>>from around the globe. It's the Cube presenting Cuban cloud brought to you by silicon angle. Okay, we're now going >>to explore what it's like to be the CEO of a fast paced growth company in Silicon Valley. And how the cloud, however, you wanted to find the cloud public cloud on Prem Hybrid, etcetera. How it supported that growth. And with me is Kathy Southwick, who is the CEO of pure storage. Kathy is really deep experience. Managing technology organizations spent a number of years overseeing A T and T s cloud planning and engineering and another few years overseeing a team of a Couple 1000 network and I T engineers working to break the physical stranglehold of fossilized telco networks, implementing network functions, virtualization and a software defined methodology for the company. And, of course, you spent the last couple of years is the CEO of Pure. So Cathy, it's great to see you again. Thank you for coming on the program. >>Thanks for having me. It's good to be here. >>You're very welcome. And so so >>given your >>experience with cloud, you know, dating back to really the early part of last decade. How did you look at cloud back then and how How is it evolved from your point of view? >>You know, it's Ah, it's an interesting question because I think that we've there's some things that have moved very fast and there's some some things that are very much the same as they were even a decade ago. I think that all companies are very focused on How do you think about Cloud? Do you think about it as on Prem? And when I started, we really were focused on an on Prem solution, and I'm in building an on Prem private cloud to help modernize our business. So I think that, you know, with that all companies are still in that same mindset of how do I want to think about Cloud? And how do I want to think about that on Prem versus Public versus, you know, combination or some type of hybrid solution? So I think all of us around that journey, it just seems like it's taken. It's probably a bit longer than most of us probably thought from beginning. >>So as a CEO thinking about that evolution, how has that informed the way you think about applying specifically the public cloud to pure business. >>You know, I think that we've been a for pure ourselves. I think we're in a really unique position. We were essentially born in the cloud. So we're, you know, company. That's 10 11 years old. And if I If I give the contrast of that of 18 t being, you know, 130 year old company Onda having a lot of applications that have, you know, lived historically on prim. There's very different issues and challenges that you have pure has had that. I think the advantage just like many other companies that were born in the cloud who have can see what advantages are very quickly. And we made decisions early on that said that we were gonna actually do both. We were gonna look to say, How do I put those applications in that in that data, whether it was on public or in on Prem and be able to do that both in the i t. Side as well as within the product side? So how we build our products now, >>as I mentioned up front, you have obviously a lot of experience managing large technology teams. My question is. When you first saw the emergence of the modern cloud, how did you communicate with your team members? I mean, you mentioned you were kind of building your own private cloud, so I guess that's less threatening to people. But what was it like? You know, Was there a concern? You know, with the eager to jump in? What was that dynamic like? And how did you manage >>it? You know, it's really it's a different depending on the different part of the organization. So I'll give you kind of two things I learned one of them was that our teams in the operation side, they saw it as a huge advantage. They saw it as an opportunity to really modernized to really get themselves both their own individual skill sets advanced, as well as provide a better level of service for our internal, you know, customer, so to speak. Our application in our data partners that we had to work with, um, they thought is an opportunity to bring agility to their applications quicker speed to market, um, or currency of their applications. So they actually got some benefits that they weren't. Actually, I'll call planning for they were they had the opportunity toe get investment in their applications without having to put the that investment on themselves. I would tell you the thing I learned from the teams, this is probably might be a little bit surprised. But often, you know, leaders believe like, you gotta have all the answers. You're gonna drive everything you're gonna let make sure everyone knows what needs to get done and what I actually found. This was actually one of my big moments, I think, was our Our individuals are employees are teams. They're so brilliant and so bright on driving change. And a lot of times leaders, I think, get in the way that so for cloud and adoption, it was really about me getting out of the way. It was really about setting that north star for where we want to go from the ability to deliver fast and quick for our business. And they get out of the way and let our teams actually drive. So it was a great, um, it was we actually actually saw the reverse. I saw more employees wanting to drive, and I needed to, like, back out and just say, Here's what we need to go. Let them drive us there. >>Alright, So I gotta ask you don't Please don't hate me for asking this question, but was your your gender and advantage was at a disadvantage. It wasn't really irrelevant in that regard. >>It was a relevant um, I think that it was I actually I truly believe it's irrelevant. I think it was literally recognizing that leaders need to set vision and what we want to achieve and let our letter of teams help us drive to get there. And I think that that is, you know, gender neutral. I think it's really about, you know, kind of checking your ego and everything else out to the side. And it's really about empowering people in our teams. Thio help drive us there. >>So thinking about that that learning specifically are there any similar tectonic shifts that you're you're seeing today where you can apply that experience? I'm just like, for instance, new modes of application development and requiring new skill sets are, or maybe another that you can think of. >>Yeah, I think I think honestly, it traverse is everything that we that we have to do as a you know, as a leader of a technology team, and whether you're in a high growth company like Pure or you're in a company that's trying to take costs out of your business or trying to, you know, do things. I think that it, um it really is a matter of leaders needing to set the stage. And so if we're trying to drive, you know, changing the business, it's really making sure that we're doing I'll calm or more empowering of our employees and they because they will see the way that we can get there. It's just a matter of, you know, letting them have that ability to do it. >>So you joined pure around two years ago and obviously growing very quickly. I love pandemic has changed the trajectory of that growth, but still good outlook. Um, but Silicon Valley fast paced company, you know, I kind of put it in the camp of the the work days, and the service now is that could have similar similar cultural patterns there. So you talked a little bit about this, but I wonder if we could come back and more specifically how you're leveraging cloud, how you're thinking about it, you know, on Prem Hybrid, Now the edge. And how did that contribute Thio Puros growth? >>Yeah, that za great question because I think that why I shared earlier, you know, we were essentially born in the cloud. I think that what it's really driven us is to be thinking more forward about where customers were going and what their challenges are. So whether it's for the I t. Teams on what we're trying to do to deliver for our business and, you know, innovation, they're obviously trying to make sure they can hit their revenue goals and all those things that important that every business deals with. But we also have that same mindset on how we develop our products. So it's really all driven by where the customer is going that they need data mobility. They need application mobility. They need really portability so that the moment that you have that ability where you can kind of control your destiny and define it, and you only could get that by having, you know, applications that are portable and data that is mobile and secure, that you have that kind of flexibility. So I think for pure we've been definitely in a great position to drive for our customers or drive where our customers are going. And so we have to find our entire product set. So not just how we operate as a business and run our business. But then how we define for our customers Same mindset is if our customers are going to the cloud that we need, have products that can help them to be in the cloud or be, you know, on print and let them decide what that looks like. Well, >>it's interesting you mentioned that and I hearken back to the The Port Works acquisition, which is an attempt to really change the way application development has done is another sort of approach Thio in a sort of modern data architecture, you, as the CEO of a technology company, most CEO, is that I know inside the tech companies that they're sort of the dog Fuding or champagne drinking, you know, testing. So So had you already started to sort of use that tech? Are you starting to, you know, Does it support that vision that you just put forth? Maybe you could talk a little bit about that. >>Yeah, It does. So we eso We had not been using port works as a za product. We were just starting down that path of looking at How do we do container ization for the applications that we do have on Prem? That's both in our engineering side as well as within I t. And so But we quickly have recognized, just like you know, And part of that acquisition is applications or companies won't have the ability to have that portability of their applications and have that flexibility that they're all striving for unless they've done things like containerized or applications made them that they're able to move them across different cloud environments, whether that's on Prem or off Prem or some hybrid eso for ourselves. You know, Port Works was a really critical acquisition, will help us on our own journey of doing the application, modernization and putting that keep those capabilities in place. But it will also enable our customers to have that same flexibility. So, again, going back to the we've adopt, these things aren't like a this is for this group, and this is for you know, this customer. It's really about how we operate both internally and then what we are providing for our customers so that portability and being able to have control of your own destiny, that's that's really to me what hybrid cloud is all about. And you can't really achieve that If you don't have some of these capabilities within your, you know, within kind of your toolbox. >>Great. Thank you for that. So I'm interested in is the head of, ah technology group at a tech company? And what are the meaningful differences? I mean, a lot of differences, but relative to CEO of a large telco or or other incumbent, you know, what are some of the good, the bad? And, uh, you know, the ugly, the differences. >>Yeah, you know, it's I meet with a lot of CEOs across Silicon Valley and we kind of joked that when you are working in a company that is a technology based company, you know, everybody knows how to dio, you know, because you do you have a brilliant engineers and and that they do know. I think the difference that you start to see is that you know, I t is, um is required to make sure that availability is their inherent in what you're doing on immediate roll out with like, you know, an application that's occurring. That's very different than how you do product lifecycle management. Um, what what we've what I've seen, actually, though, is more similarities. I know that's probably surprised to you, but coming out of a T and T, what I have been working on those last couple of years was actually doing the combination of engineering and I t into one organization and that you do have a lot of benefits for, for how you can then develop, how you can manage and the skill sets. There's a lot of similarities. So there's there's actually probably more similarities between companies and on what they're trying to achieve than than you would probably think there would be just because we're all trying to make sure that we can develop quickly. How about is >>it relates to cloud Cathy? I mean, I remember the early days of cloud, a lot of the big banks that we could build our own cloud. We can essentially compete at scale with with Amazon, where you know the big bank on. Then I think they quickly realized well, the economics actually don't favor us necessarily. Do you think there's a different perception about the use of cloud between sort of traditional incumbents and a tech company in Silicon Valley? And if so, how? >>So now I think that the if you are, you know, a bank is you refer to, and having it really is where you're starting from. If you have a very large infrastructure footprint and application footprint, your applications probably not born in the cloud. There's a lot of modernization that has to be done with those applications so that they could operate as efficiently in a public cloud as an example. And I think that's something that sometimes gets overlooked is there are enormous benefits going to public cloud. But there's also cost if your applications or your data doesn't really fit as well in that type of environment. So I think that for large enterprises like the banks, some of the telcos they've got very large footprints of infrastructure. Already, those investments have been made, and what they're really looking for is how doe I increase my ability to, you know, whether it's agility or its speed, or it's lower cost or it's all those things, and I think that's the That's a different path of different journey that they're on. So they're trying to balance all those equations of, you know, the economics as well as the ability to have, you know, no more investment or minimal investment in that infrastructure. For companies like Pure, where we started off of those investments are decision and kind of. The decision tree that we use is if it makes sense. And I don't have to make that investment on Prem for whatever reason, that I should go ahead