say, data governance I would say is a thankless job (laughs) believe it or not. But it is a critical job. It is if your data is not right, it is not going to work for whatever you're trying to do, it's the garbage in garbage out, we all know about that. And we work very closely. If there are CAPEX proposals that needs to be put in place because we're going after a certain big project, whether it's putting things together in one place or a 360 view of the customer. All of that is worked hand in hand. We work together in working towards that. >> What is your big data infrastructure like? Is it on the Cloud? Is it your own? Are you Adobe based? What do you use? >> All of the above. >> Oh. (laughter) No, so, what we have is because we are such an old company, you know we still have our legacy Db2 infrastructure. A lot of our backend databases, lot of our backend processes are all attached to that. We have a warehouse, a sequel server warehouse. We also, for our web analytics, we use Google's BigQuery. That's where you collect a lot of data on a daily basis. And recently, I think about three years ago, we went into the Cloud environment. We have a map, our cluster, which was cloud-based and now, we have brought in on prem very recently. >> Back from the Cloud. >> Back from the Cloud, on prem. And there was very good reasoning why we did that. I think frankly, it's cheaper on a longer term to bring that on prem and you are a lot more in control with all the issues with data privacy. So it is. >> Which, I hope you don't mind my interrupting but we have to wrap here and I need to get that question in. (laughs) >> Yes. >> You have data on 100 million consumers. What are you doing with all of the attention being paid for privacy right now? What are you doing to ensure the. >> We have a very, very I would say integrated infrastructure, data governance, data. There's a whole slew of, I would say, people and process around that to make sure that our date is not exposed. Now luckily, it's it's not like PII to the level that it's a health care data. So you are not really, you have information that is crazy but you still have the PII, the name and address of these customers. And as an example, none of the PII data is actually available to even to the analytics folks. It's all stripped, the PII's stripped off. You give us an ID to the customer and frankly the analytics team don't need the PII information to build any algorithms as well. So there is a whole process around keeping the data secure. >> Great, well Ash, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE, it was a pleasure having you. >> Thank you and thank you for inviting me. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Paul Gillin. We will have more from IBM CDO Summit just after this. (techno music)

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Spark Summit 2017, brought to you by Databricks. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, it's day two at the Spark Summit 2017. I'm David Goad and here with George Gilbert from Wikibon, George. >> George: Good to be here. >> Alright and the guest of honor of course, is Ash Munshi, who is the CEO of Pepperdata. Ash, welcome to the show. >> Thank you very much, thank you. >> Well you have an interesting background, I want you to just tell us real quick here, not give the whole bio, but you got a great background in machine learning, you were an early user of Spark, tell us a little bit about your experience. >> So I'm actually a mathematician originally, a theoretician who worked for IBM Research, and then subsequently Larry Ellison at Oracle, and a number of other places. But most recently I was CTO at Yahoo, and then subsequent to that I did a bunch of startups, that involved different types of machine learning, and also just in general, sort of a lot of big data infrastructure stuff. >> And go back to 2012 with Spark right? You had an interesting development. Right, so 2011, 2012, when Spark was still early, we were actually building a recommendation system, based on user-generated reviews. That was a project that was done with Nando de Freitas, who is now at DeepMind, and Peter Cnudde, who's one of the key guys that runs infrastructure at Yahoo. We started that company, and we were one of the early users of Spark, and what we found was, that we were analyzing all the reviews at Amazon. So Amazon allows you to crawl all of their reviews, and we basically had natural language processing, that would allow us to analyze all those reviews. When we were doing sort of MapReduce stuff, it was taking us a huge number of nodes, and 24 hours to actually go do analysis. And then we had this little project called Spark, out of AMPlab, and we decided spin it up, and see what we could do. It had lots of issues at that time, but we were able to actually spin it up on to, I think it was in the order of 100,000 nodes, and we were able take our times for running our algorithms from you know, sort of tens of hours, down to sort of an hour or two, so it was a significant improvement in performance. And that's when we realized that, you know, this is going to be something that's going to be really important once this set of issues, where it, once it was going to get mature enough to make happen, and I'm glad to see that that it's actually happened now, and it's actually taken over the world. >> Yeah that little project became a big deal, didn't it? >> It became a big deal, and now everybody's taking advantage of the same thing. >> Well bring us to the present here. We'll talk about Pepperdata and what you do, and then George is going to ask a little bit more about some of the solutions that you have. >> Perfect, so Pepperdata was a company founded by two gentlemen, Sean Suchter and Chad Carson. Sean used to run Yahoo Search, and one of the first guys who actually helped develop Hadoop next to Eric14 and that team. And then Chad was one of the first guys who actually figured out how to monetize clicks, and was the data science guy around the whole thing. So those are the two guys that actually started the company. I joined the company last July as CEO, and you know, what we've done recently, is we've sort of expanded our focus of the company to addressing DevOps for big data. And the reason why DevOps for big data is important, is because what's happened in the last few years, is people have gone from experimenting with big data, to taking big data into production, and now they're actually starting to figure out how to actually make it so that it actually runs properly, and scales, and does all the other kinds of things that are there, right? So, it's that transition that's actually happened, so, "Hey, we ran it in production, "and it didn't quite work the way we wanted to, "now we actually have to make it work correctly." That's where we sort of fit in, and that's where DevOps comes in, right? DevOps comes in when you're actually trying to make production systems that are going to perform in the right way. And the reason for DevOps is it shortens the cycle between developers and operators, right? So the tighter the loop, the faster you can get solutions out, because business users are actually wanting that to happen. That's where we're squarely focused, is how do we make that work? How do we make that work correctly for big data? And the difference between, sort of classic DevOps and DevOps for big data, is that you're now dealing with not just, you know, a set of computers solving an isolated sort of problem. You're dealing with thousands of machines that are solving one problem, and the amount of data is significantly larger. So the classical methodologies that you have, while, you know, agile and all that still works, the tools don't work to actually figure out what you can do with DevOps, and that's where we come in. We've got a set of tools that are focused on performance effectively, 'cause that's the big difference between distributed systems performance I should say, that's the big difference between that, and sort of classic even scaled out computing, right? So if you've got web servers, yes performance is important, and you need data for those, but that can actually be sharded nicely. This is one system working on one problem, right? Or a set of systems working on one problem. That's much harder, it's a different set of problems, and we help solve those problems. >> Yeah, and George you look like you're itching to dig into this, feel free. (exclaims loudly) >> Well so, it was, so one of the big announcements at the show, and the sort of the headline announcement today, was Spark server lists, like so it's not just someone running Spark in the cloud sort of as a manage service, it's up there as a, you know, sort of SaaS application. And you could call it platform of the service, but it's basically a service where, you know, the infrastructure is invisible. Now, for all those customers who are running their own clusters, which is pretty much everyone I would imagine at this point, how far can you take them in hiding much of the overhead of running those clusters? And by the overhead I mean, you know, the primarily performance and maximizing, you know, sort of maximizing resource efficiency. >> So, you have to actually sort of double-click on to the kind of resources that we're talking about here, right? So there's the number of nodes that you're going to need to actually do the computation. There is, you know, the amount of disc storage and stuff that you're going to need, what type of CPUs you're going to need. All of that stuff is sort of part of the costing if you will, of running an infrastructure. If somebody hides all that stuff, and makes it so that it's economical, then you know, that's a great thing, right? And if it can actually be made so that it's works for huge installations, and hides it appropriately so I don't pay too much of a tax, that's a wonderful thing to do. But we have, our customers are enterprises, typically Fortune 200 enterprises, and they have both a mixture of cloud-based stuff, where they actually want to control everything about what's going on, and then they have infrastructure internally, which by definition they control everything that's going on, and for them we're very, very applicable. I don't know how we'd applicable in this, sort of new world as a service that grows and shrinks. I can certainly imagine that whoever provides that service would embed us, to be able to use the stuff more efficiently. >> No, you answered my question, which is, for the people who aren't getting the turnkey you know, sort of SaaS solution, and they need help managing, you know, what's a fairly involved stack, they would turn to you? >> Ash: Yes. >> Okay. >> Can I ask you about the specific products? >> George: Oh yes. >> I saw you at the booth, and I saw you were announcing a couple of things. Well what is new-- >> Ash: Correct. >> With the show? >> Correct, so at the show we announced Code Analyzer for Apache Spark, and what that allows people to do, is really understand where performance issues are actually happening in their code. So, one of the wonderful things about Spark, compared to MapReduce, is that it abstracts the paradigm that you actually write against, right? So that's a wonderful thing, 'cause it makes it easier to write code. The problem when we abstract, is what does that abstraction do down in the hardware, and where am I losing performance? And being able to give that information back to the user. So you know, in Spark, you have jobs that can run in parallel. So an apps consists of jobs, jobs can run in parallel, and each one of these things can consume resources, CPU, memory, and you see that through sort of garbage collection, or a disc or a network, and what you want to find out, is which one these parallel tasks was dominating the CPU? Why was it dominating the CPU? Which one actually caused the garbage collector actually go crazy at some point? While the Spark UI provides some of that information, what it doesn't do, is gives you a time series view of what's going on. So it's sort of a blow-by-blow view of what's going on. By imposing the time series view on sort of an enhanced version of the Spark UI, you now have much better visibility about which offending stages are causing the issue. And the nice thing about that is, once you know that, you know exactly which piece of code that you actually want to go and look at. So classic example would be, you might have two stages that are running in parallel. The Spark UI will tell you that it's stage three that's causing the problem, but if you look at the time series, you'll find out that stage two actually runs longer, and that's the one that's pegging the CPU. And you can see that because we have the time series, but you couldn't see that any other way. >> So you have a code analyzer and also the app profiler. >> So the app profiler is the other product that we announced a few months ago. We announced that I guess about three months ago or so. And the app profiler, what it does, is it actually looks after the run is done, it actually looks at all the data that the run produces, so the Spark history server produces, and then it actually goes back and analyzes that and says, "Well you know what? "You're executors here, are not working as efficiently, "these are the executors "that aren't working as efficiently." It might be using too much memory or whatever, and then it allows the developer to basically be able to click on it and say, "Explain to me why that's happening?" And then it gives you a little, you know, a little fix-it if you will. It's like, if this is happening, you probably want to do these things, in order to improve performance. So, what's happening with our customers, is our customers are asking developers to run the application