>>Hey everyone. I'm Lisa Martin covering Data Citizens 22, brought to you by Collibra. This next conversation is gonna focus on the importance of data culture. One of our Cube alumni is back, Stan Christians is Collibra's co-founder and it's Chief Data citizen. Stan, it's great to have you back on the cube. >>Hey, Lisa, nice to be here. >>So we're gonna be talking about the importance of data culture, data intelligence, maturity, all those great things. When we think about the data revolution that every business is going through, you know, so much more than technology innovation, it also really re requires cultural transformation, community transformation. Those are challenging for customers to undertake. Talk to us about what you mean by data citizenship and the role that creating a data culture plays in that journey. >>Right. So as you know, our event is called Data Citizens because we believe that in the end, a data citizen is anyone who uses data to do their job. And we believe that today's organizations, you have a lot of people, most of the employees in an organization are somehow going to be a data citizen, right? So you need to make sure that these people are aware of it. You need to make sure that these people have the skills and competencies to do with data what is necessary. And that's on all levels, right? So what does it mean to have a good data culture? It means that if you're building a beautiful dashboard to try and convince your boss, we need to make this decision that your boss is also open to and able to interpret, you know, the data presented in that dashboard to actually make that decision and take that action, right? >>And once you have that why through the organization, that's when you have a good data culture. Now, that's a continuous effort for most organizations because they, they're always moving, somehow there, hiring new people. And it has to be a continuous effort because we've seen that on the one hand, organizations continue to be challenged with controlling their data sources and where all the data is flowing, right? Which in itself creates a lot of risk. But also on the other set hand of the equation, you have the benefits. You know, you might look at regulatory drivers like, we have to do this, right? But it's, it's much better right now to consider the competitive drivers, for example. And we did an IDC study earlier this year, quite interesting. I can recommend anyone to read it. And one of the conclusions they found as they surveyed over a thousand people across organizations worldwide is that the ones who are higher in maturity. >>So the, the organizations that really look at data as an asset, look at data as a product and actively try to be better at it, don't have three times as good a business outcome as the ones who are lower on the maturity scale, right? So you can say, Okay, I'm doing this, you know, data culture for everyone, wakening them up as data citizens. I'm doing this for competitive reasons, I'm doing this for regulatory reasons. You're trying to bring both of those together and the ones that get data intelligence right, are just going to be more successful and more competitive. That's our view, and that's what we're seeing out there in the market. >>Absolutely. We know that just generally stand right, The organizations that are, are really creating a, a data culture and enabling everybody within the organization to become data citizens are, We know that in theory they're more competitive, they're more successful. But the IDC study that you just mentioned demonstrates they're three times more successful and competitive than their peers. Talk about how Collibra advises customers to create that community, that culture of data when it might be challenging for an organization to adapt culturally. >>Of course, of course it's difficult for an organization to adapt, but it's also necessary, as you just said, imagine that, you know, you're a modern day organization, phones, laptops, what have you, you're not using those IT assets, right? Or you know, you're delivering them through your, throughout the organization, but not enabling your colleagues to actually do something with that asset. Same thing is true with data today, right? If you are not properly using the data assets and your competitors are, they're going to get more advantage. So as to how you get this zone or how you establish this culture, there's a few angles to look at. I would say, Lisa, so one angle is obviously the leadership angle whereby whoever is the boss of data in the organization, you typically have multiple bosses there, like achieve data officers. Sometimes there's, there's multiple, but they may have a different title, right? >>So I'm just gonna summarize it as a data leader for a second. So whoever that is, they need to make sure that there's a clear vision, a clear strategy for data. And that strategy needs to include the monetization aspect. How are you going to get value from data? Yes. Now that's one part because then you can clearly see the example of your leadership in the organization and also the business value. And that's important because those people, their job in essence really is to make everyone in the organization think about data as an asset. And I think that's the second part of the equation of getting that culture right, is it's not enough to just have that leadership out there, but you also have to get the hearts and minds of the data champions across the organization. You really have to win them over. And if you have those two combined and obviously a good technology to, you know, connect those people and have them execute on their responsibilities, such as as a data intelligence platform like Colibra, then you have the pieces in place to really start upgrading that culture inch by inch if youll, >>Yes, I like that. The recipe for success. So you are the co-founder of colibra. You've worn many different hats along this journey. Now you're building Collibra's own data office. I like how before we went live, we were talking about Collibra is drinking its own champagne. I always loved to hear stories about that. You're speaking at Data Citizens 2022. Talk to us about how you are building a data culture within Collibra and what maybe some of the specific projects are that Collibra's data office is working on. >>Yes, and it is indeed data citizens. There are a ton of speakers here, very excited. You know, we have Barb from MIT speaking about data monetization. We have dig pat at the last minute on the agenda. So really exciting agenda. Can't wait to get back out there. But essentially you're right. So over the years at cbra, we've been doing this now since 2008, so a good 15 years. And I think we have another decade of work ahead in the market, just to be very clear. Data is here to stick around as are we. And myself, you know, when you start a company, we were for people in a, in a garage if you will. So everybody's wearing all sorts of hat at that time. But over the years I've run, you know, pre-sales at colibra, I've run post-sales partnerships, product, et cetera. And as our company got a little bit biggish for now, 1,200, something like that, people in the company, I believe systems and processes become a lot more important, right? >>So we said, you know, Colibra isn't the size of our customers yet, but we're getting there in terms of organizations, structure, process systems, et cetera. So we said, it's really time for us to put our money where our mouth is and to set up our own data office, which is what we were seeing at all of our customers are doing, and which is what we're seeing that organizations worldwide are doing. And Gartner was predicting us as well. They said, Okay, organizations have an HR unit, they have a finance unit, and over time they'll all have a department, if you will, that is responsible somehow for the data. So we said, Okay, let's try to set a an example at cbra. Let's try to set up our own data office and such way that other people can take away with it, right? Can take away from it. >>So we set up a data strategy, we started building data products, took care of the data infrastructure, that sort of good stuff. And in doing all of that, Lisa, exactly as you said, we said, okay, we need to also use our own product and our own practices, right? And from that use, learn how we can make the product better, learn how we can make the practice better, and share that learning with all of the markets of course. And on, on the Monday mornings, we sometimes refer to that as eating our own dog foods or Friday evenings we refer to that as drinking our own champagne. I like it. So we, we had a, we had the driver to do this, you know, there's a clear business reason. So we involved, we included that in the data strategy and that's a little bit of our origin. >>Now how, how do we organize this? We have three pillars, and by no means is this a template that everyone should follow? This is just the organization that works at our company, but it can serve as an inspiration. So we have a pillar, which is data science. The data product builders if you will, or the people who help the business build data products. We have the data engineers who help keep the lights on for that data platform to make sure the products, the data products can run, the data can flow and you know, the quality can be checked. And then we have a data intelligence or data governance builder where we have those data governance, data intelligence stakeholders who help the business as a sort of data partner to the business stakeholders. So that's how we've organized it. And then we started following the calibra approach, which is, well, what are the challenges that our business stakeholders have in hr, finance, sales, marketing all over? >>And how can data help overcome those challenges? And from those use cases, we then just started to build a roadmap and started execution on use case after use case. And a few important ones there are very simple, we see them with our, all our customers as well. People love talking about the catalog, right? The catalog for the data scientists to know what's in their data lake, for example, and for the people in and legal and privacy. So they have their process registry and they can see how the data flows. So that's a popular starting place. And that turns into a marketplace so that if new analysts and data citizens join cbra, they immediately have a place to go to, to look and see, okay, what data is out there for me as an analyst or a data scientist or whatever to do my job, right? >>So they can immediately get access to the data. And another one that we did is around trusted business reporting. We're seeing that since 2008. You know, self-service BI allowed everyone to make beautiful dashboards, you know, by pie charts. I always, my pet peeve is the pie charts because I love buy and you shouldn't always be using pie charts. But essentially there's become proliferation of those reports. And now executives don't really know, okay, should I trust this report or that report the reporting on the same thing. But the numbers seem different, right? So that's why we have trusted business reporting. So we know if a report, a dashboard, a data product essentially is built, we know that all the right steps are being followed and that whoever is consuming that can be quite confident in the result either right, in that silver or browser Absolutely key. Exactly. Yes. A absolutely. >>Talk a little bit about some of the, the key performance indicators that you're using to measure the success of the data office. What are some of those KPIs? >>KPIs and measuring is a big topic in the, in the data chief data officer profession, I would say, and again, it always varies