and make that investment in a public cloud strategy or a hybrid cloud strategy kind. Differentiate that because I think that it's different depending on the company. You are, um, and so it really kind of depends on where you're starting from then. It also depends on what you're trying to achieve if you're just trying to achieve an economic solution. If you're trying to achieve a strategic solution, if you're trying to get agility. Andi, I think it is different for companies, and it's different depending where you're at in your kind of journey. So for a Silicon Valley company whose you know hyper growth, you know, one. We're very focused on abilities. You know everything from scale, because we've got to scale quickly. And those are things that we don't wanna have to start going and building all these data centers to go do that. We don't have those embedded investments. So it's Ah, it's a real difference in where your starting point is. And I think there I think there's value in in all those different type of approaches, >>right? And it's a real advantage for you that you don't have to shell out all that cap ex on Data Center. >>That's right. Um, as you look >>back at the last 10 years of cloud, you know, it was largely about eliminating the heavy lift of infrastructure deployment and SAS if I ng you know the business, what do you see? Going forward? What do you think the was gonna unfold in the 2020 is? Is it gonna be more of the same? Or do you expect meaningful differences? >>I think that we're going to get better as, um as you know, technology leaders on how to quickly make decisions. Um, and not its have it less political. And I think Kobe is actually taught us a lot about that around companies more willing to make. I'll call it a A you know, a faster decision and remove some of the red tape. I've heard this from many of my peers that things that might have taken them months and months to get approved. Um, it's nowadays if even if they even have to go get approval. So I think that what we're going to see is we'll see the continuance of, um, you know, a public and I'll call really hybrid cloud type of solutions. And I think it will be more purposeful about what goes there and how. How that can help us toe, you know, I'll call it enable us much faster than we've been able to do it before. I think that's been our challenges. We've, you know, we get mired into some of the you know, the details of some of these things that maybe it would be easier for us to just make the decision to move forward than Thio. Keep going around around on what's the right way to do it. Yeah, >>so that's interesting. You're saying about the fast decisions? I felt like, ah, lot of 2020 was very tactical. Okay, go deal with the work from home, etcetera. Although you you definitely see I t spending, uh, suppressed in 2020. Our forecast was minus 4% but we're saying it's gonna grow. We actually see a decent snapback. You know, what are you seeing? Generally, Not even necessarily pure. But when you talk to some of your colleagues, you obviously in the technology business, it's good to be in the technology business these days. But to use do you see spending, you know, generally coming back And maybe the timing first half, maybe a little soft second. What are you seeing >>there? Yeah, almost identical wage that. I think that we'll see, you know, a little bit of, ah tendency toe, not really hold back, but really kind of see what's happening in the first quarter of the year. There's a lot, you know, going on with companies and everyone's having to kind of balance at what that looks like. I do see. And what I'm hearing from several of my peers is that, you know, it's not necessarily budget cuts. It might be budget re directions. It might be rude prioritization, but definitely technology investments are still there, and it's still important for businesses to keep on their journeys on. But we do see that even at pure as a way to differentiate ourselves in the market as well, do you? What >>about the work from home piece? I mean, prior to co vid, I think the average was about 15 or 16% of employees work from home. You know, now it's gotta be, you know, well, over in the high seventies, Onda CEO is that we've talked to suggest that, you know, that's gonna come down in the first half, maybe down toe, still pretty high 50 60%. But then eventually is gonna settle at a higher rate than it was pre pre covert. Maybe double that rate may be in the 30 35 maybe even 40%. You know? What are you expecting >>Something probably very similar. I think that what companies have recognized and I actually tell you CEO have thought this many of them for many years that there is a huge value value and having some type of hybrid model. There's value in having, you know, both from a business perspective as well as a personal perspective. So employees work life balance and trying to balance that. So I think that, you know, we a pure and myself, As you know the CEO hugely expect that we will see some type of you know, I'll call leveling off, figure out what's the right for the right group. And I think what we don't want to get into is, you know, Chris prescriptive that says, You know, this is what the company will look like as a whole. I think it really is going to come down to certain certain types of work are more conducive to a more work, remote environment others need to have. And I always kind of uses term of individual, you know, productivity versus team. You know, productivity. We've seen, you know, great advances and or individual productivity. A team productivity is still a challenge when you're still trying to do very collaborative, you know, brainstorming sessions. And so we are looking at capabilities to be able to enable our employees to do that. But there there's some things you just can't replace. The human interaction and ability to very quickly inter actively, you know, five minutes catch someone to do that. So I think we'll see. We'll see both. We'll see some leveling off, and I think we'll see some areas of businesses that have once thought You can't do that remote. They might actually say, Hey, that is work that commute remote So I think we'll see a combination of both. That's an >>interesting perspective on productivity. And what's the What's the old saying is You could go go faster alone. But further as a team and and not a lot of folks have been talking about that team productivity, we we clearly saw the hit the positive hit on productivity, especially in the in the technology business. So So my question then is so you expect? You know H Q doesn't go away. Maybe it gets, you know, maybe it gets smaller, Uh, but so is their pent up demand for technology spending at the headquarters. Because you've been you've been, you know, pushing tech out out to the edge out to the remote workers. Securing those remote workers figuring out better ways to collaborate is their pent up demand at H. Q. >>Um, absolutely. We've been, you know, we've been actually exploring different technologies. We've been uh, looking at what are things that you know could help create a different kind of experience, eh? So I do think it will be some different types of technology. Those would be the things that maybe aren't even out there developed yet on Have you create some of those comparable experiences. So I think that the notion of you know individuals will continue to thrive, but we've got to start working on How do we continue to enhance that? That team, um, collaborative productivity environment that looks and feels different than what it might look like today. Yeah. >>They got to leave it there. Great as always. Having you in the Cube. Thanks so much for participating in Cuban Cloud. >>Great. It's great to be here. Thank you. >>Keep it right there. Back more content right after this short break. >>Yeah.

>> Okay, we're now going to explore what it's like to be the CIO of a fast-paced growth company in Silicon Valley, and how the cloud, however you want to define the cloud, public cloud, on-prem, hybrid, et cetera, how it's supported that growth, and with me is Cathy Southwick, who is the CIO of Pure Storage. Kathy has really deep experience managing technology organizations. She spent a number of years overseeing AT&T's cloud planning and engineering, and another few years overseeing a team of a couple thousand network and IT engineers, working to break the physical stranglehold of fossilized telco networks, implementing network function virtualization and a software-defined methodology for the company, and of course, she's spent the last couple of years as the CIO of Pure, so Cathy, it's great to see you again. Thank you for coming on the program. >> Thanks for having me. It's good to be here. >> You're very welcome. And so, given your experience with cloud, you know, dating back to really the early part of last decade, how did you look at cloud back then, and how has it evolved, from your point of view? >> You know, it's an interesting question, 'cause I think that there's some things that have moved very fast, and there's some things that are very much the same as they were even a decade ago. I think that all companies are very focused on how do you think about cloud? Do you think about it as on-prem, and when I started, we really were focused on an on-prem solution, and building an on-prem private cloud to help modernize our business, so I think that with that, all companies are still in that same mindset of how do I want to think about cloud, and how do I want to think about that on-prem versus public, versus a combination or some type of hybrid solution? So, I mean, all of us are on that journey. It just seems like it's taken us probably a little bit longer than most of us probably thought from the beginning. >> So as a CIO, thinking about that evolution, how has that informed the way you think about applying specifically the public cloud to Pure's business. >> You know, I think that we've been a-- For Pure ourself, I think we're in a really unique position. We were essentially born in the cloud, so we're a company that's 10, 11 years old, and if I give the contrast of that of AT&T being you know, 130 year old company, and having a lot of applications that have, you know, lived historically on-prem, there's very different issues and challenges that you have. Pure has had, I think, the advantage, just like many other companies that are born in the cloud, who can see what the advantages are very quickly and we made decisions early on that said that we were going to actually do both. We were going to look to say how do I put those applications and that data, whether it was on public or on-prem, and be able to do that both in the IT side as well as within the product side, so how we develop our products. >> Now, as I mentioned up front, you have obviously a lot of experience managing large technology teams. My question is when you first saw the emergence of the modern cloud, how did you communicate with your team members? I mean, you mentioned you were kind of building your own private cloud, so I guess that's less threatening to people, but what was it like? Was there a concern? Were they eager to jump in? What was that dynamic like, and how did you manage it? >> You know, it's really, it's different depending on the different part of the organization, so I'll give you kind of two things I learned. One of them was that our teams on the operation side, they saw it as a huge advantage. They saw it as an opportunity to really modernize, to really get themselves, both their own, individual skill sets advanced, as well as provide a better level of service for our internal customer, so to speak. Our application and our data partners that we had to work with, they saw it as an opportunity to bring agility to their applications, quicker speed to market, and more currency of their applications, so they actually got some benefits that they weren't actually I'll call planning for. They had the opportunity to get investment in their applications without having to put that investment on themselves. I would tell you the thing I learned from the teams, this is probably, might be a little bit of a surprise, but often, you know, leaders believe you got to have all the answers, you got to drive everything. You're going to make sure everyone knows what needs to get done. What I actually found, this was actually one of my big moments, I think, was our individuals, our employees, our teams, they are so brilliant and so bright on driving change, and a lot of times leaders, I think, get in the way of it. So for cloud and adoption, it was really about me getting out of the way. It was really about setting that north star for where we want to go, from the ability to deliver fast and quick for our business, and then get out of the way and let our teams actually drive. So it was a great-- I actually saw the reverse. I saw more employees wanting to drive, and I needed to back out and just say here's where we need to go. Let them drive us there. >> All right, so I got to ask you. Please don't hate me for asking this question, but was your gender an advantage? Was it a disadvantage, or was it really irrelevant in that regard? >> I think it was irrelevant. I think that it was-- Actually, I truly believe it's irrelevant. I think it was literally recognizing that leaders need to set vision in what we want to achieve, and let our teams help us drive to get there, and I think that that is gender neutral. I think it's really about kind of chucking your ego and everything else out to the side, and it's really about empowering people and our teams to help drive us there. >> So thinking about that learning specifically, are there any similar tectonic shifts that you're seeing today, where you can apply that experience? Like for instance, new modes of application development, and acquiring new skill sets, or maybe another that you can think of. >> Yeah, I think honestly, it traverses everything that we have to do as a leader of a technology team, and whether you're in a high growth company like Pure, or you're in a company that's trying to take costs out of your business, or trying to do things, I think that it really is a matter of leaders needing to set the stage, and so if we're trying to drive you know, change in a business, it's really making sure that we're doing, I'll call it more empowering of our employees, 'cause they will see the way that we can get there. It's just a matter of letting them have that ability to do it. >> So you joined Pure around two years ago, and obviously growing very quickly. I