>> "theCUBE," presents Dell Technologies World, brought to you by Dell. >> Hey, welcome back to "theCUBE's" live coverage of Dell Technologies World 2022. Live from the Venetian in Las Vegas, Lisa Martin, Dave Vellante joins me. Dan O'Brien joins us next. The senior vice president of technology solutions at Presidio. Dan, welcome to "theCUBE." >> It's great to be here. Great to be in Vegas too. >> Is it great to be back live in person, three dimensional? >> You have no idea. >> Oh, I know. >> Yeah. >> Just the seeing people again and the vibe here day-one is already fantastic. >> Yeah. >> Talk to us about Presidio and Dell's relationship? What's going on with Presidio? >> Yeah, so I'll tell you just Presidio as as a whole, and part of why I joined about a year ago and I'm still just excited as I was on day one. We're a digital services and solutions provider with deep engineering expertise in networking, cloud, security, collaboration, and modern technologies. And we'll help our customers acquire, deploy, and then operate and manage the solutions that we have. So, we're a Dell titanium black partner. We just got that, we're a super excited about it. And they're a critical part of how we deliver solutions to our customers. >> So, you joined during an interesting time during the pandemic. What are some of the challenges your customers are facing now? Aging infrastructure, labor shortages, supply chain. What do you, what are you seeing from the customers lens? >> Yeah, you know, all of the above. I think when the pandemic first hit, every customer that we spoke with basically said, Cash is king. We want to preserve it, we don't know what the future holds. So, all of the spend that happened was on the things that drove their business forward. So, I got a distributed workforce. How do I go invest in technology to make them productive? A lot of them had to take a digital agenda that was five years long and do it in three months to survive, so they spent it and that generally meant cloud. But what they didn't spend money on, was infrastructure inside the data center. And now what they're finding, is things are old, maintenance bills are going up, the cost to get it is going up. And sometimes supply chain is over 12 months long to be able to actually do something about it. >> You know, when "theCUBE" first started in 2010, it was EFC World 2010 now, 'cause Dell is really our legacy here. So, we said that companies that sell, it's kind of a pejorative, but sell boxes are going to be in trouble because of the cloud. Interesting, right? So, it was partly true because the cloud just intermediated a lot of that sort of box selling business. We said they have to become more value added players, identify. And so, when I watched Presidio, the transformation that you guys went through, and you're relatively new. Cloud has actually become an opportunity. And you're doing stuff around digital, a lot of stuff around security. It's cyber, probably automation, life cycle management. >> True. >> Talk about that transformation? And I'm interested in why you joined Presidio? >> So, I'll tell you why I joined Presidio, is I was talking to a lot of customers every day in my old role, I love doing that part. And the conversation started with, "Dan, I can't spend money on my data center right now because we're in a pandemic. I've got to innovate faster and the answer is to cloud. I don't know how to actually make my workforce productive because they're all over the place now. And we didn't invest in technology. And now I've got a threat surface with people working everywhere in workloads in different places. I don't know how to approach that." And I looked at what Presidio had built, I'm like, that's exactly what we did. But what's been fun for me, has been the answer to most of our customers is this the end? It's not the public cloud, it's not the private cloud. It's, you need to do both of them really well and have the skills and expertise to leverage 'em for the right application, or workload, or use case. And that's why I'm super excited to be here, 'cause we're really helping our customers in both areas. >> You mentioned security. We've seen a number of announcements today from Dell Technologies with respect to cybersecurity. We know the stats are what they are. It's no longer a matter of, if we're going to get hit by a cyber attack, it's when? Most organizations are going to get hit by 2025. Where is security in the conversation now? How high up in the priority is it? >> I would say it's, we don't have a single customer meeting without having that conversation. And what we're finding, is you look at the stats that say, you know, 30% of companies that have a cyber attack, don't come back from it. 20% pay the ransom, and then they don't even get their data back. So, while we want to stop the attacks, I think you're right on that the answer is, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when? But what's great about Dell Technologies, is we have a complete portfolio that can meet any SLA of our customers. It's in backup technology, it's in primary storage, they can do a mutable backups and recoveries everywhere. But what happened this week, where they announced partnerships with the cloud, that's huge because the same resource constraints that customers have in their data centers today, are the same ones you have to deploy infrastructure to be able to make this work and be able to accelerate recovery. So, the partnership and the integration with the public cloud, really gives a great integration point for a lot of our customers. >> At the analyst of the event today, we had a meeting with Jen Felch, the CIO of Dell. And I said to her, you know, our survey data from ETR shows that security now, number one priority, it kind of always was, but it's distance itself from the number two, which is cloud migration. And I asked her, I said, "Obviously, cloud migration is not your number two, 'cause number security number one was number two?" And she said, "Let me help you interpret that data. Because for us, we have the scale, we can do our own cloud essentially." What her interpretation, was what those customers are really saying is modernization. Now, you must see that. Now, of course, you're leaning into cloud. Dell is not defensive really more about cloud, like, hey, we could take advantage of it as well. So, what are you seeing in terms of the changing priorities of IT kind of pre-post pandemic? Is it like a rubber band that goes and then comes back to where it was, or is it kind of permanent? >> I think that the both worlds together are absolutely permanent. And there's no way we're going to go back from one or the other. And then we're always going to have a world where you might lean more into one. To innovate, you might lean more into one for disaster recovery. But I truly think the world and the answer for us and our perspective, has to be both. But you said something to interesting earlier, is the key I think to what customers are doing is you can't just pick up a workload and move it to the cloud, it doesn't solve a problem. You use that term modernize. And we've invested, acquisitions and continued engineering resources that were hiring around modernization because the economics and the true benefit of actually running a workload and running right at the right SLAs and meeting your customer's objectives, aren't going to work right if you're just picking an application up and moving it over there. So, we're really focused there. >> So, Couch Base, just ran a survey. We did a power panel on it with a bunch of database analysts. And it was a survey of 650 CIOs and CTOs. And it was really interesting 'cause it's an IT bias. But they said like 2/3 of the survey base said that IT is responsible for setting the digital transformation strategy of the company. And I went, "Well, I wonder what the business guys say to that. It was sort of a red flag to me. But I wonder what you're seeing 'cause there's obviously you get a difference when you talk to different worlds. So, I guess what is modernization, was kind of one of the big questions that came out of it? And who's driving the agenda? >> So, it really depends upon the customer, right? But the key to what you said, and there was an article that came out. I won't say where it was from, but it really kind of opened my eyes. But the article was titled that, "It's Time To Get Rid of the IT Department." And for someone like me and a lot of customers, that kind of scares people. But the whole underpin of it, was they were studying customers that took IT and actually disparaged, like broke 'em apart and put them into business units. So, it said, it's your turn to wake up every day and figure out what that business unit needs to be successful. Because the answer is, David, it's both, right? You need both parties on board, right? Where, you've got a business stakeholder that clearly knows want to do, understands technology's the answer but you need IT to be able to go make it work and be a true partner, and help go actually make it work. >> It reminds me of when Nicholas Carr wrote that article if you're, you guys are probably too young to remember, "But Does IT Matter?" It was kind of post Y2K, right? And then everybody went crazy. All the CIO was when nuts. And in fact, IT matters more than ever, but it's a different context, as you're saying. A question on things like skill shortages, supply chain, I mean, obviously, top of mind. >> Yeah. >> Are you helping people with that? And if so, how so? >> Yeah, so two ways I would look at this, is when you look at the supply chain, I mean, Intel I think spent a $100 million on standing up new Silicon plants. We won't see a benefit from that from 2025. So, it's real. So, a lot of what we're doing on a supply chain is how can we help a customer reach in and have certain targeted ways to leverage the cloud? Because we can't physically solve for the physics issue. The other part of it, the people shortage. I mean, it's real. I mean, everyone's sitting at home they're pondering whether or not, you know, what they're doing is fulfilling their dreams. Now, geography doesn't matter, you can do a job from anywhere. And technology is the heart of everything. So, the people shortage is real. So, we're finding that our focus on managed services we're essentially allowing our customers to run and deploy things across every technology aspect, is something that we used to have to drive to our customers. And now, we can't get out of a conversation without them asking for it 'cause they just don't have the people- >> Yeah, they're calling you into that need. >> Yeah. >> Can you share that customer example that you think really articulates the value of the Dell Technologies that Presidio is delivering? It's really been able to truly modernize in the last couple of years? >> Yeah, so looking specifically to Dell, I mean, for us, one of the taking technical data out of the data center and modernizing, their HCI portfolio together with VMware, is a complete home run. It takes multiple products, brings it into a single common solution, uses a common tool set for all the operators that are there so you don't need the number of people to run it. But if you do it right, it solves for the portability issue in some of the public cloud options, especially with things like VMC where you can have an on and off-prem and an automation between 'em, so you can pick and choose dynamically. That for us has been a home run in driving modernization strategies. >> From a multi-cloud perspective, it's going to be a big focus of this event the next couple of days. What are you seeing from customers' perspective? They're probably in multi-cloud environments for a variety of reasons, that's going to be persisting. The hyperscalers are all growing. What's going on there? How are you helping customers to manage the multi-cloud environment with just much more simplicity? >> Yeah, so I think there's a couple parts to that, right? I mean, obviously, Dell together with VMware has a great set of technologies to be able to manage the deployment of that. But what we're trying to do, is number one, help a customer determine which workload should be running in which place, right? Understand application dependencies. But as we work through a migration strategy with a lot of our customers, the key part that a lot of people don't realize, is we all think security but the networking is probably the hardest part if you want to have portability in a well running cloud. So, having years and years in network heritage, it's been a great synergy on us kind of moving in that direction to help our cloud customers make sure that the right SLA, the right connectivity, and the right availability to make that world work. >> Yeah, so multicloud, obviously, a big topic of of discussion this morning with Chuck Whitten. And that's another one of those, well, what do you mean by that? I have a sort of a premise I want to test on you, Dan. I've always said, it just comes from talking to customers, multi-cloud is kind of multi-vendor. I got to run some workloads in AWS, I run some On Prem. I run some in Google, some in Azure, and many of them, a handful like the big banks, for instance, they say, "Well we're building our own abstraction layer so we can control the policies, the security." And it seems like that's a direction that the industry generally in Dell specifically is headed. Do you buy that? And what's driving that need? >> Yeah, so I would buy it based on the size of the customer. So, when you take a big bank, a lot of what drives them to go to one cloud or the other, is that the big cloud providers they're innovating constantly. Every day there's a new tool or capability that exists there. And certain ones of them are going to match, a use case that, that large customer has- >> You can't resist? >> So, they're going to end up with multiple clouds, so it makes perfect sense. When you get into smaller customer, they really have to want to be successful. They got to pick one, right? They can't afford the people, and the scale, and the process. So, I think that's... The answer would depend based on the customer. The larger ones, I think they're going to build a full orchestration stack and small customers are going to look for one and someone maybe with managed services to help them augment the skills and staffing to make it work. >> For a while, I haven't heard it much lately, but you'd hear about repatriation, people come to me like, "Dave, you got to look into this repatriation thing." And I did, and I was like, "Eh, I really see, it a little bit, little pockets." But I do see hybrid. I mean, that's very clear. And I do see a lot of people went into the cloud, they didn't have a great experience. And okay, so there's some of that going on. I guess you could call that repatriation. But what are you seeing in terms of both of those? Is repatriation a trend or is it really an hybrid? >> So, I've interesting perspective coming from Dell, right? Where we're a very infrastructure focused in there. I see a little bit of repatriation in like a workload, like virtual desktops where you picked it up and you threw it in the cloud and make your workforce productive. But generally speaking, what we're seeing is not repatriation, which is, "Hey I move things. My cost is out of control, I don't know how to manage it. Can you help me get better controls on cost? Can you help me automate a lot of the things that are running here so I've got better control of cost and we're where things are running in my security posture?" So, it's much more about optimization that we're finding than it is. Let's bring it back. >> So, it's fine tuning the knobs? >> There you go. >> Right? And that seems to be the trend over the next couple of years? >> 110%. Yeah. >> Excellent. >> Have you seen any industries, in particular the last year that you've been with Presidio really leading edge in terms of modernization? >> Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting enough. I mean, I could give you a few examples, right? When we look in our public sector business, a lot of the educational institutions had to invest in new platforms they interact and engage with students. Our financial institutions, believe it or not, continue to innovate. I mean, what people don't realize, is the mainframe still has the transaction where your money lives in the ledger, but all the supporting ecosystem is digitalized and is completely modernized to interact with you. And, of course, retail for us. I mean, retail, they had to change their business model in many cases overnight, not even to survive, but to serve the communities they were working in. >> Yeah, I think one of the things that we've all learned in the last couple of years, is just the access, the e-commerce, the access online. We expect that now in the brick and mortar stores to be able to deliver that connected store, make sure that they have the inventory that I'm looking for with a frictionless experience. >> Yeah, and I tell you my favorite one, is you look at the healthcare industry, and while obviously with loans, and healthcare, and billing, all had to change. But that was really exciting for us, I mean, as consumers, right? Is the fact that we can interact with doctors online at the click of a button now. I mean, that part for us has been super exciting. >> Everything's at the click of the button now. >> Yeah. >> Oh, my gosh. Well, Dan, thank you so much for joining Dave and me on the program today, sharing what's new with Presidio, what you guys are doing together with Dell, and how you're helping companies in every industry to modernize. >> Perfect. I appreciate it. >> Great to have you. >> Likewise. >> Thank you. >> With Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin, and you're watching "theCUBE's" coverage of Dell Technologies World live from the Venetian in Las Vegas. Stick around, and Dave and I will be right back with our next guest. (bright upbeat music)

>>from the bellagio Hotel >>in Las Vegas. >>It's the >>cube covering >>Ui Path forward. >>Four brought to >>you by Ui Path. >>Welcome back to Las Vegas. The cube is here. We've been here for two days covering Ui Path Forward for lisa martin here with David Monty. We've talked about automation and many industries. Now this segment is going to focus on automation and healthcare. We've got two guests joining us Jim Petrosea Cto of Blue Cross, Blue Shield and Gadget. Dhaliwal. The global C. I. O. Industry lead at you. I pass guys welcome to the program. Thank you. So let's start unpacking from the CTO level and the ceo level the agenda for automation. Jim let's start with you. What does that look like >>for us. It's actually pretty strategic and part of as we think about digital and what digital transformation means, it actually plays a pretty key role. Um There are a lot of processes that can be very manual within a big organization like Blue cross and Blue shield and to be able to streamline that and take away kind of what I would call the mundane work. Right? The the you know, going through a spreadsheet and then typing it into the screen, there are a lot of processes like that that are legacy. But what if you could take that away um and actually create a better work experience for the people that work there right? And and focus on higher value type uh type things and it's really key. And it really It goes down to our our business folks right? There are a lot of things we can drive with automation. We started a program um in 2019. Um that's been quite successful. We now have 250 box, we measure what we call annualized efficiency gains. So how much efficiency are we getting by these bots? So the bots are doing um this repetitive work that people would do. Um And what we're finding is, you know, we've got about $11 million in any wise efficiency gain through the process and we're just getting started. Um But we're all we're not stopping there too though, we're enabling citizen developers. So we're saying, hey business, if you want to automate, you know, parts of your job, we're gonna help you do that. So we've got about 60 people that were training. Um We run bad Ethan's where they come together and they actually create bots uh And it's really really creating some some impact and buzz in our business >>anywhere from your lens, where does automation fit within the C. I. O. S. Agenda? And how do you work together in unison with the C. T. O. To help roll this out across the enterprise? >>Yeah, no, definitely. And in fact as a part of introduction, I can actually share that. How I'm wearing a Ceo had within your path since I'm just joining join path and I'm actually now helping a client ceos in their automation strategy but I was a deputy ceo in my prior role at L. A. County where actually I ran the automation strategy. So if we look at from our organization perspective B complex as L. A County which is such a Federated organization. From a Ceo perspective, the way we look at the strategy is it's always driven by the business goals of the city or a county and we typically drive into three different areas. One is how we can transform our operational processes so that we can save the tax dollars. It's all about doing more with the less dollars. And then second is about how we can transform our residents experience because end of the day it is all about how we can improve the quality of life for our residents. So we've got 10 million people for L. A. County, the largest populous county in us. So it was an uphill task to serve that such a diverse population need and that the third area is about how to transform the new business models because as we are moving away from a government centric approach to the residents centric approach, you really need to come up with a new digital solutions. And Ceo is in the center of all these three elements when you look at it. So it's a very appear to us to keep keep improving your efficiency and then at a time keep adding the new digital solutions and that's where automation strategy is kind of a horizontal strategy which enables all these components. So what I hear from >>that is alignment with the business. Yeah. Right. Change management. Absolutely. That's like really fundamental and then see IOS this this agent of transformation uh you can see or she has a horizontal purview across the organization now now jim the cto role is the automation at blue cross blue shield lead by you or you there to make sure the technology plugs into your enterprise architecture. What's your shoulder? >>You know? Uh my my role is really to drive uh what I'll call technology enabled business change. Right. So I actually uh started our our automation journey uh at hc sc and I did that by partnering with our business. Um There was actually a lot of buzz around automation and there were actually some small pockets of it, none of it was enterprise scale. Um Right. And we really wanted to go big in this and and working with the business sponsors, they saw value in it. Um and we've you know, we've generated um a lot of uh efficiency, better quality of work because of it but but I very closely had a partner with our business, we have a committee that is lead of business folks that I facilitate. So I view my role as an enabler, um we have to communicate the change management pieces is huge. Uh the education just having a common vernacular on what is automation mean, Right, because everybody interpreted it differently um and then being able to do it at an enterprise scale is quite challenging. Um You know, I I really enjoyed um one of the key notes, I don't know if you had a chance to see shankar by Duncan from the hidden brain, right? But he talked a lot about the brain aspect and how do you get people to change? And and that's a large part of it. There's a lot about technology, but there's really a lot about being a change agent um and and really working very closely with your business, >>how does one measure? I'm hearing a lot time saved. Our saved. How does one measure that and quantify the dollar impact, which by the way, I'm on record as saying the soft dollars are way bigger. And but when you're talking to the, you know, the bottom line CFO and it's all about, you know, the cash flow, whatever is, how do you measure that? >>I can take it. So we, what we do is as we define these use cases right? We we go through an actual structure product process where we we gather them. Um we then rate them and we actually prioritize them based on those that are going to have the greatest impact. Um and we can tell based on, you know, what is the manual effort today. So we understand there are X number of people that do this X number of days and we think this body can take that some load off of them. Right? Um So we we go in with the business case. Um And then the Ui Path platform actually allows us to measure well, how much is that pot running? Right. So we can actually sit there and say, well we wanted that thing to run 10 hours a day and it did and it's generated this kind of efficiency because otherwise the human would have had to do that work. >>So the business case is kind of redeploying >>human. It really is is really maximizing human capital and make and and you know really using because the bots do repetitive stuff really well. They don't do higher level thinking and and we don't view it as replacing people, we view it as augmenting and actually making them more efficient and more effective at what, how do you get the dollars out of that? Well, a couple of ways. Right. And so one of the things we've we've done is we we create and measure the efficiency our business users and financed by the way is one of our bigger ones. And the CFO is one of the sponsors of the program, um can decide how to reinvest it in a lot of cases it is actually cost avoidance as we grow, literally being able to grow without adding staff. I mean that's very measurable. Um in some cases it is actually taking, you know cost out um in in certain cases, but a lot of times that's just through attrition, right? You don't back fill positions, you let it happen naturally. Um and and then there's just things that happen to your business that you have to respond to give you a great example, state of texas, um passes what's the equivalent of the no surprise attack. But they did it there before the federal government did it. Um but it requires a lot of processes to be put in place, because now you have providers and payers having to deal with disputes, right? It actually generates a boatload of work. And we thought there might be, you know, 5000 of these in the first year, where there were 21,000 in the first year. And so far this year we're doubling that amount, right. We were able to use automation to respond to that without having to add a bunch of stuff. If we had to add staff for that, it would have literally been, you know, maybe hundreds of people, right? And but now, you know, there's, you can clearly put a value on it and it's millions of dollars a year, that we would have otherwise had to expect. >>The reason I'm harping on this lease is because I've been through a lot of cycles, as you know, and after the dot com boom, the the cost avoidance meant not writing the check to the software company, right? And that's what nick Carr wrote this, i. T matter. And then, and then, you know, post the financial crisis, we've entered uh a decade plus of awareness on the impact of technology. And I wonder if it's, I think this, I think this the cycle is changing I think. And I wonder if you have an opinion here where people, I think organizations are going to look at Technology completely different than they did like in the early 2000s when it was just easy to cut. >>No, I think the other point I will add to it. I agree with the gym. So we typically look at our away but it doesn't always have to be the cost. Right? If you look from the outcomes of the value, there are other measures also right? If you look at the how automation was able to help in the Covid generate. It was never about costs at that time. It was about a human lives. So you always may not be able to quantify it what you look at. Okay. What how are we maximizing the value or what kind of situations where we are and where we may not even have a human power to do that work. And we are running against the time. It could be the compliance needs. I'll give example of our covid use case which was pretty big success uh within L. A. County we deployed bots for the covid contact tracing program. So we were actually interviewing all the people who were testing positive so that we actually can keep track of them and then bring back that data within our HR so that our criminologists actually can look at the trends and see how we are doing as a county as compared to other counties and nationally. And we were in the peak, we were interviewing about 5000 people a day And we had to process that data manually into our nature and we deployed 15 members to do that. And they were doing like about 600 interviews a day. So every day we had a backlog of 2500 interviews. So it is not about a cost saving or a dollar value here because nobody planned for these unplanned events and now we don't have a time and money to find more data entry operators and parts were able to actually clear up all the backlog. So the value which we were able to bring it is way beyond the cost element. >>I I believe that 100% and I've been fighting this battle for a long time and it's easier to fight now because we're in this economic cycle even despite the pandemic, but I think it can be quantified. I honestly believe it can be tied to the income statement or in the case of a public sector, it could be tied to the budget and the mission how that budget supports the mission of the company. But I really believe it. And and I've always said that those soft factors are dwarf the cost savings, but sometimes, you know, sometimes the CFO doesn't listen, you know, because he or she has to cut. I think automation could change that >>for public sector. We look at how we can do more about it. So it's because we don't look at bottom line, it's about the tax dollars, we have limited dollars, but how we can maximize the value which we are giving to residents, it is not about a profit for us. We look at the different lens when it comes to the commercial >>Side, it's similar for us. So as a as a health care pair, because we're a mutual right? Our members and we have 17 million of them are really the folks that own the company and we're very purpose driven. Our our purpose is to do everything in our power to stand by members in sickness and in health. So how do you get the highest quality, cost effective health care for them? So if automation allows you to be more effective and actually keep that cost down, that means you can cover more people and provide higher quality care to our members. So that's really the driver for mission driven, >>I was gonna ask you as a member as one of your 17 million members, what are some of the ways in which automation is benefiting me? >>Um you know, a number of different ways. First off, you know, um it lowers our administrative costs, right? So that means we can actually lower our rights as as we go out and and and work with folks? That's probably the the the the bottom line impact, but we're also automating processes uh to to make it easier for the member. Right? Uh the example I used earlier was the equivalent of no surprises. Right. How do we take the member out of the middle of this dispute between, you know, out of network providers and the payer and just make it go away. Right, and we take care of it. Um but that that creates potentially administrative burden on our side, but we want to keep their costs down and we do it efficiently using it. So there's a number of use cases that we've we've done across, you know, different parts of our business. We automate a lot of our customer service, right? When you call um there's bots in the background that are helping that that agent do their job. And what that means is you're on the show, you're on the phone a lot shorter of a period of time. And that agent can be more concise and more accurate in answering your question. >>So your employee experience is dramatically improved, as is the member experience? >>Yes, they go hand in hand. They do go hand, unhappy members means unhappy employees, 100% >>mentioned scale before, you said you can't scale in this particular, the departmental pockets. Talk about scale a little bit. I'm curious as to how important cloud is to scale. Is it not matter. Can you scale without cloud? What are the other dimensions of scale? >>Well, you know, especially with my CTO had, we're we're pushing very heavily to cloud. We view ourselves as a cloud first. We want to do things in a cloud versus our own data centers, partially because of the scale that it gives us. But because we're healthcare, we have to do it very securely. So. We are very meticulous about guarding our data, how we encrypt information um, not only in our data center but in the cloud and controlling the keys and having all the controls in place. You know, the C. So and I are probably the best friends right now in the company because we have to do it together and you have to take that that security mind set up front. Right cloud first. Put security first with it. Um, so we're moving what we can to the cloud because we think it's just going to give us better scale as we grow and better economics overall, >>Any thoughts on that? I think a similar thoughts but if we look from L. A. county because of the sheer volume itself because the data which we are talking about. We had 40 departments within the county. Each department is serving a different business purpose for the resident beit voting or B justice or being social services and all and the amount of data which we are generating for 10 million residents and the amount of duplicate asi which it comes out because it's a very government centering model. You have a different systems and they may not be talking to each other. The amount of diplomacy and identity delicacy which we are creating and as we are enabling the interoperability between these functions to give us seamless experience keeping security in mind so fully agree on that because the end of the day we have to ensure that customer guarantee but it's a sheer volume that as and when we are adding these data sets and the patient's data as well as the residents data and now we have started adding a machine data because we have deployed so many IOT solutions so the data which is coming from those machines, the logs and all its exponential so that's where the scale comes into picture and how we can ensure that we are future ready for the upscale which we need and that's where cloud ability definitely helps a lot. >>What do you mean by future ready? >>So if you look at from a future smart city or a smart community perspective, imagine when machines are everywhere machines and IOT solutions are deployed, beat even healthcare, your bad information, you're even patient information, everything is interconnected and amount of data which is getting generated in that your automobile they're going to start talking to entertainment or we have to potentially track a single resident might be going same person going to the justice or maybe same person might be having a mental health issues, A same person might be looking for a social services, how we're going to connect those dots and what all systems they are touching. So all that interconnections needs to happen. So that exponential increase of data is a future readiness, which I'm talking about. Are we future ready from a technology perspective? Are we future ready from the other ecosystem perspective and how and how we're gonna manage those situations? Uh, so those are the things which we >>look at it and it's a it's a multiplier to, right? We all have this influx of information and you need to figure out what to do with it. Right. This is where artificial intelligence, machine learning is so important. But you also have interoperability standards that are coming. So now we're we have this massive data that each of our organizations have. But now you have interoperability which is a good thing for the member saying now I need to be able to share that data. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about >>that because a lot of changes in health care, um, are meaningful use. You have to show that to get paid but the standards weren't mature. Right? And so now that's changing what role does automation play in facilitating those standards. >>So, you know, we're big, big supporters of the fire standard that's out there um to in order to be able to support the standards and and create a P. I. S. And and pull together the information. What what will happen sometimes in the background is there's actually um artificial intelligence, machine learning models that create algorithms right? The output of that though often has to be active. Now a person can do something with that information or a vodka. Right? So when you start taking the ideal of artificial intelligence and now you have a robotic process that can use that to pull together the information and assimilated in a way to make it higher quality. But now it's available. It's kind of in the background. You don't see it but it's there helping. >>What are some of the things that you see? I know we're out of time but I just have a couple more questions. Some of the things that you see here we are you I path forward for we're in person. This is a bold company that's growing very quickly. Some of the announcements that were made, what are what are some of your reaction to that? And how do you see it helping move blue crush blue shield forward even >>faster. Well you know a lot of the announcements in terms of some of the features that that they've added around their robotics processing are great right? The fact that they're in the cloud and and some of the capabilities and and and better ability to to support that the process mining is key. Right. In order for abouts to be effective, you have to understand your process and you just don't want to necessarily automate the bad practices. Right? So you want to take a look at those processes to figure out how you can automate things smartly. Um and some of their capabilities around that are very interesting. We're going to explore that quite a bit but but I think they're the ambition here is beyond robotics. Right. It's actually creating um you know, applications that actually are using bots in the background which is very intriguing and has a lot of potential potentially to drive even more digital transformation. This can really affect all of our workers and allow us to take digital solutions out to the market a lot faster >>and to see what was going to ask you, you are here for four weeks at UI Path, you got to meet a lot of your colleagues, which is great. But what about this company attracted you to leave your former role and come over here to the technology vendor side. >>Well, I think I was able to achieve the similar role within L. A. County, able to establish the automation practice and achieve the maturity, able to stand up things and I feel that this is the same practitioner activity which I can actually take it back to the other clients ceos because of one thing which I really like about your hypothesis. RP is just a small component of it. I really want to change that mindset that we have to start looking ui path as an end to end full automation enterprise solution and it is not only the business automation, it's the idea automation and it's a plus combination and whether we are developing a new industry solutions with our partners to help the different industry segments and we actually helping Ceo in the center of it because Ceo is the one who is driving the automation, enabling the business automation and actually managing the automation ceo and the governess. So CEO is in left and center of it and my role is to ensure that I actually help those Ceos to make successful and get that maturity and you will path as a platform is giving that ability of length and breath and that's what is really fascinating me and I'm really looking forward that how that spectrum is changing that we are getting matured in a process mining area and how we are expanding our horizons to look at the whole automation suit, not just the R. P. Product and that's something which I'm really looking forward and seeing that how we're going to continue expanding other magic quadrants and we're actually going to give the seamless experience so the client doesn't have to worry about okay for this, I have to pick this and further, I have to pick something else >>that's seamless experience is absolutely table stakes these days. Guys, we're out of time. But thank you so much for joining. David me, talking about automation and health care. Your recommendations for best practices, how to go about doing that and and the change management piece. That's a critical piece. We appreciate your time. >>Thanks for having. Thank >>you. Our pleasure for day Volonte. I'm lisa martin live in las Vegas. The cubes coverage of you a path forward for continues next. Mhm. Mhm mm.

