>> Narrator: Live from Denver, CO, it's theCUBE, covering Commvault GO 2019, brought to you by Commvault. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Commvault GO '19 from Colorado this year. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman, and we are excited to welcome a couple of new guests to theCUBE. One of them brand new to Commvault. We have Mercer Rowe, VP of Global Channels and Alliances. Mercer, welcome to Commvault and TheCUBE. >> Thanks so much. >> Lisa: And we've got Carmen Sorice III, pinky out, GTM Chief of Staff for Commvault. You're the veteran here. You've been there for a year. >> A whole year, yes. >> Lisa: Exactly. Guys, so much excitement in the last, you know, nine months since Sanjay Mirchandani took over. Analysts saying, hey Commvault, you've got to upgrade your sales. You've got to upgrade your marketing. You've got to shift gears and expand the market share, and we're seeing a lot of movement in all three of those directions. The channel is really critical for Commvault, Mercer. It's responsible for a significant portion of revenue. You guys have made some strategic changes there with respect to channels and alliances. First of all, before we get into that, you're brand new, brand, brand new to Commvault. What attracted you to this company that's 20 years old that, as Sanjay was telling us, it's like the new Commvault. >> So, if I look back at my career in the last 10 years or so, I've been in IT for about 20 years, for the last 10 years or so, I've been a part of launching cloud businesses for a number of some upcoming and some new vendors, such as VMware, IBM, SoftBank and others. And a lot of that, in that process, what I've been working on is helping existing customers to move their workloads into the Cloud. We know that the market is evolving to a hybrid Cloud type of deployment model. I mean we can see that across the board with the way our customers are behaving, with the way that the Cloud vendors are behaving. But that's been a challenge because of the technology matching, right? Figuring out how to essentially put the same technology stack in the Cloud as you do on-prem to be able to move those apps over. I really started to look for companies that could bridge that gap and it could really operate in a hybrid Cloud scenario. Commvault is absolutely positioned perfectly for that in my mind, and so it's such an opportunity as we shift from our kind of act one as a great data protection company to a true hybrid Cloud data platform or data plane. >> Yeah, Carmen, maybe give us a little bit of your insight as to some of those change in roles as Mercer was just saying. Cloud is having a huge impact. You know, we've watched, you know, for years the shifting role of the traditional VAR or SI or the like, so bring us a little bit of insight as to what, today, is important to your go-to-market. >> Yeah, so what's important to our partners, especially the VARS is continuing to be relevant with our customers, right? Change is the only constant, and it's, the rate of change is just accelerating. So partners are looking for vendor partners like us to help them be relevant, to come out with the solutions that are going to be more relevant, even tomorrow. And, from a Commvault perspective, if you think about everything we've done from a data backup and a data management perspective, we've been the best in the industry, as we've just seen with Gartner and Forrester. All right, so we're proud of that. But what our partners were looking for is, where are we taking this next? Where's the innovation going to come from? So when you weave in things like Metallic that now gives our partners a consumption option. So if they have customers that want to buy software as a service, they now have that option. And then when you add software-defined storage, it takes us in to a completely different area, and you had asked Stewart about the Cloud, when you think of Cloud native applications and you think of containerization, that's changing the way backup data and primary storage data is being managed and the lines are blurring. Now with Hedvig software-defined storage, we have an opportunity to come out with integrated offers to help our partners be even more successful. >> So from a go-to-market perspective, in the last year, there's been a lot transformation, right? Not just in terms of leadership changes, but this big focus on ensuring that, as customers' environments change in this hybrid multicloud world that they are living in whether it's by design or its by acquisition or different types of growth, right? Talk to us a little bit about how Commvault foundationally is set up to really make some big shifts and big bets in new routes to market. >> Yeah, I can take that from where we were a year ago 'til now and then feel free to expand. So when you look at, we've always been a partner business, a partner friendly business. A significant percentage of our revenue, like north of 90% goes through our partners. What our partners were asking for is, hey, you guys are partner friendly, but we need you to be partner driven. So, when you come up with solutions, make sure they're channel ready, make sure they're partner ready, make sure we have our eyes on the market so that we're not just trying to sell software to our partners. We need to better understand their go-to-market models, how can we help them grow their business by offering a different variety, a variety of different services. So I think the evolution you've seen is a year ago the company made significant investments on becoming partner-first. So we've invested in channel leadership, partner leadership, not only at the corporate level but also in the field, and since Sanjay came on board, as you referenced, in February, that change is just continuing. So we're making our next level of investment in channel executives, in executives period, who have context about what channel is. And when you've lived in the channel, you've dealt with channel conflict, you bring that to the table, you bring that experience to the table. So I think you're seeing an evolution of us in our next phase of investments, helping our partners be successful, and becoming partner-first, and we've done a lot of new things with our programs that I can get in to. Financial incentives, rebates, making it easier on our partner portal to interface with us. And we're going to continue to do that, so that's we're not only just the right product choice, we're the right financial choice for our partners going forward. >> And I think, to add to that, if you look at our Metallic launch, obviously the reason we work with partners is in service of our customers. Right, that's the whole reason we partner, it's 'cause we want to great a better value proposition for our customers. And when we launched that product, a little tid bit, the company did a lot of research. Went out and talked to non, not-current Commvault customers, so potentially new greenfield customers and consistently got the feedback that they wanted to buy softwares and service applications that like that through a partner, because they could have a conversation about their entire IT environment. So it's really exciting to be in a spot where we are not only partner-first, partner-led but we're in a position where we know that this is the way our customers want to interact with us. That's number one. Number two is as we start to make some of these transitions into SaaS as we move into adjacencies like we're doing with Hedvig, it's so important to have our partners be the tip of the spear to help our customers through that journey. You know, innovation is great, but innovation also creates complexity. That's where partners help us move our customers through that journey and be successful. >> You know, we were talking to one of your launch partners earlier today and they were very excited about Metallic. On the same hide they did recognize that there is a significant change as to how they have to engage, you know, what part of the organization. You know, it's a good thing they have a Microsoft practice that this plugs into for the O365. So, bring us a little bit as to how you're helping the channel transform. >> Oh, absolutely. So, as you can see, a lot of the partners, you can see a lot of them that are here today, have moved from being pure, say in the solution of outer space, just to use as an example have moved from pure solution providers to also having MSP offerings, or other kind of services offerings, because they realize that customers want the flexibility of consumption economics while also, you know, being able to work with their trusted partner. So whether it's them, whether it's service providers who we want to drive into more of a, as a service model, and obviously we're planning to release all of this technology to our service providers to allow them to offer Commvault-based or Commvault-powered services in the market, or whether it's our great alliance partners. Companies like Nedap and Hitachi, where we have OEM relationships or other kind of very deep, collaborative relationships in the market. Adding some of these features and functions and capabilities as we move, as we help our customers to move into the Cloud, as we help them to give them more options for these multicloud or hybrid deployment models. This opens up additional apertures, additional opportunities for services, for wholistic end-to-end solutions from these partners that actually increase their ability to be relevant with the customers but also the share wallet. >> I want to get your perspective, Mercer, on differentiation, because partners, your partners work with a lot of your competitors. We know that there's a lot of coopetition, right, in technology but what is it about some of the things that Commvault is putting in place or some ideas that you have to really differentiate how you're enabling partners, whether we're talking about a VAR or a Disty or all the way up to a global services systems integrator that can deliver massive enterprise scale. >> Yeah, I can start with that if you're okay. So, it's all about listening to partners, right? Listening to what they need and what they're asking you for. Because many times a vendor becomes vendor-arrogant, right? And you're not listening to the partners. So our partners have been clear. They said we want a predictable financial model with Commvault. What translates to a program that's a full year program that gives them financial incentives so they don't have to guess what we're going to do in any given month or any given quarter with some kind of SPIF. So we've delivered on that. They've asked, number two, they said, they've said to me, and you're going to be hearing this, is you've always had great products, please, that has to continue. That's like a ticket for entry. And we've seen that we continue to lead in that space. And then I mentioned earlier about innovation. They want to know that we're going to take them into the future. So those three things are really critical for our partners. And then the last thing they ask for, which is basically a foundation across that, is field engagement. We need to be more tightly engaged with your sellers, so that we go in on joint sales calls. That we're bringing each other opportunities, and I think with the new sales leadership we have, Riccardo Di Blasio, our new CRO, our boss knows full well how to grow businesses with partners and through partners and it's by engaging in the field. And that's why we're going to have more people in the field, so that we can engage with partners and create opportunities together. So those are kind of the four foundational elements that we see. >> Mercer, I was wondering if I could get your viewpoint just in general about the channel. There was a lot of fear for a number of years about, you know, the Cloud, coming in and that readjustment. How do you think it's going? What's the general, you know, feel of the channel today, and how their interaction is with, you know, that ever-changing interaction with the big public clouds. >> You know, it's a great question, and I remember when we were first launching the cloud business as VMware. I used to go to, I built our channel model but I would introduce myself in the partner meetings with, Hey, I'm from VMware Cloud. We're here to kill your business. (laughter) Because there was a fear. And that fear, I think, in a certain way, has kind of dissipated as the market has realized as partners and mostly from the customers have realized that there is not a one size fits all strategy. The Cloud is not the solution to all IT needs. It is certainly an important part of most customer's strategy, in fact, I don't think that there are many customers that don't have Cloud as a part of their overall IT strategy, however, it's not the entire environment, and it certainly doesn't solve all needs. So, from a general perspective, the savvy partners have embraced the Cloud, they've embraced services, and they've look at it as a wholistic part of how they do business with their end customers. 'Cause as we think about, you know, to the last question, as we think about partner profitability, I think about it in two main vectors. There's margin, field engagement, revenue, and so forth, which is very, you know, this is the financial element of working with a partner like Commvault to make money. And that's obviously a very important part and that's something we will continue to invest in. Programs, and so forth, to support our partners to be profitable working with Commvault. But the other is in the practices, in how they build services, in how they build end-to-end solutions. Which, another tidbit on Metallic that some people picked up on was that we've released the telemetry APIs. Meaning that partners who are working with Metallic can see exactly what their customers are using. How are they growing? Oh, they've all of a sudden backed up a new workload. Hey, maybe they have a new project. Maybe I should call them, so I'm not waiting until renewals. I'm not waiting until the sort of forcing events to have an opportunity to place a call into my customer and say, hey, I noticed you're doing something new. How can I help? >> That insight, and sorry Carmen, we were talking about that a little bit earlier, I think with maybe with Rob Kaloustian. That was really interesting, because it really it changes the word partner, right? It can't. Because if they're actually able to follow along and maybe even make some educated predictions or suggestions to the customer, then the customer feels like, okay, you're not only selling me this, you're actively helping me optimize my deployment, learn from it and plan for what's next. So that definition of partner changes for the better. >> And I think the whole SaaS model is like the next step beyond Cloud. So you were asking me about Cloud. Very briefly, the way I've seen it over the last probably seven to nine years is, I had billion dollar VARS tell me nine years ago, don't ever try to come in here and sell me a multi tenant cloud service, 'cause I'm selling hardware. That moved to, hey, you know what? We see the customers changing. I was with a service provider. Why don't you come help us? And then a couple of years later they said, you know what? We're kind of building our own service now, so we don't need your services anymore. So, in a few, you know, three to five years, they went from stay out, I'm never going to sell a multi tenant service to quickly, well maybe not so quickly, some not as quick as others, realize that they have to get there. I think SaaS is like the next step beyond that. >> Well in this business I think if that teaches anybody anything it's never say never. Right? >> That's right. >> Well guys, thank you so much for joining Stu and me, sharing with us how things are really transforming here, but also what you're doing for global alliances and channel to really catalyze Commvault's business. We appreciate it, and we say best of luck as you enter week three? >> Yes. >> Lisa: Or day three? >> Day three, day three. >> Lisa: Gentleman, thank you for your time. >> Great, thank you very much. >> Thank you very much. >> For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watchin' theCUBE from Commvault GO '19. (fast tempo music)