know the pandemic has changed the trajectory of that growth, but still, a good outlook. But Silicon Valley, fast-paced company. You know, I kind of put it in the camp of the Workday and the ServiceNow. It's kind of similar cultural patterns there, so you talked a little bit about this, but I wonder if we could come back and more specifically, how you're leveraging cloud, how you're thinking about it, you know, on-prem, hybrid, now the edge, and how did that contribute to Pure's growth? >> You know, it's a great question because I think that-- Well, I shared earlier, we were essentially born in the cloud. I think that what it's really driven us is to be thinking more forward about where customers are going and what their challenges are. So whether it's for the IT teams on what we're trying to do to deliver for our business and innovation, they're obviously trying to make sure they can hit their revenue goals, and all of those things that are important that every business deals with, but we also have that same mindset on how we develop our products. So it's really all driven by where the customer is going, that they need data mobility, they need application mobility, they need really portability, so that the moment that you have that ability where you can kind of control your destiny and define it, and you only can get that by having applications that are portable and data that is mobile and secure, that you have that kind of flexibility. So I think for Pure, we have been definitely in a great position to drive for our customers, or drive where our customers are going, and so we've defined our entire product set, so not just how we operate as a business and run our business, but then how we define for our customers, same mindset is if our customers are going to the cloud, then we need to have products that can help them to be in the cloud, or be on-prem, and let them decide what that looks like. >> Well, it's interesting you mention that, and I hearken back to the Portworx acquisition, which is an attempt to really change the way application development is done. It's another sort of approach to sort of modern data architecture. As the CIO of a technology company, most CIOs that I know inside of tech companies, they're sort of the dog-fooding or champagne drinking, testing, so had you already started to use that tech? Are you starting to? Does it support that vision that you just put forth? Maybe you could talk a little bit about that. >> Yeah, it does. So we had not been using Portworx as a product. We were just starting down that path of looking at how do we do containerization for the applications that we do have on-prem? That's both on our engineering side as well as within IT. But we quickly have recognized, just like you know, and part of that acquisition is applications, or companies, won't have the ability to have that portability of their applications and have that flexibility that they're all striving for unless they've done things like containerize their applications, made them that they're able to move them across different cloud environments, whether that's on-prem or off-prem, or some hybrid. So for ourselves, you know, Portworx was a really critical acquisition that will help us on our own journey of doing the application modernization and putting those capabilities in place, but it will also enable our customers to have that same flexibility, so again going back to the-- These things aren't like this is for this group and this is for this customer. It's really about how we operate, both internally and then what we are providing for our customers. So that portability and being able to have control of your own destiny, that's really, to me, what hybrid cloud is all about, and you can't really achieve that if you don't have some of these capabilities within your toolbox. >> Great, thank you for that. So I'm interested, as the head of a technology group at a tech company, and what are the meaningful differences? I mean there are a lot of differences, but relative to CIO of a large telco, or other incumbent, you know, what are some of the good, the bad, and the ugly of the differences? >> Yeah, you know, it's-- I meet with a lot of CIOs across Silicon Valley, and we kind of joke that when you are working in a company that is a technology based company, you know, everybody knows how to do-- Because you do, you have brilliant engineers, and they do know. I think the difference that you start to see is that IT is required to make sure that availability is there inherent in what you're doing on immediate rollout with like, you know, an application that's occurring. That's very different than how you do product life cycle management. What I've seen actually though, is more similarities. I know that's probably a surprise to you, but coming out of AT&T, what I had been working on those last couple of years was actually doing the combination of engineering and IT into one organization, and that you do have a lot of benefits for how you can then develop, how you can manage, and the skillsets. There's a lot of similarities, so there's actually probably more similarities between companies on what they're trying to achieve than you would probably think there would be, just because we're all trying to make sure that we can develop quickly. >> How about as it relates to cloud, Cathy? I mean, I remember in the early days of cloud, a lot of the big banks said we can build our own cloud. We can essentially compete at scale with Amazon. We're the big bank. And then I think they quickly realized well, the economics actually don't favor us necessarily. Do you think there's a different perception about the use of cloud between sort of traditional incumbents and a tech company in Silicon Valley, and if so, how so? >> I think that the-- If you are a bank, as you refer to, and having-- It really is where you're starting from. If you have a very large infrastructure footprint and application footprint, your applications probably are not born in the cloud. There's a lot of modernization that has to be done with those applications so that they can operate as efficiently in a public cloud, as an example. And I think that's something that sometimes gets overlooked, is there are enormous benefits with going to public cloud, but there's also costs if your applications or your data doesn't really fit as well in that type of environment. So I think that for large enterprises like the banks, some of the telcos, they've got very large footprints of infrastructure already. Those investments have been made, and what they're really looking for is how do I increase my ability to, whether it's agility or it's speed, or it's lower costs, or it's all those things, and I think they've got the different path, a different journey that they're on, so they're trying to balance all those equations of the economics, as well as the ability to have no more investment or minimal investment in that infrastructure. For companies like Pure, where we started off with those investments, our decision, and kind of the decision tree that we used is if it makes sense and I don't have to make that investment on-prem for whatever reason, then I should go ahead and make that investment in a public cloud strategy or a hybrid cloud strategy, and I'll kind of differentiate that, because I think that it's different depending on the company you are. And so, it really kind of depends on where you're starting from, and then it also depends on what you're trying to achieve, if you're just trying to achieve an economic solution, if you're trying to achieve a strategic solution, if you're trying to get agility, and I think it's different for companies and it's different depending where you're at in your journey. So for a Silicon Valley company who's hyper-growth, you know, one, we're very focused on agility, everything from scale, because we've got to scale quickly, and those are things that we don't want to have to start going and building all these data centers to go do that. We don't have those embedded investments, so it's a real difference in where your starting point is, and I think there's value in all those different type of approaches. >> Right, and it's a real advantage for you that you don't have to shell out all that cap-ex on data centers. >> That's right. >> As you look back at the last 10 years of cloud, it was largely about eliminating the heavy lift of infrastructure deployment, and SaaSifying the business. What do you see going forward? What do you think is going to unfold in the 2020s? Is it going to be more of the same, or do you expect meaningful differences? >> I think that we're going to get better as technology leaders on how to quickly make decisions and have it less political, and I think COVID's actually taught us a lot about that around companies more willing to make, I'll call it a faster decision, and remove some of the red tape. I've heard this from many of my peers, that things that might have taken them months and months to get approved, it's now days, even if they even have to go get approval, so I think that what we're going to see is, we'll see the continuance of public and I'll call it really hybrid cloud type of solutions, and I think it will be more purposeful about what goes there and how that can help us to you know, I'll call it enable us much faster than we've been able to do it before. I think that's been our challenge is we've-- You know, we get mired into some of the details of some of these things that maybe it would be easier for us to just make the decision and move forward than to keep going round and round on what's the right way to do it. >> Yeah, so that's interesting, what you're saying about the fast decisions. I felt like a lot of 2020 was you know, very tactical. Okay, go deal with the work from home, et cetera, although you definitely see IT spending suppressed in 2020. Our forecast was -4%, but we're saying it's going to grow. We actually see a decent snap back. You know, what are you seeing generally, not even necessarily Pure, but when you talk to some of your colleagues? You're obviously in the technology business. It's good to be in the technology business these days, but do you see spending generally coming back, and maybe the timing? First half maybe a little soft, second half-- What are you seeing there? >> Yeah, almost identical to what you said. I think that we'll see a little bit of a tendency to not really hold back, but really kind of see what's happening in the first quarter of the year. There's a lot going on with companies, and everyone's having to kind of balance that and what that looks like. I do see, and what I'm hearing from several of my peers is that you know, it's not necessarily budget cuts. It might be budget redirections, it might be reprioritization, but definitely technology investments are still there, and it's still important for businesses to keep on their journeys, and we do see that even at Pure, as a way to differentiate ourselves in the market as well. >> What about the work from home piece? I mean, prior to COVID, I think the average was about 15 or 16% of employees worked from home. You know, now it's got to be well over in the high 70s, and the CIOs that we've talked to suggest that that's going to come down in the first half, maybe down to still pretty high, 50, 60%, but then eventually it's going to settle at a higher rate than it was pre-COVID, maybe double that rate, maybe in the 30, 35, maybe even 40%. What are you expecting? >> Something probably very similar. I think that what companies have recognized, and I actually tell you, CIOs have thought this, many of them for many years, that there's a huge value in having some type of hybrid model. There's value in having, both from a business perspective as well as a personal perspective, so employees' work-life balance and trying to balance that. So I think that we at Pure, and myself as the CIO, hugely expect that we will see some type of I'll call it leveling off, figuring out what's the right for the right group, and I think what we don't want to get into is a prescriptive that says this is what the company will look like as a whole. I think it really is going to come down to certain types of work are more conducive to a more work remote environment. Others need to have, and I always kind of use this term of individual productivity versus team productivity. We've seen great advances in individual productivity. Team productivity is still a challenge when you're still trying to do very collaborative brainstorming sessions, and so we are looking at capabilities to be able to enable our employees to do that, but there's some things you just can't replace the human interaction and the ability to very quickly, interactively, you know, five minutes, catch someone and do that. So I think we'll see both. We'll see some leveling off, and I think we'll see some areas of businesses that had once thought you can't do that remote, they might actually say hey, that is work that can be remote, so I think we'll see a combination of both. >> That's an interesting perspective on productivity, and what's the old saying, is you can go faster alone, but further as a team. And not a lot of folks have been talking about that team productivity. We clearly saw the hit, the positive hit on productivity, especially in the technology business, so my question then is, so you expect, you know, HQ doesn't go away. Maybe it gets smaller, but so is there pent-up demand for technology spending at the headquarters? 'Cause you've been pushing tech out to the edge, out to the remote workers, securing those remote workers, figuring out better ways to collaborate. Is there pent-up demand at HQ? >> Absolutely, we've been-- You know, we've been actually exploring different technologies. We've been looking at what are things that could help create a different kind of experience? And it'll be some different types of technology. Those will be the things that maybe aren't even out there developed yet, on how do you create some of those comparable experiences? So I think that the notion of individuals will continue to thrive, but we've got to start working on how do we continue to enhance that team, collaborative productivity environment that looks and feels different than what it might look like today. >> Cathy, got to leave it there. Great, as always, having you on the CUBE. Thanks so much for participating in CUBE on Cloud. >> Great, it was great to be here, thank you. >> All right, keep it right there. Back with more content right after this short break.

