>> Narrator: Live from Munich, Germany it's the CUBE, covering Dataworks Summit Europe 2017. Brought to you by Hortonworks. >> Okay, welcome back everyone here at day two coverage of the CUBE here in Munich, Germany for Dataworks 2017. I'm John Furrier, my co-host Dave Vellante. Two days of wall to wall coverage SiliconANGLE Media's the CUBE. Our next guest is Raj Verma, the president and COO of Hortonworks. First time on the CUBE, new to Hortonworks. Welcome to the CUBE. >> Thank you very much, John, appreciate it. >> Looking good with a three piece suit we were commenting when you were on stage. >> Raj: Thank you. >> Great scene here in Europe, again different show vis-a-vis North America, in San Jose. You got the show coming up there, it's the big show. Here, it's a little bit different. A lot of IOT in Germany. You got a lot of car manufacturers, but industrial nation here, smart city initiatives, a lot of big data. >> Uh-huh. >> What's your thoughts? >> Yeah no, firstly thanks for having me here. It's a pleasure and good chit chatting right before the show as well. We are very, very excited about the entire data space. Europe is leading many initiatives about how to use data as a sustainable, competitive differentiator. I just moderated a panel and you guys heard me talk to a retail bank, a retailer. And really, Centrica, which was nothing but British Gas, which is rather an organization steeped in history so as to speak and that institution is now, calls itself a technology company. And, it's a technology company or an IOT company based on them using data as the currency for innovation. So now, British Gas, or Centrica calls itself a data company, when would you have ever thought that? I was at dinner with a very large automotive manufacturers and the kind of stuff they are doing with data right from the driving habits, driver safety, real time insurance premium calculation, the autonomous drive. It's just fascinating no matter what industry you talk about. It's just very, very interesting. And, we are very glad to be here. International business is a big priority for me. >> We've been following Hortonworks since it's inception when it spun out of Yahoo years ago. I think we've been to every Hadoop World going back, except for the first one. We watched the transition. It's interesting, it's always been a learning environment at these shows. And certainly the customer testimonials speaks to the ecosystem, but I have to ask you, you're new to Hortonworks. You have interesting technology background. Why did you join Hortonworks? Because you certainly see the movies before and the cycles of innovation, but now we're living in a pretty epic, machine learning, data AI is on the horizon. What were the reasons why you joined Hortonworks? >> Yeah sure, I've had a really good run in technology, fortunately was associated with two great companies, Parametric Technology and TIBCO Software. I was 16 years at TIBCO, so I've been dealing with data for 16 years. But, over the course of the last couple of years whenever I spoke to a C level executive, or a CIO they were talking to us about the fact that structured data, which is really what we did for 16 years, was not good enough for innovation. Innovation and insights into unstructured data was the seminal challenge of most of the executives that I was talking to, senior level executives. And, when you're talking about unstructured data and making sense of it there isn't a better technology than the one that we are dealing with right now, undoubtedly. So, that was one. Dealing with data because data is really the currency of our times. Every company is a data company. Second was, I've been involved with proprietary software for 23 years. And, if there is a business model that's ready for disruption it's the proprietary software business model because I'm absolutely convinced that open source is what I call a green business model. It's good for planet Earth so as to speak. It's a community based, it's based on innovation and it puts the customer and the technology provider on the same page. The customer success drives the vendor success. Yeah, so the open source community, data-- >> It's sustainables, pun intended, in the sense that it's had a continuing run. And, it's interesting Tier One software is all open source now. >> 100%, and by the way not only that if you see large companies like IBM and Microsoft they have finally woken up to the fact that if they need to attract talent and if they want to be known as talk leaders they have to have some very meaningful open source initiatives. Microsoft loves Linux, when did we ever think that was going to happen, right? And, by the way-- >> I think Steve Bauman once said it was the cancer of the industry. Now, they're behind it. But, this is the Linux foundation has also grown. We saw a project this past week. Intel donated a big project to the Linux now it's taking over, so more projects. >> Raj: Yes. >> There's more action happening than ever before. >> You know absolutely, John. Five years ago when I would go an meet a CIO and I would ask them about open source and they would wink, they say "Of course, "we do open source. But, it's less than 5%, right? Now, when I talk to a CIO they first ask their teams to go evaluated open source as the first choice. And, if they can't they come kicking and screaming towards propriety software. Most organizations, and some organizations with a lot of historical gravity so as to speak have a 50/50 even split between proprietary and open source. And, that's happened in the last three years. And, I can make a bold statement, and I know it'll be true, but in the next three years most organizations the ratio of proprietary to open source would be 20 proprietary 80 open source. >> So, obviously you've made that bet on open source, joining Hortonworks, but open is a spectrum. And, on one end of the spectrum you have Hortonworks which is, as I see it, the purest. Now, even Larry Ellison, when he gets onstage at Oracle Open World will talk about how open Oracle is, I guess that's the other end of the spectrum. So, my question is won't the Microsofts and the Oracles and the IBM, they're like recovering alcoholics and they'll accommodate their platforms through open source, embracing open source. We'll see if AWS is the same, we know it's unidirectional there. How do you see that-- >> Well, not necessarily. >> Industry dynamic, we'll talk about that later. How do you see that industry dynamic shaking out? >> No, absolutely, I think I remember way back in I think the mid to late 90s I still loved that quote by Scott McNeely, who is a friend, Dell, not Dell, Digital came out with a marketing campaign saying open VMS. And, Scott said, "How can someone lie "so much with one word?" (laughs) So, it's the fact that Oracle calling itself open, well I'll just leave it at, it's a good joke. I think the definition of open source, to me, is when you acquire a software you have three real costs. One is the cost of initial procuring that software and the hardware and all the rest of it. The second is implementation and maintenance. However, most people miss the third dimension of cost when acquiring software, which is the cost to exit the technology. Our software and open source has very low exit barriers to our technology. If you don't like our technology, switch it off. You own the software anyways. Switch off our services and the barrier of exits are very, very low. Having worked in proprietary software, as I said, for 23 years I very often had conversations with my customers where I would say, "Look, you really "don't have a choice, because if you want to exit "our technology it's going to probably cost you "ten times more than what you've spent till date." So, it a lock in architecture and then you milk that customer through maintenance, correct? >> Switching costs really are the metric-- >> Raj: Switching costs, exactly. >> You gave the example of Blockbuster Camera, and the rental, the late charge fees. Okay, that's an example of lock in. So, as we look at the company you're most compared with, now that's it's going public, Cloudera, in a way I see more similarities than differences. I mean, you guys are sort of both birds of a feather. But, you are going for what I call the long game with a volume subscription model. And, Cloudera has chosen to build proprietary components on top. So, you have to make big bets on open. You have to support those open technologies. How do you see that affecting the long term distance model? >> Yeah, I think we are committed to open source. There's absolutely no doubt about it. I do feel that we are connected data platform, which is data at rest and data in motion across on prem and cloud is the business model the going to win. We clearly have momentum on our side. You've seen the same filings that I have seen. You're talking about a company that had a three year head start on us, and a billion dollars of funding, all right, at very high valuations. And yet, they're only one year ahead in terms of revenue. And, they have burnt probably three times more cash than we have. So clearly, and it's not my opinion, if you look at the numbers purely, the numbers actually give us the credibility that our business model and what we are doing is more efficient