Upbeat Music >> From the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering UiPath FORWARD IV. Brought to you by UiPath. >> Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE at UiPath Forward IV. Lisa Martin here with Dave Vellante. Day 2 of our coverage. We've been getting a lot of really great perspectives on automation and how it is impacting, significantly, every industry. We're pleased to have, from the keynote stage, Junaid Amed, the corporate Vice President of Finance at Applied Materials. He's going to talk us through why you have a why-can't-we-automate-it-all attitude. Junaid, welcome to the program. >> Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here. >> So you have a really aggressive strategy for digital transformation automation led digital transformation. Your keynote this morning was great. It was, I just thought, strategically, it was so well thought out. And then, when you got up here before we went live, you started talking about how fast the time frame was. >> Yes. >> Give the audience an overview of the strategy, what you're aiming to do and how quickly you're expecting to see change. >> Yeah, absolutely. So when we set out, when we launched about two and a half years ago, the company had doubled in size the prior five years. We were looking for it to double again. We were honest with ourselves, with the CFO and the finance leadership team, could we support the new wave of growth? And the answer is no. Okay, what do we do? We knew we had to do something, not just more things but take a complete new view on things. That's how this whole initiative got incubated. And we took a bold approach. We said, we don't want just to cover the next five years, let's cover the next 20 years. Set ourselves up to make sure we do this right for the company and for our people. So, we basically set some very ambitious goals. Which is, the key KPI that we set at our true north is, we're going to get 50 % of finance work effort, all oriented around decision support. That's what helps move the needle for the company. Sure, we have our responsibilities to close the books, to do all the transactional stuff, to do all the reporting stuff. We will do that. But that can't be the mainstay anymore. That's just table stakes. And the business is screaming for this. It's just that we didn't have the levers and the tools to be able to do it. To pivot. But given the technological advancements, we said, "This is possible now." And that's- >> I think we have to set the table here with your industry. Because you started your journey to PA automation in 2019. >> Yes. >> You participate in one of the most challenging, if not the most challenging, industry on the planet. >> Junaid: Hundred percent. >> Everybody, I don't know, maybe not the insiders but everybody else missed, absolutely no, the insiders missed it too. What was the impact of the pandemic, right? And now, chips are every part of our lives. We've got this massive chip shortage. And you know, Wall Street missed it. They said, "Oh, sell Applied Materials. Sell every semiconductor company." And then they realized, "Oh wow," kind of late into the cycle, that this is like a multi-year, perhaps a decade long transition to, maybe this never ending demand, who knows? So that's the backdrop of your business. That was driving it. What was it like inside your company? >> So Dave, you know, what we could see, obviously we couldn't predict the pandemic. We could see long term growth, right? Really tangible market inflection on the back of AI big data. If you want to say where we made a big bet as a company? We went all in on AI. Right? We believed in that growth, at a time when I think not everyone was so convinced. Okay, is this going to be- How strong is this going to hit us? So, we had the benefit of going all in on AI and saying this is another big computing wave. The next big wave of computing. Coming off of mobile and social media. And Gary Dickerson, our CEO, bet the company that we're going to enable this growth. This is real. This is going to touch the whole global economy. So yes, that's a bet, a successful bet, the company made. No one could foresee what would the pandemic do but we had the good fortune of saying we were reacting to the growth, that we were committed to service. And we knew we had to get ahead of it. So we quickly organized and got finance, our organization well positioned to successfully support the company. Now, we got hit with the pandemic. Luckily for us, we're proactive and then, you know what we did? We accelerated. >> So your move to automation was an offensive move- >> Junaid: Hundred percent. >> Not a panic move to respond to a pandemic. >> Hundred percent. What do investors want? Operating leverage. Operating leverage. >> Yeah. >> Okay. And then, right now all the models have a certain baseline. Size of company, complexity. Okay, you need a certain amount of leverage coming out of this model. The models are going to change. Those that don't change ahead of the models, they're going to play catch up. It's not a fun ride. We wanted to be ahead. >> Well, I mean, talk about operating leverage. You're a company with what? 120+ Billion dollar market cap. You've got a 20+ Billion dollar revenue and you sell extremely expensive equipment. >> Extremely. >> And then a 5X revenue multiple. That's a trailing revenue multiple. I mean that's, that's impressive. That's operating leverage. >> Yes and but the bar keeps moving. You've got to stay ahead, right? You've got to be a leader. We're a leader. We've been a leader for five decades. It's the leadership mindset, I would say, in the company and our leadership team, that really propelled us towards this. The leadership of our CFO, Dan Durn, who invested. He made a bet. No one, you know, now we're sitting here, over almost 300,000 hours automated. We didn't have the playbook when we did it. >> You created the playbook. >> We created the playbook. >> Talk to me about the appetite, because obviously aggressive leadership, bold leadership, talk to me about the appetite to be able to be able to transform so quickly. Such that when, as Dave said, you're on the offensive, such that when the pandemic came, you leveraged that as an accelerator of what you've already been doing. Because culturally, that's challenging for folks to get on board to. How did you do that? >> I have to say, it is challenging. And it's at time's it feels counter-intuitive. We were going through the pandemic. We were having a large M&A integration happening, okay and we're transforming finance. And we're a resource constrained organization. Then you tell your people, "We've got more work to do. Transformation." And you're like, "Is that the right thing to do? Isn't everyone going to leave?" But when you dig deep, you say, "How do you get mind share?" How do you, first of all, you have to get people to see the value and then you have to make sure you do it fast enough, where they want to stick around. It's counter-intuitive. "Hey, we're going to launch this new platform. It's going to take three and half years. All right everyone, we're going to do this." What happens? People are like, in-out. Okay yeah, it'll come, we'll deal with it. Then instead, you say, "Hey, we're going to transform the way we plan. Completely. Top to bottom. 10 months. We're going to do it. Here's what you're going to be at your hands- Here's what you're going to have at your disposal in 10 months, all right? Oh, by the way, we're just showing you the high level. You get to really design. What do you want?" Now, when you have credibility, street cred with your organization, and you come out and say, "I'm going to give you top to bottom agility around forecasting and you get to have input on what you really want." Now people get excited. Like, "Oh, I'm going to work 25% more but wait a second, I'm really excited about what I get at the end of 10 months." >> So, the world was betting several years ago on the consolidation of fabs. "Oh, that's bad for Applied Materials." The exact opposite happened. You know, ARM changed the model, WAYFA volume's going through the roof. Now Intel is basically following that playbook, which is wonderful, they're breaking ground in Arizona. Which is, you have these massive tailwinds behind you. So I'm interested in how you forecast that and what role automation plays in that forecasting. >> Well, if you think about it, the fundamental demand isn't changing. Capacity has to go in. People think, wait a second, so and so is going to build less or whatever, The capacity, maybe geographically, is going to get dispersed out but it still has to go in. So I think it doesn't change the fundamental demand statement. Then, how does automation play into- I just thing that the fundamental nature and pace of business is changing. For us. And our customers are going through the same. So we have to be more reactive, we have to be able to respond to their needs. That whole thing cascades down into the organization. All the way deep into finance analyst forecasting, right? So, if everyone has to work off a weekly, monthly, quarterly cadence, you're too slow. Too late. Doesn't matter how good your plan is. It's old. It's stale. We're moving into a time and era where everything happens realtime. It always happened realtime but we just never had the tools to react realtime. Now, we have realtime business performance, enterprise grade dashboards. Any minute of the day you can see what the revenue forecast is, what the margin associated with that is. Yes, when we get into the official commit cycle everything firms up but it's not the big crank, right? You're fine tuning the knobs now. Which is great. What do you want in a plan? You want greater optionality. Is there a perfect plan? Of course there isn't. What is the North Star of forecasting? Give me as much options as- viable options and then let me decide. Because there's trade-offs. There's no one perfect plan. But you were limited. It just took too long to put a plan together. So you had very small degrees of freedom around it. Viable plans. We're changing all of that. >> This might be out of your swim lane but you had a slide up today and it had the IT in the middle- >> Yes. >> So technology's fundamental. And then, you had the elephant. The Hadoop elephant in the room. So I have to ask you, you guys announced this thing earlier this year called AI to the power of X, actionable insights. I remember reading about it, it's like you're collecting data across all the estate. So I'm like, wow this is a data company. Becoming a data company. So we've been talking a lot and of course the CFO purview is the reporting and I get that. The close, daily close, virtual close, all that. But then there's this whole line-of-business data play. >> Yes. >> And I'm wondering how automation fits there. I mean, that's got to be part of the vision. >> Yeah. Now, I can't speak to the capabilities you're talking to but we are leveraging some of that infrastructure, right? We have amazing IT organization. I have to say, we within Applied, we're a latecomer. From a product, customer product standpoint, already there is so much AI work being done. So we had the benefit of leveraging some of their capabilities for finance, when we launched Agile Finance. There is a lot going on over there. I think we actually enhanced that by introducing these RPA capabilities. And we did so from partnering with, I wouldn't say partnering, IT co-piloted this with us. Fundamentally co-piloted this, okay. And now, IT is taking it to other organizations. And they're taking it to product, they're taking it to operation, they're taking it to sales. So it will have a role. Hundred percent. But they're obviously starting, over the past three to six months is when they got started. So the answer is yes, for sure but I can't speak to exactly how it plays into that specific technology. >> But you addressed the dynamic. Which is, it started in a quick wind part of the company, finance. >> Yes. >> Which is logical. That's where I first introduced RPA a decade ago. A CFO conference, right? Then that now applies to the rest of the business. They're talking about operating leverage- >> Fundamental. Yeah. Hundred percent. >> How do you get that buy-in? How do you get finance and how do you get IT to work with finance, such that IT becomes a catalyst in all these downstream reactions to get this going across the company? >> Important question. >> Well they work for you. >> They don't. >> Oh they don't. >> They don't work for us. They work for me. I'm a customer of theirs. >> Okay. >> The first person that I needed to convince that we were serious and we're going to do it is the CIO. Okay, so you ask how do you get IT bought in? Well first thing, you have to get them in the tent. This is not about, "Oh, can you go do this for me? I need this from you. Can you do that?" Too slow, okay? This RPA, especially RPA, fundamentally, is such a, it's a technology that really needs to get embedded throughout the IT operating model. So you really need IT co-piloting this with you. This is how we did it. We said we're going to learn together. This is a must have for finance. We believe strongly this is going to become a must have for the enterprise but we're going to make the investment. In that must have for the enterprise, IT has to play the roll, right? So we started this together and we learned together and they've been fundamental in our being able to get to scale in 12 months. >> How do you federate governance? Who in the organization, what part of the organization owns governance, if you will? >> Yeah. So we created, established an RPA COE. They own the governance, the policies, the processes. Then, obviously there's a role to play for the business side. So we finance a business organization to them and there's roles to play. We actually, like I showed today in the presentation, there's multiple other players across the enterprise that have to vet these automations, right? Especially in finance. We have to be SOX compliant, we have to be data privacy compliant. We set all of those processes up. So, multiple parties have to engage but engage in an efficient way. >> We're seeing the CFO role emerge. I think of you as a CFO. I mean, I just use that umbrella, emerge as an innovator. I see this all of the place now, especially in Silicon Valley. You look at a company like Snowflake, I don't know if you know Mike Scarpelli but he kind of changed the world of software in some ways. So you're seeing very innovative CFOs emerge, that are technology savvy, they understand the operating leverage, we've used that term several times today, that you can get out of technology. It just reminds me, I don't know how long ago it was when Nick Carr wrote the book Does IT Matter. It seems like technology has never been more important. Along with people and process, of course, but in terms of creating that operating leverage, it's really a key part of the equation, the playbook going forward. >> I think it is a mindset change. We're trying to drive mindset change, right? But it's also, I think, come about because I think technology has become more friendly to non IT people. I think that's a fundamental driver. All these SaaS platforms in the market place, right? What did they design for? Business users. Of course IT has a very prominent role in that whole process and supporting it and implementing it. But the target audience is business users. What was the target audience for ERP? IT. Okay. Fundamental, the technology is changing by design and you're seeing now the impact of that. Where, "Hey wait, I can do this. I can do this by myself." Okay. IT always has been and will be a very important partner. They will service your data needs. This is how we're setting up the collaboration, right? But we really want the finance users to be able to iterate, model, analyze on the fly, in the moment. And they need to do it alone. >> Self serve, yeah. >> That's it. >> Self serve in realtime. I think one of the things, you mentioned it this morning, you mentioned it on our program and one of the things we've learned in the pandemic, that realtime and access to realtime data is no longer a nice-to-have. >> Yes. >> It's really a business critical element of any industry. >> Hundred percent. >> When do you think you'll put crypto on your balance sheet? I ask all the CFOs. >> He's been asking everyone that. >> There's an easy answer. I'm not authorized to answer. Above my pay grade. >> That's a good answer. >> That's good. >> Junaid, thank you so much for joining us. Talking to us about the transformation at Applied Materials, how you're partnering with UiPath to achieve that and the aggressive strategy that you've set out and congratulations on the success of it. We'll look forward to see what's going on in the next couple years. >> Great story. >> Of course. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. >> Our pleasure. For Dave Vellante in Las Vegas, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE at UiPath Forward IV. Day two of our coverage. Stick around, we'll be right back with our next guest. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> In 2009, Cisco made a major announcement in the form of UCS. It was designed to attack the IT labor problem. Cisco recognized that, data center professionals were struggling to be agile and provide the types of infrastructure services that lines of business were demanding for the modern applications of that day. The value proposition was all about, simplifying infrastructure deployment and management and by combining networking compute and storage with virtualization and a management layer, Cisco changed the game for running applications on premises and the era of converged infrastructure was born. Now fast forward a dozen years, and a lot has changed. The cloud has gone mainstream, forcing new requirements on organizations to bridge their on-prem environments to public clouds and manage workloads across clouds. Now to address this challenge, Cisco earlier this month, announced a series of offerings, that meaningfully expands its original vision, to support the more demanding requirements of today's dev sec ops teams. In particular Cisco, with this announcement is enabling customers to deploy a full stack cloud-like operating model that leverages modern platforms such as Kubernetes, new integrations and advanced tooling to bring automation, visibility and better security for both hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Now the underpinning of this solution, is a new UCS architecture called the X series. Cisco claims this new system gives customers a trusted platform for the next decade to support their hybrid and multi-cloud workloads. Gents, great to see you, welcome. >> Hey, thank you. Good to be here. >> Thanks for having a us Dave. I appreciate. >> My pleasure. Looking forward to this. So look, we've seen the X series announcement and it looks to be quite a new approach. What are the critical aspects of the X series that you want people to understand? Maybe James, and you can take that. >> Sure I think that, you know, overall, there is a lot of change coming in the marketplace, right? We're seeing we're looking at and we're seeing from a technology standpoint, a significant amount of change. Look at CPU's and GPU's, the power draw alone is becoming, you know, it basically at the trajectory, it is, it may be untenable for some, you know, of the current configurations that people are consuming, right? So some of these current architectures just can't deal with that, right? Or at least they can't deal with what's coming in the future. We're also seeing the relevance of other types of architectures like maybe arm to start to become something that our customers want to take advantage of, right? Or maybe want to see how that scale fits into their environment on a totally different level. At the same time, the fabrics are really evolving at lightning speed here, right? So we're seeing PCI express, we've gone from gen three to gen four, gen five is coming in the very near future. We're layering on top of that, things like CXL to take that, that fabric to the next level for capabilities and be able to do things that we couldn't do before. To connect things together, we couldn't do before. Beyond that, we probably are just a few years away from even more exciting developments in the fabric space around some of the high performance low latency fabrics that are that are again on the drawing board today just around the corner. Take that and you, you look at the kind of the evolution of the the admin, right? So we're seeing the admin developer emerge. No longer is this just a guy who's sitting in front of a dashboard and managing systems, keeping them up and down, we're now seeing a whole class of developers that are also administrators, right? So all of this together is starting to push us well beyond what human scale really can manage, what human scale can consume. So, there's a lot of change coming and I think that we're taking a look at that and realizing that something like X series has to be able to deal with that change and the challenges that it brings, but also and do so in a simple manner that we can allow automation orchestration and some of these new capabilities to enhance what our customers can do, not to drown them in technology. >> You know, that taught, that's kind of interesting what James was saying about beyond human scale. I mean, I think my little narrative upfront, it was sort of, hey, we recognize as an IT labor problem. We're going to address that. And it really wasn't about massive scale back then, it is now. We really what we've learned from the cloud guys, right? >> Definitely. I mean, people are moving from pets to cattle to now with containers, they're saying that it's mosquitoes, right? Cause they're so ephemeral, they come and go and on a single host, you could have, you know, hundreds if not thousands of containers. And so the application environment has influenced the infrastructure design and really changed the role of the infrastructure operator to one that necessitates automation, necessitates operations at scale, even on prem everyone's trying to operate in that cloud like model and they're trying to bridge, the big challenge I see is, they're trying to bridge their existing environment big monolithic applications they've got on-prem with those data lakes that they built around them over the past decade, but they're also trying to follow their developers as they go out into the public cloud and innovate there. That's really where the nexus of all the application innovation is. So the IT teams who are already strapped for resources it's not like their budgets are going up every year, are now taking on a new front out in the cloud while they're still trying to maintain the systems that they've built with on-prem. That's the challenge. >> Yeah that's really the hard part and where some of the innovation here is, is anybody that lives in an old house knows that connecting old to new is very challenging much more challenging than building from scratch. But James I wonder if we'd come back to the to the architecture of the X series and what's really unique about it and what's in it for your customers? >> Yes, absolutely. So we're, when were looking at at kind of redesigning this thing from the ground up, we recognized that, you know from a timing standpoint, we're sitting at a place with the development of future fabrics and some of these other technologies that we finally have the opportunity to hit the timing perfectly to start to do composability right. So we've heard a lot of noise, you know in the market for the last several years about composability and how that's going to be the salvation or change the game here. But at the end of the day, the technology hasn't been there in those offerings, right? So we're sitting at the edge of some of the development of those technologies that are going to allow us to do that. And what we've done with X series, is we've taken a construct that we call the UCS X fabric, which is the ability to consume these technologies today as like a effectively a chassis fabric that can allow us to connect resources together within the chassis and future external to the chassis. But it also allows us to take advantage of the change in fabric that's coming. So as fabrics evolve, as we see new technologies like CXL and the PCI express gen five and beyond, come into play here and eventually physical technologies like Silicon Photonix, those are constructs that are going to allow our customers to do some amazing things and we have the construct to be able to consume those. Our goal here is like, to effectively look out at these disruptive technologies on the horizon and make sure that they're not disrupting our customers that we give our customers the ability to disrupt their competitors and to disrupt their markets, but by consuming those technologies in an easy way. >> You know, you didn't use the term future-proof. And I usually don't like that phrase because a lot of times people go that's future-proof and I'm like, well, what's future proof? Well, it's really fast. Well, okay. And in two years, it's going to be, you know really slow compared to everything else. But what you, what you just laid out is an architecture that's really taking advantage of some of these new capabilities that are driving latency down. So that's so, thank you for that. Now, Todd I get how the X series is going to enable customers you know, today I just mentioned the future but how does it play into Cisco's hybrid cloud vision? >> Well I mean, our customers aren't looking for, you know, point solutions or bolt on layers of software to manage across the hybrid cloud landscape. That's the fundamental challenge and so what we're doing with intersite, if you really think about all the systems that we have in our portfolio, like X series, really it's just extensions of our inner site platform. And there we're bridging the gaps between fundamental infrastructure prem, with all of those services that you need to optimize workloads and infrastructure, both in that on-prem environment but also out in the public cloud and even moving up the stack now into serverless. So we know that customers again are trying to bolt together a cohesive environment that allows them to manage those existing workloads on prem but also support the innovation going on out in the cloud and to do that, you have to have services to manage Kubernetes. You need hooks into modern tool chains like a Hashi corks Terraform, we did that a few months back and we recently brought in something we call our service mesh manager that came out of an acquisition of a Bonzai cloud. So what we're doing is, we're kind of spanning that entire spectrum from physical infrastructure, to the workload and that could be extracted in any number of ways either in containers or containers around VMs or bare metal running applications run on bare metal or just virtual machine applications encapsulation. So, you got all these different modalities that customers are going to run applications in and it's our intent to create a platform here that supports all of them, both on their on-prem environment and also all the resources they're managing out in the cloud. So that's a big deal for us. You know, one thing I want to go back to the X series for a second, something James mentioned, right? Is you know as we see subsystems in computing, start to decompose and break apart, you know, we have intersite as the mechanism to put Humpty Dumpty back together again and that's really, I think composability and district's options bar, but that's okay. But so I'll read it together. And like James said, you know be able to take on whatever fabrics, low latency fabrics, ultra low latency fabrics we need in coming years to sew these systems together, we're kind of breaking a barrier that didn't, that wasn't, you know people have trouble breaking through in the past, right? And that's this idea of true infrastructure as code or true software defined infrastructure. Cause now we're talking about being able to apply policy and automation, to the actual construct of a server. How do you build that thing to the needs of the workload? And so if you talk to an SRE or a developer today and you say infrastructure, they're thinking of Kubernetes cluster, but ultimately we want to push that boundary or that frontier between the world software to find it abstracted as far down in the infrastructure, as we can. And with intersite and X fabric and X series, we're taking it all the way down to the individual drive or CPU or ultimately breaking memory apart and sewing that back together. So it's kind of exciting time for us, cause really, pushing that frontier of what is software defined further and further down into the infrastructure and that just gives people a lot more flexibility in what they build. >> So I want to play something back to you and see if it resonates. Essentially, I look at what you just said is you're building a layer across my on-prem, whatever public cloud across clouds at the conventionally, you know, get to the edge, but let's hold off on that, let's park that for now. But that layer obstructs the underlying technical complexity and allows that infrastructure to be, you said programmable, infrastructure is code essentially. So that's one of my other questions, it's like, how programmable is this infrastructure, you know, today and in the future? But is that idea of an abstraction layer kind of how you're thinking about hybrid and multi-cloud? >> It is in terms of the infrastructure that customers are going to run on prem right in the public cloud the cloud providers are already abstracting that for them. And so what we want to do is bring that same type of public cloud experience to managing infrastructure on prem. So being able to have pools of resources that you allocate out to workloads, shifted as things change. So it's absolutely a cloud-like approach to on-prem infrastructure and you know, one of the things I like to say is, you know, friends don't let friends, build their own private cloud platforms from scratch, right? We're productizing this, we're bringing it as a cohesive system that customers don't need to engineer on their own. They can focus on their operations and James actually, he's a pilot, and one of the things he observed about Intersight a couple of years ago was, this idea of Intersight as a co-pilot and kind of, you know, adding a person to your team almost when you have intersite in your data center, because some very, what feels like rudimentary things are incredibly impactful day-to-day for our customers. So we have recommendation engines. If it, if like, you know, maybe it says some interplay between bios and firmware and operating system and we know that there's an issue there rather than letting customers stumble upon that on their own we're going to flag it, show them the correction, go implement it for them. So that it starts to feel a lot more like what they're accustomed to in a public cloud setting where the system has some intelligence baked in, the system is kind of covering them and watching their back and acting like a co-pilot day-to-day operations. >> Okay, so I get that, you know, the cloud guys will abstract the complexity you guys are focused on prem, but is it, so my question then is multi-cloud across clouds because we have some cloud providers, you know you're partners with Google they do some things with Antho, so I know Microsoft with Ark, but even near-term. Should we think about Cisco as playing that role of my, across cloud, you know, partner if you will? >> Absolutely. You know, cloud agnosticism is core to our approach because we know that, you know if you dial the clock way back to the early odds, right? When cloud first started emerging it was kind of an efficiency play. And you had folks like Nicholas Carr, right? The author that they put out the big switch, kind of envisioning a world where there'd be this ultimate consolidation to maybe one or two or three cloud platforms worldwide. But what we're seeing, you know we had data sovereignty kind of emerge over the past decade but even the past year or two, it's now becoming issues of actual cloud sovereignty. So you have governments in Australia and in India and in Europe actually asserting control over the cloud providers and services that can be used by their public sector organizations and so that's just leading to actually cloud fragmentation. It's not nearly as monolithic of future as we thought it would be. It's a lot of clouds and so as customers want to move around geographically or if they want to go harvest innovation that maybe Google is really good at something like machine vision, or they want to use AWS or Azure for different applications that they're going to go build. We're seeing customers really being put in a place where they're going to deal with multiple cloud providers and the data supports that. So it's definitely our approach especially on the networking technology side to make it very easy for our customers to go out and connect these different clouds and not have to repeat the integration process every time they want to go, you know, start using another public cloud provider. So that's absolutely our strategies to be very agnostic and build everything in mind for customers they're going to be using in multiple providers. >> Thank you for that touch. So James, I want to come back and talk a little bit about sort of your competitive posture here. I mean, you guys, when you made the announcement, I inferred that you were feeling like you were in a pretty good position relative to the competition that you were putting forth, not just you know, core infrastructure in hardware and software but also all these other components around it that we talked about, observability extending out to the, you know, beyond the four walls of my data center, et cetera. But talk a little bit about why you think this gives you such competitive advantage in the marketplace. >> Well I mean, I think first of all, back to where Todd was going as well, is that, you know if you think about trying to be, to work in this hybrid cloud world, that we're clearly living in, the idea of burrowing features and functions as far down the stack as possible, doesn't make a lot of sense, right? So intersite is a great example. We want to manage and we want to orchestrate across clouds, right? So how are we going to have our management and infrastructure services buried into the chassis, down at the very lowest level, that doesn't make sense. So we elevated our, you know, our operating model to the cloud, right? And that's how we manage across clouds from the cloud. So, building a system and really we've done this from the ground up with X series, building a system that is able to take advantage of all these two technologies. And you mentioned, you know, how being future proof was probably you know, a derogatory term almost and I agree with you completely. I think we're future ready. Like, we're ready to embrace it because we're not trying to say that nothing is going to change beyond what we've already thought of, we're saying, bring it on. We're saying, bring on that change because we're ready for it. We've we can accommodate change. We, we're not saying that the technology we have today is to going to ride us for 10 years, we're saying,, we're ready for the next 10 years of change. Bring it. We can do that in a simple way. That is, you know, I think, you know going to give us the versatility and the simplicity to allow the technology to go beyond human scale without having to you know drown our customers in administrative duties, right? So that co-pilot that Todd mentioned is going to be able to take on a lot more of the work, just like an airplane where you know, the pilot has functionality that he has to absolutely be part of and those are the our developers, right? We want those admin developers to develop, to build things and to do things and not get bogged down in the minutiae that exists. So I think competitively, you know, our architecture top to bottom, you know, all the way up the stack, all the way to the bottom is unique and it is focused on not just the rear view mirror but what's coming in the future. >> So my takeaway there is that, okay, I get it. The new technologies will come along but this architecture is the architecture for the decade. You're not going to have to redo the architecture in a few years. That's really the key point here. Todd, I'll give you last word might just taking some notes here and takeaways that I heard, I heard upfront. Chip diversity really take advantage of all the innovations that are coming out. You're ready for that. You're kind of blurring the lines between blade and rack, giving some optionality there. Scale is a big theme. I mean, the cloud has brought that in and, you know people want to scale, they don't want to be, you know provisioning lawns all day and they won't be able to scale if that's what their job is. Developer friendly, particularly as it relates to infrastructure as code. And you've got a roadmap. So Todd, that's my summary. I'll give you the last word. >> No, it's really good. I mean, you hit it, right. We're thinking about this holistic operating environment that our customers are building for hybrid cloud and we're pre-engineering that environment for them. So our Intersight platform, all of our systems that connect to that, are really built to tackle that hybrid environment from end to end, and with systems like X series, we're giving them a more simple, efficient landing spot for their workloads on prem but crucially it's fully integrated with this hybrid cloud platform so as they have workloads on prem and workloads in the cloud, it's kind of a transparent environment between those two, between those two, two worlds there. So bringing it together so that our customers don't have to build it themselves. >> Excellent. Well, gents thanks so much for coming on theCUBE and sharing the details of this announcement. Congratulations, I know how much work and thought goes into these things, really looking forward to its progress and adoption in the marketplace. Appreciate your time. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for time. >> And thank you for watching this cube conversation. This is Dave Vellante. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021 brought to you by IBM. >> Hello everybody, welcome back to IBM Think 2021, the virtual edition. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm pleased to welcome back a long time Cube alum, Jim Whitehurst, who's the president of IBM. And I'll call him chief cultural evangelist, welcome Jim. Great to see you again. >> Great to see you, Dave. Thanks so much for having me. >> Yeah, it's really our pleasure. And I want to start off, it's just over a year as president of IBM. And I wonder, you know, when you're a little kid or, you know, early in your career, computer science class, did you ever think you'd be president of a company that was founded in 1911? I mean, amazing. I wonder if you could share what's the most important thing you've learned in your first year? >> Well, look, I mean, as you said, I would've never thought it. Yeah, I was the first kid to have an IBM PC on the block and was always into technology but never saw myself as like, you know, running a big tech company. So it is humbling. I would say that there are tons of lessons in the first year. I guess the two that strike me most is one is just related to strategy and that's, you know, Red Hat and most technology companies, we're very customer focused. But it's around whatever technology we're bringing to market where IBM has fundamentally transitioned. And kind of transformed itself over time to make sure it can meet customer needs. So it's sold off businesses, it's bought other businesses, it's created new businesses. So it really shows the kind of the focus and value on serving our customers and doing whatever it takes to do it. And that's been a fundamental kind of different strategy than most companies have had. I think one of the reasons that we've been around for over a 100 years. The second is I'm deeply into culture and I've talked a lot about the difference of running Red Hat, it's all about innovation versus Delta Airlines where I was before, which is driving efficiency. IBM is both and so really trying to think through how you run an organization that needs to run the financial systems of the world, that extraordinary reliability and drive roadmaps on things like quantum computing. At the same time be able to innovate iteratively with our customers and in open source communities. And kind of getting that balance right as a leader. It's, you're kind of doing what we did at Red Hat and what we did at Delta but kind of doing it together. And I think that stretched me as a leader and kind of taught me a lot about how we're thinking about continuing to evolve the culture at IBM. >> Now, of course, you do this leadership series, you put out things out on LinkedIn and words matter. And that's what I take away from a lot of the little short hits that you do, which I really appreciate. My stuff that I put Jim on LinkedIn, it's just, you got to invest like 15, 20 minutes. So I really appreciate the short hits. But you do that regular series and I'm curious do you do that to reach more IBM people? Are you an open source culture? You're trying to help others. And I'm curious as to sort of why that platform as opposed to sending around an internal thing an IBM. And I'm wondering if your principles and how they've evolved kind of post pandemic. >> Well, so first off, maybe that comes from Red Hat but I think IBM shares that it's if you have something really, really valuable, you want to share it. And look, when I am out talking to our customers, CEOs and some of the biggest companies in the world, honestly we rarely talk about technology 'cause other people are more detailed or deep in that. We primarily do talk about culture. And how you think about again, how do you take an organization that's been built to drive efficiency and scale on a global basis and make it able to be more nimble and more innovative? And so, and obviously, hopefully that's all with IBM and Red Hat technologies. But ultimately most of my conversations at a senior leadership level are about culture and leadership style to drive that. And so if that's valuable for CEOs of some of the world's largest companies, it's valuable to leaders kind of across all spectrums, all sizes. And so I think LinkedIn is a good way to kind of take some of those messages and make sure we were able to share those much more broadly. So certainly I spend more time talking about it inside of IBM and I spend a lot of time with our clients talking about it. But I think many of the lessons are applicable more broadly. And so why not share them? And LinkedIn's a great platform to be able to do that. >> How about you, how have your principles, how have your principles sort of changed and how have they evolved post pandemic? >> Well, I think a couple things, so one is the pandemic kind of forces you to get more precise about it. And what I mean by that is so much of leadership is about building credibility and trust and influence. And when you're seeing someone in 3D live, visual cues can kind of mean a lot in the water cooler conversations. Or who you run into in the hall can all help kind of create that level of trust. But you can't do that in 2D. As great as Zoom and other platforms are, you just can't quite do it. And so you have to be much more thoughtful in how you're creating opportunities to kind of create trust. So I'd say I've gotten more surgical in thinking about kind of what those elements of leadership are that do that. I think the second thing I've really learned at IBM again is back to this. We have to be able to do both, drive a future state in a known world as well as, I call it seek a future state in an unknown world. So driving a roadmap for quantum computing takes a number of different technologies coming together in one year, in two years, in five years. And that really does have to be pre-planned, which is very very different, that I'll call the iterative innovation approach that we use at Red Hat and open source communities and working with our clients. And we have to do both. And so as a leader you really have to understand the problem you're trying to solve and apply slightly different kind of leadership tactics against that. So when you're executing a known versus you are trying to create something in an unknown, does require different approaches and we have to do both in IBM. And I think that's the struggle a lot of companies have, every company needs to do that. If you're Delta Airlines, you don't want anybody innovating on the safety procedures before your flight. Yet you want a lot of innovation happening on your website and your mobile app. So how do you bring those together? And as a leader you can have a common set of values, but recognize you have to bring different tools to the table, depending on the context in which you're leading. And so I learned a lot more and gotten a lot crisper with that since being at IBM. >> Interesting, I mean, the pandemic, we all know it's been terrible but one of the upshots has been we had a glimpse of the future sort of shoved into a forced march of digital in 2020. And so obviously the next 10 years ain't going to be like the last 10 years. And one of the things we've been talking about is ecosystems and partnerships and the power and leverage that you can get from those. And Arvin has said, laid it out, we are returning to growth company. And so I wonder if you could talk to how partnerships and ecosystems play into that return to growth for IBM. >> Well, first off a key part of our strategy we talk about hybrid cloud and AI. It's not just about, hey, a platform that runs across all the different deployment models is convenient. It's also because innovation is coming from so many sources today. It's coming from a by-product from the web 2.0 companies, it's coming from open source. It's coming from an explosion of startups because of the amount of capital in venture capital. It's coming from traditional software companies. It's coming from our clients who are participating in open source. And so you have so many sources of innovation. Much of what we're doing is landing a platform that allows you to consume innovation safely and reliably from wherever it's coming from. So a core part of a platform by definition is the ecosystem around it. Having a platform that runs everywhere is great but if you don't have any applications that run on it who cares. And so ecosystem and partners have always been important to IBM, but for this strategy of this horizontal platform oriented strategy, it is critical to our success because much of the platform is the ecosystem. And so we've already talked about investing a billion dollars in that ecosystem to get ISVs and other partners on our platform, again, to ultimately kind of create that kind of horizontal layer where I can run anything that I want to on it and I can run that anywhere I want to. And so the two sides of that so all the innovation happening on top and making sure it runs everywhere is what really unlocks the freedom of choice. That reduces friction to innovation, which allows everybody in the ecosystem from our clients to ISVs to hardware partners to innovate more quickly. And that's what we really see as the benefit of our platform. It's not a horizontal stove pipe, come innovate in this one place. It's recognizing innovation's happening in so many places. And the only way we're going to be able to allow people to ingest that is to have a horizontal platform that everyone's participating in. Which is why partners and ecosystem are so important, not only to the success of our platform, but to the, I'd say, as a success of this next generation of computing. These horizontal fabrics that require an ecosystem kind of built around them. >> I think that's an important nuance that maybe people don't understand that yes, you have a platform. Obviously, OpenShift is a linchpin but it's an enabler for people to build other platforms. It's not the be all, end all platform that's sort of ultimately becomes another Island. And so that is a key part of the growth strategy and presumably expand your total available market. >> Oh, absolutely and so this is the key is we can talk about great IBM technologies. We're doing amazing things in security and AI and natural language processing and all these other areas. But the platform is a recognition that we're not going to do everything for everybody anymore. There's just the democratization of technology means that there is so many sources of innovation. And so first and foremost, we have to land a platform so you can consume anything from anywhere. And then of course, we'll drive our own pace of innovation both in hardware and software around that platform. But we are just a player on that platform, which we're really instantiating for really anybody to be able to reach customers or customers to reach sources of innovation. >> I know sustainability is a passion of yours, that it's obviously a hot topic right now. Oftentimes I joke tongue in cheek, Milton Friedman's rolling over in his grave with all this ESG talk. And I know you just posted recently on LinkedIn. And of course I went right down to Kavanaugh because my premise is not only is sustainability the right thing to do, it's also good business. But I wonder if you could give us your perspectives on this. >> Yeah, well, so first off, I mean, as a large global citizen as IDM I think this is an important role that we play and look, this isn't new to IBM. We came out with our first statements around environment in 1970. We put out our first report that's become our environmental impact report in 1990. We've been talking about climate since the early two thousands. So we've been involved in this for a long, long time because I do think it's important broadly. But there's also a specific role I think IBM can play beyond just our own individual actions to reduce our own footprint. Because of some of the extraordinary technologies that IBM has worked on in the years especially around semiconductors, we have just an amazing amount of technology, expertise, intellectual property around material science. And so just a couple of examples of those that relate to the environment. We in doing some other work realized that we had a way to be able to recycle PET plastic, which is a real problem because so many clothes and other things are now made out of PET. And it's really hard to recycle but a by-product of other work we're doing realized we could do that. And so we've formed a JV and we're funding that to not profit from it but to make sure that much more of the world's PET is recycled. Or the work that we're doing on batteries, where using ocean water instead of rare earth minerals to make batteries that not only are cleaner but last longer. Those are kind of byproducts of our kind of core business. The areas that we can see the benefits of innovation and material science being able to impact the world. I am hopeful that we'll be able to play a role with all of that in clear air carbon capture. I mean, that's still far further away but I do think IBM has a unique role that we can play because of our deep expertise in, again, material science, quantum computing, and modeling that put us in a unique position to have a major impact on the world. >> I wonder if we could talk a little bit about sort of IBM and its technology bets. And I've made the point a number of times in my writing that IBM's R and D spend has been about pretty constant, about $6 billion a year. But as IBM is jettison certain businesses got out of the x86 server business and it got out of the Foundry business with micro electronics. Now it's spinning out NewCo. What happens, the effect is that R and D as a percent of revenue goes way, way up. And my premise has always been that allows IBM to be more focused. So whether it's hybrid cloud, AI, quantum, Edge where are you placing your technology bets and maybe give us a sense of how you ranked them, some of your favorites. >> Yeah, so, look, that's exactly right. I mean, we are one of the few places that still invest a massive amount in R and D, especially in fundamental research. And so I'll kind of break down kind of the core areas. So first off, what I'd say is part of the hybrid cloud platform is recognizing we don't need to do everything for everyone. There is great open source technology. There are great other vendors that are doing things that we can enable our customers to access via the platform. So we're not trying to do everything for everybody in the way maybe 40 years ago we did. Because we understand there's so much great other technology out there that we're going to make sure that we expose. So we're investing in areas where we think we can uniquely add value that need to happen that others aren't doing. So AI, let me take that as an example. There's tremendous work happening in machine learning that we see every day because of Facebook and people trying to identify cats. And so I don't mean to trivialize it, there's a phenomenal work happening there. There's a lot less work being done on in AI on things where you have a lot less data. Or areas where you need explainable unbiased AI and the problem with machine learning engines is they're not auditable by definition. That's kind of a black box. And so we do a lot of work in areas like that. We do a lot of work in natural language processing. So we've had more of a as a kind of publicity kind of push the technology something called Project Debater. Where Watson can debate kind of champion debaters. That was mainly to make sure we can understand language in context, which allows for being able to better handle call centers in areas like that. Allows us to understand source code, which also is thinking about how you migrate applications from on-premise to the cloud. So we have a bunch of AI things that we are doing and is a core focus of what we're doing. But specifically we're investing in areas like anti-biased auditability, natural language processing, areas where others aren't. Which is unique and we can bring those capabilities together with what others are doing. Security, obviously, a huge, huge area where we've invested in quantum safe encryption. We've invested in confidential computing. In other words, even in compute mode your data is encrypted. So you can keep your own keys, so not even we on our cloud can see your data. So a lot of investments happening around security and that's going to continue to be an area as we know that's going to get more and more and more scrutiny. So heavy, heavy focus there. Heavily focused on technologies that help you kind of modernize your infrastructure. So automation tools, integration tools and areas around that. So on the software side, those are kind of the main areas. When you look on the hardware side, obviously quantum is a significant area where we have a leadership position we continue to drive. But even semiconductor research in kind of process technology. So we announced something with Intel to work with them to bring some of our process technologies. As we kind of go from 7 nanometers to 5 to 2 to ultimately 1. That set of technologies is an area where we have a real leadership position and we'll continue to work with now Intel. We continue to work with others to drive that forward. So whole bunch of areas both on the hardware and the software side that we continue to make progress on. >> Yeah, the Silicon piece is interesting. And when we saw that Arvin as part of the Intel announcements that we thought originally, oh, maybe it's just about quantum but it's really much more than that. You mentioned the process. We dug into it and we realized, wow, we said Power10 actually has the highest performance. And because of the way in which you are not to geek out but you're you dis-aggregate memory. And Pat Gelsinger talked about system on a package. It turns out folks that IBM is actually the leader in that type of capability. And also the way that systems on chips use memory is very inefficient but IBM has actually invented some techniques to make that much more efficient. That's sort of the future of semiconductors. And the reason why we spend so much time thinking about it is because it's of national interest. There's a huge chip shortage, which doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon. So that's a critical part of national competitiveness and technology competitiveness going forward. >> Well, and the other interesting part about that, and you talked about Power10, going back to the hybrid cloud platform that we talked about. It's not just about running applications across wherever you want to run them. It also abstracts the chip architecture. So all of a sudden whether it's on the mainframe, it's on power, it's on ARM, it's on x86 and a whole bunch of other technologies that might get developed. We're making it much easier to kind of consume that specialization or variety at the hardware level. Recognize as Moore's law runs its course there's no longer this inevitability of everything's just going to go to x86. I think we are going to see more variety because we're going to have needs in the factory floor or in the automobile or with massive container as applications. Where you're going to need, whether it's kind of shared memory or different architectures all the way out to kind of low battery consumption. And that whole kind of breadth and our hybrid cloud platform enables that variability. And then IBM obviously has great technology to enable kind of building unique capability in hardware. So we kind of play on both sides of it, both kind of developing great technologies but then making it really easy for developers to consume and use those specialized features. >> I'm glad you brought that up, Jim. We mentioned Moore's law because we're all talking about how Moore's law is waning and it's quote, unquote dead. But the reality is, is the outcome of Moore's law which is the doubling of performance every two years is actually accelerating because of the common actuarial factors of CPU's and GPU's and NPUs and accelerators and DSPs. If you add all those up and actually, we're actually quadrupling every two years. So we have more processing power at much lower costs because of the volumes that you're seeing on things like ARM. So it's actually a very exciting time. We're entering an era that really, it's hard to get your mind around sometimes. So my question is how should we think about the future state of IBM? What does that look like? >> Well, so first off, the thing that I've found extraordinary about IBM kind of having been there now just a little over a year as an employee, a couple of years, I guess, when Red Hat was acquired. Is it is unique in fundamentally changing, again, who we are to kind of meet the needs going forward. And if you think about the needs in technology, recognize it was only like 20 years ago that Nicholas Carr wrote his famous article, IT Doesn't Matter, it's about back office. And in that world, IBM was really, really effective at building and running IT systems for our clients. We would come in, we would just kind of do everything for them. Today, technology is the forefront of developing or building competitive advantage for almost any business. And so nobody wants to kind of hand the keys, so we no longer are necessarily doing things for our clients. We're doing things with our clients. So there's a whole set of work, and we talked about how we engage with our clients, how we're much more collaborative and co-creative and our whole garage model to help build the capability to innovate with our clients is a key part of what we're doing. We'll continue to drive core technologies forward like quantum in key areas that require billions of dollars of research that frankly no one else is willing to do. And then we bring it all together with this hybrid cloud platform where we recognize it's no longer about us doing it all for you anymore. We're going to do the things where we can uniquely add value but then provide it all on a platform which allows you to consume from wherever, however you want to in a safe, secure, reliable way. So as we watch this next generation of computing unfold, cloud shouldn't end up being a bunch of vertical stove pipes. It truly needs to be kind of a horizontal platform that allows you to run any application anywhere in a safe, secure, reliable way and our architecture helps do that. So it's no longer able to do everything for you. It's we can do things uniquely on a platform and work with you to be able to help you kind of create your own pace of innovation, your own sources of advantage. And so that's the broad kind of direction that we're going, again, as enterprises move from consuming technology to be more efficient, to driving advantage with it. They need partners who understand that focused on their success and can innovate with them. And that's really where we're going with our technology, with our services capability and kind of our approach to how we work with our clients. >> Yeah, Jim, you just laid out the Holy grail of computing in the coming decade and with IBM's acquisition of Red Hat. And it really enables that vision and clearly the company is one of the top few that are in a position to do that. Jim Whitehurst, thanks so much for coming back on theCUBE. Really appreciate your time. >> Thanks for having me, it's great to chat. >> All right and thank you for watching. Keep it right there for more content of theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021, the virtual edition, be right back. (gentle music)

(bright music) >> From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021 brought to you by IBM. >> Hello everybody, welcome back to IBM Think 2021, the virtual edition. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm pleased to welcome back a long time Cube alum, Jim Whitehurst, who's the president of IBM. And I'll call him chief cultural evangelist, welcome Jim. Great to see you again. >> Great to see you, Dave. Thanks so much for having me. >> Yeah, it's really our pleasure. And I want to start off, it's just over a year as president of IBM. And I wonder, you know, when you're a little kid or, you know, early in your career, computer science class, did you ever think you'd be president of a company that was founded in 1911? I mean, amazing. I wonder if you could share what's the most important thing you've learned in your first year? >> Well, look, I mean, as you said, I would've never thought it. Yeah, I was the first kid to have an IBM PC on the block and was always into technology but never saw myself as like, you know, running a big tech company. So it is humbling. I would say that there are tons of lessons in the first year. I guess the two that strike me most is one is just related to strategy and that's, you know, Red Hat and most technology companies, we're very customer focused. But it's around whatever technology we're bringing to market where IBM has fundamentally transitioned. And kind of transformed itself over time to make sure it can meet customer needs. So it's sold off businesses, it's bought other businesses, it's created new businesses. So it really shows the kind of the focus and value on serving our customers and doing whatever it takes to do it. And that's been a fundamental kind of different strategy than most companies have had. I think one of the reasons that we've been around for over a 100 years. The second is I'm deeply into culture and I've talked a lot about the difference of running Red Hat, it's all about innovation versus Delta Airlines where I was before, which is driving efficiency. IBM is both and so really trying to think through how you run an organization that needs to run the financial systems of the world, that extraordinary reliability and drive roadmaps on things like quantum computing. At the same time be able to innovate iteratively with our customers and in open source communities. And kind of getting that balance right as a leader. It's, you're kind of doing what we did at Red Hat and what we did at Delta but kind of doing it together. And I think that stretched me as a leader and kind of taught me a lot about how we're thinking about continuing to evolve the culture at IBM. >> Now, of course, you do this leadership series, you put out things out on LinkedIn and words matter. And that's what I take away from a lot of the little short hits that you do, which I really appreciate. My stuff that I put Jim on LinkedIn, it's just, you got to invest like 15, 20 minutes. So I really appreciate the short hits. But you do that regular series and I'm curious do you do that to reach more IBM people? Are you an open source culture? You're trying to help others. And I'm curious as to sort of why that platform as opposed to sending around an internal thing an IBM. And I'm wondering if your principles and how they've evolved kind of post pandemic. >> Well, so first off, maybe that comes from Red Hat but I think IBM shares that it's if you have something really, really valuable, you want to share it. And look, when I am out talking to our customers, CEOs and some of the biggest companies in the world, honestly we rarely talk about technology 'cause other people are more detailed or deep in that. We primarily do talk about culture. And how you think about again, how do you take an organization that's been built to drive efficiency and scale on a global basis and make it able to be more nimble and more innovative? And so, and obviously, hopefully that's all with IBM and Red Hat technologies. But ultimately most of my conversations at a senior leadership level are about culture and leadership style to drive that. And so if that's valuable for CEOs of some of the world's largest companies, it's valuable to leaders kind of across all spectrums, all sizes. And so I think LinkedIn is a good way to kind of take some of those messages and make sure we were able to share those much more broadly. So certainly I spend more time talking about it inside of IBM and I spend a lot of time with our clients talking about it. But I think many of the lessons are applicable more broadly. And so why not share them? And LinkedIn's a great platform to be able to do that. >> How about you, how have your principles, how have your principles sort of changed and how have they evolved post pandemic? >> Well, I think a couple things, so one is the pandemic kind of forces you to get more precise about it. And what I mean by that is so much of leadership is about building credibility and trust and influence. And when you're seeing someone in 3D live, visual cues can kind of mean a lot in the water cooler conversations. Or who you run into in the hall can all help kind of create that level of trust. But you can't do that in 2D. As great as Zoom and other platforms are, you just can't quite do it. And so you have to be much more thoughtful in how you're creating opportunities to kind of create trust. So I'd say I've gotten more surgical in thinking about kind of what those elements of leadership are that do that. I think the second thing I've really learned at IBM again is back to this. We have to be able to do both, drive a future state in a known world as well as, I call it seek a future state in an unknown world. So driving a roadmap for quantum computing takes a number of different technologies coming together in one year, in two years, in five years. And that really does have to be pre-planned, which is very very different, that I'll call the iterative innovation approach that we use at Red Hat and open source communities and working with our clients. And we have to do both. And so as a leader you really have to understand the problem you're trying to solve and apply slightly different kind of leadership tactics against that. So when you're executing a known versus you are trying to create something in an unknown, does require different approaches and we have to do both in IBM. And I think that's the struggle a lot of companies have, every company needs to do that. If you're Delta Airlines, you don't want anybody innovating on the safety procedures before your flight. Yet you want a lot of innovation happening on your website and your mobile app. So how do you bring those together? And as a leader you can have a common set of values, but recognize you have to bring different tools to the table, depending on the context in which you're leading. And so I learned a lot more and gotten a lot crisper with that since being at IBM. >> Interesting, I mean, the pandemic, we all know it's been terrible but one of the upshots has been we had a glimpse of the future sort of shoved into a forced march of digital in 2020. And so obviously the next 10 years ain't going to be like the last 10 years. And one of the things we've been talking about is ecosystems and partnerships and the power and leverage that you can get from those. And Arvin has said, laid it out, we are returning to growth company. And so I wonder if you could talk to how partnerships and ecosystems play into that return to growth for IBM. >> Well, first off a key part of our strategy we talk about hybrid cloud and AI. It's not just about, hey, a platform that runs across all the different deployment models is convenient. It's also because innovation is coming from so many sources today. It's coming from a by-product from the web 2.0 companies, it's coming from open source. It's coming from an explosion of startups because of the amount of capital in venture capital. It's coming from traditional software companies. It's coming from our clients who are participating in open source. And so you have so many sources of innovation. Much of what we're doing is landing a platform that allows you to consume innovation safely and reliably from wherever it's coming from. So a core part of a platform by definition is the ecosystem around it. Having a platform that runs everywhere is great but if you don't have any applications that run on it who cares. And so ecosystem and partners have always been important to IBM, but for this strategy of this horizontal platform oriented strategy, it is critical to our success because much of the platform is the ecosystem. And so we've already talked about investing a billion dollars in that ecosystem to get ISBS and other partners on our platform, again, to ultimately kind of create that kind of horizontal layer where I can run anything that I want to on it and I can run that anywhere I want to. And so the two sides of that so all the innovation happening on top and making sure it runs everywhere is what really unlocks the freedom of choice. That reduces friction to innovation, which allows everybody in the ecosystem from our clients to ISVs to hardware partners to innovate more quickly. And that's what we really see as the benefit of our platform. It's not a horizontal