with respect to your organization, but there's a few that we use that might be of interest to you. So remember we have those three pillars, right? And we have metrics across those pillars. So for example, a pillar on the data engineering side is gonna be more related to that uptime, right? Audit is a data platform up and running. Are the data products up and running? Is the quality in them good enough? Is it going up? Is it going down? What's the usage? But also, and especially if you're in the cloud and if consumption is a big thing, you have metrics around cost, for example, right? So that's one set of examples. Another one is around the data science and the products. >>Are people using them? Are they getting value from it? Can we calculate that value in a monetary perspective, right? So that we can to the rest of the business continue to say we're tracking on those numbers. And those numbers indicate that value is generated and how much value estimated in that region. And then you have some data intelligence, data governance metrics, which is, for example, you have a number of domains in a data mesh. People talk about being the owner of a data domain, for example, like product or customer. So how many of those domains do you have covered? How many of them are already part of the program? How many of them have owners assigned? How well are these owners organized, executing on their responsibilities? How many tickets are open closed? How many data products are built according to process? And so on and so forth. So these are an a set of examples of, of KPIs. There's a, there's a lot more, but hopefully those can already inspire the audience. >>Absolutely. So we've, we've talked about the rise of cheap data offices, it's only accelerating. You mentioned this is like a 10 year journey. So if you were to look into a crystal ball, what do you see in terms of the maturation of data offices over the next decade? >>So we, we've seen indeed the, the role sort of grow up, I think in, in 2010 there may have been like 10 chief data officers or something. Gartner has exact numbers on them, but then they grew, you know, 400, they were like mostly in financial services, but they expanded then to all of industries and then to all of the season. The number is estimated to be about 20,000 right now. Wow. And they evolved in a sort of stack of competencies, defensive data strategy, because the first chief data officers were more regulatory driven, offensive data strategy support for the digital program. And now all about data products, right? So as a data leader, you'd now need all of those competences and need to include them in, in your strategy. >>How is that going to evolve for the next couple of years? I wish I had one of those crystal balls, right? But essentially I think for the next couple of years there's gonna be a lot of people, you know, still moving along with those four levels of the stack. A lot of people I see are still in version one and version two of the chief data officer. So you'll see over the years that's going to evolve more digital and more data products. So for next three, five years, my, my prediction is it's all going to be about data products because it's an immediate link between the data and, and the dollar essentially, right? So that's gonna be important and quite likely a new, some new things will be added on, which nobody can predict yet. But we'll see those pop up in a few years. >>I think there's gonna be a continued challenge for the chief data officer role to become a real executive role as opposed to, you know, somebody who claims that they're executive, but then they're not. Right? So the real reporting level into the board, into the CEO for example, will continue to be a challenging point. But the ones who do get that done will be the ones that are successful. Yeah. And the ones who get that done will be the ones that do it on the basis of data monetization, right? Connecting value to the data and making that very clear to all the data citizens in the organization, right? Really and in that sense, value chain, they'll need to have both, you know, technical audiences and non-technical audiences aligned of course. And they'll need to focus on adoption. Again, it's not enough to just have your data office be involved in this. It's really important that you're waking up data citizens across the organization and you make everyone in the organization think about data as an essence. >>Absolutely. Because there's so much value that can be extracted if organizations really strategically build that data office and democratize access across all those data citizens. Stan, this is an exciting arena. We're definitely gonna keep our eyes on this. Sounds like a lot of evolution and maturation coming from the data office perspective. From the data citizen perspective. And as the data show that you mentioned in that IDC study, you mentioned Gartner as well, organizations have so much more likelihood of being successful in being competitive. So we're gonna watch this space. Stan, thank you so much for joining me on the queue at Data Citizens 22. We appreciate it. >>Thanks for having me over >>From Data Citizens 22, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching The Cube, the leader in live tech coverage.

(upbeat techno music) >> Collibra is a company that was founded in 2008 right before the so-called modern big data era kicked into high gear. The company was one of the first to focus its business on data governance. Now, historically, data governance and data quality initiatives, they were back office functions, and they were largely confined to regulated industries that had to comply with public policy mandates. But as the cloud went mainstream the tech giants showed us how valuable data could become, and the value proposition for data quality and trust, it evolved from primarily a compliance driven issue, to becoming a linchpin of competitive advantage. But, data in the decade of the 2010s was largely about getting the technology to work. You had these highly centralized technical teams that were formed and they had hyper-specialized skills, to develop data architectures and processes, to serve the myriad data needs of organizations. And it resulted in a lot of frustration, with data initiatives for most organizations, that didn't have the resources of the cloud guys and the social media giants, to really attack their data problems and turn data into gold. This is why today, for example, there's quite a bit of momentum to re-thinking monolithic data architectures. You see, you hear about initiatives like Data Mesh and the idea of data as a product. They're gaining traction as a way to better serve the the data needs of decentralized business users. You hear a lot about data democratization. So these decentralization efforts around data, they're great, but they create a new set of problems. Specifically, how do you deliver, like a self-service infrastructure to business users and domain experts? Now the cloud is definitely helping with that but also, how do you automate governance? This becomes especially tricky as protecting data privacy has become more and more important. In other words, while it's enticing to experiment, and run fast and loose with data initiatives, kind of like the Wild West, to find new veins of gold, it has to be done responsibly. As such, the idea of data governance has had to evolve to become more automated and intelligent. Governance and data lineage is still fundamental to ensuring trust as data. It moves like water through an organization. No one is going to use data that is entrusted. Metadata has become increasingly important for data discovery and data classification. As data flows through an organization, the continuously ability to check for data flaws and automating that data quality, they become a functional requirement of any modern data management platform. And finally, data privacy has become a critical adjacency to cyber security. So you can see how data governance has evolved into a much richer set of capabilities than it was 10 or 15 years ago. Hello and welcome to theCUBE's coverage of Data Citizens made possible by Collibra, a leader in so-called Data intelligence and the host of Data Citizens 2022, which is taking place in San Diego. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm one of the hosts of our program which is running in parallel to Data Citizens. Now at theCUBE we like to say we extract the signal from the noise, and over the next couple of days we're going to feature some of the themes from the keynote speakers at Data Citizens, and we'll hear from several of the executives. Felix Van de Maele, who is the co-founder and CEO of Collibra, will join us. Along with one of the other founders of Collibra, Stan Christiaens, who's going to join my colleague Lisa Martin. I'm going to also sit down with Laura Sellers, she's the Chief Product Officer at Collibra. We'll talk about some of the the announcements and innovations they're making at the event, and then we'll dig in further to data quality with Kirk Haslbeck. He's the Vice President of Data Quality at Collibra. He's an amazingly smart dude who founded Owl DQ, a company that he sold to Collibra last year. Now, many companies they didn't make it through the Hadoop era, you know they missed the industry waves and they became driftwood. Collibra, on the other hand, has evolved its business, they've leveraged the cloud, expanded its product portfolio and leaned in heavily to some major partnerships with cloud providers as well as receiving a strategic investment from Snowflake, earlier this year. So, it's a really interesting story that we're thrilled to be sharing with you. Thanks for watching and I hope you enjoy the program. (upbeat rock music) Last year theCUBE covered Data Citizens, Collibra's customer event, and the premise that we put forth prior to that event was that despite all the innovation that's gone on over the last decade or more with data, you know starting with the Hadoop movement, we had Data lakes, we had Spark, the ascendancy of programming languages like Python, the introduction of frameworks like Tensorflow, the rise of AI, Low Code, No Code, et cetera. Businesses still find it's too difficult to get more value from their data initiatives, and we said at the time, you know maybe it's time to rethink data innovation. While a lot of the effort has been focused on, you more efficiently storing and processing data, perhaps more energy needs to go into thinking about the people and the process side of the equation. Meaning, making it easier for domain experts to both gain insights from data, trust the data, and begin to use that data in new ways, fueling data products, monetization, and insights. Data Citizens 2022 is back and we're pleased to have Felix Van de Maele who is the founder and CEO of Collibra. He's on theCUBE. We're excited to have you Felix. Good to see you again. >> Likewise Dave. Thanks for having me again. >> You bet. All right, we're going to get the update from Felix on the current data landscape, how he sees it why data intelligence is more important now than ever, and get current on what Collibra has been up to over the past year, and what's changed since Data citizens 2021, and we may even touch on some of the product news. So Felix, we're living in a very different world today with businesses and consumers. They're struggling with things like supply chains, uncertain economic trends and we're not just snapping back to the 2010s, that's clear, and that's really true as well in the world of data. So what's different in your mind, in the data landscape of the 2020s, from the previous decade, and what challenges does that bring for your