>>From around the globe, it's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel and AWS. >>We continue our coverage here on the cube of AWS reinvent 2020 I'm John Wallace, glad to be with you here and glad that you've joined us for an important discussion. You know, a lot of companies and many industries are making a very concerted effort toward promoting greater diversity and inclusion within their various workforces. And the renewable energy industry is certainly a big part of that movement. And here to talk about how AWS is supporting that and what the industry itself is doing. I'm proud to and pleased to welcome three guests. We have Shannon Kellogg with us from AWS. He's the vice president of public policy for the Americas. Shannon, thanks for being with us here on the cube. >>You back. Thank you. And great >>Whetstone, who is the president and CEO of the American council on renewable energy. We're going to call it a core from here on out, and also joining us Colleen Pickford, who was the EVP at ACOR, and welcome to both of you. Glad we could have it here on the cube. Glad to be here. John's great. You bet. Absolutely looking forward to this discussion first off, Shannon, let me, let me turn it over to you. I know, uh, AWS had some fairly significant announcements, uh, very recently about renewable and, um, you know, launching that on, around reinvent 2020, if he would take us through that a little bit about that commitment and what exactly that news was all about. >>Well, thank you on, uh, Amazon overall, uh, made a very, uh, significant announcement, uh, last week of 26, uh, renewable energy projects around the world. Uh, so many of those here in the U S but also, uh, many of those, uh, internationally and, um, the announcements, uh, collectively last week, along with what we've already announced previously in renewable energy projects now makes us the largest, uh, corporate, uh, buyer of renewable energy in the world. And so we're really excited about that. Um, this is part of our longterm, uh, efforts, uh, to be a hundred percent renewable, um, in our, uh, uh, footprint around the AWS infrastructure, uh, footprint, uh, but also a part of the broader, uh, commitment that we have at Amazon, including around climate and sustainability. So, uh, we were really super excited about last week from now. >>Yeah. Can you give me an idea of the flavor of the projects? I mean, you're talking about more than two dozen, uh, and as you said there around the world, so I assumed pretty wide variety of impacts and, and of, uh, initiatives as well, but maybe just to give those watching at home and idea of what the scale at this point. >>Well, it's a mix of, uh, solar and wind, uh, projects. Uh, like I said, both in the U S and abroad. Um, we had previously announced, uh, uh, several, um, solar projects in the Commonwealth of Virginia. For example, with last week's announcements, we added more, uh, solar, uh, in Virginia, we had previously, uh, uh, announced, uh, wind projects in Ohio and we added more, uh, wind, uh, and, um, uh, you know, large scale utility scale projects in Ohio. And so we also included other States of course, are in the U S and in countries as well, including, uh, one of the first offshore, uh, projects, uh, offshore wind projects that we've done, uh, with, uh, in this case with, uh, off of the coast of Germany. >>All right, Greg, when you hear about that kind of commitment that AWS is making, uh, in terms of, uh, not only from a geographical standpoint, but from a variety of standpoint, we're talking about when we're talking about solar, um, I mean, what is, what stands out to you with regard to the, the impact of that kind of commitment and that kind of initiative >>Kale it's really impactful. It's such an impressive thing to be able to bring that many new renewable projects that are that big online in a single year, that the total amount of new clean generation is on the order of 4,000 megawatts. It wasn't that long ago. That would be a great year for the renewable sector as a whole in the United States. If you go back 10, 12 years. So the idea that one company is now procuring so much renewable power is phenomenally exciting, and we're just so proud of Amazon and it's big progress toward Amazon. So a hundred percent goal, uh, and really, uh, toward the broader effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions rapidly enough to stay within shouting distance of what scientists say we need to do in order to protect our planet's climate. >>Right. Great point. Uh, Colleen, I know you made an interesting point recently, you were talking about the accelerated membership program, which is, uh, an initiative that you've just launched, uh, in terms of trying to create greater diversity and equity and inclusion within the renewable energy, uh, workforce, uh, AWS big sponsor of that, um, founding partner. Uh, if you would tell us a little bit more about that program, uh, and, and what you see is what you hope it's near term or short term impact might be. And then maybe the long tail of that, you know, what kind of impact you can have eventually? >>Yeah, absolutely a core like toward like many in our industry, we've been looking at how we can play a role in creating a more equitable and just future. Um, and we were lucky because we have board members who went during our normal boring board meetings, and we're looking at our membership, asked me, they said, what are you doing to bring more diversity into a core membership? And I had to say, not enough, and that's really the Genesis for the accelerate program. And we were really fortunate to have Shannon and Amazon and our other board members work with us to develop a program that will create opportunities for companies that are owned or led by women or people of color to access a core in all of our benefits for two years and create additional resources for them to really grow their businesses in a way that they may not otherwise be able to. >>Yeah. Shannon did point out that you are board members, Colleen just, just mentioned, um, uh, of a core. What is it about this particular initiative that you think that has peaked the AWS entrust? >>This is Colleen said, uh, we were discussing at the board level, you know, ways that we could, um, do more as a or, uh, in this companies in this sector, promote diversity and inclusion. And we were brainstorming one day and came up with this, uh, with this idea, you know, it's, I'm really excited about it because, um, we're basically going out and offering a core membership and other services, uh, to entrepreneurs and small businesses in the sector led by, uh, minorities and, um, uh, women leaders. And this is just a fantastic opportunity to assist companies and organizations that are just getting started, uh, in an encourages innovation and encourages obviously diversity and inclusion. And so we're super excited about this effort. >>Is this, is this something that you can direct toward a company of any specific size? I mean, Shannon just touched on it, small business, um, but is, is this applicable? The, the, the accelerate program is this geared toward just the small businesses, larger >>Turn in Britain. Uh, we want to bring more diversity in the sector. We want to help. And it's really the smaller companies that need assistance and making those connections and participating, uh, and gaining the access, uh, and maybe mentoring pro bono services. Uh, we want to help those small companies become bigger, grow this sector and, and help enhance the diversity, the leadership in this sector from underrepresented communities. We want, you know, like much of the economy we recognize the renewable energy sector does not yet look like America looks and that's something we're all fighting to achieve. And it's, uh, incredibly helpful to have an Amazon is really the founding supporter of this program. And after Amazon stepped up, uh, seen a number of other companies join in and helping make this a reality. And we've got a lot of momentum now, very excited about the accelerate program. >>Colleen, I like to hear a little bit more from you on the partnership with AWS in general. Um, I know this isn't the first time that you all have partnered together. So if you would maybe fill in some of the blanks about that history that led us to this initiative, and then for them being the one of the founding partners along with the Berkshire Hathaway foundation. >>Sure. I mean, Amazon's been a member of our board for a number of years now, their commitment to the industry is clear and, you know, Shannon and his whole team actively participate across a core providing us with guidance and with insights like these. I think when you look at what we've done with the accelerate program, you know, it's not the first stop for a new small company organization like eight core, but we can have a measurable impact on their go to market strategies and their ability to grow their business. And Shannon and Amazon gave us that insight and they gave us some additional insights about what we could provide through the accelerate program that could really help make a difference for those companies. >>Hmm. You know, Greg, um, if I could just flip the script just a little bit here or, or, uh, get you back on to the discussion about climate change in general. I know that's just obviously, uh, the, the, a key driver to your organization's mission. Just your thoughts about, you know, where we stand, that you talked about trying to be within shouting distance of certain goals. I know there's been discussion about United States for joining the Paris accord, um, and committing to voluntary, uh, uh, emissions controls, just, I mean, where are we in your mind in terms of, of trying to seriously address the problem >>We're behind? I mean, the surprising thing is the renewable sector has been growing at a booming pace. We had over $60 billion in investment last year and wind and solar power, uh, one of the most important economic drivers for the country. Um, we're going to end up despite all of the difficulties presented by 2020 with a pandemic, we're going to have record renewable energy growth in 2020, we're going to bust through the old record, which was about 23,000 megawatts. And we'll be more like 27,000 megawatts. So that's great, but to get our arms around the climate issue, we know we have to grow much more rapidly. We've set a goal at a core of achieving a trillion dollars and investment by 2030, starting when we launched that program back in 2018, uh, and we made a lot of headway, but we're behind. We need to be investing closer to 90, a hundred billion a year in order to see that growth in logging at growth at a much higher rate, we feel really optimistic about getting a tailwind from the new administration, the desire to build back that, or, uh, the clear focus on policies and that value the ability to generate power, to make our economy grow and grow dramatically without greenhouse emissions, without adding to, uh, climate change. >>So, uh, um, I'm optimistic we can get there, but we know we gotta step it up as much as we've been growing as successful as we've been. It's not enough. And we know that >>Colleen, how does your organization in ACOR trumpet that, um, I know you talked about the nexus of finance and policy and technology. Obviously policy is what, uh, is at the center of this particular discussion, but, but how, how can you in the coming year, especially, um, be a, a key driver in that discussion? >>Well, I think, you know, we bring together a really unique stakeholder group from all across the renewable energy industry. And we take those stakeholders and it gives us a magnified voice to share the message of what's needed to really drive more Watts of renewable energy onto the grid. And what are those barriers in policy to making that possible? So, I mean, that's really how we do it is we bring together the most unique group together, >>But we appreciate the work. Uh, no question about that. It is a dire need that needs to be addressed. And we certainly thank you for that. Uh, Shannon, we thank AWS for their support, not only of this initiative, but of all that you're doing around the world. And, uh, we certainly wish you all the best of success with the accelerate membership program and creating these better hiring opportunities within your industry. So thank you all very much for joining us here on the cube.

