>>You want us to >>Look at that camera? Okay. We're back in Boston, everybody. This is Dave ante for the cube, the leader in enterprise tech coverage. This is reinforce 2022 AWS's big security conference. We're here in Boston, the convention center where the cube started in 2010. Highend song is here. She's head of security and distributed cloud services at F five. And she's joined by Dan woods. Who's the global head of intelligence at F five. Great to see you again. Thanks for coming in the cube, Dan, first time I believe. Yeah. Happy to be here. All right. Good to see you guys. How's the, how's the event going for? Y'all >>It's been just fascinating to see all those, uh, new players coming in and taking security in a very holistic way. Uh, very encouraged. >>Yeah. Boston in, in July is, is good. A lot of, a lot of action to Seaport. When I was a kid, there was nothing here, couple mob restaurants and that's about it. And, uh, now it's just like a booming, >>I'm just happy to see people in, in person. Finally, is >>This your first event since? Uh, maybe my second or third. Third. Okay, >>Great. Since everything opened up and I tell you, I am done with >>Zoom. Yeah. I mean, it's very clear. People want to get back face to face. It's a whole different dynamic. I think, you know, the digital piece will continue as a compliment, but nothing beats belly to belly, as I like absolutely say. All right. Hi on let's start with you. So you guys do a, uh, security report every year. I think this is your eighth year, the app security report. Yeah. Um, I think you, you noted in this report, the growing complexity of apps and integrations, what did you, what are, what were your big takeaways this year? >>And so, like you said, this is our eighth year and we interview and talk to about 1500 of like companies and it decision makers. One of the things that's so prevalent coming out of the survey is complexity that they have to deal with, continue to increase. It's still one of the biggest headaches for all the security professionals and it professionals. And that's explainable in a way, if you look at how much digital transformation has happened in the last two years, right? It's an explosion of apps and APIs. That's powering all our digital way of working, uh, in the last two years. So it's certainly natural to, to see the complexity has doubled and tripled and, and we need to do something about it. >>And the number of tools keeps growing. The number of players keeps growing. I mean, so many really interesting, you know, they're really not startups anymore, but well funded new entrance into the marketplace. Were there any big surprises to you? You know, you're a security practitioner, you know, this space really well, anything jump out like, whoa, that surprised >>Me. Yeah. It's been an interesting discussion when we look at the results, right. You know, some of us would say, gosh, this is such a big surprise. How come people still, you know, willing to turn off security for the benefits of performance. And, and, and as a security professional, I will reflect on that. I said, it's a surprise, or is it just a mandate for all of us in security, we got to do better. And because security shouldn't be the one that prevents or add friction to what the business wants to do, right? So it's a surprise because we, how can, after all the breaches and, and then security incidents, people are still, you know, the three quarters of the, uh, interviewees said, well, you know, if we were given a choice, we'll turn off security for performance. And I think that's a call to action for all of us in security. How do we make security done in a way that's frictionless? And they don't have to worry about it. They don't have to do a trade off. And I think that's one of the things, you know, Dan in working our entire anti automation, uh, solution one is to PR protect. And the other thing is to enable. >>Yeah. You think about Dan, the, I always say the, the adversary is extremely capable. The ROI of cyber tech just keeps getting better and better. And your jobs really is to, to, to lower the ROI, right. It decrease the value, increase the cost, but you're, I mean, fishing continues to be prevalent. You're seeing relatively new technique island hopping, self forming malware. I mean, it's just mind boggling, but, but how are you seeing, you know, the attack change? You know, what what's the adversary do differently over the last, you know, several years maybe pre and post pandemic, we've got a different attack service. What are you seeing? >>Well, we're seeing a lot higher volume attacks, a lot higher volume and velocity. Mm-hmm, <affirmative> it isn't uncommon at all for us to go in line and deploy our client side signals and see, uh, the upper 90%, um, is automated, unwanted automation hitting the application. Uh, so the fact that the security teams continue to underestimate the size of the problem. That is something I see. Every time we go in into an enterprise that they underestimate the size of the problem, largely because they're relying on, on capabilities like caps, or maybe they're relying on two of a and while two of a is a very important role in security. It doesn't stop automated attacks and cap certainly doesn't stop automated >>Tax. So, okay. So you said 90% now, as high as 90% are, are automated up from where maybe dial back to give us a, a marker as to where it used to be. >>Well, less than 1% is typically what all of our customers across the F five network enjoy less than 1% of all traffick hitting origin is unwanted, but when we first go online, it is upper 90, we've seen 99% of all traffic being unwanted >>Automation. But Dan, if I dial back to say 2015, was it at that? Was it that high? That, that was automated >>Back then? Or, you know, I, I don't know if it was that high then cuz stuffing was just, you know, starting to kind take off. Right? No. Right. Um, but as pre stuffing became better and better known among the criminal elements, that's when it really took off explain the pays you're right. Crime pays >>Now. Yeah. It's unfortunate, but it's true. Yeah. Explain the capture thing. Cause sometimes as a user, like it's impossible to do the capture, you know, it's like a twister. Yeah. >>I >>Got that one wrong it's and I presume it's because capture can be solved by, by bots. >>Well, actually the bots use an API into a human click farming. So they're humans to sit around, solving captures all day long. I actually became a human capture solver for a short time just to see what the experience was like. And they put me to the training, teaching me how to solve, captures more effectively, which was fascinating, cuz I needed that training frankly. And then they tested to make sure I solve caps quickly enough. And then I had solved maybe 30 or 40 caps and I hadn't earned one penny us yet. So this is how bots are getting around caps. They just have human solve them. >>Oh, okay. Now we hear a lot at this event, you gotta turn on multifactor authentication and obviously you don't want to use just SMS based MFA, but Dan you're saying not good enough. Why explain >>That? Well, most implementations of two a is, you know, you enter in username and password and if you enter in the correct username and password, you get a text message and you enter in the code. Um, if you enter in the incorrect username and password, you're not sent to code. So the, the purpose of a credential stocking attack is to verify whether the credentials are correct. That's the purpose. And so if it's a two, a protected log in, I've done that. Admittedly, I haven't taken over the account yet, but now that I have a list of known good credentials, I could partner with somebody on the dark web who specializes in defeating two, a through social engineering or port outs or SIM swaps S so seven compromises insiders at telcos, lots of different ways to get at the, uh, two, a text message. >>So, wow, <laugh>, this is really interesting, scary discussion. So what's the answer to, to that problem. How, how have five approach >>It highend touched on it. We, we want to improve security without introducing a lot of friction. And the solution is collecting client side signals. You interrogate the users, interactions, the browser, the device, the network, the environment, and you find things that are unique that can't be spoof like how it does floating point math or how it renders emojis. Uh, this way you're able to increase security without imposing friction on, on the customer. And honestly, if I have to ever have to solve another capture again, I, I, I just, my blood is boiling over capture. I wish everyone would rip it out >>As a user. I, I second that request I had, um, technology got us into this problem. Can technology help us get out of the problem? >>It has to. Um, I, I think, uh, when you think about the world that is powering all the digital experiences and there's two things that comes to mind that apps and APIs are at the center of them. And in order to solve the problem, we need to really zero in where, you know, the epic center of the, the, uh, attack can be and, and had the max amount of impact. Right? So that's part of the reason from a F five perspective, we think of application and API security together with the multitier the defense with, you know, DDoS to bots, to the simple boss, to the most sophisticated ones. And it has to be a continuum. You don't just say, Hey, I'm gonna solve this problem in this silo. You have to really think about app and APIs. Think about the infrastructure, think about, you know, we're here at AWS and cloud native