>> Live, from Orlando Florida. It's theCUBE. Covering Microsoft Ignite. Brought to you by Cohesity and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite here in Orlando Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host Stu Miniman. We're joined by Carmen Crincoli. He is the Senior Program Manager for Strategy and Ecosystem here at Microsoft. Thank you so much for coming on the show Carmen. >> Thanks for having me, really excited to be here, thank you. >> So, before the cameras were rolling, we were talking about, we're going to talk tech in this interview. But right now we're going to talk about solutions and really explain what the problems are that you are solving for your customers. So, talk about the customer pain points that you and your group are looking to solve. >> Yeah, so, the WSSD program when we conceived it was to address a problem that I think a lot of people who have worked with Microsoft technology are familiar with. We have some really great technology. It's very easy for users to dive in and start using it. But to really be successful requires an additional level of expertise that not every IT shop is going to have. And as it gets more and more complex and we start bringing more and more IT functionality into the stack with software defined technologies, that challenge grows. So we feel like we've had very, very great advances in what our tech can do. And we were watching our customers struggle with it. And we decided that the best was to fix it is to create a solution program and work with our partners who have that expertise to take them, bundle them together with a set of best practices, some additional testing and validation, to ensure that customers are selecting the right hardware for the tasks that they need, and then offer that as a solution instead of as build your own, which is a little more traditional in the Windows world. >> Explain how it works. So, there's a frazzled IT person who's saying "I don't know where to begin, but I have these issues," Can you give us some examples of how you hold a customer's hand through this and walk them through the process? >> Sure, sure. So, I would say the way we approach it right now is if a customer is going to get on board the HCI train, which more and more of them are, right, we're watching the industry shift in that direction pretty rapidly now. And they say, you know, I've heard about the Microsoft technologies, I've heard about storage spaces direct and your software defined networking capabilities, and I want to pursue that. You say, well, don't just go buy some servers or recycled servers off the shelf. We want you to contact some of our partners and talk to them about their solution catalog and say look, this is the kind of workload I'm going to consolidate on it, right. I'm consolidating virtual machines from multiple environments and it's going to be a mix of traditional line of business apps and SQL and I think I'm going to have about this I/O profile. They'll help you size a solution and then deliver it on site and integrate it into your business environment, right. It lets you get something that is more tailored to what you need rather than trying to piece it together. >> I want to hear a little bit more about HCI. But before we do, you got ecosystem as part of what you work on. I think most people understand that Microsoft has a huge ecosystem. Some things are really simple to understand. Server, you guys don't make servers. Operating system sits on top of that. The storage piece of it, I've worked in the storage industry for a number of years, worked with Microsoft. Obviously a huge player in the software layer. But that was back before we called it things like software defined storage and the software defined data center. And, heck, pre-cloud and all that stuff. So, you've been there 21 years at Microsoft. Give a little bit about, you know, where Microsoft thinks they need to play, how you partner with the ecosystem out there, and then we'll get into some of the new pieces. >> Yeah, we've always viewed storage as part of the air you breathe when you're computing, right. So we always partnered with the storage ecosystem to make sure that SANS and NAS devices work inside general IT environments. The shift to a software defined mentality involved some new learning, from a Microsoft perspective. We're taking on some of the integration responsibilities that storage vendors typically had. And that's part of what birthed WSSD as a solution program, was if we have to take on all of the integration work, how do we ensure that that's good quality, right. Just buying some disks off the shelf and plugging them into the motherboard does not result in an enterprise quality solution. So we had to define some parameters and then work with OEMs and partners who know how to do the integration work as well. Put some testing parameters around it, and turn out solutions, software defined solutions, that worked as well as the highly integrated, tested SANS and NAS devices of the last generation. >> Great. I think back, you know, like most people probably know Microsoft for SNB. You had protocols that help people with NAS devices. Help bring us up to speed when things like HCI. So, HCI, technology that's been around for a number of years. Many companies partner with Microsoft. Nutanix is a nearby partner of Microsoft. VMWare partners with Microsoft on some things but is a big player with their Vsan technologies. What do we call the Microsoft HCI solution and how would you compare and contrast it to the existing solutions out there? >> The traditional strength of Microsoft, right. We're very good at partnering, even with people we're competing with. We're very serious about it. Part of our core DNA is partnership and competition at the same time. So, our HCI stack is really about integrating the functionality that's there. I would say, the way we talk about it, there are three main components. There's the storage layer, which is storage spaces direct. There's the networking layer, which we just called software defined networking, which includes a network controller and network virtualisation capabilities. And then there's the computer layer, which is Hyper-V and the additional capabilities we layer in Hyper-V where we think we add a lot of value. Things like secured VMs and security capabilities that we add on. You layer those technologies together and integrate them into a solution with validated hardware, tested hardware, a network controller, network switch, and you get something that you can integrate into a business environment. These are all capabilities that are in Windows Server 2019 Datacenter, right. This is not an additional add-on. It's not a component. It's not a thing that you download. The solution program is really about taking the stuff that's in the box and making sure customers succeed in it without having to bring in all of the expertise into their IT staff from day one. >> Thanks for the explanation. The one piece, if I understand right, Azure stack also has storage space direct in it. So should I look at this as a spectrum of how Microsoft puts the pieces together and the WSSD is just one of the storage fundamental components that plays a few places along the stack? Am I getting that right? >> Yeah, it's kind of a foundational technology. Just like Windows Server is the host layer for all of the upper, higher level workloads, Storage Spaces Direct is the foundational layer for building our storage for all of these hyperconverged solutions. Azure stack's business goals are different, right. They're looking for Azure consistency and really giving an Azure experience to customer on prem. WSSD is more for the traditional IT shop that's used to running their own virtual environments and they're just looking for some infrastructure hosting of virtual workloads. So, we're covering different ends of, I would say, the IT maturity spectrum, with the two solutions. But the underlying pieces are very much the same, right. The plumbing that powers Azure stack and the plumbing that powers WSSD, and the plumbing that powers Azure, is built on a lot of the same core Windows technologies. >> So what are the outcomes of this solutions department? How have you seen changes in customer behavior, and helping them understand the best practices that have emerged as they implement and deploy different kinds of technologies. >> I'd say the biggest thing we've noticed is we get customers to be more successful when they work with our vendors, right. WSSD launched, the origninal version of the program for 2016, launched about nine months after we RTM'd. In that nine month gap, we had a lot of customers who were excited for the technology. We had been talking about it. Our engineering teams do a great job of making people excited for the technology. We get our lovely core IT geeks pumped for this stuff. And they were going out and implementing it on their own, right. Buying hardware that they thought conformed, trying to implement, and we were having a lot of struggles, right. It was generating more sport than we'd like. Customers weren't having the experience we wanted them to have with it. Since we've started the program, and we've been getting customers pointed at our hardware partners that deliver these solutions, we've had a lot more success, right. They're much happier with it. We have multiple stakeholders bought into the success of that customer solution, so the OEMs are just as invested as we are. As opposed to if you buy a server off the shelf, they're like the server's working fine, that's not my problem. So were just seeing a lot more customer success out of it and we want to keep driving that forward with the 2019 version of the solution program. >> Carmen, anything? there are so many announcements that were made at the show. Anything in your space that you want to make sure, kind of highlight that people might have missed? Everybody knows Windows Server 2019's coming, but what does that mean for your area, or anything outside of that one announcement? >> I think the most exciting thing is some of the tech improvements that I know really land with this IT Pro crowd that is here at Ignite. So, yesterday during Erin Chapel, our CVP of Windows Server, during her Windows Server 2019 intro session, she announced a number that we achieved on Windows Server 2019 with Intel scalable persistent memory. I forget what the name of it is. Anyway, it was a crazy IOPS number- >> Scalable optane stuff if I remember because we had Jake on yesterday from Intel. And he was like "Your mind will be blown when "you hear about this". >> It was like 13.8 million IOPS on a 12 node cluster right? We're continuing our engineering focus. We're an engineering company. We love making the tech better. And we're getting people excited for it. And then we're following up with the, by the way, if you want this kind of thing in your environment, or you need it, if you need to deliver it, these are the partners you work with. We partner with them. We engineer with them, right. This is a co-engineering program. Get the solution from them. So, I would say that's the new thing from my space, right. I get to piggyback on all of this great engineering announcement and work and excitement, and say this is how you succeed with the technology. Don't go do it yourself, go to these people. >> And we're here to help you. >> Yes, yes. That's why I'm really grateful that you guys had me on, right. One of the early things I've been told since I took over the program was I didn't even know Microsoft did HCI, and I definitely didn't know that you had a solution program. And I'm like, I know, I will work on fixing that. >> Well Carmen, look, HCI, we understand the virtualisation layer is critical there. Microsoft obviously, one of the top players in that industry. So, we've been waiting to hear a broader story from Microsoft in this space, so congrats on all the progress. >> Thank you, thank you. This has been a really fantastic show so far. We actually have hyperconverged expo in the application infrastructure area, where I have six of the WSSD partners just showing off their solutions in one tight space, along with the engineers who work on the HCI stack at Microsoft right nearby. So if anyone to come check it out, talk to the engineers who wrote the software, talk to the-- >> It's a really small space, you hyperconverged it, right? (Rebecca laughs) >> Yes, it is a hyperconverged space, yes. >> Well, Carmen, thank you so much and I encouage anyone who's here at Ignite to go check out that booth and see what it's all about. >> Great, thank you so much. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Stu Miniman, we will have more from theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite coming up in just a little bit. (upbeat music)