and is working better. One of the arguments that I often hear from analysts and press is how are your margins on open source? According to the filings, again, their margins are 82% on proprietary software, my margins on open source are 84%. So, from a health of the business perspective we are better. Now, the other is they've claimed to have been making a pivot to more machine learning and deep learning and all the rest of it. And, they actually'd like us to believe that their competition is going to be Amazon, IBM, and Google. Now, with a billion dollars of funding with the Intel ecosystem behind them they could effectively compete again Hortonworks. What do you think are their chances of competing against Google, Amazon, and IBM? I just leave that for you guys to decide, to be honest with you. And, we feel very good that they have virtually vacated the space and we've got the momentum. >> On the numbers, what jumps out at you on filing since obviously, I sure, everyone at Hortonworks was digging through the S1 because for the first time now Cloudera exposes some of the numbers. I noticed some striking things different, obviously, besides their multiple on revenue valuation. Pretty obvious it's going to be a haircut coming after the public offering. But, on the sales side, which is your wheelhouse there's a value proposition that you guys at Hortonworks, we've been watching, the cadence of getting new clients, servicing clients. With product evolution is challenging enough, but also expensive. It's not you guys, but it's getting better as Sean Connolly pointed out yesterday, you guys are looking at some profitability targets on the Ee-ba-dep coming up in Q four. Publicly stated on the earnings call. How's that different from Cloudera? Are they burning more cash because of their sales motions or sales costs, or is it the product mix? What's you thoughts on the filings around Cloudera versus the Hortonworks? >> Well, look I just feel that, I can talk more about my business than theirs. Clearly, you've seen the same filings that I have and you've see the same cash burn rates that we have seen. And, we clearly are ore efficient, although we can still get better. But, because of being public for a little more than two years now we've had a thousand watt bulb being shown at us and we have been forced to be more efficient because we were in the limelight. >> John: You're open. >> In the open, right? So, people knew what our figures are, what our efficiency ratios were. So, we've been working diligently at improving them and we've gotten better, and there's still scope for improvement. However, being private did not have the same scrutiny on Cloudera. And, some would say that they were actually spending money like drunken sailors if you really read their S1 filing. So, they will come under a lot of scrutiny as well. I'm sure they'll get more efficient. But right now, clearly, you've seen the same numbers that I have, their numbers don't talk about efficiency either in the R and D side or the sales and marketing side. So, yeah we feel very good about where we are in that space. >> And, open source is this two edged sword. Like, take Yarn for example, at least from my perspective Hortonworks really led the charge to Yarn and then well before Doctor and Kubernetes ascendancy and then all of a sudden that happens and of course you've got to embrace those open source trends. So, you have the unique challenge of having to support sort of all the open source platforms. And, so that's why I call it the long game. In order for you guys to thrive you've got to both put resources into those multiple projects and you've got to get the volume of your subscription model, which you pointed out the marginal economics are just as good as most, if not any software business. So, how do you manage that resource allocation? Yes, so I think a lot of that is the fact that we've got plenty of contributors and committers to the open source community. We are seen as the angel child in open source because we are just pure, kosher open source. We just don't have a single line of proprietary code. So, we are committed to that community. We have over the last six or seven years developed models of our software development which helps us manage the collective bargaining power, so as to speak, of the community to allocate resources and prioritize the allocation of resources. It continues to be a challenge given the breadth of the open source community and what we have to handle, but fortunately I'm blessed that we've got a very, very capable engineering organization that keeps us very efficient and on the cutting edge. >> We're here with Raj Verma, With the new president and COO of Hortonworks, Chief Operating Officer. I've got to ask you because it's interesting. You're coming in with a fresh set of eyes, coming in as you mentioned, from TIBCO, interesting, which was very successful in the generation of it's time and history of TIBCO where it came from and what it did was pretty fantastic. I mean, everyone knows connecting data together was very hard in the enterprise world. TIBCO has some challenges today, as you're seeing, with being disrupted by open source, but I got to ask you. As a perspective, new executive you got, looking at the battlefield, an opportunity with open source there's some significant things happening and what are you excited about because Hortonworks has actually done some interesting things. Some, I would say, the world spun in their direction, their relationship with Microsoft, for instance, and their growth in cloud has been fantastic. I mean, Microsoft stock price when they first started working with Hortonworks I think was like 26, and obviously with Scott Di-na-tell-a on board Azure, more open source, on Open Compute to Kubernetes and Micro Services, Azure doing very, very well. You also have a partnership with Amazon Web Services so you already are living in this cloud era, okay? And so, you have a cloud dynamic going on. Are you excited by that? You bring some partnership expertise in from TIBCO. How do you look at partners? Because, you guys don't really compete with anybody, but you're partners with everybody. So, you're kind of like Switzerland, but you're also doing a lot of partnerships. What are you excited about vis-a-vis the cloud and some of the other partnerships that are happening. >> Yeah, absolutely, I think having a robust partner ecosystem is probably my number one priority, maybe number two after being profitable in a short span of time, which is, again, publicly stated. Now, our partnership with Microsoft is very, very special to us. Being available in Azure we are seeing some fantastic growth rates coming in from Azure. We are also seeing remarkable amount of traction from the market to be able to go and test out our platform with very, very low barriers of entry and, of course, almost zero barriers of exit. So, from a partnership platform cloud providers like Amazon, Microsoft, are very, very important to us. We are also getting a lot of interest from carriers in Europe, for example. Some of the biggest carriers want to offer business services around big data and almost 100%, actually not almost, 100% of the carriers that we have spoken to thus far want to partner with us and offer our platform as a cloud service. So, cloud for us is a big initiative. It gives us the entire capability to reach audiences that we might not be able to reach ringing one door bell at a time. So, it's, as I said, we've got a very robust, integrated cloud strategy. Our customers find that very, very interesting. And, building that with a very robust partner channel, high priority for us. Second, is using our platform as a development platform for application on big data is, again, a priority. And that's, again, building a partner ecosystem. The third is relationships with global SIs, Extensia, Deloitte, KPMG. The Indian SIs of In-flu-ces, and Rip-ro, and HCL and the rest. We have some work to do. We've done some good work there, but there's some work to be done there. And, not only that I think some of the initiatives that we are launching in terms of training as a service, free certification, they are all things which are aimed at reaching out to the partners and building, as I said, a robust partner ecosystem. >> There's a lot of talk a conferences like this about, especially in Hadoop, about complexity, complexity of the ecosystem, new projects, and the difficulties of understanding that. But, in reality it seems as though today anyway the technology's pretty well understood. We talked about Millennials off camera coming out today with social savvy and tooling and understanding gaming and things like that. Technology, getting it to work seems to not be the challenge anymore. It's really understanding how to apply it, how to value data, we heard in your panel today. The business process, which used to be very well known, it's counting, it's payroll, simple. Now, it's kind of ever changing daily. What do you make of that? How do you think that will effect the future of work? Yeah, I think there's some very interesting questions that you've asked in that the first, of course, is what does it take to have a very successful big data, or Hadoop project. And, I think we always talk about the fact that