>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering VMworld 2017! Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. (electronic music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE. We're on day three of our continuing coverage of VMworld 2017. We've all counted our steps, lots of steps we've gotten in, lots of great conversations. I am Lisa Martin with my co-host John Troyer. We're joined now by two guests who are new to theCUBE. Chanda Dani, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Storage and Development at VMware. Welcome to theCUBE! >> Thank you. >> And you're also joined by Mark Vaughn, you're the Director of Strategic Technology Group with Presidio, welcome! >> Yes ma'am, thank you. >> So guys we're at day three of, hopefully your feet aren't too sore, of VMware 2017. Big announcements on Monday about VCF, on AWS yesterday, the pivotal container service with Google, Pat Gelsinger mentioned on Monday, 10,000 customers on VSAN. Chanda, have you heard from customers at the event? What has their reaction been to some of the great news that's been announced? >> Customers are actually really excited. They see VMware evolve and become more and more mature and bigger, and the see us as a partner. In the context of VSAN, they are even more excited. I met a lot of customers who wanted to try out our hands-on labs, and these were actually storage admins who were like, "I'm really interested, can you guide me through this process?" I had a session on Sunday and I thought, people are still pouring in, checking into the hotel. And the session had four, five hundred people and it was on VSAN and there was so much excitement! So it's really, really amazing. Great time for VSAN right now. >> Wow, did Pat say adding 100 customers a week? >> Yes, we are adding 100 customers a week. >> That's remarkable, and it sounds like you're seeing maybe a shift in terms of the skill types that are wanting to learn about this technology? >> Exactly, so VI admins have always been a champion, but what has been very interesting this VMware that a lot of storage admins have come to the show and they are all at the hands-on labs and the sessions wanted to learn about it more and more. >> From a market perspective, Mark, question for you. Given that, and we're hearing quite a bit, John, over the last couple of days on both of our sets here, generational shifts, skillset shifts. In terms of shifts and trends in the market, what are some of the data center trends that you've heard, Mark, articulated on the show floor and from your partner, VMware, this week? >> There's definitely the shift with VMware Cloud on AWS. That's been a real emphasis this week, which again builds on what we've been doing in the private data center. So building on VCN, building on NSX, building on the VMware hypervisor. So those are some trends we've really seen and, honestly, in the data center in general, we've seen a shift in storage the last few years. So it's moving more towards an emphasis on the software. So whether you're releasing that now as a virtual appliance or a cloud appliance, or going a step further and having a solution that is totally self-defined, like VCN, we're beginning to see the emphasis move from hardware to software. >> So Mark, we've had a lot of innovation in hyperconverged infrastructure in the last few years. With VCN being one of the pillars of innovation. But the market is interesting, a lot of players in the market, some being pulled out, others entering, where are we in this whole evolution? What is the state of hyperconverged infrastructure and hyperconverged storage in 2017? >> As we look so much to public cloud, and it's been such a buzzword for the last few years, we've noticed that a lot of our customers have moved to it and realized it doesn't work everywhere. But what attracted them to the cloud, they still want, even when they run on-prem data center now. So they want that flexibility, they want that ability to scale easily, they want flexible billing, as well, and consumption-based models. And so software-defined storage and VSAN really create the ability to, you may not want everything in the cloud. But you can still have what you liked about the cloud in your own data center. And so that's part of the modernization story that we're walking through with a lot of our customers. >> Chanda, how are you seeing the consumption models? Software versus VMware ready-nodes, build-your-own partner ecosystem, how are people taking, you know, is it in the cloud, is it on-prem, how are people taking these in? >> Actually, this is one of the key reasons why customers like VSAN, the wide choice of consumption models that they have. They can fully-customize it, build it themselves, they can go with the ready-nodes, they also have a choice to go with an appliance-based solution which we have with Dell EMC called VxRail, and they also like the choice that, what they could do on-prem, now they can do it on AWS and it's just yet another site for them. And, for example, disaster recovery as a service is one of the use cases they really want to move forward with. I just came back from a customer meeting, explaining to them how it would work, and they're really excited and waiting for it to come. >> So you mentioned Dell EMC, and one of the questions I had was, just about one-year-post combination of Dell taking over. One of the things that was very clearly articulated during the keynote by Michael Dell himself was that, the importance of the VMware ecosystem really growing. And the independence. So long-time partners, Presidio and VMware, talk to us about your channel strategy, and how it's going to evolve or is evolving as you need to give customers this flexibility of private-public hybrid based on their needs and this consumption-driven model. How is the channel strategy evolving to facilitate that? You can both take a shot at that. >> One thing I've noticed, upfront, when it comes to consumption models is, we're actually seeing vendors like Dell and other OEM partners beginning to