>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering Microsoft Ignite, brought to you by Cohesity. >> Good morning, everyone, and welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite. 26,000 people from around the world have descended onto the Orlando, here in Orlando, for Microsoft Ignite. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my cohost, Stu Miniman. We are joined by Christina Warren. She is the senior cloud advocate at Microsoft. Thank you so much for coming on the show. >> Thanks so much for having me. >> So I'd love to have you talk a little bit about your work as a senior cloud advocate. And you are responsible for a lot of the video strategy of Channel 9. >> Yeah, I am. So we have a cloud advocacy scene within developer relations, and most of our advocates are focused on either kind of a specific technology area or a specific audience. I'm a little bit different in that I am kind of of a, I call myself, I'm kind of a jack of all trades, master of none. So I go across a lot of different technology areas, but I look at our video content and our video strategies that we have at Channel 9 and our YouTube channel, Microsoft Developer, and some of our other channels, and I think about what are they types of stories we want to tell, what's content do we want to create for our audience, and how can we bring new developers into our ecosystem, as well. >> So what are those stories? I mean, what do you, what are you hearing from customers and what are you hearing also from colleagues at Microsoft that say, "Here's something that we need to tell the world about"? >> Yeah, so I think it's really interesting. I think there are a lot of things. One, there, we were talking a little bit before the show. There's kind of an insatiable, I think, need for a lot of people how to get started, whether it's getting started coding, if you're wanting to learn Python or learn JavaScript or something else, or even if you're just wanting to, you're starting to get into infrastructure, and you're wanting to learn, okay, how do I, you know, spin things up on the cloud. How do I set things up? And having some of that base fundamentals content is really important, but I also think sometimes it's about troubleshooting, and it's about figuring out what are the new services. What can this do for me? And I think a lot of times, when I think about the stories we want to tell, it's not, oh look at how great our service or our product is but it's this is designed to ease my pain points and make my life as a developer or an ops person easier. >> Christina, in the early days, everybody thought that, you know, the promise of cloud was it, it was supposed to be simple and inexpensive, and unfortunately, we learned it is neither of those things by default, so, you know, how do we help people to go from, you know, it's only 20% of applications today are in the cloud. You know, really simplicity is something we need to attack, and education is one of those areas that we need, you know. Give us some examples of some of the things that your team's doing to try to help us get to the majority of environments and work loads. >> Yeah, so a great example is, you know, .NET Core 3.0 launched a couple of months ago, and there's been a big push there with cloud-native apps and cloud-native applications, and so we have like a new video series, The Cloud Native Show, that my colleague Shane Boyer heads up, where they go through kind of all the steps of cloud-native development. And what's great about this is that you have existing .NET developers who have not, to your point, you know, 80% of applications are still not on the cloud, so they're going from that older environment. And then this is saying, you can take the skills you already have, but this is how you think about these things in this new environment. And for a lot of things when it comes to tech, if you're, the way I can always think about things is the next generation of developers, they don't know a non-cloud world. They're literally cloud-first, and I think that's an important thing for all of us to consider is that the next generation developers, the kids who are in high school now, the kids who are in college, they don't know, you know, the pain of having to provision and deal with their own, you know, servers or data centers. They've only known the cloud. And so, but that's an interesting opportunity both to create cloud-first content for them, but for the people who have been using things to say, okay, what you've already been doing, there are changes, but you're not starting from zero, and you can take some of the things you already know and just move that into, into the new world. >> Yeah, well, one of the interesting things we've found this week is that when we talk about engaging with Microsoft, it's not just .NET, it's not just Windows, or Azure. We talked yesterday with Donovan Brown and Scott Hanselman, and it's you know, any app, any language, your tools, pulling those off together. That's really challenging from, you know, creating content out there, because, you know, you're not going to recreate the entire internet there. So how do you tie in what you're doing with other resources and have that, you know, communication, collaboration out there in the industry? >> So a lot of it I think from what I do and what a lot of us do, I look, I used to be a journalist, so I look at what's interesting to me and what stories I would want to tell and what things I would want to know more about. And so, you know, Visual Studio Online, which was announced this week, massive announcement. I'm super excited about that. I am super excited about what that means, and I know that the audience is going to be excited about that. So I look at an announcement like that, and I'm like okay, what kind of content can we work with with those product teams to do? What sort of tutorials would I like to build? What things would I want to know more about if, if I were, you know, really experienced or just getting started? And I think some other areas are, for instance, Windows Subsystem for Linux 2, WSL 2 will be coming out in the future. That's a great opportunity for people who are both familiar with Linux and might not be familiar with Linux to kind of get started and using Windows as their development platform. And so when I see trends like that happening or things around, you know, containers, you know, Kubernetes, you know, containerize all the things, start thinking about, okay, what are the opportunities? What are cool examples? What would I want to see as somebody who, who's tuning in? That's what I always try to think about is what would. I just try to think about it like a journalist. You know, what would an interesting story be to tell from my perspective? What would I want to know more about? And then we can go from there and work with the product groups and work with some of the other teams to make sure that we can tell those stories. >> So, I'm curious. As a former journalist, you spent a decade as a digital editor and reporter and commentator. What made you want to make the leap to big tech? >> You know, okay, so media is not a great place right now. So that's number one. Number two, you know, I was very technical as a journalist, and it was interesting because when I made that transition, I then had to really actually shore up my tech skills. And I said, okay, I have some of the basics, but I really need to like double down and invest in myself and invest in learning more. But I always, even when I was a journalist, I loved telling developer stories, and I loved advocating for developers. Even when I was, I was working at really mainstream places like Mashable, where, you know, they would send me to developer conferences, and I wouldn't just go to the press things. I would want to go to the sessions and talk to the developers and find out, okay, what are you excited about? What are the opportunities you see to build things? What's coming around that has you excited? I've always loved that. And so when the opportunity presented itself for me to be able to do that at Microsoft, I was like, oh, you know, I'd never considered that before, but that's really interesting, and that would be a interesting way of maybe seeing if I can do something else. >> One of the skills that you, that you, is common between what you do now and as work as a journalist is breaking down this technical language and making it accessible for a wider audience, particularly at more mainstream publications. What is your advice for people in terms of how to do that? Because on this show, we have a lot of technically-minded people who can really go deep into technology. But how do you then make it accessible? What is, what is your advice? >> I always try to think of who is your muse as someone who might not know what's, all the intricacies that are going on but is an intelligent person that can understand. So for me, I always use my mom. Now this was easier when I was a tech journalist than it is what I do now because she understands even less what I do now, but I try to think about, okay, how would I explain this to her? She doesn't need to know all of the intricacies, the nitty-gritty. But how could I explain something to her that would be technically accurate but would get the basic idea? And I think a lot of times when it comes to breaking down content, it's just getting to the essence of what problem is this solving, what is this doing that's better or worse, and how does it do it and in starting from there. And it, a lot of times it just takes a lot of work, and you figure out as you go along what getting feedback from users, frankly, based on they might be asking more clarifying questions, or maybe they'll want to know more about something or less about something else. This is confusing for me. And just modulating that as you go along. >> Yeah, Christina, it makes me laugh, actually. When I started blogging, my mother was one of the people that would read, and she would say, "Oh, yes, I heard about this cloud thing before. "I watched it on NPR." It's a nuanced and complicated message. I actually, I roll my eyes a little bit back at the old Microsoft to the cloud videos there, because it was like it didn't resonate. It's the stories that you're telling these days. How do you balance there's the outcomes is, yes, we want to, you know, solve, you know, some of the great challenges and help healthcare, but, you know, underneath, there's some nitty-gritty developer and infrastructure things that get solved. How do you make sure there's the connections between, you know, what the products do and the outcomes? >> Yeah, that's really interesting. You're right, it is a challenge. I think the, the important thing here is not every message has to have all of those components. So you can tell different stories. You could tell one story that's just more focused on the outcome and is just more focused on the opportunity and what's happening in healthcare, and you could have another story that might be about this is what's going on underneath that is allowing those things to happen. >> Yeah, do you, do you have any favorite, you know, outcome stories from Microsoft? >> Gosh, you know, yesterday, during Scott Hanselman's developer keynote, he was, he was, I didn't even know about the Chipotle case study. That was so interesting to me and seeing what they're doing with the different technology. That's, that was a really, that's just the first one that comes to mind I thought was really cool. I'm really excited about the opportunities we have in Quantum, and I'm really excited about opportunities in healthcare because, you know, I think we've all been to the doctor, and we've seen how much IT and how much tech infrastructure could help not just the process of diagnosing and helping things but just, even just the minutia of data entry and record delivery and keeping track of everything. So there, a lot of the things we've done there have been really interesting. >> One of the things you said is you love telling developer stories, and I'm a journalist, too. And I cover entrepreneurs, and I feel the same way about telling entrepreneur stories. Talk about some of the common characteristics you've seen. I mean, we can't obviously generalize an entire population of people, but talk about what you have seen as sort of the common elements of their personalities and their approach to solving problems. >> Right, so I think it's interesting. When I think about any developers, which are a little bit different than enterprise devs, although there are some similarities, you know, you start with, and I know for me when I start first started coding and when I first started building websites and then other things, like, for me, I wanted to either solve a problem, or I wanted to create something that other people could, could see. And so a lot of times that probably one of the more commonalities is, you know, developers, they're in many ways wanting to scratch their own itch. I wanted to do something, I couldn't figure out how to do it, so I built this myself, found out other people were using it, too, and I added features to it. I mean, I think that's what's so great about open-source is that people have the opportunity to collaborate either contributing code or even, you know, doing bug reports and or sharing ideas. And so I, one of the more common elements is I wanted to do something, or I had a really interesting idea, and I didn't see anyone else doing it, and so I just decided to build it myself. It's not that different from entrepreneurs, right. Like it's I see, I see a business opportunity, I see a business I want to do, so I'm going to build it. And that's, wanting to build things is probably the most common thing I see. >> Yeah, Christina, any common conversations or things that are coming up that, you know, people that aren't at this show, you'd like to share? >> Oh, gosh, I mean, I think there's been so much good stuff. I mentioned Visual Studio Online, which I think is really exciting because I'm really excited about being able to like be on my iPad and also code. Like, that's going to be really great. Also, I think the Arc stuff, the Azure Arc stuff is really interesting, the idea of being able to not just be focused on, you know, one platform, but being able to control all of your infrastructure no matter where it is is really, really, that's a really compelling story. That's something that makes me really excited because I love to just automate and simplify things, so anything that can make, you know, the life easier, I think is great. >> As a former journalist, I'd love your thoughts on the state of news today. I know you said you got out of it because it's not a great career path, but the overreach of social media, the spread of fake news, the real and perceived media biases. I'm interested in your thoughts about where we are today, particularly as it relates to coverage of technology. >> It's interesting. I think in some ways technology. For a really long time, most technology coverage was almost cheerleaderish. You could even look back even 20 years when the dot-com crash happened, and I was in high school then, but I was following all of that avidly. The after flow of that, the business press was maybe a little bit burned, but the technology press was still very much gung ho and was still very much cheerleading. That's changed a little bit as we've started to have to grapple with some of the consequences, good and bad, that happened with tech and with the internet. Right now, I almost feel like maybe we've gone a little bit over the edge a little bit more, and some of the critiques are fair, and some of them maybe are just, you know, it's popular to kind of be more negative. So that's been an interesting change, I think to see. You're right, though, when it comes to the spreading of kind of misinformation or people just reading things in headlines, it's really difficult I think, for people to find authoritative voices and things they can trust. Weirdly, though, I do actually think this is an opportunity for the big tech companies to help. This is things that AI could really play a big role in. These are things that could really kind of help, you know, recognize patterns of scan bots and of other things that aren't there and filter that out. But I think even when, I still feel good about journalism as a medium. I still think that the press is one of the most important assets we have, and even when we are going through shakier times, there are opportunities. I think that we will, it'll find it's way. And honestly, I really do think that technology is one of those things that will help get the real things, the important stories out there. >> All right, so, Christina, I guess final word is how should people think of Microsoft in 2019? >> We're here to help. You know, I think that we are, we are a technology company that is, that is creating the tools so that you can build and solve the problems that you need to solve. >> All right, that's a, that's a great note to end on. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Christina. >> Thank you so much for having me. >> Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite coming up in just a little bit. (upbeat instrumental music)

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. (upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Downtown San Francisco at Bespoke. It's in the Westfield Shopping Mall, kind of a cool event space up on the fourth floor, and we're at Girls in Tech Catalyst. We were last here a couple years ago in Phoenix, and we're excited to be back. 700 people, really great event, and the program's pretty simple. You've got great women leaders telling their story, and the stories are varied and really cool, and we just got out of Christina's story. She's Christina Kosmowski, global head of customer success at Slack. >> That's right. >> Christina, really good job up there. >> Thank you. >> There was a couple of things I wanted to really kind of jump on that I thought were so important. In the first one you talk about early in your career and raising your hand. When opportunities come up, don't be afraid, raise your hand, go for it. >> Yeah, absolutely. I was always saying, yes to everything. And now I work on saying no to some things. (laughs) >> That's a whole other conversation-- >> I think it's really important that you know there's all those cliches around the fact that you know you've got to go through the window sometimes or you know opportunities are masked and they really are and so just saying yes to everything and really being open to trying new things and learning new experiences will give you opportunities you didn't even realize you had. And so, I always raised my hand, you know, in college to start the soccer team. I raised my hand in my first job to go to Europe and start the London office. I raised my hand to come to Salesforce, at every single point, Salesforce had something new, I said, oh I want to do it and so I was kind of known as the person who always liked to start and build things from scratch. And so, I always wanted to be that yes person and experience these new opportunities. >> And that was huge, I think you said when you started Salesforce, revenue was like 20 million and when you left it was-- >> Almost 10 million, yeah, it's crazy. It was quite a ride, quite a ride. >> But great, cause then you get those opportunities. >> Yeah. >> Another story you were telling which I thought was pretty impactful was, your college soccer experience, you're a soccer player and you know, the difference between putting in your own work and time to achieve something and, you know, nobody ever sees the work that happens when they're not there, but more importantly, bringing along the team. >> Yeah. >> And getting everybody else to buy into your work ethic to raise the performance of the team. I wonder if you can expand on that a little bit. Cause then you said you've used that throughout your career over and over again. >> I have, it was an important lesson. I think, for those that didn't see that speech, I talked about the fact that my freshman year in soccer, it was the first year of the varsity program. We won three games and I was very angry about that and so I spent the next year kind of working my butt off. And so I got to this level but my rest of the team didn't get to the level and so I was able to challenge them to match my level and we were ultimately able to get, you know, into the top six team in the country at the end of my career and that was the first time that I realized it's not just about me. And I've seen that in every step in the way is, I can get there, I can get my idea there, I can work as hard as I can but if I can't empower the team and I can't bring all the cross-functional leaders along with me, we aren't going to achieve what we need to achieve. And at Slack, I've even seen that to be even more of the case, because I've come into a function that's brand new, it started very much as a product-based company versus Salesforce was a little more sales focused. And so it's really important that people understand what our mission is, why it's important, how we can bring these other organizations with us. >> Right, so a great kind of business theme that touched both on Salesforce and at Slack, it's kind of the subscription economy. >> Yes. >> And we've done this conference and we all switched over to our paid Adobe subscription versus trying to find a friend who'll get you a license for a deal at the end of the year. (laughs) But I think the really important thing that you touched on, when you go to subscription economy it really changes the dynamic between you and your customer. And you run customer success. >> I do. >> Because it's not just take the check and send 'em the 15% maintenance bill anymore, now you've got to build a relationship, you've got to deliver value each and every month cause they're paying you each and every month. And so you've translated that into actually building an organization that supports this very different relationship. >> That's right. >> So why don't you tell us, you know, how did that transform? How hard of a sell was that and what's the ultimate outcome with your relationship with the customers? >> I think it's so important to realize that technology is really important, but if we can't apply that into the business setting and to specific outcomes and use cases, it doesn't become valuable over time. And so, we've built an organization that really focuses on customer maturity and value. And so we take it in steps. And so we look at what are those things we can do to give value and outcomes and affect people the way they're working today? And then what does that look like tomorrow, how do we build upon that, and then what does it look like to, they can get to this fully transformed state, and we've done that through a combination of working with product to build features and in-app education, we work with all of our customers to understand what are their needs, we bring people to the table, we bring one to many programs, we've really created this champion network where we are able to allow these peer to peer relationships, and really have this network effect with our customers, and so there's lots of different methods and vehicles that we're doing to really ensure that our customers are getting that outcome. >> Yeah, it's interesting, we cover a lot of the AWS shows and, you know, Jeff Bezos will talk about them just being maniacally customer focused, and lots of companies like to talk about being maniacally customer focused, but most of them are not, they're product focused or they're competitor focused or they're kind of opportunity focused, they're not customer focused. So, how do you build that culture, can you switch if it's not there or does it got to be from the top down at the beginning? >> You can, you can, I think, you know, at Slack, we've been really fortunate it also has that extreme customer focus, but our organization started about 15 months ago, so we brought even more rigor to that, and so there's lots of programs you can do to affect the culture. So, one of the programs we have is a red account program, and one of the things there is really about bringing all the company together to swarm around issues or risks that our customers might have seen, and that's one way that we can start to talk about customer importance. >> What do you call it? >> We call it the customer red account program. >> Red account, so red like treble, because, so you basically-- >> We swarm. >> Swarm, swarm, what a great, swarm meaning a lot of people from a lot of different places. >> Lot of different places, and there's full accountability on all parts of the organization to solve it, because my organization can't solve everything, we're really just the advocates and the facilitators back into, back into Slack, and so that's important that we have that accountability, and we're swarming all around the customer. We have product feedback sessions where we're able to bring that advocacy back, we have a lot of surveys and that promoter score, things where we're measuring and looking for accountability about how we're doing with out customers, and so there's lots of different programs that you can help bring this to light, even in just tactical ways that help ultimately build this culture of customer success. >> See, so like I said, you've got a lot of sniffers in the system to see when you need to call a code red. So, I'm just curious, when you get everyone together, are people surprised where the problems are, is it like, oh, I thought we were doing a great job, and this group's like, no, no, no, you know, you're the problem? >> Sometimes, sometimes, but I think it is really around it being a team effort and really understanding that when issues or challenges expose themselves, there's multiple root causes and you can really understand, okay, part of it could be a product, part of it could be how we supported them, part of it could be in some of our marketing and messaging. And how do we all solve that in a more universal experience? >> All right, last question before I let you go. Just your impressions of the Catalyst today, you said it's your first time here. >> This is my first time here, I am blown away by the energy and excitement and really the quality of speakers and conversations that are happening, I've been hanging around all morning, and just really powerful conversations, and I think I said this in my speech, but we are in a really fortunate time right now, and I think our time is now, and it's so great to see all these women come together, and we, you know, we're the ones that can do this. >> Excellent, we'll see you Amplify later this year. >> Absolutely. >> All right, Christina, well, thanks for stopping by and sharing your story. >> All right, thanks. >> All right, she's Christina, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're at Girls in Tech Catalyst in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. (upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Downtown San Francisco at Bespoke. It's in the Westfield Shopping Mall, kind of a cool event space up on the fourth floor, and we're at Girls in Tech Catalyst. We were last here a couple years ago in Phoenix, and we're excited to be back. 700 people, really great event, and the program's pretty simple. You've got great women leaders telling their story, and the stories are varied and really cool, and we just got out of Christina's story. She's Christina Kosmowski, global head of customer success at Slack. >> That's right. >> Christina, really good job up there. >> Thank you. >> There was a couple of things I wanted to really kind of jump on that I thought were so important. In the first one you talk about early in your career and raising your hand. When opportunities come up, don't be afraid, raise your hand, go for it. >> Yeah, absolutely. I was always saying, yes to everything. And now I work on saying no to some things. (laughs) >> That's a whole other conversation-- >> I think it's really important that you know there's all those cliches around the fact that you know you've got to go through the window sometimes or you know opportunities are masked and they really are and so just saying yes to everything and really being open to trying new things and learning new experiences will give you opportunities you didn't even realize you had. And so, I always raised my hand, you know, in college to start the soccer team. I raised my hand in my first job to go to Europe and start the London office. I raised my hand to come to Salesforce, at every single point, Salesforce had something new, I said, oh I want to do it and so I was kind of known as the person who always liked to start and build things from scratch. And so, I always wanted to be that yes person and experience these new opportunities. >> And that was huge, I think you said when you started Salesforce, revenue was like 20 million and when you left it was-- >> Almost 10 billion, yeah, it's crazy. It was quite a ride, quite a ride. >> But great, cause then you get those opportunities. >> Yeah. >> Another story you were telling which I thought was pretty impactful was, your college soccer experience, you're a soccer player and you know, the difference between putting in your own work and time to achieve something and, you know, nobody ever sees the work that happens when they're not there, but more importantly, bringing along the team. >> Yeah. >> And getting everybody else to buy into your work ethic to raise the performance of the team. I wonder if you can expand on that a little bit. Cause then you said you've used that throughout your career over and over again. >> I have, it was an important lesson. I think, for those that didn't see that speech, I talked about the fact that my freshman year in soccer, it was the first year of the varsity program. We won three games and I was very angry about that and so I spent the next year kind of working my butt off. And so I got to this level but my rest of the team didn't get to the level and so I was able to challenge them to match my level and we were ultimately able to get, you know, into the top sixteen in the country at the end of my career and that was the first time that I realized it's not just about me. And I've seen that in every step in the way is, I can get there, I can get my idea there, I can work as hard as I can but if I can't empower the team and I can't bring all the cross-functional leaders along with me, we aren't going to achieve what we need to achieve. And at Slack, I've even seen that to be even more of the case, because I've come into a function that's brand new, it started very much as a product-based company versus Salesforce was a little more sales focused. And so it's really important that people understand what our mission is, why it's important, how we can bring these other organizations with us. >> Right, so a great kind of business theme that touched both on Salesforce and at Slack, it's kind of the subscription economy. >> Yes. >> And we've done this conference and we all switched over to our paid Adobe subscription versus trying to find a friend who'll get you a license for a deal at the end of the year. (laughs) But I think the really important thing that you touched on, when you go to subscription economy it really changes the dynamic between you and your customer. And you run customer success. >> I do. >> Because it's not just take the check and send 'em the 15% maintenance bill anymore, now you've got to build a relationship, you've got to deliver value each and every month cause they're paying you each and every month. And so you've translated that into actually building an organization that supports this very different relationship. >> That's right. >> So why don't you tell us, you know, how did that transform? How hard of a sell was that and what's the ultimate outcome with your relationship with the customers? >> I think it's so important to realize that technology is really important, but if we can't apply that into the business setting and to specific outcomes and use cases, it doesn't become valuable over time. And so, we've built an organization that really focuses on customer maturity and value. And so we take it in steps. And so we look at what are those things we can do to give value and outcomes and affect people the way they're working today? And then what does that look like tomorrow, how do we build upon that, and then what does it look like to, they can get to this fully transformed state, and we've done that through a combination of working with product to build features and in-app education, we work with all of our customers to understand what are their needs, we bring people to the table, we bring one to many programs, we've really created this champion network where we are able to allow these peer to peer relationships, and really have this network effect with our customers, and so there's lots of different methods and vehicles that we're doing to really ensure that our customers are getting that outcome. >> Yeah, it's interesting, we cover a lot of the AWS shows and, you know, Jeff Bezos will talk about them just being maniacally customer focused, and lots of companies like to talk about being maniacally customer focused, but most of them are not, they're product focused or they're competitor focused or they're kind of opportunity focused, they're not customer focused. So, how do you build that culture, can you switch if it's not there or does it got to be from the top down at the beginning? >> You can, you can, I think, you know, at Slack, we've been really fortunate it also has that extreme customer focus, but our organization started about 15 months ago, so we brought even more rigor to that, and so there's lots of programs you can do to affect the culture. So, one of the programs we have is a red account program, and one of the things there is really about bringing all the company together to swarm