(upbeat intro music) >> Hello everyone. Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of International Women's Day. I'm your host, John Furrier, here in Palo Alto, California. Got a special remote guest coming in. Teresa Carlson, President and Chief Commercial Officer at Flexport, theCUBE alumni, one of the first, let me go back to 2013, Teresa, former AWS. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Oh my gosh, almost 10 years. That is unbelievable. It's hard to believe so many years of theCUBE. I love it. >> It's been such a great honor to interview you and follow your career. You've had quite the impressive run, executive level woman in tech. You've done such an amazing job, not only in your career, but also helping other women. So I want to give you props to that before we get started. Thank you. >> Thank you, John. I, it's my, it's been my honor and privilege. >> Let's talk about Flexport. Tell us about your new role there and what it's all about. >> Well, I love it. I'm back working with another Amazonian, Dave Clark, who is our CEO of Flexport, and we are about 3,000 people strong globally in over 90 countries. We actually even have, we're represented in over 160 cities and with local governments and places around the world, which I think is super exciting. We have over 100 network partners and growing, and we are about empowering the global supply chain and trade and doing it in a very disruptive way with the use of platform technology that allows our customers to really have visibility and insight to what's going on. And it's a lot of fun. I'm learning new things, but there's a lot of technology in this as well, so I feel right at home. >> You quite have a knack from mastering growth, technology, and building out companies. So congratulations, and scaling them up too with the systems and processes. So I want to get into that. Let's get into your personal background. Then I want to get into the work you've done and are doing for empowering women in tech. What was your journey about, how did it all start? Like, I know you had a, you know, bumped into it, you went Microsoft, AWS. Take us through your career, how you got into tech, how it all happened. >> Well, I do like to give a shout out, John, to my roots and heritage, which was a speech and language pathologist. So I did start out in healthcare right out of, you know, university. I had an undergraduate and a master's degree. And I do tell everyone now, looking back at my career, I think it was super helpful for me because I learned a lot about human communication, and it has done me very well over the years to really try to understand what environments I'm in and what kind of individuals around the world culturally. So I'm really blessed that I had that opportunity to work in healthcare, and by the way, a shout out to all of our healthcare workers that has helped us get through almost three years of COVID and flu and neurovirus and everything else. So started out there and then kind of almost accidentally got into technology. My first small company I worked for was a company called Keyfile Corporation, which did workflow and document management out of Nashua, New Hampshire. And they were a Microsoft goal partner. And that is actually how I got into big tech world. We ran on exchange, for everybody who knows that term exchange, and we were a large small partner, but large in the world of exchange. And those were the days when you would, the late nineties, you would go and be in the same room with Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. And I really fell in love with Microsoft back then. I thought to myself, wow, if I could work for a big tech company, I got to hear Bill on stage about saving, he would talk about saving the world. And guess what my next step was? I actually got a job at Microsoft, took a pay cut and a job downgrade. I tell this story all the time. Took like three downgrades in my role. I had been a SVP and went to a manager, and it's one of the best moves I ever made. And I shared that because I really didn't know the world of big tech, and I had to start from the ground up and relearn it. I did that, I just really loved that job. I was at Microsoft from 2000 to 2010, where I eventually ran all of the U.S. federal government business, which was a multi-billion dollar business. And then I had the great privilege of meeting an amazing man, Andy Jassy, who I thought was just unbelievable in his insights and knowledge and openness to understanding new markets. And we talked about government and how government needed the same great technology as every startup. And that led to me going to work for Andy in 2010 and starting up our worldwide public sector business. And I pinch myself some days because we went from two people, no offices, to the time I left we had over 10,000 people, billions in revenue, and 172 countries and had done really amazing work. I think changing the way public sector and government globally really thought about their use of technology and Cloud computing in general. And that kind of has been my career. You know, I was there till 2020, 21 and then did a small stint at Splunk, a small stint back at Microsoft doing a couple projects for Microsoft with CEO, Satya Nadella, who is also an another amazing CEO and leader. And then Dave called me, and I'm at Flexport, so I couldn't be more honored, John. I've just had such an amazing career working with amazing individuals. >> Yeah, I got to say the Amazon One well-documented, certainly by theCUBE and our coverage. We watched you rise and scale that thing. And like I said at a time, this will when we look back as a historic run because of the build out. I mean as a zero to massive billions at a historic time where government was transforming, I would say Microsoft had a good run there with Fed, but it was already established stuff. Federal business was like, you know, blocking and tackling. The Amazon was pure build out. So I have to ask you, what was your big learnings? Because one, you're a Seattle big tech company kind of entrepreneurial in the sense of you got, here's some working capital seed finance and go build that thing, and you're in DC and you're a woman. What did you learn? >> I learned that you really have to have a lot of grit. You, my mom and dad, these are kind of more southern roots words, but stick with itness, you know. you can't give up and no's not in your vocabulary. I found no is just another way to get to yes. That you have to figure out what are all the questions people are going to ask you. I learned to be very patient, and I think one of the things John, for us was our secret sauce was we said to ourselves, if we're going to do something super transformative and truly disruptive, like Cloud computing, which the government really had not utilized, we had to be patient. We had to answer all their questions, and we could not judge in any way what they were thinking because if we couldn't answer all those questions and prove out the capabilities of Cloud computing, we were not going to accomplish our goals. And I do give so much credit to all my colleagues there from everybody like Steve Schmidt who was there, who's still there, who's the CISO, and Charlie Bell and Peter DeSantis and the entire team there that just really helped build that business out. Without them, you know, we would've just, it was a team effort. And I think that's the thing I loved about it was it was not just sales, it was product, it was development, it was data center operations, it was legal, finance. Everybody really worked as a team and we were on board that we had to make a lot of changes in the government relations team. We had to go into Capitol Hill. We had to talk to them about the changes that were required and really get them to understand why Cloud computing could be such a transformative game changer for the way government operates globally. >> Well, I think the whole world and the tech world can appreciate your work and thank you later because you broke down those walls asking those questions. So great stuff. Now I got to say, you're in kind of a similar role at Flexport. Again, transformative supply chain, not new. Computing wasn't new when before Cloud came. Supply chain, not a new concept, is undergoing radical change and transformation. Online, software supply chain, hardware supply chain, supply chain in general, shipping. This is a big part of our economy and how life is working. Similar kind of thing going on, build out, growth, scale. >> It is, it's very much like that, John, I would say, it's, it's kind of a, the model with freight forwarding and supply chain is fairly, it's not as, there's a lot of technology utilized in this global supply chain world, but it's not integrated. You don't have a common operating picture of what you're doing in your global supply chain. You don't have easy access to the information and visibility. And that's really, you know, I was at a conference last week in LA, and it was, the themes were so similar about transparency, access to data and information, being able to act quickly, drive change, know what was happening. I was like, wow, this sounds familiar. Data, AI, machine learning, visibility, common operating picture. So it is very much the same kind of themes that you heard even with government. I do believe it's an industry that is going through transformation and Flexport has been a group that's come in and said, look, we have this amazing idea, number one to give access to everyone. We want every small business to every large business to every government around the world to be able to trade their goods, think about supply chain logistics in a very different way with information they need and want at their fingertips. So that's kind of thing one, but to apply that technology in a way that's very usable across all systems from an integration perspective. So it's kind of exciting. I used to tell this story years ago, John, and I don't think Michael Dell would mind that I tell this story. One of our first customers when I was at Keyfile Corporation was we did workflow and document management, and Dell was one of our customers. And I remember going out to visit them, and they had runners and they would run around, you know, they would run around the floor and do their orders, right, to get all those computers out the door. And when I think of global trade, in my mind I still see runners, you know, running around and I think that's moved to a very digital, right, world that all this stuff, you don't need people doing this. You have machines doing this now, and you have access to the information, and you know, we still have issues resulting from COVID where we have either an under-abundance or an over-abundance of our supply chain. We still have clogs in our shipping, in the shipping yards around the world. So we, and the ports, so we need to also, we still have some clearing to do. And that's the reason technology is important and will continue to be very important in this world of global trade. >> Yeah, great, great impact for change. I got to ask you about Flexport's inclusion, diversity, and equity programs. What do you got going on there? That's been a big conversation in the industry around keeping a focus on not making one way more than the other, but clearly every company, if they don't have a strong program, will be at a disadvantage. That's well reported by McKinsey and other top consultants, diverse workforces, inclusive, equitable, all perform better. What's Flexport's strategy and how are you guys supporting that in the workplace? >> Well, let me just start by saying really at the core of who I am, since the day I've started understanding that as an individual and a female leader, that I could have an impact. That the words I used, the actions I took, the information that I pulled together and had knowledge of could be meaningful. And I think each and every one of us is responsible to do what we can to make our workplace and the world a more diverse and inclusive place to live and work. And I've always enjoyed kind of the thought that, that I could help empower women around the world in the tech industry. Now I'm hoping to do my little part, John, in that in the supply chain and global trade business. And I would tell you at Flexport we have some amazing women. I'm so excited to get to know all. I've not been there that long yet, but I'm getting to know we have some, we have a very diverse leadership team between men and women at Dave's level. I have some unbelievable women on my team directly that I'm getting to know more, and I'm so impressed with what they're doing. And this is a very, you know, while this industry is different than the world I live in day to day, it's also has a lot of common themes to it. So, you know, for us, we're trying to approach every day by saying, let's make sure both our interviewing cycles, the jobs we feel, how we recruit people, how we put people out there on the platforms, that we have diversity and inclusion and all of that every day. And I can tell you from the top, from Dave and all of our leaders, we just had an offsite and we had a big conversation about this is something. It's a drum beat that we have to think about and live by every day and really check ourselves on a regular basis. But I do think there's so much more room for women in the world to do great things. And one of the, one of the areas, as you know very well, we lost a lot of women during COVID, who just left the workforce again. So we kind of went back unfortunately. So we have to now move forward and make sure that we are giving women the opportunity to have great jobs, have the flexibility they need as they build a family, and have a workplace environment that is trusted for them to come into every day. >> There's now clear visibility, at least in today's world, not withstanding some of the setbacks from COVID, that a young girl can look out in a company and see a path from entry level to the boardroom. That's a big change. A lot than even going back 10, 15, 20 years ago. What's your advice to the folks out there that are paying it forward? You see a lot of executive leaderships have a seat at the table. The board still underrepresented by most numbers, but at least you have now kind of this solidarity at the top, but a lot of people doing a lot more now than I've seen at the next levels down. So now you have this leveled approach. Is that something that you're seeing more of? And credit compare and contrast that to 20 years ago when you were, you know, rising through the ranks? What's different? >> Well, one of the main things, and I honestly do not think about it too much, but there were really no women. There were none. When I showed up in the meetings, I literally, it was me or not me at the table, but at the seat behind the table. The women just weren't in the room, and there were so many more barriers that we had to push through, and that has changed a lot. I mean globally that has changed a lot in the U.S. You know, if you look at just our U.S. House of Representatives and our U.S. Senate, we now have the increasing number of women. Even at leadership levels, you're seeing that change. You have a lot more women on boards than we ever thought we would ever represent. While we are not there, more female CEOs that I get an opportunity to see and talk to. Women starting companies, they do not see the barriers. And I will share, John, globally in the U.S. one of the things that I still see that we have that many other countries don't have, which I'm very proud of, women in the U.S. have a spirit about them that they just don't see the barriers in the same way. They believe that they can accomplish anything. I have two sons, I don't have daughters. I have nieces, and I'm hoping someday to have granddaughters. But I know that a lot of my friends who have granddaughters today talk about the boldness, the fortitude, that they believe that there's nothing they can't accomplish. And I think that's what what we have to instill in every little girl out there, that they can accomplish anything they want to. The world is theirs, and we need to not just do that in the U.S., but around the world. And it was always the thing that struck me when I did all my travels at AWS and now with Flexport, I'm traveling again quite a bit, is just the differences you see in the cultures around the world. And I remember even in the Middle East, how I started seeing it change. You've heard me talk a lot on this program about the fact in both Saudi and Bahrain, over 60% of the tech workers were females and most of them held the the hardest jobs, the security, the architecture, the engineering. But many of them did not hold leadership roles. And that is what we've got to change too. To your point, the middle, we want it to get bigger, but the top, we need to get bigger. We need to make sure women globally have opportunities to hold the most precious leadership roles and demonstrate their capabilities at the very top. But that's changed. And I would say the biggest difference is when we show up, we're actually evaluated properly for those kind of roles. We have a ways to go. But again, that part is really changing. >> Can you share, Teresa, first of all, that's great work you've done and I wan to give you props of that as well and all the work you do. I know you champion a lot of, you know, causes in in this area. One question that comes up a lot, I would love to get your opinion 'cause I think you can contribute heavily here is mentoring and sponsorship is huge, comes up all the time. What advice would you share to folks out there who were, I won't say apprehensive, but maybe nervous about how to do the networking and sponsorship and mentoring? It's not just mentoring, it's sponsorship too. What's your best practice? What advice would you give for the best way to handle that? >> Well yeah, and for the women out there, I would say on the mentorship side, I still see mentorship. Like, I don't think you can ever stop having mentorship. And I like to look at my mentors in different parts of my life because if you want to be a well-rounded person, you may have parts of your life every day that you think I'm doing a great job here and I definitely would like to do better there. Whether it's your spiritual life, your physical life, your work life, you know, your leisure life. But I mean there's, and there's parts of my leadership world that I still seek advice from as I try to do new things even in this world. And I tried some new things in between roles. I went out and asked the people that I respected the most. So I just would say for sure have different mentorships and don't be afraid to have that diversity. But if you have mentorships, the second important thing is show up with a real agenda and questions. Don't waste people's time. I'm very sensitive today. If you're, if you want a mentor, you show up and you use your time super effectively and be prepared for that. Sponsorship is a very different thing. And I don't believe we actually do that still in companies. We worked, thank goodness for my great HR team. When I was at AWS, we worked on a few sponsorship programs where for diversity in general, where we would nominate individuals in the company that we felt that weren't, that had a lot of opportunity for growth, but they just weren't getting a seat at the table. And we brought 'em to the table. And we actually kind of had a Chatham House rules where when they came into the meetings, they had a sponsor, not a mentor. They had a sponsor that was with them the full 18 months of this program. We would bring 'em into executive meetings. They would read docs, they could ask questions. We wanted them to be able to open up and ask crazy questions without, you know, feeling wow, I just couldn't answer this question in a normal environment or setting. And then we tried to make sure once they got through the program that we found jobs and support and other special projects that they could go do. But they still had that sponsor and that group of individuals that they'd gone through the program with, John, that they could keep going back to. And I remember sitting there and they asked me what I wanted to get out of the program, and I said two things. I want you to leave this program and say to yourself, I would've never had that experience if I hadn't gone through this program. I learned so much in 18 months. It would probably taken me five years to learn. And that it helped them in their career. The second thing I told them is I wanted them to go out and recruit individuals that look like them. I said, we need diversity, and unless you all feel that we are in an inclusive environment sponsoring all types of individuals to be part of this company, we're not going to get the job done. And they said, okay. And you know, but it was really one, it was very much about them. That we took a group of individuals that had high potential and a very diverse with diverse backgrounds, held 'em up, taught 'em things that gave them access. And two, selfishly I said, I want more of you in my business. Please help me. And I think those kind of things are helpful, and you have to be thoughtful about these kind of programs. And to me that's more sponsorship. I still have people reach out to me from years ago, you know, Microsoft saying, you were so good with me, can you give me a reference now? Can you talk to me about what I should be doing? And I try to, I'm not pray 100%, some things pray fall through the cracks, but I always try to make the time to talk to those individuals because for me, I am where I am today because I got some of the best advice from people like Don Byrne and Linda Zecker and Andy Jassy, who were very honest and upfront with me about my career. >> Awesome. Well, you got a passion for empowering women in tech, paying it forward, but you're quite accomplished and that's why we're so glad to have you on the program here. President and Chief Commercial Officer at Flexport. Obviously storied career and your other jobs, specifically Amazon I think, is historic in my mind. This next chapter looks like it's looking good right now. Final question for you, for the few minutes you have left. Tell us what you're up to at Flexport. What's your goals as President, Chief Commercial Officer? What are you trying to accomplish? Share a little bit, what's on your mind with your current job? >> Well, you kind of said it earlier. I think if I look at my own superpowers, I love customers, I love partners. I get my energy, John, from those interactions. So one is to come in and really help us build even a better world class enterprise global sales and marketing team. Really listen to our customers, think about how we interact with them, build the best executive programs we can, think about new ways that we can offer services to them and create new services. One of my favorite things about my career is I think if you're a business leader, it's your job to come back around and tell your product group and your services org what you're hearing from customers. That's how you can be so much more impactful, that you listen, you learn, and you deliver. So that's one big job. The second job for me, which I am so excited about, is that I have an amazing group called flexport.org under me. And flexport.org is doing amazing things around the world to help those in need. We just announced this new funding program for Tech for Refugees, which brings assistance to millions of people in Ukraine, Pakistan, the horn of Africa, and those who are affected by earthquakes. We just took supplies into Turkey and Syria, and Flexport, recently in fact, just did sent three air shipments to Turkey and Syria for these. And I think we did over a hundred trekking shipments to get earthquake relief. And as you can imagine, it was not easy to get into Syria. But you know, we're very active in the Ukraine, and we are, our goal for flexport.org, John, is to continue to work with our commercial customers and team up with them when they're trying to get supplies in to do that in a very cost effective, easy way, as quickly as we can. So that not-for-profit side of me that I'm so, I'm so happy. And you know, Ryan Peterson, who was our founder, this was his brainchild, and he's really taken this to the next level. So I'm honored to be able to pick that up and look for new ways to have impact around the world. And you know, I've always found that I think if you do things right with a company, you can have a beautiful combination of commercial-ity and giving. And I think Flexport does it in such an amazing and unique way. >> Well, the impact that they have with their system and their technology with logistics and shipping and supply chain is a channel for societal change. And I think that's a huge gift that you have that under your purview. So looking forward to finding out more about flexport.org. I can only imagine all the exciting things around sustainability, and we just had Mobile World Congress for Big Cube Broadcast, 5Gs right around the corner. I'm sure that's going to have a huge impact to your business. >> Well, for sure. And just on gas emissions, that's another thing that we are tracking gas, greenhouse gas emissions. And in fact we've already reduced more than 300,000 tons and supported over 600 organizations doing that. So that's a thing we're also trying to make sure that we're being climate aware and ensuring that we are doing the best job we can at that as well. And that was another thing I was honored to be able to do when we were at AWS, is to really cut out greenhouse gas emissions and really go global with our climate initiatives. >> Well Teresa, it's great to have you on. Security, data, 5G, sustainability, business transformation, AI all coming together to change the game. You're in another hot seat, hot roll, big wave. >> Well, John, it's an honor, and just thank you again for doing this and having women on and really representing us in a big way as we celebrate International Women's Day. >> I really appreciate it, it's super important. And these videos have impact, so we're going to do a lot more. And I appreciate your leadership to the industry and thank you so much for taking the time to contribute to our effort. Thank you, Teresa. >> Thank you. Thanks everybody. >> Teresa Carlson, the President and Chief Commercial Officer of Flexport. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. This is International Women's Day broadcast. Thanks for watching. (upbeat outro music)

