(bright upbeat music) >> Well, hi everybody, John Wallace here and welcome to theCUBE, the leader in high-tech coverage. Glad to have you aboard here as we continue our coverage here at re:Invent 2022. We're out at The Venetian in Las Vegas. A lot of energy down on that exhibit floor, I promise you. We're a little bit away from the maddening crowd, but we're here with the Executive Summit sponsored by Accenture. I've got two guests I want to introduce you to. Jason Beyer who is the vice president of Data and Analytics at Bridgestone Americas. Jason, good to see you, sir. >> Hello, John. >> And Josh von Schaumburg, who is the managing director and North America lead for AWS Security at Accenture. Josh, good to see you. >> Thanks for having us. >> Yeah, first off, just quick take on the show. I know you've only been here about a day or so, but just your thoughts about what you're seeing on the floor in terms of energy, enthusiasm and, I think, turnout, right? I'm really impressed by it. We've got a lot of people down there. >> Yeah, I've been certainly impressed, John, with the turnout. But just as you say, the energy of the crowd, the excitement for the new things coming, it seems like it's a really pivotal moment for many organizations, including my own, and really excited to see what's coming over the next couple days. >> Let's jump into Bridgestone then. I kind of kidded you before we started the interview saying, all right, tires and golf balls, that's what I relate to, but you have a full array of consumer products and solution you're offering and your responsibility is managing the data and the analytics and making sure those business lines are as efficient as possible. >> Absolutely, John. So in my role, I have the privilege of being in an enterprise position. So I get to see the vast array of Bridgestone, which it is a large, highly vertically integrated company all the way from raw material sourcing of natural rubber to retail services in the automotive industry. We're at scale across those areas. The exciting thing about the company right now is we're going through this business transformation of becoming, you know, building on that heritage and that great legacy of having high quality high performance, highly focused on safety products to becoming a product and solutions company, and particular a sustainable solutions company. So what that means is we're bringing not only those great products to market, tires, golf balls, hoses, all kinds of rubber, air springs products to market, but thinking about how do we service those after they're in the market, how do we bring solutions to help fleets, vehicle owners, vehicle operators operate those in a sustainable way, in a cost effective way? So those solutions, of course, bring all new sets of data and analytics that come with it, and technology and moving to the cloud to be cloud native. So this new phase for the organization that we refer to as Bridgestone 3.0, and that business strategy is driving our cloud strategy, our technology strategy, and our data strategy and AWS and Accenture are important partners in that. >> Yeah, so we hear a lot about that these days about this transformation, this journey that people are on now. And Josh, when Bridgestone or other clients come to you and they talk about their migrations and what's their footprint going to look like and how do they get there, in the case of Bridgestone when they came to you and said, "All right, this is where we want to go with this. We're going to embark on a significant upgrade of our systems here," how do you lead 'em? How do you get 'em there? >> Yeah, I think there are a couple key cloud transformation value drivers that we've emphasized and that I've seen at Bridgestone in my time there. I mean, number one, just the rapid increase in the pace of innovation that we've seen over the last couple years. And a lot of that is also led by the scalability of all of the cloud native AWS services that we're leveraging, and in particular with the CDP platform. It really started off as a single-use case and really a single-tenant data lake. And then through the strategic vision of Jason and the leadership team, we've been able to expand that to 10 plus tenants and use cases. And a big reason behind that is the scalability of all these AWS services, right? So as we add more and more tenants, all the infrastructure just scales without any manual provisioning any tuning that we need to do. And that allows us to go really from idea, to POC, to production in really a matter of months when traditionally it might take years. >> So- >> If I can build upon that. >> Please do, yeah. >> The CDP, or central data platform, is part of a broader reference architecture that reflects that business strategy. So we looked at it and said, we could have taken a couple of different approaches to recognize the business challenges we're facing. We needed to modernize our core, our ERP, our manufacturing solutions move to smart factory and green factories, our PLM solutions. But at the same time, we're moving quickly. We have a startup mindset in our mobility solutions businesses where we're going to market on our customer and commerce solutions, and we needed to move at a different pace. And so to decouple those, we, in partnership with Accenture and AWS, built out a reference architecture that has a decoupling layer that's built around a data fabric, a data connected layer, integrated data services as well. A key part of that architecture is our central data platform built on AWS. This is a comprehensive data lake architecture using all the modern techniques within AWS to bring data together, to coalesce data, as well as