customers? >> Yeah, absolutely, and and I think you said it well, Dave and the intro that, that rising complexity and fragmentation, in the broader data landscape, that hasn't gotten any better over the last couple of years. When when we talk to our customers, that level of fragmentation, the complexity, how do we find data that we can trust, that we know we can use, has only gotten more more difficult. So that trend that's continuing, I think what is changing is that trend has become much more acute. Well, the other thing we've seen over the last couple of years is that the level of scrutiny that organizations are under, respect to data, as data becomes more mission critical, as data becomes more impactful than important, the level of scrutiny with respect to privacy, security, regulatory compliance, as only increasing as well. Which again, is really difficult in this environment of continuous innovation, continuous change, continuous growing complexity, and fragmentation. So, it's become much more acute. And to your earlier point, we do live in a different world and and the past couple of years we could probably just kind of brute force it, right? We could focus on, on the top line, there was enough kind of investments to be, to be had. I think nowadays organizations are focused or are, are, are are, are, are in a very different environment where there's much more focus on cost control, productivity, efficiency, how do we truly get the value from that data? So again, I think it just another incentive for organization to now truly look at data and to scale with data, not just from a a technology and infrastructure perspective, but how do we actually scale data from an organizational perspective, right? You said at the, the people and process, how do we do that at scale? And that's only, only, only becoming much more important, and we do believe that the, the economic environment that we find ourselves in today is going to be catalyst for organizations to really take that more seriously if, if, if you will, than they maybe have in the have in the past. >> You know, I don't know when you guys founded Collibra, if you had a sense as to how complicated it was going to get, but you've been on a mission to really address these problems from the beginning. How would you describe your, your, your mission and what are you doing to address these challenges? >> Yeah, absolutely. We, we started Collibra in 2008. So, in some sense and the, the last kind of financial crisis and that was really the, the start of Collibra, where we found product market fit, working with large financial institutions to help them cope with the increasing compliance requirements that they were faced with because of the, of the financial crisis. And kind of here we are again, in a very different environment of course 15 years, almost 15 years later, but data only becoming more important. But our mission to deliver trusted data for every user, every use case and across every source, frankly, has only become more important. So, what has been an incredible journey over the last 14, 15 years, I think we're still relatively early in our mission to again, be able to provide everyone, and that's why we call it Data Citizens, we truly believe that everyone in the organization should be able to use trusted data in an easy, easy matter. That mission is is only becoming more important, more relevant. We definitely have a lot more work ahead of us because we still relatively early in that, in that journey. >> Well that's interesting, because you know, in my observation it takes 7 to 10 years to actually build a company, and then the fact that you're still in the early days is kind of interesting. I mean, you, Collibra's had a good 12 months or so since we last spoke at Data Citizens. Give us the latest update on your business. What do people need to know about your current momentum? >> Yeah, absolutely. Again, there's a lot of tailwind organizations that are only maturing their data practices and we've seen that kind of transform or influence a lot of our business growth that we've seen, broader adoption of the platform. We work at some of the largest organizations in the world with its Adobe, Heineken, Bank of America and many more. We have now over 600 enterprise customers, all industry leaders and every single vertical. So it's, it's really exciting to see that and continue to partner with those organizations. On the partnership side, again, a lot of momentum in the org in the, in the market with some of the cloud partners like Google, Amazon, Snowflake, Data Breaks, and and others, right? As those kind of new modern data infrastructures, modern data architectures, are definitely all moving to the cloud. A great opportunity for us, our partners, and of course our customers, to help them kind of transition to the cloud even faster. And so we see a lot of excitement and momentum there. We did an acquisition about 18 months ago around data quality, data observability, which we believe is an enormous opportunity. Of course data quality isn't new but I think there's a lot of reasons why we're so excited about quality and observability now. One, is around leveraging AI machine learning again to drive more automation. And a second is that those data pipelines, that are now being created in the cloud, in these modern data architecture, architectures, they've become mission critical. They've become real time. And so monitoring, observing those data pipelines continuously, has become absolutely critical so that they're really excited about, about that as well. And on the organizational side, I'm sure you've heard the term around kind of data mesh, something that's gaining a lot of momentum, rightfully so. It's really the type of governance that we always believed in. Federated, focused on domains, giving a lot of ownership to different teams. I think that's the way to scale data organizations, and so that aligns really well with our vision and from a product perspective, we've seen a lot of momentum with our customers there as well. >> Yeah, you know, a couple things there. I mean, the acquisition of OwlDQ, you know Kirk Haslbeck and, and their team. It's interesting, you know the whole data quality used to be this back office function and and really confined to highly regulated industries. It's come to the front office, it's top of mind for Chief Data Officers. Data mesh, you mentioned you guys are a connective tissue for all these different nodes on the data mesh. That's key. And of course we see you at all the shows. You're, you're a critical part of many ecosystems and you're developing your own ecosystem. So, let's chat a little bit about the, the products. We're going to go deeper into products later on, at Data Citizens 22, but we know you're debuting some, some new innovations, you know, whether it's, you know, the the under the covers in security, sort of making data more accessible for people, just dealing with workflows and processes, as you talked about earlier. Tell us a little bit about what you're introducing. >> Yeah, absolutely. We we're super excited, a ton of innovation. And if we think about the big theme and like, like I said, we're still relatively early in this, in this journey towards kind of that mission of data intelligence that really bolts and compelling mission. Either customers are still start, are just starting on that, on that journey. We want to make it as easy as possible for the, for organization to actually get started, because we know that's important that they do. And for our organization and customers, that have been with us for some time, there's still a tremendous amount of opportunity to kind of expand the platform further. And again to make it easier for, really to, to accomplish that mission and vision around that Data Citizen, that everyone has access to trustworthy data in a very easy, easy way. So that's really the theme of a lot of the innovation that we're driving, a lot of kind of ease of adoption, ease of use, but also then, how do we make sure that, as clear becomes this kind of mission critical enterprise platform, from a security performance, architecture scale supportability, that we're truly able to deliver that kind of an enterprise mission critical platform. And so that's the big theme. From an innovation perspective, from a product perspective, a lot of new innovation that we're really excited about. A couple of highlights. One, is around data marketplace. Again, a lot of our customers have plans in that direction, How to make it easy? How do we make How do we make available to true kind of shopping experience? So that anybody in the organization can, in a very easy search first way, find the right data product, find the right dataset, that they can then consume. Usage analytics, how do you, how do we help organizations drive adoption? Tell them where they're working really well and where they have opportunities. Homepages again to, to make things easy for, for people, for anyone in your organization, to kind of get started with Collibra. You mentioned Workflow Designer, again, we have a very powerful enterprise platform, one of our key differentiators is the ability to really drive a lot of automation through workflows. And now we provided a, a new Low-Code, No-Code kind of workflow designer experience. So, so really customers can take it to the next level. There's a lot more new product around Collibra protect, which in partnership with Snowflake, which has been a strategic investor in Collibra, focused on how do we make access governance easier? How do we, how do we, how are we able to make sure that as you move to the cloud, things like access management, masking around sensitive data, PIA data, is managed as a much more effective, effective rate. Really excited about that product. There's more around data quality. Again, how do we, how do we get that deployed as easily, and quickly, and widely as we can? Moving that to the cloud has been a big part of our strategy. So, we launch our data quality cloud product, as well as making use of those, those native compute capabilities and platforms, like Snowflake, Databricks, Google, Amazon, and others. And so we are bettering a capability, a capability that we call push down, so we're actually pushing down the computer and data quality, to monitoring into the underlying platform, which again from a scale performance and ease of use perspective, is going to make a massive difference. And then more broadly, we talked a little bit about the ecosystem. Again, integrations, we talk about being able to connect to every source. Integrations are absolutely critical, and we're really excited to deliver new integrations with Snowflake, Azure and Google Cloud storage as well. So that's a lot coming out, the team has been work, at work really hard, and we are really really excited about what we are coming, what we're bringing to market. >> Yeah, a lot going on there. I wonder if you could give us your, your closing thoughts. I mean, you you talked about, you know, the marketplace, you know you think about Data Mesh, you think of data as product, one of the key principles, you think about monetization. This is really different than what we've been used to in data, which is just getting the technology to work has been, been so hard. So, how do you see sort of the future and, you know give us the, your closing thoughts please? >> Yeah, absolutely. And, and I think we we're really at a pivotal moment and I think you said it well. We, we all know the constraint and the challenges with data, how to actually do data at scale. And while we've seen a ton of innovation on the infrastructure side, we fundamentally believe that just getting a faster database is important, but it's not going to fully solve the challenges and truly kind of deliver on the opportunity. And that's why now is really the time to, deliver this data intelligence vision, this data intelligence platform. We are still early, making it as easy as we can, as kind of our, as our mission. And so I'm really, really excited to see what we, what we are going to, how the marks are going to evolve over the next, next few quarters and years. I think the trend is clearly there. We talked about Data Mesh, this kind of federated approach focus on data products, is just another signal that we believe, that a lot of our organization are now at the time, they're understanding need to go beyond just the technology. I really, really think about how to actually scale data as a business function, just like we've done with IT, with HR, with sales and marketing, with finance. That's how we need to think about data. I think now is the time, given the economic environment that we are in, much more focus on control, much more focus on productivity, efficiency, and now is the time we need to look beyond just the technology and infrastructure to think of how to scale data, how to manage data at scale. >> Yeah, it's a new era. The next 10 years of data won't be like the last, as I always say. Felix, thanks so much. Good luck in, in San Diego. I know you're going to crush it out there. >> Thank you Dave. >> Yeah, it's a great spot for an in-person event and and of course the content post-event is going to be available at collibra.com and you can of course catch theCUBE coverage at theCUBE.net and all the news at siliconangle.com. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage. (upbeat techno music)

