>> Announcer: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is theCUBE conversation. >> Hey, welcome back everybody Jeff Frick here with the cube. This is a special week it's Grace Hopper week, and Grace Hopper is the best name in tech conferences. The celebration of women in computing, and we've been going there for years we're not there this year, but one of the themes that comes up over and over at Grace Hopper is women and girls need to see women in positions that they can envision themselves being in someday. That is a really important piece of the whole diversity conversation is can I see people that I can role model after and I just want to bring up something from a couple years back from 2016 when we were there, we were there with Mimi Valdez, Christina Deoja and Dr. Jeanette Epps, Dr. Jeanette Epps is the astronaut on the right. They were there talking about "The Hidden Figures" movie. If you remember it came out 2016, it was about Katherine Johnson and all the black women working at NASA. They got no credit for doing all the math that basically keep all the astronauts safe and they made a terrific movie about it. And Janet is going up on the very first Blue Origin Space Mission Next year. This was announced a couple of months ago, so again, phenomenal leadership, black lady astronaut, going to go into space and really provide a face for a lot of young girls that want to get into that and its clearly a great STEM opportunity. So we're excited to have four terrific women today that well also are the leaders that the younger women can look up to and follow their career. So we're excited to have them so we're just going to go around. We got four terrific guests, our first one is Annabel Chang, She is the Head of State Policy and Government Regulations at Waymo. Annabel great to see you, where are you coming in from today? >> from San Francisco >> Jeff: Awesome. Next up is Inamarie Johnson. She is the Chief People and Diversity Officer for Zendesk Inamarie, great to see you. Where are you calling in from today? >> Great to be here. I am calling in from Palos Verdes the state >> Jeff: awesome >> in Southern California. >> Jeff: Some of the benefits of a virtual sometimes we can, we couldn't do that without the power of the internet. And next up is Jennifer Cabalquinto she is the Chief Financial Officer of the Golden State Warriors. Jennifer, great to see you Where are you coming in from today? >> Well, I wish I was coming in from the Chase Center in San Francisco but I'm actually calling in from Santa Cruz California today. >> Jeff: Right, It's good to see you and you can surf a lot better down there. So that's probably not all bad. And finally to round out our panelists, Kate Hogan, she is the COO of North America for Accenture. Kate, great to see you as well. Where are you coming in from today? >> Well, it's good to see you too. I am coming in from the office actually in San Jose. >> Jeff: From the office in San Jose. All right, So let's get into it . You guys are all very senior, you've been doing this for a long time. We're in a kind of a crazy period of time in terms of diversity with all the kind of social unrest that's happening. So let's talk about some of your first your journeys and I want to start with you Annabel. You're a lawyer you got into lawyering. You did lawyering with Diane Feinstein, kind of some politics, and also the city of San Francisco. And then you made this move over to tech. Talk about that decision and what went into that decision and how did you get into tech? 'cause we know part of the problem with diversity is a pipeline problem. You came over from the law side of the house. >> Yes, and to be honest politics and the law are pretty homogenous. So when I made the move to tech, it was still a lot of the same, but what I knew is that I could be an attorney anywhere from Omaha Nebraska to Miami Florida. But what I couldn't do was work for a disruptive company, potentially a unicorn. And I seized that opportunity and (indistinct) Lyft early on before Ride Hailing and Ride Sharing was even a thing. So it was an exciting opportunity. And I joined right at the exact moment that made myself really meaningful in the organization. And I'm hoping that I'm doing the same thing right now at Waymo. >> Great, Inamarie you've come from one of my favorite stories I like to talk about from the old school Clorox great product management. I always like to joke that Silicon Valley needs a pipeline back to Cincinnati and Proctor and Gamble to get good product managers out here. You were in the classic, right? You were there, you were at Honeywell Plantronics, and then you jumped over to tech. Tell us a little bit about that move. Cause I'm sure selling Clorox is a lot different than selling the terrific service that you guys provide at Zendesk. I'm always happy when I see Zendesk in my customer service return email, I know I'm going to get taken care of. >> Oh wow, that's great. We love customers like you., so thank you for that. My journey is you're right from a fortune 50 sort of more portfolio type company into tech. And I think one of the reasons is because when tech is starting out and that's what Zendesk was a few five years back or so very much an early stage growth company, two things are top of mind, one, how do we become more global? And how do we make sure that we can go up market and attract enterprise grade customers? And so my experience having only been in those types of companies was very interesting for a startup. And what was interesting for me is I got to live in a world where there were great growth targets and numbers, things I had never seen. And the agility, the speed, the head plus heart really resonated with my background. So super glad to be in tech, but you're right. It's a little different than a consumer products. >> Right, and then Jennifer, you're in a completely different world, right? So you worked for the Golden State Warriors, which everybody knows is an NBA team, but I don't know that everyone knows really how progressive the Warriors are beyond just basketball in terms of the new Chase Center, all the different events that you guys put on it. And really the leadership there has decided we really want to be an entertainment company of which the Golden State Warrior basketball team has a very, very important piece, you've come from the entertainment industry. So that's probably how they found you, but you're in the financial role. You've always been in the financial role, not traditionally thought about as a lot of women in terms of a proportion of total people in that. So tell us a little bit about your experience being in finance, in entertainment, and then making this kind of hop over to, I guess Uber entertainment. I don't know even how you would classify the warriors. >> Sports entertainment, live entertainment. Yeah, it's interesting when the Warriors opportunity came up, I naturally said well no, I don't have any sports background. And it's something that we women tend to do, right? We self edit and we want to check every box before we think that we're qualified. And the reality is my background is in entertainment and the Warriors were looking to build their own venue, which has been a very large construction project. I was the CFO at Universal Studios Hollywood. And what do we do there? We build large attractions, which are just large construction projects and we're in the entertainment business. And so that sort of B to C was a natural sort of transition for me going from where I was with Universal Studios over to the Warriors. I think a finance career is such a great career for women. And I think we're finding more and more women entering it. It is one that you sort of understand your hills and valleys, you know when you're going to be busy and so you can kind of schedule around that. I think it's really... it provides that you have a seat at the table. And so I think it's a career choice that I think is becoming more and more available to women certainly more now than it was when I first started. >> Yeah, It's interesting cause I think a lot of people think of women naturally in human resources roles. My wife was a head of human resources back in the day, or a lot of marketing, but not necessarily on the finance side. And then Kate go over to you. You're one of the rare birds you've been at Accenture  for over 20 years. So you must like airplanes and travel to stay there that long. But doing a little homework for this, I saw a really interesting piece of you talking about your boss challenging you to ask for more work, to ask for a new opportunity. And I thought that was really insightful that you, you picked up on that like Oh, I guess it's incumbent on me to ask for more, not necessarily wait for that to be given to me, it sounds like a really seminal moment in your career. >> It was important but before I tell you that story, because it was an important moment of my career and probably something that a lot of the women here on the panel here can relate to as well. You mentioned airplanes and it made me think of my dad. My father was in the air force and I remember him telling stories when I was little about his career change from the air force into a career in telecommunications. So technology for me growing up Jeff was, it was kind of part of the dinner table. I mean it was just a conversation that was constantly ongoing in our house. And I also, as a young girl, I loved playing video games. We had a Tandy computer down in the basement and I remember spending too many hours playing video games down there. And so for me my history and my really at a young age, my experience and curiosity around tech was there. And so maybe that's, what's fueling my inspiration to stay at Accenture for as long as I have. And you're right It's been two decades, which feels tremendous, but I've had the chance to work across a bunch of different industries, but you're right. I mean, during that time and I relate with what Jennifer said in terms of self editing, right? Women do this and I'm no exception, I did this. And I do remember I'm a mentor and a sponsor of mine who called me up when I'm kind of I was at a pivotal moment in my career and he said you know Kate, I've been waiting for you to call me and tell me you want this job. And I never even thought about it. I mean I just never thought that I'd be a candidate for the job and let alone somebody waiting for me to kind of make the phone call. I haven't made that mistake again, (laughing) but I like to believe I learned from it, but it was an important lesson. >> It's such a great lesson and women are often accused of being a little bit too passive and not necessarily looking out for in salary negotiations or looking for that promotion or kind of stepping up to take the crappy job because that's another thing we hear over and over from successful people is that some point in their career, they took that job that nobody else wanted. They took that challenge that really enabled them to take a different path and really a different Ascension. And I'm just curious if there's any stories on that or in terms of a leader or a mentor, whether it was in the career, somebody that you either knew or didn't know that was someone that you got kind of strength from kind of climbing through your own, kind of career progression. Will go to you first Annabel. >> I actually would love to talk about the salary negotiations piece because I have a group of friends about that we've been to meeting together once a month for the last six years now. And one of the things that we committed to being very transparent with each other about was salary negotiations and signing bonuses and all of the hard topics that you kind of don't want to talk about as a manager and the women that I'm in this group with