if you have a very robust business case backing a Hadoop project that is the number one key ingredient to delivering a Hadoop project. Otherwise, you can tend to boil the ocean, all right, or try and eat an elephant in one bite as I like to say. So, that's one and I think you're right. It's not the technology, it's not the complexity, it's not the availability of the resources. It is a leadership issue in organizations where the leader demands certain outcomes, business outcomes from the Hadoop project team and we've seen whenever that happens the projects seem to be very, very successful. Now, the second part of the question about future of work, which is a very, very interesting topic and a topic which is very, very close to my heart. There are going to be more people than jobs in the next 20, 25 years. I think that any job that can be automated will be automated, or has been automated, right? So, this is going to have a societal impact on how we live. I've been lucky enough that I joined this industry 25 years ago and I've never had to change or switch industries. But, I can assure you that our kids, and we were talking about kids off camera as well, our kids will have to probably learn a new skill every five years. So, how does that impact education? We, in our generation, were testing champions. We were educated to score well on tests. But, the new form of education, which you and I were talking about, again in California where we live, and where my daughter goes to high school and in her school the number one, the number one priority is to instill a sense of learning and joy of learning in students because that is what is going to contribute to a robust future. >> That's a good point, I want to just interject here because I think that the trend we're seeing in the higher Ed side too also point to the impact of data science, to curriculum and learning. It's not just putting catalogs online. There's now kind of an iterative kind of non-linear discovery to proficiency. But, there's also the emotional quotient aspect. You mentioned the love of learning. The immersion of tech and digital is creating an interdisciplinary requirement. So, all the folks say that, what the statistic's like half the jobs that are going to be available haven't even been figured out yet. There's a value creation around interdisciplinary skill sets and emotional quotient. >> Absolutely. >> Social, emotional because of the human social community connectedness. This is also a big data challenge opportunity. >> Oh, 100% and I think one of the things that we believe is in the future, jobs that require a greater amount of empathy are least susceptible to automation. So, things like caring for old age people in the world, and nursing, and teaching, and artists, and all the rest will be professions which will be highly paid and numerous. I also believe that the entire big data challenge about how you use data to impact communities is going to come into play. And also, I think John, you and I were again talking about it, the entire concept of corporations is only 200 years old, really, 200, 300 years old. Before that, our forefathers were individual contributors who contributed a certain part in a community, barbers, tailors, farmers, what have you. We are going to go back to the future where all of us will go back to being individual contributors. And, I think, and again I'm bringing it back to open source, open source is the start of that community which will allow the community to go back to its roots of being individual contributors rather than being part of a organization or a corporation to be successful and to contribute. >> Yeah, the Coase's Penguin has been a very famous seminal piece of work. Obviously, Ronald Coase who's wrote the book The Nature of the Firm is interesting, but that's been a kind of historical document. You look at blockchain for instance. Blockchain actually has the opportunity to disrupt what the Nature of the Firm is about because of smart contracts, supply chain, and what not. And, we have this debate on the CUBE all the time, there's some naysayers, Tim Conner's a VC and I were talking on our Friday show, Silicon Valley Friday show. He's actually a naysayer on blockchain. I'm actually pro blockchain because I think there's some skeptics that say blockchain is really hard to because it requires an ecosystem. However, we're living in an ecosystem, a world of community. So, I think The Nature of the Firm will be disrupted by people organizing in a new way vis-a-vis blockchain 'cause that's an open source paradigm. >> Yeah, no I concur. So, I'm a believer in that entire concept. I 100%-- >> I want to come back to something you talked about, about individual contributors and the relationship in link to open source and collaboration. I personally, I think we have to have a frank conversation about, I mean machines have always replaced humans, but for the first time in our history it's replacing cognitive functions. To your point about empathy, what are the things that humans can do that machines can't? And, they become fewer and fewer every year. And, a lot of these conferences people don't like to talk about that, but it's a reality that we have to talk about. And, your point is right on, we're going back to individual contribution, open source collaboration. The other point is data, is it going to be at the center of that innovation because it seems like value creation and maybe job creation, in the future, is going to be a result of the combinatorial effects of data, open source, collaboration, other. It's not going to because of Moore's Law, all right. >> 100%, and I think one of the aspects that we didn't touch upon is the new societal model that automation is going to create would need data driven governance. So, a data driven government is going to be a necessity because, remember, in those times, and I think in 25, 30 years countries will have to explore the impact of negative taxation, right? Because of all the automation that actually happens around citizen security, about citizen welfare, about cost of healthcare, cost of providing healthcare. All of that is going to be fueled by data, right? So, it's just, as the Chinese proverb says, "May you live in interesting times." We definitely are living in very interesting times. >> And, the public policy implications are, your friend and one of my business heroes, Scott McNeally says, "There's no privacy in "the internet, get over it." We interviewed John Tapscott last week he said "That's unacceptable, "we have to solve that problem." So, it brings up a lot of public policy issues. >> Well, the social economic impact, right now there's a trend we're seeing where the younger generation, we're talking about the post 9/11 generation that's entering the workforce, they have a social conscience, right? So, there's an emphasis you're seeing on social good. AI for social good is one of the hottest trends out there. But, the changing landscape around data is interesting. So, the word democratization has been used whether you're looking at the early days of blogging and podcasting which we were involved in and research to now in media this notion of data and transparency and open source is probably at a tipping point, an all time high in terms of value creation. So, I want to hear your thoughts on this because as someone who's been in the proprietary world the mode of operation was get something proprietary, lock it dowm, build a fence and a wall, protect it with folks with machine guns and fight for the competitive advantage, right? Now, the competitive advantage is open. Okay, so you're looking at pure open source model with Hortonworks. It changes how companies are competing. What is the competitive advantage of Hortonworks? Actually, to be more open. >> 100%. >> How do you manage that? >> No absolutely, I just think the proprietary nature of software, like software has disrupted a lot of businesses, all right? And, it's not a resistance to disruption itself. I mean, there has never been a business model in the history of time where you charge a lot of money to build a software, or sell a software that you built and then whatever are the defects in that software you get paid more money to fix them, all right? That's the entire perpetual and maintenance model. That model is going to get disrupted. Now, there are hundreds of billions of dollars involved in it so people are going to come kicking and screaming to the open source world, but they will have to come to the open source world. Our advantage that we're seeing is innovation now in a closed loop environment, no matter what size of a company you are, cannot keep up with the changing landscape around you from a data perspective. So, without the collective innovation of the community I don't really think a technology can stay at par with the changes around them. >> This is what I say about, this is what I think is such an important point that you're getting at because we were started SiliconANGLE actually in the Cloudera office, so we have a lot of friends that work there. We have a great admiration for them, but one of the things that Cloudera has done through their execution is they have been very profit oriented, go public at all costs kind of thing that they're doing now. You've seen