>> Announcer: From the CUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. >> Hello, everybody. Welcome to this CUBE Conversation. This is Dave Vellante, and I've been running the last several weeks a CXO series, where I've talked to CEOs, CIOs, CISOs, to really try to understand the impact of COVID-19. As you know, we've really dug into the budget outlook, et cetera. Well, Cathy Southwick is here. She's a CUBE alum and the CIO of Pure Storage. Cathy, it's great to see you again. Thanks so much for taking the time to come on the CUBE. >> Yeah, it's great to see you again, Dave. Thanks for having me. >> You're very welcome. So my first question to leaders is, when you started to get visibility that there was going to be this crisis, what was your first move? >> The first move for probably most organizations and especially for ours was to really assess current state of our organization. And how we support the business, so we went into a lot of pre planning and a lot of looking out and saying if things were to happen in a quarter and two quarters, three quarters what would we need to be prepared for? So we spend a lot of time going and looking at our BCP our DR plans and say what would we need to execute on? We actually started similar time that you met with Mike Fitzgerald last week. My supply chain actually started pulling triggers to get ourselves prepared and look across both our application side as how we evaluate availability, our partners that we use both, on prem and off-Prem. And we started to also look at just kind of the current state of how our employees currently work. And we do have a fair amount of our employees who are very productive and successful working remote. So we knew we need to make sure that we continue to provide that level of service across the board. There was really a lot of pre planning a lot of looking at what are we currently doing. And what do we need to make sure that we're prepared for in the unknown that we were all facing >> And I want to ask you about the kind of work from home piece of that. But before I do, help us understand, you're right, I did talk to Mike Fitzgerald. And it sounded like you guys maybe had an early warning system because you obviously have a supply chain, you're sourcing components from all over the world. Do you feel like you had kind of an early warning to this and maybe more than many organizations? >> I think we probably have an equivalent to others. I think the difference was that we are a small nimble organization our IT is very lean. And we immediately move towards kind of executing plan so there isn't a lot of approval cycles or red tape to go through. We're really empowered at the organization level to make the decisions that we think are necessary to help our business be successful. So that was really the the forefront was, see what needs to happen and then actually start doing. so don't just think about it, plan, do the analysis over and over, but actually start executing. And I think you would have seen that across all of Pure. that we immediately started mobilizing teams, our supply chain, both from an internal What do we consume, whether it's laptops, devices for employees, et cetera. Or it was the products that we need to provide our customers and what they need to do. So I think it has to do with more of how our company culture is and how we operate very much you make it happen for our customers. And that means that all of us need to be constantly prepared for what needs to happen in within our respective teams to support our customers. So I want to break this talk down to people, process, and tech. We always talk about the big three. Let's start with the people. I mean, obviously your first concern was the health and well being and safety of your people. But as Sanjay Gupta told me, once we figured that out, it's like, get to work, you know, we got to be productive. So maybe talking about the people situation, California was kind of hit early. But I imagine you've got a remote workforce as well. Paint a picture of the people resource if you would. >> That's a great point that Sanjay made. You're absolutely right. The people was it's going to be look at this is its people the safety and health, and then, what do we have to do to provide the necessary tools for our customers. And so we immediately from the employee lens, we immediately start doing things like interactions with our employees. I'll say on a very regular basis. So we do a daily set up and IT at the leadership level, that each of the organizations, they're also holding those. And a big part of that is not you know, how's your work going? It's, you know, how are you doing? How's your family doing? How are the things that you need to have in your own personal space to be able to be productive. Because if you don't have those things, then people actually can't do the work. So try to be very flexible, and we've got people who are working different shifts, meaning that they normally will be in the office Monday through Friday, but they're trying to balance those home things with homeschooling children now, and all those different aspects. So it's really been about, take care of the people first we've done some fun things like, doing little exercises where we have a challenge every day. Some type of challenge that we're asking our employees to do just to kind of keep the health and mind part of it healthy and then go right into the work. And you're right. You going to get to that, okay. I think our employees have settled down to this, whatever this new norm is. And people are not becoming very focused on how do I make sure I hit my deliverables. They're so focused on helping our business that they are, it's literally about, we actually had to tell some people to kind of back off, take some time off, because 24/7 became 24/7 for everyone instead of having some rotations because people just didn't want others to have to wait for responses. >> Right Cathy, well let's turn to the next P, which is the process. So what kind of changes did you have to make in order to support this whole work from home notion? >> You know, we're we're very fortunate, as I had mentioned earlier, we already have a fair amount of our employees that were very successful working remote. So we had already the tools in place, the capabilities in place, everything from, what we really did was a lot of validation of what we had was it going to really be sufficient. So things like checking, do we have the right VPN, do we have enough network bandwidth connections, et cetera. So for the most part, all of that has worked pretty well knock on wood, but it's gone pretty well. And we've had some challenges with some of the new hires coming in, because we still are onboarding new employees. And there are some locations around the world where there are some logistical challenges of going to certain countries. But other than that, we've actually, the plans, a lot of the planning the team had done has really paid off for them as we move forward. So we've been very successful from that perspective. >> And I definitely want to ask you about the technology but before I do, I want to talk about the macros. So we've been reporting that when we came into this year, the consensus for IT spending was a plus 4%. Through COVID and other research and surveys that we've done with our data partner ETR, we've kind of settled in at a negative 4% for the year. which would be a lot worse were it not for the work from home offset. And about 20% of the organizations that we talked to said they're increasing spending about 35% said Hey, no change. And then of course, there are a lot of industries, airlines, others affected by supply chains, et cetera, which are way way down the hospitality, et cetera. Now, that's the macro. Pure is not a bellwether for the macro because you guys are a high growth company. But, what's your budget situation kind of coming into the year and has there been any change? >> I feel very fortunate. We've been very supported from our business. We actually made some changes to I'll say double down on some investments in IT this year. So our budget coming into this year was already increased. And that was to deal with just opportunities that we saw are better aligned with the business, Better strategic partnerships in different areas of our business, how we support them from the customer side. And then also how do we want to think about areas of like our employee experience. So we actually have made this an investment year for IT. Right now, we're still on track for that. I would say that we've done a little bit of some re-prioritization of some initiatives that we wanted to do versus things that we're now wanting to make sure we care for. So think about like collaboration tools, do we want to expand any of that portfolio that we currently have? So it's more of, I feel very fortunate that we came in pretty strong, and we're still at that point. But we are doing some, I'll call, reassessing some of our priorities, say, are these the right things we should still continue to do? Or should we alter some of that. So at this point, that's what we're looking at. >> Yeah, I've talked to a number of technology leaders that have said, Look, this is a sort of, shift in priorities as you were mentioning. For instance, one said yesterday that we had this kind of hard network And now we've got this distributed workforce. So we're really kind of rethinking our network priorities. We've got to secure those remote workers. It's not just video conferencing tools. It's our VPN. It's security. It's our network bandwidth, it's maybe things like VDI, et cetera. Have you had to shuffle some of your priorities? >> So I would say the ours have been more of augmenting capabilities. So we've had a pretty successful strategy around what we're doing on the remote workers and how we secure them et cetera. We are absolutely like everybody else. I participate in several CIO forums, we talked about this. Do we need to go back and revalidate some of the decisions that you might have made in the past? And so we're doing that from ensuring that we have the right security around our enterprise. But the other is that it's also looking at are there things that we could do that would help us from productivity capabilities. And those are things like we have some tools that allow us to do Like you said video conferencing. But they're also, do you want to have capabilities to actually do white boarding or sessions that allow you to feel like you're in the room with someone. So looking at some of those new opportunities. >> So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about some of the things that some of your suppliers are doing. Obviously, Pure is a big supplier of yours. I presume they're treating you like gold. But I've had some CIOs that I've talked to say that they really were overwhelmed and pleased with the way in which their vendor partners have treated them. Maybe deferring payments for them and some of these hard hit industries and the like. What is the relationship in with your providers? >> I would characterize it very similar. We've had great partnerships with many of our major suppliers of technology. And for both SaaS providers as well as some of the other areas that we work with. And I would say that everyone has made the extra effort to either reach out, whether it's at the CEO level, it's at, different layers within their supply chain. A lot of communication we do, We've had a lot of communication from the, I'll say, the supplier community, which has been really great and very responsive. So when we are seeing issues or have questions, it's not I will get back to you at some time, or you're not important. It's about what we'll do to help you. So I think we're seeing similar to what you've heard from others. We're experiencing that great kind of ecosystem that says, hey, we got to make sure everyone is successful not just an individual company. So that's been the experience we've had as well. It's been really nice to see it. >> Tn that CIO and CISO Roundtable that I mentioned from ETR. We had thought that, especially in some of the harder hit industries that they'd be less likely or more reticent to work with startups, but it was just the opposite. In fact, one individual said, you know, you hear, the other guy says, hey, I picked three from the upper right in the Magic Quadrant, I vet them. He said, I always pick two from the upper right, and then one from the lower left. Because I'm trying to find that next diamond in the rough. And he mentioned a couple of success stories. They don't all pan out. But, they want to try new things, and get some competitive advantage. What's your take? I mean, you guys were in this position. That the challenge or the disrupter. But what's your take on working with startups in these times of crisis? >> I think it's important to, because they're seeing and they're nimble. And so I think that was one of the benefits that Pure had. We're very nimble, very quick to make decisions. You're hyper focused on the customer. And I know that a lot of companies will comment that they're very focused on their customer first, but coming into Pure you see it firsthand. And so you often see that from startups, they're very curious on what problem are you trying to solve? So they're not necessarily trying to sell you a widget of some sort. They're really trying to solve a business issue that you're facing. So I would tell you that we've had success as well over the years. Pure has worked with startups over the years. We participate with different communities whether they're the VC community who's doing round tables and discussions around new startups and the opportunities that they're bringing. Will they solve problems? And I would tend to agree. I think you need to have something that, you know, understand your business enough that can help you to scale. Because as a company like Pure, we're continuing to grow. You got to able to scale your business. And so some startups might not have some of those capabilities. But there's actually quite a few that, they can solve the problems a different way. And so, scale looks different than maybe what a traditional way to approach it. So, I think it's really important to keep them in the mix. And to actually just keep anyone who's trying to solve problems. Because the if you aren't looking at it from the lens of like, what are we trying to do to support our business. And a lot of the CIOs were in the same boat. You're trying to figure out how do I help the business be faster, better, et cetera. You're stuck with the status quo, and none of us want to be in that position. And none of our businesses can actually afford that either. >> But it sounds like your business