>> Announcer: From The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE On The Ground with Accenture Labs' 30th anniversary celebration. >> Welcome to a special CUBE On The Ground presentation of our coverage of Accenture Labs' 30th birthday party. They've been in business for 30 years. Accenture is doing some great things from here, 30 years ago, to the future. Future's all about AI, blockchain, you name it, virtual reality, augmented reality. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Our next guest is Joe Mikhail, who's the chief revenue officer of a company called Meta. Welcome to the conversation here at the Accenture Labs party. >> Thank you, John, and congratulations to Accenture. >> They have this theme, Magical, but really, it is a magical time. At my age, I've been in this business long enough, it's like I wish I was 20 again, because the technology is really amazing. Augmented reality, you guys do a lot of new stuff. Tell us what your company does, and you guys are doing some really cool stuff. >> Absolutely. We're really pioneering in augmented reality. For those who don't really understand augmented reality, it basically overlays digital data and virtual optics in the real world. With that comes, really, a change in paradigm of what's possible. Our forte is really in being a spatial interface company. We're not only changing the fidelity of the images you see in augmented reality, but how you interface with them, naturally based on neuroscience. >> Joe, first, take a step back, 'cause a lot of folks here in Silicon Valley, they all know what AR is, or augmented reality, something analyst relations work. But augmented reality is the big future. I always say AI stands for, not artificial intelligence, but augmented intelligence. That's what software's doing. What's your definition of augmented reality? >> Augmented reality is the ability to really change how man/machine interface around information, objects outside of 2D panels, and bringing the digital into our world. >> Let's talk about your company, Meta. You guys are doing some pretty cool stuff. Your CTO's not here, which, we'll get him on theCUBE soon. If you're watching, we'll get you on. But there's some cool stuff going on around visualization. I mean, we've covered big data since the day Hadoop was born 2009, 2010 timeframe. Visualization is key, but now, when you go to the next level, 3D, holograms, this is the future. The user interface is going to be augmented at work or at play. What are you guys doing? >> Absolutely, many things when it comes to data visualization. First of all, the third dimension, obviously adds a new way to see data, so, obviously, everything going from a 2D data analysis, you add a dimension, that gives you, obviously, added productivity. But in addition to that, you know, visualizing concepts. Mind-mapping, being able to correlate ideas, and not just data points. And, again, product design cycles and so on, productivity increases. Thirdly, ideation. Taking all that data, getting a 3D model with all its complexity into a simple form that we can collaborate around and design. >> You know, the next generation of users that are coming through the system, if you will, young kids, they're gamers. They love graphics. We're living in kind of a gaming culture, if you will, not to say gaming, literally, but per se, the interface is very rich in graphics, very rich in data. How is that going to impact CIOs? 'Cause they are looking at a old world of IT, put the servers on the racks, move the packets through the network. Now they have an opportunity with mobile, and now with global internet to put things out there like AR, like blockchain, smart contracts, AI. >> I think it's definitely an area that all CIOs should be looking at today, in many aspects. Number one, just like mobile, bring-your-own-device came into the office space. There will be, obviously, an impact from not just productivity solutions in the office, but as we get to consumer and AR, dealing with that and the implications of that. But, a more important, pressing issue for CIOs would be the fact that this is the future of compute. There is not a need anymore for 2D panels, or in the near future for 2D panels and keyboards and mouse interfaces, and how does that change IT support and, again, data sharing, collaboration, and all these-- >> And we see Siri, voice-activated, that's pretty classic. Throw the old movie Minority Report out there, where you're using your hands out there in the 3D space. This is an interface. >> Yes, it truly is. >> How real is that? I mean, come on, tell us! >> It's real, it's here, it's now. You can get a demo today for the audience. Soon, we can definitely invite you and get a demo. It is here. We're able to interact naturally today. We're on second-generation product. We have the widest field of view, which truly gives you immersion. You can walk around a hologram. You can stretch a hologram. You can surround yourselves with unlimited 3D images and panels and windows. >> So, what's the applications? What does this mean for the typical person out in the real world, whether they work in an enterprise, or a business, or a consumer? >> Absolutely. Early adopters right now are in business, enterprises. High-ROI type of applications and product design, so, rapidly iterating on concepts and ideas, getting all the way to sales and marketing, so once you have that design, then, how can you sell it and demonstrate it. All the way to maintenance, training, et cetera. That's the early adopters. Education