recognize the multiple different modes of consumption, whether that's classic reporting, business intelligence, analytics, machine learning data science, as well as API consumption. And so we're building that out. A year ago it was a concept on a PowerPoint and just show and kind of reflect the innovation and speed. As Josh mentioned, we're up to 10 tenants, we're growing exponentially. There's high demand from the organization to leverage data at scale because of the business transformation that I mentioned and that modernization of the core ecosystem. >> That's crazy fast, right? And all of a sudden, whoa! >> Faster than I expected. >> Almost snap overnight. And you raise an interesting point too. I think when you talk about how there was a segment of your business that you wanted to get in the startup mode, whereas I don't think Bridgestone, I don't think about startup, right? I think in a much more, I wouldn't say traditional, but you've got big systems, right? And so how did you kind of inject your teams with that kind of mindset, right? That, hey, you're going to have to hit the pedal here, right? And I want you to experiment. I want you to innovate. And that might be a little bit against the grain from what they were used to. >> So just over two years ago, we built and started the organization that I have the privilege of leading, our data and analytics organization. And it's a COE. It's a center of expertise in the organization. We partner with specialized teams in product development, marketing, other places to enable data and analytics everywhere. We wanted to be pervasive, it's a team sport. But we really embraced at that moment what we refer to as a dual speed mindset. Speed one, we've got to move at the speed of the business. And that's variable. Based on the different business units and lines of lines of business and functional areas, the core modernization efforts, those are multi-year transformation programs that have multiple phases to them, and we're embedded there building the fundamentals of data governance and data management and reporting operational things. But at the same time, we needed to recognize that speed of those startup businesses where we're taking solutions and service offerings to market, doing quick minimum viable product, put it in a market, try it, learn from it adapt. Sometimes shut it down and take those learnings into the next area as well as joint ventures. We've been much more aggressive in terms of the partnerships in the marketplace, the joint ventures, the minority investments, et cetera, really to give us that edge in how we corner the market on the fleet and mobility solutions of the future. So having that dual speed approach of operating at the speed of the business, we also needed to balance that with speed two, which is building those long term capabilities and fundamentals. And that's where we've been building out those practical examples of having data governance and data management across these areas, building robust governance of how we're thinking about data science and the evolution of data science and that maturity towards machine learning. And so having that dual speed approach, it's a difficult balancing act, but it's served us well, really partnering with our key business stakeholders of where we can engage, what services they need, and where do we need to make smart choices between those two different speeds. >> Yeah, you just hit on something I want to ask Josh about, about how you said sometimes you have to shut things down, right? It's one thing to embark on I guess a new opportunity or explore, right? New avenues. And then to tell your client, "Well, might be some bumps along the way." >> Yeah. >> A lot of times people in Jason's position don't want to hear that. (laughs) It's like, I don't want to hear about bumps. >> Yeah. >> We want this to be, again, working with clients in that respect and understanding that there's going to be a learning curve and that some things might not function the way you want them to, we might have to take a right instead of a left. >> Yeah, and I think the value of AWS is you really can fail fast and try to innovate and try different use cases out. You don't have any enormous upfront capital expenditure to start building all these servers in your data center for all of your use cases. You can spin something up easily based in idea and then fail fast and move on to the next idea. And I also wanted to emphasize I think how critical top-down executive buy-in is for any cloud transformation. And you could hear it, the excitement in Jason's voice. And anytime we've seen a failed cloud transformation, the common theme is typically lack of executive buy-in and leadership and vision. And I think from day one, Bridgestone has had that buy-in from Jason throughout the whole executive team, and I think that's really evident in the success of the CDP platform. >> Absolutely. >> And what's been your experience in that regard then? Because I think that's a great point Josh raised that you might be really excited in your position, but you've got to convince the C-suite. >> Yeah. >> And there are a lot of variables there that have to be considered, that are kind of out of your sandbox, right? So for somebody else to make decisions based on a holistic approach, right? >> I could tell you, John, talking with with peers of mine, I recognize that I've probably had a little bit of privilege in that regard because the leadership at Bridgestone has recognized to move to this product and solutions organization and have sustainable solutions for the future we needed to move to the cloud. We needed to shift that technology forward. We needed