solutions and API services is all over. You. Can't just say, I only worry about one cloud. You cannot say, I only worry about VMs. You really need to think of the entire app stack. And that's part of the reason when we build our portfolio, there is web application firewall, there's API security there's bot solution. And we added, you know, application infrastructure protection coming from our acquisition for threat stack. They're actually based in Boston. Uh, so it's, it's really important to think holistically of telemetry visibility, so you can make better decisions for detection response. >>So leads me to a number of questions first. The first I wanna stay within the AWS silo for a minute. Yeah. Yeah. What do you, what's the relationship with AWS? How will you, uh, integrating, uh, partnering with AWS? Let's start there. >>Yeah, so we work with AWS really closely. Uh, a lot of our solutions actually runs on the AWS platform, uh, for part of our shape services. It's it's, uh, using AWS capabilities and thread stack is purely running on AWS. We just, uh, actually had integration, maybe I'm pre announcing something, uh, with, uh, the cloud front, with our bot solutions. So we can be adding another layer of protection for customers who are using cloud front as the w on AWS. >>Okay. So, um, you integrate, you worry about a APIs, AWS APIs and primitives, but you have business on prem, you have business, other cloud providers. How do you simplify those disparities for your customers? Do you kind of abstract all that complexity away what's F fives philosophy with regard then and creating that continuous experience across the states irrespective of physical >>Location? Yeah, I think you're spot on in terms of, we have to abstract the complexity away. The technology complexity is not gonna go away because there's always gonna be new things coming in the world become more disaggregated and they're gonna be best of brain solutions coming out. And I think it's our job to say, how do we think about policies for web application? And, you know, you're, on-prem, you're in AWS, you're in another cloud, you're in your private data center and we can certainly abstract out the policies, the rules, and to make sure it's easier for a customer to say, I want this particular use case and they push a button. It goes to all the properties, whether it's their own edge or their own data center, and whether it's using AWS, you know, cloud front as you using or web. So that is part of our adapt. Uh, we call it adaptive application. Vision is to think delivery, think security, think optimizing the entire experience together using data. You know, I come from, uh, a company that was very much around data can power so many things. And we believe in that too. >>We use a, we use a term called super cloud, which, which implies a layer that floats above the hyperscale infrastructure hides the underlying complexity of the primitives adds value on top and creates a continuous experience across clouds, maybe out to the edge even someday on prem. Is that, does that sound like, it sounds like that's your strategy and approach and you know, where are you today? And that is that, is that technically feasible today? Is it, is it a journey? Maybe you could describe >>That. Yeah. So, uh, in my title, right, you talked about a security and distribute cloud services and the distribute cloud services came from a really important acquisition. We did last year and it's about, uh, is called Wil Tara. What they brought to F five is the ability not only having lot of the SAS capabilities and delivery capabilities was a very strong infrastructure. They also kept have capability like multi-cloud networking and, you know, people can really just take our solution and say, I don't have to go learn about all the, like I think using super cloud. Yeah, yeah. Is exactly that concept is we'll do all the hard work behind the scenes. You just need to decide what application, what user experience and we'll take care of the rest. So that solutions already in the market. And of course, there's always more things we can do collect more telemetry and integrate with more solutions. So there's more insertion point and customer can have their own choice of whatever other security solution they want to put on top of that. But we already provide, you know, the entire service around web application and API services and bot solution is a big piece of that. >>So I could look at analytics across those clouds and on-prem, and actually you don't have to go to four different stove pipes to find them, is that >>Right? Yeah. And I think you'd be surprised on what you would see. Like you, you know, typically you're gonna see large amounts of unwanted automation hitting your applications. Um, it's, I, I think the reason so many security teams are, are underestimating. The size of the problem is because these attacks are coming from tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of IP addresses. So, you know, for years, security teams have been blocking by IP and it's forced the attackers to become highly, highly distributed. So the security teams will typically identify the attack coming from the top hundred or 1500 noisiest IPS, but they missed the long tail of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of IPS that are only used one or two times, because, you know, over time we forced the attackers to do this. >>They're scaling. >>Yeah, they are. And, and they're coming from residential IPS now, uh, not just hosting IPS, they're coming from everywhere. >>And, and wow. I mean, I, we know that the pandemic changed the way that organization, they had to think more about network security, rethinking network security, obviously end point cloud security. But it sounds like the attackers as well, not only did they exploit that exposure, but yeah, yeah. They were working from home and then <laugh> >>The human flick farms. They're now distributor. They're all working from home. >>Now we could take advantage >>Of that when I was solving captures, you could do it on your cell phone just by walking around, solving, captures for money. >>Wow. Scary world. But we live in, thank you for helping making it a little bit safer, guys. Really appreciate you coming on the queue. >>We'll continue to work on that. And our motto is bring a better digital world to life. That's what we can set out >>To do. I love it. All right. Great. Having you guys. Thank you. And thank you for watching. Keep it right there. This is Dave ante from reinforce 2022. You're watching the cube right back after this short break.

>> Narrator: TheCUBE presents HPE Discover 2022. Brought to you by HPE. >> Welcome back to Las Vegas. Lisa Martin and Dave Vellante here bringing you day one of theCUBE's coverage of HPE Discover 22. We've had a lot of great conversations so far. Just a few hours in. We have two of our alumni back with us. Powerhouses, two powerhouses from Nutanix. Two for the price of one. Mandy Dhaliwal joins us. The CMO of 90 days at Nutanix. It's great to see you. Congratulations on the gig. >> Thanks Lisa. It's great to be here and great to be at Nutanix. >> Isn't it? And Tarkan Maner, the Chief Commercial Officer at Nutanix. Welcome back Tarkan. >> Great to see you guys. >> So this is only day one of the the main show Tarkan. We've been hearing a lot about cloud as an operating model. We've heard your CEO Rajiv talking about it. Break that down from Nutanix's point of view. >> Yeah, look at the end, the tech conference we are talking a lot technology but at the end it is all about outcomes. I saw Keith was here earlier, you know, GreenLake's story. We were on a session earlier. Everything is about business outcomes for the customers. And obviously our partner Ecosystems, NBC all these double technologies come together and become an open model. And our customers are moving from a CAPEX model, old school model, what I call dinosaur model, into an OPEX model, subscription model. Which Nutanix basically the category creator for this, in a hybrid multi-cloud fashion. One platform, one experience, any app, any user, anytime, and make it count. Let the customers focus on business outcomes. Let us deal with infrastructure for you. >> What are some of the key outcomes that you're seeing customers achieve? We've seen so much change in the last couple of years. >> Tarkan: Right. >> A lot of acceleration. >> Tarkan: Right. >> Every company has to be a data company today to compete. >> Right. >> What are some of the outcomes that you're really proud of? >> So look, at the end of the, day's it's all about digital transformation and it's a big loaded word. But at the end of the day every company is trying to get digitized. And hybrid multicloud is the only way to get there in a cost effective way. So that cost is a big story. Highly secure. Manageable, available, reliable, total cost ownership definitely depressed and take the complexity out. Let us deal with the infrastructure for you. You focus on your time to market, and the best applications for the best users. >> So Mandy, I remember, you know you talked about your category creator Tarkan, and I remember Stu Miniman and I, were in the Wikibon offices. We were just getting started and he said, "Dave you got to come in here." And Dhiraj was on the phone. They were describing this new category and I was blown away. I'm like, wow, that's like the cloud but you know, for on-prem. So what does the, what does the cloud operating model mean to Nutanix Mandy? >> Really, what we're trying to do is become this common cloud platform across Core, Edge and Cloud. We're