span all types of different industries. And I've learned so much from them, from my different job transitions about understanding the signing bonus, understanding equity, which is totally foreign to me coming from law and politics. And that was one of the most impactful tools that I've ever had was a group of people that I could be open with talking about salary negotiations and talking about how to really manage equity. Those are totally foreign to me up until this group of women really connected me to these topics and gave me some of that expertise. So that is something I strongly encourage is that if you haven't openly talked about salary negotiations before you should begin to do so. >> It begs the question, how was the sensitivity between the person that was making a lot of money and the person that wasn't? And how did you kind of work through that as a group for the greater good of everyone? >> Yeah, I think what's really eye opening is that for example, We had friends who were friends who were on tech, we had friends who were actually the entrepreneurs starting their own businesses or law firm, associates, law firm partners, people in PR, so we understood that there was going to be differences within industry and frankly in scale, but it was understanding even the tools, whether I think the most interesting one would be signing bonus, right? Because up until a few years ago, recruiters could ask you what you made and how do you avoid that question? How do you anchor yourself to a lower salary range or avoid that happening? I didn't know this, I didn't know how to do that. And a couple of women that had been in more senior negotiations shared ways to make sure that I was pinning myself to a higher salary range that I wanted to be in. >> That's great. That's a great story and really important to like say pin. it's a lot of logistical details, right? You just need to learn the techniques like any other skill. Inamarie, I wonder if you've got a story to share here. >> Sure. I just want to say, I love the example that you just gave because it's something I'm super passionate about, which is transparency and trust. Then I think that we're building that every day into all of our people processes. So sure, talk about sign on bonuses, talk about pay parody because that is the landscape. But a quick story for me, I would say is all about stepping into uncertainty. And when I coach younger professionals of course women, I often talk about, don't be afraid to step into the role where all of the answers are not vetted down because at the end of the day, you can influence what those answers are. I still remember when Honeywell asked me to leave the comfort of California and to come to the East coast to New Jersey and bring my family. And I was doing well in my career. I didn't feel like I needed to do that, but I was willing after some coaching to step into that uncertainty. And it was one of the best pivotal moment in my career. I didn't always know who I was going to work with. I didn't know the challenges and scope I would take on, but those were some of the biggest learning experiences and opportunities and it made me a better executive. So that's always my coaching, like go where the answers aren't quite vetted down because you can influence that as a leader. >> That's great, I mean, Beth Comstock former vice chair at GE, one of her keynotes I saw had a great line, get comfortable with being uncomfortable. And I think that its a really good kind of message, especially in the time we're living in with accelerated change. But I'm curious, Inamarie was the person that got you to take that commitment. Would you consider that a sponsor, a mentor, was it a boss? Was it maybe somebody not at work, your spouse or a friend that said go for it. What kind of pushed you over the edge to take that? >> It's a great question. It was actually the boss I was going to work for. He was the CHRO, and he said something that was so important to me that I've often said it to others. And he said trust me, he's like I know you don't have all the answers, I know we don't have this role all figured out, I know you're going to move your family, but if you trust me, there is a ton of learning on the other side of this. And sometimes that's the best thing a boss can do is say we will go on this journey together. I will help you figure it out. So it was a boss, but I think it was that trust and that willingness for him to stand and go alongside of me that made me pick up my family and be willing to move across the country. And we stayed five years and really, I am not the same executive because of that experience. >> Right, that's a great story, Jennifer, I want to go to you, you work for two owners that are so progressive and I remember when Joe Lacob came on the floor a few years back and was booed aggressively coming into a franchise that hadn't seen success in a very long time, making really aggressive moves in terms of personnel, both at the coaches and the players level, the GM level. But he had a vision and he stuck to it. And the net net was tremendous success. I wonder if you can share any of the stories, for you coming into that organization and being able to feel kind of that level of potential success and really kind of the vision and also really a focus on execution to make the vision real cause vision without execution doesn't really mean much. If you could share some stories of working for somebody like Joe Lacob, who's so visionary but also executes so very, very effectively. >> Yeah, Joe is, well I have the honor of working for Joe, for Rick Welts to who's our president. Who's living legend with the NBA with Peter Guber. Our leadership at the Warriors are truly visionary and they set audacious targets. And I would say from a story the most recent is, right now what we're living through today. And I will say Joe will not accept that we are not having games with fans. I agree he is so committed to trying to solve for this and he has really put the organization sort of on his back cause we're all like well, what do we do? And he has just refused to settle and is looking down every path as to how do we ensure the safety of our fans, the safety of our players, but how do we get back to live entertainment? And this is like a daily mantra and now the entire organization is so focused on this and it is because of his vision. And I think you need leaders like that who can set audacious goals, who can think beyond what's happening today and really energize the entire organization. And that's really what he's done. And when I talked to my peers and other teams in there they're talking about trying to close out their season or do these things. And they're like well, we're talking about, how do we open the building? And we're going to have fans, we're going to do this. And they look at me and they're like, what are you talking about? And I said, well we are so fortunate. We have leadership that just is not going to settle. Like they are just always looking to get out of whatever it is that's happening and fix it. So Joe is so committed His background, he's an epidemiologist major I think. Can you imagine how unique a background that is and how timely. And so his knowledge of just around the pandemic and how the virus is spread. And I mean it's phenomenal to watch him work and leverage sort of his business acumen, his science acumen and really think through how do we solve this. Its amazing. >> The other thing thing that you had said before is that you basically intentionally told people that they need to rethink their jobs, right? You didn't necessarily want to give them permission to get you told them we need to rethink their jobs. And it's a really interesting approach when the main business is just not happening, right? There's just no people coming through the door and paying for tickets and buying beers and hotdogs. It's a really interesting talk. And I'm curious, kind of what was the reception from the people like hey, you're the boss, you just figure it out or were they like hey, this is terrific that he pressed me to come up with some good ideas. >> Yeah, I think when all of this happened, we were resolved to make sure that our workforce is safe and that they had the tools that they needed to get through their day. But then we really challenged them with re imagining what the next normal is. Because when we come out of this, we want to be ahead of everybody else. And that comes again from the vision that Joe set, that we're going to use this time to make ourselves better internally because we have the time. I mean, we had been racing towards opening Chase Center and not having time to pause. Now let's use this time to really rethink how we're doing business. What can we do better? And I think it's really reinvigorated teams to really think and innovate in their own areas because you can innovate anything, right?. We're innovating how you pay payables, we're all innovating, we're rethinking the fan experience and queuing and lines and all of these things because now we have the time that it's really something that top down we want to come out of this stronger. >> Right, that's great. Kate I'll go to you, Julie Sweet, I'm a big fan of Julie Sweet. we went to the same school so go go Claremont. But she's been super aggressive lately on a lot of these things, there was a get to... I think it's called Getting to 50 50 by 25 initiative, a formal initiative with very specific goals and objectives. And then there was a recent thing in terms of doing some stuff in New York with retraining. And then as you said, military being close to your heart, a real specific military recruiting process, that's formal and in place. And when you see that type of leadership and formal programs put in place not just words, really encouraging, really inspirational, and that's how you actually get stuff done as you get even the consulting businesses, if you can't measure it, you can't improve it. >> Yeah Jeff, you're exactly right. And as Jennifer was talking, Julie is exactly who I was thinking about in my mind as well, because I think it takes strong leadership and courage to set bold bold goals, right? And you talked about a few of those bold goals and Julie has certainly been at the forefront of that. One of the goals we set in 2018 actually was as you said to achieve essentially a gender balance workforce. So 50% men, 50% women by 2025, I mean, that's ambitious for any company, but for us at the time we were 400,000 people. They were 500, 6,000 globally. So when you set a goal like that, it's a bold goal and it's a bold vision. And we have over 40% today, We're well on our path to get to 50%, I think by 2025. And I was really proud to share that goal in front of a group of 200 clients the day that it came out, it's a proud moment. And I think it takes leaders like Julie and many others by the way that are also setting bold goals, not just in my company to turn the dial here on gender equality in the workforce, but it's not just about gender equality. You mentioned something I think it's probably at as, or more important right now. And that's the fact that at least our leadership has taken a Stand, a pretty bold stand against social injustice and racism, >> Right which is... >> And so through that we've made some very transparent goals in North America in terms of the recruitment and retention of our black African American, Hispanic American, Latinex communities. We've set a goal to increase those populations in our workforce by 60% by 2025. And we're requiring mandatory training for all of our people to be able to identify and speak up against racism. Again, it takes courage and it takes a voice. And I think it takes setting bold goals to make a change and these are changes we're committed to. >> Right, that's terrific. I