to have a more data-driven approach to things. And so the selling of that was not a huge uphill a battle to be honest. It was almost more of a pull from the top, from our global group CEO, from our CEOs in our different regions, including in Bridgestone Americas. They've been pushing that forward, they've been driving it. And as Josh mentioned, that's been a really huge key to our success, is that executive alignment to move at this new pace, at this new frame of innovation, because that's what the market is demanding in the changing landscape of mobility and the movement of vehicles and things on the road. >> So how do you two work together going forward, Ben? Because you're in a great position now. You've had this tremendous acceleration in the past year, right? Talking about this tenfold increase and what the platform's enabled you to do, but as you know, you can't stand still. Right? (laughs) >> Yeah. There's so much excitement, so many use cases in the backlog now, and it's really been a snowball effect. I think one of the use cases I'm most excited about is starting to apply ML, you know, machine learning to the data sets. And I think there's an amazing IoT predictive maintenance use case there for all of the the censored data collected across all of the tires that are sold. There's an immense amount of data and ultimately we can use that data to predict failures and make our roads safer and help save lives >> Right. >> It's hard to not take a long time to explain all the things because there is a lot ahead of us. The demand curve for capabilities and the enabling things that AWS is going to support is just tremendous. As Josh mentioned, the, the AI ML use cases ahead of us, incredibly exciting. The way we're building and co-innovating things around how we make data more accessible in our data marketplace and more advanced data governance and data quality techniques. The use of, you know, creating data hubs and moving our API landscape into this environment as well is going to be incredibly empowering in terms of accessibility of data across our enterprise globally, as well as both for our internal stakeholders and our external stakeholders. So, I'll stop there because there's a lot of things in there. >> We could be here a long time. >> Yes, we could. >> But it is an exciting time and I appreciate that you're both sharing your perspectives on this because you've got a winning formula going and look forward to what's happening. And we'll see you next year right back here on the Executive Summit. >> Absolutely. >> To measure the success in 2023. How about that? >> Sounds good, thank you, Jim. >> Is that a deal? >> Awesome. >> Sounds good. >> Excellent, good deal. You've been watching AWS here at Coverage of Reinvent '22. We are the Executive Summit sponsored by Accenture and you are watching theCUBE, the leader in high tech coverage. (gentle music)

>>From the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas. It's the cube covering UI path forward for brought to you by UI path. >>Hey, welcome back to Las Vegas. Lisa Martin, with Dave Volante, the cube is here, live at UI path forward for very excited to be here in person. Next topic, the smart factory, a couple of guests here to unpack that for us, Jason Brixton joins us the smart factory lead at Deloitte and Thomas Hanson, the CRO of UI path gentlemen, and welcome to the program. Thank you. Thank you for having us great to have you great to be in person. Let's talk about smart track factory factory Ford auto. What is it from Deloitte perspective and then UI path. >>So if you think about smart factory, it's really that transition from the old kind of analog manufacturing environment to the digital, digital operating type environment that we see today. So technology has really changed in the last three or four years. And as a result of that elevation of technology, we're able to do a lot more on the manufacturing floor than we ever could. So what used to be more analog or hybrid with a little bit of technology is now starting to shift really to end to end integrated manufacturing operations that are based on digital platforms and we're loving it. It's a great place to be >>Great. Tell us what's your perspective? >>Well, first of all, it's great to be here. Thank you for the invite. It's so nice to be away from soon calls or, or other type of, uh, of calls, right. And be in person. Uh, look, we have an amazing partnership with the lights. Um, we have worked together for years. We've done more than 400 joint engagements with the large companies across the world. And in that process, we've really gone deeper from a vertical and industry perspective and smart factory is really the starting point of going super specific and figuring out what does automation or how does automation rather play into, um, to a, to a smart factory, like a beautiful trombone, that music from a beautiful trombone. >>So years ago, we wrote a piece talking about the cloud as an opportunity and how to take advantage of it. And one of the, the premise of the piece was you've got to build ecosystems and maybe it's within an industry or within a practice and build data in different disciplines because the power of many versus the capabilities of one, this smart factory initiative that you guys have going, it feels like an ecosystem play. Can you describe that ecosystem? Who's involved? I know SAP in for AWS, but, but tell us more about the ECOS. >>Yeah, sure. So your, your hunch, there is a great one, right? We, we learned early on that trying to do this as Deloitte or Deloitte plus one just, wasn't going to get it done, right? You really needed to harness the power of the many. And so