>> Announcer: From Miami Beach, Florida, it's The Cube, covering Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2019. Brought to you by Acronis. >> Welcome back everyone. We are here with The Cube coverage for two days. We're wrapping up, getting down on day one in the books for the Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2019. I'm John Furrier, your host of The Cube. We are in Miami Beach, the Fontainebleau Hotel. I'm personally excited for this next guest because I'm a huge Red Sox fan, even though I got moved out to California. Giants is in a different area. National League is different than American League, still my heart with the Red Sox. And we're here with an industry veteran, seasoned professional in IT and data, Brian Shield. Boston Red Sox Vice President of Technology and IT. Welcome to The Cube, thanks for joining us. >> Thank you. It's great to be here. >> John: So congratulations on the rings. Since I moved out of town, Red sox win their World Series, break the curse of the Bambino. >> Hey we appreciate that. Thank you. >> My family doesn't want me back. You got to show >> Yeah, maybe I'll put this one up for the, maybe someone can zoom in on this. Which camera is the good one? This one here? So, there ya go. So, World Series champs for at least for another week. (laughter) >> Bummer about this year. Pitching just couldn't get it done. But, good team. >> Happens. >> Again, things move on, but you know. New regime, new GM going to come on board. >> Yup. >> So, but in general, Red Sox, storied franchise. Love it there. Fenway Park, the cathedral of baseball parks. >> Brian: Defnitely. >> And you're seeing that just play out now, standard. So just a great place to go. We have tickets there. So, I got to ask you. Technology, sports, really is modernized faster than I think any category. And certainly cyber security forced to modernize because of the threats. But sports, you got a business to run, not just IT and making the planes run on time. >> Sure. >> Scouts, money, whatever. >> Fans. >> You got fan experience. >> Stadium opportunities. >> Club management, scouts are out there. So you got business, team, fans. And data's a big part of it. That's part of your career. Tell us what the cutting edge innovation is at the Red Sox these days. >> I think baseball in general, as you indicated, it's a very evolving kind of environment. I mean historically I think people really sort of relish the nostalgia of sports and Fenway Park being as historic as it is, was probably the pinnacle of that, in some respects. But Red Sox have always been leaders and baseball analytics, you know. And everyone's pretty familiar with "Moneyball" and Brad Pitt. >> John: Is that a true story, he turned down the GM job? >> I'm told it is. (laughter) I don't know if I fully vetted that question. But over the last six, seven years, you know we've really turned our attention to sort of leveraging sort of technology across the businesses, right? Not just baseball and analytics and how we do scouting, which continues to evolve at a very rapid pace. But also as you pointed out, running a better business, understanding our fans, understanding fan behavior, understanding stadiums. There's a lot of challenges around running an effective stadium. First and foremost to all of us is really ensuring it's a great fan experience. Whether it's artificial intelligence, or IoT technologies or 5G or the latest Wifi, all those things are coming up at Fenway Park. You and I talked earlier about we're about to break ground for a new theater, so a live theater on the outside, beyond the bleachers type of thing. So that'll be a 5,400-seat arena, 200 live performances a year, and with e-sports, you know, complementing it. It just gives you an example of just how fast baseball is sort of transitioning. >> And the theater, is that going to be blown out from where that parking garage is, structure and going towards >> So the corner of Landsdown and Ipswich, if you think of that sort of corner back there, for those that are familiar with the Fenway area. So it's going to be a very big change and you'll see the difference too from within the ballpark. I think we'll lose a couple of rows of the bleachers. That'll be replaced with another gathering area for fans and things like that, on the back end of that theater. So build a great experience and I think it really speaks to sort of our ability to think of Fenway as more of a destination, as a venue, as a complementary experience. We want people to come to the area to enjoy sports and to enjoy entertainment and things. >> You know Brian, the consumerization of IT has been kicked around. Last decade, that was a big buzzword. Now the blending of a physical event and digital has certainly consumed the world. >> Absolutely. >> And we're starting to see that dynamic. You speak to a theater. That's a physical space. But digital is also a big part of kind of that complementary. It's not mutually exclusive for each other. They're integrated business models. >> Absolutely. >> So therefore, the technology has to be seamless. The data has to be available. >> Yup. >> And it's got to be secure. >> Well the data's got to be ubiquitous, right? I mean you don't want to, if we're going to have fans attending theater and then you're going to go to Fenway Park or they leave a game and then go to some other event or they attend a tour of Fenway Park, and beyond maybe the traditional what people might think about, is certainly when you think about baseball and Fenway Park. You know we have ten to twelve concerts a year. We'll host Spartan games, you know. This Christmas, I'm sorry, Christmas 2020 we now have sort of the Fenway Bowl. So we'll be hosting the AAC ACC championship games there with ESPN. >> John: Hockey games? >> Hockey games. Obviously we have Liverpool soccer being held there so it's much more of a destination, a venue for us. How we leverage all the wonderful things about Fenway Park and how we modernize, how we get basically the best of what makes Fenway Park as great as it is, yet as modern as we can make it, where appropriate to create a great fan experience. >> It's a tough balance between balancing the brand and having things on brand as well. >> Sure. >> Does that come into your job a lot around IT? Saying being on brand, not kind of tearing down the old. >> Yeah absolutely. I think our CEOs and leadership team, I mean it's not success for us if you pan to the audience and everyone is looking at their phone, right? That's not what we aspire to. We aspire to leverage technology to simplify people's experience of how do you get to the ballpark, how do I park, how do I get if I want to buy concessions or merchandise, how do I do it easily and simply? How do we supplement that experience with maybe additional data that you may not have had before. Things like that, so we're doing a lot of different testing right now whether it's 4D technologies or how we can understand, watch a play from different dimensions or AI and be able to perhaps see sort of the skyline of Boston since 1912, when Fenway Park launched... And so we sort of see all these technologies as supplemental materials, really kind of making it a holistic experience for fans. >> In Las Vegas, they have a section of Las Vegas where they have all their test beds. 5G, they call it 5G, it's really, you know, evolution, fake 5G but it's a sandbox. One of the challenges that you guys have in Boston, I know from a constraint standpoint physically, you don't have a lot of space. How do you sandbox new technologies and what are some of the things that are cool that people might not know about that are being sandboxed? So, one, how do you do it? >> Yeah. >> Effectively. And then what are some of the cool things that you guys are looking at or things they might not know about that would be interesting. >> Sure. Yeah so Fenway Park, we struggle as you know, a little bit with our footprint. You know, honestly, I walk into some of these large stadiums and I get instant jealousy, relative to just the amount of space that people have to work with and things. But we have a great relationship with our partners so we really partner, I think, particularly well with key partners like Verizon and others. So we now have 5G partially implemented at Fenway Park. We expect to have it sort of fully live come opening day next year. So we're really excited about that. We hope to have a new version of Wifi, the latest version of Wifi available, for the second half of the year. After the All-Star Break, probably after the season's over. But before our bowl game hopefully. We're looking at some really interesting ways that we can tease that out. That bowl game, we're really trying to use that as an opportunity, the Fenway Bowl, as an opportunity to make it kind of a high-tech bowl. So we're looking at ways of maybe doing everything from hack-a-thons to a pre-egaming sort of event to some interesting fan experiential opportunities and things like that. >> Got a lot of nerds at MIT, Northeastern, BU, Bentley, Babson, all the schools in the area. >> Yeah, so we'll be reaching out to colleges and we'll be reaching out to our, the ACC and AACs as well, and see what we can do to kind of create sort of a really fun experience and capitalize on the evolving role of e-sports and the role that technology can play in the future. >> I want to get to the e-sports in a second but I want to just get the plug in for Acronis. We're here at their Global Cyber Summit. You flew down for it, giving some keynote speeches and talks around security. It's a security company, data protection, to cyber protection. It is a data problem, not a storage appliance problem. It's a data problem holistically. You get that. >> Sure. Sure. >> You've been in the business for a long time. What is the security kind of posture that you guys have? Obviously you want to protect the data, protect privacy. But you got to business. You have people that work with you, supply chain, complex but yet dynamic, always on environment. >> That's a great question. It's evolving as you indicated. Major League Baseball, first and foremost, does an outstanding job. So the last, probably last four plus years, Major League Baseball has had a cyber security program that all the clubs partake in. So all 30 clubs are active participants in the program. They basically help build out a suite of tools as well as the ability to kind of monitor, help participate in the monitoring, sort of a lot of our cyber security assets and logs And that's really elevated significantly