>>From the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas, it's the cube covering UI path forward for brought to you by UI path. >>It's the Q we are live in Las Vegas at the Bellagio. Lisa Martin, with Dave Volante, we're covering UI path forward for this is our second day of coverage. We've had a lot of great conversations with customers at UI path partners, their senior leaders. And next up, we're going to be talking to, I'm going to say the queen of citizen developer nests. We're not just going to create that title for you. Sydney, Madison Prescott. She's the global head of intelligent automation at Spotify Sydney. Welcome to the program. I >>Am so excited >>To be here. We're excited to have you. So one of my, as we were talking before we went live, we both are big fans of Spotify. I don't know what we would do without it in our personal lives. But talk to me a little bit about Spotify automation, UI path. And I don't want to get into you your book, what you've done for citizen developers. >>Perfect. So Spotify is on a very interesting journey. Uh, we began the journey during the pandemic and we were speaking about this a little bit earlier. And so our journey began with trying to understand how we would tackle, uh, still wanting to upskill our employees, despite the fact that we were in the middle of this kind of global crisis. And so through that endeavor, we decided to actually split out our different, uh, automation capabilities into citizen developer and unattended automation. And we did all of this through a center of excellence. So a centralized, uh, COE, which would facilitate the growth of the automations, uh, whether on the citizen developer side or the unattended side. And through this programs, we set up, uh, several different trainings where we could facilitate the growth of the citizen developer community through five day, what we call bot boot camps and the bot boot camp is in essence, um, five day training, about four and a half, five hours a day, where we take anyone at Spotify who would like to upskill in this type of automation. And we teach them everything from the basics of robotic process automation, all the way to, you know, what are all of the Spotify specific things that you have to do in order to maintain a robust, uh, citizen developer footprint within your team. And so through that, uh, that entire journey, it's been quite amazing. We started with a very small footprint in our accounting team, and we have scaled now to over 100 citizen developers, uh, in a variety of functions within Spotify. >>And what was the role that you came to Spotify to do? Cause you came there, went there right before the everything happened. >>Yes. So I was actually, uh, brought into Spotify to stand up and scale out our intelligent automation center of excellence. >>So the center of excellence is, is sort of the main spring of knowledge, training innovation. And then the, the citizen developer piece, it sounds like you're pushing out distributing that knowledge. Right. And so I'm interested in that sort of architecture of automation is that you've got a combination of centralized expertise and decentralized innovation. Can you talk about that a little bit? >>Yeah. So it's very interesting actually. So we facilitate the citizen developer program through the center of excellence. So you can think of the center of excellence as the foundation of that knowledge. And our goal is to democratize that knowledge throughout the enterprise. And the way we do that is through the training. Uh, we facilitate the governance of the program. So making sure that all of the infrastructure is properly set up, uh, enabling the citizens, if they need support, just talking about ideation, uh, even so far as up-skilling as well. So upskilling all the way to a power user, uh, whereby those users could become true innovators and facilitate a wide variety of automations within their teams. And was it >>The events of the last 18 months? It really catalyzed this and kind of led you to really become a big advocate for citizen led development. >>It did. So we initially were starting with just the center of excellence and an unintended footprint, and we quickly pivoted and realized that we needed to in order to scale, uh, significantly given the, the situation working virtually, uh, we are a distributed team around the world that it was critical for our success that we could, uh, really distribute to this workout. And we felt that the best way to do that was through standing up a citizen developer program. >>The things that I'm trying to understand is the relationship between automation and data. And I look at Spotify in many respects is a data company, at least a company who really understands data. And I see you building all these awesome data products. I'm a subscriber as well, but you know, you've added podcasts, you've got contributors to those podcasts. You've obviously got artists and you know, these people obviously have to be paid. You have this sort of interesting ecosystem and these are all data products, if you will, that you guys build. And it's very cool sort of business model. What's the relationship between data and automation? >>Well, it is a big relationship. I would actually say it is probably the pivotal relationship because in order to tell that compelling story of digital transformation, we have to understand the data behind all of the automations that we're generating. Um, and this is whether it says in developer or COE built. Um, and so for us, it's, it's a critical component of our success that we can pinpoint those key metrics that we are looking at and tracking, you know, what does success mean for our center of excellence? What does it mean for our citizen led program? And this is everything from, you know, increased data quality to risk mitigation of different internal regulatory risk. Uh, it could be something as simple as our saved on automation. So it's, uh, a wide variety of attributes that we're looking at to really pinpoint where the successes are coming from and where we can improve maybe where we need to improve our automation footprint in a given business. >>Why did you write this book? >>Great question. So I believe in citizen development, I think it is a very unique approach to spreading out the way that you can transform your business. And so I saw a lot of struggles as I've gone through I'm in the industry with understanding citizen development, uh, the premise of it, and also understanding the technology behind it. Um, I am a big fan of studio X. And so the book specifically focuses on studio X. Um, it really introducing users to what is studio X and how really teaching individuals, how to upskill themselves, um, just through the use of the book, very intuitive and hopefully taking away some of the fear that the users may have about walking through a platform like studio S >>So what do I have to know to actually, can I read your book and then start coding? Is it by >>That is the goal. Yes. So the goal for the book is very hands-on. So it is, it is a book for, um, the novice business user, uh, someone who is not familiar with RPA, someone who may not even be familiar with UI path, they would be able to pick up this book, go through the set of exercises. It's very robust out over 400 pages. So it really packed a lot of knowledge in there, but the goal would be by the time you walk through every single exercise and complete the book, you would not only understand RPA. You would also understand UI path as a, as a service provider platform. You'd also understand the nuances of studio X. >>So in theory, someone like myself could get your book, download the community edition, start building automations, right? >>Yes, exactly. Exactly. >>You have to Google a few things, but yeah. >>Yes. And it comes with a very robust code code set up. They're able to actually look at the code and review, uh, examples of the code, uh, in a source code repository. So again, it's very novice users it's meant for, to help facilitate just the learning of someone who is maybe curious about RPA, curious about UI path, or just curious about studio app. >>I already have the use case. >>You do have these guys I'm interested in doing it too. I mean, I can tell that it's a passion project of yours that you fundamentally believe in. You know, we saw this morning data from IDC and we've seen lots of different data sources that talk about, oh, automation taking jobs, people being fearful, organizations, not being ready at the same time. We've had such a tumultuous last 18 months that organizations that weren't digital are probably gone and organizations that aren't, how did there was this massive uptake in automation because suddenly you couldn't get bodies into buildings. So tell me about how this book is a facility, first of all, tell us the name of it. And then as a facilitator of those employees who might be worried about their jobs being taken by bots, >>That is a great question. So the, the name of the book is robotic process automation, a citizen developers guide to hyper automation using UI path studio X. And I would say I've heard a lot of the conversation surrounding the loss of jobs, the potential fear, uh, we all we know as humans, we are generally unfortunately, a little resistant to change and, you know, the, I'll say the digital revolution that we're going through, uh, within the workforce, whether it is hybrid work, whether it is completely virtual work, it is a bit daunting. And I understand that fear, I think in alignment with the conversation that we had heard about earlier at forward there, RPA has the ability to generate a massive amount of not only improvements within different industries, but jobs as well. Right? And for someone who is looking at this kind of ever changing landscape, and they're wondering, where do I fit in? >>Am I going to get pushed out of a, of a general, you know, uh, industry? I would say that that fear turned that into power, turned that into ambition. Um, the level of upskilling that you can do on your