known for our strength in HCI on premise. We have capability across. So it's really important for us to share this story with the market. Now, also one of the reasons I joined. You know this story needs to be told in a bigger fashion. So I'm here to really help evolve this category. We've won HCI, right? What's next? So stay tuned. >> So we call that super cloud. I call it. >> Yes, I love that name. >> So it, but it needs has meaning, right? >> Right. >> It's a new layer. It's not just, oh, I run on Azure. I run an Aw or running green. >> Mandy: Right. >> It's actually a common infrastructure. >> Yes. >> Common experience across maybe and even out to the edge. >> Mandy: Right. >> Right. So is, is that, do you guys see that or do you think this is just a little buzzword that Dave made up? >> No, I think it has legs. And I think at the core of it, it's simplicity and elegance. And if you look, and, and again, I'm drinking the the champagne, right? We have that we architected for that. We've solved that problem. So we now can extend it to become ubiquitous in the market. So it's, it's an amazing place to be because we've got the the scale, frankly, and the breadth now of the technology platform to be able to go deliver that super cloud. >> And you have to do the work, right? You, you, you have to hide all the complexity- >> Mandy: Yeah. >> Of whether it's AWS, Azure, Google, GreenLake wherever you go on prem. >> Mandy: Right. >> And not only that, as you know Dave, many people think about cloud, they automatically think about public cloud. AWS, Azure, or Google. Guess what? We have customers. Some of the workloads and apps running on a local country. If you're in Singapore, on Singtel, and your, if you're in Switzerland on Swisscom, if you're in Japan on NTT, guess what? Our cloud runs also on those clouds. For those customers who want the data, gravity, local issues with the security and privacy laws in the local country then all this SI you have HCI, Emphasis VIDPro, Accenture, CAPS, JAM, and ITCS. They have also cloud services. What we build as Mandy said as the creator, make the platform run anywhere. So the customers can move data, apps, workloads from cloud to cloud. From private to public and within public, from public to public. From AWS to Singtel. From Singtel to Swisscom to Azure, doesn't matter. We want to make sure one platform one experience, any app, any user. >> And at least a lot of those guys are building on OpenStack. We don't talk about OpenStack anymore. But a lot of the local telcos they actually it's alive and well and actually growing. >> So you, you make it sound simple. So I got to ask you as the chief marketing officer how do you message that simplicity and actually make it tangible for customers? >> That's a great question. It's really about the customer story, right? How do we share that we're able to take something that took months to deploy and have it done in in days, minutes, right? So there's a lot of those kinds of stories that you'll see across the platform coming. We're getting a lot more messaging around that. We're also tightening up the message to be more easily conveyed. So that's a lot of the stuff that I'm working on right now and really super excited. You know, we've got leading retailers, financial services institutions, public sector agencies that are running on our platform. So we've got this amazing cadre of customers and their stories just need to be told. >> That voice of the customer is so powerful. >> Mandy: Yep. >> As you well know Tarkan. That's, that's the objective voice right? That is ideally articulating your value proposition. >> Yeah. >> Validating that helping other customers understand this, these are the outcomes we are achieving. >> Mandy: Right? >> You can do the same. >> Mandy: Right. >> And, and different personas. >> Mandy: Right. >> It's not one customer fits all right. You heard Home Depot, Daniel with Antonio on the keynote. The stores, the distribution center, the warehousing and their service department, their mobile app all that data has to move from place to place. And we want to make sure it's cost effective. It's secure. And not only for the system, people like Daniel but also for application developers. Dave, you talked about, you know, Open Source, OpenStack, a lot of new application development is all open source. >> Mandy: Yep. >> And we need to also gear toward them and give them a platform, a hybrid multicloud platform. So they can build applications and then run applications and manage lifecycle applications anywhere in simple ways securely. So this platform is not only for running applications but also build a new set of digital transformation driven applications. >> So what are you doing with GreenLake especially in that context, right? 'Cause that's what we're looking for. Is like are people going to build applications on top. Maybe it's the incumbents. It might not be startups, but what what are you doing there? >> Right. So look, I'll give you the highlights on this. I know you talked to Keith again we had the session earlier. We have about 2000 plus customers. Customers are moving from a CapEx model to an OPEX model. They like the subscription side of the business and basically our strategy and many is leading this globally making cloud on your terms. So you have the control, you move from CapEx to OPEX and we bring the data in cloud to you. So you can manage the data securely, privately build your applications, and then they're ready. You can move applications based on microservices capabilities we deliver to different cloud as, as you wish. >> So then what are you hearing from customers? What are they most excited about right now given the massive potential that you're about to unleash? >> It it's really about best in class, right? So you get these these amazing technologies to come together. We abstract the complexity away for the customer. So HP GreenLake brings economic benefit. Nutanix brings experience. So you couple those two. And all of a sudden they've got time to value. Like they've never had before. Add on top of that the skills gap that we've got in the market, right? The new breed of folks that are deploying and managing these applications just don't have an appetite for complexity like they did in the old world. So we've got elegance, that's underpinning our architecture and simplicity and ease of use that learn that really translates into customer delight. So that's our secret sauce. >> You talk about time to value. Sorry, Dave. Time to value is no joke as a marketer. Talk to me about what does that mean from a translation perspective? Because these days, one of the things we learned in the pandemic, other than everyone had no patience and still probably doesn't is that access to realtime data no longer a, oh, it's awesome. It's Fanta, it's, it's table stakes. It is it's, what's going to help companies succeed. And those not. So from a time to value perspective, talk a little bit more about that as really impactful to every industry. >> Right, And, and, and underpin underpinning, all of it is that simplicity and ease of use, right? So if I can pick up and have portability across all aspects of my platform, guess what? I've got a single pane of glass that's that I'm able to manage my entire infrastructure through. That's really powerful. So I don't have to waste time doing an undifferentiated heavy lifting, all of a sudden there's huge value there in simplicity and ease of use, right? So it translates for things that would take months and you know, hundreds of developers all of a sudden you can vend out infrastructure in a way that's performant, reliable, scalable and all of a sudden, right? Everybody's happy. People are not losing sleep anymore because they know they've got a reliable way of deploying and managing and running their infrastructure. >> Perfect example for you very quick. Just is very exciting. Mandy and I, were in the session, Texas Children's Hospital. >> Yeah. >> Theresa Montag. I mean, Tonthat, she's the head of infrastructure, with Keith, with us you should listen to the patient care Pediatric, you know, oncology, realtime data. Hip regulation, highly regulated industry data. Gravity is super important. State laws, city laws, healthcare laws. The data cannot go to a public cloud service but has to be cloud driven, cloud enabled and data driven and eccentric on the site. But cloud operating model, Nutanix again with GreenLake, delivers a subscription methodology, a you know, OPEX model and delivers desktop service cloud native applications, supporting all these tools like epic all happening in healthcare. >> You guys have a high net promoter score. What, what got you there? And what's going to keep you there in the future. >> It's underpinned by the technology itself and also our outstanding support team right. We hear our competitors' customers call us for support first, before they call our competitors. If you can't take that to the bank, what can you, right. It's crazy. They, our customers tell us this >> Dave: Really? >> Really. >> It's pretty validating. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, help us with has help us with this XYZ stuff. Yeah. >> And it becomes even more important with this new cloud era. >> Yes. >> As you're moving the data, the applications to different places, they want the same experience. And look as a company, we spent the investment. It's not free. >> Mandy: Yeah. >> It costs us a lot of money to make that happen. One of the best support organizations I've been in industry for 30 years, I've never seen this kind of a maniacal focus on customer service. And without that success will not come. >> Yeah, I mean, I've met a lot of Nutanix customers at the various shows over the years. Ridden in taxis bus rides, you know, cocktail parties. They're, they're an interesting bunch, right. They, they were kind of leading edge early on. They saw the light bulb went off, they adopted. >> Right. >> Right, so, and think about thinking about aligning with where they're going where are they going and how is Nutanix aligning with them? >> There's, there's so much complexity in the world, right? So we're abstracting away the complexity. Not all workloads are meant to run in an either or situation. >> Right. >> Right, and we're hearing from IDC as well in, in, by 2026, 75% of workloads are going to be misplaced. How do they have a strategic partner? That's going to help them run their organization effectively and efficiently. We become that open and neutral player in the market. That can be the trusted advisor for them to help with workload placement optimization. They're standardizing, they're consolidating they're modernizing, they're transforming. There's a lot going on right. And so how do they come to somebody? That's voice of reason that also is well networked across the ecosystem. And that interoperability is key and yes, I'm still drinking the Kool-Aid, but it, I see it. It's, it's a tremendous story. >> Switzerland with weapons. (everyone laughing) >> You said it, you said it, Dave. >> And also one other thing it's important competition makes us better not bitter. >> Yeah. >> We have the best best partner network, 10,000 plus partners but more than numbers, quality, constantly working theater. And some of our partners also are competitors. We compete with them and we deliver solutions this way. Customers don't have to forklift out forklift in Nutanix. We leverage their past investment, current investment so they can tie Nutanix in different ways for different workloads, not one size fits all. We have multiple solutions, multiple ways you know, small, medium, large, extra large D in terms of scale and different workloads from the, you know Edge to the Cloud. And to at the end of the day to data as a whole, as you heard from HP today, our strategy, our roadmaps super aligned. That's why we were having a lot of success with GreenLake as well. >> Mandy, can you talk a last question about the partner ecosystem that Tarkan mentioned? How were you leveraging that to, to modify the messaging that you talked about? You've only been here almost 90 days. >> Mandy: Right. >> How is the partner ecosystem going to be a facilitator of the Nutanix brand and messaging and the reach? >> They're, they're tremendous, right? Because we're able to now, like we're doing here, right. Be able to reach into their customer base, and showcase our stories in a purpose built way right. This is, this is reality and solutions that we're driving for the customers with like-minded problems, like-minded people so they can see that. And so we do that across the, the ecosystem and all of a sudden, we've got this rolling thunder if you will. So it's up to us to, to, to really hone in on the right narrative and hand it to them and have them run with it that there's going to be practices built on this, even in a deeper way, moving forward. I see it, you know, we've done, I've done this before in my career. And so I've got conviction that we're on the right track and, you know, watch the space. >> Dot, dot, dot, to be continued. Watch the space. You heard it here on theCUBE. Mandy, Tarkan, thank you so much for joining Dave and me talking about the power of Nutanix with HPE, what you're doing and what you're enabling customers to achieve. It's transformative and, and best of luck. You'll have to come back in the next 90 days so we can see some of those customer stories. >> Absolutely. Absolutely, would love to, thank you. >> Thanks guys. >> Mandy: Yeah. For our guests and Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live from the show floor of HPE Discover 22. Day one coverage continues after a short break.

>> Welcome to the Special Cube conversation. We're here in Palo Alto, California Cube headquarters. I'm John for a host of the Cube were Mohit parents, founder and CEO of Cohesive Serial entrepreneur. Successful Distribute computing, phD, computer science. Welcome to the Cube. Thanks for having me here. So thanks for coming. You guys been very successful. You found the couple in twenty thirteen. Great traction. Great success, Great technology. What's the vision of Cohee City? >> Let me first start by describing the problem. And then I'll go under describing the vision. The problem in a nutshell, is ah what we call mass data fragmentation. It refers to the fact that everything sets in silos, whether it's the sender or whether it's the cloud All our data sets in silos in appliances. Just expect all across the whole universe. And our vision is to basically consolidate that onto one platform I The easiest way to understand our vision is to look at it. What a smartphone that in the consumer space before the smartphone came the all used to carry multiple devices, right? Phone, music, player, camera, and so on. So forth. Uh, the smartphone came. It put all of those on one platform gave us a single U I to manage it all, um, gave us the notion ofthe marketplace from where we could download maps and run on this platform and gave us machine learning. Our vision is something very similar for the world of leader in the world. That data is the most valuable resource today in the world, much more so than oil. And he had the infrastructure. Where we put that data is very fragmented. Let's look at the ladies under backups is one silo probably bought from different renders test. And there was another side of analytics is another one five chairs and object storage is another one. Our vision is is to put all of that on one platform, make it very simple. Make that platform span the data center and the cloud manager using one us bring machine learning concepts to it and at a market place from where people >> could, you know, the smart phones. A good analogy. I like that because you had a market where they made devices to make phone calls and then text messaging. Beak was like killer half of the time. But having the computer enable the whole new class of services functionality, usability and capability and that that iPhone was a seminal moment There. You see, the same thing in Tech right now with Cloud Cloud has changed again. Seeing cloud be successful. Scale is a huge thing. So functionality, new kinds of functionality and large scales with cloud computing has proven. And APS have come around that. So I gotta ask you, you know, backup has been in category that has been dominated. Public offerings dated domain, but the list is endless of great companies built great backup solutions or a K phones. And I think that's what you're getting at the phones is the backup. You guys are building new functions. I want to explain the reels, um, capabilities that's going to come out of the data because if you have data being backed up, you're touching the data. So if you built a platform for scale, it seems that you guys have talked about that product. What is the unique thinking behind it? How did you come to it? And what are some of the examples? >> Yeah, so let's start one step at a time. So, uh, even though it's a platform that can do multiple things just like the smartphone had to be a great phone to begin with. This is a great backup product to begin with. And once we've solved the back a problem for the customer, then we encouraged them to do more on this may be to file shares, baby to object storage. Maybe start using the clouds and sunset. The next thing you'LL say that. Imagine you will work on that data. So you've ingested some data using backups and you want to get some insights from that data today? What you're forced to do is you probably have to copy that data out into another side of creating one more fragment. One more copy of the data. Why not move APS to the data? But other than dated adapts. So our whole concept is that take this platform and take whatever happened. You wanted to run outside off this just running on this platform and thereby you're moving APS to the data. Not the dinner, perhaps moving their eyes. Heart. It is. Ah, is big moving abscess. Easy. So and that's what the hell is this about On That's the platform. That's the capability of the platform. It's a distributed platform. Let's you're on APS close to where that it is. That's the underlying a lot of >> people say I remember we're going back a couple years now talking about Cloud or once I want to be like Google. I want to be like Amazon because they were offering at large scale using open source software. You can. You were lead engineer on Google file system, so you know a lot about scale. But a lot of people wanted the scale and functionality of Google, but they wanted the ease of use of Apple. And I've heard you mentioned that when were before we came on. So this is actually an interesting dynamic. But not everyone's like, Oh, but they have now data scaling similar challenges that Google has one song or another's large scale. Talk about that dynamic because you're changing the game on backup did since you touching the data, you're going to make that more valuable beyond just backing up. And this the concept of moving absolute data talkabout this dynamic of scale, functionality and ease of use because if you're doing all the work with the data, why not extend that out? This is essentially