offer consumption models where you can actually now get hardware on six-month, one-year, you know, shorter term, where it gives you the flexibility of the cloud of, you don't have to make a longterm commitment to hardware, you can flex, you can grow. Even when it's on-prem, you can still have some of that flexibility. We've also worked out some cost models for some of our customers where we can help them have that flexibility and consumption models to allow them to actually grow on-prem in a similar way that they would in the cloud. >> Chanda, same question for you, the channel strategy. Kind of, what do you see as some of the next steps to make that channel, and make, event the partnership with Presidio even better? >> Right. So actually, Presidio has been a very successful partner for VSAN and, talking about channel strategy, if you look at it, VSAN, today, has 10,000 customers. vSphere has 350,000 customers. We are not even 4% penetrated in our own install-base, and given the tight correlation between vSphere and VSAN, we all know that vSphere obtained this large install-base through our channel. So for VSAN to have such a big install-base and increase our penetration, it is actually channel that will do that for us. And Presidio is well ahead on that curve right now. So our strategy, actually, is related to server refresh. It is projected that, by the end of 2019, about 60% of our customers would be going through a server refresh. And as they go through a server refresh, they adopt hyperconversion infrastructure more and more. Because they're buying these new servers, they say, might as well buy a ready-node. And we want to ensure that our channel is well-equipped to take advantage of this wave that is coming. So there are many things we are doing, for example, number one, that they are able to build their practice. And Presidio is quite ahead there. But the rest of the world is able to do that too, globally. And secondly, we are trying to simplify and streamline things for them by having product packages which they can sell easily. For example, we have a package of vSphere and VSAN called HCI Kit, where we have designed it such that, the most profitable way to sell vSphere is to sell it with VSAN, because if they sell vSphere, if they qualify, the ad-plus at the back is 10%. But if they sell the HCI kit, which is Vspere and VSAN, the back-end ad-plus is 30%. So for our channel, the most profitable way is to sell vSphere along with VSAN. Then we have also designed a whole bunch of sales tools. Like, they can go into an account, do an assessment, do a whole sizing for the VSAN ready node, do a full ready-node configuration with our OEM partners such as HP, Dell, Fujitsu, Lenovo, et cetera, they are all at the solution exchange here. And then they can have a full TCO conversation. All of this is now available for our channel, and we went ahead and did a practice builder workshop in all major cities globally to help them come up to speed on all this stuff. There are many other programs. And we are now providing POC gears so that you can actually do successful POCs too. So it's now execution for us. >> Yes. And it's been great because VMware has really created and ecosystm that we can work well within, and it actually creates a journey for our customers. So we've been able to walk a number of customers, I was working with a customer just this week that has been a long-time ESX environment for their VMware hypervisor. Probably four years ago they began using VSAN early on, and since that time they've moved, VSAN is now their primary storage, and now they're moving into deployment in SX. And as that is going along, they're beginning to look at vRealize Operations, they're beginning to look at Airwatch, so it really creates an ecosystem that we can walk people through the journey of moving into these, and there's often opportunities where we can come in and do a number of these at a time. But there's also a lot of opportunities where customers kind of need to mature their own processing and go through this journey. >> Mark, I'd like to drill down on that a little bit. I've known you for years, you know, back in the day when the virtualization admin was the role that was just created, and started to bridge some of those silos between storage, networking, Windows, security, teams. You talked about the channel, let's talk about the customer uptake and enablement on their side. Who are the people that are being trained on this? Is it, do folks still have the traditional storage admin? Is it a combined team? Who's buying it, who's responsible for it, and how are you helping them succeed with VSAN? >> We really have to approach that based on each customer's individual makeup. And we need to see how their organizations worked out, and where their skillsets lie. But we see that, really, as a mix. It's been much the same way as networking. At first, networking was separate from virtual networking, and they quickly realized as, you know, 80 or 90% of their environment became virtualized, you can't just sit outside of the hypervisor, you have to be participating in the network inside the hypervisor as well. So there's definitely skillsets that the storage admin brings to bear that the average systems admin doesn't have. So it's really a partnering of the two. And I see the same thing with cloud. So, where virtualization admin was a niche ten years ago, now you can't work in the data center if you don't know how to participate in the virtualization environment and you're not familiar with VMware. Cloud is kind of becoming a niche, but in five years you won't be able to work in the data center if you don't know cloud. >> Yeah, what's one of the trends that we've seen as well, just in doing some reading online, is that, it used to be, everybody was trained, you know, that would come here to VMworld, would be trained in virtualization and certifications. And now we're starting to see that shift towards cloud. Sounds like there's been this natural evolution that's been customer-driven, in terms of