>>Live from Denver, Colorado. It's the cube covering comm vault. Go 2019 brought to you by Combolt. >>Hey, good morning. Welcome to the cubes coverage of combo go 19 I'm Lisa Martin and it was stupid man. Hey Sue. Hey Lisa. Are you ready? I was going to ask you. Yes. Are you ready? >>I believe the statement this morning was, we're born ready. >>We are born ready? Yes. That was a big theme this morning. It's the theme of the event here at con Volvo 19 in Colorado and great parody this morning of all these old video clips of all these actors including the Lego movie stars from saying I'm ready. Even SpongeBob. That one got me, so we had a great day. Yesterday's to love some news came out Monday and Tuesdays a lots of great stuff to talk about. We had there a lot of their C level execs and let a new changes a call yesterday. Really got the vibe of, Hey, this is a new Combalt. >>It's interesting Lisa, because one of the things we've been talking about is the 20 years of pedigree that the company has. This Andre Mirchandani said yet they're doing some new items. I was talking to some of the partners in there like how come metallics like a separate brand, don't you worry about brand spread? We knew a thing about having too many brands on the program so it is the history, the experience, the lessons learned, the war chest as they said of all of the things that have gone wrong over the years and I sure know that from my time living on the vendor side is there's no compression algorithm for all the experience you've had and like, Oh we fixed something in that stays in the code as opposed to there's something brand new might need to work through things over time but metallic a separate brand but leveraging the partnerships and the go to market and the experience of Convolt overall. >>So if you want, my quick take is, you know metallic. I definitely, I think coming out of here is the thing we will be talking the most about their SAS plus model. I want to see how that plays in the marketplace. As I probed Rob, when we interviewed him, customers, when you think about SAS, it should just be, I worry about my data and I get up and running and they said they have a very fast up and running less than 15 minutes. That's great. But some of that optionality that they built in, Oh well I can bring this along or I can add this and do this. It's always worried that a wait, do I have to remember my thing? And as it changes down the road, do I have everything set up right? Those are things that we're trying to get away from when we go to a SAS or cloud model. >>And to your point, another theme of the show has been about operational simplification, not just what Combolt is doing internally to simplify their operations, but what they need to deliver to customers. Customers want simplicity rates. Do we, we talk about that at every show regardless of industry, but there is this, this line, and maybe it's blurring, >>like we talked a lot about blurred lines yesterday of too much choice versus simplification. Where's the line there? >> Yeah and a great point Lisa, so one of the items Sandra Mirchandani said yesterday in his keynote was that blurring the line between primary and secondary storage and I probed him on our interview is Convolt going into the primary storage market with Hedvig. Hedvig has got a, you know, a nice offering, strong IP, good engineering team. I think they want to make sure that customers that have bought head vigor want to keep buying Hedvig we'll do it, but it really, I think two years from now when you look back at is that core IP, how does that get baked into the solution? That's why they bought it. That's where it's going to be there. I don't think we're going to be looking two years from now and saying, Oh wow know Convolt they're going up against all the storage star Walton competing a bit gets HCI and everything. >>They have a strong partnership, so I think I got clarity on that for the most part, even though the messaging will will move over time on that, it will move over time on that. >> That's a good point that the song blurred lines kept popping into my head yesterday as we were talking about that. But one of the things that was clear was when we spoke with Rob Kalusi and about metallic, we spoke with Avinash Lakshman about Hedvig Sanjay as well as Don foster. They're already working on the technical integration of of this solutions and we even spoke with their VP of pricing. So from a customer, from a current Hedvig customer perspective, there is focus on that from Combolt's perspective. It's not just about integrating the technologies and obviously that has to be done really well, but it's also about giving customers that consistency and really for combo kind of a new era of transparency with respect to pricing. >>And another thing we talked about some of that transformation of the channel and Mercer row came on board only a couple of days officially on the job. He's helped a number of companies get ready for multicloud and absolutely we've seen that change in the channel over the last five to 10 years. Know back in his days when he was at VM world at VMware there the channel was, Oh my gosh, you know, when Amazon wins we all lose and today we understand it as much more nuance there. The channel that is successful partners with the hyperscale cloud environments, they have practices built around it. The office three 65 and Microsoft practices are an area that Convolt in their partners should be able to do well with and the metallic will tie into as well as of course AWS. The 800 pound gorilla in this space will be there. Combolt plays into that and you know, setting the channel up for that next generation with the SAS, with the software and living in a broader multicloud environment is definitely something to watch you a lot of news about the channel, not just from a leadership standpoint but also so metallic for the mid market >>really delivered exclusively through the channel but also the new initiative that they have. And we talked a little bit about this yesterday about going after and really a big focus with global systems integrators on the largest global enterprises. And when we spoke with their GTM chief of staff yesterday along with Mercer with Carmen, what they're doing, cause I said, you know, channel partners, all the channel partners that they work with work with their competitors. So you have to really deliver differentiation and it can't just be about pricing or marketing messaging goes all the way into getting those feet on the street. And that's another area in which we heard yesterday Combolt making strategic improvements on more feet on the street co-selling with partners, really pulling them deeper into enablement and trainings and to them that's one of the key differentiators that they are delivering to their partners. Yeah >>and Lisa, he, we got to speak to a number, a couple of customers we have more coming on today. It's a little bit telling that you know the average customer you talk to, they have five 10 years of experience there. They are excited about some of the new offerings, but as we've said many times metallic, the new Hedvig we want to talk to the new logos that they're going to get on board. That is something that for the partners has been an incentive. There were new incentives put in place to help capture those new logos because as we know, revenue was actually down in the last fiscal year a bit and Convolt feels that they have turned the corner, they're all ready to go. And one other note I'd like to make, the analogy I used last year is we knew a CEO was canoe CEO search was happening, a lot of things were in motion and it's almost as if you were getting the body ready for an organ transplant and you make sure that the antibodies aren't going to reject it. And in conversation with Sanjay, he was very cognizant of that. His background is dev offs and he was a CIO. We went for it, he was the CEO of puppet. So he's going to make things move even faster. And the pace of change of the last nine months is just the beginning of the change. And for the most part I'm not hearing grumbling underneath the customer seem fully on board. The employees are energized and definitely there was good energy last year, but a raise of the enthusiasm this year. >>Well Stu, first of all, you have just been on fire the last two days comparing their CEO transition to getting a body ready for a transplant. It's probably one of the best things I've heard in a long time. That was awesome. But you're right, we've heard a lot of positivity. Cultural change is incredibly difficult. You talked a minute ago about this as a 20 year old company and as we all have all experience and the industries in which we're in, you know, one of the things that's important is, is messaging that experience and talking about the things that that worked well, but also the things that didn't work well, that they've learned from that message was carried through the keynote this morning. That three customers on stage that we saw before we had to come to the side. And I, I had, my favorite was from Sonic healthcare. Matthew McCabe's coming on in shortly with us and I always appreciate, you know, I think the voice of the customer is the best brand validation that you can get. However, what's even better is a customer talking about when the technologies that they're using fail because it does happen. How are they positioned with the support and the training and the education that is giving them to make those repairs quickly to ensure business continuity and ensure disaster recovery. I think that to me that speaks volumes about the legacy, the 20 years of experience that combo has. >>Yeah, no, Lisa, you're absolutely right. There's certain products out there that we talk about uptime in 100% in this space. You, I believe the stat was about 94% success rate and we had NASA in the keynote yesterday talking about success versus partial success versus failures and Convolt really embraces that and has customers that we'll talk about that because there are times that things will happen and there are things that you need to be able to recover from ransomware. Often it is not a question of if, when it is going to be happened, at least. The other thing I want to get your comment on Jimmy chin who is the director and one of the, the cameraman of the free solo Oscar-winning free solo documentary definitely gave me a little bit of, Oh my gosh, look at some of the Heights and I was nervous just looking at some of this stuff they're doing. I like a little bit of lightweight hiking. I'm not a mountain climber, nothing like that. But he talked about when the camera goes on, there's that added pressure that goes on and it's sitting there. It's like, yeah, you know, we sit here live all day doing that. There's that, that energy to perform. But you know, we all appreciate the everybody watching and understanding that we're all human here and every time, every once in awhile a word or a mistake gets in there, but we keep going summit. Yeah, >>that's life. But also Jimmy chin, phenomenal. I think at 2018 they just won the Oscar just earlier this year for free. Solo. I have to watch that this weekend. But a couple of things that he talked about is that failure is a huge part of preparation. Couldn't agree more. What a simplified statement for somebody that not only has has skied Everest, the climbed Meru, I think they call it the shark fin of India, but what you talked about with what he documented with free solo and all of the thousands of sequences and he talked about that, Alex, I'm forgetting his last name, the guy who closed, who free soloed, El Capitan, all of these different failure scenarios that he rehearsed over and over again in case he encountered any of them, he would immediately be to remedy that situation and get himself back on track. I thought that message to me, failure is a good F-word if you use it properly. You know NASA, you mentioned yesterday and NASA was famous for coining in the 60s failure is not an option and I always say onto that cause I used to work for NASA, but it's a distinct possibility. And so what Jimmy chin shared this morning was electrified, but it also was a great understatement of what Combolt is helping their customers. We have to help you prepare for this. We can't help you prepare for all of it. As you mentioned, ransomware, it's not if but when. >>Well, right and both NASA and when the climbing is understanding where something could go wrong and therefore what the failures scenarios are. So you know rockets today you can't have a failure and by failure they mean look, if the rocket isn't going to work or something goes wrong, we need to make sure we don't have loss of life. That is something that if you look at blue origin and SpaceX that is pre eminent in there is we can't have another challenger disaster. We can't have some of these environments where we have the loss of human life. So that is number one. Some of the other ones, sometimes we know that the unknown happens or things don't go quite right. So being prepared to understand if something goes wrong, how do we recover from that? And that brings us back to the whole data protection and recovery of the environment because the best laid architecture, eventually something will happen and therefore we need to make sure that that data, the lifeblood of the company is able to be recovered and used and that the business can go forward even if some piece of infrastructure or some attack got through. >>There are, and there's inherent risk in every industry, whether you're talking about healthcare data, we talked with AstraZeneca yesterday, you know, genetics, clinical data, or you're talking about a retailer, doesn't matter. There's an inherent risks with every business and one of the most important things that I got out of the NASA talk yesterday, Jimmy Chin's talked today, some of the customers, is that preparation is key. You can't be over prepared. You really can't act fact. He said that you can't be overprepared in his line of work, but I think it applies to the inherent risks that any business has. Managing data. As we talk about Sue all the time, it's the lifeblood. It's the new oil. It is. It has to be available, accessible 24 by seven if it isn't and can't be. Businesses are massive risk in this day and age. Competitive competitors who have maybe better risk fault tolerance scenario in play. >>So that risk that they have to mitigate comes a preparation. We're going to be talking with Sandra Hamilton in just a few minutes about who leads customer success for combo. Really want to dig into the training, the support. We've heard that articulated from customers on stage that I don't wake up in the middle of the night anymore because I have this support from my trusted vendor combo and that is critical to any business staying up. Absolutely. We're going to hear from number of customers. I'm sure they're ready and we are ready for day two. We are ready. See, let's have a great day. Yeah, thanks. All right, so Sue and I will be right back with our first guest on day two of our coverage of comm Volkow for Stu. I'm Lisa Martin. We'll be right back.