that happen. Is the competitive advantage that you're pointing out is something we're seeing that similar that Andy Jasseys doing at AWS, which is it's not so much to build something proprietary per se, it's just to ship something faster. So, if you look at Amazon's competitive advantage is that they just continue to ship product faster and faster and faster than companies can build themselves. And also, the scale that they're getting with these economies is increasing the quality. So, open source has also hit the naysayers on security, right? Everyone said, "Oh, open source is not secure." As it turns out, it's more secure. Amazon at scale is actually becoming more secure. So, you're starting to see the new competitive advantage be ship more, be more open as the way to do business. What do you think the impact will be to traditional companies whether it's a startup competing or an existing bank? This is a paradigm shift, what's the impact going to be for a CIO or CEO of a big company? How do they incorporate that competitive advantage? Yeah, I think the proprietary software world is not going to go away tomorrow, John, you know that. There so much of installed software and there's a saying from where I come from that "Even a dead elephant is worth a million dollars," right? So, even that business model even though it is sort of dying it'll still be a good investment for the next ten years because of the locked in business model where customers cannot get out. Now, from a perspective of openness and what that brings as a competitive differentiators to our customer just the very base at which, as I've said I've lived in a proprietary world, you would be lucky if you were getting the next version of our software every 18 months, you'd be lucky. In the open source community you get a few versions in 18 months. So, the cadence at which releases come out have just completely disrupted the proprietary model. It is just the collective, as I said, innovative or innovation ability of the community has allowed us to release, to increase the release cadence to a few months now, all right? And, if our engineering team had it's way it'll further be cut short, right? So, the ability of customers, and what does that allow the customer to do? Ten years ago if you looked for a capability from your proprietary vendor they would say you have to wait 18 months. So, what do you do, you build it yourself, all right? So, that is what the spaghetti architecture was all about. In the new open source model you ask the community and if enough people in the community think that that's important the community builds it for you and gives it to you. >> And, the good news is the business model of open source is working. So, you got you guys have been public, you got Cloudera going public, you have MuleSoft out there, a lot of companies out there now that are public companies are open source companies, a phenomenal change over. But, the other thing that's interesting is that the hiring factor for the large enterprise to the point of, your point about so proprietary not updating, it's the same is true for the enterprise. So, just hiring candidates out of open source is now increased, the talent pool for a large enterprise. >> 100%, 100%. >> Well, I wonder if I could challenge this love fest for a minute. (laughs) So, there's another saying, I didn't grow up there, but a dying snake can still bite you. So, I bring that up because there is this hybrid model that's emerging because these elephants eventually they figure it out. And so, an example would be, we talked about Cloudera and so forth, but the better example, I think, is IBM. What IBM has done to embrace open source with investing years ago a billion dollars into Linux, what it's doing with Spark, essentially trying to elbow its way in and say, "Okay, "now we're going to co-opt the ecosystem. "And then, build our proprietary pieces on top of it." That, to me, that's a viable business model, is it not? >> Yes, I'm sure it is and to John's point with the Mule going IPO and with Cloudera having successfully built a $250 million, $261 million business is testimony, yeah, it's a testimony to the fact that companies can be built. Now, can they be more efficient, sure they can be more efficient. However, my entire comment on this is why are you doing open source? What is your intent of doing open source, to be seen as open, or to be truly open? Because, in our philosophy if you a add a slim layer of proprietariness, why are you doing that? And, as a businessman I'll tell you why you increase the stickiness factor by locking in your customer, right? So, let's not, again, we're having a frank conversation, proprietary code equals customer lock in, period. >> Agreed. And, as a business model-- >> I'm not sure I agree with that. >> As a business model. >> Please. (laughs) We'll come back to that. >> So, it's a customer lock in. Now, as a business model it is, if you were to go with the business models of the past, yes I believe most of the analysts will say it a stickier, better business model, but then we would like to prove them wrong. And, that's our mission as open source purely. >> I would caution though, Amazon's the mother of all lock in's. You kind of bristled at that before. >> They're not, I mean they use a lot of open source. I mean, did they open source it? Getting back to the lock in, the lock in is a function of stickiness, right? So, stickiness can be open source. Now, you could argue that Horonworks through they're relationship with partnering is a lock in spec with their stickiness of being open. Right, so I come back down to the proprietary-- >> Dave: My search engine I like Google. >> I mean Google's certainly got-- >> It's got to be locked in 'cause I like it? >> Well, there's a lot of do you care with proprietary technology that Google's built. >> Switching costs, as we talked about before. >> But, you're not paying for Si-tch >> If the value exceeds the price of the lock in then it's an opportunity. So, Palma Richie's talking about the hardened top, the hardened top. Do you care what's in an Intel processor? Well, Intel is a proprietary platform that provides processing power, but it enables a lot of other value. So, I think the stickiness factor of say IBM is interesting and they've done a lot open source stuff to defend them on Linux, for example they do a (mumbles) blockchain. But, they're priming the pump for their own business, that's clear for their lock In. >> Raj wasn't saying there's not value there. He's saying it's lock in, and it is. >> Well, some customers will pay for convenience. >> Your point is if the value exceeds the lock in risk than it's worth it. >> Yeah, that's my point, yeah. >> 1005, 100%. >> And, that's where the opportunity is. So, you can use open source to get to a value projectory. That's the barriers to entry, we seen 'em on the entrepreneurship side, right? It's easier to start a company now than ever before. Why? Because of open source and cloud, right? So, does that mean that every startup's going to be super successful and beat IBM? No, not really. >> Do you thinK there will be a red hat of big data and will you be it? >> We hope so. (laughs) If I had my that's definitely. That's really why I am here. >> Just an example, right? >> And, the one thing that excites us about this this year is as my former boss used to say you could be as good as you think you are or the best in the world but if you're in the landline business right now you're not going to have a very bright future. However, the business that we are in we pull from the market that we get, and you're seeing here, right? And, these are days that we have very often where customer pool is remarkable. I mean, this industry is growing at, depending on which analyst you're talking to somewhere between 50 to 80% ear on ear. All right, every customer is a prospect for us. There isn't a single conversation that we have with any organization almost of any size where they don't think that they can use their data better, or they can enhance and improve their data strategy. So, if that is in place and I am confident about our execution, very, very happy with the technology platform, the support that we get from out customers. So, all things seem to be lining up. >> Raj, thanks so much for coming on, we appreciate your time. We went a little bit over, I think, the allotted time, but wanted to get your insight as the new President and Chief Operating Officer for Hortonworks. Congratulations on the new role, and looking forward to seeing the results. Since you're a public company we'll be actually able to see the scoreboard. >> Raj: Yes. >> Congratulations, and thanks for coming on the CUBE. There's more coverage here live at Dataworks 2017. I John Furrier, stay with us more great interviews, day two coverage. We'll be right back. (jaunty music)