enablement and the education, but you're now seeing the importance of the guys and gals that are storage admin, maybe the system admins as well, the VI admins. How are you guys working together to sort of tailor the conversation as more ... You see a diversity in the types of people that are interested in this type of technology, and as the conversation, maybe on the storage side, goes up to the C level, because they're storing massive amounts of data that's got to be able to extract value from in new lines of business. How is your enablement evolving as these skillsets are shifting? >> Alright, so, the name "hyperconvergence" actually says it all, it's not just causing convergence of technologies, it's causing convergence of people and skillsets and teams as well, and that does include people who just used to be computer admins and storage admins and network admins now. So going back to that context of how we are doing the enablement, I think what we are doing right now is helping each side understand the value, and having them come together. Earlier they used to work as silos, and now the teams are coming together just as the technology is coming together. And as regards, talking to decision-makers in the organizations, at the CIO level, people are more interested in competitive advantage for their own organization. And we find that the hyperconvergence technology allows the entire organization to move fast. So CIOs are able to do their business initiatives in a much faster way, get their profits coming in a much fast way, their risks are minimal, so they like the technology for that reason. And VP of infrastructure, applications, et cetera, like the technology because it streamlines the operations, standardizes the processes for them. VI admins have always been a champion, because it's so easy to use for them, the learning curve is very less. And storage admins really like it because, at the time when their traditional array is running out of capacity or horsepower, they don't have the budget to go and procure something new. They do have the budget to go and acquire a few servers and SSDs, they are still able to move forward and give the organization what it needs within the budget constraints, and yet meet the timeline. So this is something which is driving a lot of convergence. >> And storage has always been so critical to how virtualization works and operates. From vMotion to DRS, there's so many baseline features that relied on the underlying storage. So the storage admins and the VI admins have been growing closer and closer together for a long time. But what we're seeing with hyperconverge, and whether it's on-prem or, especially, in the cloud, is it's not only changing the storage technology, but it's changing the cost model. So now the conversation also has to happen at a business level of, is this going to be capex? Is this going to be opex? Is this going to be a traditional purchase method? Is this going to be a consumption method? So the conversation, now, actually, has to transcend from just the technology to also the business impact and the business drivers behind selecting one method or another. >> Absolutely, absolutely. And that's a theme that we're hearing a lot, as customers talk about digital transformation. Well I love the play on words with "convergence", and it sounds like the different folks that are now really needing this type of technology are folks that you've had the chance to speak with at the show. So we want to thank you guys for taking the time on Day Three to come and chat with us on theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >> For our guests, and for my co-host John Troyer, I am Lisa Martin, you've been watching theCUBE live on Day Three, continuing coverage of VMworld 2017. We'll be right back after a short break. (electronic music)

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of Dell Technologies. World Digital Experience Brought to You by Dell Technologies. >>Welcome to the Cubes Coverage of Dell Technologies World 2020. The Digital Experience. I'm Lisa Martin, and I'm pleased to welcome back a Cube alumni and a new Cube member to the program today. China. My Mondal is back with US Director of Solutions Marketing for Dell Technologies China. But it's great to see you at Dell Technologies world, even though we're very specially death. >>Happy to be back. Thank you, Lisa. >>And Thomas Henson is joining us for the first time. Global business development manager for a I and analytics. Thomas, Welcome to the Cube. >>I am excited to be here. It's my first virtual cube. >>Yeah, well, you better make it a good one. All right. I said we're talking about a I so so much has changed John to me. The last time I saw you were probably were sitting a lot closer together. So much has changed in the last 67 months, but a lot has changed with the adoption of Ai Thomas. Kick us off. What are some of the big things feeling ai adoption right now? >>Yeah, I >>would have to >>say the two biggest things right now or as we look at accelerated compute and by accelerated compute we're not just talking about the continuation of Moore's law, but how In Data Analytics, we're actually doing more processing now with GP use, which give us faster insights. And so now we have the ability to get quicker insights in jobs that may have taken, you know, taking weeks to months a song as we were measuring. And then the second portion is when we start to talk about the innovation going on in the software and framework world, right? So no longer do you have toe know C plus plus or a lower level language. You can actually do it in Python and even pull it off of Get Hub. And it's all part of that open source community. So we're seeing Mawr more folks in the field of data science and deep learning that can actually implement some code. And then we've got faster compute to be able to process that. >>Tell me, what are your thoughts? >>Think I want to add? Is the explosive growth off data on that's actually are fulfilling the AI adoption. Think off. Like all the devices we