our posture in terms of security. We supplement that quite a bit and a good example of that is like Acronis. Acronis, for us, represents the ability for us to be able to respond to certain potential threats like ransom-ware and other things. As well as frankly, what's wonderful about a tool like this is that it allows us to also solve other problems. Making our scouts more efficient. We've got these 125 scouts scattered around the globe. These guys are the lifeblood of our, you know, the success of our business. When they have a problem, if they're in Venezuela or the Dominican or someplace else, in southeast Asia, getting them up and running as quickly as we can, being able to consume their video assets and other things as they're scouting prospects. We use Acronis for those solutions. It's great to kind of have a partner who can both double down as a cyber partner as well as someone who helps drive a more efficient business. >> People bring their phone into the stadiums too so those are end points now connecting to your network. >> Definitely. And as you pointed out before, we've got great partnerships. We've got a great concession relationship with Aramark and they operate, in the future they'll be operating off our infrastructure. So we're in the point of rolling out all new point-of-sale terminals this off-season. We're excited about that 'cause we think for the first time it really allows us to build a very comprehensive, very secure environment for both ourselves and for all the touchpoints to fans. >> You have a very stellar career. I noticed you were at Scudder Investments back in the '80s, very cutting-edge firm. FTD that set the whole standard for connecting retailers. Again, huge scale play. Can see the data kind of coming out, they way you've been a CIO, CTO. The EVP CIO at The Weather Channel and the weather.com again, first mover, kind of pioneer. And then now the Red Sox, pioneering. So I got to ask you the modernization question. Red Sox certainly have been cutting-edge, certainly under the last few owners, and the previous Henry is a good one, doing more and more, Has the business model of baseball evolved, 'cause you guys a franchise. >> Sure. >> You operate under the franchisor, Major League Baseball, and you have jurisdictions. So has digital blurred the lines between what Advanced Media unit can do. You got communities developing outside. I watch the games in California. I'm not in there but I'm present digitally. >> Sure. Sure. >> So how has the business model flexed with the innovation of baseball? >> That's a great question. So I mean, first off, the relationship between clubs like ours and MLB continue to evolve. We have a new commissioner, relatively new commissioner, and I think the whole one-baseball model that he's been promoting I think has been great. The boundaries sometimes between digital assets and how we innovate and things like that continues to evolve. Major League Baseball and technology groups and product groups that support Major League Baseball have been a fantastic partner of ours. If you look at some of the innovations with Statcast and some of the other types of things that fans are now becoming more familiar with. And when they see how fast a runner goes or how far a home run goes and all those sort of things, these kinds of capabilities are on the surface, but even like mobile applications, to make it easy for fans to come into ballparks and things like that really. What we see is really are platforms for the future touchpoints to all of our customers. But you're right, it gets complicated. Streaming videos and people hadn't thought of before. >> Latin America, huge audience for the Red Sox. Got great players down there. That's outside the jurisdiction, I think, of the franchise agreement, isn't it? (laughs) >> Well, it's complicated. As this past summer, we played two games in England, right? So we enjoy two games in London, sadly we lost to the Yankees in both of those, but amazing experience and Major League Baseball really hats off to those guys, what they did to kind of pull that together. >> You mentioned Statcast. Every year when I meet with Andy Jassy at AWS, he's a sports fan. We love to talk sports. That's a huge, kind of shows the power of data and cloud computing. >> No doubt. >> How do you guys interface with Statcast? Is that an Amazon thing? Do they come to you? Are they leveraging dimensions, camera angles? How does that all work? Are you guys involved in that or? >> Brian: Oh yeah, yeah. >> Is that separate? >> So Statcast is just one of many data feeds as you can imagine. One of the things that Major League Baseball does is all that type of data is readily available to every club. So every club has access to the data. The real competitive differentiator, if you will, is how you use it internally. Like how your analysts can consume that data. We have a baseball system we call Beacon. We retired Carmine, if you're familiar with the old days of Carmine. So we retired Carmine a few years ago with Beacon. And Beacon for us represents sort of our opportunity to effectively collapse all this information into a decision-making environment that allows us to hopefully to kind of make the best decisions to win the most games. >> I love that you're answering all these questions. I really appreciate it. The one I really want to get into is obviously the fan experience. We talked about that. No talent on the field means no World Series so you got to always be constantly replenishing the talent pool, farm system, recruiting, scouting, all these things go on. They're instrumental. Data's a key driver. What new innovations that the casual fan or IT person might be interested in what's going on around scouting and understanding the asset of a human being? >> Right. Sure. I mean some of this gets highly confidential and things, but I think at a macro level, as you start to see both in the minor leagues and in some portions of the major leagues, wearable technologies. I think beyond just sort of player performance information that you would see traditionally with you might associate it with like Billy Beane, and things like that with "Moneyball" which is evolved obviously considerably since those days. I mean understanding sort of player wellness, understanding sort of how to get the most out of a player and understanding sort of, be able to kind of predict potential injuries and accelerate recoveries and being able to use all of this technology where appropriate to really kind of help sort of maximize the value of player performance. I mean, David Ortiz, you know, I don't know where we would have been in 2018 without, you know, David. >> John: Yeah. >> But like, you know >> Longevity of a player. >> Absolutely. >> To when they're in the zone. You wear a ring now to tell you if you're sleeping well. Will managers have a visual, in-the-zone, don't pull 'em out, he can go an extra inning? >> Well, I mean they have a lot of data. We currently don't provide all that data to the clubhouse. I mean, you know, and so If you're in the dugout, that information isn't always readily available type of thing. But players know all this information. We continue to evolve it. At the end of the day though, it's finding the balancing act between data and the aptitudes of our coaching staff and our managers to really make the wise decisions. >> Brian, final question for you. What's the coolest thing you're working on right now? Besides the fan having a great experience, 'cause that's you kind of touched on that. What's the coolest thing that you're excited about that you're working on from a tech perspective that you think is going to be game-changing or interesting? >> I think our cloud strategy coming up in the future. It's still a little bit early stage, but our hope would be to kind of have clarity about that in the next couple months. I think is going to be a game-changer for us. I think having, you know, we enjoy a great relationship with Dell EMC and yet we also do work in the cloud and so being able to leverage the best of both of those to be able to kind of create sort of a compelling experience for both fans, for both player, baseball operations as well as sort of running an efficient business, I think is really what we're all about. >> I mean you guys are the poster child for hybrid cloud because you got core, data center, IoT, and >> No doubt. So it's exciting times. And we're very fortunate that with our relationship organizations like Dell and EMC, we have leading-edge technologies. So we're excited about where that can go and kind of what that can mean. It'll be a big step. >> Okay two personal questions from me as a fan. One is there really a money-counting room like in the movie "The Town"? Where they count a big stack of dollar bills. >> Well, I'm sure there is. I personally haven't visited it. (laughs) I know it's not in the room that they would tell you it is on the movie. (laughter) >> And finally, can The Cube get press passes to cover the games, next to NESN? Talk tech. >> Yeah, we'll see what we can do. >> They can talk baseball. We can talk about bandwidth. Right now, it's the level five conductivity. We're looking good on the pipes. >> Yeah we'll give you a tech tour. And you guys can sort of help us articulate all that to the fans. >> Thank you so much. Brian Shield, Vice President of Technology of the Boston Red Sox. Here talking about security and also the complications and challenges but the mega-opportunities around what digital and fan experiences are with the physical product like baseball, encapsulates kind of the digital revolution that's happening. So keep covering it. Here in Miami, I'm John Furrier. We'll be right back after this short break. (techno music)