>> Announcer: Coverage DataWorks Summit Europe 2017 brought to you by Hortonworks. >> Welcome back everyone. Live here in Munich, Germany for theCUBE'S special presentation of Hortonworks Hadoop Summit now called DataWorks 2017. I'm John Furrier, my co-host Dave Vellante, our next guest is Shaun Connolly, Vice President of Corporate Strategy, Chief Strategy Officer. Shaun great to see you again. >> Thanks for having me guys. Always a pleasure. >> Super exciting. Obviously we always pontificating on the status of Hadoop and Hadoop is dead, long live Hadoop, but runs in demise is greatly over-exaggerated, but reality is is that no major shifts in the trends other than the fact that the amplification with AI and machine learning has upleveled the narrative to mainstream around data, big data has been written on on gen one on Hadoop, DevOps, culture, open-source. Starting with Hadoop you guys certainly have been way out in front of all the trends. How you guys have been rolling out the products. But it's now with IoT and AI as that sizzle, the future self driving cars, smart cities, you're starting to really see demand for comprehensive solutions that involve data-centric thinking. Okay, said one. Two, open-source continues to dominate MuleSoft went public, you guys went public years ago, Cloudera filed their S-1. A crop of public companies that are open-source, haven't seen that since Red Hat. >> Exactly. 99 is when Red Hat went public. >> Data-centric, big megatrend with open-source powering it, you couldn't be happier for the stars lining up. >> Yeah, well we definitely placed our bets on that. We went public in 2014 and it's nice to see that graduating class of Taal and MuleSoft, Cloudera coming out. That just I think helps socializes movement that enterprise open-source, whether it's for on-prem or powering cloud solutions pushed out to the edge, and technologies that are relevant in IoT. That's the wave. We had a panel earlier today where Dahl Jeppe from Centric of British Gas, was talking about his ... The digitization of energy and virtual power plant notions. He can't achieve that without open-source powering and fueling that. >> And the thing about it is is just kind of ... For me personally being my age in this generation of computer industry since I was 19, to see the open-source go mainstream the way it is, is even gets better every time, but it really is the thousandth flower bloom strategy. Throwing the seeds out there of innovation. I want to ask you as a strategy question, you guys from a performance standpoint, I would say kind of got hammered in the public market. Cloudera's valuation privately is 4.1 billion, you guys are close to 700 million. Certainly Cloudera's going to get a haircut looks like. The public market is based on the multiples from Dave and I's intro, but there's so much value being created. Where's the value for you guys as you look at the horizon? You're talking about white spaces that are really developing with use cases that are creating value. The practitioners in the field creating value, real value for customers. >> So you covered some of the trends, but I'll translate em into how the customers are deploying. Cloud computing and IoT are somewhat related. One is a centralization, the other is decentralization, so it actually calls for a connected data architecture as we refer to it. We're working with a variety of IoT-related use cases. Coca-Cola, East Japan spoke at Tokyo Summit about beverage replenishment analytics. Getting vending machine analytics from vending machines even on Mount Fuji. And optimizing their flow-through of inventory in just-in-time delivery. That's an IoT-related to run on Azure. It's a cloud-related story and it's a big data analytics story that's actually driving better margins for the business and actually better revenues cuz they're getting the inventory where it needs to be so people can buy it. Those are really interesting use cases that we're seeing being deployed and it's at this convergence of IoT cloud and big data. Ultimately that leads to AI, but I think that's what we're seeing the rise of. >> Can you help us understand that sort of value chain. You've got the edge, you got the cloud, you need something in-between, you're calling it connected data platform. How do you guys participate in that value chain? >> When we went public our primary workhorse platform was Hortonworks Data Platform. We had first class cloud services with Azure HDInsight and Hortonworks Data Cloud for AWS, curated cloud services pay-as-you-go, and Hortonworks DataFlow, I call as our connective tissue, it manages all of your data motion, it's a data logistics platform, it's like FedEx for data delivery. It goes all the way out to the edge. There's a little component called Minify, mini and ify, which does secure intelligent analytics at the edge and transmission. These smart manufacturing lines, you're gathering the data, you're doing analytics on the manufacturing lines, and then you're bringing the historical stuff into the data center where you can do historical analytics across manufacturing lines. Those are the use cases that are connect the data archives-- >> Dave: A subset of that data comes back, right? >> A subset of the data, yep. The key events of that data it may not be full of-- >> 10%, half, 90%? >> It depends if you have operational events that you want to store, sometimes you may want to bring full fidelity of that data so you can do ... As you manufacture stuff and when it got deployed and you're seeing issues in the field, like Western Digital Hard Drives, that failure's in the field, they want that data full fidelity to connect the data architecture and analytics around that data. You need to ... One of the terms I use is in the new world, you need to play it where it lies. If it's out at the edge, you need to play it there. If it makes a stop in the cloud, you need to play it there. If it comes into the data center, you also need to play it there. >> So a couple years ago, you and I were doing a panel at our Big Data NYC event and I used the term "profitless prosperity," I got the hairy eyeball from you, but nonetheless, we talked about you guys as a steward of the industry, you have to invest in open-source projects. And it's expensive. I mean HDFS itself, YARN, Tez, you guys lead a lot of those initiatives. >> Shaun: With the community, yeah, but we-- >> With the community yeah, but you provided contributions and co-leadership let's say. You're there at the front of the pack. How do we project it forward without making forward-looking statements, but how does this industry become a cashflow positive industry? >> Public companies since end of 2014, the markets turned beginning at 2016 towards, prior to that high growth with some losses was palatable, losses were not palatable. That his us, Splunk, Tableau most of the IT sector. That's just the nature of the public markets. As more public open-source, data-driven companies will come in I think it will better educate the market of the value. There's only so much I can do to control the stock price. What I can from a business perspective is hit key measures from a path to profitability. The end of Q4 2016, we hit what we call the just-to-even or breakeven, which is a stepping stone. On our earnings call at the end of 2016 we ended with 185 million in revenue for the year. Only five years into this journey, so that's a hard revenue growth pace and we basically stated in Q3 or Q4 of 17, we will hit operating cashflow neutrality. So we are operating business-- >> John: But you guys also hit a 100 million at record pace too, I believe. >> Yeah, in four years. So revenue is one thing, but operating margins, like if you look at our margins on our subscription business for instance, we've got 84% margin on that. It's a really nice margin business. We can make that better margins, but that's a software margin. >> You know what's ironic, we were talking about Red Hat off camera. Here's Red Hat kicking butt, really hitting all cylinders, three billion dollars in bookings, one would think, okay hey I can maybe project forth some of these open-source companies. Maybe the flip side of this, oh wow we want it now. To your point, the market kind of flipped, but you would think that Red Hat is an indicator of how an open-source model can work. >> By the way Red Hat went public in 99, so it was a different trajectory, like you know I charted their trajectory out. Oracle's trajectory was different. They didn't even in inflation adjusted dollars they didn't hit a 100 million in four years, I think it was seven or eight years or what have you. Salesforce did it in five. So these SaaS models and these subscription models and the cloud services, which is an area that's near and dear to my heart. >> John: Goes faster. >> You get multiple revenue streams across different products. We're a multi-products cloud service company. Not just a single platform. >> So we were actually teasing this out on our-- >> And that's how you grow the business, and that's how Red Hat did it. >> Well I want to get your thoughts on this while we're just kind of ripping live here because Dave and I were talking on our intro segment about the business model and how there's some camouflage out there, at least from my standpoint. One of the main areas that I was kind of pointing at and trying to poke at and want to get your reaction to is in the classic enterprise go-to-market, you have sales force expansive, you guys pay handsomely for that today. Incubating that market, getting the profitability for it is a good thing, but there's also channels, VARs, ISVs, and so on. You guys have an open-source channel that kind of not as a VAR or an ISV, these are