>> From Cambridge, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE covering MIT Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Symposium 2019 brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. (upbeat techno music) >> Hi everybody, welcome back to Cambridge, Massachusetts. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in tech coverage. We go out to the events. We extract the signal from the noise, and we're here at the MIT CDOIQ Conference, Chief Data Officer Information Quality Conference. It is the 13th year here at the Tang building. We've outgrown this building and have to move next year. It's fire marshal full. Gokula Mishra is here. He is the Senior Director of Global Data and Analytics and Supply Chain-- >> Formerly. Former, former Senior Director. >> Former! I'm sorry. It's former Senior Director of Global Data Analytics and Supply Chain at McDonald's. Oh, I didn't know that. I apologize my friend. Well, welcome back to theCUBE. We met when you were at Oracle doing data. So you've left that, you're on to your next big thing. >> Yes, thinking through it. >> Fantastic, now let's start with your career. You've had, so you just recently left McDonald's. I met you when you were at Oracle, so you cut over to the dark side for a while, and then before that, I mean, you've been a practitioner all your life, so take us through sort of your background. >> Yeah, I mean my beginning was really with a company called Tata Burroughs. Those days we did not have a lot of work getting done in India. We used to send people to U.S. so I was one of the pioneers of the whole industry, coming here and working on very interesting projects. But I was lucky to be working on mostly data analytics related work, joined a great company called CS Associates. I did my Master's at Northwestern. In fact, my thesis was intelligent databases. So, building AI into the databases and from there on I have been with Booz Allen, Oracle, HP, TransUnion, I also run my own company, and Sierra Atlantic, which is part of Hitachi, and McDonald's. >> Awesome, so let's talk about use of data. It's evolved dramatically as we know. One of the themes in this conference over the years has been sort of, I said yesterday, the Chief Data Officer role emerged from the ashes of sort of governance, kind of back office information quality compliance, and then ascended with the tailwind of the Big Data meme, and it's kind of come full circle. People are realizing actually to get value out of data, you have to have information quality. So those two worlds have collided together, and you've also seen the ascendancy of the Chief Digital Officer who has really taken a front and center role in some of the more strategic and revenue generating initiatives, and in some ways the Chief Data Officer has been a supporting role to that, providing the quality, providing the compliance, the governance, and the data modeling and analytics, and a component of it. First of all, is that a fair assessment? How do you see the way in which the use of data has evolved over the last 10 years? >> So to me, primarily, the use of data was, in my mind, mostly around financial reporting. So, anything that companies needed to run their company, any metrics they needed, any data they needed. So, if you look at all the reporting that used to happen it's primarily around metrics that are financials, whether it's around finances around operations, finances around marketing effort, finances around reporting if it's a public company reporting to the market. That's where the focus was, and so therefore a lot of the data that was not needed for financial reporting was what we call nowadays dark data. This is data we collect but don't do anything with it. Then, as the capability of the computing, and the storage, and new technologies, and new techniques evolve, and are able to handle more variety and more volume of data, then people quickly realize how much potential they have in the other data outside of the financial reporting data that they can utilize too. So, some of the pioneers leverage that and actually improved a lot in their efficiency of operations, came out with innovation. You know, GE comes to mind as one of the companies that actually leverage data early on, and number of other companies. Obviously, you look at today data has been, it's defining some of the multi-billion dollar company and all they have is data. >> Well, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft. >> Exactly. >> Apple, I mean Apple obviously makes stuff, but those other companies, they're data companies. I mean largely, and those five companies have the highest market value on the U.S. stock exchange. They've surpassed all the other big leaders, even Berkshire Hathaway. >> So now, what is happening is because the market changes, the forces that are changing the behavior of our consumers and customers, which I talked about which is everyone now is digitally engaging with each other. What that does is all the experiences now are being captured digitally, all the services are being captured digitally, all the products are creating a lot of digital exhaust of data and so now companies have to pay attention to engage with their customers and partners digitally. Therefore, they have to make sure that they're leveraging data and analytics in doing so. The other thing that has changed is the time to decision to the time to act on the data inside that you get is shrinking, and shrinking, and shrinking, so a lot more decision-making is now going real time. Therefore, you have a situation now, you have the capability, you have the technology, you have the data now, you have to make sure that you convert that in what I call programmatic kind of data decision-making. Obviously, there are people involved in more strategic decision-making. So, that's more manual, but at the operational level, it's going more programmatic decision-making. >> Okay, I want to talk, By the way, I've seen a stat, I don't know if you can confirm this, that 80% of the data that's out there today is dark data or it's data that's behind a firewall or not searchable, not open to Google's crawlers. So, there's a lot of value there-- >> So, I would say that percent is declining over time as companies have realized the value of data. So, more and more companies are removing the silos, bringing those dark data out. I think the key to that is companies being able to value their data, and as soon as they are able to value their data, they are able to leverage a lot of the data. I still believe there's a large percent still not used or accessed in companies. >> Well, and of course you talked a lot about data monetization. Doug Laney, who's an expert in that topic, we had Doug on a couple years ago when he, just after, he wrote Infonomics. He was on yesterday. He's got a very detailed prescription as to, he makes strong cases as to why data should be valued like an asset. I don't think anybody really disagrees with that, but then he gave kind of a how-to-do-it, which will, somewhat, make your eyes bleed, but it was really well thought out, as you know. But you talked a lot about data monetization, you talked about a number of ways in which data can contribute to monetization. Revenue, cost reduction, efficiency, risk, and innovation. Revenue and cost is obvious. I mean, that's where the starting point is. Efficiency is interesting. I look at efficiency as kind of a doing more with less but it's sort of a cost reduction, but explain why it's not in the cost bucket, it's different. >> So, it is first starts with doing what we do today cheaper, better, faster, and doing more comes after that because if you don't understand, and data is the way to understand how your current processes work, you will not take the first step. So, to take the first step is to understand how can I do this process faster, and then you focus on cheaper, and then you focus on better. Of course, faster is because of some of the market forces and customer behavior that's driving you to do that process faster. >> Okay, and then the other one was risk reduction. I think that makes a lot of sense here. Actually, let me go back. So, one of the key pieces of it, of efficiency is time to value. So, if you can compress the time, or accelerate the time and you get the value that means more cash in house faster, whether it's cost reduction or-- >> And the other aspect you look at is, can you automate more of the processes, and in that way it can be faster. >> And that hits the income statement as well because you're reducing headcount cost of your, maybe not reducing headcount cost, but you're getting more out of different, out ahead you're reallocating them to more strategic initiatives. Everybody says that but the reality is you hire less people because you just automated. And then, risk reduction, so the degree to which you can lower your expected loss. That's just instead thinking in insurance terms, that's tangible value so certainly to large corporations, but even midsize and small corporations. Innovation, I thought was a good one, but maybe you could use an example of, give us an example of how in your career you've seen data contribute to innovation. >> So, I'll give an example of oil and gas industry. If you look at speed of innovation in the oil and gas industry, they were all paper-based. I don't know how much you know about drilling. A lot of the assets that goes into figuring out where to drill, how to drill, and actually drilling and then taking the oil or gas out, and of course selling it to make money. All of those processes were paper based. So, if you can imagine trying to optimize a paper-based innovation, it's very hard. Not only that, it's very, very by itself because it's on paper, it's in someone's drawer or file. So, it's siloed by design and so one thing that the industry has gone through, they recognize that they have to optimize the processes to be better, to innovate, to find, for example, shale gas was a result output of digitizing the processes because otherwise you can't drill faster, cheaper, better to leverage the shale gas drilling that they did. So, the industry went through actually digitizing a lot of the paper assets. So, they went from not having data to knowingly creating the data that they can use to optimize the process and then in the process they're innovating new ways to drill the oil well cheaper, better, faster. >> In the early days of oil exploration in the U.S. go back to the Osage Indian tribe in northern Oklahoma, and they brilliantly, when they got shuttled around, they pushed him out of Kansas and they negotiated with the U.S. government that