at the, at the core of what we're doing at the smart factory at Wichita, that you alluded to is about bringing an ecosystem to life. So we have 21 partners that are going to be participating out of the gate with the smart factory. Wichitan the intent is to show a seamless solution and actual end-to-end production facility that showcases 21 amazing technologies and partners. And we're just really thrilled about what we're able to show our clients. So, >>Yep. So Koch industries owns Inforce. So obviously that's the Wichita connection, is that right? So they got to be involved in this. I mean, they were amazing company, but what can you tell us about, uh, their, their involvement? >>Yep. So Coke, obviously the in for connection, uh, Dragos, which is another in four company as a founder within, uh, within the ecosystem, which is fantastic. There they play at the core. They're also an incredibly important client, right? So the Coke business on the whole is critical to how we think about manufacturing across a whole range of industries from discreet production to scale process. Um, they're fantastic partners and we've had a great time working with them. And you guys are just, >>It's about to launch through soft launch. Can you tell us more where you are in the progression? >>Sure. So soft launch started two days ago. Oh wow. So the building, we have the keys, uh, we are doing some visits with a handful of friends and family, that ecosystem partners that you mentioned, there'll be coming out, uh, to see it and to provide some feedback. And then we go live in earnest in January >>At Thomas where's UI path fit. >>Well, we fit in essay as a key part in this initiative. Um, look, we, as a company, we are part the preferred partner. First, we do all our business together with partners and we have right about almost 5,000 partners now, globally. And then there's a few, then there's a few in that 5,000 that are unique that really stand out. And Deloitte of course is one of those very, very special partners that we work with globally, but also locally here in the us, across all the states across all the industries. So we're thrilled to be part of this automation plays a key key part of smart factory. When you think about it, the evolution of work there's so much boring, mundane work on there. Humankind is better served, spending their time and effort on the non mundane on the innovative on the creative. And that's what we try to ensure that the humans in the loop so to speak are focused on the innovative work, the graded work, and we have software robots, RPA automation handle all that boring and mundane work, >>Right? Letting the folks focus on the value, add to themselves a value add to the organization, more strategic investments. Thomas question for you is in terms of you talked about this being horizontal across industries, but I'm curious about what some of the feedback is from some of your customers, 8,000 customers. Now you've got a very large what, 726 million ARR, huge lot of customers over a hundred million ARR. What's been the feedback from some of those guys. >>Well, so first of all, uh, personally, I I've been in enterprise software for more than 20 years. And what I've experienced over the years are most large scale enterprise software projects tends to be multi-year in nature, be rather complex. And the failure rate can be rather high. Then in comes RPA and automation, which is a complete different kettle of fish in the sense that from conceptualization of identifying a process, to getting it built, getting it tested, getting it into production, you're talking days and weeks only. So the path to seeing value is so fast. What I've learned yesterday and today from the 1516 customer meetings I've had so far is the same unique trend or learning across all industries and also from various parts of the world. And that is very fast realization of value, perhaps starting initially with 5, 10 20 processes and then scaling super fast because the find that return on investment incredibly quickly with our solution. So that's what unifies it across geographies and across industries. >>What'd you think about the smart factory? And one of the things we've learned during COVID is there's so much unknown. So sometimes these processes aren't linear like a trombone, you know, going back and forth in and out, but is there unknown in the smart factory processes or is it pretty well known? And you can do the process mining on that known base. What's the dynamic >>Back there. So there's a few different dimensions to it. So yes, it is well known because it's a controlled environment, but one of the things that we're doing is we're actually actively introducing a lot of unknown factors to try to let the bots and the process mining kick into effect. Right? So we're artificially, let's just say injecting opportunity for us to do that. The other thing that we're doing is, and what's really unique about the smart factory at Wichita is it's one of four across the globe for Deloitte. And so we're bringing data in from the other three sites, which is data, that'll be less controlled. We're going to do process mining on that. Just try to take advantage of some of the, some of the capabilities associated with the solutions. >>Okay. So, so w when you think about process mining, do you start there, or do you start with, I sometimes call it paving the cow path, you know, taking what you've known, that linear process that, that hit that as the quick win, and then worry about the process money, or do you step back and say, wait a minute, we have to rethink the entire factory experience. Where do you start? >>I think it depends in the case of the