what you're doing. Can you explain that? >> Yeah. I think about the problems that Google would have if they were dealing with lots and lots of fragments of data. If everything was studying in a different appliance, Uh, with the volume of data that day deal that they'LL just be going knots pulling their hair all day long, right? So they built a web scale system that was sort of like a single platform. I was fortunate to be part ofthe some of those technologies, like the Google file system. So they built that Web scale file system to make it look like make all of that look like one platform. And now that it was one platform, they could move the APP store. And we're basically trying tow do something similar to the realm ofthe second reader naps. Because we have lots and lots of data here today. It sets and silos be the backups or passed on diver filers, Object storage. We're gonna build one big platform that scales out in a Google like fashion which can be managed very simply, using one you Iike an apple like manageability. And with this concept, we become very similar to those hyper skill er's, and we bring some of the same innovations to people out there. I >> want to share a common e we were talking about before we came on camera. You were just preferred something. You said I'd like to solve one problem at a time and then move on. But what's interesting here? Competitive strategy wise, you're solving the backup problem. But why you got your hands on the data? You're actually going to re imagine the usability of that data. So you're essentially adding value to a basic function back up, putting a platform around and extending that out, perhaps to come to it. And it's kind >> of a >> land grab that's working. This is a unique It's a different way to think about, Is that right? >> So I like to say that we like the master's off one trade at a time, nor Jack of all trades, uh, and that first trade for us that we would be masters off his backups once we're happy there. Then we can go on and focus on, you know, maybe filers or object storage. And this is how we build the platform right eye. I always say that when you architect a system, you have to think about all this from day one. You can't incrementally at patches and expect the system to grow right. I sometimes draw an analogy between why Google won the war against Yahoo. Google, Tara, Phil are all as a platform there. Thought about all the use cases they'd be, you know, putting on the platform. Yeah, who just build something that was good for search. Didn't think beyond that. That's why they you know about a bunch of naps. And >> that's where they saw it and thought of >> the Google file system and then YouTube on top and Gmail on top and blah, blah, blah. No. So I was the same approach. We've talked about the problem and the problem off. The problem We want to address mastered a recommendation up front, and our system has bean architected to solve that. Even if we start by being masters of backups first, the system has been architected tto do way more than that. >> So it be safe to say that cohesive from a software core competency standpoint is distributed computing core competence or disputed systems large scale from a computer science, you know standpoint and then data. So expertise are those two is intact. >> Yes. Oh, distributed computing and distributed file systems. Those would be there to core competencies. But then again, depending on like whether it's backups or its testing, that their competences of within those domains. >> So I want to get into the private tech. First of all, thanks for saying you have responded to that. The product text. Phenomenal. You have platform can do multiple things. I want to talk about span F S on Spann Os. You have some news. You've got something share on overview of what that is and what the new news is. >> So when you're trying to control on manage of lots and lots of data, you better have a distributed file system. So we built one, and we call it Spanish Fast. The name comes from the fact that it's supposed to span nodes in the very center that's supposed to span multiple kinds of storage in the data center. It's supposed to span the data center and your multi cloud environment, their hands the names pan a fast, But since we were building it like a platform, that's not just there for your data. It also runs apse on top off this platform. Uh, the span of fast is not enough. It becomes full scale us, if you may want to call it. What? So where's it has a file system and it has the ability to run laps on the file system, and the same ability was built here. And the name's patter well, so we can store data, but we can also naps close to that >> and with multi cloud on the horizon are actually president today. A lot of people use multiple clouds, and certainly Salesforce's considered cloud you got Amazon. So especially this moment clouds of existing today in the Enterprise, the coordinated all but hybrid and and these things they're going on. Premise. It's cloud operations. This becomes an important part of the distributed environments that need to be managed. Talk about the impact of multi cloud in today's world because it's a systems thinking. You gotta think about it from day one, which is kind of today. I got on premise. I got multiple clouds out there, and some clouds or great, depending on the workload, picked the cloud for the workload. I'm a big believer in that. Your thoughts, though, on as people tried to get their arms around this and make it, you know, one environment with a lot of decoupled elements that are highly cohesive. Talk about that dynamic. >> Yeah. So Cloud is a very, um, nice entrant into the infrastructure world. It provides a lot ofthe functionality, but it doesn't quite solve that problem off massive fragmentation. When you put your dinner in the cloud, it's still fragmented. And when you're dealing with, often our customers are big. Customers are dealing with multiple clouds and the data centers, and they have dedicated people trying to move data and applications between them. That's the problem that Cohee City can actually solve very well, because we're building a platform that spans all this. Um, all of that becomes underlying infrastructure that we use. And now through us, they can easily move APS. They could easily move data. They can access the data anywhere. That's the value we been to them. We have a customer here in California, and that was spending, uh, hundred twenty thousand dollars per month. It's a new company, uh, one hundred one hundred twenty thousand dollars per month on the eight of us both after they consolidated that stuff threw us in the cloud, their ability used to seventeen thousand dollars per month. That's the kind of value we can bring. The customers >> well, the Amazon Dana. It's interesting cause you got storage and you got E C two of the compute you need compute to manage towards so against. Not just storage. That's the cost. It's it's data is driving the economics. That's where you're getting it. >> Yeah, So I think data and storage and compute go together as I'm a big fan off hyper convergence, which me, along with the rest of my team Edna tonics. And Monday it's gonna doing multiple things on the side I'm back from. And you can't do that without storage and compute both working in tandem >> so consolidating with cohesive because I'll be using cohesive, he allows the better management lower costs on Amazon. >> That's right. That's right, because we store the data efficiently on Amazon, cutting the costs, and then you can run your raps on top. You don't have to copy out the data toe, run your wraps, you can actually land on the platform and all that saves costs. >> That's a great tidbit. Notes no to the audience out there. Great to tip their pro tip. Talk about the announcement you have now have APS coming out. You got three native cohesively absence. My word. I don't know. You guys call it Think Caps is going to the Alps and then for third party application developers. So again, this kind of teases out there beyond backup story, which is platform. What of the apse, Where this come from? What? Some of the reasons why they're being built. Can you share specifics on that news? >> This goes back to our analogy to a smartphone on one of the innovations the smartphone, brother. The world was the notion of a marketplace. You could go to the marketplace and down wrap. Some of the gaps are from the vendor who built the smartphone. Some of them are from third parties. So we are. And when the first iphone came out that I had basically five straight and then now there are millions of them. So what we have seeded the system with is we have, ah, a couple ofthe third party apse for in particular one a splunk that runs on the platform with in a container. One is from a company called Menace. One is actually two laps are anti virus absent. One vendor is scented. One when is clam? Maybe, um though that third party APS But then we've built some, um, APs from cohesively itself when his app called spotlight on the security app. One is an app called Insight searches through the data when his app called Easy Scripts allows our customers to upload scraps on drawing them from Go easy. So these are the apse that I'd be exceeded the system where were also announcing an SD came in just like your smartphone has a nasty cave. The world out there can go and use that and build ups on top if he would like people out there in the world. Third parties are partners to build ups and run on this bathroom >> so moment, what's their motivation behind the app system or functionality? As