(bright music) >> Hello, everyone. Welcome to theCUBE special presentation of International Women's Day. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. This is a global special open program we're doing every year. We're going to continue it every quarter. We're going to do more and more content, getting the voices out there and celebrating the diversity. And I'm excited to have an amazing guest here, LaDavia Drane, who's the head of Global Inclusion Diversity & Equity at AWS. LaDavia, we tried to get you in on AWS re:Invent, and you were super busy. So much going on. The industry has seen the light. They're seeing everything going on, and the numbers are up, but still not there, and getting better. This is your passion, our passion, a shared passion. Tell us about your situation, your career, how you got into it. What's your story? >> Yeah. Well, John, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm glad that we finally got this opportunity to speak. How did I get into this work? Wow, you know, I'm doing the work that I love to do, number one. It's always been my passion to be a voice for the voiceless, to create a seat at the table for folks that may not be welcome to certain tables. And so, it's been something that's been kind of the theme of my entire professional career. I started off as a lawyer, went to Capitol Hill, was able to do some work with members of Congress, both women members of Congress, but also, minority members of Congress in the US Congress. And then, that just morphed into what I think has become a career for me in inclusion, diversity, and equity. I decided to join Amazon because I could tell that it's a company that was ready to take it to the next level in this space. And sure enough, that's been my experience here. So now, I'm in it, I'm in it with two feet, doing great work. And yeah, yeah, it's almost a full circle moment for me. >> It's really an interesting background. You have a background in public policy. You mentioned Capitol Hill. That's awesome. DC kind of moves slow, but it's a complicated machinery there. Obviously, as you know, navigating that, Amazon grew significantly. We've been at every re:Invent with theCUBE since 2013, like just one year. I watched Amazon grow, and they've become very fast and also complicated, like, I won't say like Capitol, 'cause that's very slow, but Amazon's complicated. AWS is in the realm of powering a generation of public policy. We had the JEDI contract controversy, all kinds of new emerging challenges. This pivot to tech was great timing because one, (laughs) Amazon needed it because they were growing so fast in a male dominated world, but also, their business is having real impact on the public. >> That's right, that's right. And when you say the public, I'll just call it out. I think that there's a full spectrum of diversity and we work backwards from our customers, and our customers are diverse. And so, I really do believe, I agree that I came to the right place at the right time. And yeah, we move fast and we're also moving fast in this space of making sure that both internally and externally, we're doing the things that we need to do in order to reach a diverse population. >> You know, I've noticed how Amazon's changed from the culture, male dominated culture. Let's face it, it was. And now, I've seen over the past five years, specifically go back five, is kind of in my mental model, just the growth of female leaders, it's been impressive. And there was some controversy. They were criticized publicly for this. And we said a few things as well in those, like around 2014. How is Amazon ensuring and continuing to get the female employees feel represented and empowered? What's going on there? What programs do you have? Because it's not just doing it, it's continuing it, right? And 'cause there is a lot more to do. I mean, the half (laughs) the products are digital now for everybody. It's not just one population. (laughs) Everyone uses digital products. What is Amazon doing now to keep it going? >> Well, I'll tell you, John, it's important for me to note that while we've made great progress, there's still more that can be done. I am very happy to be able to report that we have big women leaders. We have leaders running huge parts of our business, which includes storage, customer experience, industries and business development. And yes, we have all types of programs. And I should say that, instead of calling it programs, I'm going to call it strategic initiatives, right? We are very thoughtful about how we engage our women. And not only how we hire, attract women, but how we retain our women. We do that through engagement, groups like our affinity groups. So Women at Amazon is an affinity group. Women in finance, women in engineering. Just recently, I helped our Black employee network women's group launch, BEN Women. And so you have these communities of women who come together, support and mentor one another. We have what we call Amazon Circles. And so these are safe spaces where women can come together and can have conversations, where we are able to connect mentors and sponsors. And we're seeing that it's making all the difference in the world for our women. And we see that through what we call Connections. We have an inclusion sentiment tracker. So we're able to ask questions every single day and we get a response from our employees and we can see how are our women feeling, how are they feeling included at work? Are they feeling as though they can be who they are authentically at Amazon? And so, again, there's more work that needs to be done. But I will say that as I look at the data, as I'm talking to engaging women, I really do believe that we're on the right path. >> LaDavia, talk about the urgent needs of the women that you're hearing from the Circles. That's a great program. The affinity circles, the groups are great. Now, you have the groups, what are you hearing? What are the needs of the women? >> So, John, I'll just go a little bit into what's becoming a conversation around equity. So, initially I think we talked a lot about equality, right? We wanted everyone to have fair access to the same things. But now, women are looking for equity. We're talking about not just leveling the playing field, which is equality, but don't give me the same as you give everyone else. Instead, recognize that I may have different circumstances, I may have different needs. And give me what I need, right? Give me what I need, not just the same as everyone else. And so, I love seeing women evolve in this way, and being very specific about what they need more than, or what's different than what a man may have in the same situation because their circumstances are not always the same and we should treat them as such. >> Yeah, I think that's a great equity point. I interviewed a woman here, ex-Amazonian, she's now a GSI, Global System Integrator. She's a single mom. And she said remote work brought her equity because people on her team realized that she was a single mom. And it wasn't the, how do you balance life, it was her reality. And what happened was, she had more empathy with the team because of the new work environment. So, I think this is an important point to call out, that equity, because that really makes things smoother in terms of the interactions, not the assumptions, you have to be, you know, always the same as a man. So, how does that go? What's the current... How would you characterize the progress in that area right now? >> I believe that employers are just getting better at this. It's just like you said, with the hybrid being the norm now, you have an employer who is looking at people differently based on what they need. And it's not a problem, it's not an issue that a single mother says, "Well, I need to be able to leave by 5:00 PM." I think that employers now, and Amazon is right there along with other employers, are starting just to evolve that muscle of meeting the needs. People don't have to feel different. You don't have to feel as though there's some kind of of special circumstance for me. Instead, it's something that we, as employers, we're asking for. And we want to meet those needs that are different in some situations. >> I know you guys do a lot of support of women outside of AWS, and I had a story I recorded for the program. This woman, she talked about how she was a nerd from day one. She's a tomboy. They called her a tomboy, but she always loved robotics. And she ended up getting dual engineering degrees. And she talked about how she didn't run away and there was many signals to her not to go. And she powered through, at that time, and during her generation, that was tough. And she was successful. How are you guys taking the education to STEM, to women, at young ages? Because we don't want to turn people away from tech if they have the natural affinity towards it. And not everyone is going to be, as, you know, (laughs) strong, if you will. And she was a bulldog, she was great. She's just like, "I'm going for it. I love it so much." But not everyone's like that. So, this is an educational thing. How do you expose technology, STEM for instance, and making it more accessible, no stigma, all that stuff? I mean, I think we've come a long way, but still. >> What I love about women is we don't just focus on ourselves. We do a very good job of thinking about the generation that's coming after us. And so, I think you will see that very clearly with our women Amazonians. I'll talk about three different examples of ways that Amazonian women in particular, and there are men that are helping out, but I'll talk about the women in particular that are leading in this area. On my team, in the Inclusion, Diversity & Equity team, we have a program that we run in Ghana where we meet basic STEM needs for a afterschool program. So we've taken this small program, and we've turned their summer camp into this immersion, where girls and boys, we do focus on the girls, can come and be completely immersed in STEM. And when we provide the technology that they need, so that they'll be able to have access to this whole new world of STEM. Another program which is run out of our AWS In Communities team, called AWS Girls' Tech Day. All across the world where we have data centers, we're running these Girls' Tech Day. They're basically designed to educate, empower and inspire girls to pursue a career in tech. Really, really exciting. I was at the Girls' Tech Day here recently in Columbus, Ohio, and I got to tell you, it was the highlight of my year. And then I'll talk a little bit about one more, it's called AWS GetIT, and it's been around for a while. So this is a program, again, it's a global program, it's actually across 13 countries. And it allows girls to explore cloud technology, in particular, and to use it to solve real world problems. Those are just three examples. There are many more. There are actually women Amazonians that create these opportunities off the side of their desk in they're local communities. We, in Inclusion, Diversity & Equity, we fund programs so that women can do this work, this STEM work in their own local communities. But those are just three examples of some of the things that our Amazonians are doing to bring girls along, to make sure that the next generation is set up and that the next generation knows that STEM is accessible for girls. >> I'm a huge believer. I think that's amazing. That's great inspiration. We need more of that. It's awesome. And why wouldn't we spread it around? I want to get to the equity piece, that's the theme for this year's IWD. But before that, getting that segment, I want to ask you about your title, and the choice of words and the sequence. Okay, Global Inclusion, Diversity, Equity. Not diversity only. Inclusion is first. We've had this debate on theCUBE many years now, a few years back, it started with, "Inclusion is before diversity," "No, diversity before inclusion, equity." And so there's always been a debate (laughs) around the choice of words and their order. What's your opinion? What's your reaction to that? Is it by design? And does inclusion come before diversity, or am I just reading it to it? >> Inclusion doesn't necessarily come before diversity. (John laughs) It doesn't necessarily come before equity. Equity isn't last, but we do lead with inclusion in AWS. And that is very important to us, right? And thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk a little bit about it. We lead with inclusion because we want to make sure that every single one of our builders know that they have a place in this work. And so it's important that we don't only focus on hiring, right? Diversity, even though there are many, many different levels and spectrums to diversity. Inclusion, if you start there, I believe that it's what it takes to make sure that you have a workplace where everyone knows you're included here, you belong here, we want you to stay here. And so, it helps as we go after diversity. And we want all types of people to be a part of our workforce, but we want you to stay. And inclusion is the thing. It's the thing that I believe makes sure that people stay because they feel included. So we lead with inclusion. Doesn't mean that we put diversity or equity second or third, but we are proud to lead with inclusion. >> Great description. That was fabulous. Totally agree. Double click, thumbs up. Now let's get into the theme. Embracing equity, 'cause this is a term, it's in quotes. What does that mean to you? You mentioned it earlier, I love it. What does embrace equity mean? >> Yeah. You know, I do believe that when people think about equity, especially non-women think about equity, it's kind of scary. It's, "Am I going to give away what I have right now to make space for someone else?" But that's not what equity means. And so I think that it's first important that we just educate ourselves about what equity really is. It doesn't mean that someone's going to take your spot, right? It doesn't mean that the pie, let's use that analogy, gets smaller. The pie gets bigger, right? >> John: Mm-hmm. >> And everyone is able to have their piece of the pie. And so, I do believe that I love that IWD, International Women's Day is leading with embracing equity because we're going to the heart of the matter when we go to equity, we're going to the place where most people feel most challenged, and challenging people to think about equity and what it means and how they can contribute to equity and thus, embrace equity. >> Yeah, I love it. And the advice that you have for tech professionals out there on this, how do you advise other groups? 'Cause you guys are doing a lot of great work. Other organizations are catching up. What would be your advice to folks who are working on this equity challenge to reach gender equity and other equitable strategic initiatives? And everyone's working on this. Sustainability and equity are two big projects we're seeing in every single company right now. >> Yeah, yeah. I will say that I believe that AWS has proven that equity and going after equity does work. Embracing equity does work. One example I would point to is our AWS Impact Accelerator program. I mean, we provide 30 million for early stage startups led by women, Black founders, Latino founders, LGBTQ+ founders, to help them scale their business. That's equity. That's giving them what they need. >> John: Yeah. >> What they need is they need access to capital. And so, what I'd say to companies who are looking at going into the space of equity, I would say embrace it. Embrace it. Look at examples of what companies like AWS is doing around it and embrace it because I do believe that the tech industry will be better when we're comfortable with embracing equity and creating strategic initiatives so that we could expand equity and make it something that's just, it's just normal. It's the normal course of business. It's what we do. It's what we expect of ourselves and our employees. >> LaDavia, you're amazing. Thank you for spending the time. My final couple questions really more around you. Capitol Hill, DC, Amazon Global Head of Inclusion, Diversity & Equity, as you look at making change, being a change agent, being a leader, is really kind of similar, right? You've got DC, it's hard to make change there, but if you do it, it works, right? (laughs) If you don't, you're on the side of the road. So, as you're in your job now, what are you most excited about? What's on your agenda? What's your focus? >> Yeah, so I'm most excited about the potential of what we can get done, not just for builders that are currently in our seats, but for builders in the future. I tend to focus on that little girl. I don't know her, I don't know where she lives. I don't know how old she is now, but she's somewhere in the world, and I want her to grow up and for there to be no question that she has access to AWS, that she can be an employee at AWS. And so, that's where I tend to center, I center on the future. I try to build now, for what's to come, to make sure that this place is accessible for that little girl. >> You know, I've always been saying for a long time, the software is eating the world, now you got digital transformation, business transformation. And that's not a male only, or certain category, it's everybody. And so, software that's being built, and the systems that are being built, have to have first principles. Andy Jassy is very strong on this. He's been publicly saying, when trying to get pinned down about certain books in the bookstore that might offend another group. And he's like, "Look, we have first principles. First principles is a big part of leading." What's your reaction to that? How would you talk to another professional and say, "Hey," you know this, "How do I make the right call? Am I doing the wrong thing here? And I might say the wrong thing here." And is it first principles based? What's the guardrails? How do you keep that in check? How would you advise someone as they go forward and lean in to drive some of the change that we're talking about today? >> Yeah, I think as leaders, we have to trust ourselves. And Andy actually, is a great example. When I came in as head of ID&E for AWS, he was our CEO here at AWS. And I saw how he authentically spoke from his heart about these issues. And it just aligned with who he is personally, his own personal principles. And I do believe that leaders should be free to do just that. Not to be scripted, but to lead with their principles. And so, I think Andy's actually a great example. I believe that I am the professional in this space at this company that I am today because of the example that Andy set. >> Yeah, you guys do a great job, LaDavia. What's next for you? >> What's next. >> World tour, you traveling around? What's on your plate these days? Share a little bit about what you're currently working on. >> Yeah, so you know, at Amazon, we're always diving deep. We're always diving deep, we're looking for root cause, working very hard to look around corners, and trying to build now for what's to come in the future. And so I'll continue to do that. Of course, we're always planning and working towards re:Invent, so hopefully, John, I'll see you at re:Invent this December. But we have some great things happening throughout the year, and we'll continue to... I think it's really important, as opposed to looking to do new things, to just continue to flex the same muscles and to show that we can be very, very focused and intentional about doing the same things over and over each year to just become better and better at this work in this space, and to show our employees that we're committed for the long haul. So of course, there'll be new things on the horizon, but what I can say, especially to Amazonians, is we're going to continue to stay focused, and continue to get at this issue, and doing this issue of inclusion, diversity and equity, and continue to do the things that work and make sure that our culture evolves at the same time. >> LaDavia, thank you so much. I'll give you the final word. Just share some of the big projects you guys are working on so people can know about them, your strategic initiatives. Take a minute to plug some of the major projects and things that are going on that people either know about or should know about, or need to know about. Take a minute to share some of the big things you guys got going on, or most of the things. >> So, one big thing that I would like to focus on, focus my time on, is what we call our Innovation Fund. This is actually how we scale our work and we meet the community's needs by providing micro grants to our employees so our employees can go out into the world and sponsor all types of different activities, create activities in their local communities, or throughout the regions. And so, that's probably one thing that I would like to focus on just because number one, it's our employees, it's how we scale this work, and it's how we meet our community's needs in a very global way. And so, thank you John, for the opportunity to talk a bit about what we're up to here at Amazon Web Services. But it's just important to me, that I end with our employees because for me, that's what's most important. And they're doing some awesome work through our Innovation Fund. >> Inclusion makes the workplace great. Empowerment, with that kind of program, is amazing. LaDavia Drane, thank you so much. Head of Global Inclusion and Diversity & Equity at AWS. This is International Women's Day. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Thanks for watching and stay with us for more great interviews and people and what they're working on. Thanks for watching. (bright music)

>> Announcer: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is theCUBE conversation. >> Hi, everyone. Welcome to theCUBE Studios here in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here for coverage of AWS Public Sector Summit. This is theCUBE Virtual with our quarantine crew going out and covering the latest posts of the Virtual Summit where our next guest is Matthew Cornelius, Executive Director for the Alliance for Digital Innovation. Matthew, thanks for joining me today for part of AWS virtual Public Sector Summit. >> That's great, thanks, John. Appreciate you having me. >> I know that John Wood and I have been talking about this organization and some of the ambition and the relevance of it. So I think it's a super important story. I want to get your thoughts on this in an unpack kind of the mission but for starters, tell us what is the Alliance for Digital Innovation? When were you formed? What's the mission? What do you do? >> Sure. Yeah, so ADI was formed about two years ago, to create a new advocacy group that could focus explicitly on getting cloud forward, commercial, highly innovative companies into the public sector. So the government technology space has traditionally been dominated by a lot of legacy vendors, folks that are very happy with vendor lock-in, folks that have an outdated business model that would not suffice in the commercial sector. So why does it have to be that way for government and ADI started with about eight members has since grown. We're approaching two dozen now. So we've had a lot of growth and I think a lot of the response that you've seen in the public sector, especially to the COVID crisis, and the response and relief efforts have made this organization and our mission more relevant now than ever. There's no way that you can go back to the previous way of doing business, so adopting all these commercials technologies, changing your business model, changing your operating model, and really use an emerging technology to deliver all these missions services is critical. >> You know, one of the things that I've been reporting on for many, many years is this idea of modernization. Certainly on the commercial side with cloud, it's been really important and Amazon has done extremely well, from a business standpoint. We all know that where that's going. The issue that's happening now is the modernization is kicking in. So the government has started to move down this track, we've seen the procurement start to get more modernized. Move from buying manuals to actually having the modern stuff and in comes COVID-19. You couldn't have accelerated, you couldn't have pulled the future forward fast enough to an already struggling federal government, in my opinion, and I've talked to many people in DC and the young crowd saying, "Hey, old government get modern", and then this comes. It's almost like throwing the rock on your back and you're sinking. This is a problem. What's your take on this? Because you're trying to solve a problem with modernizing, but now you got COVID-19 coming in, it compounds the complexity and the challenge. What's your chosen reaction to that? >> Yeah, so it there's a multifaceted response to this. So part of it is what I like to say is the government's done more in the past four months than it's done in the past 14 years when it comes to modernization and adopting commercial capabilities. I think with individual agencies, you've seen those those agencies, I will name a couple like the Small Business Administration, the General Services Administration, where I used to work, folks that were already heavily invested in cloud, heavily invested in modern digital tools and modern digital processes, they were able to weather this storm and to deal especially in SPS case, with a dramatic increase in their mission. I mean, running the paycheck Protection Program is something unlike an organization that size has ever seen. And from a technology standpoint, they have a lot of good stories that are worth telling and I think it's because they were so cloud forward. I think one of the other interesting points that as really come to light over the past four months is so many of the issues around modernization were cultural. Now, of course, there are some that are legal, there's acquisition, there's the way agencies are appropriated and financed and the way they can spend their money, but by and large, all of these agencies had to move to maximum telework, they had to get rid of all of these outdated on premise processes, these paper based processes that they had. And although surely there were some bumps in the road, and that was not easy, especially for these folks working around the clock to keep their agencies operational to make sure citizens are getting the services, they need, especially during this crisis, I think there's a lot of great success stories that you see there and because of this, no one even if they're allowed to go back into the office or when they're allowed to go back in the office, people are going to understand how much more productive they are, how much more technologically capable they are. And that's not just CIO officers that's people on programs in the front lines delivering services that mission response. We've really seen it powerful word over the last four months. >> You know, Matthew, I've been very vocal given that I'm kind of the old guy, get off my lawn kind of commentary. (Matthew laughs) I've seen that the waves and I remember coming in when I was in my late 20s and 30s old school enterprises, the commercial business wouldn't do business with startups, you had to be approved or you were in entrenched vendors supporting those things and then in comes the web, in comes the 90s, and then the web came there's more agile, you had startups that were more open and working with commercial vendors. It seems like we're seeing that movie play out in public sector where you have the entrenched incumbents, they got the town wired, who knows what's going on. It's been called the Beltway bandits for years and Tris and Curson and I talk about that all the time, but now the government can be agile, and startups need to be product to these new solutions, like whether it's video conferencing or virtual events, things like we do. New solutions are coming that need to come in, it's hard. Can you share how a company whether it's a startup or a new solution can come in and work with the government? Because the perception is, it's impossible. >> Yeah, and part of why ADI exist is to break that down. One to recruit more members to join us to really help drive commercial innovation in the government. And we have some very large companies like AWS and others that do an awful lot of work with the government. And we have a lot of smaller startups that are interested in dipping their toe in there. And so we try to help them demystify how it is that you go about working with the government. I think there have been again, some good success stories on this one. I think that there are lots of places like the Department of Defense, a lot of the folks in the intelligence community, some other agencies, they have authorities, they have partnership programs that make it easier for folks to adopt commercial innovation. They have unique authorities like other transaction authorities or commercial solutions offerings that really lowers the barrier for new technologies to be piloted and potentially scaled inside government. But that's not the case across lots of agencies, and that's why we advocate broadly for getting the acquisition process to move at the speed of technology. If there are good authorities that work in some agencies, let's get into everybody, let's have everybody try it because the people in the agencies, the acquisition professionals, the technical professionals, they have to be committed to working with industry, so the industry is committed to working with them. And as a former federal employee, myself, I worked at the Office of Management and Budget and the General Service Administration, I always was upset at the fact that the government is very good at speaking to industry, but not very good at working with industry and listening, and so we see a lot more of that now and I think part of that is a response to COVID, but it's also the recognition that you can't do things the