around issues or risks that our customers might have seen, and that's one way that we can start to talk about customer importance. >> What do you call it? >> We call it the customer red account program. >> Red account, so red like treble, because, so you basically-- >> We swarm. >> Swarm, swarm, what a great, swarm meaning a lot of people from a lot of different places. >> Lot of different places, and there's full accountability on all parts of the organization to solve it, because my organization can't solve everything, we're really just the advocates and the facilitators back into, back into Slack, and so that's important that we have that accountability, and we're swarming all around the customer. We have product feedback sessions where we're able to bring that advocacy back, we have a lot of surveys and that promoter score, things where we're measuring and looking for accountability about how we're doing with out customers, and so there's lots of different programs that you can help bring this to light, even in just tactical ways that help ultimately build this culture of customer success. >> See, so like I said, you've got a lot of sniffers in the system to see when you need to call a code red. So, I'm just curious, when you get everyone together, are people surprised where the problems are, is it like, oh, I thought we were doing a great job, and this group's like, no, no, no, you know, you're the problem? >> Sometimes, sometimes, but I think it is really around it being a team effort and really understanding that when issues or challenges expose themselves, there's multiple root causes and you can really understand, okay, part of it could be a product, part of it could be how we supported them, part of it could be in some of our marketing and messaging. And how do we all solve that in a more universal experience? >> All right, last question before I let you go. Just your impressions of the Catalyst today, you said it's your first time here. >> This is my first time here, I am blown away by the energy and excitement and really the quality of speakers and conversations that are happening, I've been hanging around all morning, and just really powerful conversations, and I think I said this in my speech, but we are in a really fortunate time right now, and I think our time is now, and it's so great to see all these women come together, and we, you know, we're the ones that can do this. >> Excellent, we'll see you Amplify later this year. >> Absolutely. >> All right, Christina, well, thanks for stopping by and sharing your story. >> All right, thanks. >> All right, she's Christina, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're at Girls in Tech Catalyst in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(upbeat synthesized music) >> Announcer: Live from the Javits Center in New York City, it's The Cube, covering Inforum 2017. Brought to you by Infor. >> Welcome back to The Cube's coverage of Inforum 2017 here at the Javits Center in New York City. I'm your host, Rebecca Night, along with my co-host, Dave Vellante. We're joined by Christina Van Houten, she is in Infor SVP of industry and solution strategy, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having me. >> So I want to start out by just asking what you do at Infor and how you fit in. >> So we sit in between the people who make products and the people who sell products and we start with really understanding the market, what is needed for a particular industry, even for a particular role, and we work with our customers, we work with prospects, we work with our executives to understand the innovation initiatives they want to do and we drive road maps and then we work with our development teams very closely to develop and release their products and create everything that's needed for customers to buy and deploy and operate them from there. So it's fairly broad, things that we do. >> Right, it's not a small portfolio. >> Yeah, and what's really great about what we get to do is we're really at the nexus of the engineering teams, the marketing teams, sales, and our services organizations as well as our partners as well. >> One of the things we were talking about before the cameras were rolling was this idea of adjacent innovation, and this is something that the CEO Charles Phillips talked about at last year's summit. And I know you've written several white papers about it. Explain this to our viewers, what is adjacent innovation? >> So many of us are familiar with it, I think Charles used the example of the Venetian glass community, which obviously dates back several thousand years, but this idea that if you put several people together that had certain skillsets, it would spawn new ideas that were related but different and you see that all the time in things like government, investments in space, with dehydrated food and cell phones and all these things, geo-spacial stuff, things that we use every day. And Infor had this ecosystem of products that had been acquired over time when I started six years ago and it was just this really rich opportunity to look at all the teams and what they had built. Some of the things were redundant, some were really distinct and applied to one business but really had relevance in another industry. And because we're so disparately located around the world and it's seemingly disparate technology stacks and all those kinds of things, we had to really be deliberate about the way that we facilitated engagement and how we brought those teams together, how we were going to figure out how to integrate the products and ideas, the user experience, and so we started doing things where we would hold end to end, sun up til sun down, demonstrations of our products and had people talk about what they did and how they took advantage of certain capabilities. We're now in, we call them innovation summits, we've now just done our seventh. We do them twice a year and we set out with a very specific goal in each of them. And the last one we did, we evolved to almost doing like an Iron Chef version of solutions so we'll say okay, here's this core horizontal platform, and we want to industry-ize it for these five industries, and actually in one case it was seven. And to be honest with you guys, I was really afraid we were going to show up and people weren't going to have figured it out. And we were blown away by what people were capable of and they took one ingredient, it was one application that they had to use across the board but then they combined it with other ingredients, layered in all kinds of domain, built out some really unique functionality, and you ended up with seven completely, what looked like completely different solutions off a lot of the same four ingredients. >> The power of the crowd, crowd sourcing ideas and insights. >> The other thing that we realized, I think we've even created our own internal magic quadrant out of these events, so it's fun to use peer pressure. And some people just show up, the preparation, weeks in advance, because there's no tougher audience than your peers but we had a lot of fun with it, people really show up and have some amazing things, it's a great opportunity for other teams to learn from them, and it's become a hallmark of our culture, and I get lots of notes after, personal notes from different people in our development organization and I think it's a way for us to really feel connected, it's a way for people to feel like they stay up to speed and then it's a way for people to get recognized for doing really neat things and driving our business forward. What's also interesting is we've been able through that to take advantage of certain teams and almost turn them into consultants for other teams and say alright, you can do a discreet engagement with this team, this team in Colorado's going to do an engagement with this team in Sweden, and because they really figured out how to do this thing and we know that they'll be able to get them live on the same capability in a fraction of the time than if they were pursuing it on their own. >> So Christina, you're not an engineer by trade, you're not a software developer. But you basically run product management for this very vast portfolio, do you speak geek? (laughing) >> That's a good question for my team. I think over time, when I graduated as a theology and government major and I wanted to do economic development, public policy, I never ever imagined that I would be working, I just turned 50, in technology. But I've had over two decades of working in software and I've absolutely loved my career and it's unfolded in a way I couldn't imagine. I think part of the thing is that it's really, within our teams, no one has the ability to do everything, and so there are super technical people, there are amazing bright domain people from different industries, and then I think what I bring is the ability to see connections and to bring people together and ideas together and see where we could take something that maybe other parts of our organization add value in more of a deeper way. So there's an opportunity for me to bring those together, and it's nice to be able to have that role here because otherwise we wouldn't be able to capitalize on all the capabilities that we have. >> So you dabble in geek, you speak just enough geek. >> Just enough, mile wide and inch deep, yeah. >> So in terms of what you're looking for, in a previous interview you talked about the athlete factor as something that you want to see in potential recruits and it's the certain scrappiness. Can you talk a little bit about that? >> Yeah, I see that people can have three areas of strength, there's three legs to the stool, and one is domain in a particular product industry, one is domain in this role, and then the third is just this ability to be really entrepreneurial and go above and beyond and not draw strict boundaries around what your role is and what your day is going to be like and what your job is. And I think more and more we've enabled to really attract that kind of person and in some cases, maybe evolve people to really see things that way and really I think one of the things that our executive team is really focused on from the beginning is act like an owner and I think that's the nice thing about this role in a technology company is you are basically a team of small business owners that comprise one big company and so our teams really act that way. Their passion for their products, their sense of commitment to our customers, and the quality, and the pride that they have on how things have evolved is really very inspiring to me. And some of the people on my team are new and young and have been infused in the last couple years. Some are people who have been with the company for 20 years and I think that mix has really made for a very optimal, talk about portfolio optimization in investments, and I think there's a really good analog there for portfolios of people working on teams and getting that right chemistry and that right mix. >> Can you describe the strategy component of your title and your role? Is it primarily product strategy or development? >> Yeah, it's, first and foremost it's actually more global market strategy so once we've decided what markets we're in, you can imagine that the number of intersections that exist between geo and vertical alone, and then you layer in product. And so we start with well where should Infor be doing business, what's our legacy presence been, what is our established customer base need, and then where our market's going within that. And then we layer in products on top of that and so we really, that view of our business globally but in those increments really helps us be very focused on where our investment is, not just from a product engineering standpoint but in all of the other things that surround that that enable us to do business well. So whether it's cloud infrastructure or feet on the street to do training for our deployments. So that's the strategy piece of it. That then evolves into the product strategy around well what are we going to, there's a million things that people want and so there's a real discipline around figuring out how to whittle it down and tine those capabilities in a way that really delivers something amazing and give people what they want and balance across lots of different stakeholders and constituents. >> So when it comes to giving people what they want, how does Infor think about the customer experience? And what are you doing to optimize that? >> So there's a whole bunch of things actually in the last year that we took on. And it's not that we weren't doing it before but we felt like okay, we've had such a focus on our products and evolving feature function, but we know that we could do a better job of being good to do business with, I guess. And not just in the way the product works, but the entire process from how do you first engage with a product when you might be interested in it, what happens when you actually close the transaction, then the deployment and then operating it. So we deconstructed all of that and then looked at all the places where we could inject technology to make that experience better, and then also change our processes. And so one of the biggest things we've been working on in the last year is something that a lot of companies have but usually it's edge applications so something we call test drive try and buys, and what's interesting is the initial use case for it was hey, Charles said, we need to make our products easier for people to just go and see. What's the latest, how does it work-- >> Take it for a spin. >> Yeah. And not just new prospects, but our customers. They're trying to decide how they're going to evolve, and so we are just launching, we're calling them Test Drives, they'll be on Infor.com, and it will be core ERP as well as things as CRM and EAM and some of the edge apps. And what's really neat about the way we've done it, they're stocked with all kinds of data, we thought about the world based business processes, we have this entire experience when you log in that highlights the things that you can do in it and walks people through. And the reason I mention this is because even though the initial use case was for this engagement experience presale, the discipline around building those has also created an entirely different experience around deployment and also post go live because we are delivering a much more complete solution and that has really driven our experience too because if you're thinking through somebody coming in who doesn't know anything about the product and they need to know what to do and how to sign on and how to execute all the key business process flows, so those standard configurations that we've built out are something that is really driving excellence in our testing and all kinds of things. The other big initiative we've had is online help doesn't seem very sexy, but it really is core to the user experience and a lot of our customers were coming to us saying I would upgrade in a second but I need to know that my users are going to be happy, that they're going to know what to do as soon as we turn this on and so we realized that we needed a more consumer grade experience around the entire tool tips and embedded videos and those kinds of things. So those are part of our Test Drives and part of our standard configurations as well. >> So as you think about, I know we're tight on time, but going forward, when you look at your block diagrams of XI for the architecture, there's a lot of AWS in there, obviously, and that's a platform that you don't have to worry about the plumbing, well somebody does have to worry about the connections, but from a product standpoint, where do you look at it? Just give us a little glimpse of the road map, just subjectively, as to where you see it going. >> Yeah, so what's been really amazing for me over the last six months is our tech stack just moved, finally got to the cloud and multi tenant and it's increased dramatically in its set of capabilities. And so we've had this time, it's sort of like, I know people use the house analogy, building a house, but it is that point where you have phases and a rebuild process where a lot is going on but you don't necessarily see it. And we're finally at that point since the start of this calendar year where our ability to just have an idea and then go execute it and prototype it is mind boggling. We finally hit that delight factor, both I think for our customers and us internally where I've just said, like in our latest innovations, I'm like hey could we go and build this blah blah blah thing, and within a day, somebody had an environment up and was building it out. The tool set that we have available to our teams and to our customers to extend their platform in an easy way, are really, really exciting and really a lot of people are going to be seeing it for the first time here in a lot of cases. >> Well great, thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Christine, it was a pleasure having you on the program. >> Thanks for having me. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Dave Vellante, we will have more from Inforum in a bit. (upbeat electronic music) (bright synthesized music)

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live, from Silicon Valley, it's the theCUBE, covering Mobile World Congress 2017. Brought to you by Intel. >> Hey welcome back. We're here live in Palo Alto at the SiliconANGLE Media Cube studios, our new 4500 square foot office. We merged with our two offices here to have our own studio, and we're covering Mobile World Congress for two days. 8AM to 6 every day, breaking down all the analysis from the news, commentary and really breaking down the meaning and the impact of what's happening, and the trends. We're doing it here in California, bringing folks in and also calling people up in Barcelona, getting their reaction on the ground. We've got our reporters, we have analysts there but all the action's happening here in Palo Alto for our analysis. Our next guest is Christina Ku, director of NTT Docomo Ventures. Welcome to theCube, appreciate it. >> Hi. Well it was good to see you again. >> Great to see you. Obviously we've known each other for over a decade now and you've been in the investment community for a while. The first question is why aren't you there at a Mobile World Congress? Because it's changed so much, it's a telco show and some apps are now thrown in there. But there's so much more going on right now around 5G, AI, software, end to end fabrics. So it's not just "Give me more software, provision more subscribers." It's a whole other ball game. >> That's a great question. So our CEO of NTT Docomo is there, and the C-level team. But we are the innovation team. We have been here since 2005 doing research and then added business development about three years ago and then a ventures team that's been around and now we're part of NTT Docomo Ventures. What we're looking for is more services and software and this year I guess the focus is AI. And AI is, I would call it the new infrastructure. Since wireless networks are all data now, the new infrastructure is AI rules. Rules for everything, vertical and new maps. So I can talk a little bit more what we've been seeing in kind of the software and services area and how we're looking at the Bay Area as kind of the new innovation to bring back to Japan to work with NTT Docomo. >> That's awesome. Let's take a minute, Christina, if you can, just before we get started, take a minute to explain what your role is and the group that you're in at NTT Docomo here in the Bay area. What you guys are doing, the focus, and some of the things that you're involved in. >> Great yeah, thanks. So, I'm a director and I invest on behalf of two funds. One is NTT Docomo Ventures for NTT Docomo, the wireless carrier. Sixty-million subscribers, all in Japan. Our competitor is SoftBank. We're bigger in Japan, and have more market share. And also the NTT Group has a two hundred and fifty million dollar fund. They're off the 101 Freeway. There's NTT Security, i-Cube, a division of companies, as well. And the idea is to bring these technologies through start ups, through BD, to help them enter Japan. And also, to invest, a minority investment. >> That's awesome. So you have to pound the pavement, go out there and see all the action. Obviously, Silicon Valley, a lot of stuff happening here, and you've got a lot of experience here. Your thoughts on the business model, and how the AI as a service, you mentioned that, which is, we totally see the same thing. We see a confluence of old network models transforming into personal networks. We're seeing a trend where the relationship to the network, if you will, from a personal standpoint, could be the device initially, but now it's wearables. It's the watch, it's the tablet. So now people have this connection, digital connection to the network. Might not be just one network, it could be two, so now AI has to come in, and people are speculating that AI could be that nice brokering automation between all the digital services. Whether I'm jumping into an autonomous vehicle >> So if you refer to services for consumers, then the approach that we have is to offer a B to B to C business model, so in each lifestyle category. We purchased a cooking school, or a percentage of a cooking school, ABC Cooking. And then we were looking for kitchen devices, right, to offer that service, an oven, a bluetooth connected pan. I think some of these devices will be showing up at a Mobile World Congress. And then, people want a service wrapped around that. Same thing happened last year with fitness, with Fitbit, but also there's so many other devices to monitor your heartbeat and your health at the consumer level. But consumers want a service provider, someone to put that together for them. And I think AI would be in that layer. >> So when you say service, you don't mean like, network services or connections, you mean lifestyle services. You mentioned cooking. By the way, Twitch has one of the most popular shows in Korea. People watch each other eating food. It's one of the hottest live-streaming shows. But this kind of talks about that. You mentioned healthcare. Is this the kind of new software you see? And these are kind of the new digital services? Is that what you're looking at? >> That's exactly what we're looking at. I think people don't associate a carrier and services. In Asia, more so, maybe Korea, and Japan, because 5G will happen there, first. And Docomo will be the first carrier to have 5G in Japan. I think Korea, they'll have their version first. So I think with that, we have been, I guess since the days of i-mode, offering services, in a way. Because PC, and phone has been analogous, all data services have been just data in Japan. >> What's your take on 5G right now? Because obviously that's the big story at Mobile World Congress. Is it real? Is this one of the big upgrade areas? Do you see that being a catalyst? >> Yeah, I mean, we will have it for the Tokoyo Olympics. So we're working on that. >> And what kind of speeds are they talking about? Gigabit, is that what they're looking at? >> Yeah, I think it's within 30 seconds you can download a full HD movie. >> (laughs) I want that. >> For consumers like me right? >> Come on, I want that now. We had our last guest talking about that. "What am I going to do with a Gig?" I'm like, well, apps will figure it out. That's one of the beautiful things about software. What's the coolest thing that you've seen? In terms of, as you look at some of the things that are around the corner, what are some of the cool highlights that you see connecting the dots with some of these new kinds of services? What's the trends? >> Depends on if you say consumer, enterprise, or kind of core. Like I said, what's in the home is interesting. On the infrastructure side, mapping. I think new types of beyond Waze mapping, 3-D drone mapping. >> The drone thing is super hot. That is killer. >> But it requires a new data set. >> Yeah. >> Right? And if you look at, Waze is great, but if you look at it, it's almost outdated, now, right? In terms of what you can imagine, if there is a tree that comes up because of a storm, or has fallen down, you want that map to configure that. So that the drone can fly over the building, or the tree, or whatever's in the way. So you need real-time mapping, and I think that's an interesting area that we've been looking at a lot. >> And connectivity will fuel a lot of these devices, whether they're drones, or other sensors on the network. As that's, I'd imagine, the good instrumentation out there for that stuff. >> And also social data. The confluence of easy, cheap social data. And then marrying that, and stitching that in there. You know, we've found companies that will identify you through video, like computer vision, and a drone will follow you and recognize you through AI. >> That's cool. >> That's kind of, you know, there may be small increases in innovation, but without the AI and the machine learning, you can't- >> Yeah, it's interesting, you know, this lifestyle, these services. I think that's the right strategy in the right direction. Because we were just having a debate earlier this morning on theCube, here, about autonomous vehicles. Because one of the four categories of the hot trends in Mobile World Congress is autonomous vehicles, entertainment and media, smart cities, and home, automating and all that stuff. And that's all an opportunity for services. But we were debating that transportation's not going away, but I might not buy a car in the future. The differentiation might come from really cool software that allows me to take my preferences, my Spotify playlist, all my digital services that I am leveraging into an environment, whether it's a car, a theater, a park, a stadium. Whatever lifestyle I'm in, I can then move with my digital ecosystem, if you will. My personal- >> Your preferences. >> My digital aura, if you will, and not have to reboot, and connect. I mean right now, my phone works. I just associate, but you know, still, it feels clunky. So I think that's kind of a cool direction. Is that something that you see that telcos and most folks will pick up? Or is that just you guys doing that right now? >> I think what interests me about NTT Docomo when I joined was that they're kind of in the forefront, and in kind of leadership of that. And I think Korea and Japan, in Asia, are looking ahead. What do you do with unlimited data? And then kind of following you everywhere. So I think AI, uh, you know, we had SIRI, Shabette Concierge, which was, I guess, our version of SIRI a long time ago. There's a lot of voice-enabled applications. So, I guess, will that be the interface? I think another interesting concept is what will be the interface? The phone, Amazon Echo, what will be the natural interface for you to connect to these devices and preferences? >> Take us through the day to day in the life of a VC, kind of the deals that you do. What happens in your day to day life here in Silicon Valley? Take us through some of the things that you go through every day. >> Most days, I guess, just meeting with companies and trying to find, you know, the next one. There's so many great areas, and also the next trends. We also do a lot of enterprise deals. So I've been looking at security, cloud, a lot of the devops, or kind of what's around the cloud systems. Finding the right companies. And then, also intersecting with my, I have a business development team, and they connect to Tokyo, so there at night, talking to the business group leaders. And finding that balance of, what is a technology that would work in Japan? What are they interested in? And then, out here, scouting for those companies. >> Yeah, one of the sub-plots of the Mobile World Congress this year, which is consistent with pretty much the trend is that the enterprise, IT, is evolving very quickly because of the cloud. Amazon has certainly demonstrated the winning in the cloud. And security, no perimeter, API economy, these new trends are forcing IT to move from this proven operational methodology to very agile, data-driven, high-compute clouds. And security's one of the huge issues. And now you have multi-clouds, where I might have something in Azure, I might have something in Amazon, I might have something in a geographic basis around the world trying to operate globally, being a multinational, is challenging. What's your take on that? Because this is an area that is not sexy as the consumer play, but in the B-to-B space, it is really front and center. RSA conference just last week, we were talking on email about RSA. Two weeks ago, that was the number one thing. You've got the cybersecurity issues, you've got the cyber surveillance, and also just the threat detection from ransomware to just consumer phishing. What's your thoughts in this area? >> So, I guess we're looking at kind of what's the next new area, which would be using AI to analyze all this data that's coming in, from the perimeter, from the end point, on your network, right? And then what can bubble up to the surface? We've invested in two companies in this area: Centrify and Cyphort. Looking for, kind of, other companies that- >> John: Well, Centrify, they're really focused on the breech. >> They're really focused, yes. >> Tom Kemp, in fact we went to their party at the RSA, Jeff Frick and I. They had a great band. Had a good time with those guys. But they're doing extremely well. They're very focused on mobile. >> They're doing really well, yeah. >> So what is the challenge, in your mind, right now, if you're an entrepreneur out there, for the folks watching? They're looking for kind of like the white space. They're looking for some tea leaves to read. Could you share any color on just advice for the entrepreneurs out there? Because it's certainly a turbulent time in the enterprise, and just in general, the cloud market. >> It's very competitive. >> Advice for entres, where should they focus? What sort of key metrics should they be building their ventures around? >> I think it depends on if you have an idea, or have a product already, but I think it's very competitive, right? And it's hard to break out of. What's your product differentiation? On the enterprise space, I think building a product, solving the problem. And then once you've done that, built a great team, then sales. And I think in the security space, trying to get to a million ARR, right? Just getting to a certain scale- >> So tell us about Centrify. When did you guys invest in those guys? Early, was it later on, which round did you guys- >> We invested, in the last round, so, uh, we were late stage investors, but we're very happy with the investment. They're doing very well. >> Awesome. Any other cool things you're working on that you'd like to share? >> We have taken apart AI, and started to look at transportation, so I think mapping is a little bit a part of that. It's also driving different industries, like e-commerce, IoT. We've looked at IoT. >> You must get a lot of this all the time, and I've got to ask you the same question, because I always get asked, "John, what is AI?" Now, I have two answers. Oh, AI's been around for a long time, but then there's a new AI. How do you answer that question? Because AI as a service essentially is software in the world paradigm, and it certainly is happening where you're going to start to see some significant software advances. But AI in and of itself is evolving. How do you describe AI as a service? How would you describe it to the layperson out there? >> I think, maybe its early stage, it's the team, and the technology. How many PhDs, you know, what are you looking at? What type of machine learns? That's, we have the more technical team. We build services. You know, my boss' boss is the head of services and he reports to the CTO of Docomo. His team and he, they look at that. Then on the other hand, though, I think its later stage, is vertical industries. Have people taken it apart, put it together, and then are monetizing that? So I think it's- >> John: It's a lot of machine learning. A lot of data-driven, So algorithms over data, or data over algorithms? Is there a philosophy there? I mean, that's a debate that people love to talk about. >> Maybe it depends on where you're applying it, who it's for, where do you get the data, how do you train the data? And, you know, what is the result? And are people happy with the result? I think the core infrastructure, I think once an AI company becomes hot, then it gets bought, and at that point, we all know who the players are. And people are probably looking for more and more of those, so I think those are harder to find. So then, like I've said, we've taken that apart, and maybe we've looked at mapping. What are maybe more the components underneath that that we can start to say this is going to be huge in the future? >> Yeah, and I think that's a great philosophy, too. If you look at how IBM has branded Waston, you could almost look at how successful that's been because people can get a mental model around that. And they've taken a similar approach, although I would say they've done very good on the vertical packaging. And a lot of work's going on, now, I think we're seeing down in the guts of the tech. I think there's a machine learning and more going on there, which is really cool. >> Which utilizes the cloud, right, and- >> That's where the power- >> That's where the power is. >> The compute. I mean Amazon has that. At the last re-invent, they announced the machine learning as a service. You're starting to see this now, where people can take a iterative approach to leveraging this AI as a service. I'm really impressed by that. Congratulations on a great strategy. I think that should be a winner. >> Yeah. Thank you. And that's going to be probably a core business model. I think other telcos should take notice of that. But maybe we shouldn't tell them we're alive. We can't put it back. Christina, thanks so much for coming in, appreciate it. Christina Ku, here, inside theCube. Special coverage of Mobile World Congress. Doing all the investments, checking out all the new business models, and really looking at AI as a service, and that really is cutting edge. That really is consistent with the data. It's theCube, we'll be right back with more after this short break. (tech music) (digital music)