smart factory with that, we've got a few different places, so we're using it to do ingestion of orders. So that's obviously a very controlled environment. We're then using it to do a lot of work around inventory management and optimization as well as month end close plays, which will be a lot more we're learning as we go. Right. So I think on the spectrum, it could be on either end my personal belief. If you look at it more long-term or actually out in the real world is that this is all about learning new things. It's about generating insights from data that frankly, you don't want human beings to have to go do that. And so having the ability to take advantage of an intelligent automation solution, as powerful as UI path is really a great advantage. >>One of the things that's misunderstood, I think about UI path is they look at what happened post let's say 2015, 2016, and say, oh, just like, just like every other Silicon valley company, double, double, triple, triple. And that's not how you guys started. You sort of let things bake for the better part of a decade and then got product market fit and then exploded. Um, and so that's, that to me was a key to your success in scaling this. I feel like you guys are building a new offering here. This is not just doing a one-off the product market fit. It's not like a point product. It's a, it's a big thing. So can you talk about the go to market, your product market fit? You're testing it out now, your goals, are you trying to scale this up? What, what are some of the things that you can share about your aspirations? So >>The partnership from a UI path perspective to Deloitte is a critical partnership. One of the select few on a global level, uh, we have enjoyed tremendous, uh, amount of engagements together. I mentioned early on 400, and I believe we, we now have together right about 1000 developers trained within your organization on your iPod, right? That's right. Yep. So we have a strong base that, of course we want to build full and hopefully put a syrup behind the thousand to 10,000. And over time, we want to make sure that it's globally inclusive, that we can serve all the marketers across the world where we have giant presence. And there's a select number of verticals and industries where we really have had success together that we of course want to go and specifically shoe in on what would have caused now be manufacturing together. And of course, a classic vertical we've been very strong in together as BFSI bank and financial services industry. So those are good areas. >>Well, Jason, you're building a business out of this, right? I mean, you've got a business plan around it and you're going to scale this thing. >>Oh, absolutely. Yeah. That's 100% the case. So we have smart factory at Wichita. That is part of our positioning in the marketplace. What we found is that telling people about tech and about solutions is one thing, showing it to them in a production environment is altogether different, right? Giving clients the opportunity to explore the art of the possible in a real setting like that is incredibly impactful. And so you talked about go to market, we see this relationship with the ecosystem and what we're trying to do in Wichita, that's sort of the epicenter of building an entire business, which ultimately will have huge global potential. >>We talk about speed for a minute. And the growth trajectory that UI path Thomas has been on for the last five years or so. I think I was reading, I think it was analysis that Dave wrote that in 2016 revenue was 1,000,020, 20, 15, 20, 20 600 million. So massive growth very quickly. My question, Jason is for you in terms of the speed. Ha how quickly are you looking to see the smart factory for Dato really impacting organizations around the globe because these guys are on a fast bulleted. >>Yeah. So I wish we had those growth rates. I will say though, selling and delivering these solutions holistically to manufacturers takes more time. So we think of our cycle as be measured, certainly in many months, certainly not years. We are starting to see an acceleration of that entire sales cycle and delivery cycle, just because of things like the pandemic driving organizations to just need to move faster. Frankly, if you're not moving towards digital manufacturing operations right now, you're probably behind. And so we're seeing that urgency from the market start to pick up, but we don't have that kind of growth rate, unfortunately. >>Well, what's it. What's interesting about Deloitte to me is you guys here, I think of you as a virtual company. I mean, I know you got a lot of bodies out there, but it's not like you've got a lot of physical locations. Right. And so now, but now you're just, you're investing in a physical plant essentially, >>Which is extremely exciting. We, we keep telling ourselves when we talk to folks, they own lots of buildings. So just because we're excited about our building doesn't mean they are, but you're exactly right, right. We're obviously a global services and products company. So this is one of a handful of buildings that are going to start to represent us as an organization. And we're really excited about what should we watch? >>It's kind of milestones for progress success. What are the markers that we should be paying attention to is independence. >>I think specifically on this, um, rapid experiment together, I think one of the key learnings we can take away that we can apply to other companies in the manufacturing industry specifically look from a UI perspective. We work with many large scale manufacturers around the world, but we've seen amazing fast progress with Bridgestone. For example, we