way you used to do it, the traditional butts in seats contracting business model where everybody in between a federal employee and that outsourced service provider. You don't need all those people there, you can do it yourself and be just as effective and get all the real outcomes you're looking for with commercial innovation. >> It sounds like ADI your priorities is to make things go fast and be modernized. So I have to ask you, the question that's on my mind, probably on everyone's mind is, what are the key conversations or messages you provide to the agencies, heads or members of Congress to get them excited about this, to take action to support what you're doing? Because let's face it, most of these guys up on the Hill are girls now, most of them have a law backgrounds, they don't have a tech background. So that's a complaint that I've heard in the hallways in DC is, the guy making all the decisions doesn't know jack about tech. >> No, it's it's a great point. When we advocate up on the Hill there's a law that I don't think a lot of folks pay in awful lot of attention to. Everybody likes the nice new things that are coming from Capitol Hill but there's a great piece of legislation from 1994 for the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act. We actually did some tremendous original research at ADI, about a year ago and released an interesting report that got a lot of uptick here. And most people don't even understand that the law requires you to do market research and see if there's a commercial product or service that meets your need before you go down building any sort of specific requirements or building out some sort of long procurement process. And so a lot of what we're doing is educating folks, not just on what the law says, but on why these can lead to better outcomes for agencies. I mean, I truly believe that most of the folks in government whether they're technical folks or not want to do the best thing, but if you're a company trying to do business with the government, you have to go through what is often a five or six or sometimes 10 person human supply chain. There's someone in government who wants your solution because it addresses a particular problem, and between them, and you the company, there's all sorts of additional bureaucratic overlays and folks that are not technical, that have other incentives and other priorities that don't always lead to the most optable procurement outcome. So there's an educational component, there's a cultural component. We need more champions inside government. We need not just better technology that's wanting to work with the government but we also need smarter, better people inside that understand the technology and can get to it the way they need to get to it so that they can deliver mission. >> As someone like me who's in the technology business, who loves entrepreneurship, loves business, loves the impact of technology, I'm not a public servant, and I'm not at that up to speed on all the government kind of inside baseball, so I kind of look at it a little bit differently. I've always been a big proponent of public private partnerships that's been kicked around in the past. It's kind of like digital transformation, kind of cliche, but there's been some pockets of success there, but look at the future. The role of influence and the commercial impact just China, for instance, just riffing the other day with someone around China doesn't actually go through government channels for how they deal with the United States. There's a little commercial, they have intellectual property issues going on, people saying they're stealing, they're investing in the United States. So there's a commercial influence. So as the government has to look at these commercial influences, they then have to modernize their workforce, their workloads, their applications, their workplaces. The work is not just workloads, it's workplace, workforce. So if you had your way, how would you like to see the landscape of the federal technology piece of this look like in five years? Because there's now new influence vectors coming in that are outside the channels of federal purview. >> No, it's a great question, and I appreciate you bringing up the other complexities around nation state actors in China and everything else. Obviously, supply chain security and being able to deal with legitimate security threat is critical when you're inside government. I mean, your first sort of purpose is to do no harm and to make sure that you're keeping citizen data, whether it's classified or unclassified secure. We think at ADI that there's a great balance to be heard there and part of that is if you're working with American companies, and you're adopting the best and most agile and most innovative commercial technology that America has to offer, that's going to make our industry more competitive and position it better in the commercial market and it's also going to make government agencies more effective. They're going to be able to meet their mission faster, they're going to be able to lower costs, they're going to be able to shift what are going to be tighter and tighter budgets over the next four or five or 10 years to other areas because they're not wasting so much money on these old systems and this old business processes, this old way of doing business. So you that is one of the balances that we have to take from an advocacy standpoint. We have to understand that supply chain security, cybersecurity are real issues, but security can also be an enabler to innovation and not an impediment and if a lot of the commercial capabilities that are coming out now and a lot of these companies like the ones ADI represents, want to do business with the government, and their commercial products can inherently be more secure than a lot of these old bespoke systems or old business practices. That's good for not just federal agencies, that's good for citizens and that's good for our national defense and our economy. >> You know, I look at our landscape and being an American born here, looking at other emerging countries, certainly China's one example of becoming very world digital native, even other areas where 5G and then telecom has made great internet access, you're seeing digital native countries, so as we modernize, and our lawmakers have more tech savvy and things become digital native, the commercial enabling piece is a huge thing, having that enabling technology, because it creates wealth and jobs and other things so you got three things, digital native country, enabling technologies to promote good and wealth and engine of economic value, and then societal impact. What's your take on those three kind of pillars? Because we're kind of as a country coming into this world order and look at the younger generation, they're all screaming for it, we're digital native, and all kinds of arbitrage there, fake news, misinformation, then you got enabling technology with the cloud, and then you get societal benefits, future of elections and everything else. So what's your thoughts? 'Cause it sounds like you're thinking about these things in your Digital Innovation Alliance. >> Yeah, absolutely. The one thing I will say and as someone that was a former federal employee, the one thing we need more of whether you're on the executive branch or in Congress, we need more people that like you said, are digital natives that understand technology that also want to be inside government either running programs or dealing with policy issues. We need as many good new ideas and folks with real, legitimate, necessary and current skills in there. Because if you don't understand the technology, you don't understand, like you said the societal impacts, you don't understand the business impacts of government decision making and the government can drive markets. I mean, especially in the middle of Coronavirus, we're spending trillions of dollars to keep folks afloat and we're using technology primarily as a way to make that happen. So the first thing I would say is, we need, we continue, need to continue, sorry, we need to continue to recruit and retain and train the best and the brightest to go into government service because it is a joy and a privilege to serve government and we've got to have better smarter technical people in there or we're going to keep getting these same outcomes, like you've mentioned over the past 30 plus years. >> I think we're in a JFK moment where John F. Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, "what you can do for your country". Moment in the modern era and that was the 60s, that we saw the revolution of that happen there, we're kind of having a digital version of that now where it's an opportunity for people to get involved, younger generations and make change rather than arguing about it. So I feel fairly strongly about this so I think this is an opportunity. Your reaction to that? >> No, that's a fantastic point. I hadn't really thought about the JFK resemblance. From an industry standpoint, I think that is what is happening with these emerging technology companies and even some of the large companies. They understand that this is their way to contribute to the country whose R&D dollars and these public private partnerships helped a lot of these folks to grow and become the companies they are now. At least started them down that road. And so for us at the Alliance for Digital Innovation and the companies that are a part of us that is sort of purposeful to who we are. We do what we do and we want the government to build stronger relationships and to use this technology, because it does serve mission. I mean, we exclusively focus on the public sector. Focus of these companies and it's tremendously valuable when you see a federal agency who spent five or 10 years and hundreds of millions of dollars and still not solving a problem and then they can pick up the commercial off the shelf technology from a company that we represent, and can solve that problem for $5 million and do it in six months. I mean, that's truly rewarding and whether you're inside government or out, we should all celebrate that and we should find ways to make that the norm and not the exception. >> And take all that hate and violence and challenge it towards voting and getting involved. I'm a big proponent of that. Matthew, thank you so much for taking the time. I'll give you the last word. Take a minute to put a plug in for the Alliance for Digital Innovation. Who are the charter members, who's involved? I know John Wood from Telos is a charter member. Who's involved, how did it all start? >> Yeah. >> Give it taste of the culture and who's involved. >> Yeah, thanks, John. So, yeah, like you mentioned, we have tremendous members, AWS is obviously a great partner. We have a lot of big companies that are involved, Google Cloud, Salesforce, Palantir, Palo Alto Networks. We also have great midsize and small companies. You think of Telos, you think of SAP NS2 and Iron Net, you think of Saildrone. We've got companies that whose technology product and service offerings run the range for government needs. We all come together because we understand that the government can and should and must do better to buy and leverage commercial technology to meet mission outcomes. So that is what we focus on. And, frankly, we have seen tremendous growth since COVID started. I mean, we are 24 members now we were at 18, just four months ago, but I like to say that ADI is an organization whose mission is more important and more resonant now, not just in the technology, parts of government, but at the secretary level at the Chief Acquisition Officer level, in Congress. We are folks that are trying to paint the future, we're doing a positive vision for change for what government can and should be. And for all of those other technology companies that want to be a part of that, that understand that the government can do better, and that has ideas for making it work better and for getting commercial innovation into government faster, to solve mission outcomes and to increase that trust between citizens and government, we want you. So if folks are interested in joining you got people that are watching out there, you can go to alliance4digitalinnovation.org. We're always accepting interested applicants and we look forward to continuing this message, showing some real outcomes and helping the government for the next year, five years, 10 years, really mature and modernize faster and more effectively than it has before. >> Great mission, love what you're doing. I think the future democracy depends on these new models to be explored, candidly and out in the open, and it's a great mission, we support that. Thanks for taking the time, Matthew. Appreciate it. >> Thanks, John. Have a great Public Sector Summit. >> Okay, this is theCUBE coverage of AWS Public Sector Virtual Summit. I'm John Furrier here in theCUBE Virtual. Thanks for watching and stay tuned for more coverage. (gentle music)

>>Live from Las Vegas. It's the cube covering splunk.com 19 brought to you by Splunk. >>Hey, welcome back. Everyone's the cubes coverage here in Las Vegas for Splunk's dot com I'm John, the host of the cube. This is Splunk's 10th year user conference is the cube seventh year. We've been riding on the same wave with Splunk over the years and just watching the phenomenal growth and changes at the level of data at scale we've been covering. We can remember I said from day one data at the center of this, not just log files is now gone. Beyond that, we're here with Carrie Pailin, the CMO, chief marketing officer for Splunk. Welcome to the cube. Thanks for coming on. Thank you so much. It's great to be here. The folks that know us know about spunk. Notice the color changes in the background, the popping kink, burning yellow, orange underneath, new branding. You're new to Splunk story, career in technology. Um, this is exciting. And then portfolio, there's all the news is a phenomenal good news flow. >>Very relevant, right on Mark. Data is now creating value and datas like software. It's enabling value. Splunk software and solution platform has done that and this new new grounds to take. But you're now setting the agenda for the brand and the company tell us, I mean, it's a marketer's dream. What can I say? It's a, you know, I joined nine months ago and when I was interviewing for the role, I remember Doug Merritt saying to me, Hey, you know, we might be the only $2 billion enterprise software company that nobody's ever heard of. Amy said, I want to go solve for that. Right? Like the folks who know Splunk and our customers, they love us, our product is awesome and our culture is awesome, but the world doesn't know about us yet and we haven't invested there. So I want to go take the brand to the next level. >>And I want the world to understand what data use cases are out there that are so broad and so vast. And we believe that every problem ultimately can be solved through data or almost every problem. And we wanted to set the stage for that with this new brand campaign. Yeah. Just on a personal note. And following the journey of Splunk, a scrappy startup goes public and growth modes. When you're a growth Moe is hard to kind of lay down foundational things like branding and whatnot. But now sponsor leader, we did a poll within our community and for cloud and on premise security, Splunk's the number one supplier for just laws with workloads. And then now cloud security is kicking in. So the relationship to Amazon, Google cloud platform and Azure is a critical part of Splunk is now the leader. So leaders have to do things like make sure that their brand's good. >>This is what you're doing. Take us behind the scenes of the branding, the things you chose and data for everything. Yeah. D the little small nuance data to everything. Um, and the reason behind that was we believe you can bring and we can enable our customers to bring data to every question, every decision and every action to create meaningful outcomes. And the use cases are vast and enormous. We talked about some of them before the show started, but helping look at global law enforcement, get ahead of human trafficking through SPOHNC and spelunking. What's going on across all sorts of data sources, right? Helping zone Haven, which is our first investment from Splunk ventures, which startup that's actually helping firefighters figure out burn burn patterns with fire wildfires. But also when temperatures and humidity change where sensors are, they can alert firefighters 30 to 45 minutes earlier than they would usually do that. >>And then they can also help influence evacuation patterns. I mean it's, it's remarkable what folks are doing with data today and it's really at the, at the core of solving some of the world's biggest issues. It's hard to tell a story for a company that solves some of the use cases. Yes. Because depending on who you talk to, that's the company. This is what we should be telling them. I know you do this over here, so when you're horizontally creating this kind of value, yeah, it's hard to kind of brand that because it will get a lot of opinions because you're doing a lot of different things. There's not like one vertical. That's right. So this is the challenge that most B to B marketers will fall on the trip. We do this because we have a lot of customers in this one segment. But yes, you guys are hitting so much more. >>How did you deal with that? Ha, we had a lot of talks about it, a lot of discussions, a lot of debate and I love diversity of thought. It usually drives the right outcomes, but we had a lot of this, this is not an easy answer. If it had been, it would have been done years ago and we really talked about setting the stage for where, you know, I love the Wayne Gretzky quote about skate to where the puck is going and that's what he always did and that's why he was so good. We believe there will ultimately be a data platform of platforms and we believe Splunk is that platform, right? And so that's where the industry's going. We wanted to cast a net that would take us there so that this is the beginning of a brand evolution for us and not a total rebrand, but it's setting the stage for a category creation that we believe is coming in the industry. >>A few. You guys are smart and I think my observation would be looking at some of our 10 years of reporting and sharing some on digital is that all the conversations around data is impacting the real world. Yes. You see Mark Zuckerberg and on Capitol Hill having the answer to the date of debacles, he has cybersecurity attacks, national security, um, ransomware taking down cities and towns. This is a real impact. Forest fires disrupting rolling blackouts. So technology's impacting real world lives. That's right. This is really new to tech. I mean usually behind the scenes, you know, coding, but not anymore. We're the front lines of real societal, global. Yes. Jade is at the forefront and it's really exciting. It's also frightening, right? Because we believe data presents the greatest opportunity for humanity, but also some of the greatest threats. And so hence our ability to really dig in on data security. >>It's important to do that while we're actually also surfacing data to solve real world issues. You've been in the industry for a while and when you came to Splunk, boasts a couple of things that surprised you as you, you had some thoughts going in, you knew Splunk. Yes. What are some of the things that surprised you when you got here? Oh, I mean, in such a good way. A few things, you know. Well, here's the story. Three days into being at Splunk, my dad got very ill and I wasted him to Austin for heart surgery and he actually didn't make it. Um, and so it's been a rough year to say the least. And uh, the way that Splunk's culture, I knew about it before I came, but the way that this company treated me, like I had been here 10 years, uh, when I'd really only been an employee three days was something I'll never forget. >>And it's, it's special. Um, and so I believe that companies are successful if they are smart and healthy and in Splunk has the healthy and droves and not just the compassion and the empathy, but you know, a very transparent culture. We debate things, we talk about things, we support each other. We are accountable. And I believe that's a big part of why we've grown so fast because our culture is incredibly healthy and very, um, collaborative as a team. I'm sorry for your loss. Thank you. Um, you mentioned the culture is a big part of Splunk. Yes. In talking to some of the folks that spoke over the years, there's no, I will, I'll totally say this. There's no shortage of opinions, so have not volunteered. These are robustness. Yes. Diversity of thoughts, very actionable communities. How do you, um, how do you look at that? Because that's a, could be a force, a force multiplier. >>Yes. For the brand. How are you going to tie in to everything with the community? How are you going to harness that energy? Yeah. So it's coming and the reality is data to everything is actually a set up to tell the stories of everyone who is using data today. And so the community is going to be one of the first places we go to surface. Some of those amazing stories. Um, and some of the things you see here at the show are actually showcasing that in the keynote today we heard from zone Haman and Porsche and so many others around their use cases. But the community is where it all begins and that's the lifeblood of our sort of spunkiness and a something that we don't take for granted once. One second. Sorry about the Barack Obama. Yeah. Directions with him and his interest in Splunk. Yeah. So we had our big re rebrand a reveal last month we had an event and it was for C suite type of folks. >>That was a very intimate event and we wanted somebody to keynote that and headline that that really brought to life the whole notion that you can bring data to everything. And president Obama was the first POTUS that actually use data in his campaign strategy. He's very open about that. He's the first president to appoint a chief data scientist to the white house. He's actually exceptionally geeky and very data-driven. And so when we asked him to come and headline this, he actually was really excited about it. Um, and you know, in, in great fashion, his communications team was really strict on curating the questions that we had for him. And he was so cute. He showed up to the event and he said, look, um, I'm so thrilled to be here. I love what you guys are doing and you can ask me anything. It's just like ready to go. >>And he was so wonderful and teed up this, this notion of day bringing data to everything so brilliantly. He's kicking, dig and be ad live all the time. He's very colorful as well as personality. Yes. He's kind of nerdy and you know, he was very open and OpenGov too. One of the things that I remember and when big data really started rolling into the scene around 2009, 2010 yes. You saw that opening up data registries from cities and towns and actually created innovation from health care medical supplies? Yes. Yes. So this has been a big part of it. Huge. You guys are doing some things out here and I see the exhibits we're using the day you're doing demos. How do you see you guys helping society with that? Because if you get to the next level, you've got some great use cases. Yes, the public sector is a big part of some news here. >>Fed ramp is one little technicality, but you got some certification, but government's modernizing now. So you know post Obama, you're seeing modernization of procurement roll with cloud, certainly cyber security. Amazon with the CIA, department of defense, role of data in the military and public sector. Yes, education. This is going to be a disruptive enabler for faults on the public impact. I mean, look, there's, you know, Doug touched on this a little bit this morning, the reality in our press conference, but the reality is if you do it right, opening up datasets to communities of people that can do better together and you can get this collective momentum going. For instance, in healthcare, I mean I'm a little bit of a health care nerd and I don't know if you've watched the PBS special on the Mayo clinic, it's spectacular. But one of the reasons the Mayo has been amazing for years is because their doctors all work off the same systems in every discipline in that facility and they can learn more holistically about a patient. >>And I think about the impact that data could have if we could open up those data sets across every health provider for one person or the same illness with every major institution across the U S collaborating and sharing and what we could actually do to make real impact and strides against some of the diseases that are really crippling society today. So I think that the good that we can do with data, if we open up those data sets and do it in a way that, that it's safe. It's remarkable the progress we can make. You know, one of the from machine learning has been a big success story. Machine learning toolkit. Customers are raving about it. Opening up the data creates better machine learning. AI creates better business value. That's right. That's that part of how you guys see things rolling out. Sure. I mean, as a marketer we use AI today and it's really more machine learning. >>It's sad pattern recognition. But we use, uh, you know, my last stand as a CMO, the last company I was at, we use an AI bot to augment our sales headcount for following up on leads. And it looked like a human being. I mean, same thing for Splunk. I mean, the more we can see pattern recognition, proffer up insights, the better off we are to help out our customers. And so Tim Teles team is driving that hard and fast into our innovation curve with everything that we do. Innovation culture, big time here, right? Huge, huge and one of the reasons I came to Splunk is when I interviewed with Tim and I said, Hey, how are you doing on recruiting engineers in the Valley? We all know that that is liquid gold, and he said that he had hired 370 odd engineers in less than a year and from really big brands like Airbnb and I thought, all right, there's some really cool innovation going on here. >>If some of the best engineers in the Valley really want to come work here and they want to work for a great leader, and Tim and his team are that. so.com is 10 years now this year has been riding the wave together. It's been fun. Your first, my very first dotcom. Yes. Your thoughts on this, on this community, this event. Share your, your thoughts. I mean I'm blown away and this is a team sport. I'm so proud of the events team, the creative team, the sales teams, everybody who's come together to make this event so spectacular. It's just sort of mind numbing that a company of our size can put on such an experience for our user community, but I'm also thrilled with the engagement. We have over 300 sessions this week and most of them are user and customer use, case driven and the stories they are telling are magnificent. >>They're doing this all with Splunk, so it's pretty special. And the ecosystem and the app showcase is pretty hot here. You're seeing real applications, people writing code on top of Splunk? Yes, it's, it's, I'm sorry I don't use this word often. I'm 48 but it's rad. It's so cool. Yes. Harry, thanks so much for coming on the cube and sharing your insights. Absolutely. Final thoughts for the people who aren't here at the event, watching on camera, what, how would you encapsulate.com this year? What's the top story that needs to be told? I mean, look, the reality is that we are bringing data to way more than just security and it ops, which has been our core use cases forever, and they will continue to be, but folks are that are not incredibly data literate or through Splunk bringing data to everything and solving some big gnarly issues in the world. And it's pretty exciting stuff. So check us out. All right. Thanks. Gnarly red. Cool. I need a surf board, Jerry. Thanks for coming on Friday. Thank you so much. Coverage here@thetenth.com I'm Jennifer with the cube, bringing you all the action here in Las Vegas. Three days of cubed wall to wall coverage. We've got one more after this short break.