they maintain the mineral rights and so they became very, very wealthy. In fact, at one point they were the wealthiest per capita individuals in the entire world, and they used to hold auctions for various drilling rights. So, it was all gut feel, all the oil barons would train in, and they would have an auction, and it was, again, it was gut feel as to which areas were the best, and then of course they evolved, you remember it used to be you drill a little hole, no oil, drill a hole, no oil, drill a hole. >> You know how much that cost? >> Yeah, the expense is enormous right? >> It can vary from 10 to 20 million dollars. >> Just a giant expense. So, now today fast-forward to this century, and you're seeing much more sophisticated-- >> Yeah, I can give you another example in pharmaceutical. They develop new drugs, it's a long process. So, one of the initial process is to figure out what molecules this would be exploring in the next step, and you could have thousand different combination of molecules that could treat a particular condition, and now they with digitization and data analytics, they're able to do this in a virtual world, kind of creating a virtual lab where they can test out thousands of molecules. And then, once they can bring it down to a fewer, then the physical aspect of that starts. Think about innovation really shrinking their processes. >> All right, well I want to say this about clouds. You made the statement in your keynote that how many people out there think cloud is cheaper, or maybe you even said cheap, but cheaper I inferred cheaper than an on-prem, and so it was a loaded question so nobody put their hand up they're afraid, but I put my hand up because we don't have any IT. We used to have IT. It was a nightmare. So, for us it's better but in your experience, I think I'm inferring correctly that you had meant cheaper than on-prem, and certainly we talked to many practitioners who have large systems that when they lift and shift to the cloud, they don't change their operating model, they don't really change anything, they get a bill at the end of the month, and they go "What did this really do for us?" And I think that's what you mean-- >> So what I mean, let me make it clear, is that there are certain use cases that cloud is and, as you saw, that people did raise their hand saying "Yeah, I have use cases where cloud is cheaper." I think you need to look at the whole thing. Cost is one aspect. The flexibility and agility of being able to do things is another aspect. For example, if you have a situation where your stakeholder want to do something for three weeks, and they need five times the computing power, and the data that they are buying from outside to do that experiment. Now, imagine doing that in a physical war. It's going to take a long time just to procure and get the physical boxes, and then you'll be able to do it. In cloud, you can enable that, you can get GPUs depending on what problem we are trying to solve. That's another benefit. You can get the fit for purpose computing environment to that and so there are a lot of flexibility, agility all of that. It's a new way of managing it so people need to pay attention to the cost because it will add to the cost. The other thing I will point out is that if you go to the public cloud, because they make it cheaper, because they have hundreds and thousands of this canned CPU. This much computing power, this much memory, this much disk, this much connectivity, and they build thousands of them, and that's why it's cheaper. Well, if your need is something that's very unique and they don't have it, that's when it becomes a problem. Either you need more of those and the cost will be higher. So, now we are getting to the IOT war. The volume of data is growing so much, and the type of processing that you need to do is becoming more real-time, and you can't just move all this bulk of data, and then bring it back, and move the data back and forth. You need a special type of computing, which is at the, what Amazon calls it, adds computing. And the industry is kind of trying to design it. So, that is an example of hybrid computing evolving out of a cloud or out of the necessity that you need special purpose computing environment to deal with new situations, and all of it can't be in the cloud. >> I mean, I would argue, well I guess Microsoft with Azure Stack was kind of the first, although not really. Now, they're there but I would say Oracle, your former company, was the first one to say "Okay, we're going to put the exact same infrastructure on prem as we have in the public cloud." Oracle, I would say, was the first to truly do that-- >> They were doing hybrid computing. >> You now see Amazon with outposts has done the same, Google kind of has similar approach as Azure, and so it's clear that hybrid is here to stay, at least for some period of time. I think the cloud guys probably believe that ultimately it's all going to go to the cloud. We'll see it's going to be a long, long time before that happens. Okay! I'll give you last thoughts on this conference. You've been here before? Or is this your first one? >> This is my first one. >> Okay, so your takeaways, your thoughts, things you might-- >> I am very impressed. I'm a practitioner and finding so many practitioners coming from so many different backgrounds and industries. It's very, very enlightening to listen to their journey, their story, their learnings in terms of what works and what doesn't work. It is really invaluable. >> Yeah, I tell you this, it's always a highlight of our season and Gokula, thank you very much for coming on theCUBE. It was great to see you. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. All right, keep it right there everybody. We'll be back with our next guest, Dave Vellante. Paul Gillin is in the house. You're watching theCUBE from MIT. Be right back! (upbeat techno music)

>> live from Las Vegas. It's the queue covering del Technologies. World twenty nineteen, brought to you by Del Technologies and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to the cubes. Live coverage here, Adele. Technology rule in Las Vegas. I'm John for Developed, a special guest. Michael Dell, Chairman, CEO, Del Technologies Cube. Alumni. Great to see you again. Yearly pilgrimage. People can come on the Cube. Good to see you again. Thanks. May always >> Great to be with you guys. >> All right, So I gotta ask you because, you know, Dave and I were talking on yesterday's kickoff on our intro about the conversation we had. I think six years ago we saw you standing there in Austin, but still a public company didn't go private yet. And then the series of moves going private and we're like, That's great. Get behind the curtain. Get things reset. Look at the cash flows. Looking good. You had the clear plan as the founder and CEO is kind of a new kind of reset, if you will. And then up to now the execution in just the series of moves. When you look back now where you are today, where you were then how do you feel? What's absurd? What did you learn? What's some of the highlights for you? >> Well, look, we feel great, You know, our business is really grown tremendously. It's all the things we've been doing has been resonating with customers have been ableto, I would say, restored the origins of the entrepreneurial dream and success of the company and reintroduce, uh, innovation and risk taking into, ah, now ninety one billion dollars company growing in double digits last year and certainly the set of capabilities. That way, we've been able to build organically and in organically on DH with set of alliances. We have the trust that customers have given us, you know, super happy about the position that we're in and the opportunities going forward. As I've said, you know, a zay said Mikey. No, yesterday. I think all this is really just the pregame show. Tow what's ahead for our industry and for the role that technology is going to play in the world. >> And the role of data you mentioned also used to quote you Yes, that you said data a CZ the life, blood of digital transformation of the heartbeat, visual transformation and It's also revitalizing all the other components of what looked like a consolidated market is now actually being reborn the PC, technology, infrastructure, fabrics and other software opportunity. So Data has kind of brought in a whole nother level of kind of revitalisation and the industry, which is actually causing more investment in what looked like older category of you know it and computers whatnot. This's been a big, big tailwind for you guys. >> Well, data has always been at the centre of you know how the technology industry works and now we just have a tsunami explosion of data. And of course, now we have this new computer science that allows us Teo reason over the data in real time and create much better results in outcomes and that combined with the computing power, all organizations have to reimagine themselves, given all these technologies and certainly the infrastructure requirements in terms of the network, you know, the storage, that computer bill out of the edge, tons of new requirements, and we're super well positioned to go address all that. >> I enjoyed your keynote, Michael. So I thought it was excellent. One of your better ones and you painted a picture of tech for good. Uh, really life changing things that you guys and your customers are doing. You gave some examples that be an example of example was great Draper Labs. But you also paid a picture. You need a platform for this digital transformation. We've seen the numbers. Eighty percent of the workloads are still on Prem. What do you think that looks like ten years down the road? What do you What's your vision say? >> Well, the surprise outcome ten years from now is they'LL be something much bigger than the private cloud and Public Cloud. It's the edge and actually think that would be way more computer data on the edge in ten years than any of the, you know, derivatives of cloud that we want to talk about. So that's a ten year prediction. Yeah, that's that's That's kind of what I see. And maybe maybe nobody's predicting that this yet, But, you know, let's come back in ten years and see what it looks like. >> So I like to do that hybrid hybrid. Klaus been around for a while, but talked about. It's been kind of operating, Ma. We see that multi cloud is really kind of surged in importance in conversations because I think people wake up and go. Hey, I got multiple clouds. I got azure over here for ofthis three sixty five. I got some Amazon over here. I got some home grown stuff over here. I got a data center so that people kind