stove pipe, come innovate in this one place. It's recognizing innovation's happening in so many places. And the only way we're going to be able to allow people to ingest that is to have a horizontal platform that everyone's participating in. Which is why partners and ecosystem are so important, not only to the success of our platform, but to the, I'd say, as a success of this next generation of computing. These horizontal fabrics that require an ecosystem kind of built around them. >> I think that's an important nuance that maybe people don't understand that yes, you have a platform. Obviously, OpenShift is a linchpin but it's an enabler for people to build other platforms. It's not the be all, end all platform that's sort of ultimately becomes another Island. And so that is a key part of the growth strategy and presumably expand your total available market. >> Oh, absolutely and so this is the key is we can talk about great IBM technologies. We're doing amazing things in security and AI and natural language processing and all these other areas. But the platform is a recognition that we're not going to do everything for everybody anymore. There's just the democratization of technology means that there is so many sources of innovation. And so first and foremost, we have to land a platform so you can consume anything from anywhere. And then of course, we'll drive our own pace of innovation both in hardware and software around that platform. But we are just a player on that platform, which we're really instantiating for really anybody to be able to reach customers or customers to reach sources of innovation. >> I know sustainability is a passion of yours, that it's obviously a hot topic right now. Oftentimes I joke tongue in cheek, Milton Friedman's rolling over in his grave with all this ESG talk. And I know you just posted recently on LinkedIn. And of course I went right down to Kavanaugh because my premise is not only is sustainability the right thing to do, it's also good business. But I wonder if you could give us your perspectives on this. >> Yeah, well, so first off, I mean, as a large global citizen as IDM I think this is an important role that we play and look, this isn't new to IBM. We came out with our first statements around environment in 1970. We put out our first report that's become our environmental impact report in 1990. We've been talking about climate since the early two thousands. So we've been involved in this for a long, long time because I do think it's important broadly. But there's also a specific role I think IBM can play beyond just our own individual actions to reduce our own footprint. Because of some of the extraordinary technologies that IBM has worked on in the years especially around semiconductors, we have just an amazing amount of technology, expertise, intellectual property around material science. And so just a couple of examples of those that relate to the environment. We in doing some other work realized that we had a way to be able to recycle PET plastic, which is a real problem because so many clothes and other things are now made out of PET. And it's really hard to recycle but a by-product of other work we're doing realized we could do that. And so we've formed a JV and we're funding that to not profit from it but to make sure that much more of the world's PET is recycled. Or the work that we're doing on batteries, where using ocean water instead of rare earth minerals to make batteries that not only are cleaner but last longer. Those are kind of byproducts of our kind of core business. The areas that we can see the benefits of innovation and material science being able to impact the world. I am hopeful that we'll be able to play a role with all of that in clear air carbon capture. I mean, that's still far further away but I do think IBM has a unique role that we can play because of our deep expertise in, again, material science, quantum computing, and modeling that put us in a unique position to have a major impact on the world. >> I wonder if we could talk a little bit about sort of IBM and its technology bets. And I've made the point a number of times in my writing that IBM's R and D spend has been about pretty constant, about $6 billion a year. But as IBM is jettison certain businesses got out of the x86 server business and it got out of the Foundry business with micro electronics. Now it's spinning out NewCo. What happens, the effect is that R and D as a percent of revenue goes way, way up. And my premise has always been that allows IBM to be more focused. So whether it's hybrid cloud, AI, quantum, Edge where are you placing your technology bets and maybe give us a sense of how you ranked them, some of your favorites. >> Yeah, so, look, that's exactly right. I mean, we are one of the few places that still invest a massive amount in R and D, especially in fundamental research. And so I'll kind of break down kind of the core areas. So first off, what I'd say is part of the hybrid cloud platform is recognizing we don't need to do everything for everyone. There is great open source technology. There are great other vendors that are doing things that we can enable our customers to access via the platform. So we're not trying to do everything for everybody in the way maybe 40 years ago we did. Because we understand there's so much great other technology out there that we're going to make sure that we expose. So we're investing in areas where we think we can uniquely add value that need to happen that others aren't doing. So AI, let me take that as an example. There's tremendous work happening in machine learning that we see every day because of Facebook and people trying to identify cats. And so I don't mean to trivialize it, there's a phenomenal work happening there. There's a lot less work being done on in AI on things where you have a lot less data. Or areas where you need explainable unbiased AI and the problem with machine learning engines is they're not auditable by definition. That's kind of a black box. And so we do a lot of work in areas like that. We do a lot of work in natural language processing. So we've had more of a as a kind of publicity kind of push the technology something called Project Debater. Where Watson can debate kind of champion debaters. That was mainly to make sure we can understand language in context, which allows for being able to better handle call centers in areas like that. Allows us to understand source code, which also is thinking about how you migrate applications from on-premise to the cloud. So we have a bunch of AI things that we are doing and is a core focus of what we're doing. But in specifically we're investing in areas like anti-biased auditability, natural language processing, areas where others aren't. Which is unique and we can bring those capabilities together with what others are doing. Security, obviously, a huge, huge area where we've invested in quantum safe encryption. We've invested in confidential computing. In other words, even in compute mode your data is encrypted. So you can keep your own keys, so not even we on our cloud can see your data. So a lot of investments happening around security and that's going to continue to be an area as we know that's going to get more and more and more scrutiny. So heavy, heavy focus there. Heavily focused on technologies that help you kind of modernize your infrastructure. So automation tools, integration tools and areas around that. So on the software side, those are kind of the main areas. When you look on the hardware side, obviously quantum is a significant area where we have a leadership position we continue to drive. But even semiconductor research in kind of process technology. So we announced something with Intel to work with them to bring some of our process technologies. As we kind of go from 7 nanometers to 5 to 2 to ultimately 1. That set of technologies is an area where we have a real leadership position and we'll continue to work with now Intel. We continue to work with others to drive that forward. So whole bunch of areas both on the hardware and the software side that we continue to make progress on. >> Yeah, the Silicon piece is interesting. And when we saw that Arvin as part of the Intel announcements that we thought originally, oh, maybe it's just about quantum but it's really much more than that. You mentioned the process. We dug into it and we realized, wow, we said Power10 actually has the highest performance. And because of the way in which you are not to geek out but you're you dis-aggregate memory. And Pat Gelsinger talked about system on a package. It turns out folks that IBM is actually the leader in that type of capability. And also the way that systems on chips use memory is very inefficient but IBM has actually invented some techniques to make that much more efficient. That's sort of the future of semiconductors. And the reason why we spend so much time thinking about it is because it's of national interest. There's a huge chip shortage, which doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon. So that's a critical part of national competitiveness and technology competitiveness going forward. >> Well, and the other interesting part about that, and you talked about Power10, going back to the hybrid cloud platform that we talked about. It's not just about running applications across wherever you want to run them. It also abstracts the chip architecture. So all of a sudden whether it's on the mainframe, it's on power, it's on ARM, it's on x86 and a whole bunch of other technologies that might get developed. We're making it much easier to kind of consume that specialization or variety at the hardware level. Recognize as Moore's law runs its course there's no longer this inevitability of everything's just going to go to x86. I think we are going to see more variety because we're going to have needs in the factory floor or in the automobile or with massive container as applications. Where you're going to need, whether it's kind of shared memory or different architectures all the way out to kind of low battery consumption. And that whole kind of breadth and our hybrid cloud platform enables that variability. And then IBM obviously has great technology to enable kind of building unique capability in hardware. So we kind of play on both sides of it, both kind of developing great technologies but then making it really easy for developers to consume and use those specialized features. >> I'm glad you brought that up, Jim. We mentioned Moore's law because we're all talking about how Moore's law is waning and it's quote, unquote dead. But the reality is, is the outcome of Moore's law which is the doubling of performance every two years is actually accelerating because of the common actuarial factors of CPU's and GPU's and NPUs and accelerators and DSPs. If you add all those up and actually, we're actually quadrupling every two years. So we have more processing power at much lower costs because of the volumes that you're seeing on things like ARM. So it's actually a very exciting time. We're entering an era that really, it's hard to get your mind around sometimes. So my question is how should we think about the future state of IBM? What does that look like? >> Well, so first off, the thing that I've found extraordinary about IBM kind of having been there now just a little over a year as an employee, a couple of years, I guess, when Red Hat was acquired. Is it is unique in fundamentally changing, again, who we are to kind of meet the needs going forward. And if you think about the needs in technology, recognize it was only like 20 years ago that Nicholas Carr wrote his famous article, IT Doesn't Matter, it's about back office. And in that world, IBM was really, really effective at building and running IT systems for our clients. We would come in, we would just kind of do everything for them. Today, technology is the forefront of developing or building competitive advantage for almost any business. And so nobody wants to kind of hand the keys, so we no longer are necessarily doing things for our clients. We're doing things with our clients. So there's a whole set of work, and we talked about how we engage with our clients, how we're much more collaborative and co-creative and our whole garage model to help build the capability to innovate with our clients is a key part of what we're doing. We'll continue to drive core technologies forward like quantum in key areas that require billions of dollars of research that frankly no one else is willing to do. And then we bring it all together with this hybrid cloud platform where we recognize it's no longer about us doing it all for you anymore. We're going to do the things where we can uniquely add value but then provide it all on a platform which allows you to consume from wherever, however you want to in a safe, secure, reliable way. So as we watch this next generation of computing unfold, cloud shouldn't end up being a bunch of vertical stove pipes. It truly needs to be kind of a horizontal platform that allows you to run any application anywhere in a safe, secure, reliable way and our architecture helps do that. So it's no longer able to do everything for you. It's we can do things uniquely on a platform and work with you to be able to help you kind of create your own pace of innovation, your own sources of advantage. And so that's the broad kind of direction that we're going, again, as enterprises move from consuming technology to be more efficient, to driving advantage with it. They need partners who understand that focused on their success and can innovate with them. And that's really where we're going with our technology, with our services capability and kind of our approach to how we work with our clients. >> Yeah, Jim, you just laid out the Holy grail of computing in the coming decade and with IBM's acquisition of Red Hat. And it really enables that vision and clearly the company is one of the top few that are in a position to do that. Jim Whitehurst, thanks so much for coming back on theCUBE. Really appreciate your time. >> Thanks for having me, it's great to chat. >> All right and thank you for watching. Keep it right there for more content of theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021, the virtual edition, be right back. (gentle music)

>>from around the >>globe. >>It's the cube with digital coverage of IBM. Think 2021 brought to you by IBM. >>Hello buddy. Welcome back to I didn't think 28 21 this is the cubes ongoing coverage. We go out to the events of course, in this case we do so virtually to extract the signal from the noise. My name is Dave Volonte and now we're gonna talk about the intersection of business success and sustainability. It's hot topic. We have a great panel for you with me, our ali Carr molly, sustainability and climate practice lead at IBM Canada lucy Bonet is a senior consultant and customer experience and sustainability strategy. Also from IBM Canada and Carrick Morris. Executive Partner, Enterprise Strategy. Global Energy and sustainability lead. IBM UK folks welcome to the panel. Welcome to the cube. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Thank you. Maybe lucy, you could kick it off to talk about what is sustainability and how has it all of a sudden becomes such a hot topic amongst leadership? >>Yeah. Sure. Um So first off it's actually my pleasure that sustainability has finally become a trendy topic and is now a key imperative in the business world. Um The pandemic really played a role in it as it made people realize uh that there's an intricate link between global scale events like the climate crisis leading to the acceleration of viruses spread and their own personal health or of their business. So sustainability really means that you're addressing the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations to do so. Companies use different frameworks uh and and standards including E. S. G. Standing for environmental social and governance criteria to really assess their progress on their journey to sustainability. It comes with many metrics that they track or should track and choose to disclose for the greater benefit of all. Um One prerequisite I'd say to really building a successful sustainable company is really the need for a new form of leadership style, one that is the purpose driven that really focuses on doing well while doing the right thing. And I mean, you you might need uh examples here to illustrate what I'm saying. Um you can take uh union lever and the really radical transformation of the palm oil industry they're leading. Um if Unilever did nothing serious risk would really be posed in a few years on the whole business. So the company has started working with all actors across its value chain, from training farmers to building alliances with competitors and stakeholders. And you know what union lever is doing for the polymetal industry is actually cementing its reputation as an innovator and they're already reaping the benefits of having been first movers >>Carrick, uh lucy talked about an imperative, so take away there is not a checkbox, it's something that's sort of designed in. I wonder if you could, you could talk to that. >>Yeah, I mean sustainability at the end of the day now is built into every decision, every process, every system. Um and you know and leadership role in that space is about some kind of developing new corporate strategies, new cultures, new approaches which are around, you know, actually, how do I do this? It's a real paradigm shift, it's not it's not something you add to your business, it's something that needs to be called to your business and then you know, that's requiring us to kind of re imagining, you know, how we sort of go work, how we could help you do business? The process is developing new products, leveraging new technologies, it's putting all of those pieces in and sort of making them work and, you know, and the key part of it is how do you do this in a way where we're not forcing people to make a choice between sustainability and profitability, sustainability and you know, and in a way of quality of life. So that's how you kind of build that into kind of the core products and services and again use that ingenuity to kind of develop those and sort of developed, you know, the components that you need to as part of that process. And the other part of this is then getting into, well, actually from a leadership perspective, how do I then change and the way that I work with partners with suppliers, with competitors. So it's it's really fundamentally changing the way the business itself works as well. >>Thank you. Uh you know, ali when I talk about DSG I sometimes tongue in cheek say, Milton Friedman's probably rolling over in his grave because he's the the economist who said that the only job of a company is to make profits and drive shareholder value. And so that's, I mean that's a that's a that's a historical challenge. Uh But there's there's actually a business case for this. Uh It's actually good business and we'll talk about that. But maybe you could address some of the challenges that organizations are facing to really lean in and address. E. S. G. >>Yeah, that's right. You know, there are a lot of components to go into this and as lucy mentioned and Carrick mentioned the complexities that come with that are a lot of their significant. And so I'd say that the first challenge that I see is in regards to the alignment and integration of sustainability strategy within the organization's business model. So if we take a look at the typical life cycle which includes sourcing, production operations, distribution, and then end of life and recycling. Each of these components must consider the conduits for driving positive social impact and environmental stewardship, but that also as you said, drives opportunity and economic benefits for the organization. Um so these are components that could fall into three categories. The first one is what is the journey to net zero look like for you? How will I transform my operations, my strategy, my business models to achieve a net zero emission? What is circularity in the context of my business? How do I orchestrate for zero waste, include reuse regenerative processes, restorative processes, and then how do I build in principles of sustainability into the design, so that I integrate those components into the ways of working within this new world of sustainability that we're seeing. It's also the what and how coming together to enable long term value creation for the company. The second challenge that I see is around the performance monitoring and management and as they say, you can't manage what you can't measure and so many organizations might not have the complexity roadmap laid out for the systems and data that's required in order to enable transparent and quality reporting. We think about data knowing what you have versus what you don't um data management capturing and transform that data, integrating that data in a way that has a simple but effective use of methodologies as well as benchmarking and then having a reporting system that allows you to see everything almost a control tower of your E your S and your G. And then finally we see sustainability has become a board level priority. It is a hot topic but it's not always properly understood below the board level, so senior executives sometimes approach uh uh the the informants to change in the way that we normally approach things like regulation, but I think in this case it's quite it's quite different because it is a bit of a shift to the person with purpose as the center leaders must lead, they must hire, they must think design and share, they must meet the count paradigms for diversity inclusion. Um And I think at the same time encourage diversity, but also divergence where it needs to be, they have to have the headspace to accept the truth in the collaboration with all stakeholders. Um So I think there are ways for companies to do this and and and for them to be successful and I think I am is one of them >>uh for sure, and I think Carrick, that sort of leads me from what allie was saying about, you know, IBM big company has a big ecosystem. There are other large leaders within industry that can leverage ecosystems and it may be set the tone and show the point the way for the long tail of smaller companies. But maybe you could talk about that ecosystem flywheel. What >>we are saying is is actually sort of quite a lot of differences between the way organizations are addressing this and you are seeing some leaders in this space and you are seeing people who are taking a stand around around >>these components and actually trying to shape >>just not only what they do, but also what organizations do around them. Um I mean, you know if you kind of look at this, there's there's almost kind of three categories so that there are organizations that are sort of seeing this as an existential change. You know, if I'm looking at some mining and looking at oil and gas, I'm making your travel and transport, you know what you're still seeing, there is a fundamental shift in their business, requiring them to rethink how they do things in a very structured, um and actually quite an extended way. You know, if I'm looking at other organizations like retailers, it's actually a little less of uh an existential changes, that's more of an incremental one. But even so, they still have to change all that. They do that. They can do it in a probably a more staged approach and then you've got influences around that as well. So governments and financial services players, etcetera, who are sort of shaping the agenda and who need help and support around thinking through how they kind of measure the change, how they sort of make sure the financing the right things, and they make how they make sure they're actually getting returns they expect. And actually, the sustainability components are actually being driven by that. And I think that's that's kind of sort of where an organization like IBM comes in there, there's a lot of technical change in here, there's a lot of data change in here. And actually these are the sorts of things that, you know, from students sustainability perspective are going to help to to drive this in a more seamless and achievable way if you will. Um and so there's an awful lot that we're looking to try to do, to enable that quickly, to kind of take things off the shelf to rapidly test and to actually show people both what can be done and the value then can create by going down the sustainability journey. >>Okay. Got it. Thank you. And lucy you touched on some examples at a high level in your opening remarks. Uh and I'm interested in in kind of the starting point that you see cos you know taking uh and what's the right regime, I mean you've got to put somebody somebody's gonna be accountable for the measurements and the and the cultural changes. But but where do we start? >>Right. So one starting point is definitely uh to be looking at your data right? And uh you know it's it's really tempting to forget when you're building products or you're creating experiences. It's attempting to forget thinking about their repetitions on the environment, on communities and on society. Um Their impact is made invisible for the sake of immediate user satisfaction and short term business value. And you know although 60% of executives consider sustainability to be an essential competitive advantage, 80 actually of the products ecological impacts are locked in at the design phase. So, um that's why, you know, with with a team of four IBM superstars, um we've created the sustainable design thinking toolkit uh that was just launched and is in the process of being integrated into the official IBM design thinking uh site. And and that's really a great start because it's meant to help design thinking practitioners take responsibility on making that impact visible from the very start of the process. And we've used it with multiple clients and for internal projects. And, you know, it's really helped infuse a sustainable mindset throughout the workflows and and actually from the very, very start of it. Um one recent example was in the CPG industry where we've applied renew a sustainable design thinking activities to the problem at hand uh to get consumers to recycle more by enhancing their recycling experience. And what it allowed us to do is really to make sure that, you know, the prioritization process of the first ideas that emerged included sustainable value into the mix, so that the impact on the planet and communities wasn't a blind spot anymore. >>So, thank you for that. Uh Carrick, I wonder, you know, lucy was talking about you start with the data and that that's that's cool. I sometimes I get worried though there's going to be analysis by paralysis and overthinking the strategy. Are there ways to are there ways to get in and and and take smaller bites and iterate what what are your thoughts on that? >>Yeah, I mean, I think they're absolutely, and you know, with with lots of organizations, they really have to kind of feel their way into this, this, this new approach. You know, you actually kind of have to learn both what sustainability means, but also sort of what it can deliver. So, you know, usually what we're sort of seeing is these organizations will start to start off with things which are under their control, so how can I change my manufacturing processes? How can I change some of the internal components of what it is that we do to make them more sustainable to reduce waste, to reduce sort of kind of the energy usage components which are associated with. And that's that's quite a nice controlled starting point using leveraging things like manufacturing, 4.0, intelligent processes, massive, maximum maximum asset management type approaches. Um The second step we're sort of seeing with lots of organizations is that they then moving into kind of their own ecosystem if you will. So actually, how do I manage my supply chain more effectively? How do I drive transparency? How do I sort of also drive efficiency and and kind of carbon management from that sort of perspective. But also how do I sort of highlight the sustainable gains I'm making on my products and and get those messages to customers and highlights of what we're doing with both new products and services, but also with the existing products and services and then sort of your, your kind of your final piece. And actually this depends what kind of goes back to what I was saying before about what industry you're in. But, you know, a lot of industries are also having to kind of face the challenge of any to change fundamentally. You know, the business I'm in is not not going to work the way it works in a sustainable world. So, so actually, how do I kind of build an ecosystem based approach? How do I kind of work with other partners? How do I kind of work with suppliers? How do women competitors actually, how do I build something at scale around the platform in order to be able to deliver these types of things? And IBM, we've been kind of creating some of those, those platforms and then scaling them quite rapidly across a variety of different sectors >>and that's where you're gonna see the measurable impact. Ali do you have a framework for what was a successful outcome looks like? Are there are there companies that are sort of models of success? I mean, I think IBM is one of them, but maybe you could talk to that. >>Yeah, there are definitely companies to emulate, and companies have really started to think about the connection point between the value that's driven by their business model, as well as the effort and the impact that's being driven by there S g uh there? S you focus and so while there might be components of success, I think getting, getting it all together and all right is going to take time and it's going to be a bit of a sequence. Um but a bit of a thought experiment, if you could sit into a boardroom or at a senior level executive discussion when you think about success, would you hear things or discussions around how the company is building the environmental and social inputs to its products and services and what does that sound like? Are they tangible? Are they realistic? And what are the methods and the tools that they're using? Um Would you hear conversations about how the company is evaluating or infusing sustainability across the value chain from procurement all the way to end of life, or how about the participation of the company into other ecosystems that's driving value into other industries. And we see the force multiplier effect that comes with that when companies partner together because we are either vendors or providers or consumers of every other product or service. And then I think lastly, would organizations start to think about how to generate value closer to home and how that value can be driven into communities into where their employees are based and those elements really really improve the social elements. So let's say last is there are elements of what good and success looks like when it comes sustainability. Um but I think organizations can set their targets uh meat industry benchmarks and frameworks which already exist and are really well established um but continuously increase their own targets to set better and more ambitious goals for themselves to move beyond, to leverage technology and be innovative and and apply uh these these tools and best practices in order to get there. Uh And I think um and I think I think we'll get there over time, so I'm really encouraged by the progress that we're seeing. Uh and we hope that IBM to help accelerate that journey. >>Thank you and then lucy one of these, I'm excited about the tech because this is where I think, you know, business does meet sustainability mean green tech E. V. I mean, if if I'm a nation, I want to be on top of that. If I'm a company, I think there's opportunities for invention and innovation. Can you talk about some of those innovative texts that we're likely to see >>right? Um Well, yeah, but to pick you back on on what Allah is just saying and, you know, I think success can can come in very different ways and forms. Um you know, be it creating entirely new business models like, you know, some clients we help in the colon gas industry Taking really bold commitments to shift to energy, electric energy. Um or you know, significantly cutting costs such as, you know, those brands and the CPG industry that are doing amazing things to optimize their supply chains and make them more efficient, more transparent, more secure. Um or you know, also protecting brand reputation and mitigating risks or gaining market share by creating differentiating value. You might have heard about Loreal taking really bold moves and switching all their products to 95 renewable plant sources and circular processes. Um you know, it it can also be about capturing value by charging a premium for sustainable products. Think about Tesla or whole foods for example. I mean there's so many great examples out there already. >>Excellent. So we gotta wrap it. So, my last question and I'll start with ali and then we'll go to Carrick and lucy you can bring us home talk about why you were talking about STD reporting and transparency and how it's great for the future and in the economy and so forth. Why is this not gonna be a fad? Why is it going to be sustainable sustainability? The sustainability of sustainable uh please kick it off and then we'll go to karaoke and then lucy >>you're right. You know, this is a big change for organizations and I think naturally their uh their corporate social responsibility. Um and sustainability reports have really been externally focused and I think that has been a great step in the right direction. Um but I think what's happening now is is this convergence of sustainable material and transparent reporting that is equivalent to material financial reporting that we're seeing. And eventually I think the end goal would be to be able to read a sustainable report and understand and quantify as well as qualify how much impact is an organization making year to year. And what are some of the initiatives that's driving? What we have begun to see is a sustainable business strategy. That is also a competitive advantage for organizations. So I think the benefit in the long term is going to create a lot of value for not just the shareholder, but for the stakeholders like employees, like the communities in which these companies operate, like regulatory agencies as well as municipal, federal governments and state government. So I think this is a step in the right direction for providing a very clear direction on their sustainable initiatives. >>Thank you. Thank you. Ali Carrick, can you weigh in here, please? >>Yeah, I mean, I I agree with all that he said there and I think with the stakeholders and the end of the day this this is a collective responsibility. You know, we have one planet one rock we all live on and we all need to be part of the process of actually making it, making it change. And you can't you can't sort of change what you can't measure. So kind of holding people to account, being able to share some of the data that we've got, making sure everybody understands what the position is, how we're contributing um and and the role that we're actually still playing is going to be an incredibly important part of collectively coming together and making this change happen, and making this change happen quickly, which is what it needs to do >>and lucy your passion shines through here so it's appropriate that you close it out. >>Mhm. Yeah, well it all comes down to you know, do you want your business to still exist in 100 years from now and you know it does require courage and determination but we all have it in ourselves. Um you know, trying to find the ways that we can change things for the greater good, find the energy in yourself to inspire others to act. That's why you know, leaders with purpose and ingenuity are so so important today. Thank you >>folks. Thanks so much for the perspectives guys doing a great work, really appreciate your time on the cube today. >>Thank you. Thanks for having us >>All right, it's been our pleasure and thank you for watching. This is the cubes coverage of IBM think 2021, the virtual edition will be right back.