profiler first, before they actually put stuff on production. Because if the application profiler comes back and says, "Everything is green." That there's no critical issues there. Then they're saying, "Okay fine, put it on my cluster, "on the production cluster, "but don't do it ahead of time." The application profiler, to be clear, is actually based on some work that, on open source project called Dr. Elephant, which comes out of LinkedIn. And now we're working very closely together to make sure that we actually can advance the set of heuristics that we have, that will allow developers to understand and diagnose more and more complex problems. >> The Spark community has the best code names ever. Dr. Elephant, I've never heard of that one before. (laughter) >> Well Dr. Elephant, actually, is not just the Spark community, it's actually also part of the MapReduce community, right? >> David: Ah, okay. >> So yeah, I mean remember Hadoop? >> David: Yes. >> The elephant thing, so Dr. Elephant, and you know. >> Well let's talk about where things are going next, George? >> So, you know, one of the things we hear all the time from customers and vendors, is, "How are we going to deal with this new era "of distributed computing?" You know, where we've got the cloud, on-prem, edge, and like so, for the first question, let's leave out the edge and say, you've got your Fortune 200 client, they have, you know, production clusters or even if it's just one on-prem, but they also want to work in the cloud, whether it's for elastics stuff, or just for, they're gathering a lot of data there. How can you help them manage both, you know, environments? >> Right, so I think there's a bunch of times still, before we get into most customers actually facing that problem. What we see today is, that a lot of the Fortune 200, or our customers, I shouldn't say a lot of the Fortune 200, a lot of our customers have significant, you know, deployments internally on-prem. They do experimentation on the cloud, right? The current infrastructure for managing all these, and sort of orchestrating all this stuff, is typically YARN. What we're seeing, is that more than likely they're going to wind up, or at least our intelligence tells us that it's going to wind up being Kubernetes that's actually going to wind up managing that. So, what will happen is-- >> George: Both on-prem and-- >> Well let me get to that, alright? >> George: Okay. >> So, I think YARN will be replaced certainly on-prem with Kupernetes, because then you can do multi data center, and things of that sort. The nice thing about Kupernetes, is it in fact can span the cloud as well. So, Kupernetes as an infrastructure, is certainly capable of being able to both handle a multi data center deployment on-prem, along with whatever actually happens on the cloud. There is infrastructure available to do that. It's very immature, most of the customers aren't anywhere close to being able to do that, and I would say even before Kupernetes gets accepted within the environment, it's probably 18 months, and there's probably another 18 months to two years, before we start facing this hybrid cloud, on-prem kind of problem. So we're a few years out I think. >> So, would, for those of us including our viewers, you know, who know the acronym, and know that it's a, you know, scheduler slash cluster manager, resource manager, would that give you enough of a control plane and knowledge of sort of the resources out there, for you to be able to either instrument or deploy an instrument to all the clusters (mumbles). >> So we are actually leading the effort right now for big data on Kupernetes. So there is a group of, there's a small group working. It's Google, us, Red Hat, Palantir, Bloomberg now has joined the group as well. We are actually today talking about our effort on getting HDFS working on Kupernetes, so we see the writing on the wall. We clearly are positioning ourselves to be a player in that particular space, so we think we'll be ready and able to take that challenge on. >> Ash this is great stuff, we've just got about a minute before the break, so I wanted to ask you just a final question. You've been in the Spark community for a while, so what of their open source tools should we be keeping our eyes out for? >> Kupernetes. >> David: That's the one? >> To me that is the killer that's coming next. >> David: Alright. >> I think that's going to make life, it's going to unify the microservices architecture, plus the sort of multi data center and everything else. I think it's really, really good. Board works, it's been working for a long time. >> David: Alright, and I want to thank you for that little Pepper pen that I got over at your booth, as the coolest-- >> Come and get more. >> Gadget here. >> We also have Pepper sauce. >> Oh, of course. (laughter) Well there sir-- >> It's our sauce. >> There's the hot news from-- >> Ash: There you go. >> Pepperdata Ash Munshi. Thank you so much for being on the show, we appreciate it. >> Ash: My pleasure, thank you very much. >> And thank you for watching theCUBE. We're going to be back with more guests, including Ali Ghodsi, CEO of Databricks, coming up next. (upbeat music) (ocean roaring)

>>From the Cube Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, bringing you data-driven insights from the cube and E T R. This is breaking analysis with Dave Valante. >>Making technology predictions in 2022 was tricky business, especially if you were projecting the performance of markets or identifying I P O prospects and making binary forecast on data AI and the macro spending climate and other related topics in enterprise tech 2022, of course was characterized by a seesaw economy where central banks were restructuring their balance sheets. The war on Ukraine fueled inflation supply chains were a mess. And the unintended consequences of of forced march to digital and the acceleration still being sorted out. Hello and welcome to this week's weekly on Cube Insights powered by E T R. In this breaking analysis, we continue our annual tradition of transparently grading last year's enterprise tech predictions. And you may or may not agree with our self grading system, but look, we're gonna give you the data and you can draw your own conclusions and tell you what, tell us what you think. >>All right, let's get right to it. So our first prediction was tech spending increases by 8% in 2022. And as we exited 2021 CIOs, they were optimistic about their digital transformation plans. You know, they rushed to make changes to their business and were eager to sharpen their focus and continue to iterate on their digital business models and plug the holes that they, the, in the learnings that they had. And so we predicted that 8% rise in enterprise tech spending, which looked pretty good until Ukraine and the Fed decided that, you know, had to rush and make up for lost time. We kind of nailed the momentum in the energy sector, but we can't give ourselves too much credit for that layup. And as of October, Gartner had it spending growing at just over 5%. I think it was 5.1%. So we're gonna take a C plus on this one and, and move on. >>Our next prediction was basically kind of a slow ground ball. The second base, if I have to be honest, but we felt it was important to highlight that security would remain front and center as the number one priority for organizations in 2022. As is our tradition, you know, we try to up the degree of difficulty by specifically identifying companies that are gonna benefit from these trends. So we highlighted some possible I P O candidates, which of course didn't pan out. S NQ was on our radar. The company had just had to do another raise and they recently took a valuation hit and it was a down round. They raised 196 million. So good chunk of cash, but, but not the i p O that we had predicted Aqua Securities focus on containers and cloud native. That was a trendy call and we thought maybe an M SS P or multiple managed security service providers like Arctic Wolf would I p o, but no way that was happening in the crummy market. >>Nonetheless, we think these types of companies, they're still faring well as the talent shortage in security remains really acute, particularly in the sort of mid-size and small businesses that often don't have a sock Lacework laid off 20% of its workforce in 2022. And CO C e o Dave Hatfield left the company. So that I p o didn't, didn't happen. It was probably too early for Lacework. Anyway, meanwhile you got Netscope, which we've cited as strong in the E T R data as particularly in the emerging technology survey. And then, you know, I lumia holding its own, you know, we never liked that 7 billion price tag that Okta paid for auth zero, but we loved the TAM expansion strategy to target developers beyond sort of Okta's enterprise strength. But we gotta take some points off of the failure thus far of, of Okta to really nail the integration and the go to market model with azero and build, you know, bring that into the, the, the core Okta. >>So the focus on endpoint security that was a winner in 2022 is CrowdStrike led that charge with others holding their own, not the least of which was Palo Alto Networks as it continued to expand beyond its core network security and firewall business, you know, through acquisition. So overall we're gonna give ourselves an A minus for this relatively easy call, but again, we had some specifics associated with it to make it a little tougher. And of course we're watching ve very closely this this coming year in 2023. The vendor consolidation trend. You know, according to a recent Palo Alto network survey with 1300 SecOps pros on average organizations have more than 30 tools to manage security tools. So this is a logical way to optimize cost consolidating vendors and consolidating redundant vendors. The E T R data shows that's clearly a trend that's on the upswing. >>Now moving on, a big theme of 2020 and 2021 of course was remote work and hybrid work and new ways to work and return to work. So we predicted in 2022 that hybrid work models would become the dominant protocol, which clearly is the case. We predicted that about 33% of the workforce would come back to the office in 2022 in September. The E T R data showed that figure was at 29%, but organizations expected that 32% would be in the office, you know, pretty much full-time by year end. That hasn't quite happened, but we were pretty close with the projection, so we're gonna take an A minus on this one. Now, supply chain disruption was another big theme that we felt would carry through 2022. And sure that sounds like another easy one, but as is our tradition, again we try to put some binary metrics around our predictions to put some meat in the bone, so to speak, and and allow us than you to say, okay, did it come true or not? >>So we had some data that we presented last year and supply chain issues impacting hardware spend. We said at the time, you can see this on the left hand side of this chart, the PC laptop demand would remain above pre covid levels, which would reverse a decade of year on year declines, which I think started in around 2011, 2012. Now, while demand is down this year pretty substantially relative to 2021, I D C has worldwide unit shipments for PCs at just over 300 million for 22. If you go back to 2019 and you're looking at around let's say 260 million units shipped globally, you know, roughly, so, you know, pretty good call there. Definitely much higher than pre covid levels. But so what you might be asking why the B, well, we projected that 30% of customers would replace security appliances with cloud-based services and that more than a third would replace their internal data center server and storage hardware with cloud services like 30 and 40% respectively. >>And we don't have explicit survey data on exactly these metrics, but anecdotally we see this happening in earnest. And we do have some data that we're showing here on cloud adoption from ET R'S October survey where the midpoint of workloads running in the cloud is around 34% and forecast, as you can see, to grow steadily over the next three years. So this, well look, this is not, we understand it's not a one-to-one correlation with our prediction, but it's a pretty good bet that we were right, but we gotta take some points off, we think for the lack of unequivocal proof. Cause again, we always strive to make our predictions in ways that can be measured as accurate or not. Is it binary? Did it happen, did it not? Kind of like an O K R and you know, we strive to provide data as proof and in this case it's a bit fuzzy. >>We have to admit that although we're pretty comfortable that the prediction was accurate. And look, when you make an hard forecast, sometimes you gotta pay the price. All right, next, we said in 2022 that the big four cloud players would generate 167 billion in IS and PaaS revenue combining for 38% market growth. And our current forecasts are shown here with a comparison to our January, 2022 figures. So coming into this year now where we are today, so currently we expect 162 billion in total revenue and a 33% growth rate. Still very healthy, but not on our mark. So we think a w s is gonna miss our predictions by about a billion dollars, not, you know, not bad for an 80 billion company. So they're not gonna hit that expectation though of getting really close to a hundred billion run rate. We thought they'd exit the year, you know, closer to, you know, 25 billion a quarter and we don't think they're gonna get there. >>Look, we pretty much nailed Azure even though our prediction W was was correct about g Google Cloud platform surpassing Alibaba, Alibaba, we way overestimated the performance of both of those companies. So we're gonna give ourselves a C plus here and we think, yeah, you