>>Fly from Houston, Texas. It's the cube covering Grace Hopper celebration of women in computing. >>Welcome back to the cubes coverage of the Grace Hopper conference here in Houston, Texas. I am your host, Rebecca Knight. We have a great panel today. Uh, three distinguished guests, Jeanette Epps, an aerospace astronaut. Uh, an engineer at NASA, Mimi Valdez, a executive producer on the film, hidden figures and Christina DOJ who is a, I want to call her a rocket scientist. She will not let me, she's an electrical engineer at, at, at NASA. Thank you so much for joining me. Hey Jeanette. I want to start with you. Um, recently president Obama has said we're gonna put men on Mars, men and women, men and women on Mars. How realistic is that? I mean, it's exciting for the, for the rest of us, non astronauts to hear this is, is it realistic? >>It is realistic. And one of the things I love that he, he did that was that it gives a national initiative to go back to Mars. And so that means that people will get more involved in STEM careers, especially girls will get more involved. And it's kinda like, you know what JFK did back in the 60s to give us that push a goal, an end goal to do something. Great. >>And do you think that, you know, he said by 2030, it's not very long from now. I mean, is it going to happen? I mean, what's, >>well right now a witness is working on is we have the NASA Orion program and it's a, uh, a power light capsule that will be launched off of one of the largest rockets bigger than the Saturn five or as big. And so that the mission of NASA, Orion is to take us beyond low earth orbit and go deeper into space. So we're looking at NASA, Orion, potentially maybe being the ship that will go to Mars and you know, maybe we have more work to do, but all of getting the nation onboard with going to Mars will inspire a new generation to do great things that will help us to get to Mars. Even >>Obama has said he loves science as a kid. That was his favorite subject in school. And do you think that it will have this galvanizing effect of, as you said, making sure more little boys and girls are studying STEM? >>Well, I've seen it already with some of the tweets and different things, questions that kids ask me nowadays. I think every kid has in their heart this goal to go to Mars now. And um, I can't go to a conference or anywhere without, uh, some young child asking about Mars and what, what are, how are we going to get there? When are we going to get there? And you know, I think one of my jobs is to inspire them to get involved in STEM and help us to get to Mars. There's a lot of technology that we need to develop and produce so that we can get astronauts to live longer away from the earth surface. We have the propulsion system that can get them there faster and bring them back home long. Will it take, well, it depends on the propulsion system that we developed. So there's a number of things that we're working on to make sure that what president Obama has said will get us to Mars in the 2030s if it's pushed out to a little later, that's fine. We're working on it and we're, we're going forward with them. >>Mimi, I want to talk to you now about the film hidden figures. Uh, we'll be out in some theaters and Christmas wide release in January. It is the story of black women mathematicians working in the 1960s at NASA. How did you find out about this story? Well, I give credits at Donna gelato, one of the producers on the film who optioned the book when it was a book proposal. So before the book was even written, she optioned this the story, and it's just this amazing story that the world doesn't even know about. We all know about John Glenn's mission. He came back a national hero. It was a moment in history that galvanized the world. You know, America winning the space race. But we don't know the story of all these brilliant mathematicians, all these women who actually will really responsible Katherine Johnson specifically who hand calculated those numbers for his cause. >>Everybody, I mean, I think this is such an amazing thing to do. And, and again, we just don't know her story. And as well as Dorothy Vaughn and Mary Jackson, I mean, so many women that worked at NASA that were just, um, they were hidden. You just don't know their stories. So, so the film tells their story, it tells their, um, it tells what they did, how they helped John Glenn. Did John Glenn appreciate that John Glenn actually would not go into space unless Katherine double checked the numbers. Like he wanted her to actually, you know, he, he, he trusted her because this is when the IBM computers were first coming into NASA. So they had started asserted use that and he was like, Hmm, I, I need Catherine to check the numbers before I go into say they were friends, professional colleagues. I mean he just knew who, you know, obviously she, she was really responsible and sort of that whole mission. >>And, and you know, for him it was just sort of like, eh, these computers thing, this was like a new thing at NASA. He's like, I need a human to make sure that these numbers are right. Right. Yeah. So we're excited about the film. Who's in it? Taraji P Henson plays captain Johnson. Octavia Spencer, please. I'm Dorothy Vaughan and Janell Monae. Um, she's a, uh, a musician. This is sort of her first really big role and she plays Mary Jackson. Kevin Costner is the head of the space station. Um, we have really great actors, but I think what was really important to everyone who participated in the film was everyone understood the importance of the story and wanting to make sure that we got it right. And also, you know, movies are supposed to be entertaining, but when they can be also inspirational and educate in some way, the fact that some young girls somewhere may see this movie and decide to pursue a career in math or science or any of the STEM careers is really gratifying to us because that's what we would love to accomplish. >>You know, Christina, you have been at NASA for nine years. Uh, tell me about your style, how you got, how you got to NASA in the first place. So I've always loved space since I was like a young child. I was in fifth grade when I told my parents that I wanted to work for NASA. So really since that point, like that was, you know, my dream. And so I, you know, pursued the math and science. Those were some of my favorite subjects. Um, luckily I had some supportive parents who really like saw that desire in me and kind of nurtured and encouraged me to, Hey, if that's what you want to do, then you go for it. We'll do whatever we can. Um, and then I came across some NASA opportunities in high school. Um, and one of the programs was the high school aerospace scholars program. >>And in that program I kinda got a glimpse into what it was like to be an engineer, to work at NASA. I got to speak with, you know, fight directors and um, flight controllers. And there's so many people who contribute to the space program. And that experience really solidified my desire to pursue STEM, STEM. Um, so I started to electrical engineering and then from there, um, you know, did the internship at NASA and I've enjoyed my career so far. It's been a, it's been a great experience. And so you work on the jet propulsion system of spaceships. Um, I work Lena. Um, I work on the power systems power systems. So you are, what do you do? So, um, as an electrical engineer on power systems, I work on the design of the power system testing. Um, basically everything on the spacecraft is going to need power. >>So I'm responsible for how I need to provide power, how much, um, when we talk about going to Mars, that's a, that's a long duration mission and power is something that, um, you have to budget for. So we need to advance that technology to support these missions that, um, our administration has said we want to go there. How are y'all going to accomplish this? So there's a lot of um, design hands on work and it's, you know, it's a challenge. But I mean, together as a team, we can, I believe that will, you know, meet that goal and be able to deliver a power system that will take us to Mars. So this is a question for rip for really all of you. You're an astronaut, you were working at NASA, you just made a movie to encourage young women to, to, to, to get into the STEM field. Why is it NASA recruiting here at, at, at Grace Hopper and, and should it be, do not, do you want to take this? >>Well, that's a good question. It's not that I'm mass and I don't, it's not that I don't think NASA has a desire to recruit here. I think there's recruiting times where people come out and do that. But I think I'm, one of the things that we do in the astronaut Corps, we try to go out and attend conferences like that and try to inspire students to be interested in NASA to understand what NASA is doing, to understand, you know, the shuttle retired. But we're still flying. In fact, when I fly to space and hopefully in 2018 I'll fly with the Russians. But in the meantime, NASA's building two shadows that would take astronauts to the international space station and NASA, Orion, that'll take us deeper into space. So we want to try to inspire with our stories and get people interested in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and now even the arts, the arts play a big part of this. The arts play a big part of the well, yeah, I think I'm as a scientist and looking at patterns and things like that, there's a lot of um, people who, um, begin to work in the arts, even if it's building things with their hands and making, sculpting things, painting things. And so there's a lot of artwork that comes into play in science that is >>really refreshing, exciting, count, counterintuitive. I mean, what would you say are the ways we've talked about getting them, getting them interested through, through film. Um, talking about, uh, Obama making this, this grand announcement and Treme, what are some other ways that we can get the next generation into this field? Well, representation is obviously important. I think when people get to see images in the media of these different fields and all the possibilities, I mean every kid on this planet is obsessed with their phone, maybe not realizing like the importance of these STEM careers that are making these phones even possible or even exist. And I think the more that we can expose these careers and all these possibilities, I think it will just be just more beneficial just for humanity in general. I mean, as we know, nothing in this world can exist without math. >>Nothing. So the more that we can sort of encourage young people to see what an incredible career this is in all the possibilities that go into it, I just think we'll be better off as a nation and as a, you know, just globally as a world. Jeanette, I mean, do you have any thoughts about how, what you would advise someone? I mean you started at NASA nine years ago. So I mean, as an engineer I feel like, I mean I am making some contribution, but really the way I feel like I have more impact is through mentoring and you know, participating in those outreach type of activities for, uh, younger students like K through 12. And then also, um, you know, undergraduate like where they're really like trying to figure out what are the career options and STEM. And so that's how I feel I can have an impact there. >>And these movies help because there's a surge of like, like it's inspirational for young students to see this and be like, Oh, I never knew that that was an option. And so we get outreached to NASA, um, our request to, you know, interact with, uh, local schools and communities and kind of, um, you know, do all my lessons or just teaching with them, just talking about kind of like what the career is like. So, um, I mean I hoping that I can contribute in that way for younger, younger people. Janette are, you are an impressive astronaut, but you are also known as a black woman astronaut. Yeah. D do you do, do you bristle at that or do you embrace it? What, what do you, how, what's the responsibility? >>Oh, I totally embrace it. You know, I'm young ladies always ask me, did you have a problem being a black woman and engineering? And I always tell them that, um, I don't have a problem with being a black woman. And if other people do, then that's their problem. I totally embrace it because I'm, one of the things that I didn't realize was that, um, there's still a need to have positive role models and images of yourself. You know, growing up, my mom never taught my twin sister and I that you couldn't do something because you are a female or Brown. But there are a lot of young ladies that actually do experience that. And so having a positive roam out of it, show them that, Hey look, if I can do this, you can do this too. There's no reason you shouldn't be doing this right now yourself. >>So you are a role model. And how do you then also make sure that it's active role modeling and not just sort of standing on a pedestal of. >>One of the things I like to do is like Catherine Johnson and these great ladies that, you know, without them I, you know, I wouldn't be here is you have to do well and you have to perform well. You have to do the same work that your colleagues are doing and don't do less and don't accept less either. And when it comes to the hard work, put in the time, do the work, complete the tasks and make sure you're, you're representing yourself and your group well and you don't want to be accounted as well. You know, she's the one that we've got to help and we've got to do this, but you want to be a contributing member to every group that you're a part of and completing the tasks, doing the same work if not better. I like to say do better work, but you know, you want to be a part of the. >>Yeah. But that puts so much pressure too because it is, it's, it's be a contributor, but also don't mess up because you are under a microscope to some degree because those are, >>you know, messing up isn't, isn't. Um, failure is never, um, should never be. If it's unintentional, that's okay because you always learn from your mistakes and you have to forgive yourself and keep moving forward. If you stop right there because of a failure, um, you wouldn't go anywhere. We all fell. And it's how you respond to it. That matters. >>Yeah. Every failure is an opportunity to learn. And I think, um, you know, yeah. You can't be scared. I mean, the first and foremost is just doing a good job that, cause once, if you're just dedicated and focused on that, then I think great things can happen. And then failure is really a, a buzzword in Silicon Valley too. Right now. It's a fail fast. Um, and this idea, as you were talking about that it's your response to failure that makes a difference. Yeah. And NASA, I became familiar with this famous phrase of failing forward, meaning that yes, you're going to encounter problems, but if you are learning from the, if you're making improvements, you can design something better. So we call it failing forward. And that concept has, I've embraced that comset and it's, you know, I've encountered many failures. I mean, designing new hardware. It's not gonna, you know, work right off the box. And I'm kind of embracing that idea that it's a learning experience. As long as you don't give up as if you're applying what you learned, then that is not a failure. Christina, this is great. Christina DOJ, Mimi Valdez, Jeanette Epps. Thank you so much for joining us today. This has been such a having to be here. I'm not worthy. Thank you. This has been Rebecca Knight live coverage of the Grace Hopper conference here in Houston, Texas. We'll be back after this break.

>>The Cube presents UI Path Forward five. Brought to you by UI Path. >>Hi everybody. Welcome back to Las Vegas. You're watching the Cube's coverage of UI Path Forward. Five. We reach cruising altitude on day two. Christina Seacrest is here. She's the process Artificial intelligence and automation GPS automation leader at ey. And Bob PCIs, executive director for Intelligent Automation for the state of Tennessee. Folks, welcome to the cube. Thank you for Adam. >>Good >>To have you. Okay, I don't know if I messed up that title, Christina, but it's kind of interesting. You got process, you got ai, you got automation, you got gps. What's your role? >>I have a lot of rules, so thank you for that. Yeah, so my focus is first and foremost automation. So how do you get things like UI path into our clients, but also I focus specifically in our government and public sector clients. So sled specifically. So state local education. So that's why I'm here with the state of Tennessee. And then we also like to take it beyond automation. So how do you bring an artificial intelligence and all the technologies that come with that. So really full end to end spectrum of >>Automation. So Bob, when you think about the sort of the, the factors that are driving your organization of, how did you describe that, Those sort of external factors that inform your strategy. What, what's, what are the catalysts for how you determine to deploy technology? >>Well, it was primarily that we know tendency has a tendency to provide good customer service, but we want to get to a great status best in class, if you will. And we had an external advisory review where it said, Hey, you know, we could make automation to improve our customer experience. And so that was like a directive of the, the state leaders to go across the board and automate all processes statewide, starting with the 23 executive agencies. >>So where's the focus from that standpoint? Is it on just providing better interfaces to your constituents, your customers? Is it cutting costs or you actually have more budget to invest? Kind of a combination of >>Those? Yeah, so it's, it's really both qualitative and quantitative, right? So quantitative is where we're able to reduce hours and therefore we can redirect people to more less mundane work, if you will. And then qualitative is where we're able to reduce the errors, improve data quality, reduce cycle time for our citizens, you know, when they're making requests, et cetera. So it's, I think it's a combination of both of those quantitative and qualitative metrics that we are mandated in, in micromanaged, quite frankly to, to bring, make those >>Numbers. So I'm from Massachusetts, when I go to a a mass.gov website, I say, all this was done in the 1990s and you could just see where the different stovepipes were, were. But then every now and then you'll hit one and you'll say, Wow, okay, this is up to, it's such a great experience. And then the flip side of that is you want your employees to be happy and not have to do all this mundane work so you can retain the best people. You don't have to. So you're living that in, in state and, and local. So where did you start your automation journey? What role did EY play? Let's go. Yeah, >>Sure. So I, I, I think the thought for process automation was probably three or four years ago, but then we started the program about 18 months ago and there was a lot of, let's say behind the scenes work before we could bring EY in, you know, like what resources was I gonna have in, in the state that were gonna help me address all of the agency simultaneously, right? Cuz normally you'll see a project that'll do be more siloed across the state and say, we're gonna do this agency, we're gonna do this division. Well, you have 40 other agencies that are, you know, the momentum is it's just gonna fall, it wayside. So how we looked at it was let's blanket it and go across all 23 agencies at the same time, you know, identify common processes that are used across 40 divisions, for example, right? >>So, so what we basically did is we procured the software, you know, did the contracts, and then it was really about, I designed, I'm gonna say a multistream approach where they were, we could run multiple work streams, independent define all the architectures, required dev tests, production, the disaster recovery at the same time in parallel developed the center of excellence, the operation model, the processes, methodologies. And the third one was, let's go out to a few divisions, business administration, health, you know, health, human resources, and be able to do a process inventory to see what was there. And then based on that, there's all this theory of well let's do a proof of concept. Let's do a proof of technology, let's do apply. Well, the bottom line is rpa technology's been around for a long time. It's proven there's nothing to prove. But really what was important to prove before we decided to go, you know, full tilt was, you know, develop a proof of perceived business value. >>Are we gonna bring in the, the business value, the hours and the qu qualitative metrics that is expected by our ex executive team, The leadership, we were able to do that, you know, with the help of help of ey, we built out the prototypes and we got the green light to go forward, got ey to start, and then we just basically went pedal to the metal. We had our foundation already defined. We built up the architecture in less than one to two months. Now, in, in a public sector or private sector, it's just not heard of, right? But we have a tendency with EYs technical team, myself, we look around the, the road around the rock instead, the rock in the road, right? So we ended up coming up with a very unique, very easy to easy to handle architecture that was very scalable. And then were able to hit the ground running and deploy in production by December where head of >>Was EY involved in the whole, you know, dev test production, dr. Center of excellence, the, the process inventory or did you bring them in? Did you kind of do that internally then bring EY in for the proof of >>Value? EY was actually awarded the contract for soup to nuts, basically the first phase, which was those four work streams I told you about. And they worked with myself and the state of Tennessee infrastructure architecture teams. We needed to get these things defined and signed off the architecture so we could expedite getting them built out. And then they, and they basically ran all four work streams, you know, the process, inventory, the prototype, the, the proof of perceived business value, the building out the center of excellence, working with myself. And, and this wasn't just us in a, a vacuum, we ended up having to, I mean, I could do the strategy, I could do the technology and I could said the roadmap and all the good stuff, but we had to actually meet with a lot of the state or tendency organizations on change management. How do we end up putting this process or an automation in the middle of the, the normal traditional process, right? So there was a lot of interaction there and getting their feedback and then tweaking our operational model based on feedback from the state of Tennessee. So it was all very collective collaborative. I think that would be the keyword is collaborative and then building out everything. So then, and then we ended up going to the next way where they knew so much and we were, we had such a tight timeframe that we continued with ey. >>So Christina, Bob mentioned center of excellence a couple of times in the state of Tennessee, but then beyond state of Tennessee, other organizations you've worked with in this space, what's the relationship between center of excellence and this thing we've been hearing about over the last couple of days, the citizen developer has that been, has, has, has that been leveraged in the state of Tennessee? Bob, have you seen that leveraged in other places? Christina? What's that relationship look like? >>Yeah, so we don't leverage that, that model yet we have centralized model and there's reasons for that. So we don't end up having maverick's, runoff runoffs have one off, have, you know, have a a UI path version or down this division or have another RPA tool in another division, right? So then all of a sudden we're, we have a maintenance nightmare. Manageability nightmare. So we basically, you know, I I I negotiate an ELA with UI path, so therefore if anyone wants to go do another automation on another division, or they would basically follow our model, our design, our coe, our quality gates. We we're the gatekeepers to bring into production. >>Got it. Now, yeah. Now Christina, what's your perspective? Because I can imagine Nashville and Memphis might have very different ideas about a lot of things. Yeah. Little Tennessee reference there, but what, what, what about what, what about other places are you, are you seeing the citizen developer leveraged in, in some kinds of places more than others or >>What? Yeah. Yeah. And that's part of, because of the foundation we're building. Yeah. So we laid, you know, when, when Bob talks about the first phase of eight weeks, that was amazingly fast, even in that's ridiculous. Spoke about it to say you're gonna lay these four foundations. I was excited, like, I was like, wow, this, this is a very serious client. They wanna go fast and they wanna get that momentum, but the AUM was laid out so we could propel ourselves. So we are at 40 automations right now. We're in the works of creating 80 more automations in this next year. We'll be at 120 really quickly. The AUM is critical. And I will say at a client, I've, I've worked with over 50 clients on automation programs. The way state of Tennessee treats the aom and they abide by it, it is the living document of how you go and go fast. Got it. And the one thing I would say is it's also allowed us to have such immense quality. So I always talk about you put in forward, you put in another 80, we're at 98% uptime on all our automations, meaning they don't go down. And that's because of the AOM we set up. And the natural progression is going to be how do you take it to citizen developer? How do you take it to, we call, you know, process automation plus, >>But methodically, methodically, not just throwing it out at the beginning and, and hoping the chaos >>Works. Exactly. Exactly. And >>The ratio of of bots to automations, is that one to one or you have automation? Oh no, the single bot is doing multiple. So how many bots are you talking about? >>We're doing, Bob, you're gonna answer this better than I will, but the efficiency is amazing. We've been pushing that. >>So our ratio now, cause we have a high density architecture we put in is four bots, excuse me, four processes. The one bot and four bots, The one virtual machine EC two server. Right? So it's four to one, four to one. Now what we're going to get by next summer, we'll do more analysis. We'll probably get the six to one, six to one that's made serious shrinkage of our footprint from a machine, you know, management perspective from 60 down to seven right now we're gonna add the next chunk. We add another 80 automations in FIS gear 24. We're only gonna add two more bot, two more servers. Right? So that's only 10 running like close to 200 bucks. >>And, and is doing this on prem in the cloud? >>No, our, the architecture's fully >>Oh, cloud based >>Ct. Yeah. So we use UiPath SAS model. Yeah. Right. So that handles the orchestrator, the attended bots, all the other tooling you need automation hub, process minor et etc. Etc. Cetera. And then on the state side in aws we have, we use unattended bots, cert bots that have to go down into the legacy systems, et cetera. And they're sitting on EC two instances. >>Was there, was there a security not hole that you had to get through internally? What was that like? >>No, actually we, we, we were lock and step with the security team on this. I mean, there are some standards and templates and you know, what we had to follow, you know, but they're doing an assessment every single release, they do assessments on little bots, what systems it's activating or are accessing, et cetera. The data, because you have fedra data of FTI data, you know, in the public sector to make sure we're not touching it. >>Do you guys golf? >>I do, yeah. Not Well, yes, >>If you mean I I like golf but not don't golf well, but so you know what, what a mulligan is. If you had a Mulligan right, for the state of Tennessee, what'd you learn? What would you do differently? You know, what are some of the gotchas you see maybe Christina in, in other customers and then maybe specifically state of Tennessee, >>Right? I would say, you know, it is the intangibles. So when we talk about our clients that go fast and go big, like state of Tennessee, it's because that, that we call it phase zero that gets done that Bob did. It's about making sure you've got the sponsorship. So we've got executive sponsorship all the way up. You've got amazing stakeholder engagement. So you're communicating the value of what we're trying to do. And you're, you're showing them the value. We have been really focused on the return on investment and we'll talk a little bit about that, but it's how do you make sure that when you do, you know, states are different with those agencies, you have such an opportunity to maximize return on investment if you do it right, because you're not talking about automation in one agency, you're talking it across multiple agencies. We call that the multiplier effect. And that's huge. And if you understand that and how to actually apply that, the value you get is amazing. So I, I don't, I can't say there's a mulligan here, Bob, you may think of some, I know on other clients, if you don't line up your stakeholders and you don't set the expectations early on, you meander and you may get five, six automations in over the year. You know, when I go to clients and say, we're doing 40, we're doing 80, they're like, >>Wow, that's the, but that's the bottom line. Gotcha. Is if you, if you want to have an operational impact and have multiple zeros, you gotta go through that process that you said up front. >>Exactly. A >>Anything you do differently, Bob? >>Well, I I what I do differently, I mean, I think, I mean we, we did get executive sponsorship, you know, and in one area, but we still have to go out to all the 23 agencies and get, and bring awareness and kind of like set the hook to bring 'em in, right? Bring 'em to the, to the, to the lake. Right. And, and I think if, if it was more of a blanket top down, getting every agency to agree to, you know, in investigate automation, it would've been a lot easier. So we're, we're, we're getting it done. We've gone through 13 agencies already and less than a year, all of our releases are sprinkling across multiple agencies. So it's not like a silo. I'll look at that. Everyone at every agency is being impacted. So I think that's great. But I, I think our, our Mueller now is just trying to make sure we have enough backlog to do the next sprints. >>Is it, you know, the ROI on these initiatives is, is, is so clear and so fast. Is it self-funding? Is there gain sharing or do you just give business, give money back to the state and have to scramble for more? Do you get to, you know, get a lick off that cone? >>Unfortunately we don't, but I, I, I try to see if we could get some property like, nah, we don't do that. It's all cost, cost based. But, but our ROI is very attractive, I think for, for doing a whole state, you know, transformation. I think our ROI is three and a half to four years. Right. And that's pretty mind blowing. Even if you look at private sector or, I, I think some of the, the key things which people are noticing, even though we're in public sector, we're we are very nimble. This project is extremely nimble. We've had people come in, exactly, we need this, so we're gonna get penalized. Okay, knock it out in four hours, four days. Right? So it's that nimbleness that you just don't hear of even in private sector or public sector. And we're just able to do that for all the collaboration we do across ey, across myself and across all the other organizations that I, that I kind of drag along or what have, >>What do you, what do you, do you see any limits to the opportunities here? I mean, is this a decade long opportunity? Is you have that much runway >>Or that's just not my dna, so we're gonna, we're gonna probably do it like in four years, but Well, when >>You say do it, I mean, will you be done at that point? Or do you see the weight, >>Look at, you know, we could boil the ocean and I think this is one of the reasons why we're successful is we could boil the ocean and and be, it will be 10 attended 20 year program. Yeah. Okay. Or we looked at it, we had some of EY guys look at it and say, I said, what's the 25 80 rule? Meaning, you know, give me, So if we had 500 processes, tell me how many processes will gimme 80% of the hours. And it was 125, it was a 25 80 rule. I said, that's what we're doing it, we're doing, we're gonna do the 80% of the hours quantifiably. Now when we're done with that pass, then we'll have those other ones that are bringing 20% of the hours, that's when we might be bringing citizens in. That's what we're bringing state workers in. But at that same time, we will be going back in the wave and doing advanced ai. Right. Or advance ia, in other words. So right now we do rpa, ocr, icr, but you know, there's NL ml nps, there's virtual agents and stuff. So that's like the wave we're gonna do through the ones we've already gone through. Got it. Right. So it'll probably be a two or three wave or iterations. >>Cool. Guys, thanks so much for coming into the cube. Great story. Really appreciate you taking us through it. Thank you so much for having us. You're very welcome. All right, keep it right there. Dave Nicholson. The Dave ante. We back at UI path forward five from the Venetian in Las Vegas. Keep it right there.