have, the i o t. On age devices are doing data are pumping data into the pipeline. Our high resolution satellite imagery, all social media generating data. No. All of this data are actually helping the adoption off a I because now we have very granular data tow our friend the AI model Make the AI models are much better. Besides, so the combination off both in, uh, data the power off Like GPU, power surfers are coupled with the inefficient in the eye after and tools helping off. Well, the AI growth that we're seeing today >>trying to make one of the things that we've known for a while now is that it's for a I to be valuable. It's about extracting value from that. Did it? You talked about the massive explosion and data, but yet we know for a long time we've been talking about AI for decades. Initiatives can fail. What can Dell Technologies do now to help companies have successfully I project? >>Yeah, eso As you were saying, Lisa, what we're seeing is the companies are trying to add up AI Technologies toe Dr Value and extract value from their data set. Now the way it needs to be framed is there is a business challenge that customers air trying to solve. The business challenge gets transformed into a data science problem. That data scientist is going toe work with the high technology, trained them on it. That data science problem gets to the data science solution on. Then it needs to be mapped to production deployment as a business solution. What happens? Ah, lot off. The time is the companies do not plan for output transition from all scale proof of concept that it a scientists are playing with, like a smaller set of data two, when it goes toe the large production deployment dealing with terabytes toe terabyte self data. Now that's where we come in. At their technologies, we have into end solutions for the, uh for the ai for pollution in the customers journeys starting from proof of concept to production. And it is all a seamless consular and very scalable. >>So if some of the challenges there are just starting with iterations. Thomas question for you as business development manager, those folks that John um I talked about the data scientists, the business. How are you helping them come together from the beginning so that when the POC is initiated, it actually can go on the right trajectory to be successful? >>No, that's a great point. And just to kind of build off of what Shonda my was talking about, You know, we call it that last mile, right? Like, Hey, I've got a great POC. How do I get into production? Well, if you have executive sponsorship and it's like, Hey, everybody was on board, but it's gonna take six months to a year. It's like, Whoa, you're gonna lose some momentum. So where we help our customers is, you know, by partnering with them to show them how to build, you know, from an i t. And infrastructure perspective what that ai architectural looks like, right? So we have multiple solutions around that, and at the end of the day, it's about just like Sean. Um, I was saying, You know, we may start off with a project that maybe it's only half a terabyte. Maybe it's 10 terabytes, but once you go into production, if it turns out to be three petabytes four petabytes. Nobody really, you know, has the infrastructure built unless they built on those solid practices. And that's where our solutions come in. So we can go from small scale laboratory all the way large scale production without having to move any of that data. Right? So, you know, at the heart of that is power scale and giving you that ability to scale your data and no more data migration so that you can handle one PC or multiple PCs as those models continue to improve as you start to move into production >>and I'm sticking with you 1st. 2nd 0, sorry. Trying to go ahead. >>So I was going to add that, uh, just like posthumous said right. So if you were a data scientist, you are working with this data science workstations, but getting the data from, uh, L M c our scales thes scale out platform and, uh, as it is growing from, you see two large kills production data can stay in place with the power scale platform. You can add notes, and it can grow to petabytes. And you can add in not just the workstations, but also our They'll power it, solve our switches building out our enter A I ready solutions are already solution for your production. Giving are very seamless experience from the data scientist with the i t. >>So China may will stick with you then. I'm curious to know in the last 6 to 7 months since 2020 has gone in a very different direction thing we all would have predicted our last Dell Technologies world together. What are you seeing? China. My in terms of acceleration or maybe different industries. What our customers needs, how they changed. I guess I should say in the in 2020. >>So in 2020 we're seeing the adoption off a I even more rapidly. Uh, if you think about customers ranging from like say, uh, media and entertainment industry toe, uh, the customer services off any organization to, uh the healthcare and life sciences with lots off genome analysts is going on in all of these places where we're dealing with large are datasets. We're seeing ah, lot off adoption foster processing off A. I R. Technologies, uh, giving with, say, the all the research that the's Biosciences organizations are happening. Uh, Thomas, I know like you are working with, like, a customer. So, uh, can you give us a little bit more example in there? >>Yes, one of the areas. You know, we're talking about 2021 of the things that we're seeing Mawr and Mawr is just the expansion of Just look at the need for customer support, right arm or folks working remotely their arm or folks that are learning remote. I know my child is going through virtual schools, So think about your I t organization and how Maney calls you're having now to expand. And so this is a great area where we're starting to see innovation within a I and model building to be ableto have you know, let's call it, you know, the next generation of chatbots rights. You can actually build