might think it's a little bit harsh, we could argue for a B minus to the professor, but the misses on GCP and Alibaba we think warrant a a self penalty on this one. All right, let's move on to our prediction about Supercloud. We said it becomes a thing in 2022 and we think by many accounts it has, despite the naysayers, we're seeing clear evidence that the concept of a layer of value add that sits above and across clouds is taking shape. And on this slide we showed just some of the pickup in the industry. I mean one of the most interesting is CloudFlare, the biggest supercloud antagonist. >>Charles Fitzgerald even predicted that no vendor would ever use the term in their marketing. And that would be proof if that happened that Supercloud was a thing and he said it would never happen. Well CloudFlare has, and they launched their version of Supercloud at their developer week. Chris Miller of the register put out a Supercloud block diagram, something else that Charles Fitzgerald was, it was was pushing us for, which is rightly so, it was a good call on his part. And Chris Miller actually came up with one that's pretty good at David Linthicum also has produced a a a A block diagram, kind of similar, David uses the term metacloud and he uses the term supercloud kind of interchangeably to describe that trend. And so we we're aligned on that front. Brian Gracely has covered the concept on the popular cloud podcast. Berkeley launched the Sky computing initiative. >>You read through that white paper and many of the concepts highlighted in the Supercloud 3.0 community developed definition align with that. Walmart launched a platform with many of the supercloud salient attributes. So did Goldman Sachs, so did Capital One, so did nasdaq. So you know, sorry you can hate the term, but very clearly the evidence is gathering for the super cloud storm. We're gonna take an a plus on this one. Sorry, haters. Alright, let's talk about data mesh in our 21 predictions posts. We said that in the 2020s, 75% of large organizations are gonna re-architect their big data platforms. So kind of a decade long prediction. We don't like to do that always, but sometimes it's warranted. And because it was a longer term prediction, we, at the time in, in coming into 22 when we were evaluating our 21 predictions, we took a grade of incomplete because the sort of decade long or majority of the decade better part of the decade prediction. >>So last year, earlier this year, we said our number seven prediction was data mesh gains momentum in 22. But it's largely confined and narrow data problems with limited scope as you can see here with some of the key bullets. So there's a lot of discussion in the data community about data mesh and while there are an increasing number of examples, JP Morgan Chase, Intuit, H S P C, HelloFresh, and others that are completely rearchitecting parts of their data platform completely rearchitecting entire data platforms is non-trivial. There are organizational challenges, there're data, data ownership, debates, technical considerations, and in particular two of the four fundamental data mesh principles that the, the need for a self-service infrastructure and federated computational governance are challenging. Look, democratizing data and facilitating data sharing creates conflicts with regulatory requirements around data privacy. As such many organizations are being really selective with their data mesh implementations and hence our prediction of narrowing the scope of data mesh initiatives. >>I think that was right on J P M C is a good example of this, where you got a single group within a, within a division narrowly implementing the data mesh architecture. They're using a w s, they're using data lakes, they're using Amazon Glue, creating a catalog and a variety of other techniques to meet their objectives. They kind of automating data quality and it was pretty well thought out and interesting approach and I think it's gonna be made easier by some of the announcements that Amazon made at the recent, you know, reinvent, particularly trying to eliminate ET t l, better connections between Aurora and Redshift and, and, and better data sharing the data clean room. So a lot of that is gonna help. Of course, snowflake has been on this for a while now. Many other companies are facing, you know, limitations as we said here and this slide with their Hadoop data platforms. They need to do new, some new thinking around that to scale. HelloFresh is a really good example of this. Look, the bottom line is that organizations want to get more value from data and having a centralized, highly specialized teams that own the data problem, it's been a barrier and a blocker to success. The data mesh starts with organizational considerations as described in great detail by Ash Nair of Warner Brothers. So take a listen to this clip. >>Yeah, so when people think of Warner Brothers, you always think of like the movie studio, but we're more than that, right? I mean, you think of H B O, you think of t n t, you think of C N N. We have 30 plus brands in our portfolio and each have their own needs. So the, the idea of a data mesh really helps us because what we can do is we can federate access across the company so that, you know, CNN can work at their own pace. You know, when there's election season, they can ingest their own data and they don't have to, you know, bump up against, as an example, HBO if Game of Thrones is going on. >>So it's often the case that data mesh is in the eyes of the implementer. And while a company's implementation may not strictly adhere to Jamma Dani's vision of data mesh, and that's okay, the goal is to use data more effectively. And despite Gartner's attempts to deposition data mesh in favor of the somewhat confusing or frankly far more confusing data fabric concept that they stole from NetApp data mesh is taking hold in organizations globally today. So we're gonna take a B on this one. The prediction is shaping up the way we envision, but as we previously reported, it's gonna take some time. The better part of a decade in our view, new standards have to emerge to make this vision become reality and they'll come in the form of both open and de facto approaches. Okay, our eighth prediction last year focused on the face off between Snowflake and Databricks. >>And we realized this popular topic, and maybe one that's getting a little overplayed, but these are two companies that initially, you know, looked like they were shaping up as partners and they, by the way, they are still partnering in the field. But you go back a couple years ago, the idea of using an AW w s infrastructure, Databricks machine intelligence and applying that on top of Snowflake as a facile data warehouse, still very viable. But both of these companies, they have much larger ambitions. They got big total available markets to chase and large valuations that they have to justify. So what's happening is, as we've previously reported, each of these companies is moving toward the other firm's core domain and they're building out an ecosystem that'll be critical for their future. So as part of that effort, we said each is gonna become aggressive investors and maybe start doing some m and a and they have in various companies. >>And on this chart that we produced last year, we studied some of the companies that were targets and we've added some recent investments of both Snowflake and Databricks. As you can see, they've both, for example, invested in elation snowflake's, put money into Lacework, the Secur security firm, ThoughtSpot, which is trying to democratize data with ai. Collibra is a governance platform and you can see Databricks investments in data transformation with D B T labs, Matillion doing simplified business intelligence hunters. So that's, you know, they're security investment and so forth. So other than our thought that we'd see Databricks I p o last year, this prediction been pretty spot on. So we'll give ourselves an A on that one. Now observability has been a hot topic and we've been covering it for a while with our friends at E T R, particularly Eric Bradley. Our number nine prediction last year was basically that if you're not cloud native and observability, you are gonna be in big trouble. >>So everything guys gotta go cloud native. And that's clearly been the case. Splunk, the big player in the space has been transitioning to the cloud, hasn't always been pretty, as we reported, Datadog real momentum, the elk stack, that's open source model. You got new entrants that we've cited before, like observe, honeycomb, chaos search and others that we've, we've reported on, they're all born in the cloud. So we're gonna take another a on this one, admittedly, yeah, it's a re reasonably easy call, but you gotta have a few of those in the mix. Okay, our last prediction, our number 10 was around events. Something the cube knows a little bit about. We said that a new category of events would emerge as hybrid and that for the most part is happened. So that's gonna be the mainstay is what we said. That pure play virtual events are gonna give way to hi hybrid. >>And the narrative is that virtual only events are, you know, they're good for quick hits, but lousy replacements for in-person events. And you know that said, organizations of all shapes and sizes, they learn how to create better virtual content and support remote audiences during the pandemic. So when we set at pure play is gonna give way to hybrid, we said we, we i we implied or specific or specified that the physical event that v i p experience is going defined. That overall experience and those v i p events would create a little fomo, fear of, of missing out in a virtual component would overlay that serves an audience 10 x the size of the physical. We saw that really two really good examples. Red Hat Summit in Boston, small event, couple thousand people served tens of thousands, you know, online. Second was Google Cloud next v i p event in, in New York City. >>Everything else was, was, was, was virtual. You know, even examples of our prediction of metaverse like immersion have popped up and, and and, and you know, other companies are doing roadshow as we predicted like a lot of companies are doing it. You're seeing that as a major trend where organizations are going with their sales teams out into the regions and doing a little belly to belly action as opposed to the big giant event. That's a definitely a, a trend that we're seeing. So in reviewing this prediction, the grade we gave ourselves is, you know, maybe a bit unfair, it should be, you could argue for a higher grade, but the, but the organization still haven't figured it out. They have hybrid experiences but they generally do a really poor job of leveraging the afterglow and of event of an event. It still tends to be one and done, let's move on to the next event or the next city. >>Let the sales team pick up the pieces if they were paying attention. So because of that, we're only taking a B plus on this one. Okay, so that's the review of last year's predictions. You know, overall if you average out our grade on the 10 predictions that come out to a b plus, I dunno why we can't seem to get that elusive a, but we're gonna keep trying our friends at E T R and we are starting to look at the data for 2023 from the surveys and all the work that we've done on the cube and our, our analysis and we're gonna put together our predictions. We've had literally hundreds of inbounds from PR pros pitching us. We've got this huge thick folder that we've started to review with our yellow highlighter. And our plan is to review it this month, take a look at all the data, get some ideas from the inbounds and then the e t R of January surveys in the field. >>It's probably got a little over a thousand responses right now. You know, they'll get up to, you know, 1400 or so. And once we've digested all that, we're gonna go back and publish our predictions for 2023 sometime in January. So stay tuned for that. All right, we're gonna leave it there for today. You wanna thank Alex Myerson who's on production and he manages the podcast, Ken Schiffman as well out of our, our Boston studio. I gotta really heartfelt thank you to Kristen Martin and Cheryl Knight and their team. They helped get the word out on social and in our newsletters. Rob Ho is our editor in chief over at Silicon Angle who does some great editing for us. Thank you all. Remember all these podcasts are available or all these episodes are available is podcasts. Wherever you listen, just all you do Search Breaking analysis podcast, really getting some great traction there. Appreciate you guys subscribing. I published each week on wikibon.com, silicon angle.com or you can email me directly at david dot valante silicon angle.com or dm me Dante, or you can comment on my LinkedIn post. And please check out ETR AI for the very best survey data in the enterprise tech business. Some awesome stuff in there. This is Dante for the Cube Insights powered by etr. Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time on breaking analysis.