entrepreneurs and or businesses themselves. There's got to be a monetization shift there for you guys in the subscription business certainly. When you look at these partners, they're co-developing, they're in open-source, you can almost see the dots connecting. Is this new ecosystem, there's always been an ecosystem, but now that you have kind of a monetization inherently in a pure open distribution model. >> It forces you to collaborate. IBM was on stage talking about our system certified on the Power Systems. Many may look at IBM as competitive, we view them as a partner. Amazon, some may view them as a competitor with us, they've been a great partner in our for AWS. So it forces you to think about how do you collaborate around deeply engineered systems and value and we get great revenue streams that are pulled through that they can sell into the market to their ecosystems. >> How do you vision monetizing the partners? Let's just say Dave and I start this epic idea and we create some connective tissue with your orchestrator called the Data Platform you have and we start making some serious bang. We make a billion dollars. Do you get paid on that if it's open-source? I mean would we be more subscriptions? I'm trying to see how the tide comes in, whose boats float on the rising tide of the innovation in these white spaces. >> Platform thinking is you provide the platform. You provide the platform for 10x value that rides atop that platform. That's how the model works. So if you're riding atop the platform, I expect you and that ecosystem to drive at least 10x above and beyond what I would make as a platform provider in that space. >> So you expect some contributions? >> That's how it works. You need a thousand flowers to be running on the platform. >> You saw that with VMware. They hit 10x and ultimately got to 15 or 16, 17x. >> Shaun: Exactly. >> I think they don't talk about it anymore. I think it's probably trading the other way. >> You know my days at JBoss Red Hat it was somewhere between 15 to 20x. That was the value that was created on top of the platforms. >> What about the ... I want to ask you about the forking of the Hadoop distros. I mean there was a time when everybody was announcing Hadoop distros. John Furrier announced SiliconANGLE was announcing Hadoop distro. So we saw consolidation, and then you guys announced the ODP, then the ODPI initiative, but there seems to be a bit of a forking in Hadoop distros. Is that a fair statement? Unfair? >> I think if you look at how the Linux market played out. You have clearly Red Hat, you had Conicho Ubuntu, you had SUSE. You're always going to have curated platforms for different purposes. We have a strong opinion and a strong focus in the area of IoT, fast analytic data from the edge, and a centralized platform with HDP in the cloud and on-prem. Others in the market Cloudera is running sort of a different play where they're curating different elements and investing in different elements. Doesn't make either one bad or good, we are just going after the markets slightly differently. The other point I'll make there is in 2014 if you looked at the then chart diagrams, there was a lot of overlap. Now if you draw the areas of focus, there's a lot of white space that we're going after that they aren't going after, and they're going after other places and other new vendors are going after others. With the market dynamics of IoT, cloud and AI, you're going to see folks chase the market opportunities. >> Is that dispersity not a problem for customers now or is it challenging? >> There has to be a core level of interoperability and that's one of the reasons why we're collaborating with folks in the ODPI, as an example. There's still when it comes to some of the core components, there has to be a level of predictability, because if you're an ISV riding atop, you're slowed down by death by infinite certification and choices. So ultimately it has to come down to just a much more sane approach to what you can rely on. >> When you guys announced ODP, then ODPI, the extension, Mike Olson wrote a blog saying it's not necessary, people came out against it. Now we're three years in looking back. Was he right or not? >> I think ODPI take away this year, there's more than we can do above and beyond the Hadoop platform. It's expanded to include SQL and other things recently, so there's been some movement on this spec, but frankly you talk to John Mertic at ODPI, you talk to SAS and others, I think we want to be a bit more aggressive in the areas that we go after and try and drive there from a standardization perspective. >> We had Wei Wang on earlier-- >> Shaun: There's more we can do and there's more we should do. >> We had Wei on with Microsoft at our Big Data SV event a couple weeks ago. Talk about the Microsoft relationship with you guys. It seems to be doing very well. Comments on that. >> Microsoft was one of the two companies we chose to partner with early on, so and 2011, 2012 Microsoft and Teradata were the two. Microsoft was how do I democratize and make this technology easy for people. That's manifest itself as Azure Cloud Service, Azure HDInsight-- >> Which is growing like crazy. >> Which is globally deployed and we just had another update. It's fundamentally changed our engineering and delivering model. This latest release was a cloud first delivery model, so one of the things that we're proud of is the interactive SQL and the LLAP technology that's in HDP, that went out through Azure HDInsight what works data cloud first. Then it certified in HDP 2.6 and it went power at the same time. It's that cadence of delivery and cloud first delivery model. We couldn't do it without a partnership with Microsoft. I think we've really learned what it takes-- >> If you look at Microsoft at that time. I remember interviewing you on theCUBE. Microsoft was trading something like $26 a share at that time, around their low point. Now the stock is performing really well. Stockinnetel very cloud oriented-- >> Shaun: They're very open-source. >> They're very open-source and friendly they've been donating a lot to the OCP, to the data center piece. Extremely different Microsoft, so you slipped into that beautiful spot, reacted on that growth. >> I think as one of the stalwarts of enterprise software providers, I think they've done a really great job of bending the curve towards cloud and still having a mixed portfolio, but in sending a field, and sending a channel, and selling cloud and growing that revenue stream, that's nontrivial, that's hard. >> They know the enterprise sales motions too. I want to ask you how that's going over all within Hortonworks. What are some of the conversations that you're involved in with customers today? Again we were saying in our opening segment, it's on YouTube if you're not watching, but the customers is the forcing function right now. They're really putting the pressure one the suppliers, you're one of them, to get tight, reduce friction, lower costs of ownership, get into the cloud, flywheel. And so you see a lot-- >> I'll throw in another aspect some of the more late majority adopters traditionally, over and over right here by 2025 they want to power down the data center and have more things running in the public cloud, if not most everything. That's another eight years or what have you, so it's still a journey, but this journey to making that an imperative because of the operational, because of the agility, because of better predictability, ease of use. That's fundamental. >> As you get into the connected tissue, I love that example, with Kubernetes containers, you've got developers, a big open-source participant and you got all the stuff you have, you just start to see some coalescing around the cloud native. How do you guys look at that conversation? >> I view container platforms, whether they're container services that are running one on cloud or what have you, as the new lightweight rail that everything will ride atop. The cloud currently plays a key role in that, I think that's going to be the defacto way. In particularly if you go cloud first models, particularly for delivery. You need that packaging notion and you need the agility of updates that that's going to provide. I think Red Hat as a partner has been doing great things on hardening that, making it secure. There's others in the ecosystem as well as the cloud providers. All three cloud providers actually are investing in it. >> John: So it's good for your business? >> It removes friction of deployment ... And I ride atop that new rail. It can't get here soon enough from my perspective. >> So I want to ask about clouds. You were talking about the Microsoft shift, personally I think Microsoft realized holy cow, we could actaully make a lot of money if we're selling hardware services. We can make more money if we're selling the full stack. It was sort of an epiphany and so Amazon seems to be doing the same thing. You mentioned earlier you know Amazon is a great partner, even though a lot of people look at them as a competitor, it seems like Amazon, Azure etc., they're building out their own big data stack and offering it as a service. People say that's a threat to you guys, is it a threat or is it a tailwind, is it it is what it is? >> This is why I bring up