>>Yeah. Hello. Welcome to the Cubes International Women's Showcase, featuring International Women's Day. I'm John for your host of the queue here in Palo Alto, California. And we have three great guests videoing in from Kuala Lumpur as well as Bangkok. Johann Kwa, group CEO of K s K Group. It's just a Christina Equal, co founder and head of K s, K C Labs and Cindy, co founder of Sunday Insurance in Bangkok. Ladies. Thanks for coming on the cue. Appreciate you coming on. Thanks for Thanks for joining me on this special day. >>Thank you. Thank you so much. You >>guys are three sisters, trailblazing and the insurance and real estate through digital transformation in the cloud taking a three decade old family business to the next level raising the bar, as they say in the cloud business. Congratulations. Tell us how it all started. What's going on now? What does it look like? Where did it come from? Tell the Storey. >>Okay, so maybe I'll start, Uh, you know, since I'm at the group CEO level. So, um, as a quick introduction, you know? Okay. SK group, uh, were about 30 years old now, as a group three decades. Um, we started off as an insurance, uh, nonlife insurance company. Um, and then over the years, um, you know, we we operate in in South East Asia, So we are based in the US and markets. That message is also sitting in, um, and very quickly over the years, you know, we decided to actually venture into property development as well. Um, and really across the journey. Um, you know, we we've always been very, um, obsessed over the customers. You know, uh, and, you know, during this time and age, you know, all the customers are really digital natives now, and and, you know, the tech is very, very interesting. And so So starting in the year of 2017, we decided, um, to actually venture. Cindy and I at least we decided to start up our own, uh, tech, uh, called Sunday. Uh, Cindy is now the full time CEO and co founders. Um, and, you know, uh, it's an exciting journey from then on, uh, where now The first full stack ensure attack in in the whole of of the Asian market, uh, starting off in Thailand. Um, And then when Christine came back, to join the business. You know, since we were already in real estate, we decided, taking on from the inspiration of what we did with Sunday, how about we do the same in in in property? Because we obviously saw, you know, there was super loads of opportunities that we could we could we could do. And and a year ago, we gave birth to cast a city lapse. Um, now a prop tech company based in Malaysia. >>Christine and Cindy tell the storey here because this is actually fascinating. Storey, your sisters, your entrepreneurial. So you know each other? You're related and you've got ups and downs with the startups and growing companies changing landscape. A lot of challenges. You all gotta get along all the time. How's it going? What's it like? Mm. >>Maybe I'll start. I think I think for me I'm probably the newest addition to the trio in the, you know, working together kind of space. So for me, I think it's all about really learning how to, you know, separate your professional and personal life. And like you mentioned, you know, we live together. But we also work together. So for me, I think I took a >>lot of advice >>and direction. Um, both from Johann and, >>uh, help >>me a lot. Um, so So I think that's been my experience. Been great So far, Um, they've been really, really supportive. And I think going through this journey of, you know, like, founding a company together, it's obviously very challenging. And so I feel very fortunate to have two sisters who have already gone through it once, you know? >>So for the other guests is trying to get on the cube here. Over there. Um, sounds like fun. Uh, Christine. So on the city labs, you gotta cheque side of it there in the in the property tech. That's exciting. How's it going over there? >>Uh, super, Super cool. Super fun. Uh, has been one heck of a journey building a company from scratch, let alone in tech. I think you know, we created K s K C d lives because we really wanted to modernise the real estate industry, uh, and create, like, super transformative solutions, uh, many for two reasons. You know, one is to improve the quality of life, um, of the community around us. Uh, and secondly, really to harness all the technology and this unused data right in the real estate industry. And try and say, how can we use that to make more intelligent business decisions? Yeah, so So really, Um, I guess for us, it's been really exciting because we've launched two products. Uh, you know, one of which is Ai driven, dynamic pricing engine. And we realised that actually, the way that homes are priced today, uh, in real estate is super RK right? You only use a few basic variables. Like, how big is your house? What views do you have? But then we realised that, actually hey, with a I where you suddenly can use, like, hundreds of variables, um, and even, you know, consisting of wellness variables, for example. Um, and you can really customise pricing all the way down to a single unit level. Uh, and we realise that by doing this, we could actually unlock, um, ferret prices for our customers while also constantly kind of tracking the financial health of the company. >>Awesome. Cindy, I wanna get you in here. A co founder, Sunday Insurance. That was the origination. But a lot of change data drives everything machine learning. You gotta have the state of the art. What's going on with you? >>Yeah, I think for us, essentially, uh, we're operating in a very old industry. Um, it's one of the oldest industries globally. And if you look at the entire insurance value chain, um, every part of the process can actually, it's all about data. You can. It can be disrupted. Um, but yet every inch of the value chain is also regulated. So I think essentially what we're trying to do is, um, we're trying to really innovate the customer journey. So imagine if, um, even in the States now and even coming back to Asia, a lot of how people buy insurance is still very face to face agency. But I think in the future is going to be remote online on your app, through any partners as well. So I think, uh, we're trying to adopt any machine learning to really scale and automate, uh, the journey of anyone who's trying to buy insurance. But at the same time for insurance companies were also trying to help them automate that function itself. So imagine if banks are trying to dish out loans and you're trying to predict. What's the credit risk of every, um, single customer? That's exactly what insurance company needs to do as well. Um, And I guess insurance is all about buying a service as well. >>It's unlike you >>know, I'm gonna buy an apple. It comes to the hardware, >>right? So we're >>selling a service. So essentially you're service has to also dramatically changed. And I think these days, especially when we're operating in, uh, Thailand, Indonesia is one of the highest adoption rates for mobile these days. Everyone does. Everything lives on on the apps. So, um, insurance companies also needs to really on board their journey on that as well as increased engagement. So I don't just want to be an insurance company where, um, I speak to you and I have an issue with my claim. I want to really build a relationship with you and engage you differently. So I think it's actually that's the mission for a Sunday. So I think Imagine if imagine an insurance company 50 years in the future. How would it be? Uh, that's our mission. >>This is a great example. You guys, First of all, you're very dynamic. Thanks for sharing your storey. But when you get into the tech here, if industries that are transforming because of the digital transformation, the consumers expect the apps. You guys, as co founders and entrepreneurs now running this big business have to meet the demands and leverage the technology. How have you done that? How are you guys manage that? What kinds of decisions have you made? And you share some either experiences or observations of how to navigate and how you're riding that wave. >>Yeah. So I think if you hear from what Cindy and Christine has just mentioned, I mean, uh, we were playing in, you know, two of the oldest and largest industries in the world. Real estate and insurance. And, uh, you know, in both industries, as I said earlier, you know, it's really all about the customers, right? Um you know, in in the past, we used to think of of businesses as you know, what's your vertical and the horizontal today? Um, at least four k s k and and and all the all these, um, you know, tech ventures that we are now venture building. We're really thinking about it from the customer land. So really thinking about it from a customer ecosystem perspective. So instead of, you know, creating products and and having that push out to the customers, you know, we use tech and data and and especially data today and the right amount of data and what type of data that we want understanding that and really, um, building that product and really the services, uh, for the customers. So once you know the customer enters our ecosystem, whether you know, in your real estate, um, ecosystem or whether it's in your insurance ecosystem, we want you to to continue to stay with us, um, and to trust us. Um, and so it's not just about selling you a product, but really, you know, like, what Cindy says building a relationship with you because we think that, you know, obviously you know when insurance is something you really need when when when things go wrong in your life, we don't only want to be there. When things go wrong in your life and for real estate, you know everybody needs a shelter. So so so that's why we think that building relationships are very important and from really true, that lands is when you really think about the ecosystem and you think about data. I think Cindy Increasing gave some examples of how we're approaching it. Um, a lot of people start from from from a, you know, from a traditional business and from within. But for us, um, we decided to actually take it outside. Um, and, you know, take the approach of venture building from a startup, um, but really have, on the back end, really have that Connexion to the core businesses. Because what the core businesses understand is, you know, lifetime and experience of how customers feel and and, you know, um, in insurance, it's really about how to run a financial institution in real estate is really how to build buildings, and that is something that we can't take away. But, you know, you use technology to enable and to power. But what venture and start ups do extremely well is really the way we are extremely nimble and the way you use tech and data to navigate the quick changes of customer demands. And and you know, one thing an app and it's all about quick iterations. Right? When you build a super app, how do you incorporate all the features that are coming in, you have to keep on, you know, iterating changing, innovating, um, and innovating small with quick wins and then taking on a larger scale. And so the way we position ourselves is when you have to start up and you combine that with the core. Um, and putting the two together is how, how, how we look at things and that four minutes, the whole ecosystem >>that's awesome and being agile as fast and speed is key if you want to be there. Startup. But at the core business, that's going kind of slow. You got to kind of make everything go faster. That's a great, great insight. Let's talk about the disruption of the property industry again. That's real estate now with the Internet of things, technologies and also people expect technology. They wanna have access. I don't wanna have all these passwords and, you know they want to have easy in and out. They want good efficiency, save money. What's the disruption angle on? Um, the property neck. Christine, what's your How do you see that? The big disruption going? >>Yeah. So I think as Johann already mentioned before, you know um I think our customers we know are becoming, um, digital natives. Right? And they expect very convenient lifestyles. And we're all about our customers. So, actually, that's why we launched also another product, right where we're taking all of these things that you just mentioned, you know, about Iot into account. So what we found is, um, that actually, today, um, you know, the village about real estate is that we all live through that life as well, so we can experience that. Uh, we found that residents today, um, they find it quite challenging to request, you know, basic services like housekeeping managing, um, their defects, their tenants. Um, you know, even the financial planning and even getting into the building, right, they want more convenience. Um, but we realised that actually, all these services in the real estate industry right now and even in the prop tech space, they are very, very segmented. They're all discussed across multiple different apps. So what we really try to do is hey, let's try and consolidate all of this into one single app, which we have done, which is really cool, And it helps our residents really stay engaged and connected with our property. Um, what we did also was on the Iot front. We we were actually the first developer in Malaysia to also integrate, You know, future proof solutions like remote lift calling as well, um, into the mobile app. And that's to really go like, push on the Iot front. For us as well. >>Must be great for retention. It's all the gadgets are built into the of course. You have good WiFi fibre in their everyone's got good band with >>for sure >>It's like water and plumbing. Uh, I'd like to get everyone everyone loves that. I gotta ask Now, on the on the on the on The disruption is great. Now you've got the clouds, the clouds here for actually Amazon. You guys are big customer because you guys can move fast and they do all the heavy lifting. How are you guys seeing that helped modernise in the industry of insurance? Because that's a big vertical for a W s and you guys are doing is Cindy. What is the What is the modernisation? Um, half that you guys have taken with a W s. >>Yeah, sure. So I think essentially, for insurance, it's a product development. And when we talk about product development means, um how do you price, um, every certain individual or company very differently, right, Because everyone has very different risks surrounding them. Uh, currently, what we face is that it's a flat pricing fixed pricing. Um, and it's not really personalised to you. If you are a very good behaviour and safe kind of customer, it doesn't translate to any premium savings for you. Um, so I think, uh, part of insurance is to give, for example, affordable access to health care. But if your premiums isn't sustainable for health insurance, then it doesn't really need the point. So, uh, for Sunday, like, how we're trying to trying to do it differently is, for example, we use some AWS cloud solutions and AWS Lambda too, really power our machine learning Savalas and Cloud infrastructure. So, for example, uh, Sunday we are a serious bee companies sober and the growth stage. So at any point in time, we need to ensure that our infrastructure is able to support a huge spike in transaction volume, and we're working with large scale partners like telcos, e commerce companies, or even within our organic channels. So our AI machine learning risk prediction model, which is basically, um, powering our premium pricing engines whenever there's any requests coming in front of the Web for foreign quotation. For example, if someone wants to buy health insurance, um, it can go up and spike. But also, the data model is actually pricing, uh, processing billions of calculations, ingesting a lot of data points. Uh, it needs to do that within seconds, so yeah, I think a w s. We've been using it from day one since we launched. It's been, uh, helping us on >>that and make it go faster. That's the big thing. I gotta ask you when you guys have this family business now, three decades, you got a lot going on extending that legacy and sustaining the family legacy. I love the Storey. So who decides whether to do the startup and you guys draw straws? Is that you guys flip a coin? You gotta who runs the big business? How do you guys decide that? Mm. >>Um, maybe I'll >>I >>would say maybe it came very naturally to us. Really? I guess Here we don't have to disclose. Our age is a little bit, so I mean, I mean, we all actually the background and really all three of us. Before we came into the family business, we were all working professionals in very different fields. I was a I was in banking. Cindy was a lawyer, and Christine was a a doctor, actually, Um um, but, you know, I came back first. I'm the eldest, so after, you know, walking outside and looking into the family business. So I came back first, and and And from there, I took over the insurance business and looking at it, it was a very lonely place to be. So, um, you know, after a couple of years of Cindy being a professional life, you know, we said, Hey, would you like to come back? And let's, uh, take a different journey with insurance and see how we can build something different? Uh, since we know a lot about insurance, but let's make make make a difference and and and, you know, be sustainable, but also evolve over time and show the world that insurance is actually pretty sexy, actually. Um, and then, you know, Christine saw the fund that the two of us were having, uh, already started building a real estate on on my end. Uh, and then, uh, she came back. And, you know, we have a conversation, and we said, Look, looking at you know what we're doing in Sunday? You know, building pricing engines and being able to price to a single customer level. Um, we saw that opportunity in real estate, and, uh so I asked her. I said, Look, would you like to do this? You know, because I think there is something cool. Um, the three of us can band together and still inspire each other share ideas across each other. That's an opportunity that a lot of people don't get right. I mean, to all these industries in the world being able to cross share ideas. Uh, and sometimes inspirations and ideas don't come from the same industry. Uh, and so I think. And that's how we started. Really, John, it's not. Maybe we're lucky, and we should be grateful for >>that. You're all power women. I love the storey, and it is good that you come together, and I think the entrepreneurial kind of twist makes it more fun. But not everyone is cut out with the entrepreneurship, but it also gives you more risk management. You can. You can go after opportunities I love. I love the strategy there. You guys are great leaders. Any advice for other aspiring women leaders and entrepreneurs out there who want to make a difference? Make an impact? The world is. Change is getting better for everyone. And and again, entrepreneurial could be in big companies and also big companies doing startups. There's a whole new world. What advice would you guys give other aspiring women leaders? Okay, >>I'll keep it short from my end. I think for me it's about really following your passion following your ambition. And lastly, I think not to try and not feel like you need to conform to any gender stereotypes because I think in male dominated industries such as real estate, our are attack. I think people might have some ideas about you know what a what a tech leader or what a real estate leader might have to look like. But you don't have to conform to that. So that's probably my advice. Uh, >>yeah, I I fully agree with Chris right there. I think, um, gender isn't an issue here. If you have a passion and you identify, there is a market opportunity that you can, you know, you can really do something about it. Just just pursue it. I think most importantly, if you ever want to be an entrepreneur and start your own business or your own, start up. Uh, so long as you have the confidence, I think you're you're good to go. Um, there's a lot of talk out that that or, you know, um, women led start ups are not >>attracting >>funds, but we haven't faced that anyway. In this part of Asia, I think there's a lot of, um, I think it attracts even more attention. If you're a woman in a male dominated that industry like, hey, then you know it's it's quite unique. So I think you have a strength there, and I think there's a lot of diverse talent out there. Um, post pandemic. A lot of people are looking for changes as well, so I think it is a lot of a lot of opportunity out there. >>Yeah, Joanne, you know, you know, the thing is with cloud computing, it's a level centre. It really because if you can come together, whether it's sisters like you guys, powerful sisters and professional experience coming together leverage technology to re factor old industries. It's all about the numbers and the performance. At the end of the day, you know, you move faster and you take territory and beat the competition. >>Ultimate >>the ultimate uh, leveller. Well, congratulations. You guys are great. Thanks for coming on The Cube Sisters. You guys are amazing. Great Storey Love it. Thanks for coming out and celebrating International Women's Day feature today as part of our international women's showcase here in the Cube. Thank you so much. >>Thank you. Thank you for having us. >>Okay. The Cubes International Women's showcase Going on all year, this time featuring International Women's Day The big celebration. I'm John Ferrier, host of the Cube here in Palo Alto, California. Thanks for watching. Mm mm

>> Announcer: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is theCUBE conversation. >> Hey, welcome back everybody Jeff Frick here with the cube. This is a special week it's Grace Hopper week, and Grace Hopper is the best name in tech conferences. The celebration of women in computing, and we've been going there for years we're not there this year, but one of the themes that comes up over and over at Grace Hopper is women and girls need to see women in positions that they can envision themselves being in someday. That is a really important piece of the whole diversity conversation is can I see people that I can role model after and I just want to bring up something from a couple years back from 2016 when we were there, we were there with Mimi Valdez, Christina Deoja and Dr. Jeanette Epps, Dr. Jeanette Epps is the astronaut on the right. They were there talking about "The Hidden Figures" movie. If you remember it came out 2016, it was about Katherine Johnson and all the black women working at NASA. They got no credit for doing all the math that basically keep all the astronauts safe and they made a terrific movie about it. And Janet is going up on the very first Blue Origin Space Mission Next year. This was announced a couple of months ago, so again, phenomenal leadership, black lady astronaut, going to go into space and really provide a face for a lot of young girls that want to get into that and its clearly a great STEM opportunity. So we're excited to have four terrific women today that well also are the leaders that the younger women can look up to and follow their career. So we're excited to have them so we're just going to go around. We got four terrific guests, our first one is Annabel Chang, She is the Head of State Policy and Government Regulations at Waymo. Annabel great to see you, where are you coming in from today? >> from San Francisco >> Jeff: Awesome. Next up is Inamarie Johnson. She is the Chief People and Diversity Officer for Zendesk Inamarie, great to see you. Where are you calling in from today? >> Great to be here. I am calling in from Palos Verdes the state >> Jeff: awesome >> in Southern California. >> Jeff: Some of the benefits of a virtual sometimes we can, we couldn't do that without the power of the internet. And next up is Jennifer Cabalquinto she is the Chief Financial Officer of the Golden State Warriors. Jennifer, great to see you Where are you coming in from today? >> Well, I wish I was coming in from the Chase Center in San Francisco but I'm actually calling in from Santa Cruz California today. >> Jeff: Right, It's good to see you and you can surf a lot better down there. So that's probably not all bad. And finally to round out our panelists, Kate Hogan, she is the COO of North America for Accenture. Kate, great to see you as well. Where are you coming in from today? >> Well, it's good to see you too. I am coming in from the office actually in San Jose. >> Jeff: From the office in San Jose. All right, So let's get into it . You guys are all very senior, you've been doing this for a long time. We're in a kind of a crazy period of time in terms of diversity with all the kind of social unrest that's happening. So let's talk about some of your first your journeys and I want to start with you Annabel. You're a lawyer you got into lawyering. You did lawyering with Diane Feinstein, kind of some politics, and also the city of San Francisco. And then you made this move over to tech. Talk about that decision and what went into that decision and how did you get into tech? 'cause we know part of the problem with diversity is a pipeline problem. You came over from the law side of the house. >> Yes, and to be honest politics and the law are pretty homogenous. So when I made the move to tech, it was still a lot of the same, but what I knew is that I could be an attorney anywhere from Omaha Nebraska to Miami Florida. But what I couldn't do was work for a disruptive company, potentially a unicorn. And I seized that opportunity and (indistinct) Lyft early on before Ride Hailing and Ride Sharing was even a thing. So it was an exciting opportunity. And I joined right at the exact moment that made myself really meaningful in the organization. And I'm hoping that I'm doing the same thing right now at Waymo. >> Great, Inamarie you've come from one of my favorite stories I like to talk about from the old school Clorox great product management. I always like to joke that Silicon Valley needs a pipeline back to Cincinnati and Proctor and Gamble to get good product managers out here. You were in the classic, right? You were there, you were at Honeywell Plantronics, and then you jumped over to tech. Tell us a little bit about that move. Cause I'm sure selling Clorox is a lot different than selling the terrific service that you guys provide at Zendesk. I'm always happy when I see Zendesk in my customer service return email, I know I'm going to get taken care of. >> Oh wow, that's great. We love customers like you., so thank you for that. My journey is you're right from a fortune 50 sort of more portfolio type company into tech. And I think one of the reasons is because when tech is starting out and that's what Zendesk was a few five years back or so very much an early stage growth company, two things are top of mind, one, how do we become more global? And how do we make sure that we can go up market and attract enterprise grade customers? And so my experience having only been in those types of companies was very interesting for a startup. And what was interesting for me is I got to live in a world where there were great growth targets and numbers, things I had never seen. And the agility, the speed, the head plus heart really resonated with my background. So super glad to be in tech, but you're right. It's a little different than a consumer products. >> Right, and then Jennifer, you're in a completely different world, right? So you worked for the Golden State Warriors, which everybody knows is an NBA team, but I don't know that everyone knows really how progressive the Warriors are beyond just basketball in terms of the new Chase Center, all the different events that you guys put on it. And really the leadership there has decided we really want to be an entertainment company of which the Golden State Warrior basketball team has a very, very important piece, you've come from the entertainment industry. So that's probably how they found you, but you're in the financial role. You've always been in the financial role, not traditionally thought about as a lot of women in terms of a proportion of total people in that. So tell us a little bit about your experience being in finance, in entertainment, and then making this kind of hop over to, I guess Uber entertainment. I don't know even how you would classify the warriors. >> Sports entertainment, live entertainment. Yeah, it's interesting when the Warriors opportunity came up, I naturally said well no, I don't have any sports background. And it's something that we women tend to do, right? We self edit and we want to check every box before we think that we're qualified. And the reality is my background is in entertainment and the Warriors were looking to build their own venue, which has been a very large construction project. I was the CFO at Universal Studios Hollywood. And what do we do there? We build large attractions, which are just large construction projects and we're in the entertainment business. And so that sort of B to C was a natural sort of transition for me going from where I was with Universal Studios over to the Warriors. I think a finance career is such a great career for women. And I think we're finding more and more women entering it. It is one that you sort of understand your hills and valleys, you know when you're going to be busy and so you can kind of schedule around that. I think it's really... it provides that you have a seat at the table. And so I think it's a career choice that I think is becoming more and more available to women certainly more now than it was when I first started. >> Yeah, It's interesting cause I think a lot of people think of women naturally in human resources roles. My wife was a head of human resources back in the day, or a lot of marketing, but not necessarily on the finance side. And then Kate go over to you. You're one of the rare birds you've been at Accenture  for over 20 years. So you must like airplanes and travel to stay there that long. But doing a little homework for this, I saw a really interesting piece of you talking about your boss challenging you to ask for more work, to ask for a new opportunity. And I thought that was really insightful that you, you picked up on that like Oh, I guess it's incumbent on me to ask for more, not necessarily wait for that to be given to me, it sounds like a really seminal moment in your career. >> It was important but before I tell you that story, because it was an important moment of my career and probably something that a lot of the women here on the panel here can relate to as well. You mentioned airplanes and it made me think of my dad. My father was in the air force and I remember him telling stories when I was little about his career change from the air force into a career in telecommunications. So technology for me growing up Jeff was, it was kind of part of the dinner table. I mean it was just a conversation that was constantly ongoing in our house. And I also, as a young girl, I loved playing video games. We had a Tandy computer down in the basement and I remember spending too many hours playing video games down there. And so for me my history and my really at a young age, my experience and curiosity around tech