>> Voiceover: Live, from Orlando, Florida, it's The Cube, covering Sapphire Now, headlining sponsored by SAP HANA Cloud, the leader in platform as a service, with support from Consolink, the cloud internet company. Now, here are your hosts, John Furrier and Peter Burse. >> Welcome back everyone, we are here live in Orlando, Florida for Sapphire Now, SiliconeANGLE Media's exclusive coverage of Sapphire. I'm John Furrier with Peter Burse. This is our flagship program, we go out to the events, and extract the citizen noise, you're watching The Cube. I want to do a shout-out to our sponsors. Without their help, we would not be here. SAP HANA Cloud Platform, Consolink at CONSOL Cloud, hot start up in Silicone Valley, and also we have Cap Gemini, we have EMC. Thanks so much for your support. Our next guest is Gaby Corin, who's the EVP of the Americas for Panaya, accompanied about a year ago by Infosys, now a part of Infosys. Welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you so much. >> Congratulations on the acquisition over a yeah ago, but you guys are to a part of the big machinery of Infosys, which is tier one systems integrated part of SAP's global channel, as they call it, but essentially, you're out serving customers all over the world. >> Gaby: That is correct, yes. >> At Infosys, what's your role in the Infosys organization, and what does your company do? >> Okay, so, I'll start with the company. Panaya was founded ten years ago. Our quest is to help customers to perform all their changes in their ERP environment. We basically analyze the environment, create that mapping, that baseline that helps them understand exactly what they're dealing with, then we support them in scoping out the changes, and then, we work with them throughout the journey of executing on all the testing cycles associated with all the changes. We serve about two thousand customers, and we are a hundred percent cloud-based solution. My role as EVP for the Americas is to support all customers in the region, and we're working very closely with Infosys into bringing Panaya as part of their offering to accelerate the processes, to bring innovation, and to bring much more efficiency to all the SAP projects and activities that they perform with our customers. >> We had the global partner person on earlier, and that was the big point, innovation's now at the center, not just delivery, which Infosys has been great at, but also other things, innovation, time is very important. >> Exactly. >> Your solution speeds things up, so share with us what it is, is it a SAS space? Is it code analyzers? Is it for QA? Is it for testing? What specifically do you guys solve? What problem do you solve? >> Great question. First of all, we are a SAS-based solution, so we do everything in the cloud. This helps, as you said, perform all the tasks faster and more efficiently. The pain that we're coming to address is the fact that change is constant in the ERP. The ERP is never an island, never an isolated solution. It's always in changes, the core of a lot of the businesses that we meet here, so change is their reality, they need to change all the time. They are highly customized, so every change that come from the vendor or from the business requires a lot of preparation and very fast execution, and this is where Panaya plays. We simulate the change virtually in the cloud, and we tell customers in advance what is going to happen to their environment all the way to the code line level what exactly is going to break, how to fix it, what to test, and we support them, again, throughout all the testing cycles from the unit test or the technical test all the way to user-acceptance test, UATs, that is a big pain to organization because of the collaboration. >> It's faster is the point. So, you guys speed up the process. >> Absolutely, we speed up the process, we reduce costs, we bring customers faster to market by about fifty percent, and we allow them to do their projects at the budget that they establish or lower. >> Give me an example of someone who has the problem, and what their environment looks like. Because everyone's trying to get to the cloud, and your solution is tailor-made perfectly for the cloud because it's very dev-ops-like. It makes things go faster, it's part of that whole agile iteration speed game, which we love, but the people trying to get there that are figuring it out, what's their environment, people who have the problem? What's their environment look like? Paint the picture. >> Virtually any SAP customer needs Panaya. >> John: That's a good plug. It's complicated. >> Yes. Their environment can have one instance, or multiple instances of SAP ECCs. They all have the need for testing because they perform testing all the way. They are trying to bring some of the applications to the cloud, but not necessarily. Most of our customers still are heavily on-premise based, so what we do is that we do all the analysis in the cloud, and this is how we help them do things much faster. >> So I got to ask you the Infosys question, because I'm a big fan of Vishal Sikka. For many years, I've watched his work at SAP, certainly. He was very, very early on and very right on a lot of technical decisions around how things played out. I watched him during the SOA days, going back to the web services days, which is the late 90's, early 2000s, he had the right call and vision on web services, and then service-oriented architectures. >> Yes. >> He brought a lot of great mojo to SAP and has always been very open-source driven. >> Right. >> John: And he's just a cool guy, so what's it like working there? I mean, is he always on top of the employees? Do you talk to him? What's it like inside the company at Infosys, and specifically Vishal, what's he up to? >> First of all, he's such a visionary. You listen to him and his vision. His vision is people and software. And he wants to make a difference when it comes to supporting customers, being an SI, being at a company that creates and makes a difference. He's also very personal, so he's very approachable. He loves ideas as innovation, and he believes that the innovations come from within, so he's a huge supporter of Panaya and bringing Panaya to every single Infosys customer and opportunity, but he has that vision that you don't replace a thing, you don't replace stuff. You take something, and you bring, but you learn to collaborate, and you understand that the environments