the demand grows, functionalities needed. So I'll see platforms should be enabling, so I get why APS could build on platforms. But what was the motivation that around the apse now just l of evolution capabilities? What's the thoughts >> It goes back to our philosophy that if you need to do something, you shouldn't buy one more silo to do it. You should be able to extend your existing platform and then do stuff. That's what your smartphone does. Uh, basically, even you, by your smartphone, it can be a phone, and I'm number for the things. But then you extended the functionality of that by downloading maps. It's the same motivation, you know, extend the abilities of this platform. Just download maps and then extended right. >> Give the value proposition pitch for the developers out there. Why would they want to develop on? Complicity is it is a certain kind of developer. What's the makeup of the target audience? Who would build on obesity? >> So all kinds of people we expect to build on this platform. So the value for our customers, for instance, now rather than, uh, copying the data out of this platform onto one more silo and that's very expensive, they can actually build a nap that runs on this platform so that they don't have to move the data around, and it's very, very simple. That's the value for our customers. For the developers out there. Uh, it's the same value that they get when they build an app on a smart phone. Uh, they building up some cash, but out there can download that app and the APP and then pay that developer some money so they don't have to build the whole company or the whole thing. Now they can build a nap that runs on cohesive. It's really simple for them. They get a cut of whatever the customer pays, so there's value all around. It's a ven ven for everyone >> it's not. And it's good business model, too good community going to get an ecosystem developing its a classic growth growth opportunity for you guys. Congratulate. So what a business you guys have talked about a couple quarters ago Publicly, about two million to million dollars run rate. Give us the update on the business in terms of growth. Employee headcount. Key milestones. Can you share? Seok was empty, >> so you know the momentum is phenomenal. We're very flattered by the fact that despite the fact that we're a young company we've been selling for more than three years, of seventy percent of our customers are enterprise customers. The big guys with lots and lots of data. Uh, some of the biggest banks in the world now use us. Some of the biggest credit card companies in the world use us. Uh, a lot of the secret of federal agencies. You, us? Um, uh, some of the public customers I convention Hyatt uses us. Ah, big financial. Northern Trust uses us the famous. Uh uh, you know, food chain. Wendy's uses us. So those are the names I can I can mention that are actually using and benefiting from cohesive. Um, so lots of lots of great stuff. Um, we had three hundred percent year over year growth in revenue. Our head count, actually, er this week crossed one thousand people. So we spoke to our chief people. Officer. We should mention our one thousand employees in a special way. So all that great stuff is happening. >> It's like walking through the door. All the bills go office because you guys were two hundred last year. About this time >> when you get back, we are about to enter. People's a factor of five growth and about one years phenomenal had come growth. >> Well, that's massive growth. How big is this guy's a real state growing and buy more office space. >> Yeah, well, uh, they're headquartered in a building and son who's a downtown. We start, but we got it. That building about when you're back, we only had two floors were really expanded toe like five floors now and looking toe, you know, rent more. We've also expanded to other locations. Geographically, we now have an office and rally. We have ah, uh in office and cork in Ireland. We already had an office in Bangalore. We setting one up in pony. We're setting one up in Toronto, So lots and lots of expansion worldwide. Not >> really looking good as well. I mean, let's think about the economics. >> So this is the time they're being in mustard and growth. That's looking phenomenal on DH. There's a path to profitability. Um uh, it all depends on you know, our economics and what the board decides on how and when we wanna charge towards profitability, we can get there. It's looks easy, but I think it's our productive ity off our sales reps looks phenomenal. On average, productively is very high, which basically means that you know, we can get to profitability fairly quickly. If you want. >> We're going to say, very impressed with the growth and impressed that you go out on the road, talk to customers closing business. That's sign of a great CEO. Always make sure the customers are happy. >> Um, eventually, that sort of companies about a happy employees and be happy customers. Uh, and my job is to see you is to make sure what happened >> before we get in Some of the questions I have from the community. I prepare because people want knew you were coming on. I want to ask you about entrepreneurship in your journey. You've had quite the career Google image in that nutanix. And now here, >> Look at look at >> today's environment. I mean, it was a lot of talk about how entrepreneurship changed and starting a company, you know, you got a rocket ship, so you had a lot people coming on Now from the your journey you're on now. But a lot of other offers out there right now, kind of like looking transition. People say tech is bad, not good for society. Seen bad, negative press in their entrepreneurship is a great opportunity right now in tech. What's your thoughts on the current landscape and opportunities for, you know, folks out there building new things and going in solving a problem from old market and reimagining it for the new. Because a lot of new going on seeing a new sea change with cloud. And on premise, >> I would say, Um, this is probably the best time to do a company then ever in the past because technology is there to help people. Young entrepreneurs. Uh, there's plenty of money to be raised from the sea. Species are very happy to be helping. End of news a couple of pieces of caution that I wantto give to would be entrepreneurs. Uh, number one. Don't be in a hurry. Learn their hopes of doing a company first. Ah, before jumping and doing it because often I find that they burn their fingers and then they don't want to do a company again. First, go to a good company, learn the ropes of playing a company, and then do a company. That's number one number two. Uh, I would like to incorrigible and avenues to think about their ideas in the context. Off the following two thoughts one is, uh, the company needs to have a great entry point. That's how the company takes off. But then it also needs to have a bigger vision to look up to. And I often find that company's lack one or the other of these, Uh, and that's why they eventually fail or they never take off the ground. In our case, the entry point was backups, and the big vision is the consolidation off seconded and haps that I spoke about, Ah, one or the other if they're missing, it's not >> an extensive abilities key there, too. You get the beachheads real specific seconds, and then you see you point >> out of a vision. That's >> what broader beachhead without trying to take it all too fast or not knowing where to lay. That's gonna much the analogy. >> That's what I say. I beat master of one traitor, go ahead in the beachhead and then expanded the bigger >> and by the way, that's a classic proven way to do it. So, you know, just stay with what works, All right, let's get to the questions from the community. A lot of people wanted to ask your first question moment. You've a great perspective on the difference between hyper scale on enterprise worlds Is the enterprise still ten plus years behind the Giants in Tech? And how have you helped bring hyper scale thinking to the enterprise architecture? >> Um, the enterprise is, actually, surprisingly is getting closer and closer. Uh, with all the great technologies available, hyper convergence has bean. One of those technologies that has made hyper convergence combined with upscale, uh, is one of those technologies that has brought the enterprise were very close to the hyper scholars. Now they can buy products that are hyper energy that scale out in a group like fashion, and they can get some of the same benefits that the hyper scholars have enjoyed over the years, eh? So I won't say they have that far behind anymore. They're catching up, and they're catching up. Eyes >> used to be a few years ago, you could look at saying old relic, you know, modern cloud >> the and and the companies that I have found it have. I'm very flattered to say that have gonna, uh, hasten that journey. Uh, happy convergence. And he's even solving this problem of massive fragmentation. The hyper skills have kind of, you know, already solved that problem. They have massive, upscale systems that don't deliver data fragmentation. It's one platform, and you're gonna bring that value to the world through cohesive, >> great, great success. Okay, second question. There's a ton of money pouring into the data protection space again, a category that's there's a card in magic water for that. But again, you start Cummings that don't have magic watches because it's new. Why is this money pouring into space? Why now? >> Number one dealer is exploding. There's lots of lots of data. Ah, bulk off the data sets in what