these models off the data toe, augment those soup sports systems >>because you >>have two choices, right? You can either. You know, you you can either expand out your call center right for for we're not sure how long or you can use AI and analytics to help augment to help maybe answer some of those first baseline questions. The great thing about customers who are choosing power scale and Dell Technologies. Their partner is they already have. The resource is to be able to hold on to that data That's gonna help them train those models to help. >>So, Thomas, whenever we're talking about data, the explosions it brings to mind compliance. Protection, security. We've seen ransom where really skyrocket in 2020. Just you know, the other week there was the VA was hit. Um, I think there was also a social media Facebook instagram ticktock, 235 million users because there was an unsecured cloud database. So that vector is expanding. How can you help customers? Customers accelerate their AI projects? Well, ensuring compliance and protection and security of that data. >>Really? That's the sweet spot for power scale. We're talking with customers, right? You know, built on one FS with all the security features in mind. And I, too, came from the analytics world. So I remember in the early days of Hadoop, where, you know, as a software developer, we didn't need security, right? We you know, we were doing researching stuff, but then when we took it to the customer and and we're pushing to production, But what about all the security features. We needed >>the same thing >>for artificial intelligence, right? We want toe. We want to make sure that we're putting those security features and compliance is in. And that's where you know, from from an AI architecture perspective, by starting with one FS is at the heart of that solution. You can know that you're protecting for you know, all the enterprise features that you need, whether it be from compliance, thio, data strategy, toe backup and recovery as well. >>So when we're talking about big data volumes Chanda, mind we have to talk about the hyper scale er's talk to us about, you know, they each offer azure A W s Google cloud hundreds of AI services. So how does DEL help customers use the public cloud the data that's created outside of it and use all of those use that the right AI services to extract that value? >>Yeah. Now, as you mentioned, all of these hyper scholars are they differentiate with our office is like a i m l r Deep Learning Technologies, right? And as our customer, you want toe leverage based off all the, uh, all the cloud has to offer and not stuck with one particular cloud provider. However, we're talking about terabytes off data, right? So if you are happy with what doing service A from cloud provider say Google what you want to move to take advantage off another surface off from Asia? It comes with a very high English p a migration risk on time it will take to move the data itself. Now that's not good, right? As the customer, we should be able to live for it. Best off breed our cloud services for AI and for that matter, for anything across the board. Now, how we help customers is you can have all of your data say, in a managed, uh, managed cloud service provider running on power scale. But then you can connect from this managed cloud service provider directly toe any off the hyper scholars. You can connect toe aws, azure, Google Cloud and even, like even, uh, the in place analytics that power scale offers you can run. Uh, those, uh I mean, run those clouds AI services directly on that data simultaneously from these three, and I'll add like one more thing, right? Thes keep learning. Technologies need GPU power solvers, right? and cloud even within like one cloud is not homogeneous environment. Like sometimes you'll find a US East has or gp part solvers. But like you are in the West and the same for other providers. No, with our still our technologies cloud power scale for multi cloud our scale is sitting outside off those hyper scholars connected directly to our any off this on. Then you can burst into different clouds, take advantage off our spot. Instances on are like leverage. All the GP is not from one particular service provider part. All of those be our hyper scholars. So those are some examples off the work we're doing in the multi cloud world for a I >>So that's day. You're talking about data there. So powers failed for multi cloud for data that's created outside the public club. But Thomas, what about for data that's created inside the cloud? How does Del help with that? >>Yes. So, this year, we actually released a solution, uh, in conjunction with G C. P. So within Google Cloud, you can have power scale for one fs, right? And so that's that native native feature. So, you know, goes through all the compliance and all the features within being a part of that G c p natively eso counts towards your credits and your GP Google building as well. But it's still all the features that you have. And so we've been running some, actually, some benchmarks. So we've got a couple of white papers out there, that kind of detail. You know what we can do from an artificial intelligence perspective back to Sean Demise Example. We were just talking about, you know, being able to use more and more GPU. So we we've done that to run some of our AI benchmarks against that and then also, you know, jumped into the Hadoop space. But because you know, that's 11 area from a power scale, prospective customers were really interested. Um, and they have been for years. And then, really, the the awesome portion about this is for customers that are looking for a hybrid solution. Or maybe it's their first kickoff to it. So back Lisa to those compliance features that we were talking about those air still inherent within that native Google G C P one fs version, but then also for customers that have it on prim. You can use those same features to burst your data into, um, your isil on cluster using all the same native tools that you've been using for years within your