own, whether it's using UiPath academy, whether it's reaching out to your center of excellence, it's incredible. Um, there's a wide variety of different ways that you can upskill yourself. And in essence, you become, um, a powerful player in your environment because not only do you have the business acumen, you now have the technical acumen, and that is everything. I mean, when we talk about transformation, we talk about where our industry's going. Um, there's a saying that, you know, every company now must be a technology company, right? And so this is the key, even as workers, even as employees, we all must be technologists. And so the real question is, think of yourself and think of this concept. I like to call human augmentation. How can you augment yourself through UI path, through the use of RPA to become that up-skilled worker, that next level worker who will be integral to the success of any company moving from, >>We talk a lot about upscaling. Now, of course, part of that upskilling I presume is learning how to use robotic process automation and the tooling, but it seems that there's more to it than that. And, and you just strike me as a person that's creative, you have a power persona. So what are these sort of intangible skills that, that I need to succeed in this new world? And can I learn them? >>That's a great question. I think one of the biggest skills, being able to think outside of the box, that is huge. Uh, and again, this goes back to at least question about what does it take and what should you, you should really think outside of the box about your own career, about your team, about your company, um, how you can improve upon what is already there, um, or how can you build something completely new that has never been thought of before. And so I think that's the biggest skill. The ability to, um, innovate, think, think innovatively and think outside of the box. Um, I believe it's, it's something that is maybe a little intuitive to some individuals, but you can also learn, you can learn to, um, get out of your own way, so to speak, uh, so that you can actually start to come up with these really creative ways to address, uh, whether it's complex business problems, uh, whether it's at an industry level or even just within your internal enterprise. >>And creativity is actually one of the attributes. And I guess it might not be in your DNA, but if you, you know, it's like humor, humor, right? If you hang out with funny people, you know, if you hang out with creative people, you can, you can learn about apply. >>That's right. That's right. But in the beginning of the pandemic, you know, one of the things that I think we all want, you seem to have a ton of motivation and ambition as Dave was saying. And, and I'm someone that normally has that too, but in the first year of pandemic, that was hard. It's hard to get motivated. It was hard to know where do I fit in? How do you advise? And now of course, when you publish the book six months ago, we're about a year into the pandemic. Things are looking better because here we are in Las Vegas at an in-person event with humans. But how do you, how do you see, how do you recommend to folks that are, that don't have technology backgrounds like you don't, I don't to motivate themselves to go, you can take the control, take it. And everybody don't, we all want control as people and take control of your career path. There are a lot of opportunities out there. How do you advise people navigating this challenging sort of mental state with there's so many opportunities sitting right here? Yes >>That's so I think it, it goes back to the getting out of your own way. It also goes back to really taking a look at assess assessing your own skillset, um, assessing your own personal drivers. What motivates you, uh, whether that is in your personal life, whether that is in your professional life, and then taking a look also at those motivators, how can I look at those and what use can I get out of those to help me to transform my own personal skill set and really grow out, uh, my, my capabilities, right, as a professional it's, it's all about really thinking through, uh, your, I'll say your professional background or role as ever-changing ever-growing. And as long as you approach it with a mindset of constantly growing constantly upskilling, I mean, honestly, the sky is truly the limit. >>I a weird question. If, if, if, if mastering word is a one and let's say learning, um, learning how to use Excel, macros is let's call it a three. Uh, all in the spectrum goes out to a, be a building, a complex, uh, you know, uh, AI model, data science kind of ML model. If that's a 10, where does learning how to code RPA as a citizen developer fit on that spectrum? Good question. >>Oh, that's a great question. I would say somewhere between, Hmm. I would say somewhere between maybe three and four around there, because you there. So again, we, we have so many tools that we can use to help upscale the set of sense at this point that we can really walk them through the nuances, uh, at a pace that is conducive to really retaining the knowledge. So I don't think it's, it's definitely not the level of, let's say, building out a complex, like machine learning model or something of that nature. It may be a little bit more in alignment with, um, if someone is up-skilled and macros, or you may be up-skilled in some other type of scripting, uh, language similar to that, I might even say sometimes a little bit, maybe a little bit less difficult than that, uh, depending on what you're trying to automate, right. The process you're trying to automate the company, >>But inside of a day, I can do something fairly simple, right? Yeah. >>Yes. So we actually, the, the training that we have at Spotify, we train our users from novice. Absolutely no understanding, no knowledge of RPA to building able, being able to build a bot in five days. And those are five half days sessions that the citizen developers attend. And by the morning of the fifth day, they actually have built a bot. And so it's, and it's very powerful, uh, being able to, to upskill someone and show them, I can take you from, you know, absolutely no understanding of RPA to actually having something, a bot that you can showcase that you can run within as little as five half days. I mean, it's very compelling to any business user, right? >>The business impact. Soon as you guys are too young to remember, but there's this thing called Lotus 1, 2, 3, we used to have to go to Lotus class slash file retrieve for you folks who remember this was all keyboard based, but it was game changing in terms of your personal productivity. And it sounds like there's a similar but much, much larger impact with RPA >>Impact. Talk to me about the impact of the program, especially in the last, this year, here we are in October, you mentioned started small, and now there's about a hundred folks. Talk to me about the appetite of that as we've seen this massive acceleration and the need to automate for everyday things that we expect as consumers, whether we're ordering food or buying something online. >>Hmm. So it really is a different mindset in terms of thinking through the way that we work differently. And so we really approached it with, if you're an accountant, think of what is the future role and responsibility of an accountant in this new digital, uh, I'll say environment. And through that, we have been able to really push this idea or this concept of up-skilling as a key element of personal professional success and also team success. Um, and that has been a game changer. So there's a lot of value that comes out of the cohesiveness between the personal desire to upskill and continue to, uh, be a, you know, a consummate professional in whatever role you're in, but also to help your team right, to be, to be, you know, a standout, uh, team player in terms of the skills that you're bringing to the table as both an accountant and someone that has now the power of automation within your skillset. Okay. >>And ask you one more question. And that is something that Dave brought up yesterday as we were, he was sitting on a panel with, and he was the only male, which is not common in our industry. How have you seen the role of females in technology changing? And I'm imagine you do work in stem. Imagine you're a motivational speaker you should be if you're not. Um, but how have you seen the role of females in technology changing in since there's so much opportunity there? >>Yes. That is a great question. I believe that RPA specifically, uh, is an incredible driver of women and influencing more women to enter into stem fields, primarily because it is such an innovative technology. There are so many roles he said that are open, just opening up. Uh, probably I've heard different numbers in terms of acceleration of growth over the next five to 10 years. So we're looking at a plethora of opportunities and these are brand new roles that women who are curious about stem, curious about being a technologist can dive right into from wherever they are. So whether they are a tax professional today, whether they are working within, you know, uh, counting, whether they're working with an internal audit, they have the opportunity now to test the waters. Um, and quite often it is such a, it's such a fascinating field. And as I said, there's so much potential around it and for growth and just for changing, uh, different industries, that it's a great driver for women to actually enter into, uh, stem technology, uh, and really drive change, facilitate change, and have more women at the table, so to speak. Okay. >>And you didn't, you didn't start in tech, in stem, right? I did not. Do you have a law degree or no, you have a Ms. >>So yes, little studies and then I actually, I'm a philosopher. So I started by my degree is in philosophy. I love >>This logic. Yes. I love how you've applied that to >>Yeah. Yes. I was not initially in stem and it was actually through an internship at a technology firm, uh, while I was in college that I don't first open to technology. And it just immediately captivated me just in terms of working, you know, that the speed, the pace, uh, just being able to solve these complex business problems at scale around the world. It was absolutely fascinating to me, obviously still is, but I think testing the waters in that way, um, as I was just talking before, it helped me to understand, I had never envisioned a career in technology, but having an opportunity to test the waters really enabled me to see that, wow, this is something where I have a skillset and it brings out a passion within me that I didn't know that I had. So it was a, it was a win-win. >>That's awesome. No worries. Last question. Where can folks go to get your book? >>Yes. So anywhere books are sold, uh, definitely on Amazon. Uh, we, if you are here at forward, we also are, have a book signing, so you can come find me. I'll be on the patio signing books and, uh, yeah, it's, it's everywhere. And I would love to hear feedback. And we're thinking about a second one. So please let us know how you like the, uh, the activities that are in there. >>Thank you. Congratulations. And Dave's going to pick one up so he can start. >>Yeah. The use case. I'm dying to dig >>In, do a breathing analysis on it, and he was great to have you on the program. Your energy is fantastic. You really open up opportunities for people. I hope that more people will watch this and understand that while the really the sky is really the limit. And, uh, thank you for your time. Absolutely. >>Thank you. It's a pleasure >>For Dave Volante. I'm Lisa Martin. We are live in Vegas at the Bellagio UI path forward for you right back with our next guest.