(ethereal music) >> Good morning, everyone, and welcome to theCUBE's day-two coverage of Snowflake Summit '22. Lisa Martin here with Dave Vellante. We are live in Las Vegas at Caesar's Forum, looking forward to an action-packed day here on theCUBE. Our first guest joins us, Bill Stratton, the global industry lead, media, entertainment and advertising at Snowflake. Bill, great to have you on the program talking about industry specifics. >> Glad to be here, excited to have a conversation. >> Yeah, the media and entertainment industry has been keeping a lot of us alive the last couple of years, probably more of a dependence on it than we've seen stuck at home. Talk to us about the data culture in the media, entertainment and advertising landscape, how is data being used today? >> Sure. Well, let's start with what you just mentioned, these last couple of years, I think, coming out of the pandemic, a lot of trends and impact to the media industry. I think there were some things happening prior to COVID, right? Streaming services were starting to accelerate. And obviously, Netflix was an early mover. Disney launched their streaming service right before the pandemic, Disney+, with ESPN+ as well. I think then, as the pandemic occurred these last two years, the acceleration of consumers' habits, obviously, of not just unbundling their cable subscription, but then choosing, you know, what services they want to subscribe to, right? I mean, I think we all sort of grew up in this era of, okay, the bundle was the bundle, you had sports, you had news, you had entertainment, whether you watched the channel or not, you had the bundle. And what the pandemic has accelerated is what I call, and I think a lot of folks call, the golden age of content. And really, the golden age of content is about the consumer. They're in control now, they pick and choose what services they want, what they watch, when they watch it. And I think that has extremely, sort of accelerated this adoption on the consumer side, and then it's creating this data ecosystem, as a result of companies like Disney having a direct-to-consumer relationship for the first time. It used to be a Disney or an NBC was a wholesaler, and the cable or satellite company had the consumer data and relationship. Now, the companies that are producing the content have the data and the consumer relationships. It's a fascinating time. >> And they're still coming over the top on the Telco networks, right? >> Absolutely right. >> Telco's playing in this game? >> Yeah, Telco is, I think what the interesting dynamic with Telco is, how do you bundle access, high speed, everybody still needs high speed at their home, with content? And so I think it's a similar bundle, but it takes on a different characteristic, because the cable and Telcos are not taking the content risk. AT&T sold Warner Media recently, and I think they looked at it and said, we're going to stay with the infrastructure, let somebody else do the content. >> And I think I heard, did I hear this right the other day, that Roku is now getting into the content business? >> Roku is getting into it. And they were early mover, right? They said the TVs aren't, the operating system in the television is not changing fast enough for content. So their dongle that you would slide into a TV was a great way to get content on connected televisions, which is the fastest growing platform. >> I was going to say, what are the economics like in this business? Because the bundles were sort of a limiting factor, in terms of the TAM. >> Yeah. >> And now, we get great content, all right, to watch "Better Call Saul", I have to get AMC+ or whatever. >> You know, your comment, your question about the economics and the TAM is an interesting one, because I think we're still working through it. One of the things, I think, that's coming to the forefront is that you have to have a subscription revenue stream. Okay? Netflix had a subscription revenue stream for the last six, eight, 10 years, significantly, but I think you even see with Netflix that they have to go to a second revenue model, which is going to be an ad-supported model, right? We see it in the press these last couple days with Reid Hastings. So I think you're going to see, obviously subscription, obviously ad-supported, but the biggest thing, back to the consumer, is that the consumer's not going to sit through two minutes of advertising to watch a 22 minute show. >> Dave: No way. >> Right? So what's then going to happen is that the content companies want to know what's relevant to you, in terms of advertising. So if I have relevancy in my ad experience, then it doesn't quite feel, it's not intrusive, and it's relevant to my experience. >> And the other vector in the TAM, just one last follow-up, is you see Amazon, with Prime, going consumption. >> Bill: That's right. >> You get it with Prime, it's sort of there, and the movies aren't the best in the world, but you can buy pretty much any movie you want on a consumption basis. >> Yeah. Just to your last quick point, there is, we saw last week, the Boston Red Sox are bundling tickets, season tickets, with a subscription to their streaming service. >> NESN+, I think it is, yeah. So just like Prime, NESN+- >> And it's like 30 bucks a month. >> -just like Prime bundling with your delivery service, you're going to start to see all kinds of bundles happen. >> Dave: Interesting. >> Man, the sky is the limit, it's like it just keeps going and proliferating. >> Bill: It does. >> You talk about, on the ad side for a second, you mentioned the relevance, and we expect that as consumers, we're so demanding, (clears throat) excuse me, we don't have the patience, one of the things I think that was in short supply during COVID, and probably still is, is patience. >> That's right. >> I think with all of us, but we expect that brands know us enough to surf up the content that they think we watched, we watched "Breaking Bad", "Better Call Saul", don't show me other things that aren't relevant to the patterns I've been showing you, the content creators have to adapt quickly to the rising and changing demands of the consumer. >> That's right. Some people even think, as you go forward and consumers have this expectation, like you just mentioned, that brands not only need to understand their own view of the consumer, and this is going to come into the Snowflake points that we talk about in a minute, but the larger view that a brand has about a consumer, not just their own view, but how they consume content, where they consume it, what other brands they even like, that all builds that picture of making it relevant for the consumer and viewer. >> Where does privacy come into the mix? So we want it to be relevant and personalized in a non-creepy way. Talk to us about the data clean rooms that Snowflake launched, >> Bill: That's right. >> and how is that facilitating from a PII perspective, or is it? >> Yeah. Great question. So I think the other major development, in addition to the pandemic, driving people watching all these shows is the fact that privacy legislation is increasing. So we started with California with the CCPA, we had GDPR in Europe, and what we're starting to see is state by state roll out different privacy legislations. At some point, it may be true that we have a federal privacy legislation, and there are some bills that are working through the legislature right now. Hard to tell what's going to happen. But to your question, the importance of privacy, and respecting privacy, is exactly happening at the same time that media companies and publishers need to piece together all the viewing habits that you have. You've probably watched, already this morning, on your PC, on your phone, and in order to bring that experience together a media company has to be able to tie that together, right? Collaborate. So you have collaboration on one side, and then you have privacy on the other, and they're not necessarily, normally, go together, Right? They're opposing forces. So now though, with Snowflake, and our data clean room, we like to call it a data collaboration platform, okay? It's not really what a data warehouse function traditionally has been, right? So if I can take data collaboration, and our clean room, what it does is it brings privacy controls to the participants. So if I'm an advertiser, and I'm a publisher, and I want to collaborate to create an advertising campaign, they both can design how they want to do that privacy-based collaboration, Because it's interesting, one company might have a different perspective of privacy, on a risk profile, than another company. So it's very hard to say one size is going to fit all. So what we at Snowflake do, with our infrastructure, is let you design how you create your own clean room. >> Is that a differentiator for Snowflake, the clean rooms? >> It's absolutely a very big differentiator. Two reasons, or probably two, three reasons, really. One is, it's cross cloud. So all the advertisers aren't going to be in the same cloud, all the publishers aren't going to be in the same cloud. One big differentiator there. Second big differentiator is, we want to be able to bring applications to the data, so our clean room can enable you to create measurement against an ad campaign without moving your data. So bringing measurement to the data, versus sending data to applications then improves the privacy. And then the third one is, frankly, our pricing model. You only pay for Snowflake what you use. So in the advertising world, there's what's called an ad tech tax, there is no ad tech tax for Snowflake, because we're simply a pay-as-you-go service. So it's a very interesting dynamic. >> So what's that stack look like, in your world? So I've pulled up Frank's chart, I took a picture of his, he's called it the new, modern data stack, I think he called it, but it had infrastructure in the bottom, okay, that's AWS, Google, Azure, and then a lot of you, live data, that would be the media data cloud, the workload execution, the specific workload here is media and entertainment, and then application development, that's a new layer of value that you're bringing in, marketplace, which is the whole ecosystem, and then monetization comes from building on top. >> Bill: Yes. >> So I got AWS in there, and other clouds, you got a big chunk of that, where do your customers add value on top of that? >> Yeah. So the way you described it, I think, with Frank's point, is right on. You have the infrastructure. We know that a lot of advertisers, for example, aren't going to use Amazon, because the retailer competes with Amazon, So they want to might be in Google or Azure. And then sort of as you go up the stack, for the data layer that is Snowflake, especially what we call first-party data, is sitting in that Snowflake environment, right? But that Snowflake environment is a distributed environment, so a Disney, who was on stage with me yesterday, she talked about, Jaya talked about their first-party datas in Snowflake, their advertisers' datas in their own Snowflake account, in their own infrastructure. And then what's interesting is is that application layer is coming to the data, and so what we're really seeing is an acceleration of companies building that application natively on Snowflake to do measurement, to do targeting, to do activation. And so, that growth of that final application