enterprise. >>God, it's so starting out for power. Skill for Google Cloud Trying to get back to you Kind of wrapping things up here. What are some of the things that we're going to see next from Dell from an AI Solutions perspective? >>Yes. So we are working on many different interesting projects ranging from, uh, the latest, uh, in video Salford's that they have announced d d x a 100. And in fact, two weeks ago at GTC, uh, Syria announced take too far parts with, uh, it takes a 100 solvers. We're part off that ecosystem. And we are working with, uh, the leading, uh uh, solutions toe benchmark, our ai, uh, environments, uh, for all the storage, uh, ensuring, like we are providing, like, all the throughput and scalability that we have to offer >>Thomas finishing with you from the customer perspective. As we talked about so many changes this year alone as we approach calendar year 2021 what are some of the things that Dell is doing with its customers with its partners, the hyper scale er's and video, for example, Do you think customers are really going to be able to truly accelerate successful AI projects? >>Yeah. So the first thing I'd like to talk about is what we're doing with the D. G. S A 100. So this month that GTC you saw our solution for a reference architecture for the G s, a 100 plus power scale. So you talk about speed and how we can move customers insights. I mean, some of the numbers that we're seeing off of that are really a really amazing right. And so this is gives the customers the ability to still, you know, take all the features and use use I salon and one f s, um, like they have in the past, but now combined with the speed of the A 100 still be ableto speed up. How fast they're using those building out those deep learning models and then secondly, with that that gives them the ability to scale to. So there's some features inherent within this reference architecture that allow for you to make more use, right? So bring mawr data scientists and more modelers GP use because that's one thing you don't see Data scientist turning away right there always like, Hey, you know, I mean, this this project here needs needs a GPU. And so, you know, from a power scale one fs perspective, we want to be able to make sure that we're supporting that. So that as that data continues to grow, which, you know we're seeing is one of the large factors. Whenever we're talking about artificial intelligence is the scale for the data. We wanna them to be able to continue to build out that data consolidation area for all these multiple different workloads. That air coming in. >>Excellent, Thomas. Thanks for sharing that. Hopefully next time we get to see you guys in person and we can talk about a customer who has done something very successful with you guys. Kind of me. Always great to talk to you. Thank you for joining us. >>Thank you. Thank you >>for China. May Mandel and Thomas Henson. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes Coverage of Dell Technologies, World 2020

>> from the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's the Cube covering Cooper inspired 2019. >> Brought to you by Cooper. >> Welcome to the Cube. Lisa Martin on the ground at Cooper inspired 19 up a Cosmopolitan and Las Vegas. Cooper is a company that has a lot of energy. If you go to their website cooper dot com and check out some of their videos, the energy is awesome. And I'm happy to have some of that energy with me. Next, we have Russia Mood s V P of product from Cuba, Russia. Welcome to the Q You for having me. It's so good to be here. Thank you for coming. We're excited to be here at I was enjoyed your keynote this morning, Chanda. I had him on a little bit ago and I thought this company has naturally this culture of energy. Very inspirational. No pun intended with theme inspire. But one of the things that really struck me about your keynote this morning is that the way that you as the spp of products, the way that you announced you know, some of the great things that you guys are doing with a W s with Cooper pay with more partners was explained so clearly and articulated so beautifully that people get it. So give us a little bit of an overview of this. Suspend management the platform that you guys have been building this category and how Cooper works to help companies really transform procurement. >> Well, thank you. Thank you for your kind notes and thank you for coming in and being part of this wonderful community, let >> me >> start with with the spend. Management were incredibly excited to be co creating this whole category with with the entire customers and analysts and partners. And essentially, we have moved to a stage in time where we're looking at spend across the entire company. Not some kind of spend that expenses, not procurement, just like cos. Look at c E r M for managing everything around their sales facing activities. Business spend Management is about doing exactly the same thing on the spending management side, and there's a lot of similar things between them because on the C. R. M and the customer facing areas, there's a ton off focus on consumerism ation. How do you attract customers? Well, those concepts also are the key to success and visit spent management because ultimately the goal is all about how do I get to a point where everybody is doing what they're supposed to do to lower costs? Thinks, reduce risk, et cetera, et cetera. But when you look at large companies and you're talking about 10,000 people, 20,000 people, it comes down to every single person wanting to be a part of it, which means you gotta reach them. You gotta consume, arise the experience. So that comes a place that you can connect with. So that's a big focus for us. >> Consumer ization is so important we talk about it at a lot of events. But, you know, as consumers of I've been saying a number of times, say whether it's a vehicle, that you're in the market for home mortgage, whatever it happens to be something for your dog on Amazon, maybe that's just me. You can get access to it very quickly. You can see