implemented a smaller set of, uh, uh, bots that help them reduce their paperwork by 85% onto their branches with a Turkish e-commerce retailer called Archer. Lik I think I get the pronunciation correctly. They put 85 processes in place with our bots and are now to date transacting or running. I think it's 3 million e-commerce transactions with our processes. So the impact we can have in manufacturing together with the learnings from this, my factory, I think is just so exciting. Really? >>Yeah. The impact, the potential there is, is unlimited. Guys. Thank you for joining David, me talking to us about smart factory Ford auto, what it means for both businesses, how the partnership is evolving. It sounds like music from a beautiful trombone. Thank you so much for joining Dave and me today. Thank you For Dave Volante. I'm Lisa Martin. The Cubas live in Las Vegas at the Bellagio at UI path forward for we'll be right back.

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's the Cube covering Interconnect 2017, brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to Interconnect 2017 from Las Vegas everybody, this is the Cube the leader in live tech coverage. Bina Halmann is here, she's a Cube alumn and the vice president of offering management for storage and software defined at IBM and she's joined by Tahir Ali, who's the director of Enterprise Architecture at the City of Hope Medical Center. Folks, welcome to the Cube- >> Tahir: Thank you very much. >> Thanks so much for coming on. >> Bina: Thanks for having us. >> So Bina we'll start with you been on the cube a number of times. >> Yes. >> Give us the update on what's happening with IBM and Interconnect. >> Yeah, no it's a great show. Lots of exciting announcements and such. From an IBM perspective storage we've been very busy. Filling out our whole flash portfolio. Adding a complete set of hybrid cloud capabilities to our software defined storage. It's been a great 2016 and we're off to a great start in 2017 as well. >> Yeah [Inaudible] going to be here tomorrow >> That's right. so everbody's looking forward to that. So Tahir, let's get into City of Hope. Tell us about the organization and your role. >> Sure, so City of Hope if one of the forty seven comprehensive cancer centers in the nation. We deal with cancer of course, HIV, diabetes and other life threatening diseases. We are maybe 15 to 17 miles east of Los Angeles. My role in particular, I'm a Director of Enterprise Architecture so all new technologies, all new applications that land on City of Hope, we go through all the background. See how the security is going to be, how it's going to implement in our environment, if it's even possible to implement it. Making sure we talk to our business owners, figure out if there's a disaster recovery requirement if they have a HA requirement, if it's a clinical versus a non-clinical application. So we look at a whole stack and see how a new application fits into the infrastructure of City of Hope. >> So you guys to a lot of research there as well or? >> Absolutely. >> Yeah. >> So we are research, we are the small EDU and we are the medical center so- >> So a lot of data. >> A whole lot of data. Data just keeps coming and keeps coming and it's almost like never ending stream of data. Now with the data it's not only just data- Individual data is also growing. So a lot of imaging that happens for cancer research, or cancer medical center, gets bigger and bigger per patient as the three dimensional imaging is here. We look at resolution that is so much more today than it used to be five years. So every single image itself is so much bigger today than it used to be five years ago. Just a sheer difference in the resolution and the dimensions of the data. >> So what are the big drivers in your industry, and how is it affecting the architecture that you put forward? >> Right, so I think that a couple of huge things that are maybe two or three huge conversion points, or the pivot points that we see today. One of them is just the data stream as I mentioned earlier. The second is because a lot of the PHI and hipaa data that we have today- Security is a huge concern in a lot of the healthcare environment. So those two things, and it's almost like a catch 22. More data is coming in you have to figure out where you're going to put that data. But at the same time you got to make sure every single bit is secured enough. So there's a catch 22 where its going, where you have to make sure that data keeps coming and you keep securing the same data. Right so, those two things that we see pivoting the way we strategize around our infrastructure. >> It's hard, they're in conflict in way, >> Tahir: Absolutely. >> Because you've got to lock the data up but then you want to provide accessibilty... >> Tahir: Absolutely. >> as well. So paint a picture of your infrastructure and the applications that it's supporting. >> Right, so our infrastructure is mainly in-house, and our EMR is currently off-prem. A lot of clinical and non-clinical also stay in-house with us in our data center on-prem. Now we are kind of starting to migrate to cloud technologies more and more, as just things are ballooning. So we are in that middle piece where some of our infrastructure in in-house, slowly we are migrating to cloud. So we are at like at a hybrid currently. And as things progress I think more and more is going to go to the cloud. But for a medical center security is everything. So we have to be very careful where our data sits. >> So Bina when you hear that from a client >> Bina: Mm-hmm (affirmative) >> how do you respond? And you know, what do you propose? >> Bina: Yeah. >> How does it all... >> Yeah