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Splunk.conf19, brought to you by Splunk. >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here inside for Splunk.conf, their 10th-year conference. We've been here seven years. I'm John Furrier, the host. Our next guest is Sherrie Caltagirone, founder and executive director of the Global Emancipation Network, a cutting-edge company and organization connecting different groups together to fight that battle combating human trafficking with the power of data analytics. We're in a digital world. Sherrie, thanks for coming in. >> Thank you so much for having me. >> So love your mission. This is really close to my heart in terms of what you're doing because with digital technologies, there's a unification theme here at Splunk, unifying data sets, you hear on the keynotes. You guys got a shout-out on the keynote, congratulations. >> Sherrie: We did, thank you. >> So unifying data can help fight cybersecurity, fight the bad guys, but also there's other areas where unification comes in. This is what you're doing. Take a minute to explain the Global Emancipation Network. >> Yeah, thank you. So what we do is we are a data analytics and intelligence nonprofit, dedicated to countering all forms of human trafficking, whether it's labor trafficking, sex trafficking, or any of the sub types, men, women, and children all over the world. So when you think about that, what that really means is that we interact with thousands of stakeholders across law enforcement, governments, nonprofits, academia, and then private sector as well. And all of those essentially act as data silos for human trafficking data. And when you think about that as trafficking as a data problem or you tackle it as a data problem, what that really means is that you have to have a technology and data-led solution in order to solve the problem. So that's really our mission here is to bring together all of those stakeholders, give them easy access to tools that can help improve their counter posture. >> And where are you guys based and how big is the organization? What's the status? Give a quick plug for where you guys are at and what the current focus is. >> Yeah, perfect, so I am based in San Luis Obispo, California. We have just started a brand new trafficking investigations hub out at Cal Poly there. They're a fantastic organization whose motto is learn by doing, and so we are taking the trafficking problem and the tangential other issues, so like we mentioned, cyber crime, wildlife trafficking, drugs trafficking, all of this sort of has a criminal convergence around it and applying technology, and particularly Splunk, to that. >> Yeah, and I just want to make a note 'cause I think it's important to mention. Cal Poly's doing some cutting-edge work. Alison Robinson, Bill Britton, who runs the program over there, they got a great organization. They're doing a lot of data-oriented from media analysis, data, big focus there. Cal Poly quite a big organization. >> They are, and they're doing some wonderful things. AWS just started an innovation hub called the DX Hub there that we are a part of, really trying to tackle these really meaty problems here that are very data-centric and technology-centric. And Cal Poly's the best place to do that. >> Great, let's get into some of the details. One of the things around the news, obviously seeing Mark Zuckerberg doing the tour, Capitol Hill, DC, Georgetown, free speech, data. Facebook has been kind of blamed for breaking democracy. At the same time, it's a platform. They don't consider themselves as an editorial outlet. My personal opinion, they are, but they hide behind that platform. So bad things have happened, good things can happen. So you're seeing technology kind of being pigeonholed as bad. Tech for bad, there's also a tech for good. Pat Gelsinger, the CEO of VMware, publicly said technology's neutral. We humans can shape it. So you guys are looking at it from shaping it for good. How are you doing it? What are some of the things that are going on technically from a business standpoint that is shaping and unifying the data? >> Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely certain that technology has facilitated human trafficking and other ills throughout the world. It's a way that people bring their product, in this case, sadly, human beings, to the market to reach buyers, right? And technology absolutely facilitates that. But, as you mentioned, we can use that against them. So actually here at Conf we are bringing together for a first time the partnership that we did with Splunk for Good, Accenture, and Global Emancipation Network to help automatically classify and score risky businesses, content, ads, and individuals there to help not only with mitigating risk and liability for the private sector, whether it's social media giants or if it's transportation, hospitality, you name it, but also help ease the burden of content moderators. And that's the other side of it. So when you live in this space day in and day out, you really exact a mental toll here. It's really damaging to the individual who sits and reads this material and views photos over and over again. So using technology is a way to automate some of those investigations, and the identification of that content could be helpful in a variety of ways. >> In a way, it's a whole other adversary formula to try to identify. One of the things that Splunk, as we've been here at Splunk Conference, they've been about data from day one. A lot of data and then grew from there, and they have this platform. It's a data problem, and so one of the things that we're seeing here is diverse data, getting at more data makes AI smarter, makes things smarter. But that's hard. Diverse data might be in different data sets or silos, different groups. Sharing data's important, so getting that diverse data, how difficult is it for you guys? Because the bad guys can hide. They're hiding in from Craigslist to social platforms. You name it, they're everywhere. How do you get the data? What's the cutting-edge ingestion? Where are the shadows? Where are the blind spots? How do you guys look at that? Because it's only getting bigger. >> Absolutely, so we do it through a variety of different ways. We absolutely see gathering and aggregating and machining data the most central thing to what we do at Global Emancipation Network. So we have a coalition, really, of organizations that we host their scrapers and crawlers on and we run it through our ingestion pipeline. And we are partnered with Microsoft and AWS to store that data, but everything goes through Splunk as well. So what is that data, really? It's data on the open web, it's on the deep web. We have partners as well who look at the dark web, too, so Recorded Future, who's here at Conf, DeepL as well. So there's lots of different things on that. Now, honestly, the data that's available on the internet is easy for us to get to. It's easy enough to create a scraper and crawler, to even create an authenticated scraper behind a paywall, right? The harder thing is those privately held data sets that are in all of those silos that are in a million different data formats with all kinds of different fields and whatnot. So that is where it's a little bit more of a manual lift. We're always looking at new technologies to machine PDFs and that sort of thing as well. >> One of the things that I love about this business we're on, the wave we're on, we're in a digital media business, is that we're in pursuit of the truth. Trust, truth is a big part of what we do. We talk to people, get the data. You guys are doing something really compelling. You're classifying evil. Okay, this is a topic of your talk track here. Classifying evil, combating human trafficking with the power of data analytics. This is actually super important. Could you share why, for people that aren't following inside the ropes of this problem, why is it such a big problem to classify evil? Why isn't it so easy to do? What's the big story? What should people know about this challenge? >> Yeah, well, human trafficking is actually the second-most profitable crime in the world. It's the fastest-growing crime. So our best estimates are that there's somewhere between 20 million and 45 million people currently enslaved around the world. That's a population the size of Spain. That's nothing that an individual, or even a small army of investigators can handle. And when you think about the content that each of those produce or the traffickers are producing in order to advertise the services of those, it's way beyond the ability of any one organization or even, like I said, an army of them, to manage. And so what we need to do then is to be able to find the signal in the noise here. And there is a lot of noise. Even if you're looking at sex trafficking, particularly, there's consensual sex work or there's other things that are a little bit more in that arena, but we want to find that that is actually engaging in human trafficking. The talk that you mentioned that we're doing is actually a fantastic use case. This is what we did with Splunk for Good and Accenture. We were actually looking at doing a deep dive into the illicit massage industry in the US, and there are likely over 10,000 illicit massage businesses in the US. And those businesses, massages and spas, that are actually just a front for being a brothel, essentially. And it generates $2 billion a year. We're talking about a major industry here, and in that is a very large component of human trafficking. There's a very clear pipeline between Korea, China, down to New York and then being placed there. So what we ended up needing to do then, and again, we were going across data silos here, looking at state-owned data, whether it was license applications, arrest filings, legal cases, that sort of thing, down into the textual advertisements, so doing NLP work with weighted lexicons and really assigning a risk score to individual massage businesses to massage therapist business owners and then, again, to that content. So looking, again, how can we create a classifier to identify evil? >> It's interesting, I think about when you're talking about this is a business. This is a business model, this business continuity. There's a supply chain. This is a bona fide, underground, or overt business process. >> Yeah, absolutely, and you're right on that too that it is actually overt because at this point, traffickers actually operate with impunity for the most part. So actually framing it that way, as a market economy, whether it's shadowy and a little bit more in the black market or completely out in the open, it really helps us frame our identification, how we can manage disruptions, who need to be the stakeholders at the table for us in order to have a wider impact rather than just whack-a-mole. >> I was just talking with Sonia, one of our producers, around inclusiveness and this is so obviously a human passion issue. Why don't we just solve it? I mean, why doesn't someone like the elite class or world organization, just Davos, and people just say they're staring at this problem. Why don't they just say, "Hey, this is evil. "Let's just get rid of it." What's the-- >> Well, we're working on it, John, but the good thing is, and you're absolutely right, that there are a number of organizations who are actually working on it. So not just us, there's some other amazing nonprofits. But the tech sector's actually starting to come to the table as well, whether it's Splunk, it's Microsoft, it's AWS, it's Intel, IBM, Accenture. People are really waking up to how damaging this actually is, the impact that it has on GDP, the way that we're particularly needing to protect vulnerable populations, LGBTQ youth, children in foster care, indigenous populations, refugees, conflict zones. So you're absolutely right. I think, given the right tools and technology, and the awareness that needs to happen on the global stage, we will be able to significantly shrink this problem. >> It's classic arbitrage. If I'm a bad guy, you take advantage of the systematic problems of what's in place, so the current situation. Sounds like siloed groups somewhat funded, not mega-funded. This group over here, disconnect between communications. So you guys are, from what I could tell, pulling everyone together to kind of create a control plane of data to share information to kind of get a more holistic view of everything. >> Yeah, that's exactly it. Trying to do it at scale, at that. So I mentioned that at first we were looking at the illicit massage sector. We're moving over to the social media to look again at the recruitment side and content. And the financial sector is really the common thread that runs through all of it. So being able to identify, taking it back to a general use case here from cyber security, just indicators as well, indicators of compromise, but in our case, these are just words and lexicons, dollar values, things like that, down to behavioral analytics and patterns of behavior, whether people are moving, operating as call centers, network-like behavior, things that are really indicative of trafficking. And making sure that all of those silos understand that, are sharing the data they can, that's not overly sensitive, and making sure that we work together. >> Sherrie, you mentioned AWS. Teresa Carlson, I know she's super passionate about this. She's a leader. Cal Poly, we mentioned that. Splunk, you mentioned, how is Splunk involved? Are they the core technology behind this? Are they powering the-- >> They are, yeah, Splunk was actually with us from day one. We sat at a meeting, actually, at Microsoft and we were really just white boarding. What does this look like? How can we bring Splunk to bear on this problem? And so Splunk for Good, we're part of their pledge, the $10 million pledge over 10 years, and it's been amazing. So after we ingest all of our data, no matter what the data source is, whatever it looks like, and we deal with the ugliest and most unstructured data ever, and Splunk is really the only tool that we looked at that was able to deal with that. So everything goes through Splunk. From there, we're doing a series of external API calls that can really help us enrich that data, add correlations, whether it's spatial data, network analysis, cryptocurrency analysis, public records look-ups, a variety of things. But Splunk is at the heart. >> So I got to ask you, honestly, as this new architecture comes into play for attacking this big problem that you guys are doing, as someone who's not involved in that area, I get wow, spooked out by that. I'm like, "Wow, this is really bad." How can people help? What can people do either in their daily lives, whether it's how they handle their data, observations, donations, involvement? How do people get involved? What do you guys see as some areas that could be collaborating with? What do you guys need? How do people get involved? >> Yeah, one that's big for me is I would love to be able to sit in an interview like this, or go about my daily life, and know that what I am wearing or the things that I'm interacting with, my phone, my computer, weren't built from the hands of slave labor. And at this point, I really can't. So one thing that everybody can do is demand of the people that they are purchasing from that they're doing so in a socially viable and responsible way. So looking at supply chain management as well, and auditing specifically for human trafficking. We have sort of the certified, fair-trade certified organic seals. We need something like that for human trafficking. And that's something that we, the people, can demand. >> I think you're on the right track with that. I see a big business model wave where consumer purchasing power can be shifted to people who make the investments in those areas. So I think it's a big opportunity. It's kind of a new e-commerce, data-driven, social-impact-oriented economy. >> Yep, and you can see more and more, investment firms are becoming more interested in making socially responsible investments. And we just heard Splunk announce their $100 million social innovation fund as well. And I'm sure that human trafficking is going to be part of that awareness. >> Well, I'll tell you one of the things that's inspirational to me personally is that you're starting to see power and money come into helping these causes. My friend, Scott Tierney, just started a venture capital firm called Valo Ventures in Palo Alto. And they're for-profit, social impact investors. So they see a business model shift where people are getting behind these new things. I think your work is awesome, thank you. >> Yeah, thank you so much, I appreciate it. >> Thanks for coming on. Congratulations on the shout-out on the keynote. Appreciate it. The Global Emancipation Network, check them out. They're in San Luis Obispo, California. Get involved. This is theCUBE with bringing you the signal from the noise here at .conf. I'm John Furrier, back with more after this short break. (upbeat music)

(energetic music) >> Announcer: From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley; Palo Alto, California. This is a CUBE Conversation. >> Hi everyone, welcome to this special CUBE Power Panel recorded here in Palo Alto, California. We've got remote guests from around the Internet. We have Evan Anderson, Mark Anderson, Phil Lohaus. Thanks for comin' on. Evan is with INVNT/IP, an organization with companies and individuals that fight nation-sponsored intellectual property theft and also author of the huge report Theft Nation Almost a 100 pages of really comprehensive analysis on it. Mark Anderson with the Future in Review CEO of Pattern, Computer and Strategic New Service Chairman of Future in Review Conference, and author of the book "The Pattern Future: "Find the World's Greatest Secrets "and Predicting the Future Using Discovery Patterns" and Phil Lohaus, American Enterprise Institute. Former intelligent analyst, researcher at the American Enterprise Institute, studying competitive strategy and emerging technologies. Guys, thanks for coming on. This topic is, is industrial IoT the new battleground? Mark, you cover the Future Review. Security is the battleground. It's not just a silo'd space. It's horizontally scalable across every single touch point of the Internet, individuals, national security, companies, global, what's your perspective on this new battleground? >> Well, thank you, I took some time and watched your last presentation on this, which I thought was excellent. And maybe I'll try to pick up from there. There's a lot of discussion there about the technical aspects of IoT, or IIoT, and some of the weaknesses, you know firewalls failing, assuming that someone's in your network. But I think that there's a deeper aspect to this. And the problem I think, John, is that yes, they are in your network already, but the deeper problem here is, who is it? Is it an individual? Is it a state? And whoever it is, I'm going to put something out that I think is going to be worth talking more deeply about, and that is, if people who can do the most damage are already in there, and are ready to do it, the question isn't "Can they?" It's "Why have they not?" And so literally, I think if you ask world leaders today, are they in the electric grid? Yes. Is Russia in ours, are we in theirs? Yes. If you said, is China in our most important areas of enterprise? Absolutely. Is Iran in our banks and so forth? They are. And you actually see states of war going on, that are nuisances, but are not what you might call Cybergeddon. And I really believe that the world leaders are truly afraid. Perhaps more afraid of that than of nuclear war. So the amount of death and destruction that could happen if everybody cut loose at the same time, is so horrifying, my guess is that there's a human restraint involved in this, but that technically, it's already game over. >> Phil, Cybergeddon, I love that term, because that's a part of our theme here, is apocalypse now or later? Industrial IoT, or IIoT, or the Internet, all these touch points are creating a surface area that for penetration's purposes, any packet can get in. Nation-states, malware, you name it. It's all problem. But this is the new war battleground. This is now digital Cybergeddon. Forget the wall on the southern border, physical wall. We're talking about a digital wall. We have major threats going on to our society in the United States, and global. This is new, rules of engagement, or no rules of engagement on how to compete in a digital war. This is something that the government's supposed to protect us for. I mean, if someone drops troops in California, physical people, the government's supposed to stop that. But if it's a digital war, it's packets. And the companies are responsible for all this. This doesn't make any sense to me. Break it down, what's the problem? And how do we solve this? >> Sure, well the problem is is that we're actually facing different kinds of threats than we were typically used to facing in the past. So in the past when we go to war, we may have a problem with a foreign country, or a conflict is coming up. We tend to, and by we I mean the United States, we tend to think of these things as we're going to send troops in, or we're going to actually have a physical fight, or we're going to have some other kind of decisive culmination of events, end of a conflict. What we're dealing with now is very different. And it's actually something that isn't entirely new. But the adversaries that we're facing now, so let's say China, Russia, and Iran, just to kind of throw them into some buckets, they think about war very differently. They think about the information space more broadly, and partially because they've been so used to having to kind of be catching up to America in terms of technology, they found other ways to compete with America, and ways that we really haven't been focusing on. And that really, I would argue, extends most prominently to the information space. And by the information space I'm speaking very broadly. I'm talking about, not just information in terms of social media, and emails, and things like that, but also things like what we're talking about today, like IIoT. And these are new threat landscapes, and ones where our competitors have a integrated way of approaching the conflict, one in which the state and private sectors kind of are molded or fused or at least are compelled to work together and we have a very different space here in the United States. And I'm happy to unpack that as we talk about that today, but what we're now facing, is not just about technical capabilities, it's about differences in governing systems, differences in governing paradigms. And so it's much bigger than just talking about the technical specifics. >> Evan, I want you to weigh in on this because one of the things that I feel strongly about, and this is pretty obvious from the commentary, and experts I talk to is, the United States has always been good at defending itself physically, you know war, in being places. Digitally, we've been really good at offense, but terrible on defense, has been the metaphor. I spoke with former four-star General Keith Alexander, who ran the NSA and was first commander of the cyber command, who is now the CEO of IronNet. He and I were talking on-camera and privately and he's saying, "Look it. "we suck at defense digitally. "We're great at offense, we can take someone out "on the offense." But we're talking about IoT, about monitoring. These are technical challenges. This is network nerds, and software engineers have to solve this problem with the prism of defense. This is a new paradigm. This is what we're kind of getting to. And Mark, you kind of addressed it. But this is the challenge. IoT is going to create more points that we have to defend that we suck now at defending, how are we going to get better. This is the paradox. >> Yeah, I think that's certainly accurate. And one of our problems here is that as a society we've always been open. And that was how the Internet was born. And so we have a real paradigm shift now from a world in which the U.S. was leading an open world, that was using the Internet for, I mean there have been problems with security since day one, but originally the Internet was an information-sharing exercise. And we reached a point in human history now where there are enough malicious hackers that have the capabilities we didn't want them to have, but we need to change that outlook. So, looking at things like Industrial IoT, what you're seeing is not so much that this is the battlefield in specific, it's that everything like it is now the battlefield. So in my work specifically we're focused more on economic problems. Economic conflicts and strategies. And if you look at the doctrines that have come out of our adversaries in the last decade, or really 20 years, they very much did what Phil said, and they looked at our weaknesses, and one of those biggest weaknesses that we've always had is that an open society is also unable necessarily to completely defend itself from those who would seek to exploit that openness. And so we have to figure out as a society, and I believe we are. We're running a fine line, we're negotiating this tightrope right now that involves defending the values and the foundational critical aspects of our society that require openness, while also making sure that all the doors aren't open for adversaries. And so we'll continue to deal with that as a society. Everything is now a battlefield and a much grayer area, and IoT certainly isn't helping. And that's why we have to work so hard on it. >> I want to talk about the economic piece on the next talk track of rounds. Theft, and intellectual property that you cover deeply. But Mark and Phil, this notion of Cybergeddon meets the fact that we have to be more defensive. Again, principles of openness are out there. I mean, we have open source. There is a potential path here. Open source software has been, I think, depending on who you talk to, fourth generation, or fifth, depending on how old you are, but it's now mainstream enough