mean, we started the conversation with Grace Hopper, they put out an index for companies that don't have their own kind of internal measure to do surveys again so you can get kind of longitudinal studies over time and see how you're improving Inamarie, I want to go to you on the social justice thing. I mean, you've talked a lot about values and culture. It's a huge part of what you say. And I think that the quote that you use, if I can steal it is " no culture eats strategy for breakfast" and with the social injustice. I mean, you came out with special values just about what Zendesk is doing on social injustice. And I thought I was actually looking up just your regular core mission and value statement. And this is what came up on my Google search. So I wanted to A, you published this in a blog in June, taking a really proactive stand. And I think you mentioned something before that, but then you're kind of stuck in this role as a mind reader. I wonder if you can share a little bit of your thoughts of taking a proactive stand and what Zendesk is doing both you personally, as well as a company in supporting this. And then what did you say as a binder Cause I think these are difficult kind of uncharted waters on one hand, on the other hand, a lot of people say, hello, this has been going on forever. You guys are just now seeing cellphone footage of madness. >> Yeah Wow, there's a lot in there. Let me go to the mind reader comments, cause people are probably like, what is that about? My point was last December, November timing. I've been the Chief People Officer for about two years And I decided that it really was time with support from my CEO that Zendesk have a Chief Diversity Officer sitting in at the top of the company, really putting a face to a lot of the efforts we were doing. And so the mind reader part comes in little did I know how important that stance would become, in the may June Timing? So I joked that, it almost felt like I could have been a mind reader, but as to what have we done, a couple of things I would call out that I think are really aligned with who we are as a company because our culture is highly threaded with the concept of empathy it's been there from our beginning. We have always tried to be a company that walks in the shoes of our customers. So in may with the death of George Floyd and the world kind of snapping and all of the racial injustice, what we said is we wanted to not stay silent. And so most of my postings and points of view were that as a company, we would take a stand both internally and externally and we would also partner with other companies and organizations that are doing the big work. And I think that is the humble part of it, we can't do it all at Zendesk, we can't write all the wrongs, but we can be in partnership and service with other organizations. So we used funding and we supported those organizations and partnerships. The other thing that I would say we did that was super important along that empathy is that we posted space for our employees to come together and talk about the hurt and the pain and the experiences that were going on during those times and we called those empathy circles. And what I loved is initially, it was through our mosaic community, which is what we call our Brown and black and persons of color employee resource group. But it grew into something bigger. We ended up doing five of these empathy circles around the globe and as leadership, what we were there to do is to listen and stand as an ally and support. And the stories were life changing. And the stories really talked about a number of injustice and racism aspects that are happening around the world. And so we are committed to that journey, we will continue to support our employees, we will continue to partner and we're doing a number of the things that have been mentioned. But those empathy circles, I think were definitely a turning point for us as an organization. >> That's great, and people need it right? They need a place to talk and they also need a place to listen if it's not their experience and to be empathetic, if you just have no data or no knowledge of something, you need to be educated So that is phenomenal. I want to go to you Jennifer. Cause obviously the NBA has been very, very progressive on this topic both as a league, and then of course the Warriors. We were joking before. I mean, I don't think Steph Curry has ever had a verbal misstep in the history of his time in the NBA, the guy so eloquent and so well-spoken, but I wonder if you can share kind of inside the inner circle in terms of the conversations, that the NBA enabled right. For everything from the jerseys and going out on marches and then also from the team level, how did that kind of come down and what's of the perception inside the building? >> Sure, obviously I'm so proud to be part of a league that is as progressive and has given voice and loud, all the teams, all the athletes to express how they feel, The Warriors have always been committed to creating a diverse and equitable workplace and being part of a diverse and equitable community. I mean that's something that we've always said, but I think the situation really allowed us, over the summer to come up with a real formal response, aligning ourselves with the Black Lives Matter movement in a really meaningful way, but also in a way that allows us to iterate because as you say, it's evolving and we're learning. So we created or discussed four pillars that we wanted to work around. And that was really around wallet, heart, beat, and then tongue or voice. And Wallet is really around putting our money where our mouth is, right? And supporting organizations and groups that aligned with the values that we were trying to move forward. Heart is around engaging our employees and our fan base really, right? And so during this time we actually launched our employee resource groups for the first time and really excited and energized about what that's doing for our workforce. This is about promoting real action, civic engagement, advocacy work in the community and what we've always been really focused in a community, but this really hones it around areas that we can all rally around, right? So registration and we're really focused on supporting the election day results in terms of like having our facilities open to all the electorate. So we're going to have our San Francisco arena be a ballot drop off, our Oakland facilities is a polling site, Santa Cruz site is also a polling location, So really promoting sort of that civic engagement and causing people to really take action. heart is all around being inclusive and developing that culture that we think is really reflective of the community. And voice is really amplifying and celebrating one, the ideas, the (indistinct) want to put forth in the community, but really understanding everybody's culture and really just providing and using the platform really to provide a basis in which as our players, like Steph Curry and the rest want to share their own experiences. we have a platform that can't be matched by any pedigree, right? I mean, it's the Warriors. So I think really getting focused and rallying around these pillars, and then we can iterate and continue to grow as we define the things that we want to get involved in. >> That's terrific. So I have like pages and pages and pages of notes and could probably do this for hours and hours, but unfortunately we don't have that much time we have to wrap. So what I want to do is give you each of you the last word again as we know from this problem, right? It's not necessarily a pipeline problem, it's really a retention problem. We hear that all the time from Girls in Code and Girls in Tech. So what I'd like you to do just to wrap is just a couple of two or three sentences to a 25 year old, a young woman sitting across from you having coffee socially distanced about what you would tell her early in the career, not in college but kind of early on, what would the be the two or three sentences that you would share with that person across the table and Annabel, we'll start with you. >> Yeah, I will have to make a pitch for transportation. So in transportation only 15% of the workforce is made up of women. And so my advice would be that there are these fields, there are these opportunities where you can make a massive impact on the future of how people move or how they consume things or how they interact with the world around them. And my hope is that being at Waymo, with our self driving car technology, that we are going to change the world. And I am one of the initial people in this group to help make that happen. And one thing that I would add is women spend almost an hour a day, shuttling their kids around, and we will give you back that time one day with our self driving cars so that I'm a mom. And I know that that is going to be incredibly powerful on our daily lives. >> Jeff: That's great. Kate, I think I might know what you're already going to say, but well maybe you have something else you wanted to say too. >> I don't know, It'll be interesting. Like if I was sitting across the table from a 25 year old right now I would say a couple of things first I'd say look intentionally for a company that has an inclusive culture. Intentionally seek out the company that has an inclusive culture, because we know that companies that have inclusive cultures retain women in tech longer. And the companies that can build inclusive cultures will retain women in tech, double, double the amount that they are today in the next 10 years. That means we could put another 1.4 million women in tech and keep them in tech by 2030. So I'd really encourage them to look for that. I'd encouraged them to look for companies that have support network and reinforcements for their success, and to obviously find a Waymo car so that they can not have to worry where kids are on for an hour when you're parenting in a few years. >> Jeff: I love the intentional, it's such a great word. Inamarie, >> I'd like to imagine that I'm sitting across from a 25 year old woman of color. And what I would say is be authentically you and know that you belong in the organization that you are seeking and you were there because you have a unique perspective and a voice that needs to be heard. And don't try to be anything that you're not, be who you are and bring that voice and that perspective, because the company will be a better company, the management team will be a better management team, the workforce will be a better workforce when you belong, thrive and share that voice. >> I love that, I love that. That's why you're the Chief People Officer and not Human Resources Officer, cause people are not resources like steel and cars and this and that. All right, Jennifer, will go to you for the wrap. >> Oh my gosh, I can't follow that. But yes, I would say advocate for yourself and know your value. I think really understanding what you're worth and being willing to fight for that is critical. And I think it's something that women need to do more. >> Awesome, well again, I wish we could go all day, but I will let you get back to your very, very busy day jobs. Thank you for participating and sharing your insight. I think it's super helpful. And there and as we said at the beginning, there's no better example for young girls and young women than to see people like you in leadership roles and to hear your voices. So thank you for sharing. >> Thank you. >> All right. >> Thank you. >> Okay thank you. >> Thank you >> All right, so that was our diversity panel. I hope you enjoyed it, I sure did. I'm looking forward to chapter two. We'll get it scheduled as soon as we can. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> From Times Square, in the heart of New York City, it's theCUBE. Covering IMAGINE 2018. Brought to you by Automation Anywhere. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Manhattan, New York City, at Automation Anywhere's IMAGINE 2018. We've never been to this show. Pretty interesting, about 1,100 people talking about Bots, but it's really more than Bots. It's really how do we use digital employees, digital programs, to help people be more efficient, and take advantage of a lot of the opportunities as well as the challenges that we're facing as we keep innovating, I'm really excited to have our next guest. Jeffrey Immelt, the former chairman and CEO of GE, great to see you Jeff. >> Good to see you. >> Absolutely, last I saw you I think, was at Minds and Machines, and we're huge fans, >> A couple years ago, yep. >> Beth Comstock, I loved Bill Ruh, so you know, what a fantastic team. >> A great team. >> But here you are talking about Bots, and it's interesting because at GE you guys have been involved in big industrial equipment, as well as a huge software business, so you really figured out that you've gotta have software and people to really work with these machines. >> So you know Jeff, I really am a big believer that productivity is the key, and that we, we're seeing a bow wave of technology that's really gonna impact the workplace in a meaningful way. The reason why I like RPA, what we call Bots-- >> Right, RPA. >> Is because it can happen so quickly. It can happen across the organization. It has great productivity associated with it. So I kinda view RPA as being really one of the uh, let's say early wave technologies in terms of how to drive more automation and productivity in the workplace. >> That's funny, because people ask me they're like, what's the deal with some of these stock evaluations, is it real, and think back to the ERP days right, ERP unlocked this huge amount of inefficiency. That was a long, long time ago, and yet we still continue to find these huge buckets of inefficiency over and over. >> I think it's, I mean I think to your point, the early days of IT, really if you look at ERP manufacturing systems, even CRM. They were really more around governance. They were kind of connecting big enterprises. But they really weren't driving the kind of decision support, automation, AI, that companies really need to drive productivity. And I think the next wave of tools will operate inside that envelope. You know, ultimately these will all merge. But I think these are gonna get productivity much quicker than an ERP system or an MES system did. Which are really, at the end of the day, driven by CFOs to drive compliance more than operating people to drive productivity. >> Right, but what's driving this as we've seen over and over, that consumerization of IT, not only in terms of the expected behavior of applications, you know you want everything to act like Amazon, you want everything to act like Google. But also, in terms of expectations of feedback, expectations of performance. Now people can directly connect with the customer, with companies like they never could before, and the customers, and the companies can direct with their customer directly. Where before you had channels, you had a lot of distribution steps in between. Those things are kind of breaking down. >> I think that's for sure. I mean I think that's sure. I would say beyond that is the ability to empower employees more with some of these tools so you know, an employee used to have to go to the CIO with a work ticket, hey here's what I need. You know these Bots grow virally inside organizations. They're easy to implement. They're easy to see an impact very quickly. So I just think the tools are becoming more facile. It's no longer kind of a hierarchical IT-driven technology base. It's more of a grounds-up technology base, and I think it's gonna drive more speed and productivity inside companies. >> Right, so really it's kind of, there's always a discussion of are the machines gonna take our jobs, or are they? But really there's-- >> Jeff, I'm not that smart really I mean-- >> Well, but it's funny because they're not right? I mean, everyone's got requisitions out like crazy, we need the machines to help us do the jobs. >> Nobody has, nobody has easy jobs. The fact of the matter is, nobody has easy jobs. You know, a company like GE would have 300 ERP systems right? Because of acquisitions and things like that. And the METs not a complexity, manual journal entries, things like that. So to a certain extent these, this automation is really helping people do their jobs better. >> Better. >> More than thinking about you know, where does it all go some day. So I think, I think we're much better off as an economy getting these tools out there, getting people experience with them and, and uh, seeing what happens next. >> Right, it's funny they just showed the Bot store in the keynote before we sat down, and when you look closely, a lot of them look like relatively simple processes. But the problem is, they're relatively simple, but they take up a lot of time, and they're not that automated, most of them. >> One of my favorites Jeff, is doing a quote for a gas power plant would take eight weeks. Because now we have Bots, that can draw data from different data sources, you can do it in two and a half days right? So that's not what you naturally think of for an automation technology like this. But the ability to automate from the different data sources is what creates the cycle of time reduction. >> Right, and you're fortunate, you've sat in a position where you can really look down the road at some interesting things coming forward. And we always hear kind of these two views, there's kind of the dark view of where this is all going with the automation, and the robots. And then there's the more positive view that you just touched on you know, these are gonna enable us to do more with less and, and free people up to actually be productive, and not do the mundane. >> I think productivity, productivity enables growth. The world needs more productivity. These tools are gonna be used to drive more productivity. I think many more jobs will be technically enabled, than will be eliminated by technology. Clearly there's gonna be some that are, that are, that are impacted more dramatically than others. But I would actually say, for most people, the ability to have technology to help them do their day-to-day job is gonna have a much higher impact. >> Right. What do you think is the biggest misperception of this of this combining of people and machines to do better? Where do you think people kind of miss the boat? >> Oh look I mean, I think it's that people wanna gravitate towards a macro view. A theoretical view, versus actually watching how people work. If you actually spent time seeing how a Service Engineer works, how a Manufacturing person works, how an Administrative person works, then I think you would applaud the technology. Really, I think we tend to make these pronouncements that are philosophical or, coming from Silicon Valley about the rest of the world versus, if everybody just every day, would actually observe how tasks actually get done, you'd say bring on more technology. Because this is just shitty you know, these are just horrible, you know, these are tough, horrible jobs right? A Field Engineer fixing a turbine out in the, in the middle of Texas right, a wind turbine. If we can arm them with some virtual reality tools, and the ability to use analytics so that they can fix it right the first time, that's liberating for that person. They don't look at that and say, "Oh my God, if I use this they're gonna replace me." >> Right, right. >> They really need me to do all this stuff so, I think not enough people know how people actually work. That's the problem. >> It's a tool right? It's as if you took the guy's truck away, and made him ride out there on a horse I mean-- >> It's just a, it's just a, you know look-- >> It's just another tool. >> I remember sitting in a sales office in the early 80s, when the IT guy came out and installed Microsoft Outlook for the first time. And I remember sitting there saying, who would ever need this? You know, who needs spreadsheets? >> Right, right. >> I could do it all here. >> Yeah, little did you know. >> So I just think it's kind of one of those crazy things really. >> Yeah, little did you know those spreadsheets are still driving 80% of the world's computational demands. >> Exactly. >> Great, well alright I wanna give you a last word again. You're here, it's a very exciting spot. We call 'em Bots, or robotic process automation for those that aren't dialed in to RPA stands for. As you look forward, what are you really excited about? >> Oh look, I mean I always think back to the, to kind of the four A's really, which is uh you know, kind of artificial intelligence, automation, additive manufacturing and analytics. And I think if everybody could just hone in on those four things, it's gonna be immensely disruptive, as it pertains to just how people work, how things get built, how people do their work so, when you think about RPA, I put that in the automation. It's kind of a merger of automation and AI. It's just really exciting what's gonna be available. But this, this bow wave of technology, it's just a great time to be alive, really. >> Yeah, it is. People will forget. They focus on the negative, and don't really look at the track, but you can drop into any city, anywhere in the world, pull up your phone and find the directions to the local museum. Alright, well Jeff, thanks for uh taking a few minutes of your time. >> Great. >> Alright, he's Jeff Immelt and I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE from Automation Anywhere IMAGINE 2018. Thanks for watching. (jazz music)

(upbeat orchestral music) >> Welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with the CUBE. We're at our Palo Alto studios having a CUBE conversation about digital transformation, industrial internet, AI, ML, all things great, and we're really excited to have a representative of GE, one of our favorite companies to work with because they're at the cutting edge of old industrial stuff and new digital transformation and building a big software organization out in San Ramon. So we're so happy to have here first time Jeff Erhardt. He is the VP Intelligent Systems from GE Digital. Jeff, great to see you. >> Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. >> Absolutely, so how did you get into GE? You actually, a creature of the valley, you've been here a little while. How did you end up at GE? >> I have. I'm a new guy, so I've been here about a year and a half, I came in via the acquisition of a company called Wise IO where I was the CEO, so I've spent the last 10 years or so of my life building two different analytic startups. One was based around a very popular and powerful open source language called R and spent a lot of time working with much of the Fortune 500. Think the really data driven companies now that you would think of, the Facebooks, the Goldman Sachs, the Mercks, the Pfeizers helping them go through this data driven journey. Anyway, that company was acquired by Microsoft and is embedded into their products now. But the biggest thing I learned out about that was that even if you have really good data science teams, it's incredibly hard to go from white board into production. How do you take concepts and make them work reliably repeatably, scalably over time? And so, Wise IO was a machine learning company that was a spin out from Berkeley, and we spent time building what I now refer to as intelligent systems for the purposes of customer support automation within things like the sales force and Zendesk ecosystem, and it was really that capability that drew us to GE or drew GE to approach us, to think about how do we build that gap not just from