continuance, business resilience, well, beyond disaster recovery, it sounds like you are in pretty good shape. But I'll ask you, what do you feel as though your biggest challenge has been since COVID-19 hit? >> It's funny, I thought, I've been thinking a lot about this. Because we're always trying to figure like, how do we do this better next time? What's that look like? So certainly, I think it's the education part with our employee community. We've spent an enormous amount of time with our HR partners on doing or best practice sessions? How do you use this? What's the best way to do this way? So I think that our key learning is that most users only touch the surface of capabilities in any of the tools that you provide. Whether it's a laptop, to their home networks, to what they're doing on software tools, collaboration tools. and everyone kind of just does enough to get themself started. But when you move into an environment where we're all remote, you have to rely on all those tools so much more. So I found it to be that we spend more time on what I'll call the education side, and the awareness side we are still running like some of our normal campaigns from like security awareness. So those things can't stop. But I found that we've spent more in that lane, than we have on, I'll say, dealing with, or challenge with some of the just technical capabilities to keep our teams productive. So it's been more of the people side, when you asked the question earlier. More of the people side that we've been focused on. >> So technology infrastructure, pretty solid, It's really sort of educating people. I always said bad user behavior prompts good security every time. But I'll follow up with somebody who was joking the other day that work from home infrastructure is the new hand sanitizer and you can't get a lot of it. But no, no challenges with securing laptops, or other sort of components that you might need. >> No. I think in some of our initiatives we're still very focused on, I would say some of the areas that we're trying to get a little bit further on is what I'll call complete touchless remote capabilities. So similar to like what our customers expect of Pure, where you want, remote installs, you want to be able to do it touchless, you don't want people coming in. It's the same thing in the IT space. So we're trying to look at can we adopt some of what we're doing in the what I'd call the market side? Can we do more of that with our employee base? And I think that's where we're going to spend more of our time. Do we need to expand the collaboration capabilities? And then do we need to expand more of our capabilities on the remote side when people are not physically in the office or can't come into an office very quickly. What can we do to be more remote assist for those users? And we've spent a fair amount on that. But I would call it more of the basic capabilities. I think we need to look at, do we expand and really kind of to strengthen some of what we've done today. >> I mean, I got to say, I'm not super surprised about Your posture here. I mean Pure, you don't have a lot of legacy baggage. You've always been a very fast moving company kind of forward thinking. But I wonder if we could just ask you generally. kind of my last question here is when you think about Pure, but specifically, but also your peers? What portions of kind of post COVID-19? Do you think you're going to be permanent You know, a lot of people we're kind of on the wrong side of history in terms of work from home, forcing people to the create the beehive. Understandably, but that obviously, is going to change the whole use of collaborations. What's your sense of the top things that might remain permanent in a post COVID world? >> That's a great question. Actually one of the top questions that we're trying to grapple with right now is, What does reintegration look like? And what do you do both from a technical perspective, the people perspective and what are we going to do? So? I would say that there's still a lot of questions that are unanswered right now. I think that like all companies we're open for business right now. We're trying to understand what's happening from government controls, et cetera. And what will those need at the state, country level, et cetera,, for what we would have to differ with our employees. And I would tell you that our position as a company has been very much that we're going to have to continue to expand how we thought about, the beehive concept versus do we have more work from home. I think you will see that as a general you'll see more work from home across the board. And I also think that we'll look for some creative things that we've never done as companies before, whether that is staggering times when people are in the office. While we kind of do that today, just based on employee needs. We've got people who come in at six in the morning. we have people who come in at 10 or 11 in the morning. so, I think that we might have to be a little bit more prescribed about so many people in the office at certain times. So, I think it's going to be a combination of, I think the technical will all continue to work that. I think the people side of reintegration is going to be the how do we want to balance the working from home or the remote working? And then do we have more staggered schedules? All those things are going to be I think the bigger challenges for us to address. As just kind of as the economy in general. >> Okay, it's been great having you on, as you know, the cube we love face to face, but this is safe to safe. So thanks so much for coming on and sharing your perspectives. Great stuff. >> Great. It's great to see you Dave. >> All right, and stay safe. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for the cube, and the cube conversation. We'll see you next time. (music playing)

>> from Austin, Texas. It's Theo Cube, covering your storage. Accelerate 2019. Brought to you by pure storage. >> Hey, welcome back to the cubes. Coverage day to appear. Storage your accelerate 2019. I'm Lisa Martin Day. Volante is my co host, and we're very pleased to welcome for the first time to the Cube. Kathy Southwark. This C I O at pure Cathy. Welcome. Thank you. Glad to be here. You have a great story. This is not only your fear. Your first your accelerate. You been at the company less than a year. You were not only a pure customer before, but in a completely different industry. So your first your accelerate. Here we are in Delhi Technologies backyard. Give us your perspective on appears business from your previous customer role. >> Yes. So I spent. I've been here just under a year, she said, and I spent the almost 22 years 18 t and coming into a company. It's completely different. Different size company, different size technology issues. Everything we do is looks very different. But there's a lot of similarities that, you know, you're trying to as any company trying to innovate and trying to stay on the cutting edge and you're trying to make sure you have the right teams in place and all that, so it's a lot of fun. It's great to see the energy and the excitement here, so that's been a lot of fun to come in and to see orange everywhere painted or so it's been a lot of fun coming on >> and you're complying with your orders. >> I got the memo. I said, You know, it's hard because orange is not one of my better colors toe where but no happy toe, happy to wear orange and proud to be part of such a company who's really looking at? How do we take care of the customer? >> Right. So you were sold on pure as a customer when you were with age and T. What was it about the technology that when you were in that prayer roll that really differentiated it from its competition? It was really >> interesting. I was sharing folks earlier today that here was very different, smaller company coming into a very large organization. We started working with them back in 18 t in 2013 so they were a very small company, very early on, but they were so bullish they had this completely different attitude about storage. And it wasn't really necessarily about this storage. It's about what we're gonna do to help you change your business. So for us, you know, I really looked at when you're in a very large company, you tend to not look so much at the particular like storage or computer or what you're really looking at, How many enabling my business and with the limited dollars that you have. And resource is etcetera, you're always trying to balance and prioritize. So for us when they came in, they made this proposition and said, Hey, we can show you this in two weeks and it'll, um And you know, when you're also big enterprise, you don't have time. Thio look a technology for weeks and months on end and then have to test it. And so we brought pure end. They they were tested out the products within two weeks, and we saw more than what we're expecting. And I think that was what changed for us is it wasn't just about we could do, you know, compression. We could do the deed if we could do. It was that all of a sudden was all these other capabilities been planned for So it really was. It was pretty pretty dramatic for us because we hadn't seen other providers to come in with a story that sounded different and not just the technology. Like I'm gonna save you a dollar. It's about now I'm going to enable your business to do something different faster. And we saw it firsthand. >> I was the role of C i o at a technology company. Different from you were in a c i o N a t. But you you had kind of an engineering roll. If I think it's a solution Engineering, how is the role different in terms of how you spend your time and what you care about? >> Yeah. So, you know, in 18 t, the CEOs were focused on the application delivery sites of specific applications at pure and so an 82. My role is centered around all the infrastructure for I t. As well as our network engineering. So what we did for the Service Writer network coming into pure, you have, you know, the whole spectrum. But we're a different kind of company. and that really 10 years old. Our technical debt looks very different. We use a lot of sass products, so we use a lot of hosted solutions from our partners and providers, and we do someone premise well. But it's a very different kind of landscape, so the opportunity is you don't have as much technical debt. You also have the ability to to try things because you are smaller and you can try things much quicker and be able to say, Well, this working isn't good enough and not have to have maybe things as gold plated. As you know, a regulated telecom would have versus a product technology product company that it's trying to be very agile to produce things and change for their customers. >> So essentially you were. I'll call you the C i o of of infrastructure at AT and T with infrastructure that had to support, like you said, highly regulated in a very diverse I'm sure application portfolio. Extremely there. Thousands of systems, probably >> thousands of applications and very complex business models. They, you know, they're ah, it's not a one. So the interesting is 80. >> She's >> not a one entity business, you know they've got their media business. They've got there mobility business. We've got their wireline business. So when you have people often think of 18 t as a company, But there's actually it's a very complex business model supporting multiple products. So it's just that those air, you know, multi $1,000,000,000 product portfolios versus coming into pure where you know we're still, you know, 1,000,000,000 have company building and growing our product portfolio. >> So what's your technology strategy of pure and how are you enabling business outcomes for the company? >> That's a great, great question. So, you know, really, a business strategy here has been that I t has to really evolve and scale differently than it had in the past. The organization before was really centered around Some of the end user capabilities wasn't as centered around business outcomes, and we've taken on a different role. So as I've come on to the organization, our opportunity and our challenge is that we now have different responsibilities, were taking on things like, How do we want to think about data across the enterprise, not just within each individual domain, and so as a start up company, you often are very focused on your R and D investments in your sales and marketing investments, and you do a lot of things to get it done. And that means that individual teams will do work. But you tend to not think about what the full life cycle is of, you know, of something that you're working on. So for our opportunity now this is take a step back, be able to look across and say it worked great for that period of time. Now we have the opportunity to rethink how we want to think about the customer experience from the time product is developed all the way through and, you know, a quote to a customer through its life cycle through delivery and then the support for that customer >> so so technology, the support that sort of workflow >> the ecosystem instead of within individual areas. And so that's really there are focuses. How do we help our business to become even faster? How do we get more focused on the customer from ah whole ecosystem? And that we think about the customer from the whole ecosystem instead of each individual area? >> Sounds like that horizontal view that Charlie Giancarlo talks about you know, with storage being so vertical in the past and cures wanting to revolutionize that and make that horizontal, ensuring that any type of business, whether we're talking about yours, business or ah retailer or our airline, every function in an organization has access to share. That data exactly struck business value to lower costs to find new revenue streams, new routes to market, et cetera. >> And we're no different as a business. We need to do those same things to make sure that we can. We can deliver those for business, so that's a big part of a lot of >> times we'll talk to C. I ose that technology companies and their large established technology companies that I think Cisco S A P. They've been around a long time. They have a lot of technical debt. They look a lot like your customers, frankly, many of your customers yours ever. But my question is a lot of these c I ose that I've just mentioned, sort of generically there come wine tasters, right? You know, they used to be dog food or his drink your own champagne, but But they they are like the first line of defense verse beta customer, and they give feedback to the product groups. Do you play that role as well? >> Way do we not probably to the extent, because we're a smaller company. So we tend Thio, as with our product announcements we've made will go