>> live from New York. It's the Q covering AWS Global Summit 2019 brought to you by Amazon Web service, is >> welcome back here to New York City. You're watching the Cube, the worldwide leader in Enterprise Tech cover jumps to minimum. My co host for today is Cory Quinn and happy to welcome to the program. A first time guest on the program, says Heart O. B. Who is a senior leader of global business development with Healthcare Life. Scientists know this group and AWS thanks so much for joining us. All right, so you know, we love digging into some of the verticals here in New York City. Of course, it's been a lot of time on the financial service is peas we actually had, Ah, another one of our teams out of the eight of us. Imagine show going on yesterday in Seattle with a lot of the education pieces. So healthcare, life sciences in genomics, little bit of tech involved in those groups, a lot of change going on in that world. So give us a thumbnail if you would as toe what what's happening in your >> world so well just from a scope one of you Health care includes life set paid on provider Life sciences is far more by attacking its most medical device and then genomics and what we're seeing in those spaces. Let's start with health care. It's such a broad thing, will just sort of back to back and forth in health care itself. What we're sort of seeing their customs ask us to focus on and to help them do falls into three categories. First, is a lot of customers ask us to help them personalized the consumer health journey. You and I, all of us, are so accustomed to that frictionless experiences we have elsewhere and in health care. There's a lot more friction. And so we're getting a lot of enquiries and request for us to help them transform that experience. Make it frictionless. So an example That would be if you're familiar with Doc. Doc started here in New York. Actually, when you want a book, an appointment, Doc, Doc, you can normally, if you go online, I have to put information for insurance. You type it all. Then it's full of friction. Have to put all the fields in. They use one of our A I service's image recognition, and you simply hold up your card to the camera and it able to pull your in transporation, determine eligibility and look the right appointment for you. So that's an example of removing friction for the consumer of the health consume over the patient as they're trying to go to that health care and excessive category one frictionless experiences using AWS to support it with a i service is category, too. We're getting a lot of interest for us to help health systems predict patient health events. So anything of value base care the way you actually are able to change the cost. Quality Curve is predicting events, not just dealing with math and so using a i Am L service is on top of data to predict and forecast events is a big part of one example would be with sooner where they moved, they're healthy and 10 platform, which is a launch to a patient record platform onto AWS. About 223,000,000 individuals that are on that platform Men we did a study with him where way consume about 210,000 individual patient data and created a machine learning model this is published where you can predict congestive heart failure 15 months in advance of it actually occurring. So when you look at that, that prediction are forecasting that sort of one of the powers of this princess. What category number two is predicting health events, and then the last one I'd be remiss in leaving out is that you probably have heard a lot of discussion on physician and a clinician. Burnout to the frustrations of the nurses or doctors and Muslims have the heart of that is not having the right information the right time to take care of the right patient. Data liquidity and in Trop ability is a huge challenge, and a lot of our customers are asking us to help solve those problems with them. You know it hims. This year we announced, together with change Healthcare Change Healthcare said they want to provide free and troubling to the country on AWS, with the platform supporting that. So those are sort of three categories. Personalize the consumer health journey. Predicting patient health events and promoting intra ability is sort of the signals that we're seeing in areas that were actively supporting our customers and sort of elevating the human condition. >> It's very easy to look at the regulation around things like health care and say, Oh, that gets in the way and its onerous and we're not gonna deal with it or it should be faster. I don't think anyone actively wants that. We like the fact that our hospitals were safe, that health care is regulated and in some of the ways that it is at least. But I saw an artifact of that means that more than many other areas of what AWS does is your subject to regulatory speed of Sloane. A speed of feature announcement, as opposed to being able to do it as fast technology allows relatively easy example of this was a few years back. In order to run, get eight of us to sign a B A. For hip, a certification, you have to run dedicated tendency instances and will not changed about a year and 1/2 2 years ago or even longer. Depending it's it all starts to run together after a time, but once people learn something, they don't tend to go back and validate whether it's still true. How do you just find that communicating to your customers about things that were not possible yesterday now are, >> yeah, when you look at hip eligibility. So as you know, a devious is about over 100 him eligible service's, which means that these are so this is that so compliance that you start their compliance, Remember, is an outcome, not a future. So compliance is a combination of people process platform, and we bring the platform that's hip eligible, and our customers bring the people in process, if you will, to use that platform, which then becomes complying with regulatory requirements. And so you're absolutely right. There's a diffusion of sort of understanding of eligibility, a platform, and then they worked with customers have to do in order as a shared responsibility to do it. That diffusion is sometimes slower. In fact, there's sometimes misinformation. So we always see it work with our customers and that shared, responsive model so that they can meet their requirements as they come to the cloud. And we can bring platforms that are eligible for hip. They can actually carry out the work clothes they need to. So it's it's that money, you know, the way I think of it is. This when you think of compliance, is that if if I were to build for you a deadbolt for your door and I can tell you that this complies boasted of things, but you put the key under the mat way might not be complying with security and regular requirements for our house. So it's a share responsible. I'll make the platform be eligible and compliant, and so that collective does daytime and dusting. People are saying that there is a flat from this eligible, and then they have to also, in their response to work to the people in process potion to make the totality of it comply with the requirements for regulatory for healthcare regulatory requirements. >> Some of the interesting conversations I've had in the last few years in health care in the industry is collaborations that are going on, you know, how do we share data while still maintaining all of the regulations that are involved? Where does that leave us get involved? There >> should. That's a fact. There is a data sharing part of that did a liquidity story that we talked about earlier in terms of instability. I'll give an example of where AWS actually actively working in that space. You may be familiar with a service we launched last November at Reinvent called Amazon Campion Medical and Campion Medical. What it does is it looks at a medical note and can extract key information. So if you think back to in high school, when you used to read a book in highlighting yellow key concepts that you wanted to remember for an exam Amazon Carmen Medical Same thing exactly, can lift key elements and goes from a text blob, too discrete data that has relationship ontology and that allows data sharing where you where you need to. But then there's one of the piece, so that's when you're allowed to disclose there's one of me. Sometimes you and I want to work on something, but we want to actually read act the patient information that allows data sharing as well. So Amazon coming medical also allows you to read, act. Think of when a new challenge shows that federally protected doctor that's blacked out Amazon com for American also remove patient identifying information. So if you and I want to collaborate on research project, you have a set of data that you wanna anonima de identify. I have data information of I D identified. To put it together, I can use Amazon com Medical Read Act All the patient information Make it d identified. You can do the same. And now we can combine the three of us that information to build models, to look a research and to do data sharing. So whether you have full authority to to share patient information and use the ontological portion of it, or whether you want to do the identifying matter, Amazon competent medical helps you do that. >> What's impressive and incredible is that whether we like it or not, there's something a little special about health care where I can decide I'm not going to be on the Internet. Social media things all stop tweeting. Most people would thank me for that, or I can opt out of ride sharing and only take taxis, for example. But we're all sooner or later going to be customers of the health care industry, and as a result, this is some of that effects, all of us, whether we want to acknowledge that or not. I mean, where some of us are still young enough to believe that we have this immortality streak going on. So far, so good. But it becomes clear that this is the sort of thing where the ultimate customer is all of us. As you take a look at that, does that inform how AWS is approaching this entire sector? >> Absolutely. In fact, I'd like to think that a W brought a physician toe lead sector because they understood that in addition to our customer obsession that we see through the customer to the individual and that we want to elevate the human condition we wanted obsess over our customers success so that we can affect positive action on the lives of individuals everywhere. To me, that is a turn. The reason I joined it of U. S s. So that's it. Certainly practice of healthcare Life's I said on genomic Seti ws has been around for about six years. A doubIe s double that. And so actually it's a mature practice and our understanding of our customers definitely includes that core flame that it's about people and each of us come with a special story. In fact, you know the people that work in the U. S. Healthcare life, science team people that have been to the bedside there, people that have been adventure that I worked in the farm industry, healthcare, population, health. They all are there because of that thing you just said. Certainly I'm there because that on the entire practice of self life sciences is keenly aware of looking through the customers to the >> individual pieces. All right, how much? You know, mix, you know, definitely an area where compute storage are critically important than we've seen. Dramatic change. You know, in the last 5 to 10 years, anything specific you could share on that >> Genomics genomex is an area where you need incredible computer storage on. In our case, for example, alumina, which is one of our customers, runs about 85% of all gene sequencing on the planet is in aws customer stores. All that data on AWS. So when you look at genomex, real power of genomics is the fact that enables precision diagnostics. And so when you look at one of our customers, Grail Grail, that uses genomic fragments in the blood that may be coming from cancer and actually sequences that fragment and then on AWS will use the power of the computer to do machine learning on that Gino Mexicans from to determine if you might have one of those 1 10 to 12 cancers that they're currently screening for. And so when you talk to a position health, it really can't be done without position diagnostics, which depends on genomex, which really is an example of that. It runs on AWS because we bring compute and storage essentially infinite power. To do that you want, For example, you know the first whole genome sequence took 14 years. And how many billions of dollars Children's Hospital Philadelphia now does 1000 whole genome sequences in two hours and 20 minutes on AWS, they spike up 20,000 see few cores, do that desi and then moved back down. Genomics. The field that literally can't be. My humble opinion can't be done outside the cloud. It just the mechanics of needed. The storage and compute power is one that is born in the cloud on AWS has those examples that I shared with you. >> It's absolutely fantastic and emerging space, and it's it's interesting to watch that despite the fact there is a regulatory burden that everything was gonna dispute that and the gravity of what it does. I'm not left with sense that feature enhancement and development and velocity of releases is slower somehow in health care than it is across the entire rest of the stack. Is that an accurate assessment, or is there a bit of a drag effect on that? >> Do you mean in the health care customers are on AWS speaking >> on AWS aside, citizen customers are going to be customers. Love them. We >> do aws. You know, we obviously innovation is a rowdy and we release gosh everything. About 2011 we released 80 front service than features and jumped 1015 where it was like 702 jumped 2018. Where was 1957 features? That's like a 25 fold. Our pace of innovation is not going to slow down. It's going to continue. It's in our blood in our d. N. A. We in fact, hire people that are just not satisfied. The status quo on want to innovate and change things. Just, you know, innovation is the beginning of the end of the story, so, no, I don't have to spend any slowdown. In fact, when you add machine learning models on machine learning service that we're putting in? I only see it. An even faster hockey stick of the service is that we're gonna bring out. And I want you to come to reinvent where we're going to announce the mall and you you will be there and see that. All >> right, well, on that note thank you so much for giving us the update on healthcare Life Sciences in genomics. Absolutely. Want to see the continued growth and innovation in that? >> My pleasure. Thank you for having a show. All >> right. For Cory, Queen of Stupid Men. The Cube's coverage never stops either. We, of course, will be at eight of us reinvent this fall as well as many other shows. So, as always, thanks for watching the cue.