algorithms, but into building true intelligent applications? >> Right, so GE is such a great company. They've been around for a hundred years, original DOW component, Jeff Immelt's not there now, but he was the CEO I think for 16 years. A long period of time. Beth Comstock, fantastic leader. Bill Ruth building this great organization. But it's all built around these industrial assets. But they've started, they did the industrial internet launch. We helped cover it in 2013. They have the Pridix Cloud, their own kind of industrial internet cloud, had a big developer conference. But I'm curious coming from kind of a small Silicon Valley startup situation. When you went into GE, what's kind of the state of their adoption, you know, kind of how had Bill's group penetrated the rest of GE and were they making process? We're people kinda getting it, or were you still doing some evangelical work out in the field? Absolutely both, meaning people understand it are implementing yet I think there was maybe misunderstandings about how to think about software data in particular analytics and AI machine learning. And so a big part of my first year at the company was to spend the time coming in really from the top down, from sort of the CEO and CDO levels across the different business understanding what was the state of data and data driven processes within their businesses. And what I learned really quickly was that the core of this business, and this is all public information been well publicized, is in things like GE Aviation. It's not necessarily the sale of the engine that is incredible profitable, but rather it's maintaining and servicing that over time. >> Right. >> And what organizations like them, like our oil and gas divisions, with things like their inspection capabilities like our power division had really done is they had created as a service businesses where they we're taking data across the customer base, running it through a data driven process, and then driving outcomes for our customers. And all of a sudden the aha moment was wow, wait a minute. This is the business model that every startup in the valley is getting funded to take down the traditional software players for. It's just not yet modern, scalable, repeatable, with AI machine learning built in, but that's the purpose and the value of building these common platforms with these applications on top that you can then make intelligent. >> Right. >> So, once we figure that out it was very easy to know where to focus and start building from that. >> So it's just, it's kinda weird I'm sure for people on the outside looking in to say data driven company. We all want to drive data driven companies. But then you say, well wait a minute, now GE builds jet engines. There's no greater example that's used at conferences as to the number of terabytes of data an engine throws off on a transcontinental flight. Or you think of a power plant or locomotion and you think of the control room with all this information so it probably seems counterintuitive to most that, didn't they have data, weren't they a data driven organization? How has the onset of machine learning and some of the modern architectures actually turned them into a data driven company, where before I think they were but really not to the level that we're specifying here. >> Yah, I-- >> What would be your objective, what are you trying to take on this? >> Absolutely, machine learning, AI, whatever buzz words you want to use is a fascinating topic. It's certainly come into vogue. like many things that are hyped, gets confused, gets misused, and gets overplayed. But, it has the potential to be both an incredibly simple technology as well as an incredibly powerful technology. So, one of the things I've most often seen cause people to go awry in this space is to try to think about what is the new things that I can do with machine learning? What is the green field opportunity? And whenever I'm talking to somebody at whatever level, but particularly at the higher levels of the company is I like to take a step back and I like to say, "What are the value producing, data driven workflows within your business?" And I say define for me the data that you have, how decisions are made upon it, and what outcome that you are driving for. And if you can do that, then what we can do is we can overlay machine learning as a technology to intelligently automate or augment those processes. And in turn what that's gonna do is it's gonna force you to standardize your infrastructure, standardize those workflows, quantify what you're trying to optimize for your customers. And if you do that in a standardized and incremental way, you can look backward having accomplished some very big things. >> Right, and those are such big foundational pieces that most people I think discount again, just the simple question of where is your data. >> That's right. >> What form is it in? So another interesting concept that we cover all the time with all the shows we go to is democratization, right? So it seems to me pretty simple, actually. How do you drive innovation, democratize the data, democratize the tool to manipulate the data, and democratize the ability to actually do something about it. That said, it's not that easy. And this kind of concept that we see evolving from citizen developer to citizen integrator to citizen data scientist is kinda where we all want to go to, but as you've experienced first hand it's not quite as easy as maybe it appears. >> Yah, I think that's a very fair statement and you know, one of the things, again I spend a lot of time talking about, is I like to think about getting the right people in the right roles, using the right tools. And the term data scientist has evolved over the past five plus years going from to give Drew Conway some credit of his Venn diagram of a program or a math kinda domain expert, into meaning anybody that's looking at data. And there's nothing wrong with that, but the concept of taking anybody that has ability to look at data within something like a BI or a Tableau tool, that is something that should absolutely be democratized and you can think about creating citizens for those people. On the flip side, though, how do you structure a true intelligent system that is running reliably, robustly, and particular in our field in mission critical, high risk, high stakes applications? There are bigger challenges than simply are the tools easy enough to use. It's very much more a software engineering problem than it is a data access or algorithmic problem. >> Right. >> And, so we need to build those bridges and think about where do we apply the citizens to for that understanding, and how do we build robust, reliable software over time? >> Right, so many places we can go, and we're gonna go a lot of them. But one of the things you touched on which also is now coming in vogue is kind of ML that you can, somebody else's ML, right? >> Mhmm. >> As you would buy an application at an app store, now there's all kinds of algorithmic equations out there that you can purchase and participate in. And that really begs an interesting question of kinda the classic buy versus build, or as you said before we turned on the cameras buy versus consume because with API economy with all these connected applications, it really opens up an opportunity that you can use a lot more than was produced inside your own four walls. >> Absolutely. >> For those applications. >> Yep. >> And are you seeing that? How's that kinda playing out? >> So we can parse that in a couple of different ways. So the first thing that I would say is there's a Google paper from a few years back that we love and it's required reading for every new employee that we bring on board. And the title of it was machine Learning is the High Interest Credit Card of Technical Debt. And one of the key points within that paper is that the algorithm piece is something like five percent of an overall production machine learning implementation. And so it gets back to the citizen piece. About it's not just making algorithms easier to use, but it's also about where do you consume things from an API economy? So that's the first thing I would think about. The second thing I would think about is there's different ways to use algorithms or APIs or pieces of information within an overall intelligent system. So you might think of speech to text or translation as capabilities. That's something where it probably absolutely makes sense to call an API from an Amazon or a Microsoft or a Google to do that, but then knowing how to integrate that reliably, robustly into the particular application or business problem that you have, is an important next step. >> Right. >> The third thing that I would think about is, it very much matters what your space is. And there's a difference between doing things like image classification on things like Imagenet which is publicly available images which are well documented. Is it a dog versus a cat? Is it a hot dog versus not? Versus some of the things that we face with an industrial context, which aren't really publicly available. So we deal with things like within our oil and gas business we have a very large pipeline inspection integrity business where the purpose of that is to send the equivalent of an MRI machine through the pipes and collect spectral images that collect across 14 different sensors. The ability to think that you're gonna take a pre trained algorithm based on deep learning and publicly available images to something that is noisy, dirty, has 14 different types of sensors on it and get a good answer-- >> Right. >> Is ridiculous. >> And there's not that many, right? >> And there's not that many. >> That's the other thing I think people underestimate the advantage that Google has we're all taking pictures of dogs and blueberries-- >> Correct. >> So that it's got so much more data to work with. >> That's right. >> As opposed to these industrial applications which are much smaller. >> That's right. >> Lets shift gears again, in terms of digital transformation one of the other often often said examples is when will the day come that GE doesn't sell just engines but actually sells propulsion miles? >> Yep. >> To really convert to a service. >> Yah. >> And that's ultimately where it needs to go cause it's kinda the next step beyond maintenance. >> Yep. >> How are you seeing that digital transformation play out? Do people kinda get it? Do the old line guys that run the jet engine see that this is really a better opportunity? >> Mhmm. >> Cause you guys have, and this is the broader theme, very uniques data and very unique expertise that you've aggregated across in the jet engines base all of your customers in all of the flying conditions and all of the types of airplanes where one individual mechanic or one individual airline just doesn't have an expertise. >> Yep. >> Huge opportunity. >> That's exactly right, and you can say the ame thing in our power space, in our power generation space. You can say the same thing in the one we we're just talking about, you know things like our inspection technology spaces. That's what makes the opportunity so powerful at GE and it's exactly the reason why I'm there because we can't get that any place else. It's both that history, it's that knowledge tied to the data, and very importantly it's what you hinted at that bares repeating is the customer relationships and the customer base upon which you can work together to aggregate all that data together. And if you look at what things are being done, they're already doing it. They are selling effectively, efficiency within a power plant. They are selling safety within certain systems, and again, coming back to why create a platform. Why create standardized applications? Why put these on top? Is if you standardize that, it