of generally Khun, Khun, relate to the reality of multi cloud hybrid. Live it more of a different kind of twist, but certainly relevant. But multi cloud has got everyone's attention and you guys launched Del Cloud. Is that a multi cloud, or is that a cloud to multiple clouds? Explain your view on that and where this goes. >> So really, what we're doing is we're bringing to customers. All the resource is they need to operate in the hybrid, multi cloud world. And first, you have to recognize that the workloads want to move around and to say that they're all going to be here, or there is in some sense, missing the point because they're going to move back and forth. And, uh, you know, you've got regulation cost security performance late and see all sorts of new requirements that air coming at you and they're not going to just sit, sit in one place. Now, as you know, with via Work Cloud Foundation, we have the ability to move these workloads seamlessly across. Now, essentially all the public clouds, right. Forty, two hundred partners out there infrastructure on premise built and tuned specifically for the VM wear platform and empowered also for the edge and a love. This together is the Del Technologies Cloud. We have obviously great, uh, capabilities from our Delhi emcee infrastructure solutions and all the great innovations that Veum where coming together >> scale has been a topic. We talked on the Cube many years. We saw Amazon get scale with public cloud scales of competitive advantage is now becoming kind of table stakes both for customers trying to figure out how to operate a digital scale, speed a life. You guys have a scale level now that's pretty impressive. What you guys done with the puzzle pieces, You cut puzzle pieces, you know, cos capabilities now across the board, as you guys look at scale is a competitive advantage, which it is, and we talked about this before. You now have to integrate seamlessly in these pieces. So as you compose as customers compose the variety of capabilities. It's gotta be frictionless. That's a goal. How do you look at that? How do you talk to your team's about this on DH? What's your view on scale? And is this something you guys talk about inside the company? >> Well, inside the business, you know, the first priority was to get each of the individual pieces working well. But then we saw that the real opportunity was in the scenes on how we could more deeply integrate all the aspects of what we're doing together. And you saw that on stage, you know, in vivid form yesterday with Pat and Jeff and Sasha and even more today again. And there's more to do. There's, although there's always more to do. Were working on how we build a gate, a platform bringing together all of our capabilities with Bhumi and data protection on DH bm wear, and this is all going to be super important way. Enter this A I enabled age of the future. >> Michael, you got a track record of creating shareholder value. We're big fans of, you know, we'LL have CNBC on in the office and Michael's on everybody coming across, right? Davos? Picky, Quick. We're also big fans have asked you to sort of knocked down to three criticisms. And sure, it was really a conversation about stock price, you know? And you Did you knock down the debt structure? The low margin business, the ownership structure, its center. But you never came backto stock price, so it looks like a couple of ways to invest. Now VM wear directly. Also looks like Veum where you could you could buy cheaply through Del What your thoughts on on that? You know where Dell sits in the market today? Its value. >> I think. You know, investors are increasingly understanding that we've created an incredible business here and certainly, you know, if we look at the additional coverage that we have and you know, they're they're a CZ their understanding, the business, you know, some of the analysts are starting to say, Hey, this doesn't really feel like a conglomerate. Direct quote. Okay. And, uh, if you think about what we demonstrated today, yesterday and we'LL demonstrate the future, you know, we're not like Berkshire Hathaway or, uh you know, uh, this is not a railroad that owns a chain of restaurants. This is one integrated business that fits together incredibly well, and you know it's generating substantial cash flows. And, you know, I think investors overtime are figuring out value. That's intrinsic. Teo, the overall Del Technologies family now wave Got lots of ways to invest, right? Get, Be aware. SecureWorks pivotal. And, of course, the overall Del Technologies. >> Yeah, and just a follow up on that. I mean, I've observed on the margin side I mean, when del went private, it was around nineteen percent gross margins. Now you're in gross margin heaven, you know, absorbing the emcee. And it seems to be headed in the right right direction. So it's a nice mix >> know, in our in our cloud, an infrastructure group, almost ninety percent of the engineers are software engineers. And so you think aboutthe innovations you saw in states today with power Macs and Unity, X T and our power protect platform. You know, basically all software running on power power it surfers and platforms that we've created. >> What's on your plate now, Michael? As you come out, come out of Del Technologies world. You got business to take care of what your goals what's on your plate. What's your object? Is what you trying to accomplish in the next year? >> Well, certainly continuing to execute for our customers growing faster than the industry. You know, maintaining and improving our customer NPS levels and keeping the innovation engine cranked up on high. You saw a lot today on DH yesterday. Stay tuned, Veum. World's coming in in August and they'LL be much, much more way Continue toe innovate together Lucy with Veum where so we've got we've got lots more in the cube >> and you got cash will come in, which means your suppliers to a lot of customers Congratulations. I want to get your final thought on my final question on the Tech for good One of the things I saw yesterday on the Kino that you gave was that popped out wass. It wasn't about the speeds and feeds around, you know, the performances get great performance on the tech side. You gotta be, you know, the infrastructure level Scott be performing, but it's about solving problems. And I think this is a direction that you're taking the company saying there's outcomes out there. The problems that can be solved with tech We're hearing a whole tech for bad narrative in the media these days. Tax evil text. Bad. But there are awesome spots where technology is creating great things for society. This is a theme for you. Can you share? Why that focus? And when some of the highlights >> it's right. I mean, if you if you step back from the what happened in the last twenty four hours, twenty four days and even twenty four months, you start looking at, you know, twenty four years you start to see is thie. Outcomes for humanity have gotten dramatically better, and technologies played an enormous role in that. I'm massively optimistic that in the next three decades they're going to be really miracles. In terms of how do you dress things like deafness and blindness and paralysis with a I and embedded technology inside the body. The, you know, things were able to do now with sequencing the genome and using all this data to create personalized medicine solutions. Yes, technology can be used for bad, but the vast majority of it is used for good by people that have good in their hearts. Right. And and, uh, you know, uh, it goes beyond making great businesses and making people more productive. It's actually changing lives and very positive ways, >> while the other big narrative in the pressure here is automation and taking away jobs. And it's a serious concern. However, you know there's no reason to protect the past from from the future and this great opportunities ahead education and someone, even you and Susan but big supporters of that, obviously. So we're optimistic for the future. I know I know you are. The best is yet to come. As I'd like to say >> Absolutely, we agree. >> Once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur, you great entrepreneurial track record you celebrate thirty five years from the original dorm room. So some of your Facebook posts now here he took a business that you knew T mature couple players. This is a trend we're seeing. Zoom communication just went public. They took video streaming and holding meetings and completely when cloud base and disrupted it. You saw >> runs on Dell EMC by the way >> runs on Dell, did not know that it's only a lot of Michael great, but this is an entre. I want to get your advice to other articles that might be watching us because you now, with the technology with data and cloud and tech, you, Khun, go into existing markets that don't look good on paper that people might dismiss as that's over. That's a mature market You've certainly taken Del Technology's got all the pieces and are executing at a home of the level. Zoom did it for video on the cloud. There are zillions of these opportunities out there that entrepreneurs. So the advice don't be discouraged by what looks like a big fat market. So your what's your advice?  >> and I I feel something is coming. That's quite significant. And right now you mentioned this new wave of companies that air coming public and they were built on a foundation of technology infrastructure capabilities. You know that was established, Let's say, ten years ago. Okay, well, right now we're just at the kind of beginning of five G and A II technology, and all these embedded sensors and low latent see communications, and there will be a whole another wave of cos I suspect many, many more across all industries that, you know, just unlock all kinds of new capabilities and an opportunity. So I'm super excited about that. Andi, I think I think it's it's just going to get more interesting. >> It's amazing to think of the tools you had thirty five years ago, when you started and how you've transformed. So congratulations. >> Thank you. Spend the time again. Thanks for having us again here. Tenth year, Del Technologies. Well, thanks for having us. And great to have a conversation. >> Thank you. And the rest of the cube team for all your great coverage. >> Thank you very much. Michael Dell, Chairman, CEO, Dell Technology here. David Velante myself, John Furrier. Stay tuned for more day to coverage. We got two sets here. It's a cube canon of content blown out. The content here, Adele Technology, world Check out Dell's hashtag del tech world for all the highlights will be right back after this short break.