now. Are we ever going to get to a formula where we can actually be strong in defense as well as just offense with respect to protecting digitally? >> Phil, do you want that? >> Well, yeah, I would just say that I'm glad to hear that General Alexander is confident about our offensive capabilities. But one of the... To NSA that is conducting these offensive capabilities. When we talk about Russia, Iran, China, or even a smaller group, like let's say an extremist group or something like that, there's an integration between command and control, that we simply don't have here in the States. For example, the Panasonic and Sony examples always come to mind, as ones where there are attacks that can happen against American companies that then have larger implications that go beyond just those companies. So and this may not be a case where the NSA is even tracking the threat. There's been some legislation that's come out, rather controversial legislation about so-called hacking back initiatives and things like that. But I think everybody knows that this is already kind of happening. The real question is going to be, how does the public sector, and how does the private sector work together to create this environment where they're working in synergy, rather than at cross purposes? >> Yeah, and this brings up, I've heard this before. I've heard people talk about the fact that open source nation states can actually empower by releasing tools in open source via the Dark Web or other vehicles, to not actually have, quote, their finger prints, on any attacks. This seems to be a tactic. >> Or go through criminals, right? Use proxies, things like that. It's getting even more complicated and Alexander's talked about that as well, right? He's talked about the convergence of crime and nation-state actions. So whereas with nation-states it's already hard-attributed enough, if that's being outsourced to either whether it's patriotic hackers or criminal groups, it's even more difficult. >> I think you know, Keith is a good friend of all of ours, obviously, good guy. His point is a good one. I'd like to take it a little more extreme state and say, defense is worth doing and probably hopeless. (everyone laughs) So, as they always say, all it takes is one failure. So, we always talk about defense, but really, he's right. Offense is easy. You want to go after somebody? We can get them. But if you want to play defense against a trillion potential points of failure, there's no chance. One way to say this is, if we ignore individuals for a moment and just look at nation-states, it's pretty clear that any nation-state of size, that wants to get into a certain network, will get in. And then the question will be, Well, once they're in, can they actually do damage? And the answer is probably yeah, they probably can. Well, why don't they? Why don't they do more damage? We're kind of back to the original premise here, that there's some restraint going on. And I suspect that Keith's absolutely right because in general, they don't want to get attacked. They don't want to have to come back at them what they're about to do to your banks or your grid, and we could do that. We all could do that. So my guess is, there's a little bit of failure on our part to have deep discussions about how great our defenses either are, or are not, when frankly the idea of defense is a good idea, worthwhile idea, but not really achievable. >> Yeah, that's a great point. That comes up a lot where it's like, people don't want retaliation, so it's a big, critical event that happens, that's noticeable as a counterstrike or equivalent. But there's been discussion of the, I call it "the slow bleed" where they push the line of where that is, like slowly infiltrate, and just cause disruption and inconvenience, as a tactic. This has become something we're seeing a lot of. Whether it's misinformation campaigns on fake news, to just disrupting operations slowly over time, and just kind of, 1,000 paper cuts, if you will. Your guys' thoughts on that? Is that something you guys see out there that's happening? >> Well, you saw Iran go after our banks. And we were pushing Iran pretty hard on the sanctions. Everybody knows they did that. It wasn't very much fun for anybody. But what they didn't do is take down the entire banking system. Not sure they could, but they didn't. >> Yeah, I would just add there that you see this on multiple fronts. You see this is by design. I'm sure that Mark is talking about this in his report but... they talk about this incremental approach that over time, this is part of the problem, right? Is that we have a very kind of black or white conception of warfare in this country. And a lot of times, even companies are going to think, well you know, we're at peace, so why would I do something that may actually be construed as something that's warlike or offensive or things like that? But in reality, even though we aren't technically at war, all of these other actors view this as a real conflict. And so we have to get creative about how we think about this within the paradigm that we have and the legal strictures that we have here in this country. >> Well there's no doubt at least in my non-expert military opinion, but as someone who is a techie, been on the Internet from day one, all my life, and all those tools, you guys as well, I personally think we're at war. 100%, there's no debate on that. And I think that we have to get better policy around this and understand it better. Because it's happening. And one of the obvious areas that we see in the news everyday, it's Huawei and intellectual property theft. This is an economic impact. I mean just look at what's happening in Brexit in the U.K. If that was essentially manipulated, that's the ultimate smart bomb, is to just destroy their financial system, which ended up happening through that misinformation. So there are economic realizations here, Evan,that not only come from the misinformation campaigns and other attacks, but there's real value with intellectual property. This is the report you put out. Your thoughts? >> There's very much an active conflict going on in the economic sphere, and that's certainly an excellent point. I think one of the most important things that most of the world doesn't quite understand yet, but our adversaries certainly understand, is that wars are fought for usually, just a few reasons. And there's a lot of different justification that goes on. But often it's for economic benefit. And if you look at human history, and you look at modern history, a lot of wars are fought for some form of economic benefit, often in the form of territory, et cetera, but in the modern age, information can directly and very quite obviously translate into economic benefit. And so when you're bleeding information, you're really bleeding money. And when I say information, again, it's a broad word, but intellectual property, which our definition, here at INVNT/IP is quite broad too, is incredibly valuable. And so if you have an adversary that's consistently removing intellectual property from what I would call our information ecosystem, and our business ecosystem, we're losing a lot of economic value there, and that's what wars are fought over. And so to pretend that this conflict is inactive, and to pretend that the underlying economy and economic strength that is bolstered or created by intellectual property isn't critical would be silly. And so I think we need to look at those kinds of dynamics and the kind of Gerasimov Doctrine, and the essential doctrine of unrestricted warfare that came out of the People's Republic of China are focused on avoiding kinetic conflict while succeeding at the kinds of conflict that are more preferable, particularly in an asymmetric environment. So that's what we're dealing with. >> Mark and Phil, people waking up to this reality are certainly. People in the know are that I talk to, but generally speaking across the board, is this a woke moment for tech? This Armageddon now or later? >> Woke moment for politicians not for tech, I think. I'm sure Phil would agree with this, but the old guard, go back to when Keith was running the NSA. But at that time, there was a very clear distinction between military and economic security. And so when you said security, that meant military. And now all the rules have changed. All the ways CFIUS works in the United States have changed. The legislation is changing, and now if you want to talk about security, most major nations equate economic security with national security. And that wasn't true 10 years ago. >> That's a great point. That's really profound, I totally agree. Phil. >> I think you're seeing a change in realization in Washington about this. I mean, if you look at the cybersecurity strategy of 2018, it specifically says that we're going to be moving from a posture of active defense to one of defending forward. And we can get into the discussion about what those words mean, but the way I usually boil down is it means, going from defending, but maybe a little bit forward, to actually going out and making sure that our interests are protected. And the reason why that's important, and we're talking about offense versus defense here, obviously the reason why, from what Mark was saying, if they're already in the networks, and they haven't actually done anything, it's because they're afraid of what that offensive response could be. So it's important that we selectively demonstrate what costs we could impose on different actors for different kinds of actions, especially knowing that they're already operating inside of our network. >> That's a great point. I mean, I think that's again another profound statement because it's almost like the pin in the grenade. Once they pull it, the damage is done. Again, back to our theme, Armageddon, now or later? What's the answer to this, guys? Is it the push to policy conversation and the potential consequences higher? Get that narrative going. Is it more technical protection in the networks? What's some of the things that people are talking about and thinking about around this? >> And it's really all of the above. So the tough part about this for any society and for our society is that it's expensive to live in a world with this much insecurity. And so when these kind of low-level conflicts are going on, it costs money and it costs resources. And companies had to deal with that. They spent a long time trying to dodge security costs, and now particularly with the advent of new law like the GDPR in Europe, it's becoming untenable not to spend that defensive money, even as a company, right? But we also are looking at a deepening to change policy. And I think there's been a lot of progress made. Mark mentioned the CFIUS reforms. There are a lot of different essentially games of Whack-A-Mole being played all around the world right now figuring out how to chase these security problems that we let go too long, but there's many, many, many fronts that we need to-- >> Whack-A-Mole's a great example. The visualization of that is just horrendous. You know, not the ideal scenario. But I got to get your point on this, because one of the things that comes up all the time in our conversations in theCUBE is, the government's job is to protect our securities. So again, if someone came in, and invaded my town in Palo Alto, it's not my responsibility to fight for the town. Maybe defend my own house. But if I'm a company being attacked by Russia, or China or Iran, isn't it the government's responsibility to protect me as a citizen and the company doing business there? So again, this is kind of the confusion that people have. If somebody's going to defend their hack, I certainly got to put security practices in place. This is new ground for the government, digitally speaking. >> When we started this INVNT/IP project, it was about seven years ago. And I was told by a very smart guy in D.C. that our greatest challenge was going to be American corporations, global corporations. And he was absolutely right. Literally in this fight to protect intellectual property, and to protect the welfare even of corporations, our greatest enemies so far have been American corporations. And they lobby hard for China, while China is busy stealing from them, and stealing from their company, and stealing from their country. All that stuff's going on, on a daily basis and they're in D.C. lobbying in favor of China. Don't do anything to make them mad. >> They're getting their pockets picked at the same time. And they're trying to do business in China. They're getting their pockets picked. That's what you're saying. >> They're going for the quarterly earnings report and that's all. >> So the problem is-- >> Yeah so-- >> The companies themselves are kind of self-inflicted wounds here for them. >> Yes. >> Yeah, just to add to that, on this note, there have been some... Business to settle interest. And this is something you're seeing a little bit more of. There's been legislation through CFIUS and things like that. There have been reforms that discourage the flow of Chinese money in the Silicon Valley. And there's actually a measurable difference in that. Because people just don't want to deal with the paperwork. They don't want to deal with the reputational risk, et cetera, et cetera. And this is really going to be the key challenge, is having policy makers not only that are interested in addressing this issue, because not all of them are even convinced it's a problem, if you can believe it or not, but having them interested and then having them understand the issue in a way that the legislation can actually be helpful and not get in the way of things that we value, such as innovation and entrepreneurialism and things like that. So it's going to take sophisticated policy-making and providing incentives so that companies actually want to participate and helping to make America safer. >> You're so right about the politicians. Capitol Hill's really not educated. I mean I tell my kids, and they ask the same questions, just look at Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai present to the government. They don't even know what an Android phone versus an iPhone is, nevermind what the Internet, and how this global economy works. This has become a makeup problem of the personnel in Capitol Hill. You guys see any movement? I'm seeing some change with a new guard, a new generation of younger people coming in. Certainly from the military, that's an easy when you see people get this. But a new generation of young millennials who are saying, "Hey, why are we doing this the old way?" and actually becoming more informed. Not being the lawyer at law-making. It's actually more technically savvy. Is there any movement, any bright hope there? >> I think there's a little hope in the sense that at a time when Congress has trouble keeping the lights on, they seem to have bipartisan agreement on this set of issues that we're talking about. So, that's hopeful. You know, we've seen a number of strongly bipartisan issues supported in Congress, with the Senate, with the House, all agreeing that this is an issue for us all, that they need to protect the country. They need to protect IP. They need to extend the definition of security. There's no argument there. And that's a very strange thing in today's D.C. to have no argument between the parties. There's no error between the GOP and the Democrats as far as I can tell. They seem to all agree on this, and so it is hopeful. >> Freedom has its costs and I think this is a new era of modern freedom and warfare and protection and all these dynamics are changing, just like Cloud 2.0 is changing application developers. Guys, this is a really important topic. Thank you so much for coming on, appreciate it. Love to do a follow-up on this again with you guys. Thanks for sharing your insight. Some great, profound statements there, appreciate it. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for having us. >> It's been a CUBE Power Panel here from Palo Alto, California with Evan Anderson, Mark Anderson, and Phil Lohaus. Thank you guys for coming on. Power Panel: The Next Battleground in Industrial IoT. Security is a big part of it. Thanks for watching, this has been theCUBE. (energetic music)

>> live from Boston, Massachusetts. It's the Cube covering A W s reinforce 2019. Brought to you by Amazon Web service is and its ecosystem partners. >> Well, welcome back. Everyone's Cube Live coverage here in Boston, Massachusetts, for AWS. Reinforce Amazon Web sources. First inaugural conference around security. It's not Osama. It's a branded event. Big time ecosystem developing. We have returning here. Cube Alumni Bill Jeff for VP of strategy and the partnerships that Iron Net Cyber Security Company. Welcome back. Thanks. General Keith Alexander, who was on a week and 1/2 ago. And it was public sector summit. Good to see you. Good >> to see you. Thanks for >> having my back, but I want to get into some of the Iran cyber communities. We had General Qi 1000. He was the original commander of the division. So important discussions that have around that. But don't get your take on the event. You guys, you're building a business. The minute cyber involved in public sector. This is commercial private partnership. Public relations coming together. Yeah. Your models are sharing so bringing public and private together important. >> Now that's exactly right. And it's really great to be here with eight of us were really close partner of AWS is we'll work with them our entire back in today. Runs on AWS really need opportunity. Get into the ecosystem, meet some of the folks that are working that we might work with my partner but to deliver a great product, right? And you're seeing a lot of people move to cloud, right? And so you know some of the big announcement that are happening here today. We're willing. We're looking to partner up with eight of us and be a first time provider for some key new Proactiv elves. AWS is launching in their own platform here today. So that's a really neat thing for us to be partnered up with this thing. Awesome organization. I'm doing some of >> the focus areas around reinforcing your party with Amazon shares for specifics. >> Yes. So I don't know whether they announced this capability where they're doing the announcement yesterday or today. So I forget which one so I'll leave that leave that leave that once pursued peace out. But the main thing is, they're announcing couple of new technology plays way our launch party with them on the civility place. So we're gonna be able to do what we were only wanted to do on Prem. We're gonna be able to do in the cloud with AWS in the cloud formation so that we'll deliver the same kind of guy that would deliver on prime customers inside their own cloud environments and their hybrid environment. So it's a it's a it's a sea change for us. The company, a sea change for a is delivering that new capability to their customers and really be able to defend a cloud network the way you would nonpregnant game changer >> described that value, if you would. >> Well, so you know, one of the key things about about a non pregnant where you could do you could look at all the flows coming past you. You look at all the data, look at in real time and develop behavior. Lana looks over. That's what we're doing our own prime customers today in the cloud with his world who looked a lox, right? And now, with the weight of your capability, we're gonna be able to integrate that and do a lot Maur the way we would in a in a in a normal sort of on Prem environment. So you really did love that. Really? Capability of scale >> Wagon is always killed. The predictive analytics, our visibility and what you could do. And too late. Exactly. Right. You guys solve that with this. What are some of the challenges that you see in cloud security that are different than on premise? Because that's the sea, So conversation we've been hearing. Sure, I know on premise. I didn't do it on premises for awhile. What's the difference between the challenge sets, the challenges and the opportunities they provide? >> Well, the opportunities air really neat, right? Because you've got that even they have a shared responsibility model, which is a little different than you officially have it. When it's on Prem, it's all yours essential. You own that responsibility and it is what it is in the cloud. Its share responsible to cloud provider the data holder. Right? But what's really cool about the cloud is you could deliver some really interesting Is that scale you do patch updates simultaneously, all your all your back end all your clients systems, even if depending how your provisioning cloud service is, you could deliver that update in real time. You have to worry about. I got to go to individual systems and update them, and some are updated. Summer passed. Some aren't right. Your servers are packed simultaneously. You take him down, you're bringing back up and they're ready to go, right? That's a really capability that for a sigh. So you're delivering this thing at scale. It's awesome now, So the challenge is right. It's a new environment so that you haven't dealt with before. A lot of times you feel the hybrid environment governed both an on Prem in sanitation and class sensation. Those have to talkto one another, right? And you might think about Well, how do I secure those those connections right now? And I think about spending money over here when I got all seduced to spend up here in the cloud. And that's gonna be a hard thing precisely to figure out, too. And so there are some challenges, but the great thing is, you got a whole ecosystem. Providers were one of them here in the AWS ecosystem. There are a lot here today, and you've got eight of us as a part of self who wants to make sure that they're super secure, but so are yours. Because if you have a problem in their cloud, that's a challenge. Them to market this other people. You talk about >> your story because your way interviews A couple weeks ago, you made a comment. I'm a recovering lawyer, kind of. You know, we all laughed, but you really start out in law, right? >> How did you end up here? Yeah, well, the truth is, I grew up sort of a technology or myself. My first computer is a trash 80 a trs 80 color computer. RadioShack four k of RAM on board, right. We only >> a true TRS 80. Only when I know what you're saying. That >> it was a beautiful system, right? Way stored with sword programs on cassette tapes. Right? And when we operated from four Keita 16 k way were the talk of the Rainbow Computer Club in Santa Monica, California Game changer. It was a game here for 16. Warning in with 60 give onboard. Ram. I mean, this is this is what you gonna do. And so you know, I went from that and I in >> trouble or something, you got to go to law school like you're right >> I mean, you know, look, I mean, you know it. So my dad, that was a chemist, right? So he loved computers, love science. But he also had an unrequited political boners body. He grew up in East Africa, Tanzania. It was always thought that he might be a minister in government. The Socialist came to power. They they had to leave you at the end of the day. And he came to the states and doing chemistry, which is course studies. But he still loved politics. So he raised at NPR. So when I went to college, I studied political science. But I paid my way through college doing computer support, life sciences department at the last moment. And I ran 10 based. He came on climate through ceilings and pulled network cable do punch down blocks, a little bit of fibrous placing. So, you know, I was still a murderer >> writing software in the scythe. >> One major, major air. And that was when when the web first came out and we had links. Don't you remember? That was a text based browser, right? And I remember looking to see him like this is terrible. Who would use http slash I'm going back to go for gophers. Awesome. Well, turns out I was totally wrong about Mosaic and Netscape. After that, it was It was it was all hands on >> deck. You got a great career. Been involved a lot in the confluence of policy politics and tech, which is actually perfect skill set for the challenge we're dealing. So I gotta ask you, what are some of the most important conversations that should be on the table right now? Because there's been a lot of conversations going on around from this technology. I has been around for many decades. This has been a policy problem. It's been a societal problem. But now this really focus on acute focus on a lot of key things. What are some of the most important things that you think should be on the table for techies? For policymakers, for business people, for lawmakers? >> One. I think we've got to figure out how to get really technology knowledge into the hands of policymakers. Right. You see, you watch the Facebook hearings on Capitol Hill. I mean, it was a joke. It was concerning right? I mean, anybody with a technology background to be concerned about what they saw there, and it's not the lawmakers fault. I mean, you know, we've got to empower them with that. And so we got to take technologist, threw it out, how to get them to talk policy and get them up on the hill and in the administration talking to folks, right? And one of the big outcomes, I think, has to come out of that conversation. What do we do about national level cybersecurity, Right, because we assume today that it's the rule. The private sector provides cyber security for their own companies, but in no other circumstance to expect that when it's a nation state attacker, wait. We don't expect Target or Wal Mart or any other company. J. P. Morgan have surface to air missiles on the roofs of their warehouses or their buildings to Vegas Russian bear bombers. Why, that's the job of the government. But when it comes to cyberspace, we expect Private Cummings defending us everything from a script kiddie in his basement to the criminal hacker in Eastern Europe to the nation state, whether Russia, China, Iran or North Korea and these nation states have virtually a limited resource. Your armies did >> sophisticated RND