>>from the Cube Studios in Palo Alto and Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cube conversation. >>Hi, everybody. This is Dave Volante with Cuban. Welcome to the special digital presentation. We're really digging into how IBM is operational izing and automating the AI and data pipeline not only for its clients, but also for itself. And with me is Julie Lockner, who looks after offering management and IBM Data and AI portfolio really great to see you again. >>Great, great to be here. Thank you. Talk a >>little bit about the role you have here at IBM. >>Sure, so my responsibility in offering >>management and the data and AI organization is >>really twofold. One is I lead a team that implements all of the back end processes, really the operations behind any time we deliver a product from the Data and AI team to the market. So think about all of the release cycle management are seeing product management discipline, etcetera. The other role that I play is really making sure that I'm We are working with our customers and making sure they have the best customer experience and a big part of that is developing the data ops methodology. It's something that I needed internally >>from my own line of business execution. But it's now something that our customers are looking for to implement in their shops as well. >>Well, good. I really want to get into that. So let's let's start with data ops. I mean, I think you know, a lot of people are familiar with Dev Ops. Not maybe not everybody's familiar with data ops. What do we need to know about data? >>Well, I mean, you bring up the point that everyone knows Dev ops. And in fact, I think you know what data ops really >>does is bring a lot of the benefits that Dev Ops did for application >>development to the data management organizations. So when we look at what is data ops, it's a data management. Uh, it is a data management set of principles that helps organizations bring business ready data to their consumers. Quickly. It takes it borrows from Dev ops. Similarly, where you have a data pipeline that associates a business value requirement. I have this business initiative. It's >>going to drive this much revenue or this must cost >>savings. This is the data that I need to be able to deliver it. How do I develop that pipeline and map to the data sources Know what data it is? Know that I can trust it. So ensuring >>that it has the right quality that I'm actually using, the data that it was meant >>for and then put it to use. So in in history, most data management practices deployed a waterfall like methodology. Our implementation methodology and what that meant is all the data pipeline >>projects were implemented serially, and it was done based on potentially a first in first out program management office >>with a Dev Ops mental model and the idea of being able to slice through all of the different silos that's required to collect the data, to organize it, to integrate it, the validate its quality to create those data integration >>pipelines and then present it to the dashboard like if it's a Cognos dashboard >>or a operational process or even a data science team, that whole end to end process >>gets streamlined through what we're pulling data ops methodology. >>So I mean, as you well know, we've been following this market since the early days of Hadoop people struggle with their data pipelines. It's complicated for them, there's a a raft of tools and and and they spend most of their time wrangling data preparing data moving data quality, different roles within the organization. So it sounds like, you know, to borrow from from Dev Ops Data offices is all about streamlining that data pipeline, helping people really understand and communicate across. End the end, as you're saying, But but what's the ultimate business outcome that you're trying to drive? >>So when you think about projects that require data to again cut costs Teoh Artemia >>business process or drive new revenue initiatives, >>how long does it take to get from having access to the data to making it available? That duration for every time delay that is spent wasted trying to connect to data sources, trying to find subject matter experts that understand what the data means and can verify? It's quality, like all of those steps along those different teams and different disciplines introduces delay in delivering high quality data fat, though the business value of data ops is always associated with something that the business is trying to achieve but with a time element so if it's for every day, we don't have this data to make a decision where either making money or losing money, that's the value proposition of data ops. So it's about taking things that people are already doing today and figuring out the quickest way to do it through automation or work flows and just cutting through all the political barriers >>that often happens when these data's cross different organizational boundaries. >>Yes, sir, speed, Time to insights is critical. But in, you know, with Dev Ops, you really bringing together of the skill sets into, sort of, you know, one Super Dev or one Super ops. It sounds with data ops. It's really more about everybody understanding their role and having communication and line of sight across the entire organization. It's not trying to make everybody else, Ah, superhuman data person. It's the whole It's the group. It's the team effort, Really. It's really a team game here, isn't it? >>Well, that's a big part of it. So just like any type of practice, there's people, aspects, process, aspects and technology, right? So people process technology, and while you're you're describing it, like having that super team that knows everything about the data. The only way that's possible is if you have a common foundation of metadata. So we've seen a surgeons in the data catalog market in the last, you know, 67 years. And what what the what? That the innovation in the data catalog market has actually enabled us to be able >>to drive more data ops pipelines. >>Meaning as you identify data assets you captured the metadata capture its meaning. You capture information that can be shared, whether they're stakeholders, it really then becomes more of a essential repository for people don't really quickly know what data they have really quickly understand what it means in its quality and very quickly with the right proper authority, like privacy rules included. Put it to use >>for models, um, dashboards, operational processes. >>Okay. And we're gonna talk about some examples. And one of them, of course, is IBM's own internal example. But help us understand where you advise clients to start. I want to get into it. Where do I get started? >>Yeah, I mean, so traditionally, what we've seen with these large data management data governance programs is that sometimes our customers feel like this is a big pill to swallow. And what we've said is, Look, there's an operator. There's an opportunity here to quickly define a small project, align into high value business initiative, target something that you can quickly gain access to the data, map out these pipelines and create a squad of skills. So it includes a person with Dev ops type programming skills to automate an instrument. A lot of the technology. A subject matter expert who understands the data sources in it's meeting the line of business executive who translate bringing that information to the business project and associating with business value. So when we say How do you get started? We've developed A I would call it a pretty basic maturity model to help organizations figure out. Where are they in terms of the technology, where are they in terms of organizationally knowing who the right people should be involved in these projects? And then, from a process perspective, we've developed some pretty prescriptive project plans. They help you nail down. What are the data elements that are critical for this business business initiative? And then we have for each role what their jobs are to consolidate the data sets map them together and present them to the consumer. We find that six week projects, typically three sprints, are perfect times to be able to a timeline to create one of these very short, quick win projects. Take that as an opportunity to figure out where your bottlenecks are in your own organization, where your skill shortages are, and then use the outcome of that six week sprint to then focus on billing and gaps. Kick off the next project and iterating celebrate the success and promote the success because >>it's typically tied to a business value to help them create momentum for the next one. >>That's awesome. I want to get into some examples, I mean, or we're both Massachusetts based. Normally you'd be in our studio and we'd be sitting here for face to face of obviously with Kobe. 19. In this crisis world sheltering in place, you're up somewhere in New England. I happened to be in my studio, but I'm the only one here, so relate this to cove it. How would data ops, or maybe you have a, ah, a concrete example in terms of how it's helped, inform or actually anticipate and keep up to date with what's happening with both. >>Yeah, well, I mean, we're all experiencing it. I don't think there's a person >>on the planet who hasn't been impacted by what's been going on with this Cupid pandemic prices. >>So we started. We started down this data obscurity a year ago. I mean, this isn't something that we just decided to implement a few weeks ago. We've been working on developing the methodology, getting our own organization in place so that we could respond the next time we needed to be able todo act upon a data driven decision. So part of the step one of our journey has really been working with our global chief data officer, Interpol, who I believe you have had an opportunity to meet with an interview. So part of this year Journey has been working with with our corporate organization. I'm in a line of business organization where we've established the roles and responsibilities we've established the technology >>stack based on our cloud pack for data and Watson knowledge padlock. >>So I use that as the context. For now, we're faced with a pandemic prices, and I'm being asked in my business unit to respond very quickly. How can we prioritize the offerings that are going to help those in critical need so that we can get those products out to market? We can offer a 90 day free use for governments and hospital agencies. So in order for me to do that as a operations lead or our team, I needed to be able to have access to our financial data. I needed to have access to our product portfolio information. I needed to understand our cloud capacity. So in order for me to be able to respond with the offers that we recently announced and you'll you can take a look at some of the examples with our Watson Citizen Assistant program, where I was able to provide the financial information required for >>us to make those products available from governments, hospitals, state agencies, etcetera, >>that's a That's a perfect example. Now, to set the stage back to the corporate global, uh, the chief data office organization, they implemented some technology that allowed us to, in just data, automatically classify it, automatically assign metadata, automatically associate data quality so that when my team started using that data, we knew what the status of that information >>was when we started to build our own predictive models. >>And so that's a great example of how we've been partnered with a corporate central organization and took advantage of the automated, uh, set of capabilities without having to invest in any additional resources or head count and be able to release >>products within a matter of a couple of weeks. >>And in that automation is a function of machine intelligence. Is that right? And obviously, some experience. But you couldn't you and I when we were consultants doing this by hand, we couldn't have done this. We could have done it at scale anyway. It is it is it Machine intelligence and AI that allows us to do this. >>That's exactly right. And you know, our organization is data and AI, so we happen to have the research and innovation teams that are building a lot of this technology, so we have somewhat of an advantage there, but