is next, very close by. In the near future, and then, of course, we're thinking and trending towards consumers. What does shopping look like in the future? >> Check out Meta. It's a cool company. Now, Accenture Labs are having their party, and Accenture's been around for a while. I'm old enough to remember Arthur Andersen, the Big Six accounting firms, Accenture Consulting. These guys are not Johnny-come-latelies. They're doing some cool stuff. What's your role with Accenture Labs? You're on a panel here at this event, it's kind of a celebration. They're bringing the magic to life, talking about the magic of AI and cool things. What are you guys doing here, and what's Accenture Labs doing? >> Yeah, absolutely. We've been in collaboration with Accenture Labs for a little while, and it's been very, very exciting and productive. Number one, we're aligned on vision and strategy, so, currently, it's productivity. We're supporting productivity, we are going to develop a new platform, and so, for example, we've done a study together where we measured basic instructions around a LEGO, this was for the public, around building a LEGO piece used in our headset, using three-dimensional instructions versus 2D instructions, and Accenture brought that magic of quantifying productivity, and it was proved to be 20% faster with respect to instruction and training. >> So, Accenture has some chops, here, technically. >> Absolutely, absolutely. They do. (both laughing) And in the future, I mean, they're a big part of our ecosystem. This is what we're an enabler. We're a spatial interface-- >> What is the ecosystem for AI? That's a good question, 'cause people want to know, like, it's in a new, emerging area. Young kids are going to love this. New software development's coming in. What does the ecosystem look like in this new AR area, and what's the hiring profile? >> Yeah, that's a good question. Let me focus on ecosystem. I would say 50% of our current customers are developers, so the development community is adopting AR and they're building some really interesting and cool things. But the ecosystem comes from developers' content, so there's a lot of content developers, you know, high-fidelity 3D models. Enterprises are consuming all of this, and then channel partners, system integrators such as Accenture that are seeing the opportunity and bridging that gap for a lot of our corporate customers that are still forming their strategies. >> Joe Mikhail here, the chief revenue officer of Meta. I got to ask you, what percentage of your employees and customers are gamers? High amount, medium, low? Got to be a lot of gamers. >> There are some. Obviously, we integrate with Unity. A lot of our developers have come from that world, but our customers, we're a productivity company, and all of our customers are corporates at this time. Of course, we're interested to see what gamers can do on our platform. >> What's the low-hanging fruit for enterprise with respect to AR, because this is the question. No one debates the future. They see some augmentation coming on, obviously wearables, things of that nature, but software's going to power it all. What is the use case for enterprise? What's the low-hanging fruit? >> The lowest-hanging fruit is 3D CAD visualization in the product design cycle. That's just the lowest-hanging fruit right now. And then, training and education. >> You guys excited? >> We are very, very excited. The market's huge. >> All right, final question for you. For the folks that don't know the AR world, what is the future of AR going to be? What's the impact on society, what's the impact on daily lives of people with augmented reality? >> I think there are many, many impacts. One of our core values is technology serving humanity, so for us, it's very important to remove the barriers of devices coming between you and me, and being able to just look up content directly and interact with that. I think that's going to change how we think, how we collaborate, and then, of course, life sciences is huge, so there's a lot of companies starting to look at the future operating system, and the empathy that could come between a doctor and a patient looking at a case instead of just talking, you know? >> Joe, great, thanks for coming on. I'll give you a quick last word, here. What are you guys looking for as a company? You hiring, what's the strategy, what's the plan? Give a quick soundbite for what you guys are doing. >> Absolutely. We're growing. The market demand is huge, and we are hiring. We're looking for engineering, smart engineers that are interested in the space. We are growing on the sales and marketing side. We are absolutely interested in being part of our family, but I would say the biggest interest is in ecosystem partnerships. >> How long are you around for? >> Five years. >> Five years. Congratulations, Accenture Labs, 30 years celebration, where all the magic's happening, that's the theme. They got a magic show. We couldn't get video of that. They wouldn't let us record it. Joe from Meta, chief revenue officer, thanks for sharing your insight here on theCUBE. Appreciate it. >> Thanks, John. >> There'll be more coverage here at Accenture Labs' next 30 years. This is theCUBE coverage. We'll be right back. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Voiceover: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's TheCUBE covering Sapphire Now. Headline sponsored by SAP HANA Cloud, the leader in platform-as-a-service with support from Console Inc., the cloud Internet company. Now, here are your hosts: John Furrier and Peter Burse. >> Hey, welcome back, everyone. We are here live in Orlando, Florida for Sapphire Now SAP show exclusive coverage from SiliconANGLE Media is TheCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier with my co-host, Peter Burris, Head of Research at SiliconANGLE Media. I want to give a shout out to our sponsors, SAP HANA Cloud platform, Console Inc., Virtustream, EMC and Capgemini. Thanks for your support, we really appreciate it. Our next guest is Michael Bruchey, who is the SAP Global VP of Partner Solutions, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you very much. It's an honor to be here. >> The theme of the ecosystem has been pretty big, but the ecosystem, as we've been learning on theCUBE, is that the channels, the VARs, the VAS, the ISVs, all that stuff going on there, but the global channel, your involvement is the big integrated, it's the much more advanced traditional SAP partners... >> Michael: Sure. >> Back in the old days of Big Six accounting firms that we're doing in the early day of deployments. Now, they're doing the cloud. So what's different now? What are you guys doing? Share with the audience some of the things that you guys are doing today and you're talking about at Sapphire this week? >> You know I think one of the big changes and I, one of the things I'm always curious of is time, and over generations, how the element of time has changed. And in the old days, when you talked about the Big Six or the Big Eight, it was probably more about implementations. It was more about how do I get this software to actually run and do something for me. And while that's still an important element that has to get done, a lot of it today is really about innovation. And it's how does SAP and how do our business partners help our customers innovate their business. So it's not just about implementing a piece of financial software. It's about how do they innovate their business so that they can create a competitive advantage for themselves. So I look at it and say, implementations are important. And we absolutely have to go do that. But if we don't help our customers innovate then they might as well just be standing still because our competition or somebody that doesn't even exist yet is going to come up with an idea or a way to go do something that's going to pass them by. >> It's interesting too that the global challenge is obviously very effective in terms of obviously, delivering value to the market. But it's interesting, you have a customer who has a customer. Your customer, customer, customer. So it's like three levels down, but the partner's closed to the customer. So Peter said something on Monday, I thought it was interesting about the trend we're on. I want to get your thoughts on this and how it relates to the innovation piece. In the old days, it was known processes. You used unknown technologies that were being figured out to automate those processes, deliver those technologies, accounting, ERP. Now you have unknown processes developing with known technology. >> Michael: Sure. >> And technology's obviously getting developed more and more. But the unknown processes, like IoT, these are used cases where it's a complete digital transformation on the workflow. So it's kind of unknown. So this is where the innovation comes in. I want to get your thoughts, what innovation aspects do you see and processes are developing that are getting a clear line of sight for the partners? Obviously, Big Data is one, we see that all the time. But what would you share? What insights? Spend a minute to talk about that. >> Yeah, I, it's a great, I'm glad, it's a great question because I believe that this is one of the big differentiators that SAP is bringing to the market in that, we talked, I talked a little bit about time and the importance of getting information on a real-time basis. It's interesting, I learned from one of my colleagues this morning that the R in our earlier products was for real time. But their perspective on real time was the fact that it wasn't on punch guards. I mean this was at the beginning of our company, and you think about where we are today. For our customers, when they innovate the business, and you look at things like the Internet of Things and you want that connectivity, it's not good enough to connect to the systems they have today because if I can't process that data in real time, then it doesn't, what do I do with it? What service can I provide to my customer? And that's part of the innovation or the enabling of innovation that SAP brings to the table with, as for HANA. It's the fact that, not only can I help you connect those devices, those Internet of Things, but I can help you do something with those devices, do it in real time and provide that feedback directly to you, as an organization, and to your customer immediately. >> And what's interesting too on the ecosystem playing, this is highlighted as well. And I want to get your thoughts on is as the, these discoveries come up, people in the trenches who see customer needs in a vertical or a domain, specific expertise, set, they see an opportunity to innovate then they got to actually program it. So they need a developer approach. >> Michael: Absolutely. >> So the developer approach becomes a pretty big deal so now they see an opportunity of problem to obstruct the way, the complexity and deliver it. So again, time is important. But they have to program it. It makes you break software. >> Peter: Yeah. >> So take a step back and