layer is what we're seeing as the acceleration in the stack. >> So the more data that's in that massive distributed data cloud, the more value your customers can get out of it. And I would imagine you're just looking to tick things off that where customers are going outside of the Snowflake data cloud, let's attack that so they don't have to. >> Yeah, I think these partners, (clears throat) excuse me, and customers, it's an interesting dynamic, because they're customers of ours. But now, because anybody who is already in Snowflake can be their customer, then they're becoming our partner. So it's an interesting dynamic, because we're bringing advertisers to a Disney or an NBCU, because they already have their data in Snowflake. So the network effect that's getting created because of this layer that's being built is accelerated. >> In 2013, right after the second reinvent, I wrote a piece called "How to Compete with the Amazon Gorilla." And it seemed to us pretty obvious at the time, you're not going to win an infrastructure again, you got to build on top of it, you got to build ecosystems within industries, and the data, the connection points, that network effect that you just talked about, it's actually quite thrilling to see you guys building that. >> Well, and I think you know this too, I mean, Amazon's a great partner of ours as well, right? So they're part of our media data cloud, as Amazon, right? So we're making it easier and easier for companies to be able to spin up a clean room in places like AWS, so that they get the privacy controls and the governance that's required as well. >> What do you advise to, say, the next generation of media and advertising companies who may be really early in the data journey? Obviously, there's competition right here in the rear view mirror, but we've seen services that launch and fail, what do you advise to those folks that maybe are early in the journey and how can Snowflake help them accelerate that to be able to launch services they can monetize, and get those consumers watching? >> I think the first thing for a lot of these brands is that they need to really own their data. And what I mean by that is, they need to understand the consumer relationship that they have, they need to take the privacy and the governance very seriously, and they need to start building that muscle. It's almost, it's a routine and a muscle that they just need to continue to kind of build up, because if you think about it, a media company spends two, three hours a day with their customer. You might watch two hours of a streaming show, but how much time do you spend with a single brand a day? Maybe 30 seconds, maybe 10 seconds, right? And so, their need to build the muscle, to be able to collect the data in a privacy-compliant way, build the intelligence off of that, and then leverage the intelligence. We talked about it a few days ago, and you look at a retailer, as a really good example, a retailer is using Snowflake and the retail data cloud to optimize their supply chain. Okay? But their supply chain extends beyond their own infrastructure to the advertising and marketing community, because if I can't predict demand, how do I then connect it to my supply chain? So our media data cloud is helping retailers and consumer product goods companies actually drive demand into their reconstructed supply chain. So they both work together. >> So you have a big focus, obviously, on the monetization piece, of course, that's a great place to start. Where do you see the media data cloud going? >> Yeah. I think we'll start to expand beyond advertising and beyond marketing. There's really important sub-segments of media. Gaming is one. You talk about the pandemic and teenagers playing games on their phones. So we'll have an emphasis around gaming. We'll have an emphasis in sports. Sports is going through a big change in an ecosystem. And there's a big opportunity to connect the dots in those ecosystems as well. And then I think, to what we were just talking about, I think connecting commerce and media is a very important area. And I think the two are still very loosely connected today. It used to be, could I buy the Jennifer Aniston sweater from "Friends", right? That was always the analogy. Now, media and social media, and TikTok and everything else, are combining media and commerce very closely. So I think we'll start to see more focus around that as well. So that adds to your monetization. >> Right, right. And you can NFT that. (Lisa laughs) >> Bill: That's right, there you go, you can mint an NFT on that. >> It's the tip of the iceberg. >> Absolutely. >> There's so much more potential to go. Bill, thank you so much for joining us bright and early this morning, talking about what snowflake is doing in media, entertainment and advertising. Exciting stuff, relevant to all of us, we appreciate your insights and your forward-looking statements. >> Thank you for having me. I enjoyed it. >> Our pleasure. >> Thank you. >> Good >> Bill: Bye now. >> For our guest and Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin, you're up early with us watching theCUBE's day-two coverage of Snowflake Summit '22. We'll be back in a moment with our next guest. (upbeat music)

>>From Miami beach, Florida. It's the queue covering a chronics global cyber summit 2019 brought to you by Acronis. >>Okay, welcome back. Everyone's the cubes covers two days here in Miami beach. The Fontainebleau hotel for the Kronos has global cyber summit 2019. It's inaugural event around a new category emerging called cyber protection. Um, this isn't a wave that's going to be part of the modernization a week we've been calling cloud 2.0 or whatever you want to call it. A complete modernization of the it technology stack and development environment includes core data center to the edge and beyond. Our next guest is Dan havens, chief growth officer per Chronis. Dan, thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. And thank you for having me, Dan. So, uh, what does chief growth officer mean? You guys obviously are growing, so obviously we see some growth there. Yeah, numbers are there. What she, what she, we have a couple of divisions in the company where we see we can really accelerate the business. >>So we came in and we wanted to make some large investments here. One of those areas was sports. You're seeing race cars out here on the floor, you're seeing all kinds of baseball teams, soccer teams, and we're talking to everybody. We have 40 teams now that are using our technology for competitive advantage on the field. Uh, the other areas, OEM, so, uh, original equipment manufacturers, everybody from making a camera to a server somewhere, having a Cronus be embedded, that's a big angle for us and we just didn't have a lot of focus. So I came into to build those divisions. I've actually joined the CEO before in a prior life in his last company and did something similar for him on a similar, uh, back there and we had violent success. So yeah, it's been a lot of fun. I've been here a year and a half and we're killing it. >>We got triple digit growth in the sporting category and similar in the OEM. It's interesting, you know, I look at a lot of these growth companies and the kind of a formula. You see, you guys have a very efficient and strong product platform engineering group. A lot of developers, a lot of smart people in the company, and a strong customer facing for the lack of a better word, field. The group you're in, you're involved, this is not, and you got marketing supporting it in the middle. Yep. So nice, efficient organizational structure on a massive way. But cyber, because this isn't your grandfather's data projection, this is a platform. What's the pitch? So the key here for us is we have to always say, and, and it, it's, it's hard to simplify and we're easy. In fact, we're cost-effective. Sometimes I'll even say I'm cheap and I'm easy. >>And that does not go out of style for an enterprise, right? So our ability to take good old fashioned backup and these things that other people need and basically extend that across. Now I can have one window where I can control, keep 'em out. If somebody gets in or from the inside or a disaster happens. I from this one place can recover my data. I'm secure with my data. I have the ability to notarize my data. So this one, and by the way, key simple interface. Customers love simple. This one simple interface to be able to do that. Now it takes a lot of engineering that goes behind that. I have plenty of, I have fancy engineering degrees and all that, but I try forget that when I'm talking to a customer because at the end of the day it's gotta make sense. A mind that doesn't know, says no. >>And I think we do a pretty good job of simplifying the message, but as they get under the covers and they roll it out, they recognize that there's, you know, we, we, we have more engineers per employee capita than any company that would have 1600 employees. Simple, easy to use. It reduces the steps it takes to do something as a winning business model. You kind of come from that school you mentioned, you know, cheap and easy. That's what is key. Yeah. But we're in a world where complexity is increasing and costs are increasing. Yep. These are two dynamics that are facing every enterprise, cyber it everywhere. What's your story when you want to educate that person so they can get to that? Yes. I want to work with you guys. What's that? What's that getting to? Yes. Processed motion look like. So the beautiful part is is we sell software right now. >>Software can be purchased complex. You install it, you can figure, you do everything yourself. We also can sell that from a cloud standpoint. So now you consume it like a service. Just like you consume Netflix at home, right? I can now consume this protection as a service. You have bolts spectrums covered. Most enterprises are somewhere in the middle. We call that hybrid. So the idea here is that there's going to be components where this data's not leaving these four walls. It might be government agency, it might be some compliance factor, but the ability to be able to say yes anywhere on that spectrum, it makes it very easy for an executive to say, okay, but we have a very, as you leverage the cloud, the OnRamp for this can be as simple as turning on the surface and pointing it at a data source. I mean, you're a student of history, obviously even in this business for awhile, you've done been there longer than you'd think. >>Data protection was kind of like that. Afterthought, backup data recovery