gives you the ability to create derivative and adjacent products very easily, very efficiently, in ways that nobody else can match. >> Right, right. And I love the whole, for people who aren't familiar with the digital twin concept, but really leveraging this concept of a digital twin not to mimic kinda the macro level, but to mimic the micro level of a particular part unit engine in a particular ecosystem where you can now run simulations, you can run tests, you can do all kinds of stuff without actually having that second big piece of capital gear out there. >> That's right, and it's really hard to mimic those if you didn't start from the first phase of how did you design, build, and put it in to the field? >> Right, right. So, I want to shift gears a little bit just on to philosophical things that you've talked about and doing some research. One of them is that tech is the means to an end, and I know people talk about that all the time, but we're in the tech business. We're here in Silicon Valley. People get so enamored with the technology that they forget that it is a means to an end. It is now the end and to stay focused. >> That's right. >> How are you seeing that kind of play out in GE Digital? Obviously Bill built this humongous organization. I'm super impressed he was able to hire that many people within the last like four years in San Ramon. >> Yah. >> Originally I think just to build the internal software workings within the GE business units, but now really to go much further in terms of industrial internet connectivity, etc. So how do you see that really kinda playing out? >> Yah, I think one of my favorite quotes that I forget who it came from but I'll borrow it is, "Customers don't want to buy a one inch drill bit, they want to buy a one inch hole." >> Right. >> And I think there is both an art and a science and a degree of understanding that needs to go into what is the real customer problem that they are trying to solve for, and how do you peel the onion to understanding that versus just giving what they ask for? >> Right. >> And I think there's an organizational design to how do you get that right. So we had a visitor from Europe, the chairman of one of our large customers, who is going through this data driven journey, and they were at the stage of simply just collecting data off of their equipment. In this case it was elevators and escalators. And then understanding how was it being used? What does it mean for field maintenance, etcetera? But his guys wanted to move right to the end stage and they wanted to come in and say, "Hey, we want to build AI machine learning systems." And we spent some time talking through them about how this is a journey, how you step through it. And you could see the light bulb go off. That yes, I shouldn't try to jump right to that end state. There's a process of going through it, number one, and then the second thing we spent some time talking about was how he can think about structuring his company to create that bridge between the new technology people who are building and doing things in a certain way, and the people who have the legacy knowledge of how things are built, run, and operated? >> Right. >> And it's many times those organizational aspects that are as challenging or as big of barriers to getting it right as a specific technology. >> Oh, for sure, I mean people process and tech it's always the people that are the hard part. It's funny you bring up the elevator or escalator story, We did a show at Spunk many moons ago and we had a person on from an elevator company and the amazing insight they connected Spunk to it. They could actually tell the health of a building by the elevator traffic. >> Yah. >> Not the health of it's industrial systems and it's HVAC, but whether some of the tenants were in trouble. >> Yep. >> By watching the patterns that were coming off the elevator. While different kinda data driven value proposition than they had before. >> Yep. So again, if you could share some best practices really from your experiences with R and now kinda what you're doing at GE about how people should start those first couple of steps in being data driven beyond kinda the simple terms of getting your house in order, getting your data in order, where is it. >> Yah. >> Can you connect to it? Is it clean? >> Yah. >> How should they kinda think about prioritizing? Ho do they look for those easy wins cause at the end of the day it's always about the easiest wins to get the support to move to the next level. >> Yah, so I've sorta got a very simple Hilo play book and you know the first step is you have to know your business. And you have to really understand and prioritize. Again, sometimes I think about not the build, buy decision per say, but maybe the build consume decision. And again, where does it take the effort to go through hiring the people, understanding building those solutions, versus where is it just best to say, "I'm best to consume this product or service from somebody else." So that's number one, and you have to understand your business to do that, really well. The second one is, and we touched on this before, which is getting the right people in the right seats of the bus. Understanding who those citizen data scientists are versus who your developers are, who your analytics people are, who your machine learning people are, and making sure you've got the right people doing the right thing. >> Right. >> And then the last thing is to make sure, to understand that it is a journey. And we like to think about the journey that we go through in sort of three phases, right? Or sort of three swim lanes that could happen, both in parallel, but also as a journey. And we think about those as sort of basic BI and exploratory analytics. How do I learn is there any there there? And fundamentally you're saying, I want to ask and answer a question one time. Think about traditional business reporting. But once you've done that, your goal is always to put something into production. You say, "I've asked and answered once, now I want to ask and answer hundreds, millions, billions of times-- >> Right, right. >> In a row." And the goal is to codify that knowledge into a statistic, an analytic, a business role. And then, how do you start running those within a consistent system? And it's gonna do and force exactly what you just said. Do I have my data in one place? Is it scalable? Is it robust? Is it queryable? Where is it being consumed? How do I capture what's good or bad? And once I start to then define those, I can then start to standardize that within an application workflow and then move into, again, these complex, adaptive, intelligent systems powered by AI machine learning. And so, that's the way we think about it. Know your business, get the people right, understand that it's a systematic journey. >> Right, and then really bake it into the application. >> That's right. >> That's the thing, we don't want to make the same mistake that we do with big data, right? >> Yep. >> Just put it into the application. It's not this stand alone-- >> Correct. >> You know, kinda funny thing. >> Exactly. >> Alright, Jeff, I'll give you the last work before we wrap for the day. So you've been with GE now for about a year and a half, about halfway through 2018. What are your priorities for the next 12 months? If we sit down here, you know June one next year, what are you working on, what's kinda top of mind for you going forward? >> Yah, so top of the line for me, so as I mentioned sort of our first year here was really surveying the landscape, understanding how this company does business, where the opportunities are. Again, where those data driven work flows are. And we have an idea of of that with the core industrial. And so what we've been doing is getting that infrastructure right, getting those people right, getting the V ones of some very powerful systems set up. And so, what I'm gonna be doing over the next year or so is really working with them to scale those out within those core parts of the business, understand how we can create derivative and adjacent products over those, and then how we can take them to market more broadly based upon that, exactly as you said earlier, large scale data that we have available, that customer insight, and that knowledge of how we've been building the stuff, so. >> Alright, I look forward to it. >> I look forward to being back in a year. >> All right, Jeff Erhardt. Thanks for watching. I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching the CUBE from our Palo Alto studios. See you next time. (upbeat orchestra music)

>> Narrator: From the Computer Museum in Mountain View, California, it's the CUBE, covering ACG Silicon Valley Grow! Awards. Brought to you by ACG Silicon Valley. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with the CUBE, we're at the ACGSV, the 14th annual Grow! Awards, Mountain View California. They're just about ready to pull everybody into the keynotes and we are able to squeeze in one more interview. Excited to have Christian Kim, SVP of sales from Dell EMC. Christian, great to meet you. >> Thank you Jeff, good to be here. >> Absolutely, so you know, Dell, EMC merger took place about a year and a half of so ago, seems like it's doing really well, we'll have Michael on next week; we'll be at Dell Tech World in Vegas. >> Excellent. >> And so you're out on the front line, you're out in the sales role. How's it going out there? What's going on with the merger? How are customers digging it? How do you like having all those extra resources at your disposal? >> Well, I would say Jeff, it's a great question. The integration and the merger has gone exceptionally well, in my opinion in our first year. I think when you put the two big companies together like that, generally there's going to be a few bumps in the road but I would say the reception from our customer base has been very positive. I think the biggest thing that we see is, just the whole "better together" message, that all of the resources from the strategically aligned businesses like Dell, Dell EMC, Pivotal, Vmware, VirtuStream, RSA, and SecureWorks all working together to support the customers. >> Pretty amazing group of companies. We've just had Pat on a little while ago, you know, there was a lot of concern a couple years ago, 'what's going on with Vmware?'and they've really done a great job kind of turning that around, getting together with Amazon and that partnership RSA was last week, 45,000 people. Hot, hot hot in the security space and obviously Pivotal just did their IPO, right, last week. >> They did, yes. >> So you guys are in a good space, I mean, I remember when Michael first went private you could tell he was like a kid in a candy store, right, as he's talked about the '90-day shot clock' they didn't have to worry about it anymore. And so, you know, having an aggressive founder as the leader, I think really puts you guys in a great position. >> It does. When the founder's name's on the building, I think generally it sets a good tone for the culture and the objectives for all of the employees across Dell Technologies. >> And he's such a real guy, right? He tweets all the time, he's really out there and I always find it interesting that there's certain executives that like to tweet, that like to be social. Beth Comstock is another one that comes to mind. Pat tweets a little bit when he's really doing some of his philanthropic things, Michael does as well. And then you have other people that are scared of it, but Michael really wants to be part of the community, he tweeted out today his condolences around the crazy tragedy up in Toronto, so it's really nice to have a person running the organization. >> Yeah, he's a very active CEO and Chairman. Likes to be in front of customers, very involved with the employee base, I couldn't ask for anything more. >> Alright, so we're almost out of time, priorities for 2018, we're, hard to believe, a third of the way through, what are some of your priorities, what are you guys working on, what's top of mind? >> I'd say our priorities are certainly customer focused, focusing on business outcomes, the four areas that we really drive and work closely with our customers on are all about digital transformation, IT transformation, security transformation, and workforce transformation. Those are the big things for us this year. >> It's a good place to be. >> Thank you very much Sir. >> Well Christian, we've got to leave it there, they're shooing everybody into the keynote room so thanks for taking a minute. >> You got it. My pleasure. >> He's Christian Kim, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching the CUBE from the ACGSV Awards, Mountain View California. Thanks for watching. (techno music)

>> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at PagerDuty Summit in Downtown San Francisco. Actually, out on the wharf. It's called Pier 27, never been here before. Pretty cool venue between Pier 39 and the Bay Bridge. We're excited to have a very seasoned Silicon Valley veteran, Nick Mehta. He's the CEO of Gainsight, but look at his LinkedIn profile. He's been on startups, he's been at venture capital companies and now we hear you might may be growing a little unicorn thingy out of your head after that last round. (Nick laughs) >> I don't know about unicorn-- >> Nick, great to see you. >> But a gray hair, for sure. Seasoned, I think just means gray hair, so. >> Absolutely. >> That's growing in my head for sure. >> For people who aren't familiar with Gainsight, give them the basic overview. >> Sure, Jeff. At Gainsight, we really believe that almost every business model is shifting to ones where customers have more power. Therefore, you can't afford to just sell a customer and move on, and for a long time, businesses, the vendors had all the power. You sell a software product or hardware, you sell a device, and once the customer has it, it's up to them whether they get value. Gainsight, we're trying to help enable a shift to this concept we call customer success, where companies have to own whether or not their customers are getting value, whether they're getting the outcomes they want, whether they're using the stuff they buy, and we build a software product, a SAS application, that helps companies make sure everyone in your company is orienting your customers towards getting more value, and in the process, get them to stay with you longer, spend more money with you, and become bigger fans of your company. >> Right, I imagine a lot of people might confuse it with CRN. >> Right. >> Customer relation management and there's a big 60 storey building going up. >> I've seen the building, and we love those guys. Think of us as an adjacent product to what you might do with a Salesforce automation product like salesforce.com. We actually integrate very tightly with Salesforce, as an example, they're an investor in Gainsight. As you're managing sales with your Salesforce, you're managing your support team, you're managing other systems. How do you manage your customers and make sure they're getting value, make sure they're going to stay with you and grow over time? That's what Gainsight does. >> It's really interesting, 'cause people have been talking about the 360 degree view of the customer forever, but that's the challenge you guys went directly after with your application. >> Yeah, it's funny. That's right. I think, for a long time, people were trying to solve 360 view of the customer, but what they were really solving was 360 view of the deal, 'cause it was all about the sale, and the sale is important, it's still very important, right? It was about marketing leads and who I'm selling to and who has power and those are all really important things but now if you think about a world where the customer has power, you've got to look at 360 view of the customer. Are they getting the outcomes they're looking for? Are they adopting and using what they bought? Are they having a good experience? It's a totally different pivot on the world. It's about the customer, not the deal. >> It's interesting too to parallel that with just SAS and Cloud, because when you have a SAS relationship with a client and an ongoing subscription revenue model, you have to keep delivering value, you have to make sure they're going to pay you next month and the month after and the month after. It's not just a sell it and walk away. >> That's exactly right, Jeff. As you know, first of all, it's way cheaper to keep and grow an existing customer than to go get a new one, and because of that, the SAS business model depends on actual high retention rates. People talk about gross retention rate, basically, "Are you keeping the customers you've got?" And then also your net retention rate, are they spending more money with you over time? And the most successful SAS companies, the highest valued ones, are keeping their customers and getting them to spend more money, so that's one of the most important value drivers in SAS. >> I'm curious, when you guys deploy into a new company, a new customer, what are some of the early a-has that you just see over and over and over again that they just miss before they had this view? >> Totally, so number one is almost every company feels today like they're reactive. They find out about things but very late. A customer leaving them, somebody unhappy, a missed sales opportunity, so number one is just getting your organization to be more proactive. Number two, how do you get everyone in the company aligned around the customer? You might have somebody that cares about that one customer, but that customer is talking to support, they're working with your services team, they're going through training. How do you get everyone aligned around the customer and really have a good view across your whole organization so they're all marching for that? Number three, the third a-ha, is how do you scale that? You might have 100 customers, you might have 1,000, you might have a million. How do you scale the right approach with the right customer, whether it's a human outreach or whether it's a fully digital experience, which we can do both, of course. >> What about, there's customers that are in your sales book as a company, but then there's individuals, right, that you're interacting with. >> That's right. >> And in a big company to (mumbling) a relationship, it's not just two companies. It's thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people that are interacting at a bunch of different levels. >> I'm so glad you said that. >> How do you integrate that in? >> Yeah, totally, it's funny, because if you have a big customer and somebody says, "Is your big customer happy or not?" There's no one answer to that question. There might be one part that loves you, another part that doesn't like you, one part that's rolling out, one part that's using some new stuff, one part that's not using anything, and so you have to be able to break up that company in a lot of little pieces, we call those relationships, and then measure each of those differently and be able to drive each of those forward. So, you're totally right. It's not about one company, it's about a lot of little customers within that big customer. >> Right, now you bought into Cloud early in. I think you were actually at a VC firm looking at Cloud and obviously you're at Gainsight and SAS Application. As you look forward, you just got off a panel, what's next? Where do you see the next big evolution or revolution, if you will, in the way IT services and software are delivered? >> Totally, I think the biggest thing that's happening right now is that Cloud is just a delivery vehicle, I think everyone knows that. SAS is kind of table stakes. Mainstream companies are saying, how do I reinvent my core business by shifting to these business models that are digitally enabled? People call that digital transformation. That's what this panel we just did was all about. That's happening not just in Silicon Valley, that's happening in manufacturers and retailers and financial services companies. When they do that, they're rethinking everything about what they do, how they manage product development, how they actually sell, and also the customer experience, which is where we come in. We think the biggest thing is kind of obvious, it's digital transformation. Underneath that, you can leverage all kinds of new technologies whether it's artificial intelligence, machine learning, bots. But the transformation of mainstream businesses is happening at a rapid speed right now. >> I want to get one last point before we let you go, the impact of social, direct social back to these big companies. My favorite one is Comcast Cares. Every time my internet goes down, I jump on and I tweet-- >> Nick: Oh my God. >> Give my internet back! >> I feel for those Comcast Cares social people. They deal with a lot of mean words. >> No, this is not Xfinity Cares, this is Comcast Cares. But it's a really interesting paradox for companies, because people can reach out directly in kind of a semi public forum, which it wasn't, you know, just calling the 1800 number. How are they integrating that into this customer relationship management? >> Oh my God, we talk about the fact that customers have more power and they have bigger voices. One customer has a much bigger voice than they ever did, and so you have this amazing opportunity to either create a great advocate who could bring you new customers and new sales, or create all these detractors. I think that that public voicing of customer experience has made CEOs much more aware of why it matters. Before, a customer has a bad experience, they type up a letter and mail it to some office that nobody ever reads, and now, this CEO is seeing on her or his Facebook or Twitter feed or LinkedIn the customer upset, and I think that's making them much more aware of customer experience being really important. >> Right, right, and are you seeing, it's interesting to me, there's some senior executives, Michael Dell, Beth Comstock, just picked two out of the hat, that are super active on social-- >> Nick: Oh my gosh, yeah. >> Directly engaging with their community. There's other big companies, which I won't name, where people don't even have a LinkedIn account-- >> That's right. >> Much less a Twitter account. Is there a direct correlation that you're seeing between embracing a direct engagement with your community versus, "Eh, I don't want to say anything bad," which I think, it's either or the other. >> Yeah, I empathize with the fear, because I think people worry about saying something bad, so I get it. I think it's definitely misguided and kind of backwards. You can't stick your head in the sand anymore. Take somebody like Marc Benioff, who's so great at this, and he's on Twitter, he's advocating for causes. He's taking, maybe, controversial stands in some cases, but he's putting himself out there and he cares about his customers. Same thing with Michael Dell, same thing with Beth Comstock. There's so many great CEOs out there, so honestly, at this point, if you're not out there, you look like you have something to hide, right? (laughter) Which is not good. >> Which is not good. Alright, Nick, thanks for taking-- >> Thanks so much, Jeff. >> A few minutes, and congratulations. I saw you were a Top 50 SAS CEO of 2017, and continued success at Gainsight. >> I don't know how I made that list, but I felt honored, so thank you so much. >> Absolutely. >> I really appreciate it. >> We'll see you next time. He's Nick Mehta, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from PagerDuty Summit 2017. Thanks for watching.