>> live from Boston, Massachusetts. It's the you covering your red hat some twenty nineteen brought to you by bread hat. >> Welcome back to our continuing live coverage here, read. Had summat. Twenty nineteen. You're watching Cube. I'm John Wallis along with stewed minimum. Nice to have you here with us as we head toward the homestretch. Day three of our three days of coverage here on the Q. We're now joined by a couple of guys who they put on their traveling shoes to get here, both hailing from Sydney, Australia. Gilman, pull a Matisse who's a senior innovation lead at Optimise and Vasily Check Culkin, who's a principal software architect, also adopted, which is the second largest mobile phone service provider in Australia. Gentlemen, thanks for being with us. Thanks, fiving. It's a long way to come, right? >> Yes, it is, but it's very worst trip. >> Excellent. Well, you're both on the keynote stage this morning. We'LL talk about that in just a little bit for folks who might not be familiar with obvious once you tell us a little bit about your footprint in Australia and what brings you here to talk about red hat and open >> shift well as you mentioned the obvious is a leading telco in Australia way are lucky that we own our infrastructure, which makes it a fantastic place As software engineers or infrastructure engineers working a CZ, we can develop new products and new solutions or innovate. It was in this network. Um all roles for the city and I adopted is essentially to identify new opportunities to innovate within our networks. We use our core I sets to innovate, but not on ly Just do this research and development also execute on this way. Call this a bit of an applied innovation where a ninety we would work really hard in in taking it, Teo to realise come but live writing on Colossus. >> So we're having a lot of stories with customers about transformation and telecommunications is one that's fascinating to look at because, you know, you work on software, you know, when I think back to tell Comet was, you know, fiber and towers and you know, physical implementation. But, you know, software, such a large part of what's going on. You tell us some of the changes going on and you know what's impacting your role in Annapolis? >> Uh, it's it's impacting all. Tell CAS actually, but yes, kill Cosa Switching from this old mine set off just fathers just hours. And this is Dan movements and five hundred Carmen, which is driving a lot of changes. People start thinking about social network functions and how we can dip alone on edge. How we can help our customers and developers to collaborate on next features how we can leverage although technologists and a state we have. >> I think if you think of software defined network and they moved to naturalization, you can now think of this. Australia is a big country that so you can not think of this entire infrastructure is being virtualized and could be made available for Also use a CZ well, so it's really changing that sense that it's not closed anymore and you can open to new cases. >> You know, you bring up it. Just a point about the pure geography of Australia. Huge country. Twenty five million people. No way would jealous here in the States, you had twenty five just, you know, in the Boston New York area. Probably I would think somewhere around there, but house that factor and just in terms of your operations in general that you do have nine million subscribers spread out over so much geography on dure trying to deliver the state of the art circuit service. Just, >> I said I couldn't take this one. So in terms of distance that there is an important impact. But what Today we were talking about phone calls. Video is essentially managing infrastructure, and you know, it's such a large country as its challenges. But it's something we're getting very good at a CZ. We pushing very hard to be present in regional Australia so you can sink of this beautiful landscape in getting five of there being a challenge, but with challenges that they did. The luck that comes with this is that we get to a parade, a scaled network, maybe not with the scale of subscribers that you have in any US, but we're the same challenges. So when it comes to innovation way, get the opportunities to way find you. >> So in the keynote, there was a lot of residents in the audience when you, you know, talked about breaking the language barrier. Maybe, you know, go in share with our audience here, just a tidbit as to what you were talking about. How that works from a technology standpoint. Roll >> out from technology. A point off you telephone you're stuck is it's complex thing. And if you want to integrate directly this telephone system directly with a phone call, it's our job. Okay, I did it. It's tough we did it. I'm never getting so. And the software developers what we tend to do when the get some complex things to solve. We obstructed away, and for us it was off the solution. We need to obstruct away all this complex ing all complex signaling nadiya handling and a very simple way off getting additional voice services within phone call. It's additional challenges like distance, and you can't just kind of older in the cloud because we need to be close to the customer. Otherwise, it will be very, very but quality. Always what and yeah, and it's opens availability toe innovate further, we can bring more services, not only voice, translation and transcription, but just think about it. You got your voice. We can help you. We can like new exciting services on plain old. >> So we had translate today and that we were here to talk about the technology may also the culture changed around. If on network becomes more open. And if we have these opportunities to live rage this network to try to build new products on DH, there are plenty of products that way. Also working on that are based on this idea that waken build products like people build APS to build a napkin, a smartphone or you need this environment way can expose the network in the same digital environment on DH. Translation is very interesting because it's emotional. If you think of communication, language can be a barrier. The a. D that we digitize the phone call and that we can then let build products or or engineer products that break barriers is very exciting. And so this is where we pick the specific use case for for the keynote today, Aziz, you mentioned before it has a emotional showing it, >> but there was if I got it right and police correct me if I didn't, um, you were engaged in a real time phone call right now and then if we pretended that one of you spoke one language, one of you spoke another. There was an immediate translation from English to French, French to English. And the call was being transcribed in real time as well. So it could be used another medium, right? I want to use it in, you know, e mails or other communications text, whatever. So you were stockpiling all this capability right in through the transcription, but doing real time voice translation. >> Take the venue, We idea. So things like translation is something that Microsoft, for example, does really well and many club companies to really well, the value we add is to move from having an adult translation request conditions like this to Russian, to integrating this in in one of the most natural communication channel, which is person to person. Phone call is a perfect place to start, because if there is one place where you're going to a language barrier as phone calls global, you can call anywhere in the world. This's pretty exciting environment. >> Oh, I thought so. I mean, >> you know, it's fascinating to think kind of history of telecommunications. It's well, you know, every country has their own, you know, system. But there needs to be that interconnection so that you know, today I don't think about whether you know I'm calling across the street across the country or across the globe. It takes care of that boy. If I could just plug into some of the available services on INDU translation, you know, right you're goingto bring Bring the world a little bit closer together. >> And the phone. Nichole's of Quintus, You don't sign up to brand, so you do sign up to a telescope. But this is regardless of your device. You can establish a phone call on used the services. I >> know some teenagers I'd like to have their conversations translated for May. Really helpful. >> You can build it a cz. Well, >> can you do work on that? Good. I'll have to think about it. What about five g And what is that doing for you? Just from a purely technical standpoint, the opportunities that you see coming with that I know rollouts. Probably still year or twenty four months away from taking place. I don't know what the Australia rollout is compared to the U. S. But in terms of what that speed is going to do for you, what kinds of possibilities you think the ceiling exist? I >> must after very developed. I'm thinking, like from Pew Software Development Point of view. Excuse me. Perfect opportunity to be connect customers with developers on an edge on a on your network. Andi, it's all the world later NCIS and bend with and you can do fascinating thing on edge ofthe network I raise that sings real time Rachael here at the open to reality five g will enable it and we'LL keep thiss development and improve speed off this stuff. And I'm looking forward to have all of this available not only for me as I'm looking for Loker, I don't want it close the opening network we're opening Tell Kal Toh the cool world off wonderful software development and it's fascinating >> The Savages. Also, if you think of five, you gotta think about momentum. There is this momentum that we have now to improve our networks, and it's not entirely just five g. We've got network function visualizations. We've got Coyote, and that momentum is very interesting because as we improve our network, it becomes more digital and especially mentioned as it becomes more digital. It's more open and enables new opportunities for enterprise customers off for startups to innovate in this environment. >> Okay, so my understanding from what you talked about and, you know, this is built on open shift, you know, what's the importance? You know, why Open shift and what is that enable for your business and ultimately your customers? >> This is actually something way quite proud off. When we started this journey in this software engineering space, it's inclined narrative. It's only natural to build functions in containers, but there was There was effectively that gap between building new applications in the current state of a network that has a a very different approach of operation. So, communities, where's the right tool for us? But when you operate a carrier network, you need strong support and you need Teo. You need to have a very firm Acela's because you don't drop phone calls. This is very important minute communication, and this is where we had a fantastic relationship is really to find a way to operationalize thiss deployment. >> Ricardo wasn't only like operating this thing way worked hand in hand last few years, they've helped a lot this designing systems like best practices. We learned a lot off each other and it was fantastic journey way really enjoyed working on this. It's extremely professional team, >> No, in from a timing perspective Oh, our journey came together a same time, as read it started seeing telcos has being where the next big thing or the next something to very much start focusing on. >> So so what's your next big thing? We're talking about five G and what that's going to open up, and we've read a lot about it here in the States. But from your perspective, you know what? What is that going to enable? What kind of services? Because for G's already, you know, blowing everybody's mind in some respects, right with the data capabilities there imaging transactions, those kinds of things, but five g your thought, I think, >> previews. Innovation cycles things three G for G Always came, came in with a pre pre baked benefits, often speeds with five minutes a little. My opinion is a little bit different. What's happening? What we're doing is is an example of this is in a V that you have a new environment and important environment where new things can happen and so you're going to see this as Oppen versus closed what it means is that the next big thing is not necessarily five year. And Evie. Next big thing is what software developers will make of this environment. And that might be a start up. Or they could be enterprised could bring you cooperate, right? And we are very much very much open to start conversation with anyone that would like to make use of this. He's >> got the next big thing. That was God the next big thing yet, Right, gentlemen, thank you for making the long trip. I know not just to see us, but we do appreciate your carving out some time for us. Good job this morning. And, uh, good luck down the road. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thank you. Thank you. Back with more live from Boston. You're watching the Cuban. You're watching coverage from Red Hat Summit twenty nineteen