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of HP Green Lake Day made possible by Hewlett >>Packard Enterprise. Okay, so we're deep into H B E Green Lake Day Hope. Hopefully, you've enjoyed the spotlight sessions with Keith with with Pete, with Addison and and Skip from Splunk and, of course, the platform session that our Qadoura hosted. You know, we're going for proof points here. We really want you toe squint through the narrative today and see for yourself what's what's really here and the kind of progress that HP is making with Green Lake. So thanks to everybody for joining the conversation, we now want to turn our attention to more proof points. The next segment of this HB Green Lake day is where you'll have further opportunities toe Learn mawr about Green Lake and how you might apply it to your business. Now, if you're interested in watching watching additional sessions, we have two new ones available for you to see. The first is a session on the new managed security service from H P E with HP Green Lake, Or you could take a deeper dive into high performance computing with Green Lake just look, navigate the agenda tab and select one of those two sessions. They're available at any time. But if you want to stick with us for the live show, we have to live demos in our meat experts sessions, where you'll have the opportunity to ask your questions and have real time interaction with the experts from HP. In fact, I have Steve Showalter and Ash nor here, and they're with me right now to tell you a little bit about their meet the experts sessions. So, Steve, let's start with you. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you'll be covering in your demo today. >>Sure, Thanks, Dave. My name's Steve Showalter. I'm a part of the Green Lake Cloud Services R and D Team Super excited to be here today, and I hope everyone conjoined our session coming up or we'll take a deeper dive and a live demo of Green Lake Central. In case you haven't seen it before, Green Lake Central's a platform we used to deliver services and capabilities to our Green Lake customers. In Todays Demo will show you how we've designed Green Lake Central to take a persona based approach to deliver the right capabilities and insights to various constituents in our customers. Organizations, for example, will show how a CEO or CFO would use Green Lake Central to view their green light consumption and costs and compare those two public cloud costs from AWS or azure right within the same reporting tool. We'll also show you how a nightie operation staff would use Green Lake Central to engage in capacity planning for their Green Lake environment or manage their Green Lake private Cloud services. We also show how end users within a customer and environment would use Green Lake central to self service and lifecycle manage resource is from these Green Lake Cloud services, or even how a chief security officer would use the continuous compliance capability that we delivered through Green Lake Central toe understand their real time compliance posture against whatever regulatory frameworks they may need to be audited against. So I hope you can join me for this informative and interactive session and look forward to seeing everyone there. >>That's awesome. It sounds like some great details. Their full 3 60 view great visibility are snore. So tell us a little bit about yourself. What's going on your session. Give us Give us the hook. >>Hi. I'm marginal product manager for Green Lake for containers, Um, and three leg for containers is our upcoming service, which promises a true cloud like experience with massive operational simplicity. Uh, this offering is built on our experience middle container platform software and aims to bring speed and portability. Tow both your cloud native and non cloud native applications. Using open source communities, we have a unique data fabric that provides persistent storage for state fel applications. And today you'll see how we demystify communities, operational complexity and provide value to various personas throughout the containerized application life cycle, for example, an idea it men will have all the standardized communities cluster templates on invent automation to spin up the environment for a developer in just a few clicks. And the developer has to just focus on continuous deployment and delivery off their applications on a CEO gets complete visibility across different communities. Clusters for the cough. >>That's awesome. I mean, we know from our data that containers generally kubernetes specifically one of the most significant areas where customers are are spending time and money, so that all sounds fantastic. so you can. You having trouble deciding what you're gonna go to? We're gonna have the chance to see both demos if you want. So we'll be live for the next hour with each meet the expert session. So we're gonna run him twice If you can't decide. Go to both. Okay. Thanks for watching HB Green Lake Day. You're watching the cube?

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering space and cybersecurity. Symposium 2020 hosted by Cal Poly >>Oven. Welcome back to the Space and Cyber Security Symposium. 2020 I'm John for your host with the Cuban silicon angle, along with Cal Poly, representing a great session here on industry success in developing space and cybersecurity. Resource is Got a great lineup. Brigadier General Steve Hotel, whose are also known as Bucky, is Call Sign director of Space Portfolio Defense Innovation Unit. Preston Miller, chief information security officer at JPL, NASA and Major General retired Clint Crozier, director of aerospace and satellite solutions at Amazon Web services, also known as a W s. Gentlemen, thank you for for joining me today. So the purpose of this session is to spend the next hour talking about the future of workforce talent. Um, skills needed and we're gonna dig into it. And Spaces is an exciting intersection of so many awesome disciplines. It's not just get a degree, go into a track ladder up and get promoted. Do those things. It's much different now. Love to get your perspectives, each of you will have an opening statement and we will start with the Brigadier General Steve Hotel. Right? >>Thank you very much. The Defense Innovation Unit was created in 2015 by then Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. To accomplish three things. One is to accelerate the adoption of commercial technology into the Department of Defense so that we can transform and keep our most relevant capabilities relevant. And also to build what we call now called the national Security Innovation Base, which is inclusive all the traditional defense companies, plus the commercial companies that may not necessarily work with focus exclusively on defense but could contribute to our national security and interesting ways. Um, this is such an exciting time Azul here from our other speakers about space on and I can't, uh I'm really excited to be here today to be able to share a little bit of our insight on the subject. >>Thank you very much. Precedent. Miller, Chief information security officer, Jet Propulsion Lab, NASA, Your opening statement. >>Hey, thank you for having me. I would like to start off by providing just a little bit of context of what brings us. Brings us together to talk about this exciting topic for space workforce. Had we've seen In recent years there's been there's been a trend towards expanding our space exploration and the space systems that offer the great things that we see in today's world like GPS. Um, but a lot of that has come with some Asian infrastructure and technology, and what we're seeing as we go towards our next generation expects of inspiration is that we now want to ensure that were secured on all levels. And there's an acknowledgement that our space systems are just a susceptible to cyber attacks as our terrestrial assistance. We've seen a recent space, uh, policy Directive five come out from our administration, that that details exactly how we should be looking at the cyber principle for our space systems, and we want to prevent. We want to prevent a few things as a result of that of these principles. Spoofing and jamming of our space systems are not authorized commands being sent to those space systems, lots of positive control of our space vehicles on lots of mission data. We also acknowledge that there's a couple of frameworks we wanna adopt across the board of our space systems levers and things like our nice miss cybersecurity frameworks. eso what has been a challenge in the past adopted somebody Cyber principles in space systems, where there simply has been a skill gap in a knowledge gap. We hire our space engineers to do a few things. Very well designed space systems, the ploy space systems and engineer space systems, often cybersecurity is seen as a after thought and certainly hasn't been a line item and in any budget for our spaces in racing. Uh, in the past in recent years, the dynamic started to change. We're now now integrating cyber principles at the onset of development of these life cycle of space. Systems were also taking a hard look of how we train the next generation of engineers to be both adequate. Space engineers, space system engineers and a cyber engineers, as a result to Mrs success on DWI, also are taking a hard look at What do we mean when we talk about holistic risk management for our space assistance, Traditionally risk management and missing insurance for space systems? I've really revolved around quality control, but now, in recent years we've started to adopt principles that takes cyber risk into account, So this is a really exciting topic for me. It's something that I'm fortunate to work with and live with every day. I'm really excited to get into this discussion with my other panel members. Thank you. >>You Preston. Great insight there. Looking forward. Thio chatting further. Um, Clint Closure with a W. S now heading up. A director of aerospace and satellite Solutions, formerly Major General, Your opening statement. >>Thanks, John. I really appreciate that introduction and really appreciate the opportunity to be here in the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium. And thanks to Cal Poly for putting it together, you know, I can't help, but as I think to Cal Poly there on the central California coast, San Luis Obispo, California I can't help but to think back in this park quickly. I spent two years of my life as a launch squadron commander at Vandenberg Air Force Base, about an hour south of Cal Poly launching rockets, putting satellites in orbit for the national intelligence community and so some really fond memories of the Central California coast. I couldn't agree more with the theme of our symposium this week. The space and cyber security we've all come to know over the last decade. How critical spaces to the world, whether it's for national security intelligence, whether it's whether communications, maritime, agriculture, development or a whole host of other things, economic and financial transactions. But I would make the case that I think most of your listeners would agree we won't have space without cybersecurity. In other words, if we can't guaranteed cybersecurity, all those benefits that we get from space may not be there. Preston in a moment ago that all the threats that have come across in the terrestrial world, whether it be hacking or malware or ransomware or are simple network attacks, we're seeing all those migrate to space to. And so it's a really important issue that we have to pay attention to. I also want to applaud Cow Pauling. They've got some really important initiatives. The conference here, in our particular panel, is about developing the next generation of space and cyber workers, and and Cal Poly has two important programs. One is the digital transformation hub, and the other is space data solutions, both of which, I'm happy to say, are in partnership with a W. S. But these were important programs where Cal Poly looks to try to develop the next generation of space and cyber leaders. And I would encourage you if you're interested in that toe. Look up the program because that could be very valuable is well, I'm relatively new to the AWS team and I'm really happy Thio team, as John you said recently retired from the U. S. Air Force and standing up the U. S. Space force. But the reason that I mentioned that as the director of the aerospace and satellite team is again it's in perfect harmony with the theme today. You know, we've recognized that space is critically important and that cyber security is critically important and that's been a W s vision as well. In fact, a W s understands how important the space domain is and coupled with the fact that AWS is well known that at a W s security is job zero and stolen a couple of those to fax A. W. S was looking to put together a team the aerospace and satellite team that focus solely and exclusively every single day on technical innovation in space and more security for the space domain through the cloud and our offerings there. So we're really excited to reimagine agree, envision what space networks and architectures could look like when they're born on the cloud. So that's important. You know, talk about workforce here in just a moment, but but I'll give you just a quick sneak. We at AWS have also recognized the gap in the projected workforce, as Preston mentioned, Um, depending on the projection that you look at, you know, most projections tell us that the demand for highly trained cyber cyber security cloud practitioners in the future outweighs what we think is going to be the supply. And so a ws has leaned into that in a number of ways that we're gonna talk about the next segment. I know. But with our workforce transformation, where we've tried to train free of charge not just a W s workers but more importantly, our customers workers. It s a W s we obsessed over the customer. And so we've provided free training toe over 7000 people this year alone toe bring their cloud security and cyber security skills up to where they will be able to fully leverage into the new workforce. So we're really happy about that too? I'm glad Preston raised SPD five space policy Directive five. I think it's gonna have a fundamental impact on the space and cyber industry. Uh, now full disclosure with that said, You know, I'm kind of a big fan of space policy directives, ESPN, Or was the space policy directive that directed to stand up of the U. S. Space Force and