all the different suppliers, different prices. You're so informed as a consumer. But then that consumer on a Sunday on the Monday might be, you know, in procurement or even in the line of business that it has to be managing and contingent workforce. So there's an expectation. Deliver me the same experience when I'm a consumer at home when I'm in my day to day job, and that's something that you you really can get a sense for. What? How Cooper is enabling that potential. They're not just transform procurement, but what transforming procurement can do for top line of this >> absolutely, absolutely, and something very interesting here as well, which is, when you think about me to be experiences, it's almost will be to be. Professionals have gotten to a point where their expectations from their consumer lives just die because they're not getting that type of experience at this time. It is time to bring everyone into it and give them the same level experience. Now what we're doing something very, very unique and incredibly special in this industry, which I believe is going to light up this industry on fire is the idea of a community intelligence. It's the ideas of you talk a lot about big data and the importance of a I and dictator. What we've done here is, after over a decade in this industry, helping each and every company and say in a sass platform, Get there. Spend under management now with trillions and trillions of dollars that are going through that platform. What is happening now is we have incredible intelligence that we're able to offer to each and every business and each and every user something very approachable and very simple from one of the goals of businessmen. Management is that everybody to be able to do their process is very fast, right? So we gave me fight it. We simply allow every user to see how well they're doing compared to the rest of the community at large. >> I saw that the tortoise thing is incredible. >> It's a simple idea, however, what it is doing it. It's moving people in the right direction in terms of doing things faster, not sitting on these expense reports that because, as you heard today, when you look at the stories when you're late on invoices, etcetera, yes, it's a back office functions, but you're not delivering the actual service. Whether it is for the American Red Cross was >> great casket. If that could be right, the magnitude of that could be huge. Exactly, exactly. So community >> intelligence continues to be a very incredible, exciting opportunity for us overall. And you will hear a lot of conversations happening with customers trying to think of what else they want to compare to others. Ah, lot of the buzz was created around spent guard. >> You tell me a little bit more not about today, because we think about it from fraud, detection and security perspective. Those air >> are >> essential elements to embed in any technology in any industry. What are you guys doing here? That you really kind of dialed it up? >> It is it is incredibly exciting. So of course, whatever, there's money there's going to be from that happens everywhere in the world. When we looked at that problem, we looked at it told mystically, which is and in the market you went flying technology that thinks about let's do expenses, fraud and somebody who's going in detecting if people are doing that. But when we deflected on it, Friday is a human behavior. It's every person who's doing this, and if that person is doing, they're gonna do with expenses and contracts and sourcing everywhere they get their hands on and Amos. So we said what we need to do is to look at it holistically. Let's look at the user patterns And what are they, suspicious activities that we're seeing So platform? Why? User patterns. By looking at everything where the entire span and then what? And what we did is okay, Great. Let's how do how do you do with we use a I to do it. And this is where we do deep learning that we can look at clusters and see Oh, this is what is normal for this group. These are the out liar. So start surfacing these kinds of things up for the auditors themselves. But then we said, it's not enough to just, um, detect the fraud, because by the time you detective mind, right, yeah, yes. So you have to recover it. And now you have to go into recovery. Who wants to do that? So that's where we added the principle of in flight and flight. Catch it, catch it routed right when it is. And this is just the beginning. This a >> reactive to proactive >> it is yes, instead of after the fact I'm going to tell you and stop it right now so you don't pay it don't even pay it instead of the past. Used to be about the recovery approaches because you detected the frog two months later and you go back to whoever did the fraud and you're trying to recover your money. Got it. This is don't pay the money. Find it that moment in time And that's the beginning. And now we're looking at not only within companies but also across the baby to be with suppliers, right? Right, Because there's a lot of schemes where supplier might have a relationship with multiple people at the companies, and they have all sorts of schemes might be going on. So as we start doing that, back to community intelligence will be looking at how to surface that the entire community at large for the benefit of everybody. >> That was something that really struck me Russia yesterday when Rob kicked everything off and I just thought, you know, it's not just a community that has access to all the transactions 1.2 trillion dollars $1,000,000,000 in transactions going through the Cupid platform, which is five x increase in just the last few years alone, which is huge, but it's this collaborative community where customers from company and company be that are using are gonna be able to benefit from each other. It's It's this vision, though, that you guys have had for a long time a Cooper to build it around this community, this tribe and as we look at how many patterns in everyday lives B to B B to C are changing, being community driven, whether it's 