(energetic music) >> Narrator: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico, it's theCUBE, covering CoinAgenda. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE. >> Hello and welcome to our exclusive Puerto Rico coverage of CoinAgenda, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. We're here covering all the action at Restart, we've got a ton of events, all the thoughts leaders, influencers, decision makers, you name it, in the industry, pioneers making it happen. My next guest is Toni Lane, who's the founder of CoinGraph. She's a true influencer with a lot of impact in this market. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you for having me. >> We're so glad to have you on. Like the little joke at the beginning about being an influencer, you actually are an influencer. You've done such great work in the industry, well regarded in the community. You have publication and you do a lot of great content. Thanks for coming on. >> Oh, for sure, yeah, thanks for having me. >> So being the influencer, what does that mean these days? Because we were just talking before the camera on, we came on camera, influence changes. You can't be an influencer all the time. You can be super or expert at something, but your expertise could change, you move to a new topic, learn something. And there's a lot of people in the digital marketing world saying I'm an influencer. It's kind of half baked, and really, I mean, it's not about the followers, your thoughts? >> Well, I mean, most of those followers are purchased. So there's a big difference between being an influencer and having actual influence. Because if you're, you know, if you have a million followers on Twitter, that's nice. How much engagement do you have? And that's actually what you look for, it's like when you look at someone's, whether it's, you know, social media, their digital presence, it's not about followers, it's all about engagement. You know, I don't even have that many, like I don't spend a lot of time doing that, at least I haven't so far, it's something I'm getting more into. But I have people that are really engaged, and so I look at people that have 15 million followers and I'm like, you have just as many likes on your things as I do, right. Because these people aren't real people. And it's less about, having influence in general is in many ways about having authenticity. And so influence is your ability to get something done. Being an influencer is your ability to hold someone's attention for a fragment of time. But being an influencer is not the same as having influence. >> And this community here, certainly, with decentralization here, you get the decentralized applications coming up blockchain, you got ICOs booming. It's all about the network effect, if you look at network effect, that is a new concept that ad technology does not know because you can't cookie a network connection. The only way to measure someone's true network is through malware today, and that's not good, no one does that. Well, they do, they're-- >> Toni: Unfortunately, yeah. >> But you can't you do it at business price, not sustainable. So the point is, it's not about how many followers you have. It could be that one follower, maybe 200 or 2,000, that opens up more. This is the network effect. This is what this community is all about, so I want to get your thoughts on this community's vibe. A lot of mission-driven, impact-oriented, merged with tech. So you have a fusion of technology, artistry, craftsmanship and mission-driven societal change in one melting pot. This is your wheelhouse. Share your thoughts on this. >> Well, so all of the different digital currencies have different value systems and they attract a different breed. And there are different incentives for each of these based on how the technology is designed, each protocol, right? So if you look at Bitcoin, in Bitcoin, the incentives are, you know, mining is done by computers, so your only incentive is like having social influence? And this is, I think, why we've seen a lot of kind of I would call it a scarcity mentality in terms of the way, why we see even more trolls in Bitcoin is because social influence is a huge way that success is measured, because as a developer, you can't have, you can't achieve a level of status any other way as a developer or as an influencer in Bitcoin, because the Bitcoin network is so far removed from that. And that's actually a perverse incentive in and of itself, and not only that, but early days in Bitcoin, there were major organizations who would hire people to man 100 Reddit and Twitter accounts and go into the Bitcoin community and actually fragment the public opinion using a technique grassroots psychological insurgency. So buying Reddit accounts that had been active for the last 10 years and going through and, you know, essentially just stabbing at people and creating, even having conversations with themselves to empower the voice of trolls. And what happens is you start bringing out what we call, actually, what the former Assad called, after Henry Kissinger, there was a big move that happened in the Middle East, where Kissinger realized the Middle East was becoming too powerful, and he saw it as a threat to American democracy. And so Kissinger organized a deal that fragmented the Middle East. And Assad said to Kissinger that his actions would be, he played Assad, basically. And Assad said to Kissinger, "Your actions "will bring up demons hidden underneath "the surface of the Arab world." And that strategy is actually something used in the Bitcoin community to leverage the incentives that are created, which is why we have seen previously so much, even from our industry leaders, so much fragmentation and so much tension. But the network is the most secure and the least corruptible, hands down, fundamentally. It's real cryptography. >> But let's talk about that, I love this conversation, because with networks, you have the concept of self-heal, and this gets nerdy on the packets, how packets move, at that level, self-healing networks has been a paradigm that's been proven. So that's out there, that's got to go to a societal level. The other one is the incentive system, if you have an immune system, if you will, in a network, this is a cultural thing. So actions, the Reddit's obvious, right. Weaponizing content has been well-documented, it's coming now mainstream, people are getting it that this outcome was actually manufactured by bad behavior. Now, I argue that there's an exact opposite effect. You can actually weaponize for good, 'cause everything has a polar opposite. So what is your view on that, because this is something that we've been teasing out for the first time. How do you weaponize content for good, (mumbles) not the right word, but look for the opposite value? >> Right, yeah, I mean, it is in so many ways, right. So I think it's about, there's a professor at Stanford whose name is BJ Fogg, and he's a behavioral researcher and he talks about essentially, you know, he writes a lot about habits. But something that's even more interesting about his understanding of propaganda is I studied a lot of Edward Bernays, he's responsible, he created the theory of propaganda, right. And he's the nephew of Sigmund Freud, he's responsible for essentially every consumptive theory in like leading up to the last century, he's actually, I would say he's responsible for the state of advertising and the economy today, almost really single handedly. And what's fascinating about this theory is that you can use propaganda to get women to smoke by unearthing what it is unconsciously in men that makes them not want to smoke. You can also use propaganda to get people to invest in health and wellness. You can also use propaganda to get people to stop their bad habits. So it's understanding that a technique works in a cognitive capacity in a way that affects a large amount of people. And it's really about the intention behind why a person who has influence, as we were saying, is leveraging that relationship. So I would say it's more about-- >> So we have to reimagine influence. Because the signalings that are igniting the cognitive brain can be tweaked. So that's what you're getting at here, right, so that's what we have to do. >> And it's an illusion from almost every angle. It's even the idea that, in the United States, the level of influence the president has and who's running, you know, and who, yeah, and who's at the wheel, right. So it's, we live in a world that is built on manufactured consent, and manufactured consent is enabled through thinkers like Bernays and through what I call the illusion of things like our former construct of even American democracy. That these things we've imagined to be so, the foundation and the structure for the way that we live. All of those things have become so far removed from their theory that they're no longer serving the principles under which they were founded, and that disconnect is actually a huge, it's a gap, it's an inertia gap for exploitation or it's an inertia gap for growth, and usually what happens is you have the exploitation first. Someone says oh, here's a big gap of information asymmetry, so I'm going to exploit the information asymmetry. And then once people start realizing that that information asymmetry is being exploited, you experience a huge inversion of that and you have enough kind of, you have enough inertia behind that slingshot to launch it into something totally different. >> Yeah, this is a great concept, I interviewed the founder of the Halcyon HAL in Washington, DC, and she's an amazing woman. And she had a great conscious about this, and what she postulated was, bubbles that burst, exploitation's always, we've seen it in all trends. The underbelly, 'cause it's motivated, no dogma. They don't care about structural incentives, they just want to make cash. But she had an interesting theory, she was talking about you can let the air out of the bubble with community and data. So all the societal entrepreneurship activities now that are mission-driven, now getting back to mission-driven is interesting. There might be a way to actually avoid the pop. Because, depending upon what the backlash might be on the exploitation side, as we saw in the dotcom bubble, you can actually let the air out a little bit through things like data. I mean, how do you see, in your mind, just thinking out loud, how do you see that playing out, because we have community now. We have access to open data. Blockchain is all about immutability. It's all about power to the user's data. This is a mega trend. Your thoughts? >> So interdependence is huge in the blockchain community, and that's actually to touch back on the incentives in Bitcoin, I think that that's actually one of Bitcoin's, it's not that it's a wrong or a right, it just is, right, like sidechains will be launched eventually, but the idea that Ethereum created something that was adaptable and empowered people to be creative, and yet they're creating incentives for her people to launch products that are, I believe, 'causing, in some ways, could cause some serious harm to the ecosystem once the air is let out of that bubble. >> John: The data. >> The data, so data, yes yes yes. >> How do you let the air out of the bubble, because the pop will be massively implosion, it'll leave a crater. >> So data is a non-scarce resource. This is actually how I describe blockchain to people. And this is actually, I think, one of the, the challenge, if you want to look at it from the perspective of challenge, and then I'll talk about for the benefit, just between Bitcoin and Ethereum, there are obviously other blockchains, EOS is like coming out super soon, Holochain. There are tons, Steem has actually its own infrastructure, tons of other blockchains to speak about. But just to take these two main blockchains, which are not competitors. In Bitcoin, you have, it's really cryptography. Cryptography is not about, you know, like let's do some rapid prototyping, cryptography is about let's like put a lot of thought into this thing and have mathematical certainty that this is not exploitatable. And Ethereum is just kind of like, well, let's build a framework and then let people play as much as they can. And so there are challenges and benefits to both of those models, the challenge of Ethereum being that you've let all of this capital into the industry which is not actually, 46% of ICOs have already failed. Already failed. And then if you look at Bitcoin-- >> And a person with your industry (mumbles) at 1,200, so it's a 50% discount. >> Oh yeah, oh yeah. And then if you do the same thing and you're looking at the Bitcoin blockchain, we've seen that the capacity for innovation, Bitcoin could have done what, they could've been the first to market for what Ethereum is doing. And they chose a different route, and I think there are some pros and cons to both of those things, but I think there is an intentionality behind why the world played out in the way that it did. And I think it's the right strategy for both products. So the way I describe applications using blockchain technology to people and what I call the future of an infinite economy is that, if you think about why are Facebook and Google these multi billion dollars companies, it's really simple. It's because what do they own, right? The data, the data. And they're some of the last companies that are still stewarding these things in a way that is taking vast amount of aggregated ownership over an asset that people are generating every day that's extremely valuable to companies in the private sector. So the way that I describe blockchain is that, if we being to own our self-sovereign identity, then when we're owning our data, that's the foundation for universal basic income. If we take a non-scarce resource like data that's being generated every day, not just from us, right, but the data in the health of the ocean, right. The stewardship of the ocean, the health of the fish, actually saying okay, fish are thriving in this area, and so there's a healthy ecosystem, and so this coin is trading higher because we're stewarding this area of the ocean so we don't overfish. The quality of the air so that, when we're actually de-polluting the air collectively, everyone around us is creating and generating data to say we're making the air better. The air, actually, the health of our bodies, of our Earth, of our minds, of our planet, of even the health of our innovation. Right, what are the incentives behind our innovation, those are all forms of data. And that's a non-scarce resource, so if we take all of these different applications and make many different blockchains. Which I fundamentally believe that there's a powerful theory in having blockchains that are economically scarce, because I believe you're going to empower more diverse spectrums and also have a level of difficulty in creating the coin. You're going to have more innovation. And so-- >> Well, this is a key area. I mean, this is super important. Well, I mean, you step back for a second, you zoom out, you say okay, we have data, data's super valuable, if you take it to the individual's levels, which has not been, quite frankly, the individual's been exploited. Facebooks of the world, these siloed platforms, have been using the data for advertising. That's just what everyone knows, but there's other examples. The point is, when you put the data in the hands of the users, combine that with cloud computing and the Internet of Things when you can have an edge of the network high powered computer, the use cases have never been pushed before. The envelope that we're pushing now has never been in this configuration. You could never have a decentralized network, immutable, storing users' data, you've never had the ability to write the kind of software you can today, you've never had cloud computing, you've never had compute at the edge, which is where the users live, they are the edge. You have the ability where the user's role can enable a new kind of collective intelligence. This is like mind blowing. So I mean, just how would you explain that to a common person? I mean, 'cause this is the challenge, 'cause collective intelligence has been well documented in data science. User generated content is kind of the beginning of what we see in user wearables. But if you can control the data streaming into the network, with all the self-healing and all the geek stuff we're talking about, it's going to change structural things. How do you explain that to a normal person? >> You don't, you don't, right. So you show them. Because I can sit here all day and I can talk to you about, you know, I could talk to you about all of these things, but at the end of the day, with normal people, it's not something you want to explain. You want to show them, because with my, actually, my grandma gets Bitcoin. My grandma hit me up in like 2012 and she was like, "Do you know what that Bitcoin thing is?" I'm like, "Mimi," I'm like, "How do you know "what Bitcoin is, Mimi?" And