out to a wide set of our customers, you know? So I think we had 16 1 of the bait is that was just done. What we do with an I T. Is because we have a smaller footprint just the size we do have flash ray with a flash blade with you do use pure one. We do it Maur of ah, from how would a a smaller customer look at it, Think about it and use it. And so that's tends to be the I'll say, the lens that we look through. I think that the role I've played coming in is the bringing a perspective from a larger enterprise on how does a larger enterprise an I t. Think about it and it's again. It's not just your helping me with storage. You're actually helping me to solve a business problem. So there's s oh, there's some other and some of the leaders that we've brought in. They also come from outside industry. Some have used pure, some have not, and so have that different kind of lens of what you know we would expect to see from our product seems, but they're also extremely open. Thio. What do you think? What is I t thinking about how you were thinking about these product ideas? What what's the input from I T. So there's a lot of what we're very small from a nightie organization. I think that the two way communication is what it's gonna you know, what will help, >> what are some of the innovations? And I know you've only had a short tenure there, but one of the things I read in the Q two earnings but that we're just released last month in August was seven. That new customers added per business safer pierce of 450 or so, plus customers at it in that quarter but also a 50% increase in multimillion dollar deals. So, enterprise, any innovations that you can share since you've been on board that your team has helped cure, understood to be able to go after those large enterprise multimillion dollar deals directly. >> Well, certainly from, um, you know, from a you know, a personal understanding of the product and what here could do it scale is, you know, I certainly have that perspective to share with our customers and bringing that confidence and credibility that, you know, if you are looking at a large enterprise customer in the opportunity, they have a lot of questions about. So how exactly did 18 t do it? It's not like they run a few arrays. They run hundreds and hundreds of rays and hundreds and hundreds of petabytes. So there's It's not like it's a proof of concept or a pilot. And it's been years of doing upgrades, non disruptive Lee over the years, with all the pure upgrades that have come into play. So I can certainly bring that to the table with helping the customers to get it, you know, a little bit of confidence, but also just an understanding about how pure is approaching it with these other large customers. So and as you've talked to other customers, there's there's enough customers out there that are, you know, very, >> very eager to >> share because they're so excited about what it's done for their business. We've >> heard. Sorry, David, I was going to say on the customer front we've, what 6600 plus customers pure now has in its 1st 10 years. And the customers we've spoken to the last two days, Dave and I have noticed that a common theme is they're talking about their overall experience with the technology. They're not talking about boxes and array names, and all these specifics are talking about how they are able to one customer from, ah, legal firm, I think in Florida didn't even do a PC had appear. That was a pure customer. And from that piers advice. I got it right on board and was really talking about the experience and all of the things to your point on the business side that they're able to to influence with the technology, not talking about speeds and feeds and arrange drives and things like that. So it's very, very different conversation. >> It's S O. It's interesting because and the role that I had, I had the teams that did the architecture, planning, design and through implementation. So the operation teams one of the most unique things I've said I share with customers is when you are in a technology and you're in a large enterprise, you tend to have a challenge with introducing new technology because you don't want more technical debt. It doesn't matter what you just don't want more technical debt. So typically your operation teams are >> doing a little >> bit of pushback on you. No, no, we don't need something new. No, we don't need unless they're having significant outages or incidents that they're trying to solve for what I found. And even to this day, there is some of the folks there actually around the floor here. The folks that were in operations, they were literally coming and saying, We want more pure And so when you're in a technology organisation that typically doesn't happen. It's S o it wasn't And it wasn't like we want more of like you said the array, it was we just want we don't wanna have to worry about. And I just took a reduction of my head count. So I want I find you have to take on more data and I am. You take on more support for the business. I don't have to worry about it. And so to have that. That's a very different. And we had the same experience of their application team saying, Hey, I just got lower latents. So they didn't actually know why. They just knew that when I was trying to do my work on the application side, working within a database, all the sudden I had all this improvement and, um and so what? We allowed them to sit. Okay, well, we'll give you more capabilities, more future functionality. And that doesn't happen. Before, those were things were like, really like operations and application teams are gonna work as a team together. Very different. I'm experience. >> So if I were a pure sales rep, I would say, >> Kathy, can you come tell my customers my prospect that >> story to the sales reps have access to your calendar? How much of your time? How much time you spend, you know, sales folks wanting you to tell stories like I got >> so the I have no the company that long. So I have I have spent a fair amount of my time talking to customers. But, you know, we also have a lot of work with an I t. And so are you know it's there just is incentive to have me work with an i. T. Because I can understand what we need to do to help our field as well. And that's one of our objectives is what are we gonna do an I t. To make it that much easier and better for not just our sales teams but the manufacturing teams. The support teams are hardware, teams, all the teams that takes a deliver. And so, you know, in fairness, I have joked with some that have stopped me and said, Hey, we need to I said, Remember, we also want to deliver for you so that to make your jobs easier So there's a balance >> that it's different. A technology company writes kind of encouraged that the C I. O goes out and evangelize is >> Yeah, it's actually a lot of fun. I, uh I I do joke that when I go out to talkto the other CEOs, I mean, they're my people there, too. I know it's It's the challenges that we have to deal with. The you know, you're dealing with the technology, those very specific items, then you're dealing with that. How do we help my business and then you're dealing with. I want to make sure I'm doing the right things for people development and all those so and you have a lens across the entire enterprise. So it's not like you're just looking at sales or you're just looking at ops for your You're kind of looking at everything to say, Well, how do I help all the teams to be that much better? Because the better we are, you know, be cliche. You know, collectively, that just got is gonna enable pure toe to do more fun. >> So what's on the minds of your peers in these days? >> You know, I feel so fortunate to be in the Bay Area, and there are amazing CEOs that get together, talk very openly, share strategies, actually eagerly and openly reach out to say, How can I help you? Um, and that's I think that's a unique as part of the CIA, a community that there's this willingness to say, Look, we're all in this together from a technology perspective. I mean, look, we all want to do well for our companies, but you're also trying to figure out how to make technology team stronger and you know it's a lot of the the same issues. It's how do I change the focus of and the perception of where I t fits into a business that it's not just a back office? It's not these systems, but it's actually becoming a very strategic, you know, Enabler, advisor, participant Helping to help, you know, can provide input. You can be that one of the first you know, Betas for your company if you're in a technology area and that's a change. There's a lot of companies who have always fascinated where it's like if you're a product and you have an I T. You're selling to those people, so pitch to them. If you can't sell to them, you're not gonna be successful. So I think it's just changing, evolving. You know some of those relationships and and that's a big deal and and you know, that's from the how you run your organization. There's that, you know, how do we make sure that the technologies were were all investing in our somewhat future proof and that they can evolve with us, not become inhibitors or, you know, box you into something that you can't kind of navigate through >> well, actually deliver on future proof. It's one of those marketing terms that is used by so many organizations delivering whatever kind of product. Same is with simple and seamless says We talk about this all the time. We did hear from customers wherever Green is concerned. You know, I said, non disruptive is how much of that goes from a marketing to reality and consistently heard about Piers ability to deliver their. But it's interesting and it's a refreshing, I think, to hear that you've experienced the changing role of the CEO to be collaborative versus he knows a lot of competition. And in tech, that's a refreshing The deer And I have an idea for you since you're so you're in such a habit to D'oh, it's good. What? You're gonna like this. I have an idea. Hash tag. Help Cathy Scale. Give them this video. Just so many pure customers all across the globe. >> Thank you. I will do that. I would. That's great advice. >> That's it. Easy to d'oh! D'oh! Well, Cathy's been great having you on the Cube. Thank you for sharing your perspective as there newish. See Io and how you went from here customer to running their i t. And congratulations on being part of the next decade of pure success. Thank you. Thank you for having our pleasure for day. Volante. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube.

>> Welcome to this Special Cube conversation. We're here in Mountain View, California. Pure storages headquarters on cash for street were here in the arcade of the main building, one of six buildings here in downtown where Pure has their contingent of offices. On joint cab itself was a C i o a pure formerly many, many years of it and running T operations and right of other work clothes. Great to see you. Thanks for From the time >> Great. Thanks for having me. So we're in the >> arcade here. All the old school stand up video games, but our generation, when we have to play videogames standing up but kind of speaks to the culture of pure What's your role of pure What do you do and how long you've been here? >> Okay, so I've been here appear for just about five months and and it's been great. I came on board is the CEO and, as you know, all companies air facing their challenges, going forward, way have ours for scaling is this Business continues to grow so super excited to be here and spent a lot of fun so far. >> So about your career before pure, where were you and how long you worked there. >> I you know, I spent a better part of my current ATT and T Amazing Company and was there for over twenty one years. Had a variety of rules, primarily always in the technology sides. So everything from the from application side two operations infrastructure, Teo, Project Management, Teo Technology, Innovation And then the last few years was was spent working on a lot of our network strategy. So what are we doing as a, um, as a business to kind of transform a teen tea service provider network? And how does that a line from a cloud and a technology for what we have been doing some cases on on the side >> and you've been on both side of the table. You you were a customer of pure. Now you work. If you were running well, I t Here's a CEO. Try and try and keep this transformation going. What's your take on the industry right now? Because it's interesting times as you know it is transforming. You got security front center roles were changing. Got skills, gaps. You get the cloud with scale, a lot of change, >> you know, and it's interesting. That happens that both big companies and smaller companies, so the transition had eighty having those same challenges. They look different here, appear because we are a little over nine year old company, and as you start to look at, we have the real benefit of being a little bit younger on the tech front and being so close to, you know, obviously, being in Silicon Valley, you're so close to all the VCs and the startups. You get to have a little bit of different flavor, but, you know, it's a huge transition. I think that all of us in the industry are really faced with the challenges of not just trying to transform your teams and the work and what they're doing, but then also enable technology that's going to bridges from what we have to do with today, and where do we think we're going to go? So I don't think that is any different on any of the companies. I think we're all in that same boat of saying, How do you make sure I have technology that's gonna live longer than you know, a year, three years? And then how do we have a workforce that can continue to grow and develop because, you know, we want to be able to have our talent stay with us and make those journeys with us >> and one things we to a lot of Cuban Aries over the past ten years. Certainly in it changes been constant theme. But what's interesting is his economic changed and look of skill gas. But economics have changed, and then the time to value the big long projects used to take months and months years right now, shorten those solo cycles have been accelerated down two months and days. Sometimes Frank, can you come and reactive economics and then time to value. >> You know, I think economics are. They're always in the forefront of every company, especially publicly traded companies that, you know you want to make sure we're turning the right value to our shareholders, and that's an important aspect. But I think the more the more important part of it is just trying to make sure that you can make decisions that can outlive kind of a shorter economic window they maybe had would have done in the past. So I