technology, and it's powerful exactly like a nuclear weaponry kind of impact for digital. >> Exactly. And how can we expect prices comes to defend themselves? It's not. It's not a fair fight. And so the government has to have some role. The questions? What role? How did that consist with our values, our principles, right? And how do we ensure that the Internet remains free and open, while still is sure that the president is not is not hampered in doing its job out there. And I love this top way talk about >> a lot, sometimes the future of warfare. Yeah, and that's really what we're talking about. You go back to Stuxnet, which opened Pandora's box 2016 election hack where you had, you know, the Russians trying to control the mean control, the narrative. As you pointed out, that that one video we did control the belief system you control population without firing a shot. 20 twenties gonna be really interesting. And now you see the U. S. Retaliate to Iran in cyberspace, right? Allegedly. And I was saying that we had a conversation with Robert Gates a couple years ago and I asked him. I said, Should we be Maur taking more of an offensive posture? And he said, Well, we have more to lose than the other guys Glasshouse problem? Yeah, What are your thoughts on? >> Look, certainly we rely intimately, inherently on the cyber infrastructure that that sort of is at the core of our economy at the core of the world economy. Increasingly, today, that being said, because it's so important to us all the more reason why we can't let attacks go Unresponded to write. And so if you're being attacked in cyberspace, you have to respond at some level because if you don't, you'll just keep getting punched. It's like the kid on the playground, right? If the bully keeps punching him and nobody does anything, not not the not the school administration, not the kid himself. Well, then the boy's gonna keep doing what he's doing. And so it's not surprising that were being tested by Iran by North Korea, by Russia by China, and they're getting more more aggressive because when we don't punch back, that's gonna happen. Now we don't have to punch back in cyberspace, right? A common sort of fetish about Cyrus is a >> response to the issue is gonna respond to the bully in this case, your eggs. Exactly. Playground Exactly. We'll talk about the Iran. >> So So if I If I if I can't Yeah, the response could be Hey, we could do this. Let them know you could Yes. And it's a your move >> ate well, And this is the key is that it's not just responding, right. So Bob Gates or told you we can't we talk about what we're doing. And even in the latest series of alleged responses to Iran, the reason we keep saying alleged is the U. S has not publicly acknowledged it, but the word has gotten out. Well, of course, it's not a particularly effective deterrence if you do something, but nobody knows you did it right. You gotta let it out that you did it. And frankly, you gotta own it and say, Hey, look, that guy punch me, I punch it back in the teeth. So you better not come after me, right? We don't do that in part because these cables grew up in the intelligence community at N S. A and the like, and we're very sensitive about that But the truth is, you have to know about your highest and capabilities. You could talk about your abilities. You could say, Here are my red lines. If you cross him, I'm gonna punch you back. If you do that, then by the way, you've gotta punch back. They'll let red lines be crossed and then not respond. And then you're gonna talk about some level of capabilities. It can't all be secret. Can't all be classified. Where >> are we in this debate? Me first. Well, you're referring to the Thursday online attack against the intelligence Iranian intelligence community for the tanker and the drone strike that they got together. Drone take down for an arm in our surveillance drones. >> But where are we >> in this debate of having this conversation where the government should protect and serve its people? And that's the role. Because if a army rolled in fiscal army dropped on the shores of Manhattan, I don't think Citibank would be sending their people out the fight. Right? Right. So, like, this is really happening. >> Where are we >> on this? Like, is it just sitting there on the >> table? What's happening? What's amazing about it? Hi. This was getting it going well, that that's a Q. What's been amazing? It's been happening since 2012 2011 right? We know about the Las Vegas Sands attack right by Iran. We know about North Korea's. We know about all these. They're going on here in the United States against private sector companies, not against the government. And there's largely been no response. Now we've seen Congress get more active. Congress just last year passed to pass legislation that gave Cyber command the authority on the president's surgery defenses orders to take action against Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. If certain cyber has happened, that's a good thing, right to give it. I'll be giving the clear authority right, and it appears the president willing to make some steps in that direction, So that's a positive step. Now, on the back end, though, you talk about what we do to harden ourselves, if that's gonna happen, right, and the government isn't ready today to defend the nation, even though the Constitution is about providing for the common defense, and we know that the part of defense for long. For a long time since Secretary Panetta has said that it is our mission to defend the nation, right? But we know they're not fully doing that. How do they empower private sector defense and one of keys That has got to be Look, if you're the intelligence community or the U. S. Government, you're Clinton. Tremendous sense of Dad about what you're seeing in foreign space about what the enemy is doing, what they're preparing for. You have got to share that in real time at machine speed with industry. And if you're not doing that and you're still count on industry to be the first line defense, well, then you're not empowered. That defense. And if you're on a pair of the defense, how do you spend them to defend themselves against the nation? State threats? That's a real cry. So >> much tighter public private relationship. >> Absolutely, absolutely. And it doesn't have to be the government stand in the front lines of the U. S. Internet is, though, is that you could even determine the boundaries of the U. S. Internet. Right? Nobody wants an essay or something out there doing that, but you do want is if you're gonna put the private sector in the in the line of first defense. We gotta empower that defense if you're not doing that than the government isn't doing its job. And so we gonna talk about this for a long time. I worked on that first piece of information sharing legislation with the House chairman, intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers and Dutch Ruppersberger from Maryland, right congressman from both sides of the aisle, working together to get a fresh your decision done that got done in 2015. But that's just a first step. The government's got to be willing to share classified information, scaled speed. We're still not seeing that. Yeah, How >> do people get involved? I mean, like, I'm not a political person. I'm a moderate in the middle. But >> how do I How do people get involved? How does the technology industry not not the >> policy budgets and the top that goes on the top tech companies, how to tech workers or people who love Tad and our patriots and or want freedom get involved? What's the best approach? >> Well, that's a great question. I think part of is learning how to talk policy. How do we get in front policymakers? Right. And we're I run. I run a think tank on the side at the National Institute at George Mason University's Anton Scalia Law School Way have a program funded by the Hewlett Foundation who were bringing in technologists about 25 of them. Actually. Our next our second event. This Siri's is gonna be in Chicago this weekend. We're trained these technologies, these air data scientists, engineers and, like talk Paul's right. These are people who said We want to be involved. We just don't know how to get involved And so we're training him up. That's a small program. There's a great program called Tech Congress, also funded by the U. A. Foundation that places technologists in policy positions in Congress. That's really cool. There's a lot of work going on, but those are small things, right. We need to do this, its scale. And so you know, what I would say is that their technology out there want to get involved, reach out to us, let us know well with our partners to help you get your information and dad about what's going on. Get your voice heard there. A lot of organizations to that wanna get technologies involved. That's another opportunity to get in. Get in the building is a >> story that we want to help tell on be involved in David. I feel passion about this. Is a date a problem? So there's some real tech goodness in there. Absolutely. People like to solve hard problems, right? I mean, we got a couple days of them. You've got a big heart problems. It's also for all the people out there who are Dev Ops Cloud people who like to work on solving heart problems. >> We got a lot >> of them. Let's do it. So what's going on? Iron? Give us the update Could plug for the company. Keith Alexander found a great guy great guests having on the Cube. That would give the quick thanks >> so much. So, you know, way have done two rounds of funding about 110,000,000. All in so excited. We have partners like Kleiner Perkins Forge point C five all supporting us. And now it's all about We just got a new co CEO in Bill Welshman. See Scaler and duo. So he grew Z scaler. $1,000,000,000 valuation he came in to do Oh, you know, they always had a great great exit. Also, we got him. We got Sean Foster in from from From Industry also. So Bill and Sean came together. We're now making this business move more rapidly. We're moving to the mid market. We're moving to a cloud platform or aggressively and so exciting times and iron it. We're coming toe big and small companies near you. We've got the capability. We're bringing advanced, persistent defense to bear on his heart problems that were threat analytics. I collected defence. That's the key to our operation. We're excited >> to doing it. I call N S A is a service, but that's not politically correct. But this is the Cube, so >> Well, look, if you're not, if you want to defensive scale, right, you want to do that. You know, ECE knows how to do that key down here at the forefront of that when he was in >> the government. Well, you guys are certainly on the cutting edge, riding that wave of common societal change technology impact for good, for defence, for just betterment, not make making a quick buck. Well, you know, look, it's a good business model by the way to be in that business. >> I mean, It's on our business cards. And John Xander means it. Our business. I'd say the Michigan T knows that he really means that, right? Rather private sector. We're looking to help companies to do the right thing and protect the nation, right? You know, I protect themselves >> better. Well, our missions to turn the lights on. Get those voices out there. Thanks for coming on. Sharing the lights. Keep covers here. Day one of two days of coverage. Eight of us reinforce here in Boston. Stay with us for more Day one after this short break.

(upbeat techno music) >> Live, from Washington D.C., it's theCUBE. Covering Inforum DC 2018 bought to you by Infor. >> Well Welcome back here on theCUBE as we continue our coverage here at Inforum 2018. We are in DC, nation's capitol. Kind of sandwiched between the Capitol Hill and the White House, where there is never a dull moment these days. (laughing) >> John Walls with Dave Vellante and we are joined by Chris Lilley, who is the national managing principle of tech solutions at Grant Thornton. Chris, good to see you, thanks for joining us. >> Good to see you, thank you. >> Yeah, so first off, let's just talk about the relationship, Grant Thornton and Infor. Still fairly new? >> Yes. >> It's been about a year, a year and a half, in the making. >> It's been slightly over a year. >> Yeah, let's talk about how that began and then kind of a status update, where you are right now? >> Sure. Well, it began about a year ago, around that time that Coke made an investment into Infor and Grant Thornton was looking at expanding our technology footprint, looking at other vendors who were providing solutions to the clients that, you know, the we serve. We also saw that Infor has a very, very common client base with Grant Thornton and we spent a few days with Gardner, we spend a few days with Forrester; learned about their products, learned where they were, were very impressed and decided to make a commitment to the relationship. It's been a terrific first year with Infor. >> I talked to one of the principles last year of Coke, PAL, and he said to me that one of the benefits that we're going to bring to Infor is that we have relationships with guys like Grant Thornton. We're not going to get him in a headlock, but we're going to expose them to Infor and say, "Hey look, look for opportunities," because we think they exist and that that's what you found, right? >> 100%. To elaborate a little on the story, we spent a few days with Coke out in Wichita, understood what they saw in Infor and obviously we were aware of Infor, aware of their product base, but what they have done with the product over the past four or five years? Frankly, news to us. And where they've taken the product, the investments they've made, the other products that they've acquired around their core, the kind of edge products, if you will, absolutely tremendous and decided to make that investment. So it wasn't so much of an arm twist. >> Right >> It was some awareness that they created for us and we decided to jump in. >> What was your, all be, you know, you ah-ha that you said because you spent a little bit of time? >> Mm-hmm. >> Doing your due diligence and working, again, with the Coke folks, so, what was it that got your attention you think? I tell ya, there's really something here. >> Yeah, I think what put us over the top, is we we brought our leadership team up to New York for a few days, spent a little bit of time with Charles Phillips, who is incredibly impressive and can probably sell anything to anybody. But we really spent time with their hook and loop folks and their developers. And when we saw kind of the brainchild of hook and loop, which I don't know if you're familiar with what this? >> The in-house agency, sure. >> Yeah, the in-house-agency and what they are doing to make the product more user-friendly, to make it more engaging. When you look at the world that we live in right now, you know, I see a phone here, everything's easy to use and intuitive. Business applications are not. Now, it's a lot harder issue we're dealing with, but what they've done with the interface, what they've done with the usability kind of, that was our ah-ha moment. They showed us a couple other things that they have done for specific clients with their analytics tool set and how they've integrated that in some dashboarding and we were committed at that point. >> So talk about Grant Thornton's unique approach in terms of how you're applying Infor with clients. What's hot? You know, any specific industries and trends that you're seeing. >> Sure. What we wanted to do is we wanted to make sure that when we made the commitment, we followed through on that commitment. We very narrowly focused our initial relationship with with Infor. Our industry focus is healthcare, public sector. Our product focus is the cloud suite products along with the enterprise asset management product. By focusing on the enterprise asset management product, that allows us to get into the asset intensive industries. So, utilities, anything with large fleets, public sector munies that are managing infrastructure. So we made that commitment very narrowly so that we weren't trying to be too many things to too many people and we could really commit to them, make the investment that we needed to make. We obviously had a technology practice so we know how to do this work and the way I think about technology practices today is they're really there to transform businesses, right? We used to spend a lot of time making technology work. Technology works. Now we've got to make sure that our clients step back from what they do today, leverage the best practice in the technology, or the leading practice in the technology, and transform their business around it. That's how we've approached the relationship with Infor. >> Well that's interesting because we heard Charles' keynote day one, and he talked on theCUBE about the disparity between the number of jobs that are out there and the number of candidates that are qualified, so there's a disparity there and then he showed productivity numbers and I remember back in, I don't know what it was, 80's or 90's, whatever it was, before the PC kicked in. >> Mm-hmm. >> In a big way, in terms of productivity impact. The spending was going through the roof, but you couldn't see it in the productivity and you're sort of seeing the same thing today. The tech market's booming, but the productivity numbers are relatively flat, so the promise is that, okay, we're going to have efficiencies out of cloud, you know, all this data that we've been collecting for all this time applying machine intelligence is going to drive, we've predicted, productivity. >> Right >> The next sort of big wave. It's kind of your job to make that all happen. >> Yeah, and so, I'm guilty. I've been in this industry a long time. I've seen the waves from the Y2K to the ERPs, to when we went to distributed internet, so I've seen all that. Absolutely agree, the productivity gains haven't been there but I would say that foundation is now laid. If you think about what we did during that time frame, we got our clients onto fairly common platform, somewhat consistent practices, right? They did a lot of custom work still, but we also cleaned up a lot of data, but what we did at that point, is we did it in silos. And enterprises don't run in silos. They have to run at the enterprise level. We've got the foundation laid now, we're now to the next generation. The next generation says your basic transaction processing systems? Use 'em as they come. Let's look at what's available to us. Let's look at the partner ecosystem that's out there. Let's look at the connectivity that's out there. Let's look at how we can better engage our client base and better run our operations and that's where I think we're going to start to see the productivity and that's what Infor is doing with their last mile functionality, they're taking the need to spin any customization away from the client, they're givin' it to 'em but they're letting us think about how to transform the business and drive value. >> You talked about utilities, which is a unique animal unto itself, right? From the regulatory environment, from their various services, what they provide and the scale they provide it at? Where can Infor come in and play in that space in terms of people being receptive to new ideas, being receptive to new mousetraps when, you know, sometimes they're bound too. >> Right. >> By what they can and can't do. >> Right, that's a good question. So utilities an interesting industry, right? Everybody says utilities are behind, they are slow to adapt. But if you think about the utility and fundamentally what they do, they're one of the most complex advanced engineering businesses that you can find in the world, right? From the generation to the distribution of power is a highly complex activity that they do extremely well. So they've made a ton of investment to make sure they keep doing that extremely well, deliver power safely. We got to renew the infrastructure so they got to spend money there and that's where we see Infor coming in. If you think about what's out there right now, all the sensors that we can put in to the generation facilities, all the devices that we can use. We can use drones to look at the solar farms, figure out where the maintenance needs to be done. I think what you're going to see is Infor product being adapted into how they operate the business. Analytics being applied to how they manage their maintenance facility, which is critical in utility. Analytics being brought in to how they prepare for storms. If you think about the recovery, what we just went through in the south. You know, 800,000 people out? Relatively quick recovery there. Now it's painful, and everybody's not back, I'm not saying it's easy but the utilities down there used a lot of information to better position crews for recovery. I think that's how you're going to see it on the operational side. On the customer side, you're going to see utilities do more and more what everybody else is doing. How do you want to interact with me? When do you want to interact with me? Where do you want to interact with me? Utilities will start putting all that out there and they are putting it out there. The websites are good, they're starting to go to mobility. So I think Infor products will play across that entire space. >> You're right about the utilities, I mean the instrumentation of the homes through smart meters, I mean what a transformation in the last 10 years? Five to 10 years, even. >> Yep. >> And it's all about the data. It always come back to data. (laughing) Healthcare and public sector, utilities as well, highly regulated industries. >> Yes. >> That you chose. By design, I presume. >> Yes. >> Talk about that in terms of Grant Thornton's wheelhouse. >> Yeah, we chose healthcare and public sector because we have good existing practices. Specific in healthcare space, we were doing a lot of epic cerner work, which is their ERM systems >> Yeah. >> That are out there. Lawson is by far the leading product in their ERP back office. So it made a natural fit for us to jump into that. Grant Thornton also has a very large public sector practice, both at the federal and state local level, so again, it gave us an avenue to get in, bring Infor into some of our existing clients. But back to your point about being regulated environments, Grant Thornton is basically a public accounting firm so we're used to dealing in regulatory environment, that's part of our culture. Quality is what we focus on as a firm. We understand how to interact with the regulators. Personally, I think, things are moving so quickly that the regulators, in some cases, are still catching up. But the one piece of advice I would have to all of clients out there that operate in the regulated world, rely on your partners. Rely on your software provider, your internal audit, your external audit, your systems integrator to help you keep current with the regulatory changes. On the tail of that is all the exposure on the cyber side. If you think about what's going on, you've mentioned in home devices, smart meters, those are all access points so we've got to really harden the access and the infrastructure to make sure that people aren't using those to gain control of these systems. >> Yeah the threat matrix is expanding. >> The matrix is huge. >> And then, you know, securing the data. (laughing) Security, in many ways, is do over, right? (laughing) In this new world. >> And just looking forward, and briefly if you will, before we let you go? >> Yep. >> Where do you see the relationship going then? Because you've established your verticals, you know where you're working, you know what's going on. What's next step then? Because there's always something else down the road, right? >> Yeah, so in our industry, we've got some terrific competitors out there who have also engaged with Infor. There's some other products out there. So I think what we need to focus on now, we've got the relationship, Infor is an incredible company, they're incredibly collaborative. They're agile. We recently were working with a healthcare provider who was dealing with some of the personnel issues you were talking about, resource shortages. How do I optimize scheduling? Who do I need? Where do I need 'em? Infor was all over it. They brought in their chief nursing officer, she helped us think through how to better manage that, used their workforce management product. So, where we want to go with them is we want to innovate with them. We want to bring the innovation that we're applying, whether it's robotics in terms of bots, whether it's digital transformation which are all buzzwords, and leverage all that. But the other thing I think we're starting to really get our arms around is the broader ecosystem. They're all cloud enabled. There are a significant number of niche players out there that can bring us point solutions. You know, you mentioned the data? The data's the key to all that so we want to help them understand, architect that. Use the technology to solve our client's business problems. >> And you know these buzzwords are actually, there's substance behind them. I mean, every company is trying to get digital, right? >> Yes. >> Every company has, or should have, a digital strategy, is tying to figure out and seize pathways to, maybe not monetizing data directly but figuring out how data contributes to monetization. Software robots are real. They work. >> Right. >> Not perfect, chat bots aren't perfect but they're getting better, and better and better. You look at things like fraud detection, how far that's come just in the last five or six years? You pointed out earlier, Chris, the technology is there, it works. It's not a mystery anymore, right? I've been around a long time, too And technology used to be so mysterious and nobody knew how it worked. The Wall Street analysts, it was like, how's this tech work? Today, it's ubiquitous. >> Yes, agree, absolutely. >> It's the process, it's the people, it's the collaboration, that's the hard part. >> Yeah, I mean you said it earlier, it's getting businesses to adopt what they do, right? To really focus on where they can add value and get the people to come along. >> Chris, thank you. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Appreciate the time. >> Sure. >> And enjoy the rest of the show and again, we do thank you for the time here today. >> Okay, take care. >> Good deal, alright. Back with more here, you're watching theCUBE from Washington D.C. (upbeat techno music)