needs to be flexible, and the only way to bring that flexibility is to take the existing environment and continue to bring innovation, even if it's in small steps, you bring that innovation to the table. And this is what makes it so unique to work for a guy like him. >> The traditional systems integrator relationship, there's always been tension, a lot of tension between customers and systems integrators. >> Gaby: Yes. >> Customers say they want something. Systems integrators have the expertise to do it. Customers want it fast, systems integrators sometimes use their experience to inflate billings, but the customer increasingly is in charge in almost all global markets. The question is are you helping your customers stay more in control of Infosys engagements? And if the answer is yes, how does that improve the value proposition of Infosys? >> Okay, that's a great question. One of the reasons that Panaya remains an independent and contained organization within Infosys is, besides commitment to support that, we sell direct a lot to our customers, and we support, we remain objective, whoever the customer chooses to work with, whether it's to do it in house or to use system integrators. And we have more and more projects that there are three, four, or five system integrators that are involved, and each one does a piece of the solution, and Panaya gives that control because of their analysis, because of the support on the planning stage. We paint the right picture of where you are today, where do you want to go, and in the journey of doing that. This is one of the claims of victory of Panaya is that we bring that control back to the hands of the customers exactly as they want to, because they want to understand what are they dealing with, what are the pricing, and SIs on the other hand, also understand that prices cannot continue to be cut forever and ever. But if you don't bring that innovation, that people plus software, it will be impossible to continue to compete in this market. >> They get more net contract value on the sales as they deliver value. >> Gaby: Exactly, to the customers. >> So if they're helping their customers drive more cash and revenue-- >> Well, I would presume that it actually starts with the contracting process for a lot of these efforts is itself very, very expensive and often leads to not a lot of value, and so I presume that in response to what you just mentioned, John, that you're generating artifacts to make it easy for the customer, the SAP customer, to envision where they need to go, and those artifacts then help the SAP customer manage the integrator and the company doing it, which then dramatically reduces the contracting process. >> Gaby: Exactly. >> Because it's a lot clearer, which means I can focus more on the management of the partner-- >> You release resources, correct. >> As a set of capabilities because because it always changes along the way. >> That is correct. >> As I change, I can envision that using some of the technologies you're bringing to bear. >> That is correct, we create these assets that can be reused time and again, and then we free up resources so they can focus on innovation and additional activities. That is exactly our value proposition, you got it absolutely right. >> So, are you a consultant management system in the SAP world? >> We don't claim to be, no, we bring solutions. We're not in the consulting business at all. >> Peter: No, managing the consulting business. >> Oh, absolutely, we help to manage that process. >> Helping the customer manage those consultants. >> That is correct, that is correct. Yes, you're absolutely right. >> My final question for you, thanks for coming on The Cube, by the way, I know it's short notice. >> Thank you, thank you for having me. >> Great to have the insight. What's the biggest change in the ecosystem are you seeing today? Because you're close to the code, so you're close to all the action at Panaya and certainly Infosys is massive and global. What is the biggest change that's happening in the ecosystem, with SI's and generally across the board? >> That's a great question. One thing that we're seeing is much more competition. The customer is much more educated, exactly as you, Peter, said. The customers are much more educated, they know what they want, and they're coming in with much more control and knowledge, so we're seeing this. Customers are looking for much more long-term activities. This is why HANA is becoming such a strong, we're seeing this also here in this show how everybody's talking HANA, because it's not something that you do for the next year. It's something that is going to be with these customers for a long term. They are looking for long-term type of engagements. >> They don't have to buy a lot of HANA. They can actually put their toe in the water, if you will. The old days it was you buy SAP, and you hired the SI's, project management, delivery over a long period of time. They don't have to do that today. They can still have a long view with HANA, right? I mean, are you seeing that, too? >> Yes, and what we're seeing is, a move on this regard, we're seeing a move from best of suite into best of breed. We want on each area the best solution possible. >> Without ballooning integration and training costs. >> Correct, correct, and we fit perfectly into that story. >> Well, thanks so much. Real quick question for you. You guys have a big end-user event like Sapphire. >> Gaby: Yes. >> Didn't you just have one in San Francisco recently? Or do you have one coming up? What's going on with the events for Infosys? >> We participated in Confluence, which is a very large event of Infosys, just a couple of weeks ago. Very, very well-attended, and we-- >> John: Is that a global conference in San Francisco or is it in other areas? >> It's a global event in which the largest, the biggest customers of Infosys attend, once a year, they get together. It's all about thought leadership and sharing ideas, design thinking, which Vishal is leading very strongly. That was the main theme of the event, so we had the chance to meet a lot of our customers and prospects. Now, of course, Sapphire. >> Thank you so much for coming on, Gaby. Great to have you on The Cube, and welcome to the Cube alumni now that you're on The Cube. We are live here in Orlando for SAP Sapphire Now. I'm John Furrier with Peter Burse with the Cube. You're watching SiliconANGLE' The Cube. (futuristic music)