think that's where all of us in in the space of CIA rolls or trying to really evaluate. How do you do that? How do you make sure that you could make those transitions and not have next year on Leigh Foundation, But be part of it to help you make some of that shift >> and the evidence on workload. I've heard the word workload was a tag cloud. I'd probably say workload would be the biggest font because, you know, workloads would you mean applications that have been around for a while? But more and more applications are coming. The migrating workload. So the cloud on premise So a lot of emphasis on workloads these days >> is that putting >> pressure on it is putting pressure on the operations. How do you see that? That whole workload thing evolving? >> Yeah, you know, I definitely do. So, you know, one of the one of big initiatives I ran eighteen t was migrating a thousand of our strategic applications onto ah nonprime private cloud. And it was all about not just the economics, but also the efficiency and the enablement for the business to move faster, you know, at a lower cost point. So that always tends to be your kind of bottom line part, but I think is I've come into pure and has You're trying to figure out how do you evolve our workloads of very different. We are very in our applications, like very different. So companies have different profiles of whether it's an application or workload. I think the other is It's a hyper focused around the user experience with, you know, so not just the end customer, but also the employees experience and what happens So, you know, when you talk about workloads, it's not just applications that heir business functions. They're also about. How do you make sure that our employees are having that great experience because you want to have that so that they can help to, you know, grow us as well and be productive in their roles? >> I wantto askyou one of the talk tracks I have on my notes here about pure specifically. But more generically, workloads are dominating conversation, but also technology selection and personnel selection are also tied to workloads, and some have said to me pick the right cloud for the right work. We'LL pick the right tool for the job. You hear that a lot. >> You did. What's your >> thoughts on that? Because this seems a kind of model of wars. Little bit, because the old school was Here's my suppliers. You pick them, they're all stand in the hall, come in with this general purpose. But now, with customization mohr agility, it seems to be that workloads and selection of tech and people are tied together. So >> yeah, no, I think you're right. I think that, um you know, part of our challenge is figuring out and this is me, her. A lot of us don't get yourself locked in And to that old notion of, you know, what you would have seen, you know, back in the day is you Did you pick a vendor and you kind of right that through whatever the challenge he had, I think the vendor community has also recognized that's not really the model they want to be in either. They really want to be a partner. So now what's about figuring out what I consider enablement? So can I use you to work on or to be optimized for a certain type of function? But can I put my work load somewhere else on DH? Do it So that's when one of things I've been surprised, that's probably more rapid shift is it's not just about Can I do it all myself or on Prem or with these set of vendors? It's to say I want to be able to actually move across. So can I have the flexibility and being realistic? But she can't have you? No total flexibility, everything. But you can't start to be prescriptive about certain areas and saying these type of applications are these functions or these workloads. I could get the largest amount of flexibility, but the's I'm actually okay saying most optimized should go here, whether it's on Prem off Prem hybrid. I think that's what we'LL start to see. A lot of >> we see that the cloud conversation. We're going to talk with him, your folks, about this. But no one cloud could be great for a workload for another cloud for another workload. And that's multi cloud because you have a couple clouds, right? And that's the train that we're seeing. You dude >> absolutely saw it at a T. Same thing here, a pure we do some on Prem and we do some hybrid. We also do some hosted where we have our SAS provider host are the applications well and that actually then starts to get you into some other challenges that we have a night that you start to say. So what happens with my data, and what does that look like? Where is it going? How is it secure all those things that are so important as a business to make sure your customer in your employee's data is, you know, corn centric to >> final question for going to the talk trash. I've gotta ask you, being a veteran in the business. What is it, crazier now, then it wass ten, fifteen years ago in terms of work operations. Is it faster? What's your take on it if you look back the old way into the new ways that you know more of the same but just different kind of product and technologies, which you're >> probably in the unique role because I think it's super fun, I think that Theobald litt e to be able to transform your business and have the flexibility. I'm certainly being here in in this roll and, you know, nine half year old company. There's lots of opportunity to be completely flexible, and I think that part is really fun. I think that the challenge for some larger you know, companies who've been around hundred plus year old companies as those companies you know, have a challenge with saying I've got such a large embedded base and trying to be, you know, interoperable around, what what exists and where they want to go. I think a lot of us that were, you know, in these companies that are, like, pure we have, Ah, you know, kind of. I think it is a gift to be able to say Hey, this is really something we should be able to do How do we go do it and have the support to actually do it? So it's Ah, I think it probably depends on the part of the industry that you're in. There's definitely some challenges, and I think privacy is definitely, you know, kind of a backdrop. But I think is you think about that. There's workable solutions for as all cos they're trying to go through. I think it's just a matter of making it. You know, that commitment to say you know you can can be flexible and you can make the progress you're looking for. >> It seems to be more of a builder culture as well as your operational calls. That's right. You can build and operate, build, operate kind of a new kind of flywheel. >> Yeah, I think that's the That's the exciting part for it is, I think we've we have transitioned or we're in that mode that time period where, instead of just being a pure enablement for the business, it's really turning into How do you become a strategic partner? How how do you have that seat at the table where you're helping to say, How do we help your business? It's not just about paying out these applications. Here's our availability hears. I mean those air, what I consider table stakes. You gotta be able to do those things. Now it's about how can we help you? Actually, you know, improve what? Your trying Teo, you know, in the business side of it. So that's the That's the part I think is unique and different is that focus on helping Teo and you're not just enabled, but be that strategic partner to help. He had changed business. >> That's awesome. Couple talk trash. I want to get your thoughts on one is accelerating Conference, which is pure We've been following. The company was founded. Scott Deaton. First interview, I think, was the way he found company Washington success. Now they have a big customer conference. We have the sixteenth in September sixteen September that week. Check it out your first conference, you guys, we're introducing some new things. What's the buzz? What are you planning on for the conference >> yet? So you know, it's interesting cause such as someone who's coming out of, you know, the industry side of it. The thing that's hard is as the CIA or was trying figure out what's going to be the biggest bank for my my time, cause I can't can't go to everything. So I'm super excited. Babel Teo to attend the event. I think the uniqueness is it's focused on the customers so existing customers, but also prospects customers who are considering pure thie. Other unique thing that's happening this year is there is a very specific track around the executive side so that having the sea level conversations, you know, with some of our key leaders in our business and innovative thinkers and so It's kind of running the spectrum of be able to say, If you're coming on and you should all come if you're coming, you're going to be able to have the conversations that you're expecting out of sea level. That might look a little different than maybe someone who's trying to do innovation and in your team and what they're looking for. So whether it's you know, demos or workshops and thinks that you get your hands, you know, hands dirty on, I think that that's the you know, the excitement of all of it is it's it's kind of a multifaceted and it's, ah, it's a great opportunity connects with your peers and with other companies, be able to say, What are you doing? How do we learn from you? We do a lot of those kinds of things, I think in general, but I think when you can get focused and have a peer group that's in, ah, you know smaller type of venue where and it's not thousands at a you know, major major conference that's existing somewhere in the in the U. S. Or u know worldwide, then you can actually have those meaningful conversations with your peers to say, Here's the things I'm working on. How ve you done it? What are you doing so well, I think we're gonna enable all those type of conversations to take place. So I'm excited to be a lot of fuss. >> The objective of the sea level trackers. It's just CEOs, is it? See? So says that CX ohs. What's the focus? What's the objective? >> It is all of that. One of its so interesting is my CEO is actually going to be quizzing me and talking to me about what is they actually expected of a CEO? Because I think that as a zany sea level position, your you know, we have expectations of you know what we need to deliver. But there's also how you contribute to the business. So it's kind of all all facets of it. It's everything from, you know, understanding what the expectations are to Some also thought leadership around where technology's going trends, those type of conversations and being would have some round table conversations. Maybe industry peers, eso all those kind of aspect. So but all all those areas they're covered >> should be great event. Looking forward to it. >> Yeah, a lot of fine >> Cuban be there. Of course we'LL check us out We'Ll be broadcasting live. Okay, Second talk track Women Tech You're a woman Takes years and years in the business in a big focus over the past years, Accused men have a lot of interviews with the great women in tech. >> Where do you >> see this state of the sticks? The needles doesn't seem to be moving on the percentages, but there seems to be great mo mentum in real pros. Lot of mentoring, a lot of networking. You seeing women, VC firms evolving very rapidly seeing cohorts together. What's your take on women in Tech, where we are, What challenges was opportunities? >> Yeah, you know, So we actually, in the Silicon Valley we actually have. There's several forms that go on for women CEOs and events that were to be able to have some of those conversations. And what do we do? And I think it starts with all of us, you know, individually and a in our organization, so organically is to figure out, you know, how do you make sure everyone feels that they belong, whether it's, you know, women or it's any other diverse group of employees. We have to figure out how to make people feel connected and part of the team, and I think it starts with that. And that's for kind of every discipline. And you know that you can think of in a business in text. Specifically, I think the challenge for women is you tend to not want to be identified. As, you know, a woman in Tech. It's like I want to be evaluated for my compensate what I bring to the table, my thought leadership, my perspective on and I don't think that's you mean to women. I think that's just unique to people that we all want to be valued for what we contribute. I definitely think that is a, um, a general kind of population and technology. I have seen where it used to be that I was the only female for many, many years and meetings, whether it was that fender briefings or it was in different company forms. Uh, I've had some unique opportunity. Eighteen t was hugely focused on women in tech women and engineering all those disciplines coming to pure, super exciting that we're we also so small of a company relatively sized eighteen t We have, you know, women heir Geez, employee resource groups. We have women in engineering. We have limited night. So we have kind of the ability to get that mentoring in that coaching the support within the company. And I think that's really valuable. But to your point, I think we have to still do Mohr of connecting outside of our company, figuring out whether that's through, you know, the different universities to make sure that we're getting the pipeline coming in and then retaining. I think that's the other challenges. The number's probably won't change much because we still see a significant amount of women leaving the workforce at a certain point. Er there were staging their career, and we need to figure out, you know what? What's that draw? Why is that happening? So >> what's the technology impact? Because as technology becomes consumer, I just seeing Data Analytics to arm or big a range of topics and confidence is not just computer science or probably or whatever Lim Maura broader perspective that helping at all do you see that evolving, that getting any lift, increasing the population and competency levels, >> you know it's a great question. I think we've had a pretty strong I'LL say, run at women. Being in computer science, we haven't seen enough women going into leadership positions. I think this just kind of industry, you know, generic kind of comment. I think it definitely helps. The more that you have a broader range of skills and capabilities. I think it's what is more fascinating is we need more women in those roles because as you think about the problems that all of our businesses air trying to solve their, it's not one dimension. So if we only have attack our problems with one dimension, one skill set, we just start going to be prepared to be, Oh, it's gonna take us longer And are all of us want to be able to quickly solve the