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube presenting Cuban cloud brought to you by Silicon Angle. Hi, I'm stupid, man. And welcome back to the Cube on Cloud. We're talking about developers. And while so many people remember the mean from 2010 of Steve Balmer jumping around on stage development developers and developers, uh, many people know what really important is really important about developers. They probably read the 2013 book called The New King Makers by Stephen O. Grady. And I'm really happy to welcome to the program. Rachel Stevens, who is an industry analyst with Red Monk who was co founded by the aforementioned Stephen O. Grady. Rachel, Great to see you. Thank you so much for joining us. >>Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. >>Well, I've had the opportunity, Thio read some of what you've done. We've interacted on social media. We've got to talk events back when we used to do those in people. And >>I'm so >>glad that you get to come on the program especially. You were the ones I reached out. When we have this developer track, um, if you could just give our audience a little bit about your background. You know, that developer cred that you have Because as I joke, I've got a closet full of hoodies. But, you know, I'm an infrastructure guy by training I've been learning about, you know, containers and serverless and all this stuff for years. But I'm not myself much of developer. I've touched a thing or two in the years. >>Yeah. So happy to be here. Red Monk has been around since 2002 and have kind of been beating that developer drum ever since then, kind of as the company, The founder, Stephen James, notice that the decision making that developers was really a driver for what was actually ending up in the Enterprise. And as even more true, as cloud came onto, the scene is open source exploded, and I think it's become a lot more of a common view now. But in those early days, it was probably a little bit more of a controversial opinion, but I have been with the firm for coming up on five years now. My work is an industry analyst. We kind of help people understand, bottoms up technology, adoption trends, so that that's where I spend my time focusing is what's getting used in the enterprise. Why, what kind of trends are happening? So, yeah, that's where we all come from. That's the history of Red Monk in 30 seconds. >>Awesome. Rachel, you talk about the enterprise and developers For the longest time. I just said there was this huge gap you talk about. Bottoms up. It's like, well, developers use the tools that they want If they don't have to, they don't pay for anything. And the general I t. And the business sides of the house were like, I don't know, We don't know what those people in the corner we're doing, you know, it's important and things like that. But today it feels like that that's closed a bunch. Where are we? In your estimation, you know, our developers do they have a clear seat at the table? The title we have for this is whether the Enterprise Developer is its enterprise development oxymoron. In 2020 and 2021 >>I think enterprise developers have a lot more practical authority than people give them credit for, especially if you're kind of looking at that old view of the world where everything is driven by a buyer decision or kind of this top down purchasing motion. And we've really seen that authority of what is getting used and why change a lot in the last year. In the last decade, even more of people who are able to choose the tools that meet the job bring in tools, regardless of whether they maybe have that official approval through the right channels because of the convenience of trying to get things up and running. We are asking developers to do so much right now and to go faster and thio shifting things left. And so the things that they are responsible for incorporating into the way they are building APS is growing. And so, as we are asking developers to do more and to do more quickly, um, the tools that they need to do those, um, tasks to get these APS built is that the decision making us fall into them? This is what I need. This is what needs to come in, and so we're seeing. Basically, the tools that enterprise is air using are the tools that developers want to be using, and they kind of just find their way into the enterprise. >>Now I want to key off what you were talking about. Just developers were being asked to do Mawr and Mawr. We've seen these pendulum swings in technology. There was a time where it was like, Well, I'll outsource it because that'll be easier and maybe it'll be less expensive. And number one we found it necessarily. It wasn't necessarily cheaper. And number two, I couldn't make changes, and I didn't understand what was happening. So when when I talked to Enterprises today, absolutely. I need to have skills that's internally. I need to be able to respond to things fast, and therefore I need skills that I need people that can build what they have. What what do you see? What are those skill sets that are so important today? Uh, you know, we've talked so many times over the years is to you know, there's there's the skills gap. We don't have enough data scientists. We don't have enough developers way. We don't have any of these things. So what do we have and where things trending? >>Yeah, it's It's one of those things for developers where they both have probably the most full tool set that we've seen in this industry in terms of things that are available to them. But it's also really hard because it also indicates that there is just this fragmentation at every level of the stack. And there's this explosion of choice and decisions that is happening up and down the stack of how are we going to build things? And so it's really tricky to be a developer these days and that you are making a lot of decisions and you are wiring a lot of things together and you have to be able to navigate a lot of things. E think. One of the things that is interesting here is that we have seen the phrase like Full stack developer really carried a lot of panache, maybe earlier this decade and has kind of fallen away. Just because we've realized that it's impossible for anybody to be ableto spanned this whole broad spectrum of all of the things we're asking people to dio. So we're seeing this explosion of choice, which is meaning that there is a little bit more focused and where developers are trying to actually figure out what is my niche. What is it that I'm supposed to focus on. And so it's really just this balancing of act of trying to see this big picture of how to get this all put together and also have this focused area realizing that you have to specialize at some point. >>Rachel is such a great point there. We've actually seen that Cambrian explosion of developer tools that are out there. If you go to the CFCF landscape and look at everything out there or goto any of your public cloud providers, there's no way that anybody even working for those companies no good portion of the tools that are out there so nobody could be a master of everything. How about from a cloud standpoint, you know, there is the discussion of, you know what do I shift? Left What? You know, Can I just say, Okay, this piece of it, it could be a manage service. I don't need to think about it versus what skills that I need to have in house. What is it that's important. And obviously, you know, a zoo analyst. We know it varies greatly across companies, but you know what? What are some of those top things that we need to make sure that enterprises have skill set and the tools in house that they should understand. And what can they push off to their platform of choice? >>Yeah, I think your comment about managed services is really pressing because one of the trends that we're watching closely, it's just this rise of manage services. And it kind of ties back into the concept you had before about like, what an I team. That's they have, like the Nicholas Carr. I t doesn't matter, and we're pushing this all the way. And then we realized, Oh, we've got to bring that all back. Um, but we also realize that we really want as enterprises want to be spending our time doing differentiated work and wiring together, your entire infrastructure isn't necessarily differentiated for a lot of companies. And so it's trying to find this mix of where can I push my abstraction higher or to find a manage service that can do something for me? And we're seeing that happen in all levels of the stack. And so what we're seeing is this rise of composite APS where we're going to say, Okay, I'm gonna pull in back end AP ice from a whole bunch of tools like twilio or stripe or all zero where algo Leah, all of those things are great tools that I can incorporate into my app. And I can have this great user, um, interface that I can use. And then I don't have to worry quite so much about building it all myself. But I am responsible for wiring at all together. So I think it's that wire together set of interest that is happening for developers as the tool set that they are spending a lot of time with. So we see the manage services being important. Um played an important role in how absent composed, and it's the composition of that APs that is happening internally. >>What one of the one of the regular research items that I see a red monk is you know what languages you know. Where are the trends going? There's been relative stability, but then something's changed. You know, I look at the tools that you mentioned Full stack developer. I talked to a full stack developer a couple of years ago, and he's like like like terror form is my life and I love everything and I've used it forever. And that was 18 months, Andi. I kind of laugh because it's like, OK, I managed. I measure a lot of the technology that I used in the decades. Um, not that await. This came out six months ago and it's kind of mature. And of course, you know, C I C d. Come on. If it's six weeks old, it's probably gone through a lot of generations. So what do you see? Do you have any research that you can share as to looking forward? What are the You know what the skill sets we need? How should we be training our force? What do >>we need to >>be looking at in this kind of next decade of cloud? >>Yeah. So when when you spoke about languages, we dio a semi annual review of language usage as a sign on get hub and in discussion as seen on stack overflow, which we fully recognize is not a perfect representation of how these languages are used in the broader world. But those air data sets that we have access to that are relatively large and open eso just before anyone writes me angry letters that that's not the way that we should be doing it, Um, but one of the things that we've seen over time is that there is a lot of relative stability in those top tier languages in terms of how they are used, and there's some movement at the bottom. But the trends we're seeing where the languages are moving is type safety and having a safer language and the communities that are building upon other communities. So things like, um, we're seeing Scotland that is able to kind of piggyback off of being a jvm based language and having that support from Google. Or we're seeing typescript where it can piggyback off of the breath of deployment of JavaScript, things like that. So those things where were combining together multiple trends that developers are interested in the same time combined with an ecosystem that's already rich and full. And so we're seeing that there's definitely still movement in languages that people are interested in, but also, language on its own is probably pretty stable. So, like as you start to make language choices as a developer, that's not where we're seeing a ton of like turnover language frameworks on the other hand, like if you're a JavaScript developer and all of a sudden there's just explosion of frameworks that you need to choose from, that may be a different story, a lot more turnover there and harder to predict. But language trends are a little bit more stable over >>time, changing over time. You know, Boy, I I got to dig into, you know, relatively Recently I went down like the jam stack. Uh, ecosystem. I've been digging into a serverless for a number of years. What's your take on that? There's certain people. I talked to him. They're like, I don't even need to be a code. Or I could be a marketing person. And I can get things done when I talked to some developers there like a citizen developers. They're not developers. Come on, you know, I really need to be able to do this, so I'll give you your choices, toe. You know, serverless and some of these trends to kind of ext fan. You know who can you know? Code and development. >>Yeah. So for both translate jam stack and serve Ellis, One of the things that we see kind of early in the iteration of a technology is that it is definitely not going to be the right tool for every app. And the number of APS that they approach will fit for will grow as the tool develops. And you add more functionality over time and all of these platforms expand the capability, but definitely not the correct tool choice in every case. That said, we do watch both of those areas with extreme interest in terms of what this next generation of APS can look like and probably will look like in a lot of cases. And I think that it is super interesting to think about who gets to build these APs, because I e. I think one of the things that we probably haven't landed on the right language yet is what that what we should call these people because I don't think anyone associates themselves as a low code person. Like if you're someone from marketing and all of a sudden you can build something technical, that's really cool, and you're excited about that. Nobody else on your team could build. You're not walking around saying I am a low code marketing person like that, that that's that's that's demeaning. Like you're like. No, I'm technical. I'm a technical market, or look what I just did. And if you're someone who codes professionally for a living like and you use a low code tool to get something out the door quickly and >>you don't >>wanna demean and said, Oh, that was I did a low code that just like everybody, is just trying to solve problems. And everybody, um, is trying to figure out how to do things in the most effective way possible and making trade offs all the time. And so I don't think that the language of low code really is anything that resonates with any of the actual users of low code tools. And so I think that's something that we as an industry need toe work on finding the correct language because it doesn't feel like we've landed there yet. >>Yeah, Rachel, what? Want to get your take on just careers for developers now to think about in 2020 everyone is distributed. Lots of conversations about where we work. Can we bring the remote? Many of the developers I talked to already were remote. I had the chance that interview that the head of remote. Forget lab. They're over 1000 people and they're fully remote. So, you know, remote. Absolutely a thing for developers. But if you talk about careers, it is no longer, you know. Oh, hey, here's my CV. It's I'm on git Hub. You can see the code I've done. We haven't talked about open source yet, so give us your take on kind of developers today. Career paths. Andi. Kind of the the online community there. >>Yeah, this could be a whole own conversation. We'll try to figure out my points. Um, so I think one of the things that we are trying to figure out in terms of balance is how much are we expecting people to have done on the side? It's like a side project Hustle versus doing, exclusively getting your job done and not worrying too much about how many green squares you have on your get hub profile. And I think it's a really emotional and fraught discussion and a lot of quarters because it can be exclusionary for people saying that you you need to be spending your time on the side working on this open source project because there are people who have very different life circumstances, like if you're someone who already has kids or you're doing elder care or you are working another job and trying to transition into becoming a developer, it's a lot to ask. These people toe also have a side hustle. That said, it is probably working on open source, having an understanding of how tools are done. Having this, um, this experience and skills that you can point to and contributions you can point Teoh is probably one of the cleaner ways that you can start to move in the industry and break through to the industry because you can show your skills two other employers you can kind of maybe make your way in is a junior developer because you worked on a project and you make those connections. And so it's really still again. It's one of those balancing act things where there's not a perfect answer because there really is to correct sides of this argument. And both of those things are true. At the same time where it's it's hard to figure out what that early career path maybe looks like, or even advancing in a career path If you're already a developer, it's It's tricky. >>Well, I want to get your take on something to you know, I think back to you know, I go back a decade or two I started working with about 20 years ago. Back in the crazy days were just Colonel Daughter Warg and, you know, patches everywhere and lots of different companies trying to figure out what they would be doing on most of the people contributing to the free software before we're calling it open source. Most of the time, it was their side Hustle was the thing they're doing. What was their passion? Project? I've seen some research in the last year or so that says the majority of people that are contributing to open source are doing it for their day job. Obviously, there's a lot of big companies. There's plenty of small companies. When I goto the Linux Foundation shows. I mean, you've got whole companies that are you know, that that's their whole business. So I want to get your take on, you know, you know, governance, you know, contribution from the individual versus companies. You know, there's a lot of change going on there. The public cloud their impact on what's happening open source. What are you seeing there? And you know what's good? What's bad? What do we need to do better as a community? >>Yeah. E think the governance of open source projects is definitely a live conversation that we're having right now about what does this need to look like? What role do companies need to be having and how things are put together is a contribution or leadership position in the name of the individual or the name of the company. Like all of these air live conversations that are ongoing and a lot of communities e think one of the things that is interesting overall, though, is just watching if you're if you're taking a really zoomed out view of what open source looks like where it was at one point, um, deemed a cancer by one of the vendors in the space, and now it is something that is just absolutely an inherent part of most well tech vendors and and users is an important part of how they are building and using software today, like open source is really an integral tool. And what is happening in the enterprise and what's being built in the enterprise. And so I think that it is a natural thing that this conversation is evolving in terms of what is the enterprises role here and how are we supposed to govern for that? And e don't think that we have landed on all the correct answers yet. But I think that just looking at that long view, it makes sense that this is an area where we are spending some time focusing >>So Rachel without giving away state secrets. We know read Monk, you do lots of consulting out there. What advice do you give to the industry? We said we're making progress. There's good things there. But if we say okay, I wanna at 2030 look back and say, Boy, this is wonderful for developers. You know, everything is going good. What things have we done along the way? Where have we made progress? >>Yeah, I think I think it kind of ties back to the earlier discussion we were having around composite APS and thinking about what that developer experience looks like. I think that right now it is incredibly difficult for developers to be wiring everything together and There's just so much for developers to dio to actually get all of these APs from source to production. So when we talk with our customers, a lot of our time is spent thinking, How can you not only solve this individual piece of the puzzle, but how can you figure out how to fit it into this broader picture of what it is the developers air trying to accomplish? How can you think about where your ATF, It's not on your tool or you your project? Whatever it is that you are working on, how does this fit? Not only in terms of your one unique problem space, but where does this problem space fit in the broader landscape? Because I think that's going to be a really key element of what the developer experience looks like in the next decade. Is trying to help people actually get everything wired together in a coherent way. >>Rachel. No shortage of work to do there really appreciate you joining us. Thrilled to have you finally as a cube. Alumni. Thanks so much for joining. >>Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. >>All right. Thank you for joining us. This is the developer content for the cube on cloud, I'm stew minimum, and as always, thank you for watching the Cube.

>>Hi and welcome back to Red Hat. Summit 2020. This is the Cube, and I'm your host. Stew minimum. We're talking so many topics. This event happening globally. We're treating our partners in the red hat executives where they are around the globe. And I guess right now is Nick Carr said, Who's the senior director of technology strategy with Red Hat, And Nic is coming to us. He's early in the Bahamas, speaking to us from his boat, though. Nick, pleasure to see you. And thanks so much for joining us. >>Very nice to meet you. Yeah, remote employees. And I enjoy that a lot. >>Absolutely. So we've been talking your team a lot. Of course. You know, many employees of Red Hat already were remote, but everyone now is working where they are. You're gonna be about a topic, of course, which is even more about riveted solutions. And where things are, we're going to talk about edge and five G before we get into the topic. It's a little bit about your background, how long you've been with red hat. And you know what? Your what your role is. >>So I joined right as a little more than five years ago after the acquisition. Off of all the companies that was working on open stack. Interesting technology. I've been in open source for the past 20 more years. Um, I was, uh, working miss of many distributions of Lennox over the years, so I consider myself in open source veteran. >>Excellent. I I remember that acquisition. We had the Cube at the open stack summit for many years on that, um, you know, new the company before the acquisition >>of the >>brand. And frankly, >>though, let's talk about it. First of all, you know, you talk about edge. Edge means different things to a >>lot of people >>are talking about it >>from a >>career perspective. You know, every customer in the Iot piece. Where does Red Hat into the whole notion of edge on? You know what kind of pieces of the portfolio? Yeah. >>So obviously, edge is about building an infrastructure that goes as far as possible to be as close as possible to where people are either producing or consuming data and building infrastructure as always, being the very heart off what Red Hat has been doing. And we've been growing. That's infrastructure capability. over time. So that means that today we feel the need to fulfill the requirements of those customers that want to extend their infrastructure to there. Because when we say the edge, we have to be countries that we're talking about. Like the layers of an onion more You dig into it. The more layers you find, the more particle case you have. There's no way there is a single. >>Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. So, you know, back in the open stack days, we talked a lot about in it, though Some of the barriers I know I've spoken to prizes. Who's, You know, we are of red Hat, though, you know, Maybe start there and help us understand. You know, where are we with the solution? Uh, talk about how five g fits into it. Of course. Everybody's talking about five feet. Well, that will take time, but help us understand where we are today. >>So, um, obviously for us, the edge years, just an extension of our open ivory clouds. Right? We have always been very vocal in saying that you need to be able to deploy the same workload in any place, and the edges are Justin extensions off these anyplace. So the same strategy that we've been developing first we use open stack, uh then with open shift and making open shift are both our development and our deployment platform for all types of workloads having open shift now, this report normally container based workloads, but also the visualization based workloads are exactly what we are doing at the edge. We want people to be able to deploy a single type of platform on various types of fruit brands managers globally. Ah is complete consistency so that there is no extra cost in maintaining those thousands, sometimes millions off added location into their existing infrastructure off course. In order to do that, we need to develop new tools to do the management to develop new AI or machine learning technology, to help people process not only the data coming from the platform, but also the management of the platform itself. We are reaching such scales that we wouldn't be able to do it. We've out. You are no from the platform yourself. >>Yeah, absolutely. And of course, scale is a relative before rise in. Yeah, I've talked to a couple of times. My understanding you've got news related. This that horizon went off? >>Yeah. This week Horizon has bean announcing ah, reinforce partnership between our two companies to help them heal their edge Platform. Ah, here we are talking about the first step in their edge platform which years? What we call the extension off the board we are talking about developing small data centers are going to be closer to the certainly. Um, And here we are talking about scales that, um can comprise to hundreds of data center, each having to 20 machines or more, um, to do all the processing of their future five g network and further, um, five g years, one off the enabler off edge. But it's also the reason for telcos to start deploying their edge network because the have a requirement to boot treatments off the information closer to where the five g antennas. And this is what we are developing. >>Alright. So, Nick, we talked. You've talked a minute ago about open stack and open fifth, help our audience understand a little bit. We've already talked a lot of customers. You don't. You can have one without the other, or you can layer off of the open stack when it comes to the the solution that you're talking about Verizon or ah, you know, other other service providers out there is it? Is it one is in both eyes that I've been there, Help us understand. >>So currently we have a complete shorts. We can do an edge platform. So Levi's open stack. You've got multiple customer doing that around the world. We can build an edge platform. We is open shift on top of the stack. But if we look at a future as we are, you know, designing it, we are looking at enabling simplicity and simplicity. Means deploying a single seeing open shift on to bare metal and have these bare metal platform deal we both vm and container so that you only have one AP I. You only have one management. You only have one thing to worry about. And since open shift and bark the OS, um, there is extreme simplicity in the methodology for updating or upgrading, and I think this is going to be a key point, making things simple, reducing the number of layers in your set. >>All right, that that really intrigued Nick, help us understand a little bit this ICO, Obviously any red hat doing is open source. It's how you're for that, you know, Red hat does. But you know how you're involved in the industry to help make the word that as edge solutions roll out that customers have flexibility in the first place. >>So you have multiple tee off partnership in this industry, you've got the partnership that are built around community and we are participating in numerous community, like the Lennox Foundation. Edge on many, many more. And this is where we are building the fundamental block off our future solutions we have. Partnership also is multiple vendor. Every time you're dealing with is a specific vertical. You will have a certain number of vendors that are going to be the one enabling 80% of the applications are going to be deployed, and that's okay for the edge. And then you have the partnership we made. We see our customers because the best source off requirements are always our customers. And that's something that we've now made a strong principle, which is to always find early adopters with when we are going to build a solution in a vertical sector on the horizon is one of them has been one of them. For what, a few years now and then replicate this success on to other customers of same sex. And we are reproducing this in the industry and manufacturing sector and in many other virtual. >>Excellent. Uh, you talked earlier about the open hybrid cloud. Obviously talk about they right, Wild help us understand, Nick. You know, edge and cloud. How do they actually go together? Many people. First of all, the people living article that was, you know, edge kills the cloud we've been talking about for a while. We know everything in i t is always additive. But how should customers on the surface but really be thinking about how edge cloud fit together >>in our design? The cloud and the edge is the same thing. You address the edge, you address the cloud, you should address your on premise art where the same way you use the same guy. And this driving FBI ease of communities, FBI, which we deliver through open ship. Um, soon. What is the difference? The difference is going to be who owns the edge, or we also machine running in your cloud who owns the machine running in your private data center. What network you're using, you're going to have Ah, a lot of constrained are going to be a bit more complex when you aren't yet. For example, you are sometimes going to go through the satellite connection. These huge delays in communication you're sometime going to put machines location that are absolutely not secure. So you need to have security layers. You're ensuring that nobody can remember these machines. These are you know it. But overall, once the deployment has done, we really, really on. People should consider that's their edge piece parts of their cloud or vice versa. >>Yeah, Nick, you brought up a lot of good points there. Security, of course. Critical. A one piece that I want to get your honest about. So we're spending a few years really looking at in a worker's process at the edge. What that's brought back core talk about AI work. Both generally understood praying things out at the edge. That's gonna happen. You know more of the core and then get out of the overall devices. What do you seeing where your customers But that overall, when it comes to their data. And >>from a technical perspective, data is the real real motivation about yet they are generating so much data that we are not able to process it anymore in a central location. So we have to process this data locally where it is generated. Or I suppose it's possible to where it is generated before sending, Let's say, a summary of these data or alerts or whatever the business process that pulls for to the center of operation. The use cases that we are demonstrating in this week, uh, that you can watch through the demo booth or you can watch increases. Ah, known presentation. Use the pays off manufacturer, which is installing sensors on many of the machine producing oh stuff. And when you have the right sensors like the vibration sensor or a temperature sensor, you can very easily develop knowledge off. Oh, this machine is going to break in a short amount of time. Maybe I should start scheduling some preventive maintenance on these machines, and you can do that by just actually leading the data and have humans read it. And you can do that a lot more efficiently. Training a machine learning algorithm This is what we are demonstrating that is processing the data and sending the alerts in real part when issues are discovered. Um, all this off course needs to be down in a very scalable fashion. Here we are talking about a use case where the customer may have 50 factories >>around the world. >>Are you updates all these machine learning models in all the factories when you have an update percent to learn about something you so data and data processing and now the eye. But big data are the heart off all of the use cases we, uh, discovered around old verticals for edge. And this is why we are now almost joining forces between the team working on AI. That's right out producing the open data hub and the team marking teams working on our solution. >>Yeah, I'm really glad you brought up manufacturing as the is one of the verticals. Look at their one of the turns and challenges we saw with all of that is yeah, some of the organization, Specifically, if you look at manufacturing, it could be an ot. Um, I'm curious is you're seeing solutions. Roll out your work, Aziz. How Customers are getting beyond those barriers. You know, some of the traditional silos where there was thoroughly collaborate. >>Well, it's always Ah, problem. Every time you introduce a change, you have to manage this in every project off, deploying something you anywhere well, fail if you do not account for the human factor and edge is no different in that. And when you're talking about the factory, if you're not directly talking with the people on the floor well, regarding their needs, you're only talking is a central guy. And you just arrived one day saying, Oh, everything is going to change. It's going to be a failure that the same way is a failure when the government make a decision without going through a consultative process before implementing it. So, um, nothing new, I would say. But as usual, And maybe because of the scale of edge, yeah, we will need to ensure that our customers are aware of those challenges that lay ahead of us. >>Alright, Well, next sounds Sounds like a lot of good progress. Been made definitely further breakout. What? From summit? You learn more. Thank you so much for joining. >>Thank you for having me >>all right. More coverage from the Cube at Red Hat Summit 2020. I'm screaming a man and as always what? Alright, Nick. Good stuff.