I spent the last 18 months of my life as the lead planner and architect for standing up the U. S. Space force. But with that said, I think when we look back a decade from now, we're going to see that s p d five will have as much of an impact in a positive way as I think SPD for on the stand up of the space Force have already done so. So I'll leave it there, but really look forward to the dialogue and discussion. >>Thank you, gentlemen. Clint, I just wanna say thank you for all your hard work and the team and the people who were involved in standing up Space force. Um, it is totally new. It's a game changer. It's modern, is needed. And there's benefits on potential challenges and opportunities that are gonna be there, so thank you very much for doing that. I personally am excited. I know a lot of people are excited for what the space force is today and what it could become. Thank you very much. >>Yeah, Thanks. >>Okay, So >>with >>that, let me give just jump in because, you know, as you're talking about space force and cybersecurity and you spend your time at Vanderburgh launching stuff into space, that's very technical. Is operation okay? I mean, it's complex in and of itself, but if you think about like, what's going on beyond in space is a lot of commercial aspect. So I'm thinking, you know, launching stuff into space on one side of my brain and the other side of brain, I'm thinking like air travel. You know, all the logistics and the rules of the road and air traffic control and all the communications and all the technology and policy and, you >>know, landing. >>So, Major General Clint, what's your take on this? Because this is not easy. It's not just one thing that speaks to the diversity of workforce needs. What's your reaction to that? >>Yeah. I mean, your observation is right on. We're seeing a real boom in the space and aerospace industry. For all the good reasons we talked about, we're recognizing all the value space from again economic prosperity to exploration to being ableto, you know, improve agriculture and in weather and all those sorts of things that we understand from space. So what I'm really excited about is we're seeing this this blossom of space companies that we sort of referred to his new space. You know, it used to be that really only large governments like the United States and a handful of others could operate in the space domain today and largely infused because of the technological innovation that have come with Cyber and Cyrus Space and even the cloud we're seeing more and more companies, capabilities, countries, all that have the ability, you know. Even a well funded university today can put a cube sat in orbit, and Cal Poly is working on some of those too, by the way, and so it's really expanded the number of people that benefits the activity in space and again, that's why it's so critically important because we become more and more reliant and we will become more and more reliant on those capabilities that we have to protect him. It's fundamental that we do. So, >>Bucky, I want you to weigh in on this because actually, you you've flown. Uh, I got a call sign which I love interviewing people. Anyone who's a call sign is cool in my book. So, Bucky, I want you to react to that because that's outside of the technology, you know, flying in space. There's >>no >>rule. I mean, is there like a rules? I mean, what's the rules of the road? I mean, state of the right. I mean, what I mean, what what's going? What's gonna have toe happen? Okay, just logistically. >>Well, this is very important because, uh and I've I've had access thio information space derived information for most of my flying career. But the amount of information that we need operate effectively in the 21st century is much greater than Thanet has been in the past. Let me describe the environment s so you can appreciate a little bit more what our challenges are. Where, from a space perspective, we're going to see a new exponential increase in the number of systems that could be satellites. Uh, users and applications, right? And so eso we're going we're growing rapidly into an environment where it's no longer practical to just simply evolved or operate on a perimeter security model. We and with this and as I was brought up previously, we're gonna try to bring in MAWR commercial capabilities. There is a tremendous benefit with increasing the diversity of sources of information. We use it right now. The military relies very heavily on commercial SAT com. We have our military capabilities, but the commercial capabilities give us capacity that we need and we can. We can vary that over time. The same will be true for remote sensing for other broadband communications capabilities on doing other interesting effects. Also, in the modern era, we doom or operations with our friends and allies, our regional partners all around the world, in order to really improve our interoperability and have rapid exchange of information, commercial information, sources and capabilities provides the best means of doing that. So that so that the imperative is very important and what all this describes if you want to put one word on it. ISS, we're involving into ah hybrid space architectures where it's gonna be imperative that we protect the integrity of information and the cyber security of the network for the things most important to us from a national security standpoint. But we have to have the rules that that allows us to freely exchange information rapidly and in a way that that we can guarantee that the right users are getting the right information at the right. >>We're gonna come back to that on the skill set and opportunities for people driving. That's just looking. There's so much opportunity. Preston, I want you to react to this. I interviewed General Keith Alexander last year. He formerly ran Cyber Command. Um, now he's building Cyber Security Technologies, and his whole thesis is you have to share. So the question is, how do you share and lock stuff down at the same time when you have ah, multi sided marketplace in space? You know, suppliers, users, systems. This is a huge security challenge. What's your reaction to this? Because we're intersecting all these things space and cybersecurity. It's just not easy. What's your reaction? >>Absolutely, Absolutely. And what I would say in response to that first would be that security really needs to be baked into the onset of how we develop and implement and deploy our space systems. Um, there's there's always going to be the need to collect and share data across multiple entities, particularly when we're changing scientific data with our mission partners. Eso with that necessitates that we have a security view from the onset, right? We have a system spaces, and they're designed to share information across the world. How do we make sure that those, uh, those other those communication channels so secure, free from interception free from disruption? So they're really done? That necessitates of our space leaders in our cyber leaders to be joining the hip about how to secure our space systems, and the communications there in Clinton brought up a really good point of. And then I'm gonna elaborate on a little bit, just toe invite a little bit more context and talk about some the complexities and challenges we face with this advent of new space and and all of our great commercial partners coming into therefore way, that's going to present a very significant supply chain risk management problems that we have to get our hands around as well. But we have these manufacturers developing these highly specialized components for the space instruments, Um, that as it stands right now, it's very little oversight And how those things air produced, manufactured, put into the space systems communication channels that they use ports protocols that they use to communicate. And that's gonna be a significant challenge for us to get get our hands around. So again, cybersecurity being brought in. And the very onset of these development thes thes decisions in these life cycles was certainly put us in a best better position to secure that data in our in our space missions. >>Yeah, E just pick up on that. You don't mind? Preston made such a really good point there. But you have to bake security in up front, and you know there's a challenge and there's an opportunity, you know, with a lot of our systems today. It was built in a pre cyber security environment, especially our government systems that were built, you know, in many cases 10 years ago, 15 years ago are still on orbit today, and we're thankful that they are. But as we look at this new environment and we understand the threats, if we bake cybersecurity in upfront weaken balance that open application versus the risk a long as we do it up front. And you know, that's one of the reasons that our company developed what we call govcloud, which is a secure cloud, that we use thio to manage data that our customers who want to do work with the federal government or other governments or the national security apparatus. They can operate in that space with the built in and baked in cybersecurity protocols. We have a secret region that both can handle secret and top secret information for the same reasons. But when you bake security into the upfront applications, that really allows you to balance that risk between making it available and accessible in sort of an open architecture way. But being sure that it's protected through things like ITAR certifications and fed ramp, uh, another ice T certifications that we have in place. So that's just a really important point. >>Let's stay high level for a man. You mentioned a little bit of those those govcloud, which made me think about you know, the tactical edge in the military analogy, but also with space similar theater. It's just another theater and you want to stand stuff up. Whether it's communications and have facilities, you gotta do it rapidly, and you gotta do it in a very agile, secure, I high availability secure way. So it's not the old waterfall planning. You gotta be fast is different. Cloud does things different? How do you talk to the young people out there, whether it's apparent with with kids in elementary and middle school to high school, college grad level or someone in the workforce? Because there are no previous jobs, that kind of map to the needs out there because you're talking about new skills, you could be an archaeologist and be the best cyber security guru on the planet. You don't have to have that. There's no degree for what, what we're talking about here. This >>is >>the big confusion around education. I mean, you gotta you like math and you could code you can Anything who wants to comment on that? Because I think this >>is the core issue. I'll say there are more and more programs growing around that educational need, and I could talk about a few things we're doing to, but I just wanna make an observation about what you just said about the need. And how do you get kids involved and interested? Interestingly, I think it's already happening, right. The good news. We're already developing that affinity. My four year old granddaughter can walk over, pick up my iPad, turn it on. Somehow she knows my account information, gets into my account, pulls up in application, starts playing a game. All before I really even realized she had my iPad. I mean, when when kids grow up on the cloud and in technology, it creates that natural proficiency. I think what we have to do is take that natural interest and give them the skill set the tools and capabilities that go with it so that we're managing, you know, the the interest with the technical skills. >>And also, like a fast I mean, just the the hackers are getting educated. Justus fast. Steve. I mean e mean Bucky. What do you do here? You CIt's the classic. Just keep chasing skills. I mean, there are new skills. What are some of those skills? >>Why would I amplify eloquent? Just said, First of all, the, uh, you know, cyber is one of those technology areas where commercial side not not the government is really kind of leading away and does a significant amount of research and development. Ah, billions of dollars are spent every year Thio to evolve new capabilities. And a lot of those companies are, you know, operated and and in some cases, led by folks in their early twenties. So the S O. This is definitely an era and a generation that is really poised in position. Well, uh, Thio take on this challenge. There's some unique aspects to space. Once we deploy a system, uh, it will be able to give me hard to service it, and we're developing capabilities now so that we could go up and and do system upgrades. But that's not a normal thing in space that just because the the technical means isn't there yet. So having software to find capabilities, I's gonna be really paramount being able to dio unique things. The cloud is huge. The cloud is centric to this or architectural, and it's kind of funny because d o d we joke because we just discovered the cloud, you know, a couple years ago. But the club has been around for a while and, uh, and it's going to give us scalability on and the growth potential for doing amazing things with a big Data Analytics. But as Preston said, it's all for not if if we can't trust the data that we receive. And so one of the concepts for future architectures is to evolve into a zero trust model where we trust nothing. We verify and authenticate everyone. And, uh, and that's that's probably a good, uh, point of departure as we look forward into our cybersecurity for space systems into the future. >>Block everyone. Preston. Your reaction to all this gaps, skills, What's needed. I mean it Z everyone's trying to squint through this >>absolutely. And I wanna want to shift gears a little bit