issues that are >> of a personal question put you on the spot? What's the big learnings for you? Looking back now that you've seen that you can share as a woman attack and you put your twenty three year old hat on, what would you do differently? If anything, if you're living in today's world, >> you know eso it's interesting at has asked this question before actually came to pure as I talked to a number of companies in the Valley and it was like, What would you tell your younger self? And I said one of them is not to be afraid, and I think that's so so many of us. Whether you know, male or female. Sometimes you get into a routine and you don't necessarily break out of it or change. And so you tend to maybe take a safer path or a safer direction. And I think if I was to think back you No one is. Don't be afraid and the other, I think, is I probably would have. I was probably naive Tio not realize that I was sometimes the only female, and so I just kind of worked as I didn't think that was a different shade IRT it mattered. And when I think about it now, I probably should have done more to do some of the networking that we're doing today. That might have helped. You know, we talk a lot about the difference between mentoring and sponsoring, and it really gets into that. There needs to be enough, you know, sponsors both male and and female who can help to, you know, not just developed but have the conversations, you know, Make sure that people are included. Those kind of having a voice at the table. And I was very fortunate. I worked under some amazing leaders, both male and female, who who made sure that I had a voice. But I you know, I'm not a timid flower anyway, So I wouldn't have you know, I'm not going to sit there and to sit back and not do it and not to speak up. But I think that's something that not everyone is this comfortable was speaking up and being okay. That maybe I'm not right or so I think that I would tell my younger son Don't be afraid. And the second is to doom or Teo help get other others who maybe don't feel as if they belonged much. Teo, be able to have that. That same voice >> possible. Congratulations. You're awesome. And I'm excited for the event with you, >> you have to be a lot of fun. >> Okay, Next talk track. You were a customer of pure before you joined the company. Yes, you're t you were You know you have the keys to the kingdom. All the vendors pitching you You have big infrastructure, run tons and tons of work loads on DH. This is what, six, seven years ago here was in the growth phase. Now they're public company and much larger experience. But back then you took a risk on a technology. Tell us about that story because you made a big bet. Did it? Work actually worked out. You're here. I'm sure that he still has pure detail. The story? >> Yes. So first it starts with, You know, I had amazing team at a great team of folks who didn't want to accept the status quo, what was happening in the stores storage industry. And so as a CZ, we were hearing, you know, like you said, the pitches about what's due. What's different? Um, they were willing to stand up and say, Hey, you know what I think we need to look at this company, and, you know, it is hard when you are, you know, kind of that time I would say Pierre was somewhat of a unicorn in the sense that you try to have a somebody who's that small, non private, probably health company toe work with a big behemoth like tea. There's a lot of different things, whether it's contractual, you know, the legal, that decency is all that's having put aside the, you know, all of the technology. It's all of that That's really hard for companies to navigate. Pure had an amazing technology, and what happened is they came in and they said, Hey, this is what we can do. We can transform your business is not just about the economics will prove you that part, but we can actually help you to deliver faster for your application teams. We can help you with all these areas and and we could do it all within like two weeks. So the key was being able to stand up and say I'm going to do this and then prove it in this very small window because when you're in a large enterprise, you often you don't have unlimited resource is very constrained of. It's not a different that it started, but you're very limited. Resource is welcome to try to run big scale and so they were able to prove out everything they said, and then plus more. It was things like we started seeing efficiencies in the data center. We started to see that things like that where we thought we're going to have to expand and buy, you know, additional ports. We were able to not have to do it. So there was a lot of these, like side benefits that we weren't expecting. We all those Plus we asked for. So we did. We took a bet on Pure. They were a great, innovative team to work with. And, you know, he's had it, you know, their legacy is ah, very much innovation. And so it kind of was that match to say we need to re and companies who can help us to continue to innovate. >> We little skeptical at first, but we can do in two weeks. >> Yes. So it's almost like a bet. You go. All right, let's get you to do it. We'Ll see how it works in two weeks. So and that's s o they came in. It was all proved out. So we way actually, you know, move forward And you know, today a t and T is you know, hundreds of race, which is, you know, a very large footprint for any company to have with size. And it spans, you know, production application, Tier one applications to things that are specific use cases. So it kind of spans a large. >> Not a lot of war stories around. Critical failures, either. You said you had some successes with them before you came on camera. Yeah. Share that story is the storage. Is one those things where he was going to have something that might go down? The question is, how severe is the problem? What was some of the experiences you have? >> Yeah. You know, I can say that. You know, I left a team t last last summer. So up through that point, we had not had any several announces. So when you think of a large company, it's not unusual to have incidents outages. I mean, that that tends to happen just with the size of your footprint. Um, t was very successful, working with pure on, having essentially having a product that had big stability. And we didn't see those outages and not just on running it, but actually doing the non disruptive upgrades. So the ability to actually take the technology, do the next generation and not have any outages. That's pretty unusual for for any company tau experience. And so I looked at us from a scale highly unusual, but that's that was success. >> Great success. Okay, finally, you're here pure now, your CEO not as big as a T and T was still public company and they have a lot of employees. They're maturing as a company. You're running pure at your house. You can't unless you're doing a bake off internal assessment. How using pure. Now, how's it going? What's the share? Some of the architectural details without giving away any secrets. What's it like? And what you guys doing this innovative. >> So, you know, we are. We are much smaller organization, obviously. Then you know where I live just left. But it's really important for us to have that same innovation and capabilities we actually use pure we. But we use both flash array. We use flash blades of both of our you know, I'll say premiere products. We also use pure one, which is kind of the the telemetry visibility allows you to do what if analysis looked to see how you're doing for capacity perspective. So we actually use, um are you know, three of our primary products to actually run our daily our data warehouse, and then we are doing some of it just to be able to do some of our security. So we actually run a splunk in tableaux and using those type of tools, those capabilities, we run them on our environments and were able to do a lot of things that the feedback that we're getting is like, Oh, my gosh, we can't believe that you guys were able to do this. We have a very, very lean ight organization. So to do some of the things we're doing from a security analytics and, you know, threat, detections and all that, those are things that aren't very common for a lot of companies are we're all trying to be better on it and were able to use our own technology to kind of help substantiate what we're trying to solve for that's so super exciting. >> That's awesome. Final point on the CEO perspective. Great to have you and get the CEO perspective again. Bullets a customer and then working up your CEO is out there right now are challenged with transformation. Digital transmissions like buzz word that's been kicked around for years. But now you starting to see the robber hitting the road. Really? Development pressure, modernisation, run app, development. See, I see the pipe lining to multi cloud hybrid cloud. All this is now pretty much got some visibility into architectural decisions. What do you think is the bigger It's callous facing CEOs today in terms of, you know, thinking about the holistic, you know, five ten year horizon as they start to make investments and think about either aging out or contain arising preexisting workloads to cloud native APS and on premise giving me all your thoughts. >> Yeah. You know, I think that the kind of boils down to a couple aspects. One of them is, you know, module ization of your applications. That's why containers ations become such a big deal. Being able to do things like, you know, have your data separate from your application and not have everything so integrated at that level where you then are getting somewhat confined. You have issues with in I have to have this application running in this location. I also need to have the data has to be, you know, coexisting with it and so you run with all these constraints. So I think that for depending on the age of your organisation, that the first challenge is trying to figure out how do I start, Tio, you almost break apart my application of iron, my infrastructure. So I have more ability to have more modularity between what needs to happen and where it needs to happen. So I think to me, that's the That's one of the biggest aspects were, you know, super fortunate, because because we're a big sash shot. Most of our applications were dependent on our venders for the US Ask providers to have kind of worked through some of those issues, but that's that's one aspect. I think the second is the ability to navigate between, you know, on permanent prints. So the hybrids solution is really I don't see that going away. I think that all of us are struggling with the whole notion of whether it's the economics. It's the ability to like you, said move workload to the right location for the right optimization, the right tooley, et cetera. And so I think it's that flexibility. You can't get any of that if you don't have the first part done. And then when you start talking about your like your digital strategy, none of that works when you start wanting to get into, like, a A and m o until you have some of those things done and you put that data strategy in place. So you then have that ability have the threat across your whole, you know, ecosystem. And I think that's what our challenge, >> an automation, is key. But you gotta automate manual test. You have people to do it. Then you got a strange way to make that. So the skill gap stills always gonna be there. Right? Kathy, Thanks for Spend the time sharing your insight here on the cube conversation. Really appreciated. Absolutely. Thank you for >> having me >> here. Cube culture here. Pure storages headquarters in Mountain View, California. John Korea. Thanks for watching

>> Hi, everyone; I am thrilled to personally invite you to a special event created and hosted by "theCUBE." On January 21st, we're holding "theCUBE on Cloud," our first editorial event of the year. We have lined up a fantastic guest list of experts in their respective fields, talking about CIOs, COOs, CEOs, and technologists, analysts, and practitioners. We're going to share their vision of Cloud in the coming decade. Of course, we also have guests from the big three Cloud companies, who are going to sit down with our hosts and have unscripted conversations that "theCUBE" is known for. For example, Mahlon Thompson Bukovec is the head of AWS's storage business, and she'll talk about the future of infrastructure in the Cloud. Amit Zavery is one of Thomas Kurian's lieutenants at Google, and he'll share a vision of the future of application development and how Google plans to compete in Cloud. And J.G. Chirapurath leads Microsoft's data and analytics business. He's going to address our questions about how Microsoft plans to simplify the complexity of tools in the Azure ecosystem and compete broadly with the other Cloud players. But this event, it's not just about the big three Cloud players. It's about how to take advantage of the biggest trends in Cloud, and, of course, data in the coming decade, because those two superpowers along with AI are going to create trillions of dollars in value, and not just for sellers, but for practitioners who apply technology to their businesses. For example, one of our guests, Zhamak Dehghani, lays out her vision of a new data architecture that breaks the decade-long failures of so-called big data architectures and data warehouse and data lakes. And she puts forth a model of a data mesh, not a centralized, monolithic data architecture, but a distributed data model. Now that dovetails into an interview we do with the CEO of Fungible, who will talk about the emergence of the DPU, the data processing unit, and that's a new class of alternative processors that's going to support these massively distributed systems. We also have a number of CXOs who are going to bring practical knowledge and experience to the program. Allen Nance, he led technology transformation for Phillips. Dan Sheehan is a CIO, COO, and CTO and has led teams at Dunkin' brands, Modell's Sporting Goods and other firms. Cathy Southwick has been a CIO at a large firm like AT&T and now is moving at the pace of Silicon Valley at Pure Storage. Automation in the Cloud is another theme we'll hit on with Daniel Dines, who founded and heads the top RPA company. And of course, we'll have a focus on developers in the Cloud with Rachel Stevens of RedMonk. That's a leading edge analyst firm focused exclusively on the developer community. And much more that I just don't have time to go into here, but rest assured, John Furrier and I will be bringing our thoughts, our hard-hitting opinions, along with some special guests that you don't want to miss. So click on the link below and register for this free event, "theCUBE on Cloud." Join us and join the conversation. We'll see you there.