was there. And so maybe that's, what's fueling my inspiration to stay at Accenture for as long as I have. And you're right It's been two decades, which feels tremendous, but I've had the chance to work across a bunch of different industries, but you're right. I mean, during that time and I relate with what Jennifer said in terms of self editing, right? Women do this and I'm no exception, I did this. And I do remember I'm a mentor and a sponsor of mine who called me up when I'm kind of I was at a pivotal moment in my career and he said you know Kate, I've been waiting for you to call me and tell me you want this job. And I never even thought about it. I mean I just never thought that I'd be a candidate for the job and let alone somebody waiting for me to kind of make the phone call. I haven't made that mistake again, (laughing) but I like to believe I learned from it, but it was an important lesson. >> It's such a great lesson and women are often accused of being a little bit too passive and not necessarily looking out for in salary negotiations or looking for that promotion or kind of stepping up to take the crappy job because that's another thing we hear over and over from successful people is that some point in their career, they took that job that nobody else wanted. They took that challenge that really enabled them to take a different path and really a different Ascension. And I'm just curious if there's any stories on that or in terms of a leader or a mentor, whether it was in the career, somebody that you either knew or didn't know that was someone that you got kind of strength from kind of climbing through your own, kind of career progression. Will go to you first Annabel. >> I actually would love to talk about the salary negotiations piece because I have a group of friends about that we've been to meeting together once a month for the last six years now. And one of the things that we committed to being very transparent with each other about was salary negotiations and signing bonuses and all of the hard topics that you kind of don't want to talk about as a manager and the women that I'm in this group with span all types of different industries. And I've learned so much from them, from my different job transitions about understanding the signing bonus, understanding equity, which is totally foreign to me coming from law and politics. And that was one of the most impactful tools that I've ever had was a group of people that I could be open with talking about salary negotiations and talking about how to really manage equity. Those are totally foreign to me up until this group of women really connected me to these topics and gave me some of that expertise. So that is something I strongly encourage is that if you haven't openly talked about salary negotiations before you should begin to do so. >> It begs the question, how was the sensitivity between the person that was making a lot of money and the person that wasn't? And how did you kind of work through that as a group for the greater good of everyone? >> Yeah, I think what's really eye opening is that for example, We had friends who were friends who were on tech, we had friends who were actually the entrepreneurs starting their own businesses or law firm, associates, law firm partners, people in PR, so we understood that there was going to be differences within industry and frankly in scale, but it was understanding even the tools, whether I think the most interesting one would be signing bonus, right? Because up until a few years ago, recruiters could ask you what you made and how do you avoid that question? How do you anchor yourself to a lower salary range or avoid that happening? I didn't know this, I didn't know how to do that. And a couple of women that had been in more senior negotiations shared ways to make sure that I was pinning myself to a higher salary range that I wanted to be in. >> That's great. That's a great story and really important to like say pin. it's a lot of logistical details, right? You just need to learn the techniques like any other skill. Inamarie, I wonder if you've got a story to share here. >> Sure. I just want to say, I love the example that you just gave because it's something I'm super passionate about, which is transparency and trust. Then I think that we're building that every day into all of our people processes. So sure, talk about sign on bonuses, talk about pay parody because that is the landscape. But a quick story for me, I would say is all about stepping into uncertainty. And when I coach younger professionals of course women, I often talk about, don't be afraid to step into the role where all of the answers are not vetted down because at the end of the day, you can influence what those answers are. I still remember when Honeywell asked me to leave the comfort of California and to come to the East coast to New Jersey and bring my family. And I was doing well in my career. I didn't feel like I needed to do that, but I was willing after some coaching to step into that uncertainty. And it was one of the best pivotal moment in my career. I didn't always know who I was going to work with. I didn't know the challenges and scope I would take on, but those were some of the biggest learning experiences and opportunities and it made me a better executive. So that's always my coaching, like go where the answers aren't quite vetted down because you can influence that as a leader. >> That's great, I mean, Beth Comstock former vice chair at GE, one of her keynotes I saw had a great line, get comfortable with being uncomfortable. And I think that its a really good kind of message, especially in the time we're living in with accelerated change. But I'm curious, Inamarie was the person that got you to take that commitment. Would you consider that a sponsor, a mentor, was it a boss? Was it maybe somebody not at work, your spouse or a friend that said go for it. What kind of pushed you over the edge to take that? >> It's a great question. It was actually the boss I was going to work for. He was the CHRO, and he said something that was so important to me that I've often said it to others. And he said trust me, he's like I know you don't have all the answers, I know we don't have this role all figured out, I know you're going to move your family, but if you trust me, there is a ton of learning on the other side of this. And sometimes that's the best thing a boss can do is say we will go on this journey together. I will help you figure it out. So it was a boss, but I think it was that trust and that willingness for him to stand and go alongside of me that made me pick up my family and be willing to move across the country. And we stayed five years and really, I am not the same executive because of that experience. >> Right, that's a great story, Jennifer, I want to go to you, you work for two owners that are so progressive and I remember when Joe Lacob came on the floor a few years back and was booed aggressively coming into a franchise that hadn't seen success in a very long time, making really aggressive moves in terms of personnel, both at the coaches and the players level, the GM level. But he had a vision and he stuck to it. And the net net was tremendous success. I wonder if you can share any of the stories, for you coming into that organization and being able to feel kind of that level of potential success and really kind of the vision and also really a focus on execution to make the vision real cause vision without execution doesn't really mean much. If you could share some stories of working for somebody like Joe Lacob, who's so visionary but also executes so very, very effectively. >> Yeah, Joe is, well I have the honor of working for Joe, for Rick Welts to who's our president. Who's living legend with the NBA with Peter Guber. Our leadership at the Warriors are truly visionary and they set audacious targets. And I would say from a story the most recent is, right now what we're living through today. And I will say Joe will not accept that we are not having games with fans. I agree he is so committed to trying to solve for this and he has really put the organization sort of on his back cause we're all like well, what do we do? And he has just refused to settle and is looking down every path as to how do we ensure the safety of our fans, the safety of our players, but how do we get back to live entertainment? And this is like a daily mantra and now the entire organization is so focused on this and it is because of his vision. And I think you need leaders like that who can set audacious goals, who can think beyond what's happening today and really energize the entire organization. And that's really what he's done. And when I talked to my peers and other teams in there they're talking about trying to close out their season or do these things. And they're like well, we're talking about, how do we open the building? And we're going to have fans, we're going to do this. And they look at me and they're like, what are you talking about? And I said, well we are so fortunate. We have leadership that just is not going to settle. Like they are just always looking to get out of whatever it is that's happening and fix it. So Joe is so committed His background, he's an epidemiologist major I think. Can you imagine how unique a background that is and how timely. And so his knowledge of just around the pandemic and how the virus is spread. And I mean it's phenomenal to watch him work and leverage sort of his business acumen, his science acumen and really think through how do we solve this. Its amazing. >> The other thing thing that you had said before is that you basically intentionally told people that they need to rethink their jobs, right? You didn't necessarily want to give them permission to get you told them we need to rethink their jobs. And it's a really interesting approach when the main business is just not happening, right? There's just no people coming through the door and paying for tickets and buying beers and hotdogs. It's a really interesting talk. And I'm curious, kind of what was the reception from the people like hey, you're the boss, you just figure it out or were they like hey, this is terrific that he pressed me to come up with some good ideas. >> Yeah, I think when all of this happened, we were resolved to make sure that our workforce is safe and that they had the tools that they needed to get through their day. But then we really challenged them with re imagining what the next normal is. Because when we come out of this, we want to be ahead of everybody else. And that comes again from the vision that Joe set, that we're going to use this time to make ourselves better internally because we have the time. I mean, we had been racing towards opening Chase Center and not having time to pause. Now let's use this time to really rethink how we're doing business. What can we do better? And I think it's really reinvigorated teams to really think and innovate in their own areas because you can innovate anything, right?. We're innovating how you pay payables, we're all innovating, we're rethinking the fan experience and queuing and lines and all of these things because now we have the time that it's really something that top down we want to come out of this stronger. >> Right, that's great. Kate I'll go to you, Julie Sweet, I'm a big fan of Julie Sweet. we went to the same school so go go Claremont. But she's been super aggressive lately on a lot of these things, there was a get to... I think it's called Getting to 50 50 by 25 initiative, a formal initiative with very specific goals and objectives. And then there was a recent thing in terms of doing some stuff in New York with retraining. And then as you said, military being close to your heart, a real specific military recruiting process, that's formal and in place. And when you see that type of leadership and formal programs put in place not just words, really encouraging, really inspirational, and that's how you actually get stuff done as you get even the consulting businesses, if you can't measure it, you can't improve it. >> Yeah Jeff, you're exactly right. And as Jennifer was talking, Julie is exactly who I was thinking about in my mind as well, because I think it takes strong leadership and courage to set bold bold goals, right? And you talked about a few of those bold goals and Julie has certainly been at the forefront of that. One of the goals we set in 2018 actually was as you said to achieve essentially a gender balance workforce. So 50% men, 50% women by 2025, I mean, that's ambitious for any company, but for us at the time we were 400,000 people. They were 500, 6,000 globally. So when you set a goal like that, it's a bold goal and it's a bold vision. And we have over 40% today, We're well on our path to get to 50%, I think by 2025. And I was really proud to share that goal in front of a group of 200 clients the day that it came out, it's a proud moment. And I think it takes leaders like Julie and many others by the way that are also setting bold goals, not just in my company to turn the dial here on gender equality in the workforce, but it's not just about gender equality. You mentioned something I think it's probably at as, or more important right now. And that's the fact that at least our leadership has taken a Stand, a pretty bold stand against social injustice and racism, >> Right which is... >> And so through that we've made some very transparent goals in North America in terms of the recruitment and retention of our black African American, Hispanic American, Latinex communities. We've set a goal to increase those populations in our workforce by 60% by 2025. And we're requiring mandatory training for all of our people to be able to identify and speak up against racism. Again, it takes courage and it takes a voice. And I think it takes setting bold goals to make a change and these are changes we're committed to. >> Right, that's terrific. I mean, we started the conversation with Grace Hopper, they put out an index for companies that don't have their own kind of internal measure to do surveys again so you can get kind of longitudinal studies over time and see how you're improving Inamarie, I want to go to you on the social justice thing. I mean, you've talked a lot about values and culture. It's a huge part of what you say. And I think that the quote that you use, if I can steal it is " no culture eats strategy for breakfast" and with the social injustice. I mean, you came out with special values just about what Zendesk is doing on social injustice. And I thought I was actually looking up just your regular core mission and value statement. And this is what came up on my Google search. So I wanted to A, you published this in a blog in June, taking a really proactive stand. And I think you mentioned something before that, but then you're kind of stuck in this role as a mind reader. I wonder if you can share a little bit of your thoughts of taking a proactive stand and what Zendesk is doing both you personally, as well as a company in supporting this. And then what did you say as a binder Cause I think these are difficult kind of uncharted waters on one hand, on the other hand, a lot of people say, hello, this has been going on forever. You guys are just now seeing cellphone footage of madness. >> Yeah Wow, there's a lot in there. Let me go to the mind reader comments, cause people are probably like, what is that about? My point was last December, November timing. I've been the Chief People Officer for about two years And I decided that it really was time with support from my CEO that Zendesk have a Chief Diversity Officer sitting in at the top of the company, really putting a face to a lot of the efforts we were doing. And so the mind reader part comes in little did I know how important that stance would become, in the may June Timing? So I joked that, it almost felt like I could have been a mind reader, but as to what have we done, a couple of things I would call out that I think are really aligned with who we are as a company because our culture is highly threaded with the concept of empathy it's been there from our beginning. We have always tried to be a company that walks in the shoes of our customers. So in may with the death of George Floyd and the world kind of snapping and all of the racial injustice, what we said is we wanted to not stay silent. And so most of my postings and points of view were that as a company, we would take a stand both internally and externally and we would also partner with other companies and organizations that are doing the big work. And I think that is the humble part of it, we can't do it all at Zendesk, we can't write all the wrongs, but we can be in partnership and service with other organizations. So we used funding and we supported those organizations and partnerships. The other thing that I would say we did that was super important along that empathy is that we posted space for our employees to come together and talk about the hurt and the pain and the experiences that were going on during those times and we called those empathy circles. And what I loved is initially, it was through our mosaic community, which is what we call our Brown and black and persons of color employee resource group. But it grew into something bigger. We ended up doing five of these empathy circles around the globe and as leadership, what we were there to do is to listen and stand as an ally and support. And the stories were life changing. And the stories really talked about a number of injustice and racism aspects that are happening around the world. And so we are committed to that journey, we will continue to support our employees, we will continue to partner and we're doing a number of the things that have been mentioned. But those empathy circles, I think were definitely a turning point for us as an organization. >> That's great, and people need it right? They need a place to talk and they also need a place to listen if it's not their experience and to be empathetic, if you just have no data or no knowledge of something, you need to be educated So that is phenomenal. I want to go to you Jennifer. Cause obviously the NBA has been very, very progressive on this topic both as a league, and then of course the Warriors. We were joking before. I mean, I don't think Steph Curry has ever had a verbal misstep in the history of his time in the NBA, the guy so eloquent and so well-spoken, but I wonder if you can share kind of inside the inner circle in terms of the conversations, that the NBA enabled right. For everything from the jerseys and going out on marches and then also from the team level, how did that kind of come down and what's of the perception inside the building? >> Sure, obviously I'm so proud to be part of a league that is as progressive and has given voice and loud, all the teams, all the athletes to express how they feel, The Warriors have always been committed to creating a diverse and equitable workplace and being part of a diverse and equitable community. I mean that's something that we've always said, but I think the situation really allowed us, over the summer to come up with a real formal response, aligning ourselves with the Black Lives Matter movement in a really meaningful way, but also in a way that allows us to iterate because as you say, it's evolving and we're learning. So we created or discussed four pillars that we wanted to work around. And that was really around wallet, heart, beat, and then tongue or voice. And Wallet is really around putting our money where our mouth is, right? And supporting organizations and groups that aligned with the values that we were trying to move forward. Heart is around engaging our employees and our fan base really, right? And so during this time we actually launched our employee resource groups for the first time and really excited and energized about what that's doing for our workforce. This is about promoting real action, civic engagement, advocacy work in the community and what we've always been really focused in a community, but this really hones it around areas that we can all rally around, right? So registration and we're really focused on supporting the election day results in terms of like having our facilities open to all the electorate. So we're going to have our San Francisco arena be a ballot drop off, our Oakland facilities is a polling site, Santa Cruz site is also a polling location, So really promoting sort of that civic engagement and causing people to really take action. heart is all around being inclusive and developing that culture that we think is really reflective of the community. And voice is really amplifying and celebrating one, the ideas, the (indistinct) want to put forth in the community, but really understanding everybody's culture and really just providing and using the platform really to provide a basis in which as our players, like Steph Curry and the rest want to share their own experiences. we have a platform that can't be matched by any pedigree, right? I mean, it's the Warriors. So I think really getting focused and rallying around these pillars, and then we can iterate and continue to grow as we define the things that we want to get involved in. >> That's terrific. So I have like pages and pages and pages of notes and could probably do this for hours and hours, but unfortunately we don't have that much time we have to wrap. So what I want to do is give you each of you the last word again as we know from this problem, right? It's not necessarily a pipeline problem, it's really a retention problem. We hear that all the time from Girls in Code and Girls in Tech. So what I'd like you to do just to wrap is just a couple of two or three sentences to a 25 year old, a young woman sitting across from you having coffee socially distanced about what you would tell her early in the career, not in college but kind of early on, what would the be the two or three sentences that you would share with that person across the table and Annabel, we'll start with you. >> Yeah, I will have to make a pitch for transportation. So in transportation only 15% of the workforce is made up of women. And so my advice would be that there are these fields, there are these opportunities where you can make a massive impact on the future of how people move or how they consume things or how they interact with the world around them. And my hope is that being at Waymo, with our self driving car technology, that we are going to change the world. And I am one of the initial people in this group to help make that happen. And one thing that I would add is women spend almost an hour a day, shuttling their kids around, and we will give you back that time one day with our self driving cars so that I'm a mom. And I know that that is going to be incredibly powerful on our daily lives. >> Jeff: That's great. Kate, I think I might know what you're already going to say, but well maybe you have something else you wanted to say too. >> I don't know, It'll be interesting. Like if I was sitting across the table from a 25 year old right now I would say a couple of things first I'd say look intentionally for a company that has an inclusive culture. Intentionally seek out the company that has an inclusive culture, because we know that companies that have inclusive cultures retain women in tech longer. And the companies that can build inclusive cultures will retain women in tech, double, double the amount that they are today in the next 10 years. That means we could put another 1.4 million women in tech and keep them in tech by 2030. So I'd really encourage them to look for that. I'd encouraged them to look for companies that have support network and reinforcements for their success, and to obviously find a Waymo car so that they can not have to worry where kids are on for an hour when you're parenting in a few years. >> Jeff: I love the intentional, it's such a great word. Inamarie, >> I'd like to imagine that I'm sitting across from a 25 year old woman of color. And what I would say is be authentically you and know that you belong in the organization that you are seeking and you were there because you have a unique perspective and a voice that needs to be heard. And don't try to be anything that you're not, be who you are and bring that voice and that perspective, because the company will be a better company, the management team will be a better management team, the workforce will be a better workforce when you belong, thrive and share that voice. >> I love that, I love that. That's why you're the Chief People Officer and not Human Resources Officer, cause people are not resources like steel and cars and this and that. All right, Jennifer, will go to you for the wrap. >> Oh my gosh, I can't follow that. But yes, I would say advocate for yourself and know your value. I think really understanding what you're worth and being willing to fight for that is critical. And I think it's something that women need to do more. >> Awesome, well again, I wish we could go all day, but I will let you get back to your very, very busy day jobs. Thank you for participating and sharing your insight. I think it's super helpful. And there and as we said at the beginning, there's no better example for young girls and young women than to see people like you in leadership roles and to hear your voices. So thank you for sharing. >> Thank you. >> All right. >> Thank you. >> Okay thank you. >> Thank you >> All right, so that was our diversity panel. I hope you enjoyed it, I sure did. I'm looking forward to chapter two. We'll get it scheduled as soon as we can. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>>From the cube studios in Palo Alto, in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cute conversation. Hi, welcome back. I'm Stu middleman. And this is a cube conversation digging in with, talking about what they're doing to help people. Yeah. Really bringing some of the networking ideals to cloud native environment, both know in the cloud, in the data centers program, Krishna penny. He is the vice president of software. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much for talking to me. Alright, so, so Krishna the pin Sandow team, uh, you know, very well known in the industry three, uh, you innovation. Yeah. Especially in the networking world. Give us a little bit about your background specifically, uh, how long you've been part of this team and, uh, you know, but, uh, you know, you and the team, you know? Yeah. >>And Sando. Yup. Um, so, uh, I'm VP of software in Sandow, um, before Penn Sarno, before founding concern, though, I worked in a few startups in CME networks, uh, newer systems and Greenfield networks, all those three startups have been acquired by Cisco. Um, um, my recent role before this, uh, uh, this, this company was a, it was VP of engineering and Cisco, uh, I was responsible for a product called ACA, which is course flagship SDN tonic. Mmm. So I mean, when, why did we find a phone, uh, Ben Sandoz? So when we were looking at the industry, uh, the last, uh, a few years, right? The few trends that are becoming clear. So obviously we have a lot of enterprise background. We were watching, you know, ECA being deployed in the enterprise data centers. One sore point for customers from operational point of view was installing service devices, network appliances, or storage appliances. >>So not only the operational complexity that this device is bringing, it's also, they don't give you the performance and bandwidth, uh, and PPS that you expect, but traffic, especially from East West. So that was one that was one major issue. And also, if you look at where the intelligence is going, has been, this has been the trend it's been going to the edge. The reason for that is the motors or switches or the devices in the middle. They cannot handle the scale. Yeah. I mean, the bandwidths are growing. The scale is growing. The stateful stuff is going in the network and the switches and the appliances not able to handle it. So you need something at the edge close to the application that can handle, uh, uh, this kind of, uh, services and bandwidth. And the third thing is obviously, you know, x86, okay. Even a few years back, you know, every two years, you know, you're getting more transistors. >>I mean, obviously the most lined it. And, uh, we know we know how that, that part is going. So the it's cycles are more valuable and we don't want to use them for this network services Mmm. Including SDN or firewalls or load balancer. So NBME, mutualization so looking at all these trends in the industry, you know, we thought there is a good, uh, good opportunity to do a domain specific processor for IO and build products around it. I mean, that's how we started Ben signed off. Yeah. So, so Krishna, it's always fascinating to watch. If you look at startups, they are often yeah. Okay. The time that they're in and the technologies that are available, you know, sometimes their ideas that, you know, cakes a few times and, you know, maturation of the technology and other times, you know, I'll hear teams and they're like, Oh, well we did this. >>And then, Oh, wow. There was this new innovation came out that I wish I had add that when I did this last time. So we do, a generation. Oh, wow. Talking about, you know, distributed architectures or, you know, well, over a decade spent a long time now, uh, in many ways I feel edge computing is just, you know, the latest discussion of this, but when it comes to, and you know, you've got software, uh, under, under your purview, um, what are some of the things that are available for that might not have been, you know, in your toolkit, you know, five years ago. Yeah. So the growth of open source software has been very helpful for us because we baked scale-out microservices. This controller, like the last time I don't, when we were building that, you know, we had to build our own consensus algorithm. >>We had to build our own dishwasher database for metrics and humans and logs. So right now, uh, we, I mean, we have, because of open source thing, we leverage CD elastic influx in all this open source technologies that you hear, uh, uh, since we want to leverage the Kubernetes ecosystem. No, that helped us a lot at the same time, if you think about it. Right. But even the software, which is not open source, close source thing, I'm maturing. Um, I mean, if you talk about SDN, you know, seven APS bank, it was like, you know, the end versions of doing off SDN, but now the industry standard is an ADPN, um, which is one of the core pieces of what we do we do as Dean solution with DVA. Um, so, you know, it's more of, you know, the industry's coming to a place where, you know, these are the standards and this is open source software that you could leverage and quickly innovate compared to building all of this from scratch, which will be a big effort for us stocked up, uh, to succeed and build it in time for your customer success. >>Yeah. And Krishna, I, you know, you talk about open forum, not only in the software, the hardware standards. Okay. Think about things, the open compute or the proliferation of, you know, GPS and, uh, everything along that, how was