industry-wide we always have waves of centralization, decentralization. They're playing out simultaneously right now with cloud and IoT. The fact of the matter is that you're going to have multiple clouds on-prem data and data at the edge. That's the problem I am looking to facilitate and solve. I don't view them as competitors, I view them as partners because we need to collaborate because there's a value chain of the flow of the data and some of it's going to be running through and on those platforms. >> The cloud's not going to solve the edge problem. Too expensive. It's just physics. >> So I think that's where things need to go. I think that's why we talk about this notion of connected data. I don't talk hybrid cloud computing, that's for compute. I talk about how do you connect to your data, how do you know where your data is and are you getting the right value out of the data by playing it where it lies. >> I think IoT has been a great sweet trend for the big data industry. It really accelerates the value proposition of the cloud too because now you have a connected network, you can have your cake and eat it too. Central and distributed. >> There's different dynamics in the US versus Europe, as an example. US definitely we're seeing a cloud adoption that's independent of IoT. Here in Europe, I would argue the smart mobility initiatives, the smart manufacturing initiatives, and the connected grid initiatives are bringing cloud in, so it's IoT and cloud and that's opening up the cloud opportunity here. >> Interesting. So on a prospects for Hortonworks cashflow positive Q4 you guys have made a public statement, any other thoughts you want to share. >> Just continue to grow the business, focus on these customer use cases, get them to talk about them at things like DataWorks Summit, and then the more the merrier, the more data-oriented open-source driven companies that can graduate in the public markets, I think is awesome. I think it will just help the industry. >> Operating in the open, with full transparency-- >> Shaun: On the business and the code. (laughter) >> Welcome to the party baby. This is theCUBE here at DataWorks 2017 in Munich, Germany. Live coverage, I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. Stay with us. More great coverage coming after this short break. (upbeat music)

(upbeat electronic music) >> Male Voiceover: Live from New York, it's the Cube, covering big data New York City 2016. Brought to you by headline sponsors Sisco, IBM, Nvidia, and our ecosystem sponsors. Now, here are your hosts. Dave Vellante and Peter Burress. >> We're back in the Big Apple. This is the Cube, the worldwide leader in live tech coverage, we're here at Big Data NYC, Big Data week is part of strata plus dupe world. Shaun Connolly is here as the vice president of strategy at Horton Works, long time friend and Cube alum, great to see you again. >> Thanks for having me, were back at the same venue last year, always a pleasure. >> Yeah, it's good, we're growing, I guess the event's growing, we haven't been over there yet, but some of our guys have, but what's it like over there? >> You know, it feels the same, some of the different use cases, I think last year was streaming, we're hearing more machine learning and things like that as far as use cases, so similar vibe. >> Yeah, so things are evolving, right? How's Hortonworks evolving? >> We're continuing to report our quarterly earnings as the only publicly traded company in this space, things from a business perspective are doing well. Our connected data platforms strategy which we unveiled at the beginning of this year, which is written data in motion and data at rest and enabling these new gen transformational applications continues to play out. The data in motion piece is sort of decoupled and unrelated to a hadou platform, it's really about acquiring and handling the FedEx for data delivery type notions, data logistics, secure transmission. That's based on the Apache Ni-Fi tech that was originally built sort of at the NSA over the past eight years, so. Really a nice robust piece of technology that we've pushed out to the edge in our latest release so you can really skin these down into a secure site to site transmission. A lot of sophisticated capabilities there, so we're seeing a lot of uptake in that sort of architectural vision, the products are maturing, both on prem and in the cloud, things are pretty exciting. >> Well this cloud thing seems pretty real. (Shaun laughing) You can get a lot of traction, right? Everybody kind of knew it was coming, but what are you seeing? >> Yeah so it was, I guess I started the journey back in 2009, when I was at Springsource in Paul Moretz was CEO of Vmware, and that was pre sort of cloud at that time. We were talking about this notion of platform as a service, and things like that. And that resonated really well with folks back then, but their main ask was how do you solve the data problem, how do actually get the data to the apps that need it. Fast forward to 2016, I think it's been a lot of open source innovation, you know a lot of commercial innovation, the rise of cloud for providing a fast path to value, booting up these used cases, it's a fascinating transition to watch. Many of our customers are, people use the word hybrid. What that means to me is they'll have data center workloads, or multi data center workloads, but they also have cloud workloads, sometimes even multi cloud workloads, and that inherent nature of the beast is why I use sort of the term of connected data architecture, is y%ou need an architecture that inherently is built to span that fact. And that's just increasing, that's just the world we live in today. >> But the fact is because there speed of light issues, there's data fidelity issues. >> Shaun: Yup. >> There's other types of things, how are you starting to see those practical and very physical realities start to impact the whole concept of design as it pertains to data, as it pertains to analytics, as it pertains to the infrastructure associated with the two? >> Yup, so at Hoop Summit that we had last June, there were really some really good sessions that were there. Folks like Comcast, Ford, Schlumberger talked about this connected data architecture reality, right. If you look at like, I like to use the connected car ecosystem as a good example, cause there were insurance providers and others that were sort of speaking on behalf of that, where you have the cars and other data that's inherently born up there, and there's a slug of use cases that are around edge analytics, streaming analytics, time series analytics, and we're seeing that, and I think the cloud lends itself really well for those types of use cases. But we also see manufacturing line data for the cars, where you want to get a 360 degree view of operational issues, and dovetail that with manufacturing line elements, and that's inherently what we've seen is, what your classic sort of on prem data wake, in quotes has been used for so you can get that 360 degree operational intelligence type of analytics to come out of that, right? So that type of use case, whether you apply it to oil and gas and having the sensors on the oil rigs, in the Schlumberger example, that pattern is repeating itself across different industries. British Gas, in Europe talks about how they're fundamentally changing the nature of the relationship with their customer because of the smart meters, and their connectivity in the homes and they can deliver a better value there. So that's inherently connected data realm, there's cloud use cases, and in the data center use cases. So I see these use cases, you know, they'll be use case specific in applications that are sprinkled across that fabric, if you will. And that's really what we're seeing. >> At our panel last year here in this venue, we would talk about a lot of things, one was the market, the sort of ebbs and flows you just mentioned, you guys are the only public player, Talon's joining that crew. >> Shaun: Yeah. Excellent. >> You've seen some. >> Shaun: We need more. >> We need more, we've seen some MNA, Plat 4 taken out, I don't know if that was, I don't know the specifics of that deal. Might have been an acu hire, might not, I don't know. And Data Mere did a raise, so you're seeing these rip currents, in all directions. What are you seeing in the marketplace, lot of funding early on, lot of players, lot of innovation, and now it's like, okay, the music at some point's going to stop, but. >> Yeah. >> What's your take? >> So in our last call, and I think we repeated it on our prior earnings call, you know, our focus and then we put out there in our earnings, in our Q3 earnings will sort of reiterate where we stand is, we basically said Q4 is when we look to go adjust to even or break even. >> Right. >> And then 2017 we'll go from there. We reiterated that guidance, we had a little over 62 million in billings for the quarter, so the business is pretty robust and growing, it's a. We're only five years into this, I mean we're just five years old, so it's a very fast pace of billings growth, right? That's almost a 250 million run rate, right? For exiting that quarter. You know, annual run rate. So we see a lot of the use cases really continuing to move on. I think what I and what our