she's just like, "I don't know, I read." You know, I was like, "This is, so what are you reading? "Like, are you hanging out on like libertarian forums, "like what's up?" And so-- >> What's going on in the club there, I mean, are they playing-- >> Yeah, but she is a really unique lady. So I would say that, for most people, they are not going to, when you explain things to people-- >> What would you show them, I mean, what's an example? >> The way that, so when I was, so I got into Bitcoin in 2011, and the way that I would explain Bitcoin to people is I would just send it to them. I would be like, "Here's Bitcoin, like take this Bitcoin, "here's some Bitcoin for you." And that was, people got it, because they were like, I have five dollars now in my hands that was not there. And this person just sent it to me. And for some people even still, you know, to be honest, even then, I remember how much energy it took for me to do that. Everywhere I go, I'd be like, in cabs, I'd be checking out grocery stores and I would try, I would essentially pitch Bitcoin to every person that I met. >> John: You were evangelizing a lot of it. >> It took so much energy though, and even after that, there was a period-- >> It was hard for people to receive it, they would have to do what at that time? Think about what the process was back then. >> Oh yeah. There were very few people who, even after doing that, really got it. But you know what happened. This is so much perspective for me, I remember doing that in 2013 and I remember, in 2018, actually, I think it was the end of 2017. I went to a gas station, it's the only gas station in San Francisco with a Bitcoin ATM. And I was like, I need to get some cash and I'm running on Bitcoin. >> John: You guys want a mountain view now. >> Yeah, yeah. And so I go in and these guys, I'm like frustrated, I'm like oh, the ATM is like the worst user experience ever, I'm like (groans). That's literally, I'm like, it's just, it was like eyes rolling in the back of my head, like just so frustrated because I'm a super privacy freak. And so it was just a super complex process, but the guys that, the guy's (mumbles) he looks at me and he goes, "Yo." And I was like, "What's up, man?" And he goes, "Are you trying to buy some Bitcoin?" I was like, "I'm trying to sell some Bitcoin right now." (John laughs) >> You're dispensing it, they're like yeah. >> Yeah, he's like, "Oh, word." And he's like, "How much are you trying to sell?" And I'm like, "I don't know, like 2K." And so he goes, "Aight." And he's like, "Let me hit up my friends," he literally calls three of his friends who come down and they just like, they're like, "Do you want to sell more?" They're like, all they just peer to peer. It's like we bypass the ATM and it was actually a peer to peer exchange. And I didn't have to explain anything. You know what made people get it? You showed them the money, you showed them the money. And sometimes people don't, you can explain these concepts that are world-changing, super high level or whatever. People are not actually going to get it until it's useful to them. And that's why a user interface is so important. Like, if you even look at the Internet. Who made the money on the Internet, right, it was the people who understood how to own the user interface. >> I had a conversation with Fred Kruger from WorkCoin, he's been around the block for a long time, great guy. We were riffing on the old days. But we talked about the killer app for the mini computer and the mainframe, the mini computer and then the PC, it was email, for 20 years, the killer app was email. We were like, what's the killer app for blockchain? It's money, the killer app is money. And it's going to be 50 year killer app. Now, the marketplace is certainly maybe tier two killer app, but the killer app is money. >> For sure, that's amazing. >> That's the killer app. Okay, so we're talking about money, let's talk about wallets and whatnot. There's a lot of people that I know personally that had been, wallets had been hacked. Double authentication (mumbles) news articles on this, but even early on, you got to protect yourself. It's something that you're an advocate of, I know recently, you've been sharing some stuff on Telegram. Share your thoughts on newbies coming in, be careful. Your wallet can be hacked, and you got to take care of yourself online. Is there a best practice, can you share some color commentary on when you get into the system, when you get Bitcoin or crypto, what are some of the best practices? >> It's not even, I think you need to remember a key principle of cryptography when you're dealing with digital currency, which was like don't really trust anything unless you call someone, you have like first hand verification from a person that you trust. Because these things are, I mean, I've had, literally last week, I had seven friends contact me, actually more than that once I posted about it, and they were like, "Is this you?" And I was like what, like people would literally just go online, they would scrape my Facebook photo, they'd go on Telegram and they would make, my name is @ToniLaneC, T-O-N-I-L-A-N-E-C, and so is my Twitter, and people would scrape my photos from my Twitter or my Telegram or my Facebook and they would create fake accounts. And they would start messaging people and say "Hey, like "what's up, how are you, that's cool, great, awesome. "So like, I need like 20 BTC for a loan. "Can you help me?" And all my friends were like, "I was just talking to you, is this you?" And I'm like no. And so I think that there's, the other thing you have to, it's not just security in terms of, and this is actually a problem Blockchain has to solve, right. It's not just security in terms of protecting your wallet and, you know, getting like a Ledger or a Trezor and making sure that you're keeping things like in cold storage, that you're going, there are so many, keeping your money in a hard wallet, not keeping your private keys on your computer, like keeping everything, storing your passwords in multiple places that you know are safe. Both handwritten, like in lock boxes, putting it in your safe deposit box or, you know, there are so many different ways that we can get into like the complexities of protecting yourself and security. Not using centralized cell networks is one of the big ways that I do this. Because if you are using two factor-- >> John: What's a centralized cell network? >> AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile. Because you are putting yourself in a situation where, if you're using a centralized system, those centralized systems are really easily exploitable. I know because my mom, when I was a kid one time, she put a password on my account so I couldn't buy games. I was not happy about it, it was my money that I was using, it was my money I was using to buy games, she was like, "You should just spend your money on better things." And so I remember going in when I was a kid, and I was like, this is my money, I totally want to buy this upgrade on this game. And so I went in and I essentially figured out how to hack into my own phone to be able to use my own money to buy the games that I wanted to buy-- >> Highly motivated learning opportunity there (laughs). >> But I realized that, in the same way we were talking about things that can be used for good can be used for bad, in the same way that someone can do something like that, you can also say, well, I'm in a call and say that I'm this person and take their phone and then get their two factor auth. So I don't use centralized cell networks, I don't use cell networks at all. >> John: What do you use? >> So, I mean, I have different kinds of like strategies or different things that mostly-- >> You might not want to say it here, okay, all right. >> Yeah yeah yeah, they're different, I'm happy to talk about those privately. The way that I've kind of handled that situation, and then the other thing that I would say is like, we really need hardcore reputation systems in our industry and for the world. And not social reputation systems like what is happening in China right now, where you can have someone leave you, like let's say I get into an Uber and I'm 30 seconds late. I can end up in a situation where I'm like not able to be admitted into a hospital or I'm not able to take a public train. Because someone rates me lower on this reputation system, I think that's a huge human rights issue. >> John: Yeah, that's a huge problem. >> And so not reputation systems like this, but reputations like the one we're working on at CULTU.RE that are really based more on the idea of restoration and humanization, rather than continued social exploitation to create some kind of collective norm, I think that kind of model is, it's not only a-- >> Well, the network should reject that by-- >> Toni: Exactly, exactly. >> All right, so let's talk about digital nations, we have China, so there's some bad behavior going on there. I mean, some will argue that there's really no R&D over there, and now they're trying to export the R&D that they stole into other countries, again, that's my personal rant. But the innovation there is clear, we chat and other things are happening. They finally turned the corner where they're driving a lot of, you know, mainly because of the mobile. But there's other nations out there that are kind of left behind. The UK just signed this week with Coinbase a pretty instrumental landmark licensing deal, which is a signal, 'cause I know Estonia, Armenia, you name every country wants to, Bahrain's got, you know, Dubai envy. So I mean, every country wants to be the crypto country. Every country wants to be the smart cities digital nation. I know this is something that you liked, and you and I were talking about 'cause we both are interested in. Your reaction, your thoughts on where that's going, I see, it's a good sign. What are the thresholds there, what are some of the keys things that they need to do to be a real digital nation? >> Well, I think it's less about digital nations in terms of like a nation is a series of borders, and more about first nations that we are, this is what we work on at CULTU.RE, that we are actually a nation of people and a lot of those nations have overlap and we should be able to participate in many different nations who have many different economies that are all really cooperating interdependently to create the best possible life for all human good, rather than just saying like I care about me and mine, because that strategy, the way government works now, it's a closed network with low trust that is extremely inefficient in management of resources. And the only way you can really-- >> That's the opposite, by the way, of what this movement's about. >> Yeah, exactly. And the only way you can have influence in government is to go in government and to work through government. All right. So it's the idea that, look at how much food we waste in the United States. If we took the food we wasted in the United States and repurposed it, we could literally cure world hunger. That is how bad it has gotten, right. And there are people starving in the US. There are people on food stamps in the US. >> Well, I mean, every institution, education, healthcare, you name it, it's all, you know, FUBAR, big time. >> Yeah, but we're throwing away tons of lettuce and all of this different kinds of produce because it like looks funky. Like this peach looks a little too much like a bottom. So we're like not able to sell it. >> Or lettuce got a little brown on it, throw the whole thing away. >> Yes, exactly, exactly, and that waste is unacceptable. So what we need to move toward is a model of open networks of governance where we have peer to peer distribution of finance and of resources in a way that allows people to aggregate around the marketplaces that are actually benefiting the way that they believe the world should work. So it's about creating a collective strategy of collective non-violence and eliminating harm, so obviously, you know, having a society that has enough proper incentives so that people are well off and that people are provided for, and I think blockchain will-- >> I noticed you're wearing a United Nations pin. >> Woo-hoo, yeah. And blockchain, I think, will also create this. >> John: I have one too. >> Let's up top. (slap) Yeah, I think blockchain will also help create universal basic income, but in addition to that, it's the idea that, if I'm living next door, I'll give two examples. So one is about the legality of the way that we contribute to the society. So let's say I have a next door neighbor. And let's say that this next door neighbor and I feel literally, we totally get along on everything, there's just one issue we feel we're like, I totally disagree with this, I totally disagree. And that issue is the use of, and I hope this isn't controversial to say, but anyway. So the use of medical marijuana, right. And it shouldn't be, because we can have two different opinions and the world can still work and that's the point. >> Well, in California, it's now legal to own marijuana. >> Yeah, for sure, it's legal here as well. So it's the idea that, if I, so let's say I'm a woman who, you know, I have someone in my life who was injured by a driver who was driving under the influence of marijuana. And so that's all I know about marijuana because I don't really do drugs, I've never been around drugs. So when I hear that word, I immediately think about the person in my life who was harmed because of, yes, and so immediately triggered, and I'm like, I don't want to support anything, I don't want to support anything to do with marijuana, I think marijuana is like the Devil's lettuce. And I have no interest in supporting marijuana. She never has to support marijuana, she doesn't have to. But her next door neighbor is a veteran with Parkinson's disease, her, me, whatever, is a veteran with Parkinson's disease, okay. And the only way that this man can move is, he's literally shaking, but when he smokes medical marijuana, he's actually able to, you watch and literally 30-45 minutes, he's upright, he looks like a normal healthy man. And so he says, "I believe that every, "after I fought in this, I believe every person "should have access to medical marijuana, "because this is the only way I'm able "to even operate my life." >> The different context. >> And I'm so, yes, exactly. And so what culture is really about is about understanding each other's context, that's even how reputation works. It's contextual awareness that provides greater understanding of who we are as individuals and the way we work together to make society work. So maybe they can mutually agree that he is not going to smoke while he's driving and he can pay to support everyone to have access who needs access to medical marijuana. >> Or he could finance Uber rides for them. You know, or whatever, I mean, these are mechanisms. >> Yes, yes, but it's the, yes, exactly, exactly. It's the idea that we are all, we're coming together to share context is a way that's not aggressive and not accusatory, so