well- >> come about. >> You know as we see clients like Tahir, and some of the requirements in these spaces. Security is definitely a key factor. So as we develop our products, as we develop capabilities we ensure that security is a number one focus area for us. Whether it's for the on-prem storage, whether it's for the data that's in motion from moving from the on-prem into the cloud, and secure completely all the way through where the client has the control on the security, the keys et cetera. So a lot goes into making sure as we architect these solutions for our clients, that we focus on security. And of course some of the other requirements, industry specific requirements, are all also very important and we focus in on those as well. Whether it's regulatory or compliance requirements, right. >> So from a sort of portfolio standpoint what do you guys do when there's all kinds of innovations over that last four or five years coming in with flash, we heard about object stores this morning, we got cloud, you got block, you've got file, what are you guys doing? >> So we do a lot of different things, so from having filers in-house to doing block storage from- And the worst thing now these days with big data is, as the data is growing the security needs are growing but the end result with the researchers and our physicians the data availability needs to be fast. So now comes a bigger catch 22, where the data is so huge but at the same time they want that all of that very quickly on their fingertips. So now what do you do? That's where we bring in a lot of the flash to upfront it. 10 to 12 percent of our infrastructure has flash in the front, this way all the rendering, or all the rights that happen or- First land on the flash. So everybody who writes, feels like it's a very quick write. But there's a petabytes and petabytes behind the scene that could be on-prem, it could be on the cloud, but they don't need to know that. Its, everything lands so fast that it looks like it's just local and fast. So there's a lot of crisscross that is happening, and started maybe four five years ago with the speed of data is not going to be slow. The size of data increasing like crazy and then security is becoming a bigger and bigger concern as you know. Maybe every month or month and a half there's a breach somewhere that people have to deal with. So we have to handle all of that in one shot. So you know, it's more than just infrastructure itself. There's policies, there's procedures, there's a lot that goes around. >> So when you think about architecting, obviously you think about workloads and- >> Tahir: Of Course. >> what the workload requirement is, it's no a one size fits all. >> Tahir: Right right. >> So where do you start, do you start with- >> Tahir: Sure. >> Sort of, you know a conversation with the business? >> Sure, sure. >> How much money do you got? >> So we don't really deal with the money at all. We provide the best possible solution for that business requirement. So the conversation happens, "tell us what you're looking for." "We're looking for a very fast XYZ." "Okay tell us what exactly you need." "Here's the application, we want it available all the time, "and this is how it's going to look like, "it can't be down because our patients are depending on it". So on and so forth. We take that, we talk to our vendors. We look at exactly how it's architected. If it's- Let's just say it's three-tiered. There's a web, there's an app and then there's a database. You already know by default that if it's a database it's going to go on a high transactional IO where either it's a flash or a very fast spinning disc with a lot of spindles. From there you get the application. Could be a virtual machine, could not be a virtual machine. From there you get to a web tier. Web tiers are usually always on a virtual infrastructure. Then you realize if you want to put it on a DMZ so people from outside can get to it, or it's only for internal use. Then you draw the entire architecture diagram out. Then you price it out, you said "Okay if you want this to be "always on, maybe you need a database that is always on." Right, or you need a database that replicates 24/7. That has a cost associated to that. If you have an application- If wanted two application maybe it's a costier application it could be HA it could not be HA, so there's a cost to that. Web servers are kind of, you know cheaper tier of virtual machines. And then there's a architecture diagram, all the requirements are met in there. And there's a cost associated to that, saying business unit here is how much it's going to cost and this is what you will have. >> Okay so that's where the economics, >> Exactly >> comes into play. Okay this is what your requirements are >> Yep. >> This is, based on that what we would advise. >> Exactly, yeah. >> And then essentially it's can you afford it. >> Right right. (laughs) If you want to buy a house that is a three bedrooms and three bathrooms in Palo Alto, versus a six bedrooms and then seven bathrooms in Palo Alto it's going to be a financial impact that you might not like. (laughs) So it's one of those, right. So what you want has a financial impact on your end solution and that's what we provide. We don't force somebody to get something. We just give them- Hey how many kids do you have? Four kids, then maybe you need a five bedroom house. Right so we kind of do that. >> Is it common discussion? >> Yeah it is, it is. And that's, as you know, some of the things we do focus on. Right, as we- In addition to the security aspect of it of course, is around the automation, around driving in the efficiencies. Because at the end of the day, you