that impact? I did. So, I mean, it's a good thing you're talking about. For example, we were, we are looking in the future and OCP card, but I do know it's a good thing that SEP card goes into a HP server. It goes into a Dell software. Um, so pretty much, you know, we, we want to, I mean, see our goal is to enable this platform, uh, that what we built in, you know, all the use cases that customer could think of. Right. So in that way, hardware, standardization is a good thing for the industry. Um, and then same thing, if you go in how we program the AC, you know, we at about standards of this people, programming, it's an industry consortium led by a few people. >>Um, we want to make sure that, you know, we follow the standards for the customer who's coming in, uh, who wants to program it., it's good to have a standards based thing rather than doing something completely proprietary at the same time you're enabling innovations. And then those innovations here to push it back to the open source. That's what we trying to do with before. Yeah. Excellent. I've had some, some real good conversations about before. Um, and, and the way, uh, and Tondo is, is leveraging that, that may be a little bit differently. You know, you talk about standards and open source, oftentimes it's like, well, is there a differentiator there, there are certain parts of the ecosystem that you say, well, kind of been commodified. Mmm. Obviously you're taking a lot of different technologies, putting them together, uh, help, help share the uniqueness. Okay. And Tondo what differentiates, what you're doing from what was available in the market or that I couldn't just cobbled together, uh, you know, a bunch of open source hardware and software together. >>Yeah. I mean, if you look at a technologist, I think the networking that both of us are very familiar with that. If you want to build an SDN solution, or you can take a, well yes. Or you can use exhibit six and, you know, take some much in Silicon and cobble it together. But the problem is you will not get the performance and bandwidth that you're looking for. Okay. So let's say, you know, uh, if you want a high PPS solution or you want a high CPS solution, because the number of connections are going for your IOT use case or Fiji use case, right. If you, uh, to get that with an open source thing, without any assist, uh, from a domain specific processor, your performance will be low. So that is the, I mean, that's once an enterprise in the cloud use case state, as you know, you're trying to pack as many BMCs containers in one set of word, because, you know, you get charged. >>I mean, the customer, uh, the other customers make money based on that. Right? So you want to offload all of those things into a domain specific processor that what we've built, which we call the TSC, which will, um, which we'll, you know, do all the services at pretty much no cost to accept a six. I mean, it's to six, you'll be using zero cycles, a photo doing, you know, features like security groups or VPCs, or VPN, uh, or encryption or storage virtualization. Right. That's where that value comes in. I mean, if you count the TCO model using bunch of x86 codes or in a bunch of arm or AMD codes compared to what we do. Mmm. A TCO model works out great for our customers. I mean, that's why, you know, there's so much interest in a product. Excellent. I'm proud of you. Glad you brought up customers, Christina. >>One of the challenges I have seen over the years with networking is it tends to be, you know, a completely separate language that we speak there, you know, a lot of acronyms and protocols and, uh, you know, not necessarily passable to people outside of the silo of networking. I think back then, you know, SDN, uh, you know, people on the outside would be like, that stands for still does nothing, right? Like networking, uh, you know, mumbo jumbo there for people outside of networking. You know what I think about, you know, if I was going to the C suite of an enterprise customer, um, they don't necessarily care about those networking protocols. They care about the, you know, the business results and the product Liberty. How, how do you help explain what pen Sandow does to those that aren't, you know, steeped in the network, because the way I look at it, right? >>What is customer looking? But yeah, you're writing who doesn't need, what in cap you use customer is looking for is operational simplicity. And then he wants looking for security. They, it, you know, and if you look at it sometimes, you know, both like in orthogonal, if you make it very highly secure, but you make it like and does an operational procedure before you deploy a workload that doesn't work for the customer because in operational complexity increases tremendously. Right? So it, we are coming in, um, is that we want to simplify this for the customer. You know, this is a very simple way to deploy policies. There's a simple way to deploy your networking infrastructure. And in the way we do it is we don't care what your physical network is, uh, in some sense, right? So because we are close to the server, that's a very good advantage. >>We have, we have played the policies before, even the packet leaves the center, right? So in that way, he knows his fully secure environment and we, and you don't want to manage each one individually, we have this, okay, Rockwell PSM, which manages, you know, all this service from a central place. And it's easy to operationalize a fabric, whether you talk about upgrades or you talk about, you know, uh, deploying new services, it's all driven with rest API, and you can have a GUI, so you can do it a single place. And that's where, you know, a customer's value is rather than talking about, as you're talking about end caps or, you know, exactly the route to port. That is not the main thing that, I mean, they wake up every day, they wake up. Have you been thinking about it or do I have a security risk? >>And then how easy for me is to deploy new, uh, in a new services or bring up new data center. Right. Okay. Krishna, you're also spanning with your product, a few different worlds out. Yeah. You know, traditionally yeah. About, you know, an enterprise data center versus a hyperscale public cloud and ed sites, hi comes to mind very different skillset for management, you know, different types of okay. Appointments there. Mmm. You know, I understand right. You were going to, you know, play in all of those environments. So talk a little bit about that, please. How you do that and, you know, you know, where you sit in, in that overall discussion. Yes. So, I mean, a number one rule inside a company is we are driven by customers and obviously not customer success is our success. So, but given said that, right. What we try to do is that we try to build a platform that is kind of, you know, programmable obviously starting from, you know, before that we talked about earlier, but it's also from a software point of view, it's kind of plugable right. >>So when we build a software, for example, at cloud customers, and they use BSC, they use the same set of age KPI's or GSP CRS, TPS that DSC provides their controller. But when we ship the same, uh, platform, what enterprise customers, we built our own controller and we use the same DC APS. So the way we are trying to do is things is fully leverage yeah. In what we do for enterprise customers and cloud customers. Mmm. We don't try to reinvent the wheel. Uh, obviously at the same time, if you look at the highest level constructs from a network perspective, right. Uh, audience, for his perspective, what are you trying to do? You're trying to provide connectivity, but you're trying to avoid isolation and you're trying to provide security. Uh, so all these constructs we encapsulated in APA is a, which, you know, uh, in some, I, some, some mostly like cloud, like APS and those APIs are, are used, but cloud customers and enterprise customers, and the software is built in a way of it. >>Any layer is, can be removed on any layer. It can be hard, right? Because it's not interested. We don't want to be multiple different offers for different customers. Right. Then we will not scale. So the idea when we started the software architecture, is that how we make it pluggable and how will you make the program will that customer says, I don't want this piece of it. You can put them third party piece on it and still integrate, uh, at a, at a common layer with using. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, Krishna, you know, I have a little bit of appreciation where some of the hard work, what your team has been doing, you know, a couple of years in stealth, but, you know, really accelerating from, uh, you know, the announcement coming out of stealth, uh, at the end of 2019. Yeah. Just about half a year, your GA with a major OEM of HPE, definitely a lot of work that needs to be done. >>It brings us to, you know, what, what are you most proud about from the work that your team's doing? Uh, you know, we don't need to hear any, you know, major horror stories, but, you know, there always are some of them, you know, not holes or challenges that, uh, you know, often get hidden yeah. Behind the curtain. Okay. I mean, personally, I'm most proud of the team that we've made. Um, so, uh, you know, obviously, you know, uh, our executors have it good track record of disrupting the market multiple times, but I'm most proud of the team because the team is not just worried about that., uh, that, uh, even delegate is senior technologist and they're great leaders, but they're also worried about the customer problem, right? So it's always about, you know, getting the right mix, awfully not execution combined with technology is when you succeed, that is what I'm most proud of. >>You know, we have a team with, and Cletus running all these projects independently, um, and then releasing almost we have at least every week, if you look at all our customers, right. And then, you know, being a small company doing that is a, Hmm, it's pretty challenging in a way. But we did, we came up with methodologists where we fully believe in automation, everything is automated. And whenever we release software, we run through the full set of automation. So then we are confident that customer is getting good quality code. Uh, it's not like, you know, we cooked up something and that they should be ready and they need to upgrade to the software. That's I think that's the key part. If you want to succeed in this day and age, uh, developing the features at the velocity that you would want to develop and still support all these customers at the same time. >>Okay. Well, congratulations on that, Christian. All right. Final question. I have for you give us a little bit of guidance going forward, you know, often when we see a company out and we, you know, to try to say, Oh, well, this is what company does. You've got a very flexible architecture, lot of different types of solutions, what kind of markets or services might we be looking at a firm, uh, you know, download down the road a little ways. So I think we have a long journey. So we have a platform right now. We already, uh, I mean, we have a very baby, we are shipping. Mmm Mmm. The platforms are really shipping in a storage provider. Uh, we are integrating with the premier clouds, public clouds and, you know, enterprise market, you know, we already deployed a distributed firewall. Some of the customers divert is weird firewall. >>So, you know, uh, so if you take this platform, it can be extendable to add in all the services that you see in data centers on clubs, right. But primarily we are driven from a customer perspective and customer priority point of view. Mmm. So BMW will go is even try to add more ed services. We'll try to add more storage features. Mmm. And then we, we are also this initial interest in service provider market. What we can do for Fiji and IOT, uh, because we have the flexible platform. We have the, see, you know, how to apply this platform, this new application, that's where it probably will go into church. All right. Well, Krishna not a penny vice president of software with Ben Tondo. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, sir. It was great talking to you. All right. Be sure to check out the cube.net. You can find lots of interviews from Penn Sundo I'm Stu Miniman and thank you. We're watching the cute.

>>Live from Orlando, Florida. It's the cube covering Microsoft ignite brought to you by Cohesity. >>Welcome back everyone to the cubes live coverage of Microsoft ignite. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co host to minimun. We are doing joined by Donna Sarkar. She is the advocate lead Microsoft power platform at Microsoft. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you very much for having me. Tai cube land. So tell us a little bit about power platform. It's something we're hearing some buzz about, but we still need the overview. What is it all about? All right, so for years, decades we in the tech industry, you have been on this mission where we say everyone in the world can benefit from learning to code, right? Uh, whether you're a farmer and accountant, a teacher, a lawyer, a doctor, some sort of code will help you do your job better and you'll be able to automate away boring tasks and make apps and websites to solve your business problems. >>Right? We've been saying this forever and soon we started to realize like, why are we asking everyone to learn to code when the end goal is to solve those business problems, right? So instead of learning to code, why not create a suite of low code or no code tools? So all of these people who we call citizen developers who may not be professional developers as in they didn't go to computer science school, they didn't do a coding boot camp. They don't live in visual studio all day. How can they use these low code tools to solve their specific business problems? So that's like the vision of power platform and they're, I would say six independent pillars of it. Um, the first one, the one that most people know is power BI, which is a dashboard to visualize data and you know, um, traction in your business and all of that. >>So that's the one that most of the fortune 500 are like quite familiar with. The second one that I think a lot of people have used, used to be called Microsoft flow. So this is a automation tool where you'd say, if I get an email, send me a text, you know, a kind of a, if this happens, then that happens. It's just a logical tool that connects lots and lots of services in our life together that has been renamed to power automate to focus more on the automation that many businesses have that we actually have not thought about for decades. How do we automate some of these processes that people have to do all the time? Third thing if I could. So of course one of the new announcements this week, power automate is the RPA piece. Yes. Come out there. So I guess it's a suite and this is a new offering as RPA. >>The robotic process automation is how we can, um, do UI automation, which is a huge pain in the neck. Like it's terrible because you say, Oh click box, wait three seconds, wait for this thing to happen. Sleep 10 sec. It is terrible. I've done UI automation, I hate it. UI automation. So much. So RPA, what it does for you is you perform the act actions and the code is generated and it replays. So that is this powerful tool for anyone who has to do any sort of repetitive scan form, scan, form, scan form, you know, sort of thing. So power automate. The third pillar is PowerApps, which I think everyone hears a lot about today, which is um, apps that are generated from whatever data source that you've got. Say you've got an Excel spreadsheet having, and I saw all of your guests are it all tracked in an Excel spreadsheet, right? >>Donna's coming now, Christina is coming next and there's Christina now and imagine you can see them in an app instead. And all of you have this app on your phone, you can say, Oh, what's on the docket for today, right? Donna's showing up at 11 Christina's at 1130 what are the questions we want to ask Donna? Click on the Donna tab, you get all the questions you want to talk to her about, et cetera. So PowerApps is a way to quickly generate an app from a data source without code. We have a whole bunch of templates depending on what you're trying to do. So maybe you're trying to make a gallery of photos or you're trying to make like an expense tool or like a gas mileage tool or whatever you're trying to do that every single business in the world has the same tools, slightly different. >>So the fourth thing is, um, a new announcement called power virtual assist, which is, um, think about it as simplified chatbots, right? Chatbots are everywhere. Uh, the way people think about making them is, Oh, I have to go get Azure cognitive services and learn it deeply and become a AI expert and learn to like speak natural language processing stuff. But in fact, you can build a chat bot in five minutes using power virtual assist, which was fantastic and really cool. And running through all of this is my favorite that I learned a lot about this week, which is called the AI builder. And AI builder is a tool really that brings intelligence to all of these things and makes you feel it kind of a badass. I'm like, Oh, I trained an AI model and deployed it and tested it on stage. That's crazy and cool. And I learned to do that in five minutes and believe you me, I'm not a data scientist. >>So it was a really, really cool set of tools that I personally, even as a pro developer, I'm very excited about. Well, I want to dig into the tools more than what they can do. But I first want to ask you a personal question because you're new to the role. You've been there two weeks. What made you, what was exciting to you about working with power platforms? So I've been at Microsoft for 14 years and I've always been in the windows division and I've always worked in a software engineering function. So always dealing with like C plus plus code comm code, how do we, what product code do we changes, do we make to windows the. And recently I've been realizing that my personal mission that anyone in the world should have my opportunities. It's, that's really important to me. Right? I grew up underserved society in Detroit, Michigan, right? >>I don't, I often feel like I don't deserve this life that I have and I fell into it because of luck and circumstance and I want other people to have these opportunities and not feel that same kind of impostor thing. So I always believe that tech is this, you know, this sword, this weapon that you can wield and it will as you make your way through the world and it creates so many opportunities, right? It, the opera and anyone in the world wants to hire a software engineer. Every company, right? Every company wants to hire devs. It doesn't matter if you're like government or like oil rigs, you want software developers. And I thought, what an amazing economic power and I want lots of people to have that. And lo and behold, I was offered the opportunity to head up a brand new advocacy team for the power platform, um, as part of the Azure advocates organization. >>And I said, Oh, that's amazing to be able to line up my personal passion with a mission in the company that doesn't come along very often. So I love my job. So it's interesting thought. I would love your viewpoint as someone that's been with Microsoft for 14 years, cause I know a lot of the advocacy people and many of them are ones that if you ask them if they would have joined Microsoft five years ago, I'm not sure. Sure. So you know, moving from windows to there. Tell us a little bit about culturally what's different about Microsoft today and you know, much more obviously than just windows. Yeah. Um, I would say that there's three things that are dramatically different. There's a lot of like things that people notice, but three things I think that are just, you can't even argue about it. One, we are definitely a learn it all mindset rather than a nodal where it's actually much better now to say, I do not know. >>Let's go find out, let's go do an experiment and then we'll have an answer. And that's much better than with great confidence saying something wrong. Right. Oh I know this will work for sure. I guarantee you. And then it not working because you're being a know it all rather than the learn it all. So that tolerance is off the charts. It's, it's expected. If you come in with a strong opinion with no sort of experimental data to back it up, that's no longer a good thing right now. People almost are suspicious. Like, really? Why do you, why do you think that? Have you checked it? Have you done the experiment? The second thing is, um, this co-creating with customers before, like you're asking about windows. I've worked on windows five versions and it always went a little like this, right? We as the developers would go and hide in Redmond, Washington for three and a half years and one day we would show up and say, here is your operating system. >>We'll see you in three years, have fun using it by, and then we go off and make another operating system. Right? We didn't stick around to figure out, is this operating system working for you? Are you being successful? What's you're trying to do? Are your customer successful? We just went ahead and made what we thought was next, right? Because we were convinced we knew better. But with windows 10 and every other product at Microsoft, now we actually cocreate with our customers, right? That feedback loop is part of the product cycle where we don't ship a product without having a feedback loop. So we shipped something. How are we getting feedback? What is the time baked in to actually take that feedback and make changes? So that's one thing. It's dramatically different. Um, it used to all be timed to code, product, time to fix bugs. >>That's it. Now it's code product, listen to customer feedback, fixed bugs from customers. That's it. So it dramatically shorten the amount of time it took to build an operating system because we don't need to make a three year long product. Instead we make like a six month long product. And when I ran the windows insider program, we were testing windows every week, right? Twice a week we're rolling out versions of windows to millions of people and getting their feedback in real time. And the third thing I'd say that's been a dramatic transformation is this inclusivity of not just different kinds of, you know, race in the city, but work styles, the kinds of businesses we do work with. Like we're a, we do Linux now, right? We do eggs. Um, our platform itself pulls from all sorts of data sources. We don't just say we only pull from Microsoft tech. >>Like if you have Excel, if you have access, if you have Azure, if you've sequel, we support you and everyone else go the heck away. No, we're, we're saying whatever data source you've got, we don't care. We'll build you a power app based on your data source. Bring your whole self to work, right? It's that bring your whole self to a work mindset that I think has permeated just across the company and a chosen our products. So you were talking about this feedback loop and I'm interested because these, these, the power platform was rolled out into 2018 we haven't seen any major revenue yet, but Microsoft sees a ton of promise here. So what was the customer feedback you were given in terms of these updates that you've just announced here at ignite and what were customers demanding, wanting, needing from these platforms, these, these, these tools? >>Well, there's been a few things. One, um, the uptake in power platform, especially power apps is the fastest growth of any business app in Microsoft history. Um, in the last like just two years we've reached 84% of the fortune 500 are running power. Now. That's kind of wild, right? When you think these are normally traditional companies who can be quite conservative, but they've got people, whether it's an it, it's a citizen dove or a PRODA, they're actually building power apps to supplement their business needs, right? So it's been just astronomical growth, which is fantastic. Um, and the feedback from this group is actually what dictates all of the changes we've been making. So one of the key things a lot of people said was we just adopted teams like last year, right? Our company adopted teams, we're all in on teams. All of our communication like realtime has done on teams, but power platform is not with teams. >>What's, what's the deal with that? Right? So the par platform dev team engineering team actually went and figured out how can you have a teams channel, how can you build a power plant, a power app, and then share that power app within your teams specifically. So say the three of us are working on a teams channel and I make a Oh, track your attendees app, the one we're talking about, I can share it within the teams itself and we can just see it from within the team's window. So it'll run within the teams window. Um, we can just deploy it to our phones as well. And with the same team's credentials as we're working, that applies to the app as well. So that's something that just rolled out this week as direct feedback from people who say we're, we want an on the latest and greatest. And that means teams. That's one means SharePoint online. That means our platform. That means all the things now. >>Yeah. So Donna, one of the things I love that you talked about is it doesn't take months to get started on this. So many announcements that you talked through all the six pillars and everything. For those people out there seeing what's new, give them some final tips as to how they should get started with, with the power platform family. >>I would say that um, one of the best things you can do is just get your hands on it, right? Stop reading about it. Stop looking at the announcements. Just get your hands on it. Because I was at first reading all these blog posts trying to understand CDs, power platform, AI builder, all this stuff. Stop. Just don't do it. The best thing to do is to go get on Microsoft learn. There's a start, a starter tutorial called canvas apps for power platform. Um, and go do the tutorial. All it does is it deploys an Excel spreadsheet to your personal machine or your personal one drive, whatever it is and using that, it's just carpet, right? It's like black carpet, white carpet and shows pictures of carpet and then you generate a power app. And it shows it in a gallery view on an app that you just see on your computer and then you deploy it to your phone. >>All it does is show you the power of an Excel spreadsheet converted into an app. So I've created a short URL for it just to make life easier for everyone. So it's AKA dot. Ms power up, super straight forward, super simple. And I talk about this tutorial all the time, not because I think it's the best tutorial that's ever existed, but for someone who has absolutely no idea and they're feeling intimidated to start, this is exactly the right thing to do because this tutorial, I am not kidding you both of you can do it in five minutes. Like on the next break. Once you're finished with me and Christina, I challenge you to do the tutorial. All right? Okay. Challenge accepted. One, one final thing. So you are known for this Ted talk that you gave Unimpossible syndrome earlier in this, in our conversation you said you fell into this like, Oh absolutely, you've gotten lucky, but yet you're a smart woman. >>Talk about imposter syndrome. And then and then give your best advice for the young people out there and an old people to frankly who are suffering. Imposter syndrome is a killer because it is a disease that is a global epidemic. It's not. Some people think it's a woman's problem, it's a people of color problem. No, it's not. It's an everyone problem. Every time I give this talk, the Ted audience was thousands of people. I would say about 70% men and when I asked how many of you feel these symptoms? Hands are up. 70% of people, and this was men too, who feel like I got here. You know the thoughts are usually I got here by accident. It was dumb luck. There's a mistake in the process. I slipped in under the radar any minute. Now someone's going to show up here and say, you don't belong here. >>Get out or someone's going to check my credentials or ask me like, how do you think you're as good as the people around you? Or why are you qualified to speak on this topic? Right? People are convinced this is going to happen. Like, almost everyone is convinced and it's wild. And I've realized the reason that happens is because we are not used to doing that thing yet. That's it. We don't imposter about the things we do every day. You don't imposter about being in camera on front of the camera in front of everyone because you do it all the time and you've gotten good reviews and obviously people come to talk to you. But if tomorrow I was to be like you and I are going to write office abs, you may say, ah, I don't think I'm qualified to do that. I don't know if you are or not. >>I'm just making stuff up at this point. Um, and you may say, I am not qualified to do that. And the reason you say that is because you've never done it before. Why would you be qualified to do that? It's like me trying to be qualified to ride a unicycle, right? Which I can't. So my advice to people who feels this, well I don't feel like I belong here, is break it down right into steps, debug this process and say, all right, there are parts of this process that I feel qualified to do and there's parts I do not feel qualified to do. What are they? So from my own example, I absolutely do not feel qualified to lead an advocacy team for power platform. Right. I said, I joined this team two weeks ago. I just learned about this product last year. How am I qualified to lead advocacy for this? >>So I had to break it down and I said, what? What am I feeling and posturing about? Is it leading advocacy? No, I did it for windows. I did it for hollow lens. I do know how to do that. Is it speaking in front of lots of people? Not really. I do that all the time. Is it writing content so others can learn? Not really. I do that all the time. Is it the product? Yes, it's the product. It's the, I don't feel like I know the ins and outs of the product that well. So if you were to ask me where exactly is the connector for, you know, Azure sequeled or PowerApps, I would just freeze. Like I do not know. I think it's in the Azure portal somewhere, somewhere. So I would feel that sense of imposter and like, Oh, I don't know. >>So I don't belong here. It's no, I just don't know the product that well. That's okay. I know advocacy well, so what I need to do now is identify things. I'm good at advocacy things. I'm not good at product, learn the product. That's it. It just becomes a really easy to do list or to learn list. Right. Learn it all mindset, not know it all. Mindset. I love it. Thank you so much. Thank you is a really terrific conversation. Wonderful. Thanks for having me. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. Stay tuned for more of the cubes live coverage of Microsoft ignite.