and talk about the space agencies and organizations that are responsible for deploying these spaces into submission. So what is gonna take in this new era on, and what do we need from the workforce to be responsive to the challenges that we're seeing? First thing that comes to mind is creating a culture of security throughout aerospace right and ensuring that Azzawi mentioned before security isn't an afterthought. It's sort of baked into our models that we deploy and our rhetoric as well, right? And because again we hire our spaces in years to do it very highly. Specialized thing for a highly specialized, uh, it's topic. Our effort, if we start to incorporate rhetorically the importance of cybersecurity two missing success and missing assurance that's going to lend itself toe having more, more prepared on more capable system engineers that will be able to respond to the threats accordingly. Traditionally, what we see in organizational models it's that there's a cyber security team that's responsible for the for the whole kit kaboodle across the entire infrastructure, from enterprise systems to specialize, specialize, space systems and then a small pocket of spaces, years that that that are really there to perform their tasks on space systems. We really need to bridge that gap. We need to think about cybersecurity holistically, the skills that are necessary for your enterprise. I t security teams need to be the same skills that we need to look for for our system engineers on the flight side. So organizationally we need we need to address that issue and approach it, um todo responsive to the challenges we see our our space systems, >>new space, new culture, new skills. One of the things I want to bring up is looking for success formulas. You know, one of the things we've been seeing in the past 10 years of doing the Cube, which is, you know, we've been called the ESPN of Tech is that there's been kind of like a game ification. I want to. I don't wanna say sports because sports is different, but you're seeing robotics clubs pop up in some schools. It's like a varsity sport you're seeing, you know, twitch and you've got gamers out there, so you're seeing fun built into it. I think Cal Poly's got some challenges going on there, and then scholarships air behind it. So it's almost as if, you know, rather than going to a private sports training to get that scholarship, that never happens. There's so many more scholarship opportunities for are not scholarship, but just job opportunities and even scholarships we've covered as part of this conference. Uh, it's a whole new world of culture. It's much different than when I grew up, which was you know, you got math, science and English. You did >>it >>and you went into your track. Anyone want to comment on this new culture? Because I do believe that there is some new patterns emerging and some best practices anyone share any? >>Yeah, I do, because as you talked about robotics clubs and that sort of things, but those were great and I'm glad those air happening. And that's generating the interest, right? The whole gaming culture generating interest Robotic generates a lot of interest. Space right has captured the American in the world attention as well, with some recent NASA activities and all for the right reasons. But it's again, it's about taking that interested in providing the right skills along the way. So I'll tell you a couple of things. We're doing it a w s that we found success with. The first one is a program called A W s Academy. And this is where we have developed a cloud, uh, program a cloud certification. This is ah, cloud curriculum, if you will, and it's free and it's ready to teach. Our experts have developed this and we're ready to report it to a two year and four year colleges that they can use is part of the curriculum free of charge. And so we're seeing some real value there. And in fact, the governor's in Utah and Arizona recently adopted this program for their two year schools statewide again, where it's already to teach curriculum built by some of the best experts in the industry s so that we can try to get that skills to the people that are interested. We have another program called A W s educate, and this is for students to. But the idea behind this is we have 12 cracks and you can get up to 50 hours of free training that lead to A W s certification, that sort of thing. And then what's really interesting about that is all of our partners around the world that have tied into this program we manage what we call it ws educate Job board. And so if you have completed this educate program now, you can go to that job board and be linked directly with companies that want people with those skills we just helped you get. And it's a perfect match in a perfect marriage there. That one other piece real quickly that we're proud of is the aws Uh restart program. And that's where people who are unemployed, underemployed or transitioning can can go online. Self paced. We have over 500 courses they can take to try to develop those initial skills and get into the industry. And that's been very popular, too, So that those air a couple of things we're really trying to lean into >>anyone else want to react. Thio that question patterns success, best practices, new culture. >>I'd like Thio. The the wonderful thing about what you just touched on is problem solving, right, And there's some very, very good methodologies that are being taught in the universities and through programs like Hacking for Defense, which is sponsored by the National Security Innovation Network, a component of the I you where I work but the But whether you're using a lien methodologies or design school principals or any other method, the thing that's wonderful right now and not just, uh, where I work at the U. The Space force is doing this is well, but we're putting the problem out there for innovators to tackle, And so, rather than be prescriptive of the solutions that we want to procure, we want we want the best minds at all levels to be able to work on the problem. Uh, look at how they can leverage other commercial solutions infrastructure partnerships, uh, Thio to come up with a solution that we can that we can rapidly employ and scale. And if it's a dual use solution or whether it's, uh, civil military or or commercial, uh, in any of the other government solutions. Uh, that's really the best win for for the nation, because that commercial capability again allows us to scale globally and share those best practices with all of our friends and allies. People who share our values >>win win to this commercial. There's a business model potential financial benefits as well. Societal impact Preston. I want to come to you, JPL, NASA. I mean, you work in one of the most awesome places and you know, to me, you know, if you said to me, Hey, John, come working JP like I'm not smart enough to go there like I mean, like, it's a pretty It's intimidating, it might seem >>share folks out there, >>they can get there. I mean, it's you can get there if you have the right skills. I mean I'm just making that up. But, I mean, it is known to be super smart And is it attainable? So share your thoughts on this new culture because you could get the skills to get there. What's your take on all this >>s a bucket. Just missing something that really resonated with me, right? It's do it your love office. So if you put on the front engineer, the first thing you're gonna try to do is pick it apart. Be innovative, be creative and ways to solve that issue. And it has been really encouraging to me to see the ground welcome support an engagement that we've seen across our system. Engineers in space. I love space partners. A tackling the problem of cyber. Now that they know the West at risk on some of these cyber security threats that that they're facing with our space systems, they definitely want to be involved. They want to take the lead. They want to figure things out. They wanna be innovative and creative in that problem solving eso jpl We're doing a few things. Thio Raise the awareness Onda create a culture of security. Andi also create cyber advocates, cybersecurity advocates across our space engineers. We host events like hacked the lad, for example, and forgive me. Take a pause to think about the worst case scenarios that could that could result from that. But it certainly invites a culture of creative problem solving. Um, this is something that that kids really enjoy that are system engineers really enjoyed being a part off. Um, it's something that's new refreshing to them. Eso we were doing things like hosting a monthly cybersecurity advocacy group. When we talk about some of the cyber landscape of our space systems and invite our engineers into the conversation, we do outweighs programs specifically designed to to capture, um, our young folks, uh, young engineers to deceive. They would be interested and show them what this type of security has to offer by ways of data Analytic, since the engineering and those have been really, really successful identifying and bringing in new talent to address the skill gaps. >>Steve, I want to ask you about the d. O. D. You mentioned some of the commercial things. How are you guys engaging the commercial to solve the space issue? Because, um, the normalization in the economy with GPS just seeing spaces impacts everybody's lives. We we know that, um, it's been talked about. And and there's many, many examples. How are you guys the D o. D. From a security standpoint and or just from an advancement innovation standpoint, engaging with commercials, commercial entities and commercial folks? >>Well, I'll throw. I'll throw a, uh, I'll throw ah, compliment to Clint because he did such an outstanding job. The space forces already oriented, uh, towards ah, commercial where it's appropriate and extending the arms. Leveraging the half works on the Space Enterprise Consortium and other tools that allow for the entrepreneurs in the space force Thio work with their counterparts in a commercial community. And you see this with the, uh, you know, leveraging space X away to, uh, small companies who are doing extraordinary things to help build space situational awareness and, uh, s So it's it's the people who make this all happen. And what we do at at the D. O. D level, uh, work at the Office of Secretary defense level is we wanna make sure that they have the right tools to be able to do that in a way that allows these commercial companies to work with in this case of a space force or with cyber command and ways that doesn't redefine that. The nature of the company we want we want We want commercial companies to have, ah, great experience working with d o d. And we want d o d toe have the similar experience working, working with a commercial community, and and we actually work interagency projects to So you're going to see, uh, General Raymond, uh, hey, just recently signed an agreement with the NASA Esa, you're gonna see interagency collaborations on space that will include commercial capabilities as well. So when we speak as one government were not. You know, we're one voice, and that's gonna be tremendous, because if you're a commercial company on you can you can develop a capability that solves problems across the entire space enterprise on the government side. How great is that, Right. That's a scaling. Your solution, gentlemen. Let >>me pick you back on that, if you don't mind. I'm really excited about that. I mentioned new space, and Bucky talked about that too. You know, I've been flying satellites for 30 years, and there was a time where you know the U. S. Government national security. We wouldn't let anybody else look at him. Touch him. Plug into, um, anything else, right. And that probably worked at the time. >>But >>the world has changed. And more >>importantly, >>um, there is commercial technology and capability available today, and there's no way the U. S government or national security that national Intel community can afford economically >>to >>fund all that investment solely anymore. We don't have the manpower to do it anymore. So we have this perfect marriage of a burgeoning industry that has capabilities and it has re sources. And it has trained manpower. And we are seeing whether it's US Space Force, whether it's the intelligence community, whether it's NASA, we're seeing that opened up to commercial providers more than I've ever seen in my career. And I can tell you the customers I work with every day in a W s. We're building an entire ecosystem now that they understand how they can plug in and participate in that, and we're just seeing growth. But more importantly, we're seeing advanced capability at cheaper cost because of that hybrid model. So that really is exciting. >>Preston. You know you mentioned earlier supply chain. I don't think I think you didn't use the word supply chain. Maybe you did. But you know about the components. Um, you start opening things up and and your what you said baking it in to the beginning, which is well known. Uh, premise. It's complicated. So take me through again, Like how this all gonna work securely because And what's needed for skill sets because, you know, you're gonna open. You got open source software, which again, that's open. We live in a free society in the United States of America, so we can't lock everything down. You got components that are gonna be built anywhere all around the world from vendors that aren't just a certified >>or maybe >>certified. Um, it's pretty crazy. So just weigh in on this key point because I think Clint has it right. And but that's gonna be solved. What's your view on this? >>Absolutely. And I think it really, really start a top, right? And if you look back, you know, across, um in this country, particularly, you take the financial industry, for