all based upon, yeah, we might have an outage or a flood or hurricane Sandy who knows what's going to happen. You know, some force majority out there might happen, but security is a constant disrupter of business continuity. The data's being hijacked and ransomware to malware attacks. This is a major disruption point of a world that was supposed to be a non disruptive operational value proposition. Yeah, so the world has changed. They went from a niche, well, we've got their architecture of throwing back up. You've got to think about it from day one at the beginning. This seems to be your, your story for the company. You think about security from the beginning with data protection. There's only one club in the bag, so to speak. Talk about that dynamic and how's that translating into your customer's storytelling customer engagements to show you, you used an interesting word at the beginning, disaster recovery years ago, I started my tech industry in 1992 right? >>Disaster recovery is when we're going to have a flood or a hurricane and the building's going to burn down. What we find is most of our customers, that's certainly happens, but that's not the driver. The driver now is somebody after my data because the world has changed. Not only has the amount of data we're collecting change, but the ability to illegally monetize somebody else's data has become reality and you have social media that is socializes if you get breached and so forth. So there's a number of drivers. Number one, I don't want to be turned out of business. Number two, I don't want to be ransom. Then number three, I certainly don't want to do the cover of the wall street journal tomorrow morning as a top executive who looked past data. We literally watch brands, I won't mention the brand now, but a very large fortune 1000 what's called out yesterday. >>We see it every few days and we watched the carnage of their brand get deluded because they weren't protected. So I think it's the perfect storm up. I've got a ton of data, so it's coming in from all directions. Secondly, I I'm concerned about, you know, my brand and been able to protect that data and then you know, what do I do? And the disaster in this case is not necessarily flood or fire. It's that somebody from the inside or outside got in the gym. Pretend that I'm a decision maker. I'm like, my head's exploding. I'm got all this carnage going on. I don't want to get fired yet. I know I'm exposed. Nothing's yet happened yet. Maybe I settled the ransomware thing, but I know I'm not in a good place. What's your story to any, what's your pitch to me? What's in it for me? Tell me. >>Tell me the posture and the, well, we're halfway home. If you say, I know I'm not in a good place, right? Cause oftentimes somebody has to get bit first or they have to see their neighbor get bit first and then they say, Hey come in. One of my first plays would be let's find out what place you really are. I can do that very quickly and an assessment, we can gather your systems, we can get a sense for our, where's your data? Where it's flowing from. What are you doing? What are you doing to protect it? We typically will come back and there's going to be spots where there's blind spots. Sometimes they're fully naked, right? But the good news is is now we know the problem, so let's not waste any time, but you can get onboard and baby steps or you know, we can bandaid it or we can really go into full surgery however you want to move forward. >>But the idea is recognizing this has to be addressed because it's a beast. Every single device that's out there on the floor, in any enterprise, any company is a way in and a POC are critical for your business model. You want to get them certainly candy taste, show the value quickly has a POC, gets structured unit assessment. You come in on a narrow entry nail something quick, get a win. What's the, what's the playbook? Love PLCs because we're so fast and easy meaning oftentimes you do PLCs cause you're complex software and you're trying to prove your point and so forth. I love to push a POC cause I can do it inside of days, but I get the customer to take the drive. It's just on the car lot. If I get you to drive it down the block, you're not bringing it back. You're bringing it home to the neighbors. >>Right. That is the case with our software and our hit rate is key. But again it's because it's straightforward and it's easy. So though most sales cycles don't push for pilot. I can't wait to get a pilot but we don't need 30 days to do it in a couple of days. They're going to recognize I can do this too. You have a good track record of POC. If I get, this is going to be the most conceding. You might have to edit this out. If I get an audience, I will win. That is the most conceited statement on the planet. And if I get the audience and they will look, and this is why we use the sports teams. Sports teams are the cool kids using this. And if I get an executive to say, what are you guys doing with the red Sox? If I could get him or her to look, it's game over. >>Hey being bad ass and having some swagger. It's actually a good thing if you got the goods to back it up. That's not fun. Piece here is that the product works well and it's not this massive mountain to hurdle. It is. We can get started today and take bites as we go, but you mentioned sports. Let's get into that talk track. As we have been covering sports data for now six years on the cube in San Francisco. We were briefly talking about it last night at the reception, but I think sports teams encapsulates probably the most acute use case of digital transformation because they have multiple theaters that are exploding. They got to run their business, they got a team to manage and they got fan experience and their consumers, so you've got consumerization of it. You got security of your customers either in a physical venue from a potential terrorist disaster could happen to just using analytics to competitive venture from the Moneyball model to whatever sports really encapsulates what I call the poster child of using digital into a business model that works. >>You've been successful with sports. We interviewed Brian shield yesterday. Yup. Red Sox, vice-president technology. He was very candid. He's like, look it, we use analytics. It helps us get a competitive, not going to tell you the secrets, but we have other issues that people not thinking about drone strikes while the games going on, potential terrorist attacks, gathering the people, you know, adding on East sports stadium to Fenway park. They have a digital business model integrating in real time with a very successful consumer product and business in sports. This has been a good market for you guys. What's been the secret to success? >> Explosive market? Couple things. First off, you summarized well, sports teams are looking for competitive advantage, so anything that can come in under that guys is gonna get some attention plus data, fan data, system data, ticket data. Um, in baseball, they're studying every single pitch of pictures ever thrown. >>They have video on everything. This is heavy lift data, right? So a place to put it saved money, a place to protect it, a pace to access it so that all of my Scouts that are out in the field with a mobile device have the ability to upload or evaluate a player while they're out still on them and on the field somewhere maybe in another country. And then add the added caveat in our sexiest piece. And that's artificial intelligence. You mentioned Moneyball, right? Uh, the, the entire concept of, of stat of statistics came out in the Moneyball concept and you know, we all saw the movie and we all read the book, but at the end of the day, this is the next step to that, which is not just written down statistics. Now we can analyze data with machine learning and we have very, we have unique baseball examples where there's absolutely no doubt they have the data. >>It's the ability to, how do I turn that to where I can be more competitive on our racing team. So we're actually working with teams improving, changing the car on the track during the race, using our software fact. We always look forward to opportunities where somebody says, Hey, come in and talk about that because it's incredibly sexy to see. Um, but sports are fun because first off they're the cool kids. Secondly, they're early adopters. If it's gonna give competitive advantage, uh, and third, they hit all the vectors. Tons of data have to protect it. >> It's our life in the business models digital too. So the digital transformation is in prime time. We cannot ignore the fact that people want wifi. They got Instagram, Facebook, all of these, they're all conscious of social media. There are all kinds of listening sports club, they have to be, they have to be hip, right? >>And being out front like that, think about the data they have come in at. And so not just to be smart on the field, they have to be smart with our customer. They're competing with that customer for four of their major sports or whatever. Major sports in the, in the, in the, in our case in this fashionable to be hip is cool for the product, but now you think about how they run their business. They've got suppliers, um, that have data and trusting suppliers with data's. There's a difficult protection formula. They've got national secure security issues. They have to protect, well they have to protect as a big part, but they have to protect, well first off these, these archives of data that are of 20 races ago or of this pitcher pitched three years ago and I have a thousand of his pitches and I'm looking for towels. >>That is, that's mission critical. But also, uh, to boot you have just business functions where I'm a, I'm a team and I have a huge telco sponsor and we are shifting back and forth and designing what their actual collateral is going to be in the stadium. They're actually using a Chronis to be able to do that up in the cloud where they can both collaborate on that. Not only doing it, but being able to protect it that way. It's, it's more efficient for them. It's interesting. I asked Brian shield this question, I asked her how does baseball flex and digital with the business model of digital with the success of the physical product or their actual product baseball. And he said an interesting thing. He's like the ROI models just get whacked out because what's the ROI of an investment in technology? It used to be total cost of ownership. >>The class that's right under the under the iceberg to sharpen whatever you use, you use that. We