(upbeat music) >> Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE, covering Inforum D.C. 2018, brought to you by Infor. >> Well, back here on theCUBE, we are at Inforum '18. We're in Washington, D.C. here in the Walter Washington Convention Center. Not far from the White House. It's about a mile that way, and Capitol Hill's about a mile that way, I think. I know we're right in here, but I know we are smack dab in the middle of it. Dave Vellante and John Walls and Kevin Curry, who's the SVP of the global public sector at Infor. Good to have you with us. Good to see you, sir. >> Great to be here. Thanks for your time. >> So public sector, you're in the heart of it here, and you were telling us before we went on the air that you've got more than 700 clients here at the show this week? >> We do, we do. It's the best attendance we've had yet for Inforum, and I joined about six and a half years ago. And we built this business pretty much from the ground up. So it's been a great experience, and now we're starting to get a lot of adoption within the government, across the government, from federal to state to locals. >> What's the process been like, especially across those three, because I assume they're all different? You know, local, state, federal, everybody has different pain points and there's different tolerances. >> They do, they do. I mean, there's different micro-verticals within each of those statements. As an example, if you look at local governments, it could be anything from transit agencies to K-12 schools, to public works, to police, to fire. They all have all different requirements. State's the same thing, whether it's Department of Transportation or Department of Health and Human Services. And then when you get the federal side of it, then it's from the intelligence community to Department of Defense, healthcare within Defense, like the VA and DoD and Defense agencies as well. So it's a pretty wide swatch of use cases and business cases that you need to be able to sell to. >> Charles said something interesting in the keynote today. I want to ask you about it. He said, "We made a strategic decision to go to the cloud. "We didn't want to compete with Google "and Amazon and Microsoft for CloudScale. "That didn't make any sense for us." And he said, "When we were an on-prem software vendor, "we weren't managing servers for our customers." Now what struck me there is if you look back at the software company back in the day, they really didn't care about the server, right? It was just sort of infrastructure. It was kind of irrelevant to them. The cloud feels different. It seems like a more strategic relationship with Amazon. You know, we talk about Teresa Carlson and what a force she is in the government. AWS in the GovCloud has been a huge force. They had a giant lead. So have you been able to draft off that or is it just another sort of infrastructure platform? >> No, they're a major strategic partnership there with AWS and NN4. At the company level, and especially for me, with the government, they've made the right investments at the right time, I mean, and they actually have cloud environments that are very specific to different segments of the government and to different geographies. So as an example, in the federal government they have an intelligence cloud called C2S, which we work with them on. There's a very large procurement out right now for the Department of Defense called Jedi, which Amazon's going after, as well as the other larger cloud providers, so we're obviously riding that horse with AWS. And also for local governments, and they've done all of the compliancy for the government, whether it be FedRAMP, whether it be CJIS for those departments that are worried about the justice type of requirements. And as you get outside of the U.S., they're putting clouds and we're a global company as well, putting clouds in all the right places. They have a G-Cloud offering in the U.K. and as we talked about earlier when we sat down, they're opening a cloud in the Middle East right now too, in Bahrain that I think traces on oil over there as we speak. >> Right, right. The first Middle East country to claim cloud first. But it just seems like there's a strategic advantage there. And even with the other cloud suppliers. I mean, you know, Google's got its niche, big niche, you know, Microsoft, with its software state, but it seems like Amazon, they talk about that flywheel effect, brings certain technologies that, you know, when you talk to Soma, you guys have been able to take advantage of. It just feels a lot different than the old traditional server manufacturer. Oh, it's a Unix box and there's no difference between vendor A, B and C. >> Absolutely correct. And for us, we've taken advantage of the tools that Amazon has and obviously, we're doing all the compliancy on our applications and they've got whole the infrastructure piece of it, so the two work very well together. >> And that has allowed you to focus on your knitting, if you will. >> Yes. >> The things that you do best, which is a micro-verticals, suite across the application portfolio, bringing AI to the equation, automation, we heard a lot about robotic process automation, which is probably a hot topic in the government. >> Yes. I mean, Charles famously, he may have had a quote. I'm sure you heard it. It's friends don't let friends build data centers. >> Great quote. >> You know, that's not a business we're in. We're a software company. >> Right. >> So the public sector, obviously a different animal than the private sector. Very different needs, different constituents, you got tax payers, you got all that. When you bring the technology into the public sector, what does that do for it or how does that have to be, I don't know, re-conformed or adapted? And ultimately, what's the payoff, right? What's the return on that investment? >> So it was actually pretty shocking how quickly the government has adopted and moved towards the cloud. Typically, they're laggards. Everything happens in the commercial market and then government's a little bit of a late adopter, right? But we're seeing them very quickly go to the cloud and there's a lot of reasons for that. One being, you have an aging workforce. Okay, so the baby boomers are all retiring so a lot of that intellectual knowledge is going out the door. Two, is there's some economies of scale to be realized by doing that because once you're in the cloud, I mean, it's up to the vendor who's maintaining it to maintain that for you. So, you know, the people behind the scenes, they have to do it. You know, when you upgrade your software to go from one release to the other, it's automatically done for you. I mean, so there's real cost savings to be had, you know, from a care and feeding perspective there as well. Also a lot of the, on the ERP side of the things, a lot of the systems that are out in the marketplace today that governments have bought, like the Oracles or the SAPs, a lot of these systems are at end-of-life and the companies are no longer supporting them. So it's a re-implementation for them. You know, and so now they're looking, okay, if we have to re-implement and we have to look at our new options, we're going to do it in a cloud. >> So when you've been around as long as I have, Kevin, >> Right. >> you've seen the pendulum swing. You don't have to agree so vehemently. (laughing) But from mainframe to client server and so you're back to the cloud, and now with IoT, it seems like the pendulum is swinging back to a distributed environment. So help us understand where IoT fits to the cloud and even your on-prem business. >> Okay, so like I say, cloud is a pretty broad topic, okay? We have multiple applications that would run in that environment. So when I look at IoT, I think of things like our asset management platform. We have a very strong enterprise asset management platform that runs in the cloud or runs on-prem. And if you think about infrastructure as an example, which government has a lot of, okay. Think about the ability to have sensors on different pieces of equipment and being able to read that information. Think about using drone technology, okay, to be able to do physical inspections under bridges, so you're not having people having to climb around underneath there. I mean, so being able to do live feeds of data and be able to streamline the way you do business and have that automatically captured within an application. So yes, that is one area where we see it. I mean, I think you're going to see more and more of robotics and artificial intelligence and all the things come into play. I think you heard a lot about that here and it's here. I mean, they were things we saw in movies before but now the technology's here today. >> Well, the other thing we heard this morning that Charles has always talked a lot about the data. You guys always talked about your data lake. I like to think of it as a data ocean. You think about all the data out of GT Nexus and, you know, your customers that are providing data to inform. The data model starts to really expand and you guys have seemed to really take advantage of that. Talk about the data, the importance of data, the importance of securing data to the government. >> Well, think about that. I mean, there's islands of information that governments have that if they were able to consolidate that data and put some intelligence into it, be able to make business decisions versus, you know, one system sitting over here, one system sitting over here and none of them ever communicating or talking to each other. You know, the ability to, You could do from anything from, just think about crime statistics, okay? The ability to deploy resources where the crime is and then as it moves, be able to further deploy resources. You know, New York, years ago, did things like that with CompStat when they were cleaning up Times Square and so forth. But just think of that as a concept, realtime being able to manage data. >> So you've got, here at the show, we were talking about earlier, 700 and some odd clients, 725. You've got the federal forum for the first time. Why now? And what are you getting out of that or what do you hope to get out of that at the end of the week? >> So the whole executive team and our board of directors have made significant investments in this marketplace because they understand that government is a very large beast, if you will, and there's a lot of opportunity for deployment of our solutions and there's a real need to solve problems for constituents here as well. So they've made very significant investments in things for security like FedRAMP, compliancy. You know, some companies are doing it on some of their solutions. We're doing it across the board on all the products that we take to the government marketplace. So we're invested in it. You've probably heard today, Charles talked about the fact that we're going to have a federal cloud suite, which we are. So that means federal financials, okay? Actually being able to solve all the problems for the federal government and comply to all their needs and all the things that are part of mandated accounting for the federal government. They made all the right investments and human capital management would be another area. If you think about, we've got an application called Talent Science. The ability to hire the right people for the right job and retain those people. Just think about, ICE is a good example. You heard that they have to hire thousands of people to deploy on the borders, right? How do you quickly ramp and hire these right people if you don't have the right tools to do it? >> You were quoted in TIME magazine, Marc Benioff's new publication, about America's crumbling infrastructure. What role do you see technology playing generally and specifically in for software and helping with that problem? >> So we do a lot today around infrastructure. As an example, we have a very strong presence in transit agencies here in the U.S. New York City runs us, amounts to about a trillion dollars worth of assets there. So anything moving in, out or around the city, so subways, buses, trains, tunnels, bridges, Metro-North, Long Island Rail Road. L.A. runs us, San Francisco runs us, Chicago runs us, Dallas runs us and many others. So we're managing all of that infrastructure. So you hear a lot about infrastructure bills coming out of the federal government. And they're right. I mean, a lot of these tunnel, a lot of these bridges and tunnels and even roadways were built back during World War II, right? And they're aged, you know, they are starting to crumble and there's going to be a lot of money spent to do that and when it comes to rebuilding those types of things, there's a lot of assets that are going to need to be managed, you know, to do that. So we think there's a real opportunity for software such as what we bring to the marketplace to help with that process. >> How about talent retention? I mean, obviously, as administrations come and go, you know, people move, but there's been a lot of brain drain. I mean, take the Patent Office, people in commercial industry stealing some of the best and brightest out of government. Can software play a role in helping better retain, train, you know, evolve growth paths and careers? >> Yes. I guess, in a couple different ways. I mean, number one, I think the applications of today versus the applications of yesterday have changed so much. I mean, you look at, you know, the applications you have on your mobile phone. The ability to have that look and feel, I mean, our kids today are going to go into the workforce and they won't settle for anything less. They're going to want to have that look and feel. They're going to want to have those intuitive type of applications that help them do their job. And that's the kind of offering we're bringing to the marketplace. Then from just actually bringing the right people and we have an application called Talent Science, as an example, where actually there's multiple different areas of your personality that it can determine and map it back to your top performers in your company. And determine the right people for the right job where they'll fit into that environment and then they would thrive hopefully. And it should increase retention on the staff. In government, we've actually sold it to Department of Health and Human Services for hiring case workers. Okay? Or to police departments for hiring of law enforcement. So there's a real opportunity to take those types of applications and do some pretty creative things. >> What's, I hate to say, the pain side of it. But dealing with the government obviously contracts is an issue, right? And a challenge sometimes maybe for you. I'm curious, in a quickly evolving space such as yours, how do you help them keep up with you and their regulatory oversight and whatever mandated restrictions they have? All those things, you know, that come with government. It just doesn't square up with what you do. >> It is, it's a very, again, to your point, it's a different, it's a different industry with different requirements. And everything here is very open and above board. It's open procurements. Everything is competitively bid. There are contractual vehicles that you competitively bid for that'll allow you to be able to do business a lot easier in the future. I mean, in the feds you have things like the GSA 70 Schedule. U.K., you have something called the G-Cloud contract. A lot of states have vehicles where you can bid for it, so all states and local can buy off of those contracts without having to go to a competitive offering. So there's ways that the business can get done without having to go through a lot. >> Every hoop and every, yeah, right. >> The major pain process. But then there's also competitive RFPs, which, you know, well, they'll put a bid out, it'll be very detailed. You have to answer 3,000 requirements. And then after that you'll end up going into an orals and a demo process and, you know, nine months later, they're going to pick a winner. (laughs lightly) Then you go through, but then you have to go through a very painful contract negotiation process. >> That's the process I was talking about. (laughing) Exactly what I was talking about, right. >> Right. >> Yeah, yeah. Well, Kevin, thanks for being with us. We appreciate the time. >> It's my pleasure. >> And it sounds impressive, right, with the turnout you had, so I'm sure you're very, very pleased with the response you've had here on the show for so far. >> I am and I thank you for your time and >> You bet. >> have a good show. >> Look forward to seeing you down the road. Alright, sir, thank you. Back with more here live on theCUBE. We're at Inforum '18 and we are in Washington, D.C. >> I'm quite sure they got me pinned up back here, but I can't-- (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: New York City. It's theCUBE. Covering CyberConnect 2017. Brought to you by Centrify, and the Institute For Critical Infrastructure Technology. >> Hey, welcome back everyone. This is theCUBE, live in New York City, in Manhattan. We're here at the Grand Hyatt Ballroom for CyberConnect 2017. Inaugural event presented by Centrify. I'm John Furrier, with my co-host Dave Vellante, both Co-Founders of SiliconANGLE Media. Our next guest is Parham Eftekhari, who's the Co-Founder and Senior Fellow of ICIT. Also part of the team and the lead around putting the content agenda together. These are the guys who put it all together. Really inaugural conference, great success. Turns out, you know we (laughs), we talked about it was going to be big, it was going to be huge. By the numbers, it's just a great beachhead, the right people showed up. Welcome to theCUBE, thanks for joining us. >> Yeah, thank you for having me, excited to be here, good to chat with you again. >> So, we, before the event started, just, you know, a couple months ago when we were talking about the event, we're like, this is, love the name, first event of its kind. Always wondering, you know, will people show up? Right, you know? >> That's right, first-time events, we've talked about this before, there are so many cyber security events out there, and so many organizations competing for a limited time and resources. So, I think to have a, an event like this be such a big success in the first time speaks to the quality of the content, and, you know, Centrify's role and ICIT's role in putting it together. >> I want to give you guys congratulations, to you and your partner, for running a really amazing company and event. You guys go big by thinking small, by being small, being relevant. Your model and how you do business earns trust, it's very community-driven. Same ethos as what we believe in. So, wanted to give you props for that. >> Parham: Thank you. >> It's not usual you see great execution thinking about your audience and constituents, so congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Okay, so, with that, you've got a lot of heavy hitters in your rolodex, you guys got a great community, big names. General's up there, you have big time SiSoS. >> Parham: Yeah. >> What's the vibe? I mean, you guys are dealing with this profile persona all the time. What's on the minds? I mean, obviously the General's banging his fist on the table, virtual table, or he's holding his coffee cup, telling war stories, he's basically saying, if we don't get our act together, industry and government... >> Yeah, well, I think what's happening today, and you know the business of the Institute, we're a research-driven organization, so as an organization that provides objective research, we have the fortunate position to be able to advise to some of these commercial and public sector leaders. And so, in that advisory, we have a really good sense on the pulse of the community. And we're able to hear directly from these individuals, we don't have to look at market research studies, we don't have to look at what some of these third-party groups are talking about. We're able to communicate directly, and we can actually see and feel their feedback to what we're discussing. >> There's no lag to your model, you have your fingers on the pulse. What is it telling you? Obviously, we heard the message here, there's some work to be done, there's some technical core fundamental infrastructure things, there's application-specific things, obviously the threats aren't stopping. >> Parham: That's right. >> What are the, what's-- >> If you look at the program that was built, it really does mirror the way that the Institute believes we need to approach solving these issues. And that comes with a layered security strategy. And so, oftentimes you'll go to these events, and we understand that there's organizations that are looking to make this into more of a marketing opportunity for them. So, unfortunately, the curriculum and content only touches one or two core competencies, which obviously really underscore what the sponsors do. What we've done here at CyberConnect, which is why Centrify's such a great partner, they understand that they may be one of the world's leading identity access management organizations, but they know for us to have a cyber security renaissance and actually make that quantum leap that the General and some of the executives that you were mentioning were discussing all day, we need to have a number of different technologies discussed, and have that education talk about things like the use of machine-learning based artificial intelligence. Talk about how technology can enable automation. Talk about identity access management. Talk about, like we just heard Terry Gravenstein, talk about the importance of building a culture of trust, right? Security has a human element to it, people's one of the biggest problems we have. So, I think this is one of the reasons why this event, to your point earlier, is such a big success only the first year out. >> Parham, we heard a lot today about sort of the partnership, really the imperative, of government and commercial enterprises working together. You do a lot of work in the government. And there seems to be, anyway our impression is, there's a heightened sense of security, for obvious reasons. And, board levels in the commercial side have really tuned in to security. But still, organizations seem to be struggling with what's the right regime. You know, it used to be just an IT problem, or a security team problem, and as you really pointed out many, many times at this event, it's everybody's problem. >> Parham: Yeah. >> So, what are you seeing in terms of, things that commercial enterprises can learn from government, particularly from the top, in the top down initiative. >> Yeah, I think one of the themes you've heard discussed several times today is, and Terry again just talked about us having a seat at the table, I think there's so much media discussion about cyber security. You know, all of our families, our moms, our grandparents, are understanding that cyber security is a major issue. We're even starting to get some more general consensus that cyber security is a national security imperative. And, so I think this is helpful. I think now we have to start to, as cyber security practitioners, we have to speak in the language that resonates with, so, if you're talking to a chief operating officer, and trying to educate them on the impact of ITOT convergence, then you have to speak in the terms that a COO is interested in, versus a CFO, versus your CIO, versus your Board of Directors. So I think language matters, vocabulary matters. And I think it's one of the things that we see, we see starting to percolate up in some of the conversations that we're having. >> Given that humans are the main problem, I mean we all have this assumption, we talk about it in theCUBE all the time, but oh my gosh, internet of things is going to create this huge space of people to attack, a huge attack vector. But if the humans aren't managing the devices, is there potentially an upside there, if that makes sense? >> Yeah, so, you know, I think it all goes back to, tomorrow morning, we'll hear from Dr. Ron Ross and David from Centrify. And they're going to be talking about security by design. In this, Dr. Ross actually put out a paper, 800-160, which really talks about the importance of building better systems, devices, products. So, I think that we are moving towards automation, we're moving towards machine learning, we already see it impacting a lot of our society, and even down to the, to your point, the IoT devices. We just put out a paper about cyborgs and the use of embedded devices in an actual, in humans, trans-humanism. This is all a, this, this ship has, the train has left the station, I guess you could say. I think what's important now is to not make the same mistakes we did the first go around, and pause and not put profits over security and privacy, and actually understand that, if we can't build it with security, certain security requirements there, then we can't get that functionality, or it may not cost the price point that we want it to cost, which may, you know, have it be more affordable for consumers. So I think we have to re-prioritize. >> US companies generally have not taken that pause and put security over profits. It's really been the reverse. And many would say, okay, but it's actually worked out pretty well for US companies, they dominate the technology industry. What do you say to those folks that say, well, profits are actually more important? >> Well, I think, I think it depends, when you say it worked out well, I think if you look at all those individuals that have been impacted by the breaches, I think that's where people are really starting to understand how it's impacting us, and going back to my comment about the national