>> Live from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE covering the AWS Accenture Executive Summit. Brought to you by Accenture. >> Welcome back the theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Executive Summit here at the Venetian in Las Vegas. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We are joined by Gene Reznik, the Chief Strategy Officer at Accenture. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE, Gene. >> My pleasure, Rebecca. >> So, Accenture is calling this period of time that we are all living through a period of epic disruption. Define what that means for us. >> Sure, sure. So, well, I think we're living in a very disruptive age right now. But again, I think we believe over the next 10 years it's going to become even more epic. And I think what's driving that, some things are geopolitical in nature. Alright, uh. Sort of, everything between U.S. and China relations, what's happening in Europe, all of that. Of course, there's technological. Dynamics around artificial intelligence. Of course, there's data, there's privacy, there's security. And all that really compounding on each other. We believe it's creating an environment where it's just going to be very challenging for people, but also for companies to navigate. And I think leadership and big organizations and their teams have to be very thoughtful of how they navigate this time. And I think there's going to be some big winners and I think there's going to be some big losers. And I think we see companies today that have been around for hundreds of years challenged to really adapt, adjust, and transform to really be prepared for this next wave of change. >> So, as you said, it's a very restive time politically, technologically, business wise. How are companies approaching this? I mean, as you said, you have to be very thoughtful. You have to have a real strategy in terms of how you're going to approach this, an approach innovation. How would you say companies are doing? Give them a report card right now in terms of how industry is responding. >> Yeah, well I think the first thing we would sort of say, and we've done quite a bit of analysis, and study through Accenture research, and as you'd expect, different industries are under different amounts of pressure and disruption. Some, like music industry and book publishing and currently retail, are under tremendous pressure. And, many have not responded well. They were too slow. They saw the digital natives just really take away their businesses. Others are better protected. So we have really gone through and analyzed industry by industry how they are prepared for today and really what they need to do going forward. And I guess our assessment is it's very, very difficult, as you would expect, to take a big organization and transform it. And the issue is again, while a lot of it is technology, the people side, the culture side, the organizational side, the incumbency dimension, the shareholders, all those things that make change very difficult are at the core of the transformation agenda. >> And innovation is really sort of the answer to it all because once you're move innovative, then you are going to ride this wave of epic disruption. So, first of all, how would you, so many companies are saying we want to be more innovative. What's the answer to that? I mean, what does that mean to be more innovative? >> Yeah, it's a good point. So we have, Accenture has looked at this. We sort of codified something that we call the wise pivot. Which is how should an organization really pivot to transform their business. And it's got elements, we believe strongly that you have to transform the core. Innovation can't be on the edge. At some point, you have to transform the core which usually gets at cost reduction, using automation to transform the business, transform the core economics. Then you have to grow the core and that's really I think the hard part, which is gaining market share in the core business we believe, whether it's in automotive business, whether it's in healthcare, whether it's in even retail, you have to grow the core, cause ultimately that gives you the investment capacity to scale the new. So, how to orchestrate that journey in a methodical way, again, keeping in mind the organization and what it delivers today and not leaving different parts of the organization behind is what we work with our clients on. >> And, what separates the winners from the losers? So the companies that are doing this well, how are they focusing on their core? And the core competencies? >> Right. We believe investing is a very big thing. Right, so the hardest part of all of this, in terms of economically, I mean there's a lot of difficult dimensions, but economically, as the pressure mounts, the ability to invest diminishes for most companies. And they don't have the room to invest in the business that their future depends on. And really freeing up that room and making the difficult decisions, you may have seen there were some announcements of mass lay offs, even today right? It's some of the biggest companies in the world. They're trying to create the room to invest in their next generation business that will take them into the future. And I think that's really the hardest part. How do you ultimately create the capacity to invest? And how do you make those investments? Again, cause there's also a lot of other examples of companies that have invested in the wrong way or in the wrong thing, that ultimately didn't lead them to the future So those two elements, creating the room to invest, then investing it in the right things and the right ways is what we find is key. >> So you're talking of course about GM which announced today that it was laying off about 15 thousand white collar and blue collar jobs. And the reason they're doing this is because they're saying there's no longer any room for six passenger cars in this market. We want to focus on self-driving vehicles. Is that a good move? I mean, I know you're not a GM analyst here but at the same time, it sounds as though that is smart, as you said. It's making room for investing in the future. >> Yeah, and I think that GM is clearly seeing autonomous cars coming, sort of form factors, everything that they're doing. And again, I don't think particular it's that in GM's case but again you read it that way. You'll look at General Electric. They're restructuring their entire company to better compete in the new. You'll look at IBM. IBM is acquiring Red Hat to have the kind of assets to compete in the new. So I think the biggest companies in the world are really trying to sort of say what the next ten years, what is their business going to to be? And then how to they take what got them here which for many of them have been 50 to 100 year journeys. And really figure out how to restructure that, to give them the room to invest into building a new business. And really, that takes tremendous leadership by the entire, you know, by the CEO, the board, the entire executive team and the people. The people have to commit to go along for that ride, and endure some of the pain for the greater good. >> So it's really a change management issue here, but in terms of, you talked about leadership, it also takes the foresight to actually know what your business is in the future. So GM is saying autonomous vehicles, which an average layman can say, yeah, that looks as though that's where the car industry is going. But how does a company even begin to imagine it's future at this time where there are new technologies being invented everyday, which are disruptive as we started talking about in the earlier conversation. >> Yeah, I think that's a very good question. Cause also if you look at where's the money going. The money is going to the disrupters. Right, if you look at the top five, the Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, let's put Microsoft in there. Combined last year they invested over 70 billion dollars, and that's about 15 percent of all of the fortune of the global one thousand. So the capital, as measured by what companies are expending, what the start-up, the VCs are at an all time high. 155 billion dollars invested last year, double what it was in 2001. The IPO market is at an all time high. Right, then you have these things like division fund, which is a whole other investment vehicle to fuel technology. So the reality is, there's never been more money going in to create the next wave of disruption, which is why we believe many of the existing companies really need to create those partnerships where they benefit from that. They can't compete with it. They can't outguess it, right? They need to be making equal systems that ultimately enable them to leverage those investments, to really help power their next generation business. >> So as an ecosystem driven world, where is Accenture doing this kind of work? >> Yeah, so the good news for Accenture is we built our business, built services in an ecosystem kind of model. Initially with SAP, with Oracle, with Salesforce and now it's with companies like Amazon and the AWS. And I think our view, and what we try to work with our clients on, is really to create the construct. And by the way, a lot of these constructs are just now being formed. What does partnering with an AWS to create your next generation digital business, what does that look like? And there's some models emerging in terms of co-innovation. And I would tell you what Amazon has done, what Berkshire Hathaway and J.P. Morgan Chase is an example of partnering to transform healthcare. Interesting way to do that. You look at something, another Seattle company Starbucks partnering with Alibaba to basically power their entire business in China. So you're starting to see different constructs where big companies are really coming together in different ways. And then again, those partnership constructs, incentives, business models around that, I think that's really where the innovation is going to take place. How do you do that? How do you