80 plus percent when I was talking to China are a little bit ago, 80 plus percent of buying decisions are done are driven by the buyer. Is there so much access to information? Don't you want it? You wanna learn from others who have experienced good or bad with a particular supplier or particular thunder and share that information? And so really, the collaborative spirit of Cooper's community is really it's just seems quite unique to me. >> It has been quite incredible, and when it started, it started in face to face. It wasn't in the technology itself. When we started, it was in community advisory board meetings were sitting up and thinking about areas we want to go to. You came into inspire. Today I'd say, for example, a couple inspires ago I came and I talked about a new concept that we're getting into. I left the stage and several customers came to me, and they're like, We want to help shape this And I said, Absolutely, and guess what they did. They took it upon themselves to organize the meetings and to lose. They unlock getting, they brought customers themselves. And we went in there and we co developed and co created the product by working with everyone, and that was always the spirit. And then what we did after that is his layer the technology on top, which is to start looking at the entire big data and start to anonymous eyes. All of that data aggregated and start surfacing these least insights about risk, about fraud, about opportunities for companies. One of the exciting things, for example, now we have in the community is if you want to go look to buy anything, you can go and search for what will come back to you is a bunch of suppliers with a lot of data about them. But what's special here, This is not win. Go look at the directory and give you did about a directory of what the supplier said about themselves. We want after the entire transactions across the whole ecosystem. Okay, that has been anonymous ized. And we're telling you, based on that data, these suppliers are my are supplying this item. You're getting real world information about who are supplying them with scores on how good they are. It's really, really exciting chef that we're taking as we go into the world of of community intelligence and apply and get a >> large. Yeah, well, it's another thing that you guys to really well, that I've served in the last couple of days is we're talking about customer advisory boards before, and I know a number of customers that were on the program with me the last couple of days. Talked about that. These customers are what this example that you just gave this very cool where they're driving, they're bringing you to Maur customers. But that sense of customers feeling Cooper isn't only listening to us. There were co carrying with them. They're part of this community. That's also something that was refreshing to hear. Thank you, because at the end of the day, that's why any business is in businesses. You're selling a product or service. You're not creating something that's hopefully going to meet some esoteric right problem are concerned. It's that co creation there, that that vibe is very, very evident. I've seen it. I heard it from customers that were on stage, those that were here with us today, and that's something that I just think it's really kind of sets people apart. >> Thank you, thank you. It's been a true joy. I mean, when I think of can't remember where this but it really resonated with me is a real bonding happens when you co create something together. And that is the essence of why we have this fight that you are feeling with customers. Because do you take examples like Nike? When they started on their journey with us, Nike wanted to go into a pigment factory and how to factor payments. When we first started, we were very upfront about our capabilities. We cannot support these things, but we started to discover, talk about it, rolled up our sleeves, and we started to dig in in their use cases were different. Their use cases, where, where they're looking at all of the invoices for that are thousands of lines long because of all the different parameters on the shoes that they are getting for orders. When we looked at these, we didn't have these give abilities. We partnered with them, and as we did that we did it in nothing. Isolation. We did it because we know there are other customers like this. Have this needs. We just haven't tipped them. Yes, yes. So we started to talk to all these customers, validate ideas. And we went on a journey that went on for a good two and 1/2 years and now has made the product so strong and so many customers are using these kind of capabilities. But the school created all of that together, which is incredibly special. >> Another thing as we're getting close to wrapping up here that you talked about your keynote today that was also mentioned yesterday. A number of times is speaking of co creation overthe 300 new developments and advancements in the platform since just last year's inspired 12 months. That's a tremendous amount of of R and D, but that's done in conjunction with this community. This co creation there is really allowing you guys to move. Probably faster. Imagine. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. And the pace is just incredible on. Of course, that's part of the growth where we now have separate teams dedicated for each of these functional areas so we can drive more and more of those kinds of ideas. But yes, I would only accelerating. We're growing. So we >> should be seeing even. Well, that's good cause of the A M. Cooper. It's for accelerated. Exactly. What are you doing here? I wish we had more time. I think you and I were just scratching the surface that you're gonna have to come back. >> I would love it. Such a pleasure to >> thank you. Thank you. I hold a cz. Well, thanks for having us here. It's awesome. And I can't wait to see where the next year goes. Thank you. All right. So Russia, huh? Mood? I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube from Cooper A inspire 19. Thanks for watching