security side, this is no longer just about being able to steal your PII, and maybe doing some fraud in terms of identity theft and what not. When we're talking about meta-data and capitalistic dragnet surveillance, and now if you're looking at who is stealing and curating this information, it could be special interest groups, could be nation states, so now this becomes a much larger issue and a much larger challenge. >> So it's a ticking timebomb, is essentially what you're saying. And so that begs the next question: does really government have to get involved, to begin to impose its will, if you will, on commercial organizations? >> Yeah, I think what's going to happen, and actually we were talking about this at lunch with General Alexander earlier today, it's going to be a balance. You know, the government will be getting involved, they are getting involved, there's a lot of legislation being passed that truly is trying to make a bi-partisan push to address some of these issues. But I think, ultimately, that's going to be, as the General kind of said earlier, it's just going to be the government beating these, these folks virtually on the head until they start to do some self-governance and self-regulation. >> Parham, talk about your relationship with the General, vis-a-vis, this event. I see he had a great keynote, inspiring us, he moved a lot of people, talked about the general common defense versus civil liberties balancing privacy, as you mentioned. What more can you share about some of the things that he sees and feels strongly about, that you guys are seeing in your research in the Institute, because this is interesting, because you got a guy who says, "I'm an Army guy," right, who's now looking through the prism of the future, with past history at the NSA Command Center, Cyber Command Center. >> Yeah. >> He's got a pretty interesting view, and he sees both sides of the coin. >> Yeah. >> You guys are seeing that, people in the tech business are like deer in the headlights. We saw Twitter, Facebook and Alphabet, you know, like (groans). And then the center's trying to grock what Twitter does. >> Parham: Yeah. >> So, I mean, you have this generational gap, you also have historical analog to digital transformation going on. This is a societal impact, this is pretty huge. What does the General truly feel, what's his vision, what's his point of view these days? >> So, I'm not going to speak for the General, I wouldn't dare do that, but I will say that, if you listen to his comments on stage, one of the things he does talk about, and where our relationship is very strong, is the importance of public-private sector collaboration. The General actually received our pinnacle, I'm sorry, was named our pioneer last year at our gala which is actually happening in a couple of days in Washington, DC. And he really, if you listen to his message, he underscores the importance of collaboration, not just within a sector, not just within government, but cross-sector and between public-private sector, and between technology providers and government and legislative community. So, I think one of the things that I am comfortable saying is that, he would encourage more collaboration, and more information sharing, and more trust among the sectors to work together to solve these problems. >> How should people measure success in this business? >> That's a loaded question. I think, I think success needs to be, at this stage, incremental. I think that we need to be realistic in terms of how much quote success can we achieve overnight. We've, as we mentioned earlier, the ship has sailed, and so I think we need to do multiple things simultaneously. We, of course, do need to continue to implement technology and strategies that detect and respond to threats. But I personally would say that the true success is going to really be accomplished when we start to deploy strategies and re-prioritize so we're actually building more secure systems, more secure devices. I think that's going to be... Needs to go hand-in-hand, and we'll hear a lot about that tomorrow with Dr. Ross. >> Would that imply that, either, you know, the rate of growth of breaches starts to moderate, or the amount of data or loss, revenue dollars lost, begins to, you know, slow down its growth rate or-- >> Yeah, at some point that's absolutely going to be the goal, I think that-- >> Is that a reality though, I mean given that everything is growing so fast in our business? >> Oh, yeah, I'm an eternal optimist. I think absolutely, we'll get there. I can't tell you the timeframe, but I do know that venues like this, and the work that ICIT is doing, is really important to getting us to that point. Until we get folks in the media and on Capitol Hill and in federal agencies talking about these issues, so then it's not just the security folks who are focused on this, but a broader group. >> Yeah, and I think that's the opportunity, and as we wrap up day one here, education and content value is what we're seeing. You guys see that all the time, I know I'm preaching to the choir. But again, looking at mainstream media and some of the techniques that the Russians and other states have used to implement means and the election conversations, it's being gamified, we know that. So, the media picks up on it because there's identity politics going on. So, I think there needs to be a wake-up call, I mean, I think the educational process is critical. >> Yeah. >> What's next? >> And, and, and that's where, you know, we feel very fortunate to be in the position that we're in, because ICIT is a neutral, third-party, non-profit, and non-partisan research organization. So what we're doing is putting out content. We're not, we're not, the... I should say it this way, the information comes out-- >> You've no agenda in terms of how to capture? >> Yeah, exactly. >> It's all transparent. >> Our, our, our agenda is national security. Our agenda is improving the security of our nation's critical infrastructure sectors, improving resiliency. And providing trusted advisory to these various stakeholders. >> Well, getting the people here on theCUBE, and having you guys come on, and doing this great event really get, opens up the door for more voices to be heard. >> Parham: Absolutely. >> And we heard from your partner, had some great things to say. This has got to get out there, so the people, the press can report on it-- >> Parham: That's right. We'll turn on the cameras. >> Parham: Yeah. >> Dave, what's your take on the event here? Obviously, as an inaugural event, what's your analysis? >> Well, I mean, we touched on some big topics, right? I mean, the General, in particular, was talking about collaboration with the FBI, you know, Sony came in. >> John: The role of government. >> Privacy, ACLU, Jeffrey Stone. I think, you know, my big takeaway, as we were just discussing, was... And the General said that Sony, for example, he gave that example, can't do it alone. And I, we've been saying this for a while. And John, you predicted this, you said a while back that, that the government's processes, technologies, know-how, is going to seep into commercial businesses. As it has so often. I mean, you look at, you know, space launch, you know, radar, nuclear energy, the internet, et cetera. And I think security, cyber security, is such a big problem, only the government can help solve this problem. >> Well, the government's always been dealing with the moving train, and the corporations and the enterprise have traditionally been buying shrink-wrapped software loaded on a server that's evolved to buying more servers that have been pre-integrated with software. And buying silver bullet solutions, and then leave it alone until something breaks, and then fixes it. And I think, you know, when we were talking and looking at this event, my takeaway here is, the moving train is never going to stop, and the shifting of the game is going to be a cat-and-mouse, good versus bad, new technology versus reality. Open source certainly accelerated the role of the public domain. Treasure troves of information are being amassed, whether it's WikiLeaks or in the open source. This is a problem, and then there's no real, like, real creative solutions. I am not seeing anything. So, to me, this event takeaway is that, this is the first time a step has been taken to saying, whoa, holistic big picture. What is the architecture of a global society, where nation states can compete with no borders. >> Yeah. >> In a digital, virtual space, be effective, have freedom, and then respect for the individual. I mean, no one's ever had that conversation. >> Yeah, well we're excited to have it. We've gotten really great feedback from just some of the conversations that we're hearing in the hallway, as people are taking, learning actionable intelligence, where I can actually take this and instill it. I think a lot of people are actually being inspired, and that's something we need, especially in an industry where every day is about how, you know, cyber security folks don't get in the news when nothing happens. There's a commercial, I think it's an IBM commercial, right, where it's, my, my, nothing happened at work for my dad today, right? That never happens, it's always about what does go wrong, so I think we need to be inspired and motivate ourselves. >> Well, one of the things that we're excited about, as you know, we're community-model like you guys are. You look at some of the early indicators of how blockchain, and even though it's kind of crazy, you know, bubbly with the ICOs and cryptocurrency and overall blockchain, it all comes down to the common thread. We see an open source software over multiple generations, we're seeing it in blockchain, we're seeing it in security. Community matters. And I think the role of individuals and communities will be a big part of the change, as a new generation comes up. Really fundamental, so congratulations. >> Parham: Absolutely, thank you. >> Okay, Parham here's inside theCUBE for our wrap-up of day one of CyberConnect 2017. I'm John, with Dave Vellante. Thanks for watching. (synthesizer music)

(hip-hop music) (electronic music) >> Announcer: Live from Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering IBM Chief Data Officer Strategy Summit Spring 2017. Brought to you by IBM. (crowd) >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Fricke here with Peter Burris. We're wrapping up a very full day here at the IBM Chief Data Officer Strategy Summit Spring 2017, Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco. An all-day affair, really an intimate affair, 170 people, but Chief Data Officers with their peers, sharing information, getting good information from IBM. And it's an interesting event. They're doing a lot of them around the country, and eventually around the world. And we're excited to have kind of the power behind the whole thing. (laughing) Caitlin Lepech, she's the one who's driving the train. Don't believe the guys in the front. She's the one behind the curtain that's pulling all the levers. So we wanted to wrap the day. It's been a really good day, some fantastic conversations, great practitioners. >> Right. >> Want to get your impression of the day? Right, it's been great. The thing I love about this event the most is this is all client-led discussion, client-led conversation. And we're quite fortunate in that we get a lot leading CDOs to come join us. I've seen quite a number this time. We tried something new. We expanded to this 170 attendees, by far the largest group that we've ever had, so we ran these four breakout session tracks. And I am hearing some good feedback about some of the discussions. So I think it's been a good and full day (laughing). >> Yes, it has been. Any surprises? Anything that kind of jumped out to you that you didn't expect? >> Yeah, a couple of things. So we structure these breakout sessions... Pointed feedback from last session was, Hey, we want the opportunity to network with peers, share use cases, learn from each other, so I've got my notes here, and that we did a function builder. So these are all our CDOs that are starting to build the CDO office. They're new in the journey, right. We've got our data integrators, so they're really our data management, data wranglers, the business optimizers, thinking about how do I make sure I've got the impact throughout the business, and then market innovators. And one of the surprises is how many people are doing really innovative things, and they don't realize it. They tell me-- >> Jeff: Oh, really. >> Ahhh, I'm just in the early stages of setting up the office. I don't have the good use cases to share. And they absolutely do! They absolutely do! So that's always the surprise, is how many are actually quite more innovative than I think they give themselves credit. >> Well, that was a pretty consistent theme that came out today, is that you can't do all the foundational work, and then wait to get that finished before you start actually innovating delivering value. >> If you want to be successful. >> (laughing) Right, and keep your job (laughing) If you're one of the 41%. So you have to be parallel tracking, that first process'll never finish, but you've got to find some short-term wins that you can execute on right away. >> And that was one of our major objectives and sort of convening this event, and continuing to invest in the CDO community, is how do I improve the failure rate? We all agree, growth in the role, okay. But over half are going to fail. >> Right. >> And we start to see some of these folks now that they're four, six years in having some challenges. And so, what we're trying to do is reduce that failure rate. >> Jeff: Yeah, hopefully they-- >> But still four to six years in is still not a bad start. >> Caitlin: Yeah, yeah. >> There's most functions that fail quick... That fail tend to fail pretty quickly. >> Yeah. >> So one of the things that I was struck by, and I want to get your feedback on this, is that 170 people, sounds like a lot. >> Caitlin: Yeah, yeah. >> But it's not so much if there is a unity of purpose. >> Caitlin: Correct, correct! >> If there's pretty clear understanding of what it is they do and how they do it, and I think the CDO's role is still evolving very rapidly. So everybody's coming at this from a different perspective. And you mentioned the four tracks. But they seem to be honing in on the same end-state. >> Absolutely. >> So talk about what you think that end-state is. Where is the CDO in five years? >> Absolutely, so I did some live polling, as we kicked off the morning, and asked a couple of questions along those lines. Where do folks report? I think we mentioned this-- >> Right. >> When we kicked off. >> Right. >> A third to the CEO, a third to CIO, and a third to a CXO-type role, functional role. And reflected in the room was about that split. I saw about a third, third, third. And, yet, regardless of where in the organization, it's how do we get data governance, right? How do we get data management, right? And then there's this, I think, reflection around, okay, machine learning, deep learning, some of these new opportunities, new technologies. What sort of skills do we need to deliver? I had an interesting conversation with a CDO that said, We make a call across the board. We're not investing to build these technical skills in-house because we know in two years the guys I had doing Python and all that stuff, it's on to the next thing. And now I've got to get machine learning, deep learning, two years I need to move to the next. So it's more identifying technologies in partnership bringing those and bringing us through, and driving the business results. >> And we heard also very frequently the role the politics played. >> Caitlin: Oh, absolutely. >> And, in fact, Fow-wad Boot from-- >> Kaiser. >> Kaiser Permanente, yeah. >> Specifically talked about this... He's looking in the stewards that he's hiring in his function. He's looking for people that have learned the fine art of influencing others. >> And I think it's a stretch for a lot of these folks. Another poll we did is, who comes from an engineering, technical background. A lot of hands in the room. And we're seeing more and more come from line of business, and more and more emphasize the relationship component of it, relationship skills, which is I think is very interesting. We also see a high number of women in CDO roles, as compared to other C-suite roles. And I like to think, perhaps, it has to do-- >> Jeff: Right, right. >> With the relationship component of it as well because it is... >> Jeff: Yeah, well-- >> Peter: That's interesting. I'm not going to touch it, but it's interesting (laughing). >> Well, no, we were-- >> (laughing) I threw it out there. >> We were at the Stanford-- >> No, no, we-- >> Women in Data Science event, which is a phenomenal event. We've covered it for a couple years, and Jayna George from Western Digital, phenomenal, super smart lady, so it is an opportunity, and I don't think it's got so much of the legacy stuff that maybe some of the other things had that people can jump in. Diane Green kicked it off-- >> Yeah. >> So I think there is a lot of examples women doing their own thing in data science. >> Yeah, I agree, and I'll give you another context. In another CUBE, another event, I actually raised that issue, relationships, because men walk into a room, they get very competitive very quickly, who's the smartest guy in the room. And on what days is blah, blah, blah. And we're talking about the need to forge relationships that facilitate influence. >> Absolutely. >> And sharing of insight and sharing of knowledge. And it was a woman guest, and she... And I said, Do you see that women are better at this than others? And she looked at me, she said, Well, that's sexist. (laughing). And it was! I guess it kind of was. >> Right, right. >> But do you... You're saying that it's a place where, perhaps, women can actually take a step into senior roles in a technology-oriented space. >> Yeah. >> And have enormous success because of some of the things that they bring to the table. >> Yeah, one quote stuck with me is, when someone comes in with great experience, really smart, Are they here to hurt me or help me? And the trust component of it and building the trust, And I think there is one event we do here, the second day of all of our CDO summits, so women in breakfast, the data divas' breakfast. And we explore some opportunities for women leaders, and it was well-attended by men and women. And I think there really is when you're establishing a data strategy for your entire organization, and you need lines of business to contribute money and funding and resources, and sign off, there is I feel sometimes like we're on the Hill. I'm back in D.C., working on Capitol Hill (laughing), and we're shopping around to deliver, so absolutely. Another tying back to what you mentioned about something that was surprising today, we started building out this trust as a service idea. And a couple people on panels mentioned thinking about the value of trust and how you instill trust. I'm hearing more and more about that, so that was interesting. >> We actually brought that up. >> Caitlin: Oh, did you! >> Yeah, we actually brought it up here in theCUBE. And it was specifically and I made an observation that when you start thinking about Watson and you start thinking about potentially-competitive offerings at some point in time they're going to offer alternative opinions-- >> Absolutely. >> And find ways to learn to offer their opinions better than their's just for competitive purposes. >> Absolutely. >> And so, this notion of trust becomes essential to the brand. >> Absolutely. >> My system is working in your best interest. >> Absolutely. >> Not my best interest. And that's not something that people have spent a lot of time thinking about. >> Exactly, and what it means when we say, when we work with clients and say, It's your data, your insight. So we certainly tap that information-- >> Sure. >> And that data to train Watson, but it's not... We don't to keep that, right. It's back to you, but how do you design that engagement model to fulfill the privacy concerns, the ethical use of data, establish that trust. >> Right. >> I think it's something we're just starting to really dig into. >> But also if you think about something like... I don't know if you ever heard of this, but this notion of principal agent theory. >> Umm-hmm. >> Where the principal being the owner, in typical-- >> Right. >> Economic terms. The agent being the manager that's working on behalf of the owner. >> Right. >> And how do their agendas align or misalign. >> Right. >> The same thing is just here. We're not talking about systems that have... Are able to undertake very, very complex problems. >> Right. >> Sometimes will do so, and people will sit back and say, I'm not sure how it actually worked. >> Yeah. >> So they have to be a good agent for the business. >> Absolutely, absolutely, definitely. >> And this notion of trust is essential to that. >> Absolutely, and it's both... It originated internally, right, trying to trust the answers you're getting-- >> Sure! >> On a client. Who's our largest... Where's our largest client opportunity, you get multiple answers, so it's kind of trusting the voracity of the data, but now it's also a competitive differentiator. As a brand you can offer that to your client. >> Right, the other big thing that came up is you guys doing it internally, and trying to drive your own internal transformation at IBM, which is interesting in of itself, but more interesting is the fact that (laughing) you actually want to publish what you're doing and how you did it-- >> Yeah. >> As a road map. I think you guys are calling it the Blueprint-- >> Yes. >> For your customers. And talk about publishing that actually in October, so I wonder if you can share a little bit more color around what exactly is this Blueprint-- >> Sure. >> How's it's going to be exposed? >> What should people look forward to? >> Sure, I'm very fortunate in that Inderpal Bhandari when he came on board as IBM's First Chief Data Officer, said, I want to be completely transparent with clients on what we're doing. And it started with the data strategy, here's how we arrived at the data strategy, here's how we're setting up our organization internally, here's how we're prioritizing selecting use cases, so client prefixes is important to us, here's why. Down at every level we've been very transparent about what we're doing internally. Here's the skill sets I'm bringing on board and why. One thing we've talked a lot about is the Business Unit Data Officer, so having someone that sits in the business unit responsible for requirements from the unit, but also ensuring that there's some level of consistency at the enterprise level. >> Right. >> So, we've had some Business Unit Data Officers that we've plucked (laughing) from other organizations that have come and joined IBM last year, which is great. And so, what we wanted to do is follow that up with an actual Blueprint, so I own the Blueprint for Inderpal, and what we want to do is deliver it along three components, so one, the technology component, what technology can you leverage. Two, the business processes both the CDO processes and the enterprise, like HR, finance, supply chain, procurement, et cetera. And then finally the organizational considerations, so what sort of strategy, culture, what talent do you need to recruit, how do you retain your existing workforce to meet some of these new technology needs. And then all the sort of relationship piece we were talking about earlier, the culture changes required. >> Right. >> How do you go out and solicit that buy-in. And so, our intent is to come back around in October and deliver that Blueprint in a way that can be implemented within organization. And, oh, one thing we were saying is the homework assignment from this event (laughing), we're going to send out the template. >> Right. And our version of it, and be very transparent, here's how we're doing it internally. And inviting clients to come back to say-- >> Right. >> You need to dig in deeper here, this part's relevant to me, along the information governance, the master data management, et cetera. And then hopefully come back in October and deliver something that's really of value and usable for our clients across the industry. >> So for folks who didn't make it today, too bad for them. >> Exactly, we missed them, (laughing) but... >> So what's the next summit? Where's it's going to be, how do people get involved? Give us a kind of a plug for the other people that wished they were here, but weren't able to make it today. >> Sure, so we will come back around in the fall, September, October timeframe, in Boston, and do our east coast version of this summit. So I hope to see you guys there. >> Jeff: Sure, we'll be there. >> It should be a lot of fun. And at that point we'll deliver the Blueprint, and I think that will be a fantastic event. We committed to 170 data executives here, which fortunately we were able to get to that point, and are targeting a little over 200 for the fall, so looking to, again, expand, continue to expand and invite folks to join us. >> Be careful, you're going to be interconnected before you know. >> (laughing) No, no, no, I want it small! >> (laughing) Okay. >> And then also as I mentioned earlier, we're starting to see more industry-specific financial services, government. We have a government CDO summit coming up, June six, seven, in Washington D.C. So I think that'll be another great event. And then we're starting to see outside of the U.S., outside of North America, more of the GO summits as well, so... >> Very exciting times. Well, thanks for inviting us along. >> Sure, it's been a great day! It's been a lot of fun. Thank you so much! >> (laughing) Alright, thank you, Caitlin. I'm Jeff Fricke with Peter Burris. You're watching theCUBE. We've been here all day at the IBM Chief Data Officer Strategy Summit, that's right the Spring version, 2017, in Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (electronic music) (upbeat music)