>>Live from Las Vegas. It's the cube covering UI path forward Americas 2019. Brought to you by UI path. Hello everyone and welcome >>do the cubes live coverage of UI path forward. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, co-hosting alongside of Dave Volante. We are joined by Layla Delage. She is the chief information and digital officer at Coca-Cola. ECEK thanks so much for coming on the show. Thank you. Great to be here. Very exciting. And also Christina Perala, she is the group RPA lead at Generali. Thank you so much for coming into, for inviting me. Thank you. So I want to hear from you both about what, what your industry is and what your role is. Level. Let's start with you. Okay, great. Um, so we are, um, one of the Rogers bottlers within the Coca-Cola system. Uh, we produce, distribute and sell Coca Cola company products. The operating around 10 countries are middle East and central Asia and parts of middle East, Pakistan, Syria and Turkey. They are actually born out of Turkey and that's where our central offices, um, we've operate with 26 plants, around 8,500 employees. >>Uh, we serve a consumer base of 400 million and we have around close to 1 billion, uh, customers. Uh, and we continue to invest in the countries where we operate. And my role is to film and my role is all things digital within this community. So leading technologists, leading technology, all things digital. Yes. So Christina, tell us about Generali. Generalia. Sikora Zuni is a leading insurance company as the presidency. Enough 50 countries worldwide and more than a 70,000 employees that were wider. So it's a bigger company, not only for insurance. And my role with the internet rally group is to leader the LPA program. So I'm inside of the group that I in digital. So am I inside this group, I'm very focused on smart process automation. So RPA plus AI, because a has a, we already know all I loudly, LPA without a AI is announcer nowadays. So we have to keep on talking about AI, machine learning algorithms to enrich, uh, uh, the capabilities of basic robotic sell, hand reach, also the Antwerp and automation of processes. You're the CIO and the CDO. Yes. Yes. That's unique. First of all, there's one that's unique too. It's even more unique than a woman has both roles. So what's the reason behind it? So, um, there's definitely a reason behind it. I joined the Coca Cola >>system about a year ago, so I'm just a over a year in the company. The reason actually I wanted to make sure that we highlight the CIO and CTO CDO role together is, um, I want to advocate for all the it organizations to transform and really get into the digital world and get into the world of advanced technologies, become strategic business partners. Get out of the kitchen, I call it kitchen kitchen, it, you know, get out of the managing of data centers or cloud and um, just the core foundational systems and applications. Get into the advanced technology, understand the business, gain business acumen and deliver solutions based on business needs. So to highlight that, I want to make sure that I hold the role of both and I'm able to be advocate of both worlds. Cause digital without it support is not able to accomplish what they need to accomplish and it needs to get into more of the digital space. And Christina, as the RPA, you write bots, you evangelize the organization. >>Um, mostly the second. So in generally we have a, a very, uh, so, uh, sort of ivory the organization. So for something we are very decentralized, for example, for the developing of robots or the deploying for the action, the operational stuff and so on. Uh, but uh, for some stuff like a guidelines, uh, uh, risk framework to ensure that robots can do their work in the right way with notice to all for the business processes, uh, for this stuff before guidelines, framework, best practice sharing. We are a central centralized, we, we try to be centralized. So, uh, my role is to try to collect is to collect and not try and super lat, uh, best practices and share with you in the companies chair, uh, um, the best use cases. And, uh, also tried to gather what are the main concerns, what are the difficulties in order to a facilitator and to boost smarter process automation of the option. So >>Laila, you are up on the main stage this morning. You, I Pat highlighted Coca Cola itchy as a, as a customer that is embraced automation, embrace the UI pass solution. So tell us a little bit about the challenges you are facing and then why you chose I a UI path. So as I joined the company, uh, I introduced a very strong digital strategy that required a lot of change and it's within a company that has been very successfully operating all these years and doing pretty much know what to do very well. And all of a sudden with digital we are starting to disrupt the, are trying to say, Hey, we've got to change the way, do some of the things. Um, so belief in digital and belief that it can really bring efficiency and outcomes was very important. And I needed a quick win. I needed to have a technology or a solution or an outcome that I would generate very quickly and show to the whole organization that this can be done and we can do this as Coca-Cola. TJ. >>So that was, that was RPA, that was our PA for this fascinates me because you're an incumbent business, been around for a long time. you're a bottler and distributor, right? So yeah, processes are around the bottling plants and the distribution system. Yes. And now you're transforming into a digital business. Yes. I'll put data at your core. Totally not start his daytime customer. Okay. So describe the difference between the traditional business and what it looks like when you've transformed, particularly from a data perspective. And then I want to understand what role RPA plays. So we are definitely a very data rich company, however, to call ourselves data rich and to call it a strategic asset, I first need to capture and control my data and I have to treat it like a strategic asset. So that is a huge transformation. The second, once you treat it as an asset, how do you generate more insights? >>And I call this augmenting the gut feeling. I have an amazing gut feeling in the company. How do I augment that with data and provide our, this is partners and then our customers and our suppliers and some of the information. And then obviously future maturity level is, you know, shared economy and data monetization, et cetera. So that's how I describe within the company. And then assets, other assets like our plants and coolers cooler, we call it cooler, you know, where do you actually see all our products? They are called, they are visible and they are available, but they are also in that set where I can turn them into a digital cooler and I can do so much more with the cooler that standing. And I recently, in one of our leadership meetings I said we have as many coolers as the um, population on the fishy Island, which is close to 1 million. >>So just imagine in this new world, in this digital era, everything that you can do by just having a cooler, 1 million coolers present out there on the street, I can serve the consumers, I can serve customers with very different information. So that's kind of what I mean by turning the business into a digital business. So that's an awesome story. By the way, how does RPA fit into that vision? RPA is everywhere in division. So I said when I started the journey, uh, any digital journey has some Muslim battles for me. There are four must win battles. I need to get certain things right in it, in the, and that was one, one of the Mustin battles was alteration. So we have to create efficiency, we have to optimize, we have to streamline. And we said automation first. Um, and we started with, I call it robotics and automation. >>And I agree with what you said, Christina. It's more than just robots. It's actually a strategic application. It could be a good old ERP. It's the RPA, it's AI, it's all the other technologies that are out there that they bring the two of them brings. So how do you create this end to end solution using all the trends, technologies to create optimization? Uh, our goal was how do we get back to our customer much faster. We had so many customer facing processes and they're going to be there forever. They are a very customer centric customer into company obviously. So how do I get back to my customer faster? How do I make my employees just happy? They were working on so many things would be until midnight over time during weekends. How do I take that away from them? So we called it lifting the weight of the shoulders and giving you a new capabilities. So again, augmentation and then giving them that space. So we had uh, three of my employees upskilled and reskilled themselves. They became a developers in the robotics space, a couple of fire functional, um, colleagues are now reskilling themselves because now they have the time to reskill. More importantly, they have the time to actually leverage their expertise and they are so much more motivated. The engagement, the employee engagement is increasing. So that's how we are positioning RPA. Pristina ICU >>nodding a lot, your head too. A lot of what Layla is saying. I'm wondering if you can talk to about any best practices that have emerged as you've implemented RPA at Generali to what you've learned. Yes, for sure. Um, we have a lot of processes automated, uh, all around the group. Uh, but we are not, we have not reached our maximum or, uh, benefits, uh, gaining. So what we need to do right now is to try to boost the smart process automation, uh, via analyzing the issue around value, Cena. So each business area of the value chain because currently we have countries that has, that have a different level of maturity. So, so some countries are at the very beginning and we have to help them with best practice sharings with a huge case, successful use cases. And we are, uh, we have a lot of help from parts into, in this because locally and who I Potter as a, a very strong presence and is very powerful in doing that. >>And, uh, now, uh, our next mouth are very focused on try to, um, uh, deep dive, the vertical, our area of the issue around value chain and identify which are the processes inside them are best to automated. Uh, uh, Basinger. Uh, these activities are not so you, I part, we'd, his experience has created a heat mapper, value chain Heath mapper. And so it's given up as some advice where to focus our strengths, our hand energy in automating. And I think that this is a very huge, uh, uh, support that you are UI parties given us. So it's not just a matter of, okay, let's start, uh, uh, do some, uh, process assessment in order to identify which processes are the best candidates to be automated. But, uh, we have, uh, how our back, uh, us. So we, we are, uh, we have the backing of UI pass saying it's better to do that and automate in depth, uh, processes of that, but Oh, the value chain. So we are starting a program to do that with all the countries or the vertical area of the country. So, and I think that this could really bring a, uh, high benefits and can, uh, uh, drive us to, uh, really having a scaling up in using a smart process, automation and UI. But you a bot ecosystem not only are, so >>one of the nice things about RPA is you can take the software robots and apply them to an existing process. A lot of times changing processes and a lot of times almost always changing processes is painful. However, we've talked to some customers that have said by applying RPA to our business, it's exposed some really bad processes. Have you experienced that and can you maybe share that experience with it? Absolutely. So for us, one of the initial, um, robots, we applied to a customer facing process. It was our field team trying to get back to our customer with a, with some information. And we realize that the, um, the cycle time was very long. And the reason is there are four functions involved in answering the question and seven different applications are being touched all the way from XL to ERP to CRM. So what we did obviously bringing a strategic solution to fix the cycle time and reduce that to streamline the process was going to take us long. So RPA was great help. We reduced the cycle time by putting a robot and we were able to get back to ours, priests, sales team in the field in matter of minutes. What used to take hours was now being responded to in minutes. Now that doesn't mean that process is perfect, but that's our next step. So we created value for our customer and our sales team within the field, um, before, you know, streamlining and going into a bigger initiatives. So then you could share Christina. >>Yes. Uh, so, um, it is necessary to automate something that could be automated. So, uh, it is necessarily to out optimize the process before automating it, but sometimes it's better to automate it as Caesar because, uh, also the not optimize the process can bring value if ultimated. So let me share an example. If you, for example, have to migrate some data obviously is a one shot, uh, uh, activity. But with the robot you can do it in a very short, well sharp timer. Maybe it's not the best, uh, process to be automated, but that could be useful as well. So it's always a matter of understanding the costs and the benefits. Uh, and sometimes, uh, FBA is very quickly, is very quick to be implemented and can be, can have a, also a lot of savings instead of integrating instead of doing more complex things. >>And then other things, uh, that it's important to take into account is that, uh, uh, after having a automating goal, all the low hanging fruits and so the processes with a low cost, uh, uh, low complexity and high benefits, uh, then it starts to facer when it's necessary to understand how to the end to end processes. Because, uh, it happens, uh, in, uh, some of our countries that, uh, the second phase is very difficult because, uh, the situation is that you have very, um, a lot of very fermented processes. And so before automating it is necessary to apply operational efficiency methodology, lean six Sigma, rare business process for engineering and then automate it. So it's a longer trip. And our Amer as group head office in general is to give these kinds of methodologies and best practices for all kinds of level of maturity in our countries. So finally, w what is the customer is the employee response then in terms of how you're talking a lot about streamlining, getting rid of these tedious tasks that took forever, how, how our employees reacting to the implementation. >>So we, um, we actually launched the, uh, announce announced RPA robotics and automation with a Hekaton in our company. And we invited 40 colleagues from various functions and two and everybody from the business was there and they participated actually in gathering ideas and prioritizing what matters most to the company. And we looked at customer, we looked at compliance, we look to the employee and we actually with during the hackathon you iPad team helped us to go live with one of the robots. They were mesmerized. They couldn't believe that this could happen. I think that's where we kind of engaged them and now going forward everyone who generate the idea was part of the building of the robots so they continue to be engaged to me allowed them to name the robots so they start naming and once the robots were alive yet literally had some of our teams who are dancing from happiness and I think that said it all. That was the strongest voice of our business partner and we published that video. So our business partners became our advocates and that's really our how we born the robotic and automation within CCI. We have so many advocates right now they are coming to us. Our business partners are coming to us with more use cases and they are actually, they are sharing with rest of the system within Coca-Cola and with the group that we are part of locally in Turkey, they are sharing their stories. So now we have a hype going on in the system. >>Yes. And in generally, um, at the beginning, uh, we face some fears in our employees fears of losing their job, but fear is not be able to use this kind of technology. Uh, but, uh, also with the help of HR because I, Charlie is, uh, driving a huge program of upskilling and reskilling of people. Uh, nowadays, uh, also hand user are very happy to use robotics, uh, because, uh, uh, when they realize that they can really help in their activities, in their very boring and not useful activities, they are very happy to enjoy this, this program. But it is so, uh, it, it was a trip, a journey with the employees to make them understand that it's not something that, uh, is affecting their job. So, at least in generally group, we are, we are programming, uh, these, uh, uh, or employees, uh, journey in order to make them, uh, uh, to have more, uh, uh, awareness about robotics and not be scared about it. Layla and Christina, thank you both so much for coming on the cube. It was wonderful. Thank you very much for you. I'm Rebecca Knight for Dave Volante. Please stay tuned for more of the cubes live coverage of UI path forward.