>> From the SiliconANGLE Media Office in Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Now, here's your host, Dave Vellante. >> Hello everyone and welcome to this week's episode of theCUBE Insights, powered by ETR. In this Breaking Analysis I want to lay out my 2020 predictions using insights gleaned from theCUBE blended with ETR spending data. You know, 2019 marked our 10th year of doing theCUBE. Over that time we've had the pleasure of covering nearly 1000 events and milestones, including the exit from the great softness of 2008 and 2009. You know theCUBE has extensively tracked a 10 year bull market. We've covered the era of data. We saw the rise and profitless prosperity of the big data and opensource Hadoop movement, where we predicted the practitioners, not vendors, would benefit the most from big data. We've covered many dozens of acquisitions including the 60 billion dollar chess move made by Michael Dell acquiring EMC, and a launch of hundreds of startups in flash, hyper-converged, big data, AI, blockchain, crypto, security and SaaS. There'll be other days to talk about theCUBE and review that, today's all about predicting the future, using spending data and insights from the thousands of interviews we've done on theCUBE. So let's get right into the ETR data and start with the high-level spending. Remember in October, ETR released its survey results and stated that we're coming out of a multiyear investment cycle in digital transformation. Enterprise IT buyers have learned what works, and on which technologies they're going to double down. They're now narrowing their investments on emerging technologies, picking those winners for the next gen tech, and at the same time, they're cutting redundancies from legacy players that they were keeping on as a hedge. Buyers are picking bundled suites from a handful of mega vendors, and solidifying their investments. We're seeing a multi-generational dynamic repeat itself, where buyers are creating a balance between the convenience of packaged offerings, i.e. bundles, and leveraging best of breed technologies to drive innovation. So on balance, the ETR data shows that a contraction in spending and tepid CIO sentiment is impacting both emerging vendors as well as traditional players, and these trends are most pronounced in the very largest organizations, which have always been the best bellwether in ETR's data sets. Let me share with you what one IT executive said recently that I think really sums up the situation quite well. He said, "ETR's findings mirror what we're doing today, "in that we spend most of 2018 bringing in "a lot of the new, core technology. "I believe what you're seeing now is not a lull in spend, "but an operationalization of what we've already purchased. "We're not spending on what's next yet, "because we're still rolling out what we just bought." This is from a VP of global IT at a large public manufacturing company, I said he, it could be a she as well. I think that she's summing it up correctly, and it reflects many of what customers on theCUBE tell us. Now, let's take a look at the macroeconomy. GDP growth is going to come in at about 2.3% this year, give or take. It's not going to hit the Trump administration's goal of 3% plus, but consumers are clearly powering steady growth. At least for now. IT spending should grow at about a point or two above GDP, so let's put that at, say, 4%. We're right in the middle of a Santa Claus rally, and the S&P is above 3200 today. Tech has been a powerful tailwind for stocks, and I think stocks, tech stock's going to take a breath in early 2020, but I expect continued strong growth in the economy and tech spending after a Q1 pause. I could see the S&P flirting with 3700 or even higher in 2020, and I think the tech sector will be a benefactor of that momentum, providing an impetus for continued growth. Here's my thinking on that. So much of 2020 is going to be about the election, and to me the election is going to be really about the economy. And I predict the economy is going to remain steady. And as the IT leader I quoted earlier said, customers will be operationalizing what's been previously purchased. Here's what's different in 2020. Tech projects have historically been very risky investments, and have required higher internal rates of return, IRRs, to get approved by CFOs. But the cloud has altered two factors. One, is that it's allowed more experimentation for way less money. The second is cloud, by shifting CAPEX to OPEX, allows for much more incremental, lower risk investments. So I think you'll see continued steady growth, powered by the cloud, which allows experimentation, and importantly higher hit rates of success. These successful projects will throw off cash for companies, and CFOs are getting on board because they realize it's driving innovation. They also realize that IT does matter, maybe not in the form that Nick Carr envisioned, but a new generation of IT that creates competitive advantage. This brings me to my first main prediction, which is the growth of cloud computing is going to moderate, but the cloud will continue to steal significant share from on-prem spending. Now the narrative that the pendulum is swinging back in my view, is a false narrative. Rather, the pendulum has swung, and the cloud is the underpinning of innovation. Now having said that, I do think we're seeing a bit of an equilibrium in spending, where buyers have identified those workloads that are going to remain on-prem, which is why you see, for example, AWS, Azure, and Google making moves in hybrid. Hybrid slash on-prem offerings. What this chart here shows from ETR, so from 2010 through October '19 survey on cloud spending, I had to block out the 2020 survey as it's currently in the field, I'm not allowed to show that data. The yellow line is market share, which in ETR parlance, as you remember, is pervasiveness, or mentions in their survey. The blue line is spending momentum, measured as net score, which essentially subtracts the percent of customers spending less from those spending more. The long, steady march of cloud, as you can see, continues, and there's no indication that it's going to abate. That said, the penetration of cloud has become much more meaningful, so share gains will be more hard-fought for the cloud guys. Now, you may see this as a non-prediction, or a hedge. It's not, let me be clear. Cloud will continue to steal share from on-prem, but share gains for the cloud vendors will be more difficult. Which brings me to part B of this prediction. What I'm showing in this chart is market share from ETR's January 2016 survey through October '19. And I'm showing spending for three on-prem vendors within AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud accounts. And I'm picking on Oracle, IBM, and Dell EMC as three prominent on-prem proxies, and you can see the steady decline in market share for these companies. And even though there's a bit of an uptick in October, I don't see this as a reversal. What's going to happen is that traditional on-prem vendors are going to step up their cloud strategies. Specifically with multicloud management. This is going to be the case with Dell, who's going to leverage VMware, and in the case of IBM, they'll try to take advantage of Red Hat in that multicloud game. Now both IBM and Oracle, who each have public clouds are going to dig their heels in, they're going to get customers in a headlock, and provide big financial incentives for them to use their captive clouds. All right, so with the high-level spending comments that I made earlier, and that cloud discussion that we just had as a backdrop, the question is, which companies will do well in the coming year? I'm going to call out five companies, that I want to highlight where the ETR data intersects what we're seeing on theCUBE. The prediction is these five players will do well in 2020, they're going to power through any downturn in spending, and they're going to thrive in the face of the cloud share shift. So the chart here shows data from the ETR October 2019 survey, and it lays out net score or spending momentum for these companies, that I am predicting will be winners in 2020 and beyond. And the five companies are UIPath, Snowflake, Databricks, HashiCorp, and Rubrik. Let me start with UIPath. They are the leader in robotic process automation. I think RPA is going to do well even in a downturn, because more companies will be looking to automate and save money, even in a softer climate. Automation Anywhere is another player in this space, they're doing pretty well, and I predict that UIPath will come out on top of this space, but both UIPath and Automation Anywhere can thrive. Next company is Snowflake, they are changing the analytic database market, and I've covered them before in previous Breaking Analysis segments. They are going to continue to grow nicely in my view. They are 100% cloud-based, and they participate in all popular cloud platforms. Now ironically, they compete with AWS RedShift, who continues to copy some of the innovations that Snowflake has popularized. But AWS and Snowflake are strong partners, so there's room for both companies to thrive. Snowflake especially, as they play in clouds other than just AWS. Which brings me to Databricks. We're seeing a new type of workload emerge in the cloud for modern analytic databases, where organizations are taking all this data that they have, lots of it in the cloud, and they're structuring it within a Snowflake database, or RedShift, and they're bringing Databricks tooling to the equation to be able to query and visualize the data in near real time. Now of course, as I say, AWS plays here with RedShift, and they're selling a lot of EC2, so they love Snowflake. All major cloud players are seeing this type of workload enter the mix, and it's going to be a strong area of growth in 2020 and beyond. Next thing I want to talk about is HashiCorp. HashiCorp is capitalizing on this trend toward cloud-native computing. The company provides opensource tooling for developers, and is all about simplifying application deployment independent of the underlying platform, whether it's virtual, container, or cloud. Five years ago, the players in the space that got all the attention on theCUBE were Chef, Puppet, Ansible and Salt, and today, especially again on theCUBE, you hear the most about Hashi and Ansible, and in fact we were at AnsibleFest with theCUBE, and we heard lots about HashiCorp, so they both complement and compete with the older players. To me, this reminds me of Spark within the Hadoop ecosystem. Hashi has raised about 174 million in VC, and as you can see they have very strong spending momentum in the ETR dataset, with a net score, as shown, of 63%. Now finally, I want to talk about Rubrik, which has been a consistent performer in the ETR dataset. They're trying to transform backup into data management as a discipline. They compete with established players in the data protection space, guys like Veritas, Dell EMC, IBM and CommVault. Now Rubrik is not the only new or newish player here, that's doing very well, Cohesity, who's relatively new, Veeam, which has been around for a decade, both doing very well and showing up strong in ETR surveys, especially Veeam, but Rubrik has been a consistently strong performer and has been outpacing the others, so I want to call them out. Look for these five to do very well in 2020, and into the next decade. So that brings me to my next prediction, I want to talk about Kubernetes. This prediction is twofold. Kubernetes is going to continue its strong showing as this data from ETR shows. This is Kubernetes' market share in the October 2019 survey, so Kubernetes spend had a 76% net score. So very very strong. But the other part of the prediction is that Kubernetes will become embedded into virtually every platform, and people will stop thinking about it as a separate market. Already today, there's little discussion of the idea of a Kubernetes distro, I mean Anthos is an example of a Kubernetes stack, but it can be run in the cloud, it can be run on-prem, anywhere. VMware Tanzu, Microsoft Azure Arc are other examples, they're really not stacks, but they're management platforms that can manage anyone's Kubernetes instances. I like to think of this as kind of like flash. You remember when everyone looked at flash storage as a separate market, well today it's just embedded everywhere. And that's kind of what's happening with Kubernetes. So spending momentum is going to continue to be strong, but by 2023, Kubernetes will be ubiquitous, and not really thought of as a separate entity. All right, for my next prediction, I want to talk about cybersecurity. I did a Breaking Analysis earlier this year on security, and I showed this slide. And as you can see, I've added a little something in the red stars for my prediction. So what this chart shows is two views of net score, the left-hand side shows the ranking by net score, and you can see CrowdStrike, Okta, Shape Security, which was just, by the way, bought by F5, that was an announcement. Twistlock, which is now Palo Alto Networks, and you can see the others down that list. On the right-hand side is net score, but it's ranked by shared N, which is a measure of pervasiveness in the ETR dataset. What I've added is the four star companies, that is those companies that have both spending momentum and are pervasive in the ETR survey. So the prediction is 2020 we'll see the four star companies maintain their position and gain strength in 2020. These include established players with portfolios where they can bundle like Microsoft, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Splunk, Proofpoint, Fortinet, and CyberArk Software. And then the newer companies like Okta and CrowdStrike are going to continue to gain share faster than the larger players. Now you also may see companies like SailPoint, Illumio, and SentinelOne emerge as four star companies over the next 24 months. Now the one company that's not on this list that is a major player in security is AWS. AWS is the cloud security leader, and is in a category all by itself in many ways. As I said in my security segment earlier this year, the market is incredibly fragmented, and it's going to stay that way. Each year we look back and say "Did we spend more on security?" and "Are we more safe?" And every year the answer is yes, and no. And 2020 will be no different. Now if you look at the various data sources, we spend approximately 120 billion dollars annually on cybersecurity. The worldwide economy is about 85 trillion in dollar terms, so on balance, we spend about .14% on securing our economy, so we're barely scratching the surface. The market is going to remain highly fragmented, the rich will get richer if they have four stars, new players will continue to enter the space, and M&A will continue to be robust. Now if you exclude my long shot that the S&P will break through 3700 next year, that makes nine predictions. For my 10th and final prediction, I don't have hard data from ETR, but I have a strong opinion on this, and that is that the edge will be won by developers, you've heard me talk about this before. Specifically, platforms like Outposts, which are essentially programmable infrastructure which bring a cloud development platform to the edge, is how that space will evolve. It won't be won by shoving traditional servers and storage boxes out to the edge. Rather, it will grow by coders being able to build new applications and workloads on top of infrastructure as code. Okay, that wraps up my 2020 predictions. I'd very much like to hear your opinion, so you can leave your thoughts or your own predictions in the comments sections of this video, or go to my LinkedIn posts. You can reach me @DVellante on Twitter, love to hear your thoughts. And don't forget, this series is available on iTunes, Spotify, and other podcast platforms for your listening pleasure. I'd like to wish everyone a safe and restful holiday season and a prosperous, healthy 2020. Enjoy your families, enjoy this time, this is Dave Vellante, signing out from the latest episode of theCUBE Insights powered by ETR, thanks for watching, everybody. We'll see you next time. (techno music)

>>Live from Copenhagen, Denmark. It's the cube covering Nutanix dot. Next 2019 brought to you by Nutanix. >>Welcome back everyone to the cubes live coverage of Nutanix. Dot. Next we are here in Copenhagen, Denmark. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with Stu minimun. We are joined by Nicola Bosun awic. He is the VP GM desktop services at Newtanics. Thanks so much for coming on the show. And also you piss Carr who is an industry analyst and and the many time guest on the cube. That's right. Thank you so much for coming on the show. So you are actually the founder of frame and frame was bought by Nutanix a about a year ago. So tell us a little bit about the acquisition, how its acquisitions are challenging. How has it has, how has it been going? >>It's mayor great year. Uh, there's no better place than a tannics to do end user computing in VDI. And that's what frame was all about. How we make it simple. Uh, that was also all about Newtanics. How do you make computing simple, fast, delightful, and um, we've done, uh, so many things to really bridge that world of on prem and cloud off traditional legacy VDI, like Citrix and VMware on hyperconverged infrastructure and now new broker like frame. And we are really looking at that as one end user computing team and just do what's right for the customers. So it's been a blast. Yeah. Nicola, you know, last year when we had you on, we talked a lot about frame, so you've got a broader mandate now to do the whole desktop services. Give us your view of the landscape a little bit out there as you know, definitely. >>I understand, you know, VDI traditionally, boy was it complicated building that stack, the infrastructure and the software pieces. Um, you know, where are your customers today and you know, how's the industry doing it a whole on that modernization journey. >> Uh, it, as I said, it's been a great 12 months. If you're in VDI. A lot of people who are in the traditional VDI world with brokers like Citrix and VMware are looking to modernize their data centers and there is no better options than uh, hyperconverged and Newtanics to have bite size and linearly, um, scaled infrastructure, run VDI. We continue to innovate, we continue to work closely with um, the vendors, especially Citrix. Um, and at the same time as the focus is shifting to the public clouds, uh, we are, um, having our own opinion and how the broker in the public cloud should look like with frame and then mixing and matching where the desktops really are and really looking at very, um, industry and vertical specific use cases. We're seeing lot of new adoption in healthcare and financial services and with frame, we're seeing a lot of new use cases in education and public sector as well. Right. >>Is this, is this jiving with what you see as the terms of the way they're positioning themselves and what you're hearing from your sources in the market? >>Yeah, absolutely. I mean, um, you know, given the trend that, you know, applications are going into the cloud, um, it makes sense to kind of pick up those, you know, those applications that are harder to virtualize, harder to move to the cloud and you know, find a way to bring them to the cloud as well. To bring that, I don't know, that cloud like experience for the older applications as well. Um, and then the other hand there's, you know, the simplicity of running the, um, the older desktops. Uh, the traditional VDI just likes to set, I mean, it's difficult to set up that whole environment to manage it, to make sure it continues to operate and then to have something that kind of replaces that with a simple solution. I mean, that's what customers are looking for. Yup. >>Nicola, I know some of the conversations I had years ago was, you know, it's not even desktop. It's, it's about my applications, it's about my users. It's about how things, things are changing. They're in today's world where have many customers who are trying to do SAS first. You know, how, how do you, I guess, reframe that conversation of, you know, what was, you know, we spent over a decade with that VDI discussion. Look, I think we're going to end up, when it comes to infrastructure and when it comes to virtualization, we're going to come ups where some somewhere in the middle where not everything's going to be public cloud and that everything's going to be on prem. It's going to be somewhere in the middle of when it comes to application delivery versus full desktops. It started obviously with app virtualization, but more and more people are looking at delivering full desktop solutions. >>There is a great benefit to it, consistent performance, um, you know, isolation and security or some things that come to mind and we are now able to deliver great performance. Look at windows 10, which is a big migration. We can deliver great windows 10 performance using Citrix or using frame and um, for example, some of the innovation that NVIDIA's bringing to market with a virtualizing GPS. So for the longest time it was a niche and as becoming more of a mainstream, if you just want your desktop to be scrolling smoothly, you'll probably need your GPU. So I think that's where a VDI and a simplicity of VDI, um, really takes over. >>So you are talking about speed and security. What about design? How does that play into it? >>Well, kind of Newtanics is all about, you know, data delivery, design and delight. And a, I think with end user computing, uh, it's end user for a reason. It's experienced by a user, it's experienced by an administrator, and at the end of the day, best user experience is going to win. So for administrators, if they can install their applications and manage them in one click, that's a great benefit. Then that's what we bring with combination of hybrid converged and a frame. Same goes for end user experience, um, as opposed to, let's say 10 years ago when everybody was in a wired network. Uh, these days people work from anywhere. They work from Starbucks, they work over and allows a seller a. So it's very important to have that user experience. Um, you know, uh, be delightful. And, um, that's something that we're very focused on. Yeah. I think I've had so many discussions this year about kind of the CX, the customer experience as well as the employee experience. So, you know, I would think that this whole EUC discussion ties it. What, what are you hearing from them and seeing out there? >>So, you know, the, the whole, the whole discussion about experience. Um, I think it's really important. I mean, employees have to do their job. They are given the tools to do the job, but sometimes the tools that are given or you know, slightly older, um, they may not be modern, they may not be web-based, they may not be performant or, so the issue is how do you, you know, in a very specific niche and a very specific use case, how do you make sure that the older application will actually continue running? Right? Um, how do you bring that, you know, windows application into a, um, into a framework where you can actually work with it everywhere on any device? Right. And that's, that's of where, where I see the, um, um, the wish for a good employee experience cannot be broken down by the technical technical limitations of what applications can do. Right. Um, and the issue is, you know, not every application is cloud native, not every, every application runs in the cloud. So you have to have something that kind of bridges that gap between, you know, on the one hand what you want to offer to the employee and the other hand what you're kind of forced to use in specific use cases. Um, there's just no other way than, you know, w using that old windows application. Yeah. >>Nicola, once again, I think back to some of the years of talking about VDI deployments and it was like up, well, organizationally, we're now off to have the desktop team versus the server team and the storage people need to get involved. And you brought a customer to come talk to the analyst yesterday and they didn't, they were like, we don't want to worry about any of this. We want to worry about our application, what's going on. So help, help explain a little bit, kind of some of the transformational potential of the new model. It's almost the same way we can hyper converged compute within storage and hypervisor. We're hyper converging all these different roles from the storage role to the it role to the business for all where to be honest, you don't need three separate people or three separate teams to do it. Um, solutions like, um, frame for example, make it possible to do that from a single pane of glass and to manage it all. So the customer that we had yesterday is doing that thing. Exactly. And it's not going even to there. It, um, in some cases, um, like, Oh customer we're going to have tomorrow Vodafone, uh, that is, they're on a hyperconverged still has lot more than what I'd call a legacy. It's 5,000 applications delivered to 50,000 concurrent users and they're just doing a new refresh shot. It's here to stay. VDI is here to stay. Yeah. What are >>you see as some of the biggest challenges facing companies like Nutanix? Um, particularly in this space? >>So, I mean, the biggest challenge is going to be integration, right? I mean Nutanix is becoming a big company. It's up to you, I don't know, 5,500 people. I think it's a big company. It's a lot of products that, you know, the portfolio is expanding. And so making sure that all of those solutions fit into the portfolio. And again, coming back to that experience, right? Um, so can candidates annex deliver a solution for many different problems within the data center and Indiana briars cloud without it seeming to be, you know, different products that are not integrated where the user experience is bad. I mean, we've all been there where you try to run a data center and you got bogged down with all of the details simply because the products that you use are not integrated. Um, so I think, you know, from, from any tannics perspective, making sure that everything's integrated and worked well with all of the other products in a portfolio, that's going to be the big challenge for the next year. You know, Nicola, we had Dera John this morning and he talked about those experiences. You know, customers shouldn't have >>Oh my gosh. You know, I looked on the slide and there's 30 different Nutanix products and I can't even spell all of them. Um, you know, uh, so, uh, tell us a little bit about, uh, you know, integrating frame through and making sure a desktop just becomes a, you know, a piece of that experience. The big switch for us as being thinking about solutions, not products for that same reason because there's so many products right now in a portfolio and end user computing or VDI has been one of the key solutions that we are focusing on in the next 12 and 24 mods. So would, that really means is that all the products are designed to work seamlessly. So it starts with your, um, hyper-converged, um, widths, um, Citrix as a broker, horizon as a broker, a frame as a broker, but it extends way beyond that. >>So talking about files, you obviously need your enterprise file server that is very, very seamlessly integrated with the end user computing solution. Same goes for flow. You can now have boundaries of who can access VMs or now we have identity based micro segmentation. Um, and then, uh, things like beam where you can seamlessly again have one-click integration and now how much is something costing you right now and how much the same workload would cost you if you ran it on prem or in a different cloud. So I think all of these things are designed to work seamlessly and we spend a ton of time, I mean literally a ton of time to get together with all the teams and to make sure that that user experience is as seamless as possible. >>So I want to go deeper into your past when at the age of 22, you helped lead a revolution that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic. I want to know the lessons that you learned as a revolutionary and how and how you apply them to the technology industry today. I mean because there is a lot of, you know, move fast and break, which is what you were doing then. Yeah. >>Now also like, ah, I, I spoke to a group of executive last night and mentioned, um, uh, those times in the 90s. I grew up in Serbia where the rest of the world was going for dotcom. Boom. We were dealing with, um, um, basically Yugoslavia breaking apart and in 96, from, um, um, pretty anonymous student in the, in a crowds after Milosevic's stolen election, um, I became the leader of what was a very, uh, uh, natural, but also very attentive, um, movement. Uh, within four weeks I was sitting with him just like this, negotiating and negotiating with about a hundred thousand people yelling and screaming under his window, and he had to, um, reverse the results of his election fraud. It took another couple of years. Then we got rid of him. The lesson that I learned at a very young age and just, you know, things just happen was that if you do things in an authentic way, if you speak with conviction ed the right time, you know, there, there are no things that you can do. >>And that was probably the revolutionary spirit that Newtanics shares when I met Dhiraj that, uh, you know, everything's possible that incumbencies not are insurmountable. And that's what led me to move to the U S um, go to my grad school, get BHD start gobbling companies. And looking back, I'm in my mid forties right now. It's pretty crazy to looking at the odds and they'll, what it takes to build a company, make it successful and how risky that is. Just going through some of these experiences when I was in my early twenties, certainly helped me. And, um, I think we'll live in the day and age where the risk is probably overestimated and that we should probably all take more risk. Uh, in modern day and age, the gain is potentially very large and the risk is relatively small. >>Those are that, that's great. But then the timing is everything too >>thing. And I know there was, um, a fall of two 96 20 cup, 20 something years ago. And I remember, um, you know, the biggest lesson that I've learned, if we've done exactly the same thing and we've done it 10 times better six months before or six months after, it wouldn't happen. It was really the right moment and the right wave of underlying energy that if you serve that way the right way, you can move mountains. But it's really important to have a krill clear message to do it with conviction and to do it the right time. >>Right. So it's a little bit of luck, but then also the willingness to take a risk. Absolutely. Excellent. Well, thank you so much. You've and Nicola. Thank you. It was a pleasure talking to you both. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. We will have more coming up tomorrow from nutanix.next.