align your incentives? And how do you jointly benefit from that partnership? >> So you announced something today with your Applied Intelligence Center of Excellence in Seattle, Washington. Tell our viewers a bit little more about that. >> Well, first of all we look at AWS and we say, clearly this is a company that is really important. >> It's doing something right. >> It's doing a lot of things right, it's doing a lot of things right. And I think a lot of our clients are looking at them, are leveraging them. So, it's our responsibility then as a services organization to build up capabilities and skills, and make their, and enable our clients to really tap in to this tremendous innovation. So, yeah, we did announce at Applied Intelligence Center of Excellence in Seattle. It'll be one of many centers across the United States and globally with a simple premise of building skills, building proof of concepts, building use cases, building MVPs to really around different industries and different solutions sets so again, reimagine business processes, catalyze transformation, and really make it something that our clients can tap into. >> You are the Chief Strategy Officer, what is your piece of advice for companies out there, at AWS, at reInvent here, what's sort of your one piece of strategy advice in this period of epic disruption and this cloud world. >> Yeah, I would say that unburdening ourselves from the day to day, and really immersing ourselves in this amazing environment. Learning, really understanding what makes one of these, one of the greatest companies in the world tick. Understanding how they do things. Not only, and as you know, there's more to Amazon than just technology. Right? There's a very strong culture. There's a very strong customer centricity. And really sort of understanding that, and really trying to apply it to our respective businesses. And seeing how it could really be, make the pivot to the digital more effective. And that's what I would sort of say. Come with an open mind. Learn a lot, and take it forward. >> Great, well Gene Reznik thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. >> This is a lot of fun. >> My pleasure. Thank you, thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight. We will have more of theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Executive Summit in just a little bit. (techno music)

>> Announcer: From the SiliconANGLE Media office in Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCube! (bright music) Now here's your host, Dave Vellante. >> Hi everybody, welcome to this special presentation in the Marlborough offices of theCube. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm here with a friend, a colleague, a mentor of mine, David Moschella who is an author and a Fellow at Leading Edge Forum. Dave, thanks for coming in. It's great to see you. >> Hey, great to see you again. So we're going to talk about your new book, Seeing Digital: A Visual Guide to Industries, Organizations, and Careers of the 2020s. I got it here on my laptop. Got it off of Amazon, so check it out. We're going to be unpacking what's in there today. This is your third book I believe, right? Waves of Power and... >> David: Customer-Driven IT. >> Customer-Driven IT which was under the '03 timeframe coming out of the dot-com, and to me this is your most significant work, so congratulations on that. >> Well, thank you. >> Dave: I know how much work goes into it. >> You bet. >> So what was the motivation for writing this book? >> Well it's a funny thing when books are a lot of work, and during those times you wind up asking yourself why am I (laughing) doing this because they put in so much time. But for the last seven or eight years our group, the Leading Edge Forum, we've been doing a lot of work mostly for large organizations and our clients told us that the work we've been doing in consumerization, in Cloud, in disruption, in machine intelligence was really relevant to not just them but to their wider audiences of their partners, their customers, their employees. And so people are asking can we get this to a wider audience, and really that is what the book is trying to do. >> Yeah, you guys have done some great work. I know when I can get my hands on it I consume it. For those of you who don't know, Dave originally came up with the theory of disintegration to kind of explain the shift from centralized mainframe era to the sort of open distributed competition along different lines which really defined the Wintel era. So that was kind of your work really explaining industry shifts in a way that helped people and executives really understand that. And then the nice thing about this book is you're kind of open-sourcing a decade's worth of research that yourself and your colleagues have done. So talk about the central premise of the book. We're entering a new era. We're sort of exiting the Cloud, Web 2.0 era. We're still trying to figure out what to call this. But what's the central premise of the book? >> Yeah, the central premise is that the technologies of the 2020s will indeed define a new era, and the IT era industry just evolves. We had the mainframe era, the mini era, the PC and the Internet era, the mobility era, and now we're going in this era of intelligence and automation and blockchains and speech and things that are just a entire new layer of intelligence, and that that layer to us is actually more the powerful than any of the previous layers we've seen. If you think back, the first Web was founded around technologies like search and email and surfing the Web, quite simple technologies and created tremendous companies. And then the more recently we have sort of the social era for Facebook and Salesforce. And all these companies, they sort of took advantage of the Cloud. But again, the technologies are relatively simple there. Now we're really looking at a whole wave of just fundamentally powerful technology and so trying to anticipate what that's going to mean. >> So going from sort of private networks to sort of public networks to a Cloud of remote services to now this set of interrelated digital services that are highly accessible and essentially ubiquitous is what you put forth in the book, right? >> Yeah, and we put a lot of emphasis on words. Why do words change? We had an Internet that connected computers and a Web that sort of connected pages and documents and URLs. And then we started talking about Cloud of stuff out there somewhere in cyberspace. But when we look at the world that's coming and we use those words, pervasive, embedded, aware, autonomous, these aren't words that are really associated with a Cloud. And Cloud is just a metaphor, that word, and so we're quite sure that at some point a different word will emerge because we've always had a different word for every era of change and we're going into one of those eras now. >> So a lot of people have questions about we go to these conferences and everybody talks about digital disruption and digital transformation, and it's kind of frankly lightweight a lot of times. It doesn't have a lot of substance to it. But you point out in the book that CEOs are asking the question, "How do I get digital right?" They understand that something's happening, something's changing. They don't want to get disrupted, but what are some of the questions that you get from some of your clients? >> Yeah, that first question, are we getting digital right sort of leads to almost everything. Companies look at the way that a Netflix or Amazon operates, and then they look at themselves and they see the vast difference there. And they ask themselves, "How can we be more like them? "How can we be that vast, that innovative, that efficient, "that level of simple intuitive customer service?" And one of the ways we try to define it for our clients is how do they become a digital first organization where their digital systems are their face to the marketplace? And most CEOs know that their own firm doesn't operate that way. And probably the most obvious way of seeing that is so many companies now feeling the need to appoint a Chief Digital Officer because they need to give that task to someone, and CDOs are no panacea but they speak to this need that so many companies feel now of really getting it right and having a leadership team in place that they have confidence in. And it's very hard work, and a lot of our clients, they still struggle with it. >> One of the other questions you ask in the book that is very relevant to our audience given that we have a big presence in Silicon Valley is can Silicon Valley pull off a dual disruption agenda? What do you mean by that? >> Yeah, if you look at the Valley historically you could see them essentially as arms merchants. They were selling their products and services to whoever wanted to buy them, and companies would use them as they saw fit. But today in addition to doing that they are also what we say is they're an invading army, and they are increasingly competing with the very customers they've traditionally supplied, and of course Amazon being perhaps the best example of that. So many companies dependent on AWS as a platform, but there's Amazon trying to go after them in health care or retail or grocery stores or whatever business they're in. Yeah, content, every business under the sun. And so they're wearing these two dual disruptions hats. The technologies of our time are very disruptive, machine intelligence, blockchains, virtual reality, all these things have disruptive technology. But that second disruptive agenda of how do you change insurance, how do you change health care, how do change the car industry, that's what we mean, those two different types of disruptions. And they're pursuing both at the same time. >> And because it's digital and it's data, that possibility now exists that a company, a technology company can traverse industries which historically haven't been able to be penetrated, right? >> Yeah, absolutely, in our view every industry is going to be transformed by data one way