say, "Okay. How long is that going to take?" So what's interesting, the ecosystem you guys are putting together is a time to value equation. What's the perspective on that? I mean cause that becomes now a developer cloud concept, the cloud from the servers and the ecosystem. What are you guys seeing there? And what used cases can you share? >> I'll give you a real live example for me and what we do and how we operate our business with our global business partners. When we decide to go to market with a global systems integrator to address this specific business problem, it's important for us to be able to track and measure whether what we're doing is being effective or not. If we create some sort of a campaign that distributes that message to our customers or our prospects, how many of them come forth or actually interested in it, and do we create business opportunity? And once we've created a business opportunity, we get it closed. Now we really want to track and measure where is it in the implementation? When do they go live? Once they've gone live, let's create a story so we can share that with the rest of the marketplace so that people can see the value that other customers are getting for what we do. We didn't really have a system to be able to track that. I came into this role about two years ago, and for the first year, we took something we had and we sort of got the duct tape out and we wrapped it up and we used it to do the best that we could. But we realized it really wasn't adequate for what we wanted to go do. So we actually contracted with one of our business partners. And we had them develop an application for us utilizing HANA Cloud platform. So it's a HANA Cloud platform-based application. It's fully integrated with our CRM system. And the beauty of it is, in the old world, if you didn't look at the innovative tools that SAP has available today, if you went back to the old way of doing things, it probably would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. >> Peter: And you wouldn't have gotten it done? >> We would not, well, and that's part of the reason why we didn't have anything. >> That's right. >> That's because we could never get it done. >> That's right. >> So we contract with one of our business partners who is an expert with HANA Cloud platform, and they developed an application for us in literally weeks. >> John: That's awesome. >> We defined our business requirements. We used, we used our own technology, worked with a third-party company, that's a business partner to go develop an application that solves a business problem. Yeah, now we had to go through the exercise of defining what our business requirements were. But the fact that we could do that, and we were able to do it economically, that's one of those big differences between the way that we used to do things and the way that we can do things today. And that's the important message for our customers is that if you have to take months or years and spend thousands and thousands of dollars to get things done, your competition will pass you by. Somebody you don't know even know exists today will pass you by. We need to enable them, so that they can be innovative, they can be quick. And they can respond to the requirements that are happening in the marketplace so that they can create their own innovations. We did that for ourselves. We used our own technology to get it done. >> But the other thing I'm presuming, I'll bet you, well, let me put it this way, there's been a consistent theme here that the platform approach allows that back end, that traditional SAP, that stable, that secure, that compliant foundation, that it allows innovation to occur in a way that doesn't freak out the IT organization. >> Michael: Exactly. >> And when I say that you probably weren't going to be able to get it done a few years ago is that someone within the IT organization would have come and whacked you with a hammer. But because you're using your own technology, and this is a test, this is the question, to what degree were you no longer, did you no longer have to run that traditional gauntlet of getting it up and running and into production and integrated with the rest of the system? >> Yeah, so we hadn't spoken about this before. >> Peter: Yes. >> And your question's great because I'd indicated that there was a solution that we had. I hesitated using the word solution because it really wasn't designed for what we were trying to go do. It was built on technology from somebody else. It wasn't built on SAP technology. And there were probably two driving factors to move off of that system. Number one, it didn't adequately meet our business requirements. But number two, the IT department said the clock is ticking. >> Yeah. >> We'll only support this for so long. You need to move to HANA, and you need to utilize SAP tools in order to get the support that you're looking for. So in some respects, we were forced to go do it. But we were able to embrace and adopt the new technologies that we have available. And by doing that, we got ourselves back into something that was standard, that our IT operation could support. And get it done much more quickly and get it much, done much more economically, where in the past, we could never get it done. >> So one of the things that's been occurring here at, on TheCUBE over the past couple of days, John, we have a lot of interviews with a lot of people that are part of the overall ecosystem. And SAP has an enormous amount of talent that's devoted to try and drive the productivity and