don't use that. We think about other consequences like a terrorist attack. That's right. So so the business model, ROI calculation shifting, do you have those kinds of conversations with some of these big teams and these sports teams? Because you know they win the world series, their brand franchise goes up if they win the national championship, but whatever their goal is has real franchise value. There's numbers on that. There's also the risk of say an attack or some sort of breach. >> Well, I won't mention the names, I won't mention the teams by name, but I have a half a dozen teams right now and two that are actually rolling out that are doing facial recognition just for security, a fan's entering their stadium. So they are taking the ownership of the safety of their fan to the level of doing visual or facial recognition coming into their stadium. >>Obviously the archive to measure against is important and we can archive that, but they're also using artificial intelligence for that. So you're absolutely right. They owe their fan a safe experience, not only a safe experience with good experience and so forth. And we love to be associated whenever we can with wins and losses. But to your point, how do you get, or how do you show a TCO on a disaster and nobody wants to, and by the way, we've seen enough of that to know it's looming. And there's also the supply chain too. I can buy a hotdog and a beer from Aramark, which is the red socks. They say supplier that's not owned by the red Sox. They have a relationship. But my data's in, I'm a consumer of the red Sox. I'm procuring a, you know, some food or service from a vendor. Yeah, yeah. My data's out there. >>So who protects that? Well, these are unique questions that come up all the time. Again, that's a business decision for the customer. The idea is with cloud collaboration, it's technically quite easy, but again, they have to decide where they're gonna commingle their data, how they're going to share. But the idea here is, again, back to the spectrum, fully cloud and accessible and locked down airtight government's scenario where we have a, you know, a lock bottom line is you get to pick where you want to be on there and there's going to be times where my example of talking to the, uh, the telco vendor, we're, we're actually going to share our data together and we're going to make us faster, make a quicker return and design this collateral for our stadium faster. Those are business decisions, but they're allowed because it, Coronas can be as hybrid as you need to be along the site. >>And again, that resonates with an executive. They never want to be wearing handcuffs and they don't want to pay overpay for stuff to not use our stuff. And if you decide to consume cloud, you, you just pay as you go. It's like your electricity bill. All right. So the red Sox are a customer of you guys. You have or they use your service. What other sports teams have you guys engaged with who you're talking to? Give a taste of some of the samples. So European, we have a couple of formula one teams. We have a racing point. We have the Williams team and formula E we have to cheetah the dragon team. We have a adventury, we also have Neo. So we have a good presence in the racing clubs. We have a ton of a world rally cars and, and, and motorcycle motorcross and so forth. >>Then you step over into European football. So we, we, we started in cars and recognize this is hot. So then we got our first, uh, European team, uh, and we had arsenal. As a matter of fact, we have one of the legends here signing with us today. And you know, I mean, they're rock stars, right? People follow them. Anyway, so we have arsenal and we did man city. Um, and we just landed, uh, Liverpool just did that this quarter, two weeks ago. I literally just, the ink is still drying. Um, and then you move into the United States, which I brought the, you know, I brought the circus to town on January one, 2019. First when was the Boston red Sox. We quickly followed that up. You'll see us on the home run fence at San Diego Padres. Volts bought for different reasons, but both very sexy reasons. So it's the reason. >>What were the main drivers? So in the case of the Boston red Sox, it was, it was a heavy lift on video. A lot of on the protection side. Um, the, uh, San Diego was file sync and share. So the example I was giving of, um, being able to share with your largest telco vendor or with your largest investors slash sponsor for your stadium, um, that was the driver. Now what's funny about both is as they get started, he's always expanding, right? So we have the baseball teams, we did land this quarter, the Dallas stars. So that's our first hockey club. I really want. And my goal is to try to get a couple in each of the main four categories and then some of the subs, um, just cause you get the cool kids, you get a tipping point. Everybody then wants to know what's going on. I have a hundred and play. >>And so we, we typically try to qualify regional where it makes sense. Um, uh, we're, you know, we're very close with a team here in the region. So, you know, they, in the feedback from, from the, from the successes you had implementations, why, what's uh, what's been the feedback from the customers. So here's the file in this. Sounds like I'm just tripping with sales guy and I apologize. Warning signs. Okay. If they use it, we're home free. So when you get Brian or any one of these guys that are using it, all I have to do is make sure that a new customer hears this person who has no reason to say anything else and just expose them to it. Because it's this unknown, scary thing that we're trying to protect against and being able to do that and have the freedom of how aggressive or you know, what metaphor am I going to cover that? >>And then also, uh, you know, the, obviously the economics work is you pay as you go. Um, it's, you know, it's a good story. Well, Dan, congratulations on the success. Um, great to see you guys really digging in and getting those PLCs and being successful. We watching your growth. Final question for you yes. Is all the data and the patterns that you see and all of customers. What's the number one reason why a Cronus is selected and why you women? I think that's an interesting question and I think that it's a couple of reasons. Number one, we work, we're easy. We have an enormous footprint. So there's a lot to reference from. Many people have already used us on the consumer side, so we're safe. So that's one reason I would also tell you however, that we have a great ecosystem because a Kronos is different than most software companies. >>Most software companies have a huge outside sales force that sells direct to customer a Chronis. Everybody here is a partner. We sell through a service provider to a channel member through a, through a, a, a, an ISV. Um, and then we have some direct enterprise. But the idea is there's a variety of solutions that can be baked on this foundation. And I think people like that variety. I, they, they like the, like the freedom of I'm not just trapped with this one thing. I can buy it and all options are available and I will tell you an it, nobody wants to be locked down. Everybody wants options, safety in numbers. They want their data protected with the whole cyber land lens. And they know everything's changing every six months. Something's different. And I don't want to be handcuffed in my desk. I want all options available. I think that's our best value from all right, Dan, thanks for coming on. Dan havens, chief growth officer, but Krohn is weird. The Chronis global cyber summit. I'm John Ford. Stay tuned for more cube coverage after this short break.

>> From Sand Hill Road in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE. Presenting, the People First Network, insights from entrepreneurs and tech leaders. >> Hello everyone I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, we are here in Sand Hill Road up at Mayfield Venture Capital Firm for their 50th anniversary, their People First Network series, produced with theCUBE and Mayfield, I'm John Furrier, with Bill Schlough, the Chief Information Officer of the San Francisco Giants, CUBE alumni, great to see you thanks for joining me today for this People First Series we're doing with Mayfield's 50th anniversary, thanks for coming in. >> Good to be here, John. >> So, been a while since we chatted, it's been a year, A lot's happening in tech, you can't go a year, that's like seven dog years in tech, lot happening, you're managing, as the CIO for the Giants, a lot of things going on in baseball, what's the priorities for you these days, obviously, you guys, great social, great fan experience, what's new for you, what's the priority? >> Man, there's always something new. It's what I love about it, this'll be my 20th season with the Giants comin' up. And, it never gets old, there's always new challenges. On the field, in the seats, off the field, you name it. As we look toward next year, really excited about bringin' in a new video board, which we haven't publicly announced, maybe I just did publicly announce, we're breaking news on theCUBE today. So we're puttin' in a new video board, it'll be over three times the size of the one we have today. That's big news, we're doing a lot of exciting things in the ticketing world. The ticketing world is really transforming right before our eyes in terms of the way fans buy tickets. It's changed a lot. Once up on a time you could call a game a sellout, and we sold out 530 straight games at AT&T Park, but really there's no such thing as a sellout anymore I mean, at any point you can get a great ticket, so we have to adapt to that and change the product that we're delivering to fans, so making some changes on the ticketing front, the fan experience, the ballpark with the video board, and another thing that's changing a lot is the way fans consume our game when they're not at the ballpark. It's rare that you're going to see somebody sit on a couch for three plus hours and watch a game continuously anymore. Fans are consuming through mobile devices, streaming, catching clips here and there, all different methods, and it's fun to be a part of that, because, fans still love the game, but they're just consuming it in different ways. >> Yeah, I love having chats with you on theCUBE because one of the things that have always been the same from nine years doing theCUBE is, the buzzword of consumerization of IT has been out there, overused, but you're living it, you have a consumer product, the ultimate consumer