or another. Whether it is disrupted or not is a second question, but the industry'll be very different when all of these technologies come into play, and the tech companies feel like they have the expertise and the vision of it. But they also have the money, and they're going to bet heavily to pursue these areas to continue their growth agenda. >> So one of the other questions of course that IT people ask is what does it mean for my job, and maybe we can, if we have time, we can talk about that. But you answer many of these questions with a conceptual framework that you call the Matrix which is a very powerful, you said words matter, a very powerful concept. Explain the Matrix. >> Okay, yeah. If we start and go back they have this idea that every generation of technology has its own words, Internet, Web, Cloud, and now we're going to a new era, so there will be a new word. And so we use the word Matrix as our view of that, and we chose it for two reasons. Obviously there's the movie which had its machine intelligence and virtual worlds and all of that. But the real reason we chose it is this concept that a matrix as in matrix mathematics is a structure that has rows and columns. And rows and columns is sort of the fundamental dynamic of what's going on in the tech sector today, that traditionally every industry had its own sort of vertical stack of capabilities that it did and it was sort of top to bottom silo. But today those horizontal platforms, the PayPals, the AWSs, the Facebooks, they run this, Salesforce, all these horizontal services that cut across those firms. And so increasingly every industry is leveraging a common digital infrastructure, and that tension between the traditional vertical stacks and these enormously powerful horizontal technology firms is really the structural dynamic that's in play right now. >> And at the top of that Matrix you have this sort of intelligence and automation layer which is this new layer. You don't like the term artificial intelligence. You make the point in the book there's nothing really artificial about it. You use machine intelligence. But that's that top layer that you see powering the next decade. >> Absolutely, if you look at the vision that everybody tends to have, autonomous cars, personalized health care, blockchain-based accounting, digital cash, virtual education, brain implants for the media, every one of those is essentially dependent on a layer of intelligence, automation, and data that is being built right now. And so just as previous layers of technology, the Web enabled a Google or an Amazon, the Cloud enabled AWS or Salesforce, this new layer enables companies to pursue that next layer of capabilities out there to build that sort of intelligent societal infrastructure of the 2020s which will be vastly different than where we are today. >> Will the adoption of the Matrix, in your opinion, occur faster because essentially it's built on the Internet and we have the Internet, i.e. faster than say the Internet or maybe some other major innovations, or is it going to take time for a lot of reasons? >> I think the speed is actually a really interesting question because the technology of the 2020s are extremely powerful, but most of them are not going to be immediate hits. And if you look back, say, to search, when search came out it was very powerful and you could scale it massively quickly. You look at machine learning, you look at blockchains, you look at virtual realities, you look at algorithms, speech and these areas, they're tremendously powerful. But there's no scenario where those things happen overnight. And so we do not see an accelerating pace of change. In fact it might be people often overestimate the speed of change in our business and consistently do that. But what we see is a sort of fundamental transformation over time, and that's why we put a lot of emphasis on the 2020s because we do not see two years from now this stuff all being in place. >> And you have some good examples in the book going back to the early days of even telephony. So it's worth checking that out. I want to talk about, bring it back to data, Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook, top five companies, public companies in terms of market cap. Actually it's not true after the Facebook fake news thing. I mean Berkshire Hathaway is slightly past Facebook. >> It'll be back (laughs). But I agree, it'll be back, but the key point there is these companies are different, they've got data at their core. When you compare that to other companies even financial services industry companies that are really data companies but the data's very bespoken, it's in silos. Can those companies, those incumbent companies, can they close that gap? Maybe you could talk about that a little bit. >> Yeah, we do a lot of work in the area of machine intelligence, artificial, whatever you want to call it. And one of the things you see immediately is this ridiculously large gap between what these leading companies do versus most traditional firms because of the talent, the data, the business model, all the things they have. So you have this widening gap there. And so the big question is is that going to widen or is it going to continue, will it narrow? And I think that the scenario for narrowing it I think is a fairly good one. And the message we say to a lot of our clients is that you will wind up buying a lot more machine intelligence than you will build because these companies will bring it to you. Machine intelligence will be in AWS. It'll be in Azure. It'll be in Salesforce. It'll be in your devices. It'll be in your user interfaces. It'll be in the speech systems. So the supply-side innovations that are happening in the giants will be sold to the incumbents, and therefore there will be a natural improvement in today's situation where a lot of incumbents are sort of basically trying to build their own stuff internally, and they're having some successes and some not. But that's a harder challenge. But the supply side will bring intelligence to the market in a quite powerful way and fairly soon. >> Won't those incumbents, though, have to sort of reorganize in a way around those new innovations given that they've got processes and procedures that are so fossilized with their existing businesses? >> Absolutely, and the word digital transformation is thrown around everywhere. But if it means anything it is having an organization that is aligned with the way technology works. And a good example of that is when you use Netflix today there's no separate sales experience, market experience, customer service, it's just one system and you have one team that builds those systems. In a typical corporation of course you have the sales organization and the marketing organization and the IT organization and the customer service organization. And those silos is not the way to build these systems. So the message we send to our clients if you really want to transform yourself you have to have more of this team approach that is more like the way the tech players do it. And that these traditional boundaries essentially go away when you go in the digital world where the customer experience is all those things at the same time. >> So if I'm hearing you correctly it's sort of a natural progression of how they're going to be doing business and the services that they're going to be procuring, but there's probably other approaches. Maybe it's force, but you're seeing maybe M&A or you're seeing joint ventures. Do you see those things as accelerating or precipitating the transformation or do you think it's futile and it really has to be led from the top and at the core? >> It's one of the toughest issues out there. And the reason people talk about transformation is because they see the need. But the difficulty is enormous. Most companies would say this is a three- or four-year process to make significant change, and this in a marketplace that changes every few months. So incumbent firms, they see where they want to go and it's very hard, and this is why this whole thing of getting digital right is so important, that people need to commit to significant change programs, and we're seeing it. And my parent company, DXC, we do a lot of this with clients and they want to embark on this program and they need people who can help them do it. And so leading a transformation agenda in most firms is really what digital leadership is these days and who's capable of doing that which requires tremendous skills in soft skills and hard skills to do right. >> Let's talk about industries and industry disruption. When you looked at the early disrupted industries whether it was publishing, advertising, music, one maybe had the tendency to think it was a bits versus atoms thing, but you point out in the book it's really not the case because you look at taxis, you look at hotels. Those are physical businesses and they've been disrupted quite substantially. Maybe you could give us some thoughts and insight there, particularly with regard to things like health care, financial services which haven't been disrupted. >> And there's a huge part of the work that I've been doing for years. And as you say, if you look at the industries that actually have been disrupted, they're all relatively low-security, low-risk businesses, music, advertising, taxis, retail. All these businesses have had tremendous changes. But the ones that haven't are all the ones where the stakes are higher, banking, insurance, health care, aerospace, defense. They've been hardly disrupted at all. And so you have this split between the low-risk industries that have changed and the high-risk ones that haven't. But what's interesting to me about that is that these technologies of the 2020s are aimed almost directly at those high-risk industries. So machine intelligence is aimed directly at health care and autonomous systems is aimed directly at defense and blockchains are aimed directly at banking and insurance. And so the technologies of the past if you look at Internet and the Web