we call second story. It comes to it through back up straight. Your your production stuff has some production data, but eventually that data. Nobody wants to believe that they would keep it in there for at least six seven years, maybe forever. All dated, it comes to backups. The opportunity that people have seen is that they can actually now doom or with that data. It's not just dumb waiter sitting there, so it's not just data protection. It becomes more of a data management and you do data management through APS. That's what cohesion is exploding. We get the data onto a platform through backups, but then we expand into arrest of the vision and Kendra naps to extract value from the dealer right? That's why the money is coming. >> Well, you just answer the next question, which is, you know, why cohesively wind now the space is crowded, a lot of competition, So I'll just move on Ransomware, what's going on there and what's unique about Kohi City and what do you bring to the table with respect to Ransomware. >> So Ransomware is, uh, uh, something that we now live in. Its every enterprise is at risk, uh, being affected by ransomware. So what we have announced recently eating a month back, we announced our ransomware support. Uh, we can offer not just the detection, but also a number for the things we can detect Ransom where we can allow our customers toe apply fixes. When When that happens, we really allow things to be recovered once ransomware happened. So it's built into our data protection environment, right? That's how customers like it. So it adds value to the data that they already have. It's not just a dumb backup. >> And with all the third party and S t k stuff happening potential extensive bility on that core, >> that's right. Now we can have apse that can detect more round somewhere by virtue of the fact that we can support running absolutes to data. Some of those APs could be Andy dancing, perhaps help protect the data, do some custom stuff. Once said handsome, it is detected. All that becomes possible >> last question from the crowd here, the community multi cloud. Everyone's going up to the space. What is multi cloud data protection really about? And why cohesive? Isn't this just really a multi cloud vendor? Khun, do it all mean a lot of people saying they're multi cloud vendors. Y you what is multi cloud data protection all about? >> So, you know, big enterprise customers probably have a foot in every cloud, and they call it a multi cloud infrastructure. And if they want to protect the data and forced me, the data is very fragmented. So they need a backup solution for one for every cloud that's roughly multi cloudy. The production. Uh, we're cool. Here's the adds value. It's building one platform that spans your multicolored environment. So one platform can now take care ofall that those backups eso it really simplifies the job off doing backups or data protection in a multicolored environment. And that's where the Queen's devalue comes in. >> Well, congratulations. Final question for this interview. How would you summarize the state of cohesive the right now? Thousand employees growth on the customer traction side and revenue business funding. Males look good economic with a platform, certainly software margins looking very good growth. What's it all about right now? Culture value, proposition don't. >> It's kind of like a rocket ship, and we're just hanging on. But it's Ah, I think that focus is, um, when you grow this fast, uh, the challenge becomes, uh, keeping your culture intact and we tryto put a lot of effort on our culture. Our core values are cultural guidelines were fanatics about that. So we want everyone to feel that they're coming in and this is home away from home, and they treat others to make them feel it's home away from home. We're trying to build a family here, so there's a lot of emphasis on that. But at the same time, you know, we all work hard and let the company >> and the new ecosystem opportunity for you is looking really good because if he zaps takeoff, certainly the cohesively APS. And now you got third party with an S t. K. This is potentially a game changer for you as a company to a CZ Wells, you have product company. Software company makes a lot of scared, but now you're gonna be bringing developers and impact there. >> The impact, the talk, leadership impact. Uh, you know, I'm personally very fun off er you know I do these companies because I want to change the world. I won't change the way the world thinks this is the way I think. And if I can help the world think in this fashion contributed something to the world. And so that's the excitement that sort of mission is. Team is excited about that. It's just >> we got a great mind phD in computer science and two ships systems entrepreneur that thinks up new things that disrupt the status quo. And the old guard certainly track record their congratulations. Know what? Thanks for coming on The Cube. This's the Cube conversation here. Palo Alto. I'm John every year. Thanks for watching. What?

(upbeat synthesized music) >> Announcer: Live from the Javits Center in New York City, it's The Cube, covering Inforum 2017. Brought to you by Infor. >> Welcome back to The Cube's live coverage of Inforum, I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Dave Vellante. We're joined by Pam Murphy, she is the Infor COO, thanks so much for coming on the program-- >> Thank you for having us, thank you. >> So you're hosting for the third time, a special session devoted to WIN, the Women's Infor Network. Tell us a little bit about this session and who are the guests and what we can expect. >> Yes, absolutely, so as you said, it's our third year hosting it. It's a very popular session, it's the only non product session of the entire conference and open to everybody, men and women. We always have a fantastic lineup of speakers and this year is no different. So the way we work it is we do a combination of TED Talks and panel sessions so we've got Tan Lee, who's the founder of Emotiv brain augmentation technology. And then we've got Reshma Saujani who's the founder of Girls Who Code. She's done great stuff in terms of pioneering STEM and getting girls to code. So she's going to talk us through her work, if you will, in training so many girls to code and how she wants girls to adopt, and behaviors she wants them to exhibit in this industry. And then we've got what will be I'm sure a lively panel with Ambassador Susan Rice and Farah Pandith and we're going to be talking about the government's ability to manage the terrorism that we're seeing today and we're going to be talking counter terrorism, we're going to be talking about what lessons are we learning from what's going on in Europe and what is the role in technology in helping curb terrorism. So that's going to be an exciting and interesting session. And then we're going to have Dr. Jill Biden come in and hopefully lighten up the session and talk about resilience and leadership today, so very exciting, very much looking forward to it. It's 11 AM tomorrow morning in the Special Events Hall, and hopefully it will be good if not better than the last two years. >> Rebecca: And we're going to have many of those guests on our program >> Yes. >> after that too. So why, what is the purpose of it? It sounds like a great session and it's going to be enlightening and exciting to hear all those women talk, but what is your goal in gathering this group of women? >> I guess I should go back to the founding of WIN. So I started WIN probably over four or five years ago at this point and its purpose was to just galvanize and bring women together, allow forum in which they could mentor each other and where we could work on the advancement of women within the organization. It's something that as I traveled through the offices, people have been asking me a lot to create that forum, create that environment and so we've got hundreds of WIN chapters around the globe with thousands of women participating. So we have very regular sessions and we talk about topics that are relevant to women and also just about advancing their careers and given that at a forum we have so many thousands and thousands of not only our own Infor WIN members but also customers, we just thought it was a great opportunity to have one of our sessions at Inforum and invite inspiring female speakers to come and talk to us about their experiences, how they got to be where they are, the challenges that they met along the way. So what's interesting is that the only WIN or female aspect of the session is the fact that every speaker on stage is female. Outside of that, that's where the relevance ends in the sense that it really is talking to topics that is applicable to everyone. So that's why it is just a topic and an audience that appeals to everybody, men, female, old, and young. >> So these sessions are always interesting and inspiring. What kind of impact have they had? Can you share with us any results? >> Absolutely, so we have, first of all they're very inspirational for everybody attending and I've had customers, not only our own employees, but I've had customers reach out to me and say that they were inspired by a story and it caused them to take action and change in their life. And before they may have felt something but they heard from somebody else saying that how they overcame it and it caused them to honestly take change within their own lives and their own organizations. So for customers, partners, whoever's attending, it just, to hear from someone else, you often have the perception with these speakers