hey welcome back here ready Jeff Rick here with the key we're at the chief data scientist USA conference in downtown San Francisco and we're really excited to have a representative from IBM Sam Lightstone distinguished engineer from IBM join us Sam great to se you thank you very much pleasure to be here absolutely so we cover a ton of IBM events we're at world of Watson world lots of developer conference big the big event in New York earlier this year around strata so you know we're big fans of all the things that IBM is doing and in Rob Thomas and the SPARC group so I could go on and on but we won't go there we'll talk about what you were talking about earlier today and kind of let the cat out of the bag which is always exciting breaking news or breaking Bay there I don't know exactly how we would describe it but you talked about something new IBM data confluence yeah you could share this what's that all about yeah so it's a it's a whole new idea a whole new paradigm that were that we were incubating right now inside of IBM and it's not yet available but we're hoping to start trials in January ish timeframe but it comes from a realization that so much data is about to come upon us from distributed data sources you know everybody's got not only your cell phone but increasingly data is coming from Internet of Things you're gonna have data coming from your car data come from your glasses some smart meters on your house and it's deluge of data and the way that people like to do data science on this data today is they pull this data from these devices and put it into a central repository which is which is a perfectly legitimate strategy but it means that you're creating copies of the data and there's a certain complexity of dragging that data through the internet into some central repository so the idea that we had with data confluence is to leave the data where it is and create and allow the data all these different data sources if you can imagine cars you can imagine cell phones or smart meters on buildings allow them to find one another and collaborate on data science problems like a computational mesh so that we can bring hundreds thousands millions of microprocessors to bear on the data where it lives without moving it around and our theory is not only is that simpler for everyone because the data doesn't have to move around but we can actually bring more computation to bear because every one of those data sources has compute and has persistence and you can multiply the the opportunities right and you took a chance you ran a live demo which is you know always risky business at any anything but but there was a really interesting because concepts that you highlighted kind of organically forming adapting constellation right of these of these sources and the example you use they were solar panels but for them to do this kind of automatically if you will as opposed to someone going in and scripting and building the structure because tomorrow as you demonstrated in your demo you might want to add more or add more so exactly that dynamic functions are pretty pretty interesting yeah and it's a very powerful concept and a very necessary concept and the reason it's so necessary is these devices could be anywhere right and you could have most your devices in New York but a few of them in the Yukon or Alaska or something and you don't want them to all be equally connected right so it's important to be sensitive to create this network that is sort of geospatially aware and connectivity aware not not just sort of hard-coded you know so that so one aspect of that is to be sensitive to network latency and topology that's one reason why it has to be automatic the other reason has to be automatic is if you really want this to scale to thousands of devices you can't have some programmer trying to figure out who connects to what right it's just too hard right so making it really adaptive and automatic is super important another thing that's really important for the Internet of Things is depending on the on the circumstance but if you can imagine cell phones for example you can have a network of thousands millions of phones but at any point in time somebody some of those funds are gonna be turned off so the network has to be adaptive to the possibility that devices go offline right are there intentionally like a phone perhaps unintentionally because they break you know if you have a device on a smart meter it may simply break and then that particular device is offline for a period of time right so the network has to be resilient to that and that's part of what we've been building in particular using technology that we incubated in our UK labs in Hursley so it's it's been a great collaboration across IBM this is not just you know one you know one set of people in one lab but actually a corporate collaboration and really our goal is to make this as you say automatic but I would I would say beyond automatic to make it resilient right there's got to be resilient and fault tolerant because the complexities that we could be dealing with are just too large for human being to deal with right and clearly and distributed right that's the big thing guys we're leveraging IBM bluemix cloud you know all this stuff doesn't happen with with cloud capabilities and the demo you did here you were here the data center was concerned San Jose and the actual data elements were in in Toronto so just you know Amazon and Microsoft and Google are always you know get talked about a lot it within the cloud space but really iBM is making major players and it if not in that top three certainly right there in the fourth position as a leader in cloud and then what this cloud enables and then really kind of with the whole cognitive push you know that's a priority for Ginni and the team to really bring more intelligence he's exactly right and what data confluence you know what we're hoping not only to tap in to data science on distributed systems for IOT and also for enterprise use cases as well but really to take it to the next level of hybrid cloud because these data sources could be in the cloud and they could be on-premises they could be anywhere in the world and you can mix and match and that's really a very powerful capability for our customers many companies now struggling as their data is now part cloud and part on-premises right and in the compute as well right you could deal shift exactly compute from the edge to the cloud you know a dynamic fashion based on what the kind of optimal solution is or as you said sometimes over the edges off lined and you can't do it there it's exactly right so kind of a cool story you said this came out of a out of something called blue unicorn what is blue you know fantastic so blue unicorn was an initiative that a few of us got together on inside of IBM you probably know some of these folks Rob Thomas so I think you've interviewed gears from Karachay Leah and myself and the three of us got together and we said you know we want to find a more effective way to tap in to the creative juices of our staff we got some of the greatest minds in the world working at IBM we hire brilliant people PhDs masters of the top schools all over the world and all too often we hire these people and we tell them what they should be working on that wouldn't it be better if we could find a repeatable process for them to come to us and say here's the next big innovation that IBM ssin should have and blue unicorn came out of that desire to tap into and and nurture this creative passion of of our staff and was really designed almost like an internal VC initiative so people would would come to us with proposals and we've got those proposals we start out with hundreds and feted it down to dozens that down to just a small few that we would fund from the ones that we funded you know that would go through periodic reviews until eventually we ended up with a very small set that are still being incubated and and did a confluence happen to have been one of those projects awesome so it's different than kind of the 10% thing this is actually almost like an internal you you put your proposal together you pitch it whereas if it was an internal VC you get funded and then you go do that with your team right one thing I would say is one of the you know as we're setting up we're trying to find ways to make it work make it efficient one of the best filtering factors that we came up with is that people had to show us running code before it was funded right right and that was amazing because that meant people had to work nights and weekends they had to have that level of passion and commitment for their idea to get to that level of vetting and that was incredible that that definitely filtered the people who were super passionate about what they were doing and the people just said yeah I'd like to tinker and that was tremendous okay and then you're here at the show melting a small show tight group kind of multi industry any good takeaway surprises from the last couple days here at the chief data science USA show you know it's been an amazing conference actually and some great speakers some great insights I think one of the most useful insights for me was was I was curious to hear from this audience what is the duration of data that is important to them do they need to see data from the last hour the last month the last year the last 10 years and of course it does vary from problem to problem but many people said you know for the work that I do I need about three months to build a model and then once I have a model I'm really looking at the last two to four weeks of data to gain data science insight and that was a very important point for me especially as we continue on our work on analytics data science and IBM it's very important for us to understand the range of data that that people are using shorter than you seem sure yeah it's shorter because I know certainly in the data warehousing space that I've been working a lot of my career in people do data analytics on you know six months a year or three years right so this is this is it definitely is somewhat of a shift and it tells us something about our society that things are moving faster and the idea that's older than six months is is usually not as interesting anymore yeah really shows kind of the dynamic real-time nature it's not this is analyzing just the old stuff is interesting but not nearly as interesting as being on top of where's the spark stream somebody's other thing is funny Beth Comstock kicked off the GU minds and machines event a couple days ago she said we even walk faster in cities they've done so everything is continuing to speed up right all right so you're from now you're back here what are we gonna be talking about Wow okay well you know we just launched a few months or a few weeks ago actually the the Watson Data Platform a huge event for us and it really is for us the foundation the data foundation of all the cognitive computing that we're that IBM is coming out with it's gonna bring together data science and data storage and collaboration across you know amongst analysts and data scientists together all all one platform for all your data needs I'm hoping that a year from now I'm going to speak to you about how data confluence is a core part of that of that platform and we're gonna be raeng analytics on millions of devices all over the world all right Sam well thanks for taking a few minutes I know you gotta go catch an airplane for stopping by and sharing your insight thank you all right Sam lights on I'm Jeff Creek you're watching the cube thanks for watching