and the Cloud eras, they were not aimed at these industries. But today's are, so you now have at least a highly plausible scenario where those industries might change too. >> When to talk to companies in those industries that haven't been disrupted do you get a sense of complacency that ah well, we haven't been disrupted, We're going to wait and see, or do you see a sense of urgency? >> No, complacency is baked in for years of people saying, "We've heard all this before. "We're doing just fine. "Maybe it's their industry but not ours." >> Dave: You don't buy it. >> Or the main one is, "I'll be (laughing) retired "before any of this stuff matters for the senior execs." And the thing about all four of those is they're probably true. They have heard all this before because there was a lot of excessive hype. Many of them are doing just fine. Well the one about the other industries is a wrong one, but and many of them will be retired before the things really bite if executive's in their late in their career. So the inertia and the complacency is an enormous issue in most traditional companies. >> So let's do a little lightning round if we can. Oh, actually I just want to make a point. In the book you lay out disruption scenarios for each industry which is really worthwhile. We don't have time to go through that here, but let's do a little lightning round here, some of the questions that you ask that I'd love to get your opinion on of which of course there are no right answers but we can maybe frame it. Let's start with retail. Do you think large retail stores are going to disappear? >> Well the first I say is that disruption is never total. There are still bookstores, there are still newspapers, there are still vinyl records. >> Dave: Mainframes, saving IBM. >> (laughing) Indeed, indeed, but real disruption means that the center of gravity is just totally moved on. And when you look at retail from that point of view, absolutely. And will large ones totally disappear? No, but Wal-Mart is teetering. If you go into a large, Best Buy, a company that strong hero locally, you go into there, there's hardly anybody in there. And so those stores are in tremendous trouble. The grocery stores, the clothing stores, they'll have probably a better future, but by and large they will shrink, and the nature of malls will change quite substantially going forward. People are going to have to find other uses for those spaces, and that's actually going on right now. >> It's funny, it is, and certainly some of the more remote malls you find that they're waning. But then some of the higher-end malls, they seem, you can't find a parking space. What's your sense of that, that that's still inevitable or it's because it's more clothing or maybe jewelry? >> And there's some parts of America that have a lot of money, and therefore they fill up malls. But I think if you look at what's going on in the malls, though, they're becoming more like indoor cities full of restaurants and health clubs and movie theaters and sometimes even college courses and health care centers, daycare centers, air conditioning. Think of them as an indoor environment where you might have the traditional anchor stores but they're less necessary over time. Quite a bit less necessary. >> You mentioned college courses. Education's something we haven't talked about which is again ripe for disruption. Machines, will they make better diagnoses than doctors? >> Yeah, you see this already in image processing, anything that has to do with an image, X-rays and mammograms, cancers, anything, tissues. The machine learning progress there has been tremendous and to the point where schools now should be seriously thinking about how many radiologists do they really want to train because those people are not going to be needed as much. However they're still part of the system. They approve things, but the work itself is increasingly done by machines. And it means increasingly that it's not just done by machine, it's done by one machine somewhere else rather than every hospital setting up its own operations to do this stuff. And health care costs are crazy high in every country in the world, especially here in America. But if you're ever going to crack those costs you have to get some sort of scale, and these machine learning-based systems are the way to do it. And so it is to me not just a question of should this happen, it's that this is so what needs to happen. It's really the only sort of economic path that might work. >> You make the point that health care in particular is really ripe for disruption of all industries. The next one's really interesting to me. You talked about blockchain being sort of aimed at banking and financial services and as an industry that has not really yet been disrupted. But do you think banks will lose control of the payment systems? >> Banks have been incredibly good at keeping control through cash and paper checks and credit cards and ATM machines. They've been really good about that and perhaps they will ride this one too. But you can see countries are clearly going to, they're getting rid of cash. They're going to digital currencies. There's the need to be able to send money around as simply as we send emails around, and the banking industry is not really supporting (laughing) those changes right now. So they are at risk, but they are very good at co-opting stuff, and I wouldn't count them out. >> And the government really wants to get rid of paper money. You've made that point, and the government and the financial services-- >> Work together, and yeah. >> They always work together, they have a lot to lose. >> Yeah, and way back when Satoshi Nakamoto, whoever he or she is or it, they, whatever it is, said that bitcoin would either be very, very big or it would vanish altogether. And I think that statement is still true, and we're still in that middle world. But if bitcoin vanishes, something doing a similar thing will emerge because the concepts and the capabilities there are really what people want. >> Yeah, the killer app for blockchain is for right now it's money. (laughing) >> Yeah, it's speculation, (laughing) I mean it's, (laughing) and no one uses it to buy anything. (Dave laughing) That was the original bitcoin vision of using it to go buy pizzas and coffees. It's become gold, it's digital gold. I mean it's all it is. >> The value store... >> It's digital gold that is very good in the dark Web. >> And if anybody does transact in bitcoin they immediately convert it to fiat currency. (laughing) >> Perhaps someday we'll learn that the Russians actually built bitcoin (Dave laughing) and it's Putin's in control. (David and Dave laughing) Stranger things have happened. >> It's possible. >> Hey, why keep it anonymous? >> They are the masters of the dark Web. (Dave laughing) >> Could be Russians, could be a woman. >> David: Right, right, nobody has any idea. >> Robotic process automation is really interesting with software robots, robots. Do you see that reversing sort of offshoring, offshore manufacturing and other services? >> Not really, I think in general people looked at robotics, they looked at 3D printing and said, "Maybe we can bring all this stuff back home." But the reality is that China uses robots and 3D printing too and they're really good at it. If anything's going to bring manufacturing back home it's much more political pressures, trade strategies, and all the stuff you see going on right now because we do have crazy imbalances in the world that probably will have to change. And as Ben Stein the economist once said, "Well if something can't go on forever, it won't." And I think there will be some reversals, but I think they'll be less about technology than they will be about political pressures and trade agreements and those sort of changes. >> Because the technology's widely accessible. So how far do you think we can take machine intelligence and how far should we take machine intelligence? >> Well I make a distinction right now that I think machine intelligence for particular purposes is tremendous if you want to recognize faces or eventually talk to something or have it read something or recognize an activity or read images and do all the things it's doing, it's very good. When they talk about a more general-wise machine intelligence it's actually really poor. But to me that's not that important. And one way we look at machine intelligence, it's almost like the app industry. There'll be an app for that, there'll be a machine learning algorithm for almost every little thing that we do that involves data. And those areas will thrive mightily. And then sort of the bottom line we try to at that as who's got the best data? Facebook is good at facial recognitions because it's got the faces, and Google's good at language translation because it has the books and language pairs better than anybody else. And so if you follow the data and where there's good data machine learning will thrive. And where there isn't it won't. >> The book is called Seeing Digital: A Visual Guide to the Industries, Organizations, and Careers of the 2020s, and part of that visual guide is every single page actually has a graphic. So really a new concept that you've... >> Yeah, and thanks for bringing that in. And the reason the book is called Seeing Digital is that the book itself is a visual book, that every page has a graphic, an image, a picture, and explains itself below. And just in our own work with our own clients people tell us it's just a more impactful way of reading. So it's a different format. It's great in the ebook format because you can use colors, you can do lots of things that the printed world doesn't do so well. And so we tried to take advantage of modern technologies to bring a different sort of book to the market. >> That's great. So Google it and you'll find it easily. Dave, again, congratulations. Thanks so much for coming on theCube. >> David: Thank you, a pleasure. >> All right, and thank you for watching, everybody. We'll see you next time. (bright music)