>> from Santa Clara, California It's the Cube covering techno ovation World Pitch Summit 2019 Brought to You by Silicon Angle Media Now here's Sonia to Gari >> Hi and welcome to the Cube. I'm your host, >> Sonia to Gari, and we're here at Oracle's >> Agnew's campus in Santa Clara, California covering techno vacations. World Pitch Summit 2019 a pitch competition in which girls from around the world developed mobile lapse in order to create positive change >> in the world with us. Today we have team >> powerful daisies from Brazil. Um, and their acts called safe tears. So their members are on a Toronado. Uh, Clara Patan. Um, Anna Julia Uh, Giacomelli um Emmanuel Amara Skin and Julie Carr Bio. Welcome to the Cuban. Congratulations on your being finalists. Thank you. So your app safe tears tell us more about that. >> So our APP is a suicide prevention app in which its user gets his own glass of blue feelings, where to use their ads or remove tears accordingly with his feelings. So if the user said they had tears any, they're happy they take theirs out. >> Wow, that's amazing. So can you tell us how someone would use Thea >> So let's say I'm set. So I go to the app and I at use. So add those as my 2% rise is the absolute send motivational messages to me like saying go talk to somebody over find help and also encouraging me to be to know, to get better. And if I'm happy, I take tourists out and I get messages like congratulating me too because I'm doing better. >> So is there like a graph of your improvement of how you feel some days you feel the other days >> we would like to implement dead in your future. But right now, in this version of the app that is not available >> OK, well, yeah, that would be a great thing, Thio. So how did you come up with this idea? >> So in our community, there was a lot of suicide cases and off course with friends and family, and it was something that really needed more help. So we went Thio lecture about suicide, and the woman said that we are like a glass of water. We we feel that up and then one day all the water gets out and then somebody you know tries to suicide themselves. So we wanted this person to thio like realize that she's getting wars so she can find help before anything bad happens. >> And I know that sometimes giving advice to someone who's depressed can be very tricky. And you have to make sure saying the right thing. So how did you find out what kind of advice to give in your app? >> Yeah, we had help over school psychologist. So she was there with those the whole time we were developing and she helped us do Every single message is that the absense to the person is, you know, viewed by >> her And have you seen has anyone used the app and has felt better? Any success stories >> they're hesitant to launch, But we did tested it and people really liked it and thought that they would use it. >> That's amazing. So how >> did you all meet and why did >> you decide to join techno vacation? >> So we were from the same school from different classes where we're from the same school. So we met there and our teacher showed us the documentary code girl and their inspired us to join techno vacation because we thought it would be a cool experience. >> And so how detective ation help you achieve your goals and make your act better. >> So without techno vacation, of course, we couldn't be here and get all this experience in learning's to improve our app. So it's helping a lot. >> And, um, can you tell us more specifically like, what skills have you learned from Tekken? Ovation. >> Like programming, big public speaking and about business. We learn a lot like doing the business plan about marketing and publicity and all that. And I heard you >> guys had an amazing week this week. You went to whoever you saw Golden Gate Bridge. Can you tell us more? About what? The highlights of the wiki pad? >> Yeah, we went to Webber, of course. And we talked to people there. He was amazing. Talk to employees and see how is life there. And also we went to the Golden Bridge and we crossed the bridge. It was a Bahar, you know, we're not used to exercising. Right? And last night we had a dance party. What? She was really fun and we got to interact with people from all over the world and it was amazing. >> That's so great. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I'm so looking forward to seeing your app in the APP store one day. And congratulations. And good luck for the pitch tonight. >> Thank you so much. This has been team >> powerful daisies from Brazil. This'd the Cube. We'll see you next time.

>> Live from Orlando, Florida its theCUBE covering Enterprise Connect 2019. Brought to you by Five9. >> Hello from Orlando, Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman theCUBE. We are live, day three at Enterprise Connect 2019. We have been in Five9's booth all week and we're very excited to welcome to the program for the first time Harry Moseley the CIO of Zoom Video Communications. Harry thanks so much for joining Stu and me on The CUBE today. >> Lisa, Stu its a pleasure to be here, thank you for having me. >> And you're a hall of famer, you have been inducted into the CIO Magazine's hall of fame and recognized as one of the world's top 100 CIO's be Computer World >> Yes that's right >> So we're in the presence of a VIP >> (chuckles) Well thank you for that it's, as I say its all credit back to the wonderful people that have supported me throughout my career. And I've worked with some amazing people and leaders and, who have supported me and the visions that I've created for their organizations. And so, I understand its about me but it's also about the great teams that I've worked with in my past. I can't make this stuff up, yep. >> Harry, we love talking to CIO's especially one with such a distinguished career as yours 'cause the role of CIO has gone through a lot of changes. IT has gone through a lot of changes. You know we've been doing this program for nine years. Remember reading Nick Carr's IT, does IT matter? And you know, we believe IT matters more than ever Not just IT, the business, the relationship maybe give us a little more of your view point as to the role of the CIO and technology, at a show like this. We hear about the CMO and the business and IT all working together. >> Yeah so its actually, in my opinion, there's never been a better time to be a CIO, irrespective of the company you are in, whether its a tech company like where I'm, you know Zoom Video Communications or any one of the prior companies I worked for, professional services, financial services. But even when you think about it like trucking, You think about trucking as an industry, you think about trucking as a company, its like it was a very sort of brick and mortars? But now its all about digital, right? A friend of mine runs a shipping container company and to think that they load five miles of wagons every day. And so I said to him, "how long does it take to load a wagon on a truck?" "It takes four minutes, and you know what Harry, "we're working that down to three. "And that'll increase our revenue by 20 to 25 percent.' And so its just fantastic. And the pace of change, you know it's just growing exponentially. It's just fascinating, the things that we can actually do today we only dreamed about them a year ago. And you think about it sort of' I can't wait to be back here next year, 'cause we're going to just lift the roof off this place in terms of the capabilities. And so its fantastic, yeah it's just absolutely fantastic. >> So looking at, a lot of us know Zoom for video conferencing and different things like that, but you said something very interesting in your fireside chat this morning that I hadn't thought about, and that is when, either going from audio to video, when you're on a video chat you really can't or shouldn't multi-task. So in terms of capturing peoples attention, enabling meetings to happen maybe more on time, faster, more productive. Thought that was an interesting realization, I thought, you're right. >> It just clicks, it just works. You know mobile, you know when I go back to my you know sort of' going back and again, thank you for the recognition from the key note. But when I go back earlier in my career it's like dialing that number, dialing that ten digit number, misdialing that number, what happened? I got to' hang up, I got to' get a dial tone, I got to' dial the numbers again. Now I'm like two minutes late and I know I'm late more often than I'd like, but when its late because of something like that, that's frustrating. That's really frustrating. And so the notion that you can just click on your mobile device, you can click on your laptop, I have no stress anymore, in joining meetings anywhere. I love telling the story about how I had a client meeting, I was in O'Hare Airport and I joined the client prospect meeting. I joined the prospect meeting on my phone using the free wifi service at O'Hare Airport. Put up my virtual background on my phone I just showed you this Stu, with our logo shared the content off of my phone 18 minutes into this 30 minutes call, the person I was talking to, the CIO for this firm called a halt to the meeting. This is what exactly what happened. Enough, I've heard enough. (announcement in background) >> Keep going. >> Keep going, okay. Enough, I didn't know what enough meant. And so I was a little spooked by that if you will. He goes, "you're on a phone, you're in O'Hare Airport, "you've got a virtual background, "you're sharing content, its all flawless. "Its like this is an amazing experience "that we can't get from all the technology "investment we've done in this space "for our company. "So guys, enough. "We're starting a proof of concept on Monday. "No more discussions about it. "Harry, looking forward to being a business partner." >> Does it get better than that? >> It doesn't get better than that. Its like you know, you hop through security, you get on a plane, and its cruisin' all the way home. >> Yeah I mean Harry, I do have to say, you know disclaimer, we are Zoom customers I'm actually a Zoom admin and its that simplicity that you've built into it is the experience, makes it easy. >> And then when you, and Stu, sorry to interrupt you but I got really excited about this stuff as you can tell. But, and then you look at the enterprise. So you're admin? You get into the enterprise management portal and its like Stu, I had a really bad experience. Oh let me look that up, oh yeah, okay. Where were you? You know, I was in outer Mongolia Ah okay, about five minutes into the call you had some packet loss, its like yeah it wasn't. But it still maintains the connection, right? So you can actually, so our Enterprise Management Portal is awesome. >> Yeah so that actually where I was going with the question, is you know I remember back, I actually worked for Lucent right after they spun out from AT&T. And we had videos talking about pervasive video everywhere, in my home in the business. Feels like we're almost there but still even when I have a team get together my folks that live in Silicon Valley, their connectivity's awful. You know when they have their, and its like oh well my computer or my phone don't have the cycles to be able to run. Maybe we have to turn off some of the video Are we getting there, will 5G solve some of these issues? Will the next generation of phones and computers keep up with it? Because it's, I'm sure you can guess we're big fans of video. It's a lot of what we do. >> Because video is the new voice, right. We like video. If I can only hear you and I can't see you, then when I make a statement I can't see you nodding. If I say something you like, you nod. So we get that concurrency of the experience Again it comes back Stu, where were we a year ago? The capabilities we had, where will we be a year from today? Whether its AI, whether its the power in the device in front of us whether its the network, you know, 5G is becoming a reality. It's going to take some time to get there but you've got sort of great technologies and capabilities, that you know, you look at the introduction of our real-time transcription services. I mean how cool is that? I'm sure there's lots of questions, so lots of people would ask about that real-time transcription in terms of, well what's next? I'm not going to talk about what's next. But as they say in life, watch this space. >> Yeah, just you made some announcements at the show with some partners I actually believe Otter AI is one of the ones you mentioned there. I got a demo of their thing, real time, a little bit of AI built in there. Can you talk about some of those partnerships? >> Yeah so we have great, we love our partnerships right? Whether its on the AI space, with Apple and Siri and Amazon and Otter. We also love our partnerships with Questron and Logitek and HP, and Polly of course. Again its the notion of, we have terrific software. You guys realize that, right? Its terrific software, proprietary QOS proprietary capabilities, its like its a fantastic experience every time on our software. These partners have great technologies too. But they're more on the hardware side, we are software engineers at our core. As Andreson said, I think it was about ten years go, "software is the easing thing in the world "so you take terrific software "you imbed it in terrific hardware "with terrific partners and what happens "is you get exceptional experiences." And that's what we want to deliver to people. So its not about the technology, its about the people. Its about making people happy, making easy, taking stress off the table. You go to the meeting, you light it up, you share the content, you record it, you can watch it later, its just terrific. >> So the people, the experiences you about we've been hearing that thematically for the last three days. As we know as consumers, the consumer behavior is driving so much of this change that has to happen, for companies to not just digitally transform, but to be competitive. We're in Five9's booth and they've mentioned they've got five billion minutes of recorded customer conversations. You guys can record, but its not just about the recording of the voice and the video and the transcription. Tell us about what you're doing to enable the context, so that the data and the recordings have much more value. >> Yeah so , I mean its the notion of being able to sort of rewind and replay. I'll give you another example if I may. Coming out of an office in Palo Alto jumped in the Uber, going back to San Jose for a client meeting. I'm a New Yorker as we talked about a few minutes ago and, I don't know the traffic patterns in Southern, in the Valley. And its about 5:00 o'clock, 5:15. San Jose meetings 5:45. Normally it would be fine, but its rush hour, what do I know about rush hour? I know a lot more now than then. I realize I'm not going to be able to make it on time. Put up the client logo, virtual background on the phone, in the Uber, client gets on the call, Harry where are you? I'm in the back of an Uber. Again, the same sort of experience. Then he asks the question, "well with this recording capability, "can I watch it at 35,000 feet?" Of course you can. And that was it. That was the magic moment for this particular client, because he said "I'm client facing all the time. "I don't get it in time, "I don't always make my management meetings "so I won't have to ask my colleagues what happened "and get their interpretation of the meeting. "I can actually watch the meeting "when I'm at 35,000 feet on a plane, going to Europe." So that's what this is all about. >> Alright, well Harry obviously this space excites you a bunch. Can you bring us back a little bit? This brought you out of retirement and the chase, the space is changing so fast. We come a year from now, what kind of things do we think we'll be talking about, and what's going to keep you excited going forward? >> So lets talk about the first part first and then sort of' break it into two. So yes I had a fantastic career and I retired and so when I met Eric and I met the leadership team at Zoom and I dug into the technology and I understood sort of' A, the culture of the company which is amazing. When I understood the product capability and how this was built as video first, and how we would have this maniacal focus if you will on sort of being a software company at our core. And how it was all about the people. That was sort of a very big part of my decision. So that was one. Two is, look we have a labor shortage right? We can't hire enough people, we can't hire the people, we have more jobs than we have people. So and so, retaining talent is really important. Giving them the technology and the studies that have been done, if you make an investment in the technology, that helps with retention. That helps with profit. It helps with, product innovation. So investment in the people. And the ability to collaborate. It's very hard to work if you don't collaborate, right? It just makes it really, very lumpy if you will. So the ability to collaborate locally, nationally, and globally, and people say, well what's collaborating locally? It's kind of like we can just walk down the corridor. Yeah, well if you're in two different buildings how do you get there? And then it gives us, a foot of snow between you, its makes it really hard. So collaborating locally, nationally, and globally is super important. So you put all that together that was the, what convinced me to say okay you know what, retirement, we're just going to put a pause button on that. And we're going to gave some fun over here. And that really has been, so I've, over a year now and its been absolutely amazing. So yes, big advances. What's in the the future? I think the future, you know there's been a lot of discussion around AI. We hear that its like, all the time. And we've seen from a variety of different providers this week in terms of their, their thoughts around how they're going to leverage AI. Its not about the technology, its about the end of the its about the user experience. And you look at the things that we started to do, we talked about real-time transcriptions a few moments ago, you look at the partnership that we have with Linkedin where you can hover over the name and their Linkinin profile pops up. You're going to see this, I just see this as an exponential change in these abilities. Because you have these building blocks today that you can grow on an exponential basis. So, the world is our oyster, is how I fundamentally think about it. And the art of the possible is now possible, And so lets, I think the future is going to' be absolutely amazing. Who would have, sorry Lisa, who would have thought a year ago, you could get on a plane using facial recognition? Let me just throw that out there. I mean, that's pretty amazing. Who would have thought a year ago that when you rent a car, you can just look at the camera on the way out and you're approved to go? Who would have thought that? >> So with that speed I'm curious to get your take on how Zoom is facilitating adoption. You mentioned some great customers examples where your engagement with them via Zoom Video Conference basically sold the POC in and of itself, with you at an airport >> That's a great questions. >> I guess O'Hare has pretty good wifi. >> What's that? >> O'Hare has pretty good wifi. >> A little choppy but, but it worked. >> It worked. >> Because of our great software, yeah. >> There you go, but in terms of adoption so as customers understand, alright our consumers are so demanding, we have to be able to react, and facilitate collaboration internally and externally. How, what are some of the tools and the techniques that Zoom delivers to enable those guys and gals to go I get it, I'm going to use it, And I'm actually going to actually use it successfully? >> This is a question, I don't know how many clients, CIOs, CTOs, C suite execs I talk to, and they all say, they all ask me similar sorts of questions. Like we're not a video first culture. Its like video, its kind of like we're a phone culture. And then I, so I throw that right back at them and I say and why is that? Because we don't have a good video platform. Aha. Now, when you have good video, when it just works when its easy, when its seamless, when its platform agnostic. IOS, Andriod, Mac, Windows, Linux, VDI, web. When you have this sort of, this platform when you're agnostic to the platform, and its a consistent high quality experience, you use it. So its the notion of, Lisa, it's the notion of would we rather get into a room and, would we rather get into a room and have a face to face meeting? Absolutely. So why would you get on a call and not like to see the people you're talking to. You like to see the people. Why, because its a video first. >> Unless its just one of those meetings that's on my calender and I didn't want to be there and I'm not going to listen. But I totally agree with you Harry. So, another hot button topic that I think we're at the center of here and that I'm sure you have an opinion on. Remote workers. So we watched some really big companies I think really got back in the dialogue a coupla' years ago when Yahoo was like okay, everybody's got to' come in work for us and we've seen some very large public companies that said you need to be in your workforce. and as I said, I'm sure you've got some pretty strong opinions on this >> I don't know what's going on here, quite honestly Stu but its like I think you're reading my brain because these are things I love talking about. So yeah, its. Sorry repeat the question? >> Remote workers. >> Remote workers, yeah. So first of all, I was at an event recently we talked about remote work. We didn't like the term. Its a distributed workforce. >> Yes. Because if you say you're a remote worker its kind like, that doesn't give you that warm feeling of being part of the organization. So we call it, so we said, we should drop calling people remote workers and we should call them a distributed work force. So that's one. Two is, I'm in New york, I'm in Orlando, I'm in Chicago, I'm in Atlanta, I'm in Denver. I'm on planes, I'm in an Uber. I don't feel disconnected at all. Why? Because I can see my colleagues, and its immersive. They share content with me. I'm walking down Park Avenue and I've got my phone and they're sharing content and I'm zooming in and I can see them and I can hear them and I'm giving feedback and I'm marking up on my phone, as I'm walking. So I don't feel, and then when I go to, its fascinating, and then I go to San Jose and I'm walking around the office and I'm seeing people physically. It doesn't feel like I haven't seen them, its really funny. I was in San Jose last week, Wednesday and Thursday in San Jose, took the red-eye back. Hate the red-eye but, I don't like flying during the day, I think it's inefficient, a waste of time. Took the red-eye back, now I'm on calls Friday morning from my office at home with my green screen, Zoom background and everybody's got, it's like I'm talking to the same people I was talking to yesterday but they were in the flesh, now they're on video. It's like Harry where are you, why didn't you come to the room? Well I'm back in New York. It's just just that simple, yep. >> That simple and really it sounds like Harry, what Zoom is delivering is a cultural transformation for some of these newer or older companies who, there is no reason not to be a video culture. We thank you so much for taking some time >> Thank you, thank you >> To stop by theCUBE and chat with Stu and me about all of the exciting things that brought you back into tech. and I'm excited to dial up how I'm using Zoom. >> Well we can take five minutes after this and I can show you some cool tricks >> Wow, from the CIO himself. Harry Moseley, thank you so much for your time. >> Thank you, thank you >> Great to have you on the program. For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin and you're watching theCUBE (upbeat tune)

(upbeat music) >> Live from Las Vegas. It's the Cube. Covering, Boomi World, 2018. Brought to you by Dell Boomi. >> Hello everyone, welcome to the live Cube coverage here in Las Vegas, the Wynn Hotel for Dell Boomi World 18. So, exclusive coverage. We're here all day. Wall to wall coverage covering the impact of cloud native to application developers and owners and for businesses. I'm John Furrier with Lisa Martin here. We're here with Michael Dell. 13th time on the Cube. He's the founder and CEO of Dell Technologies. Continuing to defy logic. Growing leaps and bounds. Continuing to do more in the new era of IT and computing. Mike, great to see you. Thanks for coming. >> Great to be with you. Lisa, John, always fun. And here at Boomi World it's really exciting to see the ecosystem continue to grow. As people try to connect everything together Boomi is right there. Incredible business last quarter. Booking growth, 80%, 7500 customers. I still can't find a customer that doesn't need Boomi. The team continues to evolve what the capabilities. We've just had a great show here. 1000 customers showed up. Lot's of great customer stories about how they're integrating all their apps and data together. With the tsunami of data that is coming, it just gets more and more important and interesting and fun. >> You know, you mentioned on the key note stage with CEO Boomi, talking about some performance numbers that you always throw out, server growth. Continuing to grow, okay. The pundants were saying oh servers, that's cloud server-less. You still need compute, networking and storage but they do change with the cloud and SaaS has proven that business model of as a service is key. Boomi's got this little secret weapon around the unified platform that integrates a lot of these traditional components that is still going to be foundational but yet set up the next wave around AI, Edge, data tsunami that you mentioned. This is a key variable in the architectural shift. Can you talk about how you see that playing out? Because you got a couple big pieces on the chess board. VMWare, the continuous Dell Technologies portfolio kind of as the table stakes. This is kind of interesting new architecture. Explain how you see that. >> Pivotal, Dell EMC, VMWare. >> So a lot of pieces. >> Right. >> How does Boomi play into that? Because if it does be a glue layer if you will for lack of a better word, it can be very powerful. >> Yeah, so the challenge is when you go to Software as a Service, how do you connect the things together? Now, connecting 1 or 2 together is pretty straight forward. But when you start having 50 or 100 of these things, and then you've got on premise systems and now you want to have actions like an employee does something and based on their roll then something else happens, you have work flow. And then you get this, you go from a couple billion PCs to 5 billion smart phones to 100s of billions of connected things out there with this explosion in the edge. How you integrate and connect everything together with work flow and do it securely is super, super important. So we're seeing just an explosion of use cases. There was some great examples from a city digitizing and being able to detect leaks and when traffic lights aren't working. The used cases are pretty unlimited and Boomi and Pivitol play sort of at the top layer for us so the applications and integrating all the data and allowing customers to express their competitive advantage with software and data and AI and machine learning. And then of course we've got VM Ware to virtualize everything from the data center to the network and beyond. With NSX, what we're doing with NFE and software to fine win. And then of course we're the initial infrastructure company. Absolute number 1 in all aspects of the data center. And growing much faster than any of the competitors. >> And I want to also get your thoughts on VM Ware announced up to this morning, actually Barcelona time for VM Ware Europe, the acquisition of Heptio. >> Absolutely. >> Okay, Pat Kelson said in VM World, we're going in, we're going to make Kubernetes the dial tone. This is a key architectural component around orchestration. Containers certainly everyone knows, that's been standardized. People love containers. They're using them. As applications need to be more efficiently built out, out of the Boomi's value proposition, Kubernetes and these cloud native things are super important. What's your view on that? Great acquisitions, very young company? Not 34 billion dollars for a Red Hat like IBM bought but a small tuck in. How important is that trend for you? >> Well, think about what we've done with Pivitol and VM Ware together with the Pivitol container service and now adding Heptio with 2 of the 3 founders of the whole Kubernetes movement. We're going to be making Kubernetes just part of the dial tone of vSpheres. So for virtually all the customers out there, 600000 of them that use vSphere, it'll just be super easy to now have Kubernetes containers built into their vSphere environment. That's the vision. We've got a great team working on it across VM Ware and Pivitol and now the Heptio team. Adding to it. We're super pumped about all this. >> If your friend asked you at a party this weekend, hey Michael, why is Kubernetes important? What do you say to that? >> I guess it would depend on how much they know about this. >> They're a business owner responsible for application development. >> Yeah. >> They are owning to transform their organization. They realize clouds going to be a part of it. They here Kubernetes really popular, it's trending. But it's a technology. A lot of people are now getting this for the first time and seeing it as the early dopples have shown it. They try to want to know the impact and why it's important. Why is Kubernetes important as you start to get into this orchestration of apps and work loads across clouds. Why is it important? >> I think people don't want to get locked in to a particular place when it comes to their infrastructure. Kubernetes has clearly won the battle in terms of being able to be that abstraction layer. That's the simple thing that is super exciting. When it sort of went from cloud to hybrid cloud to multi cloud, people realized they wanted a 2 way street where they could move things back and forth. And now with the edge, they want to move it to the edge. With the distributed core. This explosion in data, this dat tsunami really requires a whole new set of tools in terms of the software infrastructure to be able to make it all work. >> So transformation is ... You're talking about Dell Technologies now. 34 years later you have 7 corporations under that. Done a lot to keep those brands, as they're very valuable. Dell Boomi as a business unit. Transformation is essential and Dell Boomi wants to be the transformation partner. It's also incredibly difficult. IT transformation. Digital, security, workforce. Dell Boomi works and Dell Technologies with a lot of large enterprise organizations that are still probably fairly not as well connected as they should be to find new value, new business dreams. How do you talk with customers, large enterprises that need to transform to stay competitive? Where do they start? And how dose the Dell transformation story in and of itself help those customers feel confident in what Dell Technologies can deliver? >> Right, well first thing I'd say is we actually work with customers of all sizes. We have an enormous business with small and medium and large customers. We're number 1 across the whole spectrum. We serve 99% of the Fortune 500. Since your question is about those types. They're looking at the digital transformation and figuring out this is really not an IT project. It's about technology becoming pervasive in everything that they're doing. From sells to marketing, to product creation to their whole fundamental strategy. So then it shows up in the office of the CEO and business line executives and they're having to reimagine. And so they look for a partner and Dell Technologies is very unique. 2 years and 2 months ago we put together all these companies and it's been fabulous. We've been growing double digits consistently and the response has been great because we can deliver a complete set of capabilities. Now you're right, change management, and how do I do it in my company, that's a big deal. So they're pulling on us to bring them more of a ... The don't want us to show up with a bunch of parts and drop em off. They want us to actually build them a solution that is specific to their needs. Help them implement it. In many cases, run it for them. So we do much of that ourselves with our own services organization. 