product, in Major League Baseball, and the Giants, great franchise, in a great city, in a great stadium, with a rabid fanbase, and they know tech, so you have all the elements of tech, but the expectation of consumers, and the experiences are changing all the time, you got to deliver on the expectations and introduce new experiences that become expectations, and this is the flywheel of innovation, and it's really hard, but I really respect what you guys are doing over there, and that's why I'm always curious, but, always, the question comes back to, is, can I get faster wifi in the stadium? (laughs) It's always the number one question >> It's funny that you ask that because it is AT&T Park, you know, so, honestly, we got to check that box, and we've had to for years, all the way back to when we first rolled it out, way back in 2004 when we first rolled out wifi in the park, people weren't asking for it then, people were coming to the ballpark with a laptop and plugging a card into it, and there were about a hundred of them that were accessing it, but today, what's interesting is, who knows what next, but we're not talkin' about wifi as much, wifi is just kind of, expected, you got to have it, like water. You're talkin' about 5G networks, and new ways to connect. Honestly, this past season, our wifi usage in terms of the number of fans that use wifi, what we call the take rate, the percentage of fans, was actually down 30% from the previous year. Not because we had less fans in the stadium, because this is the take rate, a percentage of fans in the stadium, went down, because AT&T made some massive investments in their cellular infrastructure at the ballpark, and if you're just connecting, and you got great bandwidth, you don't feel the need to switch over to wifi, so who knows what the future will hold? That's a great point, and you see the LTE networks have so much more power, it used to be you needed wifi to upload your photos, so you'd go in, log in, and if they auto login that's cool, but people don't need to. >> Not with photos, what they need it now for is when we see it really maxing out is events, like our Eagles concert, or Journey concert, or a really big game, like opening day, or honestly, Warriors playoffs game, 49ers football games, that's when folks are streamin' to video. For streamin' to video, they're still goin' to that wifi. Yeah, that's the proven method, plus they don't want to jack up their charges on the AT&T site, but I won't go there, Let's talk about innovat-- Most say unlimited, I will go there, most say unlimited these days. >> Really, I got to find that plan, my daughter's killin' me with her watchin' Netflix on LTE, I tell her. Innovation is changing, I want to get your thoughts on this, 'cause I know you're on the front end of a lot of innovations, you do a lot of advising here at Mayfield. The VC's always trying to read the tea leaves, you're living it, what's the innovation formula look like now for you 'cause as you're sittin' in your staff meetings, as you look at the team of people around you, you guys want to foster, you do foster, innovation culture. What's the formula, what do you guys do when you have those meetings, when everyone's sitting around the table sayin', what do we do next? "How do we create a better experience? "How can we get better fans, and better product "in their hands as fast as possible?" What's your strategy? >> You know, it's funny, people talk about the secret sauce for innovation, what's the formula? I would say, for us, it's really a symbiotic relationship with a lot of things, first of all, where we are, geographically, we've got folks like Mayfield, down the street, and many others, that we can talk to, that are, when innovation is happening, when the startups are incubating, they're being funded by these guys, a lot of times they are here, and our phones are ringing off the hook with a lot of folks so my formula for innovation is answer the phone and take the meetings, but, to be honest, that creates its own problems, because there's so many great ideas out there, if you try to do all of them, you're going to fail at all of them. You got to pick a very small few to try to experiment with, give it a shot, we just don't have the bandwidth, we only have 250 full-time staff on the business side. For us, geographically, you have to really be laser-focused and say okay, there are so many great ideas out here, which are the three or four that we're going to focus on this year, and really give it a try, that's really going to drive, propel our business forward, enhance our product on the field, whatever it might be, but I'll tell you where it really truly starts. It's from the top with our CEO. And, I've had a few different bosses over the years, but with the Giants, our CEO is singularly focused on all of us doing things folks have never done before regardless of what business unit you're in. Whether you're in ticketing, finance, marketing, sales, what drives him, and drives all of us, is innovation. And his eyes glaze over when I talk to him about cost-cutting, and his eyes can glaze over really fast. But when I talk to him about doing something no one's ever done before, that's when he sits forward in his chair, he gets engaged, and I just have a great boss, Larry Baer, he's been with us for 25 years wit the Giants, and he is the driver for it, he creates the culture from the top, where all of us, we want to impress him, and to impress him, you got to do sometin' nobody's ever done before, and what's even more interesting is there are some challenges and some changes talking place across our industry, as I said before, ticketing and other areas, and I've sat in meetings with him where somebody might raise their hand and say, "But this is happening across the industry, "so it's just a macro trend," and he'll get upset, be like, "I don't care about macro trends. "We are here in the Bay Area, "we're the San Francisco Giants, "we're going to do it our way." >> And so when you do it your way, he promotes risk-taking, so that's a great culture. What are some of the things you have tried that were risky, and/or risque, or maybe an experiment, that went well, and maybe ones that didn't go well, can you share some color commentary around that? >> Sure, over 20 years we've had some of all of those. I would say, I've had some real scary moments, our culture is collaborative, but I wouldn't call it combative, but we all have strong opinions, a lot of us have been there a long time, and we have strong opinions and so we'll battle, internally, a lot, but then once the battle is over, we'll all align behind the victory. Thinking back, one of the most stressful times for me at the ballpark was related to wifi, when we decided to take our antennas and put 'em under people's seats. No one had ever done that before, and there were two major concerns with that. One is, honestly are people going to get cancer from these antennas under their seats, it's never been done before, what's going to happen, and whether it's going to happen or not, what's the perception of our fans going to be, because, these are, the bread and butter is, the golden goose here, all the fans, so, yeah it's great that they're going to be, have faster connection here at AT&T Park, but if they think they're going to get cancer, they're going to cancel their season ticket plans, we got to problem. Number two is, we're taking away a little storage space also, under the seats, so it was very controversial internally, we did all of our research, we proved that having a wifi antennae under your seat is the equivalent to having a cell phone in your pocket, most people do that, so we're pretty safe there, and from the storage space perspective, honestly, it actually elevates your stuff, if somebody spills a Coke behind ya, it'll fall all around your purse, which is sitting on top of that wifi antenna so we came up with a good solution, but that was an example of something that was really controversial >> So beer goes on the antennae not your bag. (laughs) >> Exactly, your bag stays dry, we found a way to spin that but, there have been so many, I can go way back in time, back to the days when it was the PalmPilot that ruled the day instead of the apple >> Well you guys also did a good job on social media, I got to give you guys props, because, you're one of the first early adopters on making the fan experience very interactive. That was, at that time, not viewed as standard. Yeah, built the @Cafe at our ballpark, which is still there really to try to bring social media to the fans. >> I think you're the first ballpark to have a kale garden, too, I think. >> That's a little off topic, but yes, driven by one of our players, who's a big kale fan, yeah, the garden out in center field. >> So sustainibility's certainly important, okay, I got to ask the question around your role in the industry, because one of the things that's happening more and more in Major League Baseball and certainly as it crosses over to tech her at Mayfield Venture Capital, there's a lot of collaboration going on, and it's a very people-centric culture where, it used to be people would meet at conferences, or you'd do conference calls, now people are in touch in real time, so these networks are forming. It takes a village to create innovative products, whether you're inside the Giants, or outside in the ecosystem, how have you personally navigated that, and can you share some experiences to the folks watching, how you became successful working in an environment where it's collaborative inside the walls of the San Francisco Giants, but also outside? >> %100, the topic is near and dear to my heart, and from when I started with the Giants, that's what I love about our industry We compete on the field, and only on the field. When you look at who the Giants competitors are, from a business perspective, honestly the Dodgers are not a competitor from a business perspective. The A's are barely a competitor from a business perspective. We got a lot of competitors and very few of them are in our actual industry, so we collaborate all day, and it's been amazing, I can count on one hand, across all of sports, folks who have not been collaborative. There's a very small group of teams, your favorite team, the Boston Red Sox, are not on that list, they are very collaborative, but their arch rival, well there's a few others out there that may be less collaborative, but most of them are highly collaborative, from top down, and so, what I did from when I first started the first trip I