you're right. The alternative to what I've described is manual spreadsheets. It's querying databases. It's sending emails to subject matter experts asking them what this data means if they're out sick or on vacation. You have to wait for them to come back, and all of this was a manual process. And in the last five years, we've seen this data catalog market really become this augmented data catalog, and the augmentation means it's automation through AI. So with years of experience and natural language understanding, we can home through a lot of the metadata that's available electronically. We can calm for unstructured data, but we can categorize it. And if you have a set of business terms that have industry standard definitions through machine learning, we can automate what you and I did as a consultant manually in a matter of seconds. That's the impact that AI is have in our organization, and now we're bringing this to the market, and >>it's a It's a big >>part of where I'm investing. My time, both internally and externally, is bringing these types >>of concepts and ideas to the market. >>So I'm hearing. First of all, one of the things that strikes me is you've got multiple data, sources and data that lives everywhere. You might have your supply chain data in your er p. Maybe that sits on Prem. You might have some sales data that's sitting in a sas in a cloud somewhere. Um, you might have, you know, weather data that you want to bring in in theory. Anyway, the more data that you have, the better insights that you could gather assuming you've got the right data quality. But so let me start with, like, where the data is, right? So So it's it's anywhere you don't know where it's going to be, but you know you need it. So that's part of this right? Is being able >>to get >>to the data quickly. >>Yeah, it's funny. You bring it up that way. I actually look a little differently. It's when you start these projects. The data was in one place, and then by the time you get through the end of a project, you >>find out that it's moved to the cloud, >>so the data location actually changes. While we're in the middle of projects, we have many or even during this this pandemic crisis. We have many organizations that are using this is an opportunity to move to SAS. So what was on Prem is now cloud. But that shouldn't change the definition of the data. It shouldn't change. It's meaning it might change how you connect to it. It might also change your security policies or privacy laws. Now, all of a sudden, you have to worry about where is that data physically located? And am I allowed to share it across national boundaries right before we knew physically where it waas. So when you think about data ops, data ops is a process that sits on top of where the data physically resides. And because we're mapping metadata and we're looking at these data pipelines and automated work flows, part of the design principles are to set it up so that it's independent of where it resides. However, you have to have placeholders in your metadata and in your tool chain, where we're automating these work flows so that you can accommodate when the data decides to move. Because the corporate policy change >>from on prem to cloud. >>And that's a big part of what Data ops offers is the same thing. By the way, for Dev ops, they've had to accommodate building in, you know, platforms as a service versus on from the development environments. It's the same for data ops, >>and you know, the other part that strikes me and listening to you is scale, and it's not just about, you know, scale with the cloud operating model. It's also about what you were talking about is you know, the auto classification, the automated metadata. You can't do that manually. You've got to be able to do that. Um, in order to scale with automation, That's another key part of data office, is it not? >>It's a well, it's a big part of >>the value proposition and a lot of the part of the business case. >>Right then you and I started in this business, you know, and big data became the thing. People just move all sorts of data sets to these Hadoop clusters without capturing the metadata. And so as a result, you know, in the last 10 years, this information is out there. But nobody knows what it means anymore. So you can't go back with the army of people and have them were these data sets because a lot of the contact was lost. But you can use automated technology. You can use automated machine learning with natural, understand natural language, understanding to do a lot of the heavy lifting for you and a big part of data ops, work flows and building these pipelines is to do what we call management by exception. So if your algorithms say 80% confident that this is a phone number and your organization has a low risk tolerance, that probably will go to an exception. But if you have a you know, a match algorithm that comes back and says it's 99% sure this is an email address, right, and you have a threshold that's 98%. It will automate much of the work that we used to have to do manually. So that's an example of how you can automate, eliminate manual work and have some human interaction based on your risk threshold. >>That's awesome. I mean, you're right, the no schema on write said. I throw it into a data lake. Data Lake becomes a data swamp. We all know that joke. Okay, I want to understand a little bit, and maybe you have some other examples of some of the use cases here, but there's some of the maturity of where customers are. It seems like you've got to start by just understanding what data you have, cataloging it. You're getting your metadata act in order. But then you've got you've got a data quality component before you can actually implement and get yet to insight. So, you know, where are customers on the maturity model? Do you have any other examples that you can share? >>Yeah. So when we look at our data ops maturity model, we tried to simplify, and I mentioned this earlier that we try to simplify it so that really anybody can get started. They don't have to have a full governance framework implemented to to take advantage of the benefits data ops delivers. So what we did is we said if you can categorize your data ops programs into really three things one is how well do you know your data? Do you even know what data you have? The 2nd 1 is, and you trust it like, can you trust it's quality? Can you trust it's meeting? And the 3rd 1 is Can you put it to use? So if you really think about it when you begin with what data do you know, write? The first step is you know, how are you determining what data? You know? The first step is if you are using spreadsheets. Replace it with a data catalog. If you have a department line of business catalog and you need to start sharing information with the department's, then start expanding to an enterprise level data catalog. Now you mentioned data quality. So the first step is do you even have a data quality program, right. Have you even established what your criteria are for high quality data? Have you considered what your data quality score is comprised of? Have you mapped out what your critical data elements are to run your business? Most companies have done that for there. They're governed processes. But for these new initiatives And when you identify, I'm in my example with the covert prices, what products are we gonna help bring to market quickly? I need to be able to >>find out what the critical data elements are. And can I trust it? >>Have I even done a quality scan and have teams commented on it's trustworthiness to be used in this case, If you haven't done anything like that in your organization, that might be the first place to start. Pick the critical data elements for this initiative, assess its quality, and then start to implement the work flows to re mediate. And then when you get to putting it to use, there's several methods for making data available. One is simply making a gate, um, are available to a small set of users. That's what most people do Well, first, they make us spreadsheet of the data available, But then, if they need to have multiple people access it, that's when, like a Data Mart might make sense. Technology like data virtualization eliminates the need for you to move data as you're in this prototyping phase, and that's a great way to get started. It doesn't cost a lot of money to get a virtual query set up to see if this is the right join or the right combination of fields that are required for this use case. Eventually, you'll get to the need to use a high performance CTL tool for data integration. But Nirvana is when you really get to that self service data prep, where users can weary a catalog and say these are the data sets I need. It presents you a list of data assets that are available. I can point and click at these columns I want as part of my data pipeline and I hit go and automatically generates that output or data science use cases for it. Bad news, Dashboard. Right? That's the most mature model and being able to iterate on that so quickly that as soon as you get feedback that that data elements are wrong or you need to add something, you can do it. Push button. And that's where data obscurity should should bring organizations too. >>Well, Julie, I think there's no question that this covert crisis is accentuated the importance of digital. You know, we talk about digital transformation a lot, and it's it's certainly riel, although I would say a lot of people that we talk to we'll say, Well, you know, not on my watch. Er, I'll be retired before that all happens. Well, this crisis is accelerating. That transformation and data is at the heart of it. You know, digital means data. And if you don't have data, you know, story together and your act together, then you're gonna you're not gonna be able to compete. And data ops really is a key aspect of that. So give us a parting word. >>Yeah, I think This is a great opportunity for us to really assess how well we're leveraging data to make strategic decisions. And if there hasn't been a more pressing time to do it, it's when our entire engagement becomes virtual like. This interview is virtual right. Everything now creates a digital footprint that we can leverage to understand where our customers are having problems where they're having successes. You know, let's use the data that's available and use data ops to make sure that we can generate access. That data? No, it trust it, Put it to use so that we can respond to >>those in need when they need it. >>Julie Lockner, your incredible practitioner. Really? Hands on really appreciate you coming on the Cube and sharing your knowledge with us. Thank you. >>Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to be here. >>Alright? And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Volante for the Cube. And we will see you next time. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