60000 plus people in our services organization. And of course we have the best, all the great SIs out there that are helping customers implement and run and manage like I said, 99% of the Fortune 500. We're right there with them in this digital transformation. Of course we do the IT, the workforce, the PCs and of course security. Unbelievably important. Your whole brand trust is all based on that so we wrap the whole thing with security and no company has the breath that we have. I think we've kind of won the hearts and minds of the decision makers because of the capabilities that we have. Not that we take it for granted. We have to go earn that trust every single day. We have unbelievably talented people in our company. Over 20000 engineers. Scientists, PHDs. About 90% of them are software engineers. This is a very different company than it was 5 or 10 years ago. We're having a blast. It's a rocket ship, so. >> I had a chance to interview an IT leader and his name is Allen Bean. He's the global CTO and head of IT innovation at Proctor and Gamble. He brought the cloud to Coca-Cola. Has had a career all in IT going back to DHL in the 90s and 80s. So we were talking and I asked him, does IT matter. And Dave Alampi always brings up the book by Nick Carr. And we always talk about it. >> Love it. Such a fun topper, yeah. >> And so he says, quote, at that time some people thought it didn't matter, everyone was kind of complaining, but he says it does matter. It's a competitive advantage. And over the decades IT was outsourced. And now people are trying to bring that back in and make it a competitive advantage. This is now ... It's a mandate basically. So as people who have been kind of anemic with IT, they've got people running stuff but eventually outsource all the value. They got to bring that value in. Cloud is that opportunity. How do you respond to the leaders out there trying to figure this out. What are the keys to success around bringing back the competitive advantage and using the cloud for things that aren't core to the core competency but getting that core competency nailed down. What's your vision. >> Yeah, well, look, I mean, it's all about understanding what is your competitive differentiation and advantage as a business. And if you give that away to somebody else, you're going to be out of business in not too much time. Packers applications are great for things that aren't differentiated. But if you actually do something that's unique and valuable and special and you can't express that in software with your own data, you're going to have a problem, right? This is what companies are figuring out. This is what we're doing with Pivitol and Boomi allowing companies to build all this together. And look I think as it relates to cloud, customers have figured out it's multi cloud, right? It's a workload dependent discussion. Some workloads are great in the public cloud but in many cases, not so much, right? As we've modernized and automated the infrastructure we have customers that tell us hey our private cloud for our predictable workload, which is 90%, is 5, 6 times less expensive than AWS. We're building these converge, hyper converge, like the fast track to the automated modernized infrastructure. And look, you can decide. But we're seeing customers that want to move things back and forth and we're seeing a bit of a boomerang. Where customers have said oh everything you upload to the cloud, and no, not everything. >> And the digital transformation really is making IT a competitive advantage. So I had a long ranging interview. It's up on YouTube. I asked him a final question. I always said, okay, so you know, he's transforming Proctor and Gamble. I said okay, as you look ads and all those things what's the next mountain that you're going to climb? You're an IT pro, you said in the agenda. And I'll read you the quote. I want to get your reaction. He said, "I think we're looking forward. Latency is still an issue. We have to find ways to defeat latency and we're not going to do it through basic physics, we're going to have to change out business models, change our technology, distribution, change everything that we're doing. Consumers and customers are demanding instant access to enhanced information through AI and machine learning right at the point when they want it." So this is his next mountain. This is kind of what you were talking about on the stage here at the Dell Boomi event around the impact of AI and data. What's your reaction to that quote? >> Well to me this is all about the edge and 5G coming around the corner. And you look at all the big telcos. They're all piling in on 5G because it's 1000 times faster and 1000 times less latency. That's going to be a big turbo charge. The rocket ship. And it will just create an explosion in data and compute on the edge. And a lot of it's going to stay on the edge. Because you'll have these edge devices talking to each other. A whole new class of applications and capabilities because of that. That's super exciting. We're already seeing it with this build out of distributed core. And that's why we see so much growth in the data center business. >> So Michael, Dell Boomi, if you look at Boomi for a second, was named by the Gartner Magic Quadrant of 2018 as a leader in Ipads. Today they talked about ... >> Again, I think 6th or 7th year in a row. It's been there for quite some time. >> An established leader in an established market. But today they were talking about, hey we want to change the, we want to redefine the I in Ipads to intelligence. How is Dell Technologies and Boomi particularly starting to leverage terra bites and terra bites of customer meta data to make your systems smarter? To enable businesses to truly connect. Prim, edge devices as things continue to get more distributed and data becomes more critical? >> Yeah, so, the key to AI and all of its variance of machine learning, deep learning neural network is the data. The data is the fuel for the rocket ship of AI. And the challenge is, if you have your data spread out in 100 softwares of service providers and 3 public clouds and here and there and where's all your data? We don't really know. How do you fuel the rocket? It becomes a very difficult problem. This is the problem that we're beginning to address for our customers. We're going to have an event all about AI coming up I think next week. Where we're going to be talking much more about this. We got a number of offerings that we're rolling out. We've been helping customers for years build their data lakes and curate the data. And of course Pivitol and Boomi are essential to how you bring all of this together and make sense of it. Because if you just have all the data but you can't actually use it. If you're not already using AI and it's variance to improve your products and services, you're doing it wrong. We've identified over 450 projects just within Dell Technologies internally. As I mentioned on stage, we've sold about 700 million computers since I started in my dorm room. We have enormous telemetry data. Imagine, if you will, that something doesn't work exactly the way it's supposed to. Okay? What's the chance that has never happened before? >> Zero. >> The answers almost zero, right? Our job is to take all this data that we have, use all this intelligence and actually prevent it from happening. So we're building all kinds of intelligence and AI and preventative technology into all of our solutions from the data center to the desk top to the edge, to the multi cloud so that all these systems are just self healing and auto magically way more reliable. >> Auto magically, I like that. It just sounds like what you're saying is Dell Technologies articulating it's value and it's differentiation because you're using that data. >> You have to. >> To identify insight, to take action immediately. >> And to your point about the big companies, they have an advantage but it's a bit of a time value expiring advantage. They have the data that the new entrance don't have. >> Right. >> But they have to activate it quickly with this new computer science or else they'll be dinosaurs, right? Nobody wants to be a dinosaur. >> Michael, what's the business drivers, and you talk to customers all the time, that they're seeing and that matter most to them. Is it agility, is it transform the customer employee experience, compliant security? How would you view the pattern around the most important business driver for your customers that are trying to put the business transformation together with digital. Could you comment just anecdotally what you see? >> I think every customer is a little bit different in their journey. Some customers, security is number 1. Because of the kind of business that they're in and it just has to be that way. For other customers it's how do I increase my speed to the solution. It used to be we need a new feature. We'll get it in a year or 2. How about never. Does never work for you? That's kind of the old IT. Now with agile development you've got, what we're doing with Pivotol cloud foundry, you've got companies implementing, these are giant companies. Biggest companies in the world. They're implementing new things like in 2 or 3 weeks. It's amazing how fast. Speed and as a chief executive, that's what you crave. How can I take this new requirement that I heard from the customer and turn it into a feature that I can go offer very, very quickly? That's what you want to be able to do. It's what we used to be able to do when we were little tiny cubs. How do you do it with 200000 people? >> I want to get your thoughts on a trend that you popularized early on in your career, the direct business model, you also had the just in time manufacturing kind of ethos of build it, build to order, really streamline efficiency. So I want to kind of take the leap to now a new generation with cloud native where you have workflows and efficiencies. You have integration. So in a way the customers are now going direct to their customers and wanting to compose and build solutions. As you said on stage, these are going to be new problems that not yet have been identified. New solutions. So that customers have to be what you did. They got to build their own. So they got to build their own, they got to have the suppliers, they got to have the code. How do you see customers being successful if they want to take that efficiency approach? Kind of be 5 nines if you will in this new modern era. Because this is the challenge that they have. They have to build their own. They need suppliers. They need you guys. How do you see the customers being successful in that scenario? >> Yeah, I think what they're trying to do is shrink the time from when at that point of customer interaction, they can use the data to make the service and the product better and if it's like this lengthy value chain with all these different intermediaries and it takes weeks or months or never, that's just way too slow. They want it to be like instantaneous. How do they create that direct relationship with their customers? I only had 1000 dollars when I started so we couldn't really afford much so each dollar you invest very carefully. We just kind of out of necessity came up with some ideas that ... >> You were efficient because you had to be. >> We didn't have any choice, right? >> So when we talk about integration, we talk about it's the foundation of digital transformation, we've talked about IT, security, workforce. One of the things that you mentioned earlier that I'd like to get your perspective on, a different view of transformation is cultural. An enterprise organization as you mentioned has a huge advantage of a tremendous wealth of data. With that amount of data and the need for speed as you just talked about, where, in your opinion, and your experience, is cultural transformation as an enabler of an enterprise to really be able to react that quickly to develop new products, new revenue strengths? >> Yeah, I think it's a big challenge. And a lot of customers struggle with change management. You never want a good crisis go to waste. We sort of grew up in the business where it was change or die, quick or dead. If you don't do it you're gone, right? This was just the way our business, this was just how we had to compete. It's what we grew up in. And I think what's happened is more and more businesses are that way now. It requires the business leaders to say hey friends, we've got a real challenge here and we've got to move faster. It is change or die, it's quick or dead, I think for all businesses because this is the fastest time ever but it's the slowest time relative to the future. It's just going to get faster and faster. If companies ... The only way you get good at change is to do it more frequently. And so if you've never changed anything for 80 years in your company and all the sudden you start trying to change, it's really hard. You just have to start. >> How do you inspire say employees at Dell Technologies who've been with you for a very long time to be able to be open and agile themselves to help facilitate this transformation? >> I believe we built it into our culture that they understand that change is good as opposed to change is bad. If you fear something well then it's bad, right? We precondition people to say okay we're going to change something. Not to say every time we change something it works perfectly. We make mistakes, we learn, we trial and error. That's all fine. Fail fast. But you need a culture where you can embrace change. No question about it. I think a lot of companies that didn't really have that are figuring that out and either by crisis or by leadership or by some combination they're then forced into it. For me, it's what we grew up in. Because hey it's a tough world out there. >> Mike, I want to ask you a final question. Thanks for coming on and spending the time with us. Great interview here. Good length. Recently in the news with a lot of commentary from us as well as the industry around IBM buying Red Hat. I made a comment around the innovation piece of this and I want to get your thoughts on that because when you bought EMC, it was a merger of equals. You integrated that and the growth that you've been successful since then, I want to get your perspective. I want you to take a minute to explain to folks watching, when you did the merger equal with EMC, what happened? You've been successful integrating the organization. What innovative things have you done since the EMC merger of equals? Take a minute to explain, again, there's a lot of moving pieces on the table. You got VM Wares, you got Pivitol, you got Boomi. A lot of moving parts in your plan. You've been successful with the numbers. Financial performance shows it. Take a minute to explain what happened, where's the innovation coming out of Dell Technologies? >> So in hind sight, it looks pretty obvious, right? You take the leader and servers and the leader in storage and you say hey infrastructure hardware goes together. And by the way, if you have the leader of infrastructure software, VM Wares, you put that all together. Wow, that'd be really great. And turns out it was. It was actually much better than we thought. And so customers have really bought into that and then with Pivitol and Boomi and Rsave, Virtustream, Secureworks etc., we have such a complete set of capabilities that customers have said, hey, why do I want to buy from 20 smaller less capable companies and integrate it myself versus you guys will just do all this for me. If they were buying from 2 or 3 or 4 parts of Dell Technologies they'll say, well, why don't we just take the others, right? We been picking up huge amounts of share across the whole business. I'm talking about like 10s of billions of dollars of growth here. There's clearly a consolidation going on in the kind of existing parts of the industry but we've also got massive investments in the new cloud native parts and software defined, and security. It's been a real blessing to be able to pull all of these teams together. We had this relationship with EMC going back from 2001. We were very early supporters of VM Ware. We had a theory of victory and it's played out very well. The teams have really gelled enormously well and the customers have continued to give us their trust. >> I think, first of all servers, storage, networking is never going away. It's the holy trinity of anything in computing. Just looks different and consumes differently. But I think people underestimate the execution innovation that you guys have done. You didn't skip a beat. VM Ware didn't skip a beat. So things have happened, so that was a challenge of the integration. >> Not everybody predicted that it was going to go that way. It's actually gone much better than even we had planned. The revenue synergies have been much larger. >> Well congratulations and thanks for taking the time on the Cube. Michael Dell is here inside the Cube here at Boomi World 18. Dell Boomi World. It's the part of Dell Technologies. We think of them being the power engine for data processing, data growth, powering AI, integrating all the application workloads. I'm John Furrier with Lisa Martin. Stay tuned for more coverage after this short break. (upbeat music) >> Since the dawn of the cloud, the Cube has been there. Connected.

(upbeat inspirational music) >> Hello everyone, I'm John Furrier in the Palo Alto Studios for Cube Conversation. I'm here with David Link who's the CEO of ScienceLogic. David, thanks for coming in. Good to see you. >> Great to be here, John. >> So, thanks for coming in. You came in from D.C., that's where your headquarters and ScienceLogic, you guys are having good business run right now. You're self-funded early on, now you get to venture back. Take a minute to explain how you guys got started, what does the company do? >> So, this is the classic story of entrepreneurship. We started in the garage. Myself and a couple of co-founders believed that IT management operations was broken and it was broken because a lot of the industry had really focused on having silos of data, the silos of data, the network, the application, the security, the storage, now cloud, containers and every technology had its own data silo of manageability. We believe that that was intrinsically wrong to understand how the service that combined all these different applications and technologies was behaving. We wanted a service view, so we brought it all together, kicked off, really the first seven years we boot strapped the company, the first year and a half we coded, got the product to market, it grew very quickly, got to the Inc. 500 a couple times, and then we attracted a lot of financing options. We had about 250 companies approach us. We never made one outbound call and fortunately, we had some really great and strong investors in EA, then Intel Capital, and three and a half years ago, our last round of financing was with Goldman Sachs and they've really been a great catalyst to help us continue our growth over the last five years. I think we've grown about 540% on the revenue side, so it's been an exciting time. >> Well congratulations. It's always a good success story to be a hot deal when you don't have to make any calls, they come to you. >> Yes. >> And that's good, that's part of growth, but I got to ask you what year did you start the company up? >> 2003. >> So, it's not obvious then, it's obvious to you as a visionary, but now people now know IT operations is broken. Cloud highlights it in a big way. The lights get turned on, the cockroaches are running around, but web services were still booming at that time. You start to see the beginning of the whole web services movement, you guys saw this early. Now, it's well recognized that IT operations can be automated away and Cloud certainly has an automations vibe to it. AI has been a big part of the AI operations. Is this kind of where you guys started with that vision? Was the original vision kind of where it is today? Take us through kind of what you saw and what's happening today. >> So, thematically we have this next wave of the computer architecture, Cloud computer architecture, edge computing where the way you manage that kind of infrastructure is different than the classic client server. There are different needs, different requirements, and that thematically has led with the change of infrastructure. Applications are changing and applications are now more infrastructure-aware. When we started the company, usually applications sat on one system or a cluster of systems and they weren't widely distributed. So now that the applications profile is changing, the architects are changing to microservices, that really puts huge strain on our industry. The industry, the total adjustable market, is about 25 billion dollars a year annual spent on tools. John, if you can imagine that. 25 billion a year is spent. It's going through an amazing, I would say, tectonic shift because why? Infrastructure's shifting and as more people move workloads to the Cloud into what I would call ephemeral workloads where they're moving around, that causes all kinds of pressure on the systems and record to manage that so that you understand what is happening at this moment in time. Where is it? What Cloud is it running on? How's the application performing? And you really need to tie the application to the infrastructure real-time. >> I want to get your thoughts on this. I interviewed a CIO this past week for a big company. I won't say the name 'cause we haven't published the video yet, but he told me candidly, he said that, look it, we outsourced everything and we outsourced our way into oblivion and what he meant by that was is that the core competency of IT, and he reference the book, Nick Carr, IT Doesn't Matter, which kind of was true, but wasn't true. Now, IT has a competitive advantage and essentially, they had this anemic IT department that was outsourced and they lost their competitive advantage, so he's like the reinvestment in IT is more than ever now because of Cloud, because of these new environments. So, I kind of believe that to be true. I'm sure you do too, but the reaction really is is you've got a lot of Legacy vendors that were dictating how to do things. >> Yes. >> I'm IBM, I'm Oracle, you got to do it this way and you were kind of constrained, IT was constrained by that. Now, you got to be much more agile, you have workloads that are dynamic, provisioning, orchestration, this is a whole new dynamic. What's the impact to the IT buyer, the IT environment with this new model, this new modern dynamic, new modern era? >> When you think about CIOs and CEOs, the pressure that they have to be Cloud first. Cloud first is such a strong... At the Board level, there's pressure. The adoption of Cloud now is happening faster and more rapidly than the adoption of virtualization, maybe it's doubling in the speed in the time warp, but what that means is that most CIOs are dealing with as many as nine to 11 Clouds, not one. You have a federation of Clouds: Private Clouds, public Clouds, software as a service Clouds, and that's your IT landscape, so it's changing so quickly that you have to think of it in a more federated approach. That means that the way you used to manage your private systems, and now your public systems, are really different and you've got to look at them more holistically because often they're communicating with one another in hybrid architectures. So, that's really the heart at our mission, to provide the context of how all the services you're trying to deliver as a CIO are behaving. What's their availability? What's the risk of the service having a problem? And knowing that real-time is ultimately what you want to do with your Cloud first strategy, but you need the right tooling operationally to affect that kind of outcome for your team. >> So, what's the core problem that you guys are solving? 'Cause obviously, there's a lot of complexity now, it's a new environment, so I still got the baggage of some Legacy environments. Is it monitoring you're solving? I guess, what's the core problem is my question that you guys are solving? If you had to kind of finish that, the core problem is blank. >> The core problem is visibility. The Holy Grail is application to infrastructure and the problem is that's becoming so complicated because everything is moving around. The more abstraction layers where it's a container, which is abstracted on top of a virtual machine, which is on top of bare-metal server. SD-WAN is an abstraction on top of an MPLS network. So, you have all of these layers that get from a software-defined perspective, they get abstracted away from the actual equipment that it's running on. Well, when that happens, where is the problem? Because it's moving around. The problem isn't in one place. So, that application to infrastructure awareness, it's almost like one of the things that we've looked at in the world of Facebook. You've got a lot of relationships, you've got videos, you've got friends, you've got all these different connections that are constantly moving around with data streams. What we do as a company is pull all these different data streams from the technologies themselves, from the Cloud providers, from the application layer, pull it together in a data hub that we can then understand how they all relate to one another so you can really, truly understand service impact and that is the crux of the problem most companies are dealing with now. You've got to fight with your Legacy, 'cause you still have that and it's not going away tomorrow, so you've got to make sure you're good at that, you've also got Cloud, the Cloud first initiative, and then you've got in between systems that are using both. That's really where we play. We're really good at the Legacy, we're good at Cloud, and connecting the two together and that is a really tough space because most Legacy providers really didn't get good with managing hyperactive ephemeral Cloud estates. The guys who started over the last five years building tools to manage the Cloud are really good at Cloud, but they don't cover Legacy. They're not going to cover a net app or hyper-converge, typically. So, we combine the both, Legacy and Cloud together in one management system, monitoring management paradigm, and then there's an automation engine where we actually proactively remediate problems real-time. So, the three together is where algorithmic operations, AI Ops, comes together. >> David, I want to dig into the offering, but before we get there, I want to get your thoughts on two trends: one is multi-Cloud. Recently, we've seen a lot of hybrid Cloud discussion, but now the big hubbub is multi-Cloud and the other one is AI Operations. So, I've been saying on The Cube, everyone who's in IT Operations is screwed, going to get automated away by AI. It's kind of tongue in cheek, but it's kind of a reality is that those old business models that were based upon certain service levels are going to be done in software. Now, you've got multi-Cloud. So, first question is what is multi-Cloud definition that you have for that? What does it mean? What is multi-Cloud? >> In our world, multi-Cloud is... Most large organizations use more than one Cloud and half of that is driven by what Cloud is best to operate a particular application profile? Amazon's really good at a lot of application profiles, but Azure might be better at certain Microsoft profiles, and then Google has profiles, and IBM Watson has profiles. Depending upon what you're trying to do with the application, where it was born, how it's living, how it's been re-factored, you're going to use one Cloud or the other, but most customers that we see have many Clouds. There really isn't one Cloud management scape when you're using... Vendors are still reasonably proprietary in the public hyper-scales. >> Some are better than others. >> And some are better. It depends on the use case. So, we try to bring all that together so that you're not looking at four panels, you're looking at one. >> So, you make it easy with one dash port. Okay, AI Operations. This is a hot trend, a lot of venture capitals are funding companies that have AI Ops in it, machine-learning obviously booming, no doubt software automation is coming. I'm seeing it everywhere. What does that mean? What is the definition of AI Operations? I mean, I'm bombastic at saying the industry sectors is going to crumble. I kind of think it will, but it will shift, but what is the impact to IT Operations with AI and what is AI Ops? >> We like to think of it as a life cycle. So, when you look at the life cycle of operations you have at the beginning of the life cycle, provisioning, so when we think about algorithmic, there's many different layers of automation: machine learning, cognitive learning, and you're going to use different parts of algorithmic operations for different parts of the life cycle. So at the very beginning, you're going to connect generally to a provisioning system so you know what's been provisioned or de-provisioned so we can automatically align a manageability template because nobody can be on a keyboard now, John. This has to be all machine to machine. So, once then it gets provisioned, then there's the run operate part and how do you learn from the normal operating conditions that you're looking for? The anomalies that you would look for to detect things aren't behaving appropriately? And then, once you understand those anomalies and the patterns, you can remediate them proactively, adding resources, decreasing resources, changing configurations, those are the things that kind of that last tier, and then that final tier, when there is a problem, if there is a problem, you've got to then raise a ticket, you've got to then work through the incident management of that ticket so there's another multi-step layers of automation to the incident management orchestration layer of solving problems, closing out a ticket. So, we have so many different layers across that life cycle that we plug into, most of which are native to our core platform. >> And your secret sauce is managing all the workloads that are moving around really fast, so to complicate that even further, you've got a lot of stuff moving around to track it all. I love what you said about not typing on the keyboard anymore, but essentially I'll translate that from what I heard was command line interface of CLIs has been the primary mechanism for dealing with either network and or storage, which is moving packets from here to there and moving storage from now to then, storing stuff. So, CLI is moving to a programmable model? This is the big takeaway. So, I totally think this is the mega trend. The command line interface mode of operation is moving to programmable, which hits your run and operate. >> Correct. >> This is the mega trend. Your thoughts? >> It is and that's one of the layers of complication because instead of a CLI, it's an API, and it's usually a restful API or a graph API. Those APIs are very different in construct and instead of talking to one device, that one device is virtualized into a hundred or a thousand and so with one API call, you actually create a thousand devices versus one device and understanding how one system is behaving, like a CLI would be to one system, right? So, that is a layer of complication where when we make an API call, we break it up into hundreds of things that then we track and understand the tenancy of what is a multi-tenant nature of that? What is the organization? What is the service view for all these little components that are part of one API call? And that abstraction layer makes it really difficult for the enterprise because the one thing about our API economy right now, there is no standard. Every vendor chooses their own formats for their products and in some cases, many formats for products in a product family. So, that layer of complexity, John, is what we're really solving for. The customer doesn't have to worry about that. We take care of that for them, but you're right, the API has become the CLI and it's just a level of complexity beyond what most enterprises are wanting to deal with themselves. That's why they bring us in to help. >> That is so important too that the data's in the API. >> That's right. >> That's key and Cloud's got orchestration challenges, state and state-less applications. All right, let's get into ScienceLogic's offering. So, what do you guys provide to customers? Talk about the product. How do you guys deliver it? Is it software, is it Cloud, is it service, is it appliance? Take us through the offering. What's the key secret sauce? How do people buy and use your product? >> So, our product's delivered as a service. You can use it in the Cloud. We deliver it as a service in our Cloud, but we also provide it if customers are using Amazon or IBM or Google or Microsoft. They can put our product, same code-base, same product, they subscribe to it, it's a subscription license model, so it's a pay-as-you-go and you pay for the number of devices that are under management. Typically, there are some customers, whether it's in the government, financial services, or international locations where they might want to deploy our product on premise, so we offer the same mode, either in the Cloud or on premise, but most customers now are choosing to deploy the product in the Cloud and that is a really easy... It's easy to get >> That's good for you guys. >> It's great for us because there's consistency of operations, we can keep everything up to date, and most customers want technology delivered as a service. They just want it to work. They want it to solve the business problem and do it easily, efficiently, even better, solve complex problems in an easy format. >> Give some customer examples or benefits or anecdotal stories around customers that have used your service that extracted benefits and value out of it, and second part of that question is when does someone know they need your product? What are the smoke signals? Is something breaking or is it just pain? When do they know to call you guys? So first one is customer examples or stories and then how does someone know who's watching this, hey I might need these guys? >> There are four segments that we cover. We have customers all over the world. There's enterprise customers. This is really a product for large enterprise, Fortune 1000 companies, so Clorox would be a customer, Hughes Satellite would be a customer, Cisco Systems out here in the valley is a customer, Dell, EMC, so it depends on what problem we're trying to solve for the customer. >> So large IT deployments basically? >> Very large, multinational, big networks, hundreds of thousands of devices, tens of thousands of devices is where those companies have immense complexity, lots of heterogeneous technology that comes together to deliver a service. They need a really robust solution to manage that proactively. So, enterprise customers, service providers, so a lot of managed service providers, infrastructure service providers, Telcos, they all use it, so I think we have about 60% of the infrastructure as a service providers use our product to deliver managed services to their customers and then the federal government all over the world, we have government customers around the world. I think right now about 70,000 organizations use our product every day and it's fairly evenly split, AMIA and AsiaPac, and then the US is our biggest market. >> You know, it's interesting you mention heterogeneous. I always kind of smile because you mentioned client server earlier. Every wave has their reflection point and I think what's going on with Cloud and I'd love to get your reaction is that Cloud, where it's winning, is it's a scale out, large scale, pool of resources. We look at what's going on with Amazon, all this, is that you don't need to know what service they have, just get more servers, so you're scaling out. >> Yes. >> But now, you need to have heterogeneous components. It's not just X-86. You could have a GPU, you have other stuff, AI going on, so heterogeneous is different now, but it's still the same came, it's still complex, it needs to be abstracted away. Is this kind of the key area that you're riding on? Is that right? What's your thoughts about that concept? >> Well to a large degree, John, the Cloud providers have really provided a layer for you to not have to worry about that, but we've seen customers actually with hyper-converged environments that they build in-house and or systems that they built because of geo-fencing in different countries that need the data kept in the country. There are requirements that drive people to build their own system, so the real thing that we're seeing a tremendous struggle with right now is that context, understanding what connects to what. All the different technologies that come together, all the heterogeneity that comes together to deliver a service, and whether you buy best in class technologies to solve one part of the stack, the landscape of whether it's your load balancer or a caching server or the database or the server, the network, all those different components, the security layer, those components that come together, often people have chosen specific technologies to solve those problems. The Cloud kind of abstracts that away with they hyper-scalers, but often you're putting infrastructure that you have on prem combined with infrastructure in the Cloud to deliver an aggregate solution so that multi-tiered architecture, just like back in the day, a three-tiered architecture, we're seeing those emerging again with public Cloud because you might want the data that actually generates the information on the web client's side to be in your data center, but you still have to understand how the service is behaving. So, we really look at all layers of the stack to solve the problem and that's really hard to do. >> Well David, great to have this conversation. Before we end, I want you to get a quick plug in for the company. How many employees, offices? What's the revenue like? What's your goals? You don't have to share the revenue if you don't want to, but if you want to, you can. Give a plug for the company. What's happening? >> Well, I'm really proud of what the team's done. We've got a great team of employees, about 370 employees today, full-time, they're spread all over the world, probably 80% are here in the Americas and the vision for the company, we think that this is a big opportunity. We are far from done. We really started the company to disrupt the industry 'cause the industry, as I said, was a silo industry and it really is, 20 years later, it's still that way. It's not really converged into a unified solution. We have great aspirations. Every year we've been growing the business 40, 50% a year for the last several years, and this year, we'll round over 100 million within the next 12 months of our run rate, so it's an exciting time for the company. >> Well, you've got a great model, SAS, in a massively growing and changing market, complex market, heterogeneous networks, apps are all being abstracted away and automation's driving this, so I think it's a perfect storm of innovation. Congratulations and thanks for chatting on The Cube here in Palo Alto. >> Love to be here, John. Thanks for having me. >> John Ferrier here, Cube Conversation, and we're here with David Link, CEO of ScienceLogic, and also the founder. Self-funded, big venture rounds, growing like a weed, based in D.C. This is the Cube Conversation. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. (dramatic inspirational music)