the success and the value of partners and the whole ecosystem for customers. As you look forward, when you think about collaboration, you heard Hasso talk this morning about some of the new tech, in his keynotes, some of the new technologies, some of the ways, that's going to be, that's going to make it easier for smart, high quality, high-success people to work together. Talk a little bit about how you think technology's going to make it easier for you to work with all of the SAP experts and folks who are trying to bring value to the ecosystem for customers. >> Yeah, so today, pretty much all of our global systems integrators are creating innovation centers that will allow them to take advantage of these tools and to quickly develop and deploy assets that will help customers solve specific business problems. And so I believe what we'll be able to have, and I'm envisioning one in particular that happens to be in the same town that I live in, we will be able to work very, very quickly with that organization and integrate that group on a global basis. So it doesn't matter if the business problem is in the United States or if the business problem is in Asia Pacific or in Latin America. We can create those assets in a single location and deploy them anywhere across the globe. And it's interesting when I go around the globe and I meet with business partners, sometimes the challenge that they have is to understand all of the assets that are available within their own organization. And with the way that they're setting up these, and some of them will call them solution centers, some of them will call them innovation centers. But essentially, these centers of excellence, where they had the ability to bring the right resources together, who have the industry knowledge, they have the line of business knowledge. They've got the technical expertise that they can develop these kinds of solutions, that could be deployed in the cloud and can be deployed anywhere across the globe. >> Big buzz this week has been the Apple announcement. >> Sure. >> Obviously, that's going to impact you guys cause it's one great sexy announcement. Everyone loves Apple. They have billions in the cash, 2/3 overseas. But then you guys are global company, Hope we take advantage of that. That's going to bring a lot of attention to the ecosystem and more, and certainly put a spring in the step for developers. That's going to attract a non-SAP set of... >> Michael: Yeah. >> Folks. Yet you guys have an open choice model where you can buy SAP end to end, do all the greatness and goodness of SAP. But for the most part, you might get new customers. How is that impacting the game? Cause that's now, opens to SAP. You have the ecosystem up to a boat load of new opportunities. How are you guys structured for that? What's your thoughts on that? How are you guys organizing and capture that opportunity? Are you going to double down the marketing budgets and go all in? Cause Apple, you've got a window of opportunity. The wind's at your back on this one. >> Michael: Sure. >> So it's great opportunity. How are you organizing it? And how are you taking that to market? >> I think that one of the things certainly, as we work with our business partners especially, it's not about just working with them where they have their SAP expertise. That's not, they're not the only people that communicate either with our customers or with prospects. People who aren't our customers. And so one of the things that we're really trying to do is to ensure that where they have digital practices, and those digital practices aren't necessarily within the SAP practice at all. A matter of fact, they're not. It's really working in collaborating with them and helping them understand how the SAP today has the ability to work with them and to work with customers who haven't necessarily implemented anything of SAP today, whether you're the smallest enterprise or you're the largest global corporation, we have solutions that we can jointly come in together and solve business problems. >> And the consumerization of IT's happening, so that's certainly, is an exclamation point on that. >> Yeah, I thought Hasso's example today was outstanding. Because it took something that he's absolutely got on his app and say you wouldn't be able to do this any other way. >> Peter: That's right. >> And to be able to open SAP up... >> John: It's huge. >> To the user regardless of whether it's somebody just walking down the street or it's somebody within the four walls of the corporation and to be able to use those Apple devices in order to access that information and to make decisions that have an impact on what they do day in and day out, it's pretty significant. >> I mean, I mean it's going to be a competitive advantage for you guys. And I think one of the things that's not being discussed heavily, maybe because it's one of those things people don't like to talk about is money making, huge money making opportunity, exposing the SAP customer base to all those white space developer opportunities could be... >> Sure. >> Fantastic. >> Yeah, well yeah. And it also opens it up to a set of developers who may not have historically even looked at developing on an SAP platform. >> Michael, thanks so much for spending the time on TheCUBE. We really appreciate great conversations, great insights, sharing the data here on TheCUBE. TheCUBE ecosystem's growing at a new CUBE alumni, Michael, welcome to TheCUBE, appreciate it. We're live here at SAP Sapphire. You're watching TheCUBE. (chill-out music)