example, when when that was a burgeoning industry, what had to happen to ensure that across the board. Um, you know, your your finances were protected these way. Implemented regulations from the top, right? Yeah. And same thing with our health care industry. We implemented regulations, and I believe that's the same approach we're gonna need to take with our space systems in our space >>industry >>without being too directive or prescriptive. Instance she ating a core set of principles across the board for our manufacturers of space instruments for deployment and development of space systems on for how space data and scientific data is passed back and forth. Eso really? We're gonna need to take this. Ah, holistic approach. Thio, how we address this issue with cyber security is not gonna be easy. It's gonna be very challenging, but we need to set the guard rails for exactly what goes into our space systems, how they operate and how they communicate. >>Alright, so let's tie this back to the theme, um, Steve and Clint, because this is all about workforce gaps, opportunities. Um, Steve, you mentioned software defined. You can't do break fix in space. You can't just send a technician up in the space to fix a component. You gotta be software defined. We're talking about holistic approach, about commercial talk about business model technology with software and policy. We need people to think through, like you know. What the hell are you gonna do here, right? Do you just noticed road at the side of the road to drive on? There's no rules of engagement. So what I'm seeing is certainly software Check. If you wanna have a job for the next millennial software policy who solves two problems, what does freedom looked like in space Congestion Contention and then, obviously, business model. Can you guys comment on these three areas? Do you agree? And what specific person might be studying in grad school or undergraduate or in high school saying, Hey, I'm not a techie, but they can contribute your thoughts. I'll >>start off with, uh, speak on on behalf of the government today. I would just say that as policy goes, we need to definitely make sure that we're looking towards the future. Ah, lot of our policy was established in the past under different conditions, and, uh, and if there's anything that you cannot say today is that space is the same as it was even 10 years ago. So the so It's really important that our policy evolves and recognizes that that technology is going to enable not just a new ways of doing things, but also force us to maybe change or or get rid of obsolete policies that will inhibit our ability to innovate and grow and maintain peace with with a rapid, evolving threat. The for the for the audience today, Uh, you know, you want some job assurance, cybersecurity and space it's gonna be It's gonna be an unbelievable, uh, next, uh, few decades and I couldn't think of a more exciting for people to get into because, you know, spaces Ah, harsh environment. We're gonna have a hard time just dud being able differentiate, you know, anomalies that occur just because of the environment versus something that's being hacked. And so JPL has been doing this for years on they have Cem Cem great approaches, but but this is this is gonna be important if you put humans on the moon and you're going to sustain them there. Those life support systems are gonna be using, you know, state of the art computer technology, and which means, is also vulnerable. And so eso the consequences of us not being prepared? Uh, not just from our national security standpoint, but from our space exploration and our commercial, uh, economic growth in space over the long term all gonna be hinged on this cyber security environment. >>Clint, your thoughts on this too ill to get. >>Yeah. So I certainly agree with Bucky. But you said something a moment ago that Bucky was talking about as well. But that's the idea that you know in space, you can't just reach out and touch the satellite and do maintenance on the satellite the way you can't a car or a tank or a plane or a ship or something like that. And that is true. However, right, comma, I want to point out. You know, the satellite servicing industry is starting to develop where they're looking at robotic techniques in Cape abilities to go up in services satellite on orbit. And that's very promising off course. You got to think through the security policy that goes with that, of course. But the other thing that's really exciting is with artificial intelligence and machine learning and edge computing and database analytics and all those things that right on the cloud. You may not even need to send a robotic vehicle to a satellite, right? If you can upload and download software defined, fill in the blank right, maybe even fundamentally changing the mission package or the persona, if you will, of the satellite or the spacecraft. And that's really exciting to, ah, lot >>of >>security policy that you've gotta work through. But again, the cloud just opens up so many opportunities to continue to push the boundaries. You know, on the AWS team, the aerospace and satellite team, which is, you know, the new team that I'm leading. Now our motto is to the stars through the cloud. And there are just so many exciting opportunities right for for all those capabilities that I just mentioned to the stars through the cloud >>President, your thoughts on this? >>Yes, eso won >>a >>little bit of time talking about some of the business model implications and some of the challenges that exists there. Um, in my experience, we're still working through a bit of a language barrier of how we define risk management for our space systems. Traditionally traditionally risk management models is it is very clear what poses a risk to a flight mission. Our space mission, our space system. Um, and we're still finding ways to communicate cyber risk in the same terms that are system engineers are space engineers have traditionally understood. Um, this is a bit of a qualitative versus quantitative, a language barrier. But however adopting a risk management model that includes cybersecurity, a za way to express wish risk to miss the success, I think I think it would be a very good thing is something that that we have been focused on the J. P o as we Aziz, we look at the 34 years beyond. How do >>we >>risk that gap and not only skills but communication of cyber risk and the way that our space engineers and our project engineers and a space system managers understand >>Clinton, like Thio talk about space Force because this is the most popular new thing. It's only a couple of nine months in roughly not even a year, uh, already changing involving based on some of the reporting we've done even here at this symposium and on the Internet. Um, you know, when I was growing up, you know, I wasn't there when JFK said, you know, we're gonna get to the moon. I was born in the sixties, so, you know, when I was graduating my degree, you know, Draper Labs, Lincoln Lab, JPL, their pipeline and people wasn't like a surge of job openings. Um, so this kind of this new space new space race, you know, Kennedy also said that Torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans. So in a way that's happening right now with space force. A new generation is here is a digital generation. It's multi disciplinary generation. Could you take a minute and share, uh, for for our audience? And here at this symposium, um, the mission of Space Force and where you see it going because this truly is different. And I think anyone who's young e I mean, you know, if this was happening when I was in college would be like dropping everything. I'm in there, I think, cause there's so many areas thio jump into, um, it's >>intellectually challenging. >>It's intoxicating in some level. So can you share your thoughts? >>Yeah. Happy to do that. Of course. I I need to remind everybody that as a week ago I'm formally retired. So I'm not an official spokesman for US forces. But with that, you know, it said I did spend the last 18 months planning for it, designing and standing it up. And I'll tell you what's really exciting is you know, the commander of, uh, US Base Force General J. Raymond, who's the right leader at the right time. No question in my >>mind. But >>he said, I want to stand up the Space Force as the first fully digital service in the United States. Right? So he is trying >>to bake >>cloud baked cybersecurity, baked digital transformational processes and everything we did. And that was a guidance he gave us every day, every day. When we rolled in. He said, Remember, guys, I don't wanna be the same. I don't wanna be stale. I want new thinking, new capabilities and I want it all to be digital on. That's one of the reasons When we brought the first wave of people into the space force, we brought in space operations, right. People like me that flew satellites and launch rockets, we brought in cyber space experts, and we brought in intelligence experts. Those were the first three waves of people because of that, you know, perfect synergy between space and cyber and intel all wrapped in >>it. >>And so that was really, really smart. The other thing I'll say just about, you know, Kennedy's work. We're going to get to the moon. So here we are. Now we're going back to the Moon Project Artemus that NASA is working next man first woman on the moon by 2024 is the plan and >>then >>with designs to put a permanent presence on the moon and then lean off to march. So there was a lot to get excited about. I will tell you, as we were taking applications and looking at rounding out filling out the village in the U. S. Space Force, we were overwhelmed with the number of people that wanted, and that was a really, really good things. So they're off to a good start, and they're just gonna accomplishment major things. I know for sure. >>Preston, your thoughts on this new generation people out there were like I could get into this. This is a path. What's your what's your opinion on this? And what's your >>E could, uh, you so bold as to say >>that >>I feel like I'm a part of that new generation eso I grew up very much into space. Uh, looking at, um, listen to my, uh, folks I looked up to like Carl Sagan. Like like Neil Tyson. DeGrasse on did really feeling affinity for what What this country has done is for is a space program are focused on space exploration on bond. Through that, I got into our security, as it means from the military. And I just because I feel so fortunate that I could merge both of those worlds because of because of the generational, um, tailoring that we do thio promote space exploration and also the advent of cybersecurity expertise that is needed in this country. I feel like that. We are We are seeing a conversions of this too. I see a lot of young people really getting into space exploration. I see a lot of young people as well. Um uh, gravitating toward cybersecurity as a as a course of study. And to see those two worlds colliding and converse is something that's very near and dear to me. And again, I I feel like I'm a byproduct of that conversion, which is which, Really, Bothwell for space security in the future, >>we'll your great leader and inspiration. Certainly. Senior person as well. Congratulations, Steve. You know, young people motivational. I mean, get going. Get off the sidelines. Jump in Water is fine, Right? Come on in. What's your view on motivating the young workforce out there and anyone thinking about applying their skills on bringing something to the table? >>Well, look at the options today. You have civil space President represents you have military space. Uh, you have commercial space on and even, you know, in academia, the research, the potential as a as an aspiring cyber professional. All of you should be thinking about when we when we When? When we first invented the orbit, which eventually became the Internet, Uh, on Lee, we were, uh if all we had the insight to think Well, geez, you know whether the security implications 2030 years from now of this thing scaling on growing and I think was really good about today's era. Especially as Clint said, because we were building this space infrastructure with a cyber professionals at ground zero on dso the So the opportunity there is to look out into the future and say we're not just trying to secure independent her systems today and assure the free for all of of information for commerce. You know, the GPS signal, Uh, is Justus much in need of protection as anything else tied to our economy, But the would have fantastic mission. And you could do that. Uh, here on the ground. You could do it, uh, at a great companies like Amazon Web services. But you can also one of these states. Perhaps we go and be part of that contingency that goes and does the, uh, the se's oh job that that president has on the moon or on Mars and, uh, space will space will get boring within a generation or two because they'll just be seen as one continuum of everything we have here on Earth. And, uh, and that would be after our time. But in the meantime, is a very exciting place to be. And I know if I was in in my twenties, I wanna be, uh, jumping in with both feet into it. >>Yeah, great stuff. I mean, I think space is gonna be around for a long long time. It's super exciting and cybersecurity making it secure. And there's so many areas defeating on. Gentlemen, thank you very much for your awesome insight. Great panel. Um, great inspiration. Every one of you guys. Thank you very much for for sharing for the space and cybersecurity symposium. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. >>Thanks, John. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, >>I'm >>John for your host for the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium. Thanks for watching.