made, was to Cleveland. And this was many years ago, Cleveland Indians had a reputation of being very progressive so I called up my counterpart there, I said, "I'm new to the industry, can I come out, "can I learn from you?" And that's where it started, and ever since, every year, we travel to two cities, I take at least four of my staff, to two cities each year and we meet with all the sports teams in those cities. This year, we went to Milwaukee and we met with the Brewers, and we did the Packers as well. Every year, over the 20 years we've visited pretty much every professional sports city, and we just go through it again, and always, red carpet, open door, and you build those face-to-face relationships, that you can pick up the phone and make the call, in a few weeks we're all going to get together in Denver at our MLB IT Summit, my job at the IT Summit every year is I host the golf classic, so I bring all the golfers, the hackers, the duffers out, and we have a great time on the golf course and build those relationships and again, the only thing that we don't really talk about that much is the technology we use to enhance the product on the field. Everything else is fair game. >> So share the business side, but the competitive advantage, where the battle's really having Dodger and Giants obviously on the field, highly competitive-- >> But what's cool about that is then I can meet with the other sports teams to talk about that, so I'll leave the teams nameless, but we've had some awesome collaborative discussions with NBA teams especially to talk about what they're doing to assess talent, and there's no competition there. >> So there's kind of rules of the road, kind of like baseball, unwritten rules. >> Right. >> So talk about the coolest thing that you guys have done this year, share something that you personally feel proud of, or fans love, what were some of the cool things this year that pops out for you? >> Sure, the technology that we invested in this year that I thought was a game-changer, we saw, we experimented with last season, but this year, we've been experimenting with VR and AR a little bit. But, a technology that we thought was really cool is called 4DReplay, it's a company out of Korea. And we saw them, we did an experiment with them, and then we implemented them for the full season this year and we've seen them at some other venues as well, the Warriors tried them at the Playoffs, but we had 'em full year and what we did was they put in about 120 cameras, spaced approximately five feet apart, between the bases. 120 of 'em, and they focus on the pitcher and the batter, so when you have a play, you can 3D, or 4D, 4D rotate around that play and watch the ball as it's moving off the bat, and get it from that full perspective, it's awesome for the fan experience, it gives them a perspective they never have, I love watching the picture, because you can see that hand, in full 4D glory pronating as it comes through on every pitch, if you can watch that hand carefully you can predict what kind of pitch it is, it's something that a fan has never had access to before, we did that for the first time this year. >> I had a new experience, obviously you see Statcast on TV now, a lot of this overlayed stuff happening, kind of creates like an esports vibe to the table. Esports is just coming. >> And it's just the beginning >> Your thoughts on esports, competitor, natural evolution, baseball's going to be involved in it, obviously, thing in the emerging technology's looking interesting, and the younger generation wants the hot, young... Sure, we feel like our game has been around a long time, and it still is, the rules haven't changed that much, but fans still enjoy it, but they just consume it differently and our game can be incredibly exciting in moments, but, there's also some gaps in there when you can build relationships. Some of the younger generation may fill those gaps with watching somethin' else, or two other things on their devices, but that's okay, we embrace that at the ballpark, but in terms of the emergence of esports, and the changing demographic of our fanbase, what we're trying to do is just package our game differently. One thing I'm really excited about, and startin' to see, we're in the early days, I consider with virtual reality, we experiment with it, maybe two or three years ago we've been doing some stuff with it, but I'd say it feels like we're in the second or third inning with virtual reality, where we're really going, and I've seen Intel doin' some of this stuff, I was out working with Intel in Pyeongchang, at the Olympics this past year, working with their PR team, and where it's going I can already visualize what this is going to be like, this concept of volumetric video. Where, it's not about having that courtside seat, in basketball, or that seat right behind home plate, it's about being wherever you want to be, anywhere in the action. And to me it's not about doin' it live, because in baseball, you don't know where the ball's going to go, it's about doin' it, replay, right after, okay, that ball was shot to Brandon Crawford, he made the most amazing diving play, picked it up, gunned it to first, where do you want to watch that from? Everybody's different, some people might want to watch it from right behind first base, some people might want to watch it right Brandon Crawford, behind the batter, with volumetric video and the future of VR, you'll be able to do that, and this esports generation, this fan's instant gratification want, unique experiences, that's what's going to deliver it. >> This is such an immersive environment, we're looking at this kind of volumetric things from Intel, and you got VR and AR, immersion, is a new definition, and it's not, I won't say putting pressure, it's evolving the business model, who would've thought that DraftKings and these companies would be around and be successful, that's gambling, okay, you now you got that, your VR so the business model's changing, I've been hearing even token and cryptocurrency, maybe baseball cards will be tokenized. So these are kind of new, crazy ideas that might be new fan experience and a business model for you guys. Your thoughts on those kind of wacky trends. >> That's why I love working with companies like Mayfield 'cause they're seeing the future before we see it, and I love being where we are, so we can talk to them, and learn about these companies. Another example, along those lines is, how are fans going to get to the ballpark five years from now, and how do we adapt to that because we're doing a major development right adjacent to the ballpark, we've got 4,000 parking spaces. Are we going to need those five years from now? Well we're going to build out that whole parking lot, we're going to put a structure in there. But five, ten years from now, we're building that structure so it can be adaptable, because, is anyone going to need to park? Is parking going to be like typing, you know on a typewriter, 10, 15 years now because everybody is in either self-driving cars, or ride shares, and the cars just, poof, go away, and they come back when you need 'em. >> Like I said, everything that's been invented's been on Star Trek except for the transporter room, but maybe they could transport to the game. >> We could use that in San Francisco. >> Bill, got to ask you about your role with Mayfield, because one of the things I've always been impressed with you is that you always have a taste for innovation, you're not afraid to put the toe in the water or jump in the deep end where the technology is, these guys are lookin' for some trends, too. How do you advise some of these guys, how do you work with Mayfield, what's the relationship, how are they to work with, what's the intersection between Mayfield and you? >> Well the one thing that Mayfield does is they put together a conference, each Summer, that I love comin' down to, and I get to meet a lot of my counterparts and we talked about meeting with my counterparts in sports, but I love meetin' with my counterparts across all industries, and Mayfield makes that possible, they bring us all together with some really interesting speakers on a variety of topics not all directly tech related, so it's a great opportunity for me to just get outside of the daily routine, get outside the box, open my mind, and I just have to drop down the road to do it. So that's an example, another thing is, Mayfield, and other firms will come to me, and just say, "Hey, here's a technology we're evaluating, "they think it would be a great fit in sports, "what do you think?" And so, I can give them some valuable feedback, on company's they're evaluating, companies will come to us, and I might throw them their way, so it's really a two way street >> Great relationship, so you're a sounding board for some ideas, you get to peek into the future, I mean, we've interviewed entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs here, it's a seven, eight year build out, so it's almost like an eight year peek into the future. >> Yeah, and it's super valuable, especially given where we are geographically and our inclination toward being on the leading edge. >> I want to just end the segment by sayin', thanks for comin' in, and I want you to show the ring there, 'cause I always, can't stop starin' at the hardware, you got the ring there, the world champion. >> It's a few years old at the moment, we're going to have to get a new one sometime soon. >> We got to work on that, so is there any cutting edge technology to help you evaluate the best player, who you lookin' at next year, what's goin' on? What's the trades goin' on, share us-- >> Are we off the record now, 'cause I have a feeling you're asking this for personal reasons, for your squad, so. >> I'm a Red Sox fan of the AL, obviously, moved here 20 years ago, big fan of the Giants, I love comin' to the games, you guys do a great job, fan experience is great, you guys do great job and I'm looking forward to seeing a great season. >> Thanks, yeah, hope springs eternal this time of year, we always block off October and expect to be busy, but when we have it back, it just gives us an opportunity to get a head start on everybody. >> Well Bill, thanks for coming in, Bill Schlough, CIO for the San Francisco Giants, here on Sand Hill Road talkin' about the 50th anniversary of Mayfield, and this is the People First Network, getting ideas from entrepreneurs, industry executives, and leaders. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, thanks for watching. (electronic music)