know, whether as capital expands or operational expands you want to optimize for both of those. And that's where as we architect the solutions, develop the offerings, we ensure that we build-in capabilities, whether it's storage efficiency capabilities like virtualization, or de-dupe or compression. But as well as this automated tiering. Tiering off from flash to lower tier, whether it's on-prem lower, slower- >> Tahir: Could be a disc. >> speed disc or tape or even off to the cloud, right. And being able to do that, provide that I think addresses many of our clients' needs. That's a common requirement that we do hear. >> And as mentioned 10 to 12 percent of it if flash. >> Tahir: Right. >> The rest, you know ninety percent or so is something else. That's economics, correct? >> Right so- >> And how do you see that changing? >> So I think the percentage won't really change. I think the data size will change. So you have to just think about things, just in generality. Just what you do today. You know when you take a picture, maybe you look at it the first three days, even if you have a phone. After three days, maybe you look at it maybe once every two months. After three months, guess what? You will always never look at them. They're kind of moved away from even your memory banks in your head. Then you say, "Oh I was looking through it". And then maybe once in awhile you look at it. So you have to look at the behavior. A lot of the applications have the same behavior, where the new data is required right away. The older the data gets, the more archival state it gets. It gets warmer and then it gets colder. Now, as a healthcare institute we have to devise something that is great financially, also has the security, and put away in a way where we can pull it without having pain to put it back. So that's where the tiering comes to play. Doesn't matter how we do it. >> And your planning assumption is that the cost disparity between flash and other forms of storage will remain. That other- >> So- >> forms will remain cheaper. >> Right, so we are hoping, but I think the hybrid model of flash- So once you do a hybrid with flash and disc, then it becomes a little more economically suitable for a lot of the people. They do the same thing, they do tiering, but they make it look like a bigger platform. So it's like, "We can give you a petabyte "but it's going to look like flash." It doesn't work like that. They might have 300 terabyte of flash, 700- but it's so integrated quickly, that they can pull it and push it. Then there's a read-aheads write-aheads that takes that advantage to make it look like it. That will drop your pricing. The special sauce that transfer the data between slower and flash discs. >> Two questions for you. >> Sure. >> What do you look for in a supplier? And what drives you nuts about a supplier, that you don't want a supplier to do? >> Sure. So personally speaking, this is just my personal opinion. A stable environment a tried and true vendor is important. Somebody who has a core competency of doing this for a longer term is what I personally look at. There's a lot of new players who come in, they stay for a couple of years, they explode, somebody takes them over or they just kind of vanish. Or certain people outside of their core competency. So if Toyota started to make- Because they wanted to save money they said, "Hey Toyota from now on will make "the tires that are called Toyota." But Toyota is not a tire company. Other companies, Bridgestone and Michelin's have been making tires for a very long time. So the core competency of Toyota is building the cars and not the tires. So when I see these people, or the vendors saying, "Okay I can give you this this this this and this and that and the security and that. Maybe three out of those five things are not their core competency. So I start to wonder if the whole stack is worth it because there's going to be some weakness because they don't have the core competency. That's what I look at. What drives me crazy is, every single time somebody comes to meet with me they want to sell me everything and the kitchen sink under one umbrella. And the answer is one single pane of glass to manage everything. Life is not that easy, I wish it was but it really is not. (laughs) So those two things are- >> Selling the fantasy right. Now Bina we'll give you the last word. Interconnect, give us your final thoughts. What should we know about what's going on in software-defined and IBM storage. >> Yeah you know lots of announcements at Interconnect. You heard, as you talked about, cloud optic storage we've got great new pricing models and capabilities and overall software-defined storage. We're continuing to innovate, continue add capabilities like analytics and you'll see us doing more and more on cognitive. Cognitive storage management to get more out of the data, help clients get more and more information and value out of their data. >> What's the gist of the new pricing models, just um- >> Flexible pricing model depending on how the both hybrid as well as the three tiered on-prem and in between. But really cold as well as a flexible pricing model where depending on how you use the data you know you get consistent pricing so between on-prem and in the cloud. >> So more cloud-like pricing >> Yes, exactly. >> Great. >> Yep. >> Easier consumption, excellent. Well Bina Tahir thanks very much for coming to the cube. >> Yes yes thank you. >> Dave: Pleasure having you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. >> Dave: You're welcome. Alright keep it right there everybody we'll be back with our next guest and a wrap, right after this short break. Right back. (upbeat music)