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of Actifio Data Driven 2020, brought to you by Actifio. >> Hi everybody this is Dave Vellante, full of preview of Actifio Data Driven, and with me is Brian Reagan who is a long time cube alumni, good friend. Brian, awesome to see you thanks for coming on and help us set up Data Driven >> Dave it's always a pleasure to be here, thanks for having me. >> So this is one of our favorite events of the season, not only because it's historically been in Boston, but it's a really good intimate event, lot of customer content. Unfortunately this year, of course everything has gone virtual but tell us about that, what do you guys got planned for Data Driven this year? >> Well again we're delighted to be able to put the show on, in spite of all of the challenges of travel and face to face. As you know from years past, Data Driven has always been sort of by the customers for the customers, very much an event that is driven around understanding how customers are using data strategically, and how Actifio is helping them do that to power their businesses. This year is no different, I think what we've done is we've taken the best of the physical events, which is really facilitating fireside chats and panels of people using our technology to move the business forward with data, but also added a lot of things that frankly are impossible to do when you're strained by a physical event, which is be able to run a series of on demand technical sessions. Our technical tracks are always standing room only, so now we can offer more content, more discreet package content that can be consumed the day of the event and on for a year plus after the event. So we're excited to really sort of mix the best of both worlds virtual and the forums that have worked so well for us in the physical events. >> Well it's like I said I mean, lots of these events are sort of vendor fests, but what you do with Data Driven is you bring in the customer's voice. And I remember last year in theCUBE, we had Holly st. Clair who was with the state of Massachusetts, she was awesome. We had a guest from DraftKings, which was really, really tremendous. Of course, you see what's happening with those guys now just exploding. >> Exactly. >> But we also had a lot of fun, when of course Ash comes on, and all the Actifio folk, but we had Frank Gens on, the first and only time we've ever had him on theCUBE, he's now retired from IDC, I guess semiretired. We had Duplessie on, which was a lot of fun. So it's just a good vibe. >> Yeah, we made a conscious decision to your point not to avoid the traditional vendor fest, and bludgeoning people with PowerPoint throughout the day, and really wanted to make it spin it around, and have the customers tell their stories in their own words, and really talk about the themes that are both common, in terms of challenges, ways that they've addressed those challenges, but also dig into the real implications of when they do solve these challenges, what are the unintended consequences? It's sort of like the... In a lot of ways I think about the journey that customers went through with VMware and with the ability to spin up VMs effortlessly, was a fantastic first step, and then all of a sudden they realized they had all of these spun up Vms that were consuming resources that they didn't necessarily had thought about at the very beginning. I think that our customers as they progress through their journey with Actifio, once they realize the power of being able to access data and deliver data, no matter how big it is, in any form factor in any cloud, there's incredible power there, but there also comes with that a real need to make sure that the governance and controls and management systems are in place to properly deliver that. Particularly today when everything is distributed, everything is essentially at arms length, so that's part of the fun of these events is really being able to hear all of the ways these unique customers are, adding value, delivering value, gaining value, from the platform. >> What's it's interesting you mentioned VMs, it was like life changing when you saw your first VM get spun up and you're like, wow, this is unbelievable, and then it was so easy to spin up. and then you just save VM creep and copy creep. >> Right. >> And you're seeing some similar things now with cloud I mean example is the cloud data warehouses is so easy to spin those things up now. The CFOs are looking at the bill going Whoa, what are we doing here? >> (laughs) >> You're going to see the same thing >> Exactly. >> with containers as you begin to persist containers, you're going to have the same problem. So you guys created the category, it's always a marketing executives dreams to be able to create a category. You guys created the Copy Data Management category, and of course, you've extended that. But that was really good, it was something that you guys set forth and then all the analysts picked up on it, people now use that as a term and it kind of resonates with everybody. >> Right, right. It was bittersweet but also very satisfying to start to see other vendors come out with their own Copy Data Management offerings, and so yes the validating that in fact this is a real problem in the enterprise continues to be a real problem in the enterprise, and by using technologies that Actifio really pioneered and patented quite a bit of foundational technologies around, we're able to help customers address those copy data challenges, those spiraling costs of managing all of these duplicate, physical instances of data. And to your point, to some degree when you're on-prem in a data center and you've already bought your storage array. Okay, I'm consuming 20% more of the Ray or 100% more of the array than I really need to be, but I've already paid for the array. When it comes to cloud, those bills are adding up hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and those are real costs, and so in many ways cloud is actually highlighting the power and frankly the problem of copy data, far more than the on-prem phenomenon ever did. >> Yeah I was on the phone with a former CIO, COO now of a healthcare organization, and he was saying to me there's a dark side of CapEx to OPEX, which is now that he's a COO he's like really concerned about the income statement and the variability of those costs, and so to your point I mean it's a big issue, the convenience seems to be outweighing some of that concern but nonetheless lack of predictability is a real concern there. >> Absolutely, absolutely. And I think we see that... You mentioned data lakes, and whether you call it a data lake or you just call it a massive data instance, one of the speakers of Data Driven this year is a customer of our Century Data Systems down in Florida. And they have 120 terabyte database that actually they're using, and this is an incredible story that we're excited to have them share with the world during Data Driven. They're using it to help the federal government get better data faster on COVID treatments and the efficacy of those treatments, and so to even consider being able to rapidly access and manage 120 terabyte instance. It breaks the laws of physics frankly. But again with Copy Data Management, we have the ability to help them really extend and really enhance their business and ultimately enhance the data flows that are hopefully going to accelerate the access to a vaccine for us in North American and worldwide, quite frankly. >> That's awesome, that's awesome. Now let's talk a little bit more about Data Driven what we can expect. Of course, the last couple of years you've been the host of Data Driven. They pulled a Ricky gervais' on you >> (Laughs loudly) like get the golden gloves, he's no longer being invited to host, but I think probably for different reasons, but what are some the major themes that we can expect this year? >> Yeah, we were disappointed that we couldn't get Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. >> (laughs quietly) I think we decided that in a virtual construct, the host duties were pretty amenable. So among the many things I talked about Sentry Data Systems and we have many customers who are going to be joining us and telling their stories. And again from accelerating data analytics to accelerating DevOps initiatives, to accelerating a move to the cloud, we're going to hear all of those different use cases described. One of the things that is different this year and we're really excited. Gene Kim sort of the author and noted DevOps guru, author of The Phoenix Project and The Unicorn Project, he's going to be joining us. We had previously intended to do a road show with Gene this year and obviously those plans got changed a bit. So really excited to have him join us, talk about his point of view around DevOps. Certainly it's a hugely important use case for us, really important for many of our customers, and actually registrant's between now and the event, which is September 15th and 16th, we'll get an eCopy an e-book copy of his Unicorn Project book. So we're eager to have people register and if they haven't already read him then I think they're going to be really pleasantly surprised to see how accessible his materials are, and yet how meaningful and how powerful they can be in terms of articulating the journeys that many of these businesses are going through. >> Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. I'm stucked I have not read that material, but I've heard a lot about it, and when I signed up I saw that, said great I'm going to get the free book. So I'm going to check that out, >> Yeah It's obviously a very, very hot topic. Well Brian, I really appreciate you coming on, and setting up the event. What are the details? So where do I go to sign up? When is the event? What's the format? Give us the lowdown. >> It is September 15th and 16th, actifio.com will guide you through the registration process. You'll be able to create the event based on the content that you're eager to participate in. And again not only on the 15th and 16th, but then into the future, you'll be able to go back and re access or access content that you didn't have the time to do during the event window. So we're really excited to be able to offer that as an important part of the event. >> Fantastic and of course theCUBE will be there doing its normal wall to wall coverage. Of course, this time virtual, and you'll see us on social media with all the clips and all the work on Silicon Angle. So Brian great to see you and we will see you online in September. >> Thanks, Dave. >> All right, and thank you. Go to actifio.com, sign up register for Data Driven, this is Dave Vellante for theCUBE, we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)