that they have this fantastic upbringing, fantastic education, they're successful because it's a function of that. Well actually that's not often the case. People have had a hard upbringing or they've met a lot of challenges around the way and it's how they overcame those challenges and the resilience that they brought into the mix is what inspires people. So really that's what I would say people get out of it, and often spawning from that, we often end up as well tailoring programs or development techniques which we feel would be of benefit to folks beyond that. So one of our speakers last year prompted a big thought about diversity and how we should be dealing with ways in which we may be dismissive of certain topics or abrasive to people, so it's thought provoking and it inspires action, which is obviously what we want to get out of it. >> We funded a nonprofit initiative last year in partner with another journalism outfit, The GroundTruth, to study women in tech and we presented at the, we had The Cube at the Grace Hopper Conference and some of the things that came out of that, I wanted to comment, chief data officers actually have a disproportionately higher percentage of women, maybe it's 'cause it's such a thankless job and they're (laughing) wiling to take it on. And then we found cyber bullying had a very negative effect on the participation of women in tech which is about 17% of the women. And then of course the salary disparity, one of the areas that we found was most egregious was Cambridge, Mass, now this is supposed to be a progressive, relatively liberal area. >> Our hometown. >> And it was huge, our hometown, very high disparity of low participation of women in tech. Any thoughts on that data and what kind of progress you'd like to see us make as an industry? >> I'm hopeful of the fact that the next generation will look back on where technology is now from the perspective of the low representation of women and that whole diversity factor and look on it as being a non-issue. I'm hopeful in the sense that, I don't think it's going to be as pronounced as we have it now. I think we're doing a far better job of going out to colleges, to institutions, and enabling girls and providing girls with coding courses. So I'm hoping it's not going to be a longterm issue for us. From our perspective, to your point, we look at the various line of businesses and functions within our organization and we see where is the disparity arising and where do we need to focus? And so interestingly enough, if you look at G&A functions or if you look at marketing functions, it's 50/50, right, in terms of representation, but there's definitely certain functions where either the nature of what they're doing or if it's a high travel related function, meaning you're away for long periods of time, there are certainly the areas I think which don't have as equal distribution in terms of men, and for those really, we've been working on creating programs to ease those burdens that may be had, or else promote them positively where it literally is an unconscious bias, if you will. It's a long topic, for sure, that I could go on about for a long period of time but I just think it's constant, looking at unconscious biases, it's looking at ways in which we feel that there's fairness, if you will, into the equation. And a lot of the time I honestly feel that it's not conscious, if you will, and it therefore just needs to be looked at specifically at ways and means in which that could be addressed or tackled. >> So as a successful woman in technology, COO at a major technology company, what advice do you have for that young woman who wants to get into technology but is dispirited by the headlines and by what appears to be a very macho culture where there is vast salary discrepancies? >> Yeah, it's unfortunate that that has come out all too much more frequently and with volume in the last six months for the companies that we're aware of. But I would say, I personally haven't experienced that, and I'm personally of the view that, by the way, I never meant to end up in this industry, so I look back and think how on Earth did I actually get here, but I think you have to be willing to take risks and you have to be wiling to dismiss a lot of what you hear and look on the fact that there is a lot of very successful women, even within Infor. Since we started WIN, we have had a huge increase in the amount of SVPs and VPs within our organization. I think it's something like a 60% increase in terms of who we have. There is so much more women in very, very senior roles now than we've ever had before, so I'm hopeful that it is changing. I hope that some recent coverage and recent events have not, will not create a longterm impact, but I think people just need to look and see with the tech industry booming, with the way in which people are being compensated, that it's a good industry in which you can be very successful and do great things. >> Dave: And cloud helps. >> Yeah. >> It does. >> Yeah. >> There are far more women at application oriented shows than there are infrastructure oriented, 'cause hardware guys are hardware guys. I don't know why, like mechanics, other than Mona Lisa Vito, mostly hardware people. But let's shift gears a little bit and talk about the global alliances. You are running that initiative here. These are folks that we haven't typically seen at Inforum but they're coming out of the wood works, what's going on, what's driving that? >> Yeah first of all we have a fantastic base of existing partners who had great successes in implementing Infor applications for their customers and so but with the growth that we've been seeing, honestly, in our business, over the last number of years, we just need to have more and more delivery capacity to create more choice for our customers as to who they can go to to implement our software. And if you think about the move to the cloud and if you think about digitalization and the fact that every customer is becoming more consumed and obsessed with technology because it's changing their businesses so fundamentally, they do want the option and the choice of having the large global system integrators, digital integrators, that they can go to do massive transformation work and business process re-engineering and program management and change management. And so for us it was important to form good reliances with the Deloittes, the Accentures, the Caps, and the Grant Thorntons in order to provide that larger ecosystem of transformational services that we can offer to our customers. So it's great, they're all platinum sponsors here at Inforum this year and there's over a hundred very senior executives and managing directors from those four. And we're just very excited about the extent and pace to which they're building out Infor practices, so it's great. >> I have to ask you, so don't hate me for saying this, but those guys love to pig out on big complicated ERP implementations that take two and three years. Is that world just going away and it's moving toward more of a digital transformation and a whole new line of thinking and that's why there's a good fit with Infor or is it something else? >> I think they understand and know that the older days of a company spending $100 million on an ERP implementation are gone, that's really not acceptable anymore. It's absolutely not our strategy, as you know from being here at the conference, our strategy is around creating industry specific end to end suites which don't require modifications and which are purpose built for the cloud. And so that is very clear to them and they understand that and are embracing the concept because they realize that cloud is an enabler, it's just another deployment method, but fundamentally it's about helping the customers take advantage of that technology and transform their businesses and to do that, it requires a lot more than software. And so they're changing, our industry is changing. Steve talked to the point of the stage today that the cost of technology is becoming very low and that therefore the permeation of technology in everything we do is going to be so prevalent. So it's understood and for them, it's more about helping our customers get to that digital age and being able to transform their businesses to cope with the changing technology. >> Are you satisfied with the pace? >> Pace of? >> Of the change, of getting people to the cloud. Do you feel there is, is the momentum there? >> Well we've seen huge growth in our sector. We have completely tipped the balances. I would have said, obviously it's been coming, it's like Salesforce.com and companies who basically do certain applications in the cloud and for us, we're different because we have complete end to end suites in the cloud, mission critical applications. And so our business has grown enormously over the course of the last three years and I think now it's mainstream, if you will. And so we're very pleased and happy. We have a lot of customers who have made, obviously we have over 8,400 customers now already there. And the pace is increasing. And it's just a continuous effort for the customers who haven't gone already, helping them understand what they need to do to get there, and that's what we've been doing in spades for the last couple of years. >> Great, well Pam Murphy, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you. >> We really appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Dave Vallente, we will have more from The Cube's coverage of Inforum 2017 just after this. 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