two people can believe two totally different things and still develop enough mutual respect to live together peacefully in a society. >> You know, the other too I'm riffing on that is that now KYC is a concept (mumbles) kicked around here, know your customer. I've been riffing on the notion of KYC for know your neighbor. And what we're seeing in these communities, even the analog world, people don't know who their neighbors are. Like, they don't actually even like care about them. >> Toni: For sure. >> You know, maybe I grew up in, you know, a different culture where, you know, everyone played freely, the parents were on the porch having their cocktail or socializing and watching the kids from the porch play on the lawn. Now I call that Snapchat, right. So I can see my kids Snapchat, so I'm not involved, but I have peripheral view. >> Toni: For sure. >> But we took care of each other. That doesn't happen much anymore, and I think one of the things that's interesting in some of these community dynamics that's been successful is this empathy about respect. They kind of get to know people in a non-judgmental way. And I think that is something that you see in some of these fragmented communities, where it's just like, if they just did things a little bit different. Do you agree, I see you're shaking your head, your thoughts on this? This super interesting social science thing that's, now you can measure it with digital or you can measure that kind of-- >> We can incentivize it. We can incentivize it. And that's the difference, measurement is one thing. Incentive is a behavior changer. Incentive is a behavior changer. And that is what we actually have to do in the way we think about the foundation of these systems, is it's not incentivizing competitive marketplaces that are like my way of thinking about this is right and your way of thinking about this thing is wrong, and like ah, it's not about that. At the end of the day like, I think we forget or misquote so much of, so many of the great thinkers of the last generation, like if you think about Darwin. What does everyone know about Darwin, right, it's like survival of the fittest. It's not what Darwin said, okay. It's misquoted and it's used, it's like one of those things where people who want to exploit-- >> It's a meme, basically. >> Yeah, people who want to exploit someone else's knowledge for their own ends will use that to, in some way, uplift the kind of like strategy of, you know, incentives of the time. What Darwin actually said was that human beings with the highest capacity for sympathy, qualities we now identify as altruism, compassion, empathy, reciprocity, will be the most likely to survive during hardship. Fundamentally, I mean, look at the state of the world today. It doesn't look good, it's like, you look at the way people interact with each other, it's like a virus that's attacking itself in an ecosystem that is our planet Earth, and we need to be, you know what is the antibody, our own sense of consideration for our fellow man. That is the antibody to violence. And so we can incentivize this, and we're going to have to because we're going to, AI, automation, these will fundamentally transform the way we think about jobs in a way that will liberate us like we've never known before. And once given the freedom, I think that we'll see the world start to change. >> Toni, I really appreciate you spending the time in this thought leadership conversation, riffing back and forth. Feels great and it's a great productive conversation. I got to ask you, how did you get there? I mean, who are you? I mean, you're amazing. Like, how did you get here, you obviously, Coin Telegraph's one of the projects you're running, great content. You're wearing the UN pin, I'm aligning with that. Got a great perspective. What's your story? Where did you come from originally, I mean... How did you get here? >> I think, you know, I don't know. I'm really connected to Saturn, I don't know where my home planet is. >> Which spaceship did you come in on? No, I mean, seriously, what's your background? How did you weave into this? 'Cause you have a holistic view on things, it's impressive. But you also can get down and dirty on the tech, and you have a good, strong network. Did you kind of back into this by accident on purpose, or was it something that you studied? What's the evolution that you have? >> Yeah, you know. I studied performance art and I was an artist all of my life. And I had a really big existential crisis, because I realized, as I was looking around, that technology was replacing every form. I remember the first time I watched an AI generate, this was maybe in like, I don't remember how, this was a long time ago, but I was essentially watching, before like the deep dream stuff, maybe like 2009 or 10. And I remember watching computers generate art. And I just was like, I was like mic drop, I was like anything that could ever be created can and will be created by computers, because these are, you are looking at this data, you can scan every art piece in the world and create an amalgamation of this in a way that extends so far beyond team and capacity that the form that we have used to express artistic integrity, all forms will, in some way, become obsolete as a form of creative expression. And I had this huge existential crisis as a performer, realizing that the value of my work was essentially, like, how long would the value of my work live on if no one is, I am not alive to continue singing the song. You don't remember the people who played Carmen, you remember Bizet who wrote the opera, you remember Carmen the character, but the life of the performer is like that of a butterfly. It's like you emerge from the cocoon, you fly around the world beautifully for a very short amount of time. And then you just, you know, stardust again. And so I had this huge existential moment, and it was a really big awakening call. It was as though the gravity of the universe came into the entire dimension of my being and said these, what you have learned has given you a skill, but this is not your path. So I went okay, I just need some time to like process that and so, 'cause this is my entire life, it's the only thing I ever imagined I would ever do. And so I ended up spending three months in silence meditating. And people are like whoa, like how did you do that? And I don't think people, I don't know, not that people don't understand, but I'm not certain that a lot of people have the level of this kind of existential moment that I experienced. And I couldn't have done anything else, I really just needed to take that time to process that I was actually reformulating every construct at the foundation of my own reality. And that was going to take, that's not something you just do overnight, right, like some people can do it more fluidly, but this was a real shift, a conscious shift. And so I asked myself three questions in that meditation, it was what is my purpose, what is the paradigm shift and where is my love. And so I just meditated on these three questions and started to, I don't know how deeply you've studied lucid dreaming or out of body experiences, but that's another, a conversation we can get into in another time, that was my area of study during that period. And so I ended up leaving the three months in silence and I just kind of, I started following my intuition. So I would just, essentially, sometimes I'd walk into a library and I would just shut my eyes and I would just walk around and I would touch books. And I would just feel what they felt like to me, like the density of their knowledge. And I would just feel something that I felt called to, and I would just pull it out of the shelf and just read it. And I don't know how to explain it-- >> (mumbles) Energy, basically-- >> I was guided, I was guided to this. This was in 2011. And so what I started getting into was propaganda theory, the dissolution of Aristotelian politics as an idea of citizen and state when we're really all consumers in a Keynesian economy structured by Edward Bernays, the inventor of propaganda, who essentially based our entire attitude of economic health on, you know, a dissolving human well being. Like, the evolution of our economic well being and our human well being were fundamentally at odds, and not only was that system non-sustainable, but it was a complete illusion. At every touch, point and turn, that the systems we lived in were illusions. And so is all of the world, right, like this whole world is an illusion, but these illusions in particular have some serious implications in terms of people who don't have the capacity, or not the capacity, everyone has the capacity, but who have not explored that deeply, right, who haven't gone that deep with themselves. >> And one of those books was like a tech book or was like-- >> It was just multiple, no, it was multiple books. And it's not that I would even read all of the books all of the way through. Sometimes I would just pick up a book and I would just open it to a certain page and I would read like a passage or a couple pages, and I'd just feel like that's all I need to read out of that book. It's, you just tune into it. >> When was your first trade on Bitcoin, first buy, 2011? >> You want to know something nuts? People always, people are like, "When did you first buy Bitcoin?" I was not, I didn't. So after I started, once you know, all this knowledge came to me, I just started talking about it, I was like, I've been given some wisdom, I just have to share it. So I started going out into the world and finding podiums and sharing. And that was when someone put a USB full of Bitcoin into my hands. I very rarely, I don't necessarily buy, I've just been gifted a lot. >> Good gifts. >> Toni: They've been great gifts, yeah. >> And then when did you start Coin Telegraph, when did that come online? >> So that was in 2013. I joined, the property had been operable for I think like three or four months. And some guys called me and they said, "We're just really impressed with you "and we want to work with you." And I said, "Well, that's nice," I was like, "But you don't have a business, right?" And they were like, "What do you mean?" And I was like, "Well, you have a blog, right?" And so I went in and I said, essentially like, here's, to scale the property, I was like, "Here's a plan for the next three years. "If we really want to get this property to where "it needs to be." I'm like, "Here are the programs that we need "to institute, here's like this entire, "countries we can be operable in "and then other acquisitions of other properties." I essentially went in and said like, "Here's the business model and the plan at scale," and they were just like, I think they were a little like, the first call that we had, I think they were just like, "We just called you to," it was a bold move, like, "We just called you to offer you something, "and you countered our offer by saying "we don't have a business?" It was one of those things, but they-- >> Well, it was the labor of love for them, right, I mean-- >> Well, for all of us, yeah, for all of us. >> When all you do is you're blogging, you're just sharing. And then you start thinking about, you know, how to grow, and you got to nurture it, you need cash. >> Yes, and so I essentially came in and then started, I was both editor in chief and CEO and co-founder of the property who helped bring in a lot of the network, build the reputation for the brand, create a scaling strategy. A lot of mergers and acquisitions, a lot of franchises and-- >> How many properties did you buy roughly, handful, six, less than six? >> So I would also say that-- >> Little blogs and kind of (mumbles) them together, bring people together, was that the thinking? >> Yeah, you know, what's interesting is media from all shapes and sizes, 15 to 20 offices in 25 different countries. I always say this when I talk about this, a very important lesson that I learned. How do you manage a team of 40 anarchists? You don't, you don't, that's the answer, you don't, you don't even like, you're like oh. I remember when I was like, "We're a team!" And someone was like, "No, we're not, "I don't believe in teams, I work for myself "and I don't need," I was like oh, wow. I was like oh-- >> John: The power of we, no. >> I was just like, all right, but it was a good learning experience, because I was like well, this is the way, these are your needs. So if that's your, I was like, well, let's embrace that, let's embrace the idea-- >> But that's the culture, you can't change it. >> And let's create the economy around that, let's actually do direct incentive for it, if you think that you're, if you want to be in this on your own, then let's say okay, we're going to make this fully free market economics and we're going to have a matter of consensus on whether or not someone who's exploiting the system, you write an article, you send it out, the number of views and shares that it gets from accounts that are, you know, proven verified, that is how much you get out of the bounty that's created from our ad sales, and if the community comes together in a consensus and says that someone wrote an article that was basically exploiting the system, like beer, guns, tits and weed plus Bitcoin and then they just shared it with everyone, then obviously, they would be weighted differently because the community would reach consensus so-- >> Change the incentive system. >> We just, I started, yeah, I started redesigning, essentially, once I had that moment, I was like okay, I was like, well, we really got to change the incentives here then because the incentives are not going to work like that. If that's the, if there's a consensus that that is the way you guys want to do things, then I got to change things around that. All right, cool, and so yeah, it was a really interesting awesome learning experience from like, you know, a team of like, maybe like 20 to 40 into, probably took it up 40, and then with all of the other, you know, companies and franchises, to about 435 people. And then just took the revenue from, yeah, just took, it was like skating revenue and then rocketing revenue. So that was really my role in the growth of the business and we're all, you know, it's amazing to see how these kind of blockchain holacracies work, you know, at a micro scale and at a macro scale. And what it really takes to build a movement, right. And then, in some ways, I guess it'd either become or create a meme. >> Well, I really appreciate the movement you've been supporting, we're here to bring theCUBE to the movement, our second show, third show we've been doing. And getting a lot more this year, as the ecosystem is coming together, the norms are forming, they're storming, they're forming, it's great stuff. You've been a great thought leader, and thanks for sharing the awesome range of topics here for theCUBE. >> For sure. >> Toni Lane here inside theCUBE, I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching our exclusive Puerto Rico coverage of CoinAgenda, we'll be right back. (energetic music)