customers ask us is, they're on a digital transformation journey, and they want the industry to start talking about those types of business value drivers, right? So I think we should expect to see a transition from the piece parts animals in the zoo and what's the right open source piece of technology, and more why should you care, right? As a business, how is this transforming what you do? How does this open up new lines of business? We started seeing that at Hadoop Summit when I think about two dozen customers were sharing, very rich stories, right? So that's where things are. But I think running a company is, you have to run it with a certain sense of rigor and that was one of the reasons why we chose to go public, right? >> So, we by the way, we totally agree that customers want to stop talking about digital business in platitudes and start actually identifying specifically what is it about it that's new and different, and find ways of doing it. >> Shaun: Sure. >> Coming back to the issue, however, of how you go about making some of those transformations relevant. There is clearly a knowledge gap about what digital business is, what it isn't, certainly. But there's also a fair amount of skills that have yet to be developed, that are required for a lot of the use cases that companies are pursuing. Not just in terms of implementing the technology appropriately, but actually constructing and conceptualizing the use cases. >> Shaun: Sure. >> So that suggests that there's two paths forward. There's a path forward where we can do a better job of diffusing knowledge through people, and there's a path for where we can do a better job of building software that's easier to use. >> Shaun: Mm hmm. >> And there's both. How do you see this playing out over the course of the next few years? >> Yep, and I think in any new area as technology's emerging, like one of the things I use is Apache Software Foundation. Literally every other week there's a new data related Apache project that lands, so it's. It can be really confusing, but it's exhilarating from the fact of I participate in that, and I try and figure out what ones we can harness in a consumable platform, whether it's one prem or a cloud or what have you. What use cases can it light up? So I think you have both of those vectors, and it really depends on, I like to use the classic software adoption curve, you have a lot of the left side of the chasm folks, where a lot of this new stuff is going to be sharper edges, and they're always going to be trailblazers, right? But we are also seeing a lot of some of these advanced analytics. Some of these new solutions are automating the pipeline, so you can actually let the infrastructure and these engines do more of the thinking for you, so you get your model's output. Even to the point where you run multi model simulation in parallel, and out pops the best fit. That's where things will head, right? I think it's just a matter of the technology maturing, making sure we address things like security, metadata management, governance, and those illities that the enterprise expects, and then really forcing ourselves to simplify and automate as much as possible, right. And that was one of the reasons on that last one why in October 2011 we basically chose Teradata and Microsoft as key partners. Teradata because in 2011, clearly, right? >> Peter: Teradata. >> They're Teradata, right? Microsoft because it simplifies technologies and brings them to billions of users, right? And so we need to do both, you need to harden it, right? For the most rigorous large enterprises, but you need to simplify it for the meat of the market adopters, right? The early majority and late majority. You have to do both. >> Shaun, you're sitting across from a CEO, and you have to say these are the three things you need to do to enact this digital transformation. >> Shaun: Yup. >> What are the three things you're telling him? >> So, I think they need as a business to identify how do they want to leverage data as capital, and what pockets of value do they want to go chase, number one. Number two, how is their business being impacted by the fact that you have the rise of IOT and inherently increasing connected society and infrastructure. How is that impacting them? And number three is, how do they evolve what they're used to doing, right? You have to align it, exactly. >> Because that's really many respects of, I like to say there's a difference between invention and innovation. Invention is the engineering act, innovation's a social act, it's adopting those new practices >> Shaun: Exactly. >> That actually allow you to enact the invention and generate revenue. >> Exactly. Now in our space, I think we have a very compelling renovate value prop which is a cost savings where you can drive cost out, but the innovate use cases are the ones. Like if all you're going to do is renovate, then you will fail, you will stall, right? Because it's not a balance of cost savings. It's about how do you actually transform your business. And in the case of like the British Gas example, I used that as how they engaged that end consumer is fundamentally changing. So that's the question I put back in those conversations is how do you want to evolve your business and how do you leverage data as capital? Because the beauty of data as capital is you can actually generate multiple lines of interest off of a single data set, cause you can derive different insights off of that, so it's not like a dollar, right? And single compound, it's multiple compound annual interest rate on that. But they have to chase the right use cases. >> Although, we've also learned from great design that if you do the right thing better, you get rid of a lot waste and so coming back to your point, doing the right thing better often leads to cost savings. >> Yes. Exactly. One inherently can drive the other, but if you're just driving it then >> Peter: Just doing cost. >> You're not going to transform your buisiness. >> Peter: You're just going to continue to do the same or wrong things worse. >> Shaun: Exactly. >> Or wrong things cheaper. >> And that's difficult for enterprises. Because there's a certain way to do data management inherently inside in a highly structured manner, but I do think the rise of like IOT, I don't see as a market, I see it as infinite slices of prosciutto, right? (laughter) It's a very thinly sliced set of market opportunities, right? But it's forcing people to think about different use cases and how that might impact their business. >> We see those set of capabilities. >> Yup. >> Which leads to the prosciutto. >> Exactly. >> So you, and come up with a really nice sandwich. (laughter) >> It's my Italian. >> Let's keep going. >> I'm loving it. >> I'm getting a little hungry. >> You have always made a big deal out of your partnerships not being barney deals but being deep integration relationships. So you mentioned two here, Teradata and Microsoft. As the cloud becomes more prevalent, as things evolve and machine learning becomes the hot buzzword, et cetera. How have you evolved those relationships specifically in terms of the integration work that you've done? Have you kept up that engineering ethos, or? >> And that was the thing. With Microsoft, we clearly spent a lot of sweat equity on the Azure HDInsight service, but if you look at that ecosystem, they have Azure machine learning, right? They have a whole raft of services, right, that you can apply to the data when it's in the cloud, right? So how that piece integrates with the broader ecosystem of services is a lot of engineering work as well. I've always said, there's work to be done in our green box, but the other half of the work is how it plumbs into the rest. And so if you look at the AWS ecosystem, how do you optimize for S3 as a storage tier, and ephemeral workloads where HDFS is maybe a caching mechanism but it's not your primary storage, right? It brings up really interesting integration modes and how you actually bring your value out into really interesting use cases, right? So I think it's opened up a lot of areas where we can drive a lot more integration, drive the open source tech in a way that's relevant for those use cases. >> Alright, we got to go but, summit in Tokyo, is it next month? >> Yes, end of October. >> End of October. >> It's our first time, so primarily summits have been US and Europe. We had Melbourne end of August, and we have Tokyo end of October. I'll be, they're bringing the right hander out of retirement, so I'll be onstage in Tokyo. (laughing) I've usually been behind the scenes. >> Throwing the slurve? (laughter) >> Yeah, exactly. So I'm looking forward to it, it'll be exciting. >> Alright, good, and then 17, you're going to start again in the spring. >> Shaun: Yup. >> You're in Munich. >> Shaun: Yup. Munich. >> You were in Dublin last year, you're moving to Munich this year. >> Shaun: Exactly. >> Hopefully the Cube will be back, in Munich, alright? >> We love you guys, you guys do a good job. >> Let's make it happen, do good stuff in Europe, so thanks again for coming out. >> Shaun: Thanks for having me. >> Always a pleasure. Alright, keep it right there, we'll be back right after this short break. This is the Cube, we're live from New York City. ( upbeat electronic music)