live from Los Angeles it's the queues covering open-source summit North America 2017 brought to you by the Linux Foundation and redhead he welcome back everyone here live in LA for the open source summit in North America I'm jumper with my co-host Jeff Fritz too many men he'll be back shortly is out scouring the hallways for all the news and analysis getting all the scuttlebutt are here we're here with our next guest brian behlendorf who is the executive director of the hyper ledger project for the Linux Foundation thanks for coming on thank ledger thanks for sharing we just talking before the camera started rolling about blockchain and the coolness around the hype around it but again the hype cycle is usually a pretext to the trend hyper ledger is one of those exciting projects that like AI everyone is jazzed about because it's the future right open source is getting bigger and bigger as Jim zemulon was saying 23 million developers and growing but there's still so much work to be done the global society's relying on open source it's shaping our culture - Ledger's one of those things where it is going to actually disrupt the culture and change it potentially and even this morning Chinese band virtual currencies and icos and all based upon doesn't mean it's time to invest yes and whatever China bands it's always been successful so your thoughts go first boy star let's get into hyper ledger project it's certainly super exciting probably people are talking about it heavily what's going on with the project give a quick update what's the purpose who's involved and when some of the milestones you guys have hyper ledger is less than two years old it was launched officially in December of 2015 I joined in main and it was founded on the principle that hey there's a lot of interesting stuff happening in the cryptocurrency world but there might be some more prosaic some more directly applicable applications of distributed ledger and smart contract technology to rebooting a lot of otherwise very thorny problems for industries in the world the main problem being you've got companies doing business with each other and the recording transactions and you know they'll have to go back and reconcile their systems to get audited bugs right and a lot of the systems out there depend upon processes at a very human processes that are prone to error prone to corruption right so the idea is the more that you can pull together you know information about transactions into a shared system of record which is really with the distributed ledger it's and then the more about of the governance and the and the business processes enclosed that you can automate by smart contract the more effective the more efficient a lot of these markets will be so that's what hyper ledger is about ok so certainly the the keynote was all about open sources being dependent upon and Jim's Emlyn as well as Christine Corbett said you know traditionally control we all know that open source but I love that the deployment changing the face of capitalism because hyper ledger is a term that you can almost apply to the notion of decentralize not just distributed but decentralized business so the notion of supply chain things in finance to moving Goods around the world this is interesting this is how about the impact of how you guys are seeing some of these applications we're now a decentralized architecture combined with distributed creates an opportunity for changing the face of capitalism flowing because the word distributed can be very loaded all right you know and even decentralized right it can be very loaded and what I what I tried to popularize is the idea of minimum viable centralization right you know football games and other sports games have referees right and when we play a game like this well sometimes you know sometimes we don't need a referee it's just us playing pick-up basketball but we want somebody on the periphery we all agree to who helps remind us what the rules are and throws a red flag from time to time all right and so you see in industries ranging from finance where you're building these transaction networks to you know supply chains where you need to track the flow of like food and to know when if food has gotten spoiled possibly where that came from or diamonds that have been involved in conflict time and you know other illegal activities right you want to know where that came for a minute and it involves that industry getting together and saying we all agree we have a big net interest in making our business actually follow certain rules and norms right and using a distributed ledger to to bring that about it's something that can just provide a lot of optimizations so most people think of like Bitcoin and ether a mezda with all this ICO buzz as de as the front end to really the underlying blockchain which you're talking about yeah and that's kind of like I get that fiat currency in this market developed to look crazed bubbles some people call it whatever but you're getting at something unique and this is that there's a real business value of hyper ledger I won't say boring but it's like meat and potatoes stuff it's like really kind of prosaic is the prosaic it's like so but it's disruptive so if you think about like the old days when we were growing up or I was growing up ERP was on mini computers and the prized resource planning relationship management software those were bloated monolithic software packages yeah still out there today and they handle the so called supply chain right so is the hypervisor a disruption to that is it an augmentation of that so some try to put it in context the cost of sending a shipping container from China to the United States right half of that is in paperwork half of that is because that container on average will go through 30 different organizations from the the you know the suppliers that you're assembling the goods into to all the different ports all the different regulatory authorities right out finally to where it's delivered and if you can optimize those business processes if you can make it so that the happen in a space where it's not about paper and facts which a lot of that world is still ruled by today or a bureaucrat sitting there reviewing stuff that's coming in and having to stamp it when really all that could be automated you could cut the cost of that and take the shipping industry from what is right now a money-losing industry to potentially being viable once again so optimization is really critical for them it's optimization but it but there's also some new capabilities here so I spent a year at Department of Health and Human Services trying to help make health care records more portable for patients right and we wrote it and got it I got the industry to write a ton of open source software implemented open standards to make these records shareable the problem was the patient wasn't involved right this was about trying to take two orgs do something that all of their bean counters told them not to do which was share patient records because no that's proprietary value and the HIPAA regulations all that not exactly blackens processes basically with blocking with blocking technology that we can reinvent that as a patient driven process right we could reinvent a lot of the other business processes out there that involve personally identifiable information like the Equifax disaster right we could reinvent how the credit markets assess risk in individuals through blockchain technology in a way that doesn't require us to build these big central anonymous third parties that Coover everybody's data and become these massive privacy titanic's right we can reinvent a lot of this through blockchain tech and that's a lot of what we're working on that Nagaraja because a analytics from that kind of a unique place because you're used to driving these big open-source projects there's a lot of people and they're trying to build the wrapper around the base core of blockchain to come up with their version or their kind of application if you will whether it be Bitcoin or whatever but you guys are in kind of a special place based on your roots we believe that I mean open standards are nice but what really matters is common code right and in a world like we envision where rather than saying you one big Network like Bitcoin or one big Network like aetherium you've got thousands or tens of thousands of these permission networks that cover different industries different geographies different regions what you need is common software so that when a developer goes to work on an application that touches one or multiple of these they've got familiar idioms to work they've got familiar technologies to work with like NGO or Java or JavaScript right but they've got a community of other technologies has been trained up on these technologies that can help them bootstrap and launch their project and maybe even become a contributor to the open source so what we've figured out at the Linux Foundation is how to make that virtuous cycle go right companies you know benefit commercially from it and then feed back into the project and that's what we're mentioning the word you get almost rethink and reimagine some of these things like the Equifax disaster yeah I think it's pretty man no breathing most tech people I really seen as as viable like absolutely it's gonna happen so there's a nice trajectory vision that people are buying into because it's somewhat you can see it hanging together playing out technically what are some of the things going on the project can you share with the folks watching about some things that you're doing to get there faster what's going on with the community with some of the issues with concerns how do people get involved take some time to go tobut deep words of the project so we're not a you know an RD kind of free thinking kind of thing we're about get writing code and shipping and getting into production right so hyper ledger fabric just hit a one dot oh that was a signal from the developers that this code is ready to be run in production systems and for you to track digital assets right doesn't by far does not mean it's the end of the road it's the end of chapter one right but at least it's a place where we you know the kind of the clear intent is let's make this actually usable by enterprises the other projects we've got eight different projects total at hyper ledger some of them even compete with each other right but we're driving all of them to get to a one dot oh and over time all of them talk about how they relate to each other in kind of complimentary ways what's some of the profile developers you're getting because some people always ask I know what should I get involved what can I sink my teeth into what are some of the meaty kind of things that people are doing with it who the persona that that are coming in these enterprise developers they more traditional full-stack developers can you give a range of some of the persona attributes because this is early code still I mean this whole space is still pretty early when it comes to understanding how to use these technologies especially at scale kind of at a DevOps scale a lot of the people first coming into the tech community now are fairly advanced right are kind of the whiz kids right but we're seeing that gradually broad broaden out we now are at a point where we could use developers coming in and writing sample applications right we could use people helping us with documentation we're developing training materials that will be creative commons-licensed so everybody will be able to deliver those and as they find bugs or add features to the training they can do that too we can really use anybody all right so folks watching get involved okay get any white spaces you might want to tease them out with that you see happening obviously mentioned tracking digital assets data is a stress that's cool anything that's going on with data probably is a digital asset but you'd agree what's some of the things that people could get motivated can you share any insight that you might have that would motivate someone to jump in I think any any industry has these challenges of weaving their systems together with other businesses and then trying to do that in a way that holds each other.you account right this is a system for building systems of record between organizations right and you know you running a database to me running a database we don't get there on our own we only get there by working with consortio by working in as a community to actually build these systems and so I'd say every every business has that challenge whether they're engineers have felt free to go in and try to tackle that extranet days when you see people building citizen networks similar concept where blockchain is one big happy family collaborative network all right final question for you kind of shooting for a little bit what do you expect to happen community any thoughts on some of the goals you have is executive director obviously you got some hackathons for good we'll see blockchain being applied to some real things with one dot out what do you see rolling out which some of your goals I massively grow the developer community both the well you know the one end of the spectrum which is the the whiz kids the hardcore developers to you know move forward on a kind of the leading edge of that but really we've got to bring you know hundred thousand developers into this space or the next couple years just to meet the demand that's there in the industry for that town alright so if I'm a now an executive as a hey I saw this great Cuban in friens awesome go get involved what how did someone get involved is just jump standard community model just jump in what advice would you give someone if they want to engage and participate for every one of our projects if you give gave it an hour you'd get to a running you know instance of that software right so fabric or sawtooth within an hour you should ever running for node instance that you can start writing chain code two which is the smart contract language right and and then from there getting involved in the community as a matter of joining mailing list joining our rocket chat channels rocket chats an alternative to slack that we actually prefer and I and I think you'll find a really welcoming community of other devs who want to tell you about what the projects are and want to help you kind of climb that learning curve one of the comments just enough good note here is that Christina gave him the key no she says code can shape culture you've been in the industry a long time you've seen the wave you've been on the shoulders of others and now as the open source goes to the next level how is code gonna shape the culture in your opinion actually people started working together to take that I would say that almost I'm not a moon shot but it's really more of an imperative that culture will be changed inclusion else is huge your thoughts on code shaping culture so we've we've had a decline in trust in institutions in the United States and worldwide not just in the last seven months since November but actually for the last 20 years there's Edelman does this survey every year where they ask you your trust in brands your trust in government your trust in the process the fairness of society and for 20 years that's been on a straight-line decline to the point where we ask ourselves like can you trust any level of government can you trust businesses to look out for your interest the answer almost generically is going to be no this is a technology that can save us from this is a technology that we I believe can help us define the rules of the game help us build society but then actually automate and implement that in a way that doesn't require us to have to bribe an official or curry favor with a school official to get our kid into that school or anything like that this is a way to try I think to make the world more accountable and more fair and open source has that inclusive and staying away from the gerrymander and I love the quote it's so confusing now it's like who do you ask where's the source of truth and it used to be RTFM and check the source code now it's not only there is no manual who is the source fake news all these bots means kind of crazy so this is that a call to arms the open source I think it is I think it really is the trust as a service ok Brian thanks so much for come on if you appreciate it Thank You director for the hyper ledger project super important project really a game changer changing the face of capitalism also continuing the trend accelerate open source I'm Shaun Frechette for more live coverage from the queue after this short break

okay we're back this is Dave Volante with Jeff Kelly we're with Ricky bond on organ this is the cubes silicon angles flagship product we go out to the events we extract the signal from the noise we bring you the tech athletes who are really changing the industry and we have one here today christiane sabo is the CEO the leader the spiritual leader of of this conference and of Tablo Kristin welcome to the cube thanks for having me yeah it's our pleasure great keynote the other day I just got back from Italy so I'm full of superlatives right it really was magnificent I was inspired I think the whole audience was inspired by your enthusiasm and what struck me is I'm a big fan of simon Sinek who says that people don't buy what you do they buy why you do it and your whole speech was about why you're here everybody can talk about their you know differentiators they can talk about what they sell you talked about why you're here was awesome so congratulations I appreciate that yeah so um so why did you start then you and your colleagues tableau well it's how below really started with a series of breakthrough research innovations that was this seed there are three co-founders of tableau myself dr. crystal T and professor Pat Hanrahan and those two are brilliant inventors and designers and researchers and the real hero of the tableau story and the company formed when they met on entrepreneur and a customer I had spent several years as a data analyst when I first came out of college and I understood the problems making sense of data and so when I encountered the research advancements they had made I saw a vision of the future a much better world that could bring the power of data to a vastly larger number of people yeah and it's really that simple isn't it and and so you gave some fantastic examples them in the way in which penicillin you know was discovered you know happenstance and many many others so those things inspire you to to create this innovation or was it the other way around you've created this innovation and said let's look around and see what others have done well I think the thing that we're really excited about is simply put as making databases and spreadsheets easy for people to use I can talk to someone who knows nothing about business intelligence technology or databases or anything but if I say hey do you have any spreadsheets or data files or databases you you just feel like it could it could get in there and answer some questions and put it all together and see the big picture and maybe find a thing or two everyone not everyone has been in that situation if nothing else with the spreadsheet full of stuff like your readership or the linkage the look the the traffic flow on on the cube website everyone can relate to that idea of geez why can't I just have a google for databases and that's what tableau is doing right right so you've kind of got this it's really not a war it's just two front two vectors you know sometimes I did I did tweet out they have a two-front war yeah what'd you call it the traditional BI business I love how you slow down your kids and you do that and then Excel but the point I made on Twitter in 140 characters was you it will be longer here I'm a little long-winded sometimes on the cube but you've got really entrenched you know bi usage and you've got Excel which is ubiquitous so it sounds easy to compete with those it's not it's really not you have to have a 10x plus value problem solutely talked about that a little bit well I think the most important thing we're doing is we're bringing the power of data and analytics to a much broader population of people so the reason the answer that way is that if you look at these traditional solutions that you described they have names like and these are the product brand names forget who owns them but the product brand names people are used to hearing when it comes to enterprise bi technology our names like Business Objects and Cognos and MicroStrategy and Oracle Oh bi and big heavy complicated develop intensive platforms and surprise surprise they're not in the hands of very many people they're just too complicated and development heavy to use so when we go into the worlds even the world's biggest companies this was a shocker for us even when we go into the world's most sophisticated fortune 500 companies and the most cutting-edge industries with the top-notch people most of the people in their organization aren't using those platforms because of theirs their complication and expense and development pull and so usually what we end up doing is just bringing the power of easy analytics and dashboards and visualization and easy QA with data to people who have nothing other than maybe a spreadsheet on their desk so in that sense it's actually a little easier than it sounds well you know I have to tell you I just have a cio consultancy and back in the day and we used to go in and do application portfolio analysis and we would look at the applications and we always advise the CIOs that the value of an application is a function of its use how much is being adopted and the impact of that use you know productivity of the users right and you'd always find that this is the dss system the decision support system like you said there were maybe 3 to 15 users yeah and an organization of tens of thousands of people yeah if they were very productive so imagine if you can you can permeate the other you know hundreds of thousands of users that are out there do you see that kind of impact that productivity impact as the potential for your marketplace absolutely I you know the person who I think said it best was the CEO of Cisco John Chambers and I'll paraphrase him here but he has this great thing he said which is he said you know if I can get each of the people on my team consulting data say oh I don't know twice per day before making a decision and they do the same thing with their people and their people and so you know that's a million decisions a month you did the math better made than my competition I don't want people waiting around for top top management to consult some data before making a decision I want all of our people all the time Consulting data before making a decision and that's the real the real spirit of this new age of BI for too long it's been in the hands of a high priesthood of people who know how to operate these complicated convoluted enterprise bi systems and the revolution is here people are fed up with it they're taking power into their hands and they're driving their organizations forward with the power of data thanks to the magic of an easy-to-use suite like tableau well it's a perfect storm right because everybody wants to be a data-driven organization absolutely data-driven if you don't have the tools to be able to visualize the data absolutely so Jeff if you want to jump in well Christian so in your keynote you talked for the majority of the keynote about human intuition and the human element talk a little bit about that because when we hear about in the press these days about big data it's oh well the the volume of data will tell you what the answer is you don't need much of the human element talk about why you think the human element is so important to data-driven decision-making and how you incorporate that into your design philosophy when you're building the product and you're you know adding new features how does the human element play in that scenario yeah I mean it's funny dated the data driven moniker is coming these days and we're tableaus a big big believer in the power of data we use our tools internally but of course no one really wants to be data driven if you drive your company completely based on data say hello to the cliff wall you will drive it off a cliff you really want people intelligent domain experts using a combination of act and intuition and instinct to make data informed decisions to make great decisions along the way so although pure mining has some role in the scheme of analytics frankly it's a minor role what we really need to do is make analytic software that as I said yesterday is like a bicycle for our minds this was the great Steve Jobs quote about computers that their best are like bicycles for our mind effortless machines that just make us go so much faster than any other species with no more effort expended right that's the spirit of computers when they're at our best Google Google is effortless to use and makes my brain a thousand times smarter than it is right unfortunately over an analytic software we've never seen software that does tap in business intelligence software there's so much development weight and complexity and expense and slow rollout schedules that were never able to get that augmentation of the brain that can help lead to better decisions so at tableau in terms of design we value our product requirements documents say things like intuition and feel and design and instinct and user experience they're focused on the journey of working with data not just some magic algorithm that's gonna spit out some answer that tells you what to do yeah I mean I've often wondered where that bi business would be that traditional decision support business if it weren't for sarbanes-oxley I mean it gave it a new life right because you had to have a single version of the truth that was mandated by by the government here we had Bruce Boston on yesterday who works over eight for a company that shall not be named but anyway he was talking about okay Bruce in case you're watching we're sticking to our promise but he was talking about intent desire and satisfaction things those are three things intent desire and satisfaction that machines can't do like the point being you just you know it was the old bromide you can't take the humans in the last mile yeah I guess yeah do you see that ever changing no I mean I think you know I I went to a friend a friend of mine I just haven't seen in a while a friend of mine once said he was an he was an artificial intelligence expert had Emilie's PhD in a professorship in AI and once I naively asked him I said so do we have artificial intelligence do we have it or not and we've been talking about for decades like is it here and he said you're asking the wrong question the question is how smart our computers right so I just think we're analytics is going is we want to make our computers smarter and smarter and smarter there'll be no one day we're sudden when we flip a switch over and the computer now makes the decision so in that sense the answer to your question is I keep I see things going is there is it going now but underneath the covers of human human based decision making it are going to be fantastic advancements and the technology to support good decision making to help people do things like feel and and and chase findings and shift perspectives on a problem and actually be creative using data I think there's I think it's gonna be a great decade ahead ahead of us so I think part of the challenge Christian in doing that and making that that that evolution is we've you know in the way I come the economy and and a lot of jobs work over the last century is you know you're you're a cog in a wheel your this is how you do your job you go you do it the same way every day and it's more of that kind of almost assembly line type of thinking and now we're you know we're shifting now we're really the to get ahead in your career you've got to be as good but at an artist you've got to create B you've got to make a difference is the challenge do you see a challenge there in terms of getting people to embrace this new kind of creativity and again how do you as a company and as a you know provider of data visualization technology help change some of those attitudes and make people kind of help people make that shift to more of less of a you know a cog in a larger organization to a creative force inside that organ well mostly I feel like we support what people natively want to do so there are there are some challenges but I mostly see opportunity there in category after category of human activity we're seeing people go from consumers to makers look at publishing from 20 years ago to now self-publishing come a few blogs and Twitter's Network exactly I mean we've gone from consumers to makers everyone's now a maker and we have an ecosystem of ideas that's so positive people naturally want to go that way I mean people's best days on the job are when they feel they're creating something and have that sense of achievement of having had an idea and seeing some progress their hands made on that idea so in a sense we're just fueling the natural human desire to have more participation with data to id8 with data to be more involved with data then they've been able to in the past and again like other industries what we're seeing in this category of technology which is the one I know we're going from this very waterfall cog in a wheel type process is something that's much more agile and collaborative and real-time and so it's hard to be creative and inspired when you're just a cog stuck in a long waterfall development process so it's mostly just opportunity and really we're just fueling the fire that I think is already there yeah you talked about that yesterday in your talk you gave a great FAA example the Mayan writing system example was fantastic so I just really loved that story you in your talk yesterday basically told the audience first of all you have very you know you have clarity of vision you seem to have certainty in your vision of passion for your vision but the same time you said you know sometimes data can be confusing and you're not really certain where it's going don't worry about that it's no it's okay you know I was like all will be answered eventually what but what about uncertainty you know in your minds as the you know chief executive of this organization as a leader in a new industry what things are uncertain to you what are the what are the potential blind spots for you that you worry about do you mean for tableau as a company for people working with data general resource for tableau as a company oh I see well I think there's always you know I got a trip through the spirit of the question but we're growing a company we're going a disruptive technology company and we want to embrace all the tall the technologies that exist around us right we want to help to foster day to day data-driven decision-making in all of its places in forms and it seems to me that virtually every breakthrough technology company has gone through one or two major Journal technology transformations or technology shocks to the industry that they never anticipated when they founded the company okay probably the most recent example is Facebook and mobile I mean even though even though mobile the mobile revolution was well in play when when Facebook was founded it really hadn't taken off and that was a blind Facebook was found in oh seven right and look what happened to them right after and here's that here's new was the company you can get it was founded in oh seven yeah right so most companies I mean look how many companies were sort of shocked by the internet or shocked by the iPod or shocked by the emergence of a tablet right or shocked by the social graph you know I think for us in tableaus journey if this was the spirit of the thought of the question we will have our own shocks happen the first was the tablet I mean when we founded tableau like the rest of the world we never would have anticipated that that a brilliant company would finally come along and crack the tablet opportunity wide open and before in a blink of an eye hundreds of millions of people are walking around with powerful multi-touch graphic devices in their I mean who would have guessed people wouldn't have guessed it no six let alone oh three know what and so luckily that's what that's I mean so this is the good kind of uncertainty we've been able to really rally around that there are our developers love to work on this area and today we have probably the most innovative mobile analytics offering on the market but it's one we never could have anticipated so I think the biggest things in terms of big categories of uncertainty that we'll see going forward are similar shocks like that and our success will be determined by how well we're able to adapt to those so why is it and how is it that you're able to respond so quickly as an organization to some of those tectonic shifts well I think the most important thing is having a really fleet-footed R&D team we have just an exceptional group of developers who we have largely not hired from business technology companies we have something very distributed going a tableau yeah one of the amazing things about R&D key our R&D team is when we decided to build just this amazing high-wattage cutting-edge R&D team and focus them on analytics and data we decided not to hire from other business intelligence companies because we didn't think those companies made great products so we've actually been hiring from places like Google and Facebook and Stanford and MIT and computer gaming companies if you look at the R&D engineers who work on gaming companies in terms of the graphic displays and the response times and the high dimensional data there are actually hundreds of times more sophisticated in their thinking and their engineering then some engineer who was working for an enterprise bi reporting company so this incredible horsepower this unique team of inspired zealots and high wattage engineers we have in our R&D team like Apple that's the key to being able to respond to these disruptive shocks every once in a while and rule and really sees them as an opportunity well they're fun to I mean think of something on the stage yesterday and yeah we're in fucky hats and very comfortable there's never been an R&D team like ours assembled in analytics it's been done in other industries right Google and Facebook famously but in analytics there's never been such an amazing team of engineers and Christian what struck me one of the things that struck me yesterday during your keynote or the second half of the keynote was bringing up the developers and talking about the specific features and functions you're gonna add to the product and hearing the crowd kind of erupt at different different announcements different features that you're adding and it's clear that you're very customer focused at this at tableau of you I mean you're responding to the the needs and the requests of your customers and I that's clearly evident again in the in the passion that these customers have for your for your product for your company how do you know first I'm happy how do you maintain that or how do you get get to that point in the first place where you're so customer focused and as you go forward being a public company now you're gonna get pressure from Wall Street and quarter results and all that that you know that comes with that kind of comes with the territory how do you remain that focused on the customer kind of as your you know you're going to be under a lot of pressure to grow and and you know drive revenue yeah I keep that focus well there's two things we do it's a it's always a challenge to stay really connected to your customers as you get big but it's what we pride ourselves on doing and there's two specific things we do to foster it the first is that we really try to focus the company and we try to make a positive aspect of the culture the idea of impact what is the impact of the work we're having and in fact a great example of how we foster that is we bring our entire support and R&D team to this conference no matter where it is we take we fly I mean in this case we literally flew the entire R&D team and product management team and whatnot across country and the time they get here face to face face to face with customers and hearing the customer stories and the victories and actually seeing the feedback you just described really inspires them it gives them specific ideas literally to go back and start working on but it also just gives them a sense of who comes first in a way that if you don't leave the office and you don't focus on that really doesn't materialize and the way you want it the second thing we do is we are we are big followers of I guess what's called the dog food philosophy of eat your own dog so drink your own champagne and so one of our core company values that tableau is we use our products facility a stated value of the company we use our products and into an every group at tableau in tests in bug regressions in development in sales and marketing and planning and finance and HR every sip marketing marketing is so much data these these every group uses tableau to run our own business and make decisions and what happens Matt what's really nice about a company because you know we're getting close to a thousand people now and so it's keeping the spirit you just described alive is really important it becomes quite challenging vectors leagues for it because when that's one of your values and that's the way the culture has been built every single person in the company is a customer everyone understands the customer's situation and the frustrations and the feature requests and knows how to support them when they meet them and can empathize with them when they're on the phone and is a tester automatically by virtue of using the product so we just try to focus on a few very authentic things to keep our connection with the customer as close as possible I'll say christen your company is a rising star we've been talking all this week of the similarities that we were talking off about the similarities with with ServiceNow just in terms of the passion within the customer base we're tracking companies like workday you know great companies that are that are that are being built new emerging disruptive companies we put you in that in that category and we're very excited for different reasons you know different different business altogether but but there are some similar dynamics that we're watching so as observers it's independent observers what kinds of things do you want us to be focused on watching you over the next 12 18 24 months what should we be paying attention to well I think the most important thing is tableau ultimately is a product company and we view ourselves very early in our product development lifecycle I think people who don't really understand tableau think it's a visualization company or a visualization tool I don't I don't really understand that when you talk about the vision a lot but okay sure we can visualization but there's just something much bigger I mean you asked about people watching the company I think what's important to watch is that as I spoke about makino yesterday tableau believes what is called the business intelligence industry what's called the business analytics technology stack needs to be completely rewritten from scratch that's what we believe to do over it's a do-over it's based on technology from a prior hair prior era of computing there's been very little innovation the R&D investment ratios which you can look up online of the companies in this space are pathetically low and have been for decades and this industry needs a Google it needs an apple it's a Facebook an RD machine that is passionate and driven and is leveraging the most recent advances in computing to deliver products that people actually love using so that people start to enjoy doing analytics and have fun with it and make data-driven driven decision in a very in a very in a way that's just woven into their into their into their enjoyment and work style every every single day so the big series of product releases you're going to see from us over the next five years that's the thing to watch and we unveiled a few of them yesterday but trust me there's a lot more that's you a lot of applause christina is awesome you can see you know the passion that you're putting forth your great vision so congratulations in the progress you've made I know I know you're not done we'll be watching it thanks very much for coming to me I'm really a pleasure thank you all right keep right there everybody we're going wall to wall we got a break coming up next and then we'll be back this afternoon and this is Dave Volante with Jeff Kelly this is the cube we'll be right back