>>from the Cube Studios in Palo Alto and Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cube conversation. Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's Cuban sites, powered by ET are in this breaking analysis, we want to accomplish three things. First thing I'll do is we'll recap the current spending outlook. Next, we want to share some of the priorities and sentiments and the outlook that we're hearing from leading tech execs that we've been interviewing in the past couple of weeks on the remote cube. And finally, we'll take a look at really what's going on in the market place, a little bit of a look forward and what we expect in the coming weeks and months ahead. Now, as you know, E. T. R was really the first to quantify with real survey data the impact of covert 19 on I t spend. So I just want to review that for a moment. This CTR graphic right here shows that results from more than 1200 CIOs and I T practitioners. That shows that they expect their I t spending how they're they're spending on the change in 2020 now, look at the gray bar shows a very large number of organizations that they're plowing ahead without any change. In overall, I spend about 35% now shown in the green bars before 21% of respondents are actually increase their budgets this year. And the red bars, of course, they show the carnage. Really, 28% of customers are expecting a decrease of more than 10% year on year. Now, as we've reported, the picture would look a lot worse were it not for the work from home infrastructure, offset by E spending on collaboration tools and related networking security. VPN, VD I interest infrastructure, etcetera. Now remember each year launched this survey on March 11th and ran it through early April. So it caught the change in sentiment literally in real time on a daily basis. And that's what I'm showing here in this graphic. What it does is it overlays key events that occurred during that time frame and what E. T. R did was they modeled and rear end the data excluding the responses prior to each event. So, of course, the forecast got progressively worse over time. But as you can see on the Purple Line. There was a little bit of an uptick in sentiment from the stimulus package, and it looked like, you know, there's another. It looks like there's another economic cash injection coming soon. Now, as we've reported, the card forecast calls for around 4% decline in I t spend from 2020. That's down from plus 4% prior to Corona virus. It's ER has now entered its self imposed quiet period for two weeks. But what we're doing here is showing some of the sectors that we're watching closely for big changes. We're gonna drill into these over the next several weeks. Now, of course, is we've reported we're seeing a substantial cut in I t spend across the board. Capex will be down. We would expect sectors like I t consulting and outsourcing to be way, way down as organizations put a lot of projects on the back burner. But there are bright spots is shown here in the green. One that we really haven't highlighted to date is cloud really haven't dug into that and also data center related services around Cloud Cloud, we think, is definitely going to remain strong and these related services to get connect clouds via Coehlo services and really reducing latency across clouds and on Prem, we think will remain strong. Now I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about some of the learnings and takeaways from our conversations with CSOs over the past couple of weeks. One of the great things about the Cube is we get to build relationships with many, many people. Over the past 10 years, I've probably personally interviewed close to 5000 people, so we've reached out to a number of those execs over the last couple of weeks to really try and understand how they're managing through this cove in 19 Crisis. So let me summarize just some of the things that we heard. And then I'll let the execs speak to you directly first, of course, like tech execs, are there half full people perpetual optimist, if you will. It was interesting to hear how many of the people that I spoke with, that they actually had early visibility on this crisis. Why? Because a lot of our operations, we're actually in China and other parts of Asia, so they saw this coming to an extent, and they saw it coming to the U. S. And so you know, there were somewhat ready and you're here. They all had on air of confidence about their long term viability and putting their put their employees ahead of profits. But the same time, once they see that their employees are okay, they want to get them focused and productive. Now what they've also done is they've increased the cadence and the frequency of their communications. Yeah, and most, if not all, are trying to get back with a free no strings attached software and other similar programs. But the bottom line is, they really don't know what's coming. They don't know when this thing will end. They don't know what a recovery really is gonna look like when people are going to feel safe traveling again what the overall economic impact is gonna be. So I think it's best summarized to say they're hoping for the best, but planning for the worst. But let's listen to this highlight clip that we put together of five execs that I talked to along with John Furrier Melissa DiDonato of Susa. Frank Sluman, who had snowflake and he's formerly the chairman and CEO of service. Now Jeremy Burton is the CEO of a company called Observe. He used to be the CMO of Dell and EMC. Before that, brand products Sanjay Poonam as the CEO of VM Ware and ST ST Vossen heads up Cisco's collaboration business. Roll the clip. >>What keeps me up at night now and how I wake up every morning is wondering about the health of my employees, that a couple of employees, one that was quite ill in Italy. We were phoning him and calling and emailing him from his hospital bed. And that's what's really keeping me going. What's inspiring me to leave this incredible company is the people and the culture that they built that I'm honoring and taking forward as part of the open source value system. My first movers, Let's not overreact. Take a deep breath. Let's really examine what we know. Let's not jump to conclusions. Let's not try to project things that were not capable of projecting death hard because, you know, we tend to have sort of levels off certainty about what's gonna happen in the next week in the next month, and so on. All of a sudden that's out of the window creates enormous anxiety with people. So, in other words, you've got a sort of a reset to Okay, what do we know? What can we do? What we control, Um, and and not let our minds sort of, you know, go out of control. So I talk to are people time of maintain a sense of normalcy focused on the work. Stay in the state in the moment. And ah, I don't turn the news feed off. Right, Because the hysteria you get through that through the media really not helpful. Just haven't been through, you know, a couple of recessions where, you know, we all went through 9 11 You know, the world just turn around and you come out the other side. And so the key thing is, you said it very much is a cliche, but you gotta live in the moment. What can I do right now? What can I affect right now? How can I make sure that you know what I'm working on is a value for when we come out the other side. And when you know more code balls come along. I think you'd better reason about that with the best information you have at the time. I always tell people the profits of VM Ware wheat. If you are not well, if your loved ones not well, if you take a picture of that first, we will be fine. You know this to show fast, but if you're healthy, let's turn our attention because we're not going to just sit in a little mini games. We're gonna so, customers, How do we do that? A lot of our customers are adjusting to this pool, and as a result they have to, you know, either order devices, but the laptop screens things were the kinds to allow work for your environment to be as close to productive as they're working today. I do see some, some things coming. Problem right? Do I expect the volumes off collaboration to go down? You know, it's never going to go back to the same level. The world as we know it is going to change forever. We are going to have a post code area, and that's going to be changed for the better. There's a number of employees who have been skeptical, reticent, working from home were suddenly going to say just work from home. Thing is not so bad after all. >>So you can hear from the execs who all either currently or one point of lead large companies in large teams. They're pretty optimistic now. The other thing that's Lukman told me, by the way, is he approves investments in engineering with no qualms because that's the future of the company. But he's much more circumspect with regard to go to market investments because he wants to see a high probability of yield from the sales teams before making investments there. I also want to share some perspectives that I've learned from small early stage companies, and we've all seen the Sequoia Black Swan memo and you might remember there onerous rest in peace, good times the alert that they put out in 2008. It basically they're essentially advising companies to stop spending on non essential items. By the way, another slew of society also somewhat scoffed at this advice, and he told me on the Cube, you should always stop spending money on non essential items. At any rate, I've talked to a number of early stage investors and portfolio companies, and I'll share a little bit of their play Bach playbook that they're using during this crisis, and it might have some value to the cut, cut cut narrative that you're hearing out there. I think the summary for these early stage startups is first focus on those customers that got you to where you are today. In other words, don't lose sight of your core. The second thing is, try to hone your go to market and align it with current conditions. In other words, paint a picture of the ideal customer and the value proposition that you deliver specifically in the context of the current market. The third thing is, they're updating their forecast more frequently and running sensitivity analysis much more often so that they can better predict outcomes. I e. Reset. You're likely best case and worst case models. The third is essentially reset your near term and midterm plans and those goals and re balance your expense portfolio to reflect these new targets. And this is important by the way, to communicate to your investors. When I've seen is those companies with annual recurring revenue there actually in pretty good shape, believe it or not, in almost all cases, I've seen targets lowered. But there are some examples of startups that are actually increasing their outlook. Think, Zoom, even those who is not a startup anymore. But generally I've seen resets of between 5 to 10% downward, which you know what often is in pretty much in line with the board level goals. And I've seen more drastic reductions as well of up to 50% now. So we've heard some pretty good stories from larger tech companies and some of these VC funded startups. Now I want to talk about small business broadly and what we're hearing from small business owners and also the banks that serve them. Look, I'm not going to sugar coat this many small businesses, as you well know, in deep trouble. They're gonna go out of business. They're laying off people on. There are a number of unemployed the aid package that the government's putting forth the small businesses. It's not working its way through the banking system. Not nearly fast enough, despite the Treasury secretaries efforts, The bottom line is banks don't want to make these loans to small businesses. Right now, there's too much that they don't understand. They're making no money on these loans they're being overwhelmed with. Volume will give you some examples. Bank of America, when the small business payroll program first hit signal that would Onley help companies with both ah banking relationship and an existing lending relationship with the bank UPS is another example said it was only gonna directly help companies with over 500 employees. And for small businesses, it was outsourcing that relationship to another firm, which, of course, meant you had to go through a new rectal exam, if you will, with that new firm. In a way, you can't blame the banks. They're being asked to execute on these programs without clear guidance on how they're supposed to enforce guidelines. And what happens if they make a mistake? Is the federal government gonna pull their guaranteed backing? What are those guidelines? They seem to be changing all the time. And what's the banks, liability and authority to enforce them? Why don't I spend time talking about this? Well, nearly half of US employees work for small businesses, and nearly 17 million workers as of this date have filed for unemployment, and I'll say the banks got bailed out in the financial crisis of 2008 and they need to step up, period, and the government needs to help them, all right. The other buzz kill data that I want to bring up is our national debt. Now many have invoked that there's no such thing as a free lunch, including the famous Milton Friedman, the Economist who I'm gonna credit. Others have said it, but I'll give it to him. Why? Because he espoused controlling the money supply and letting the market's fix themselves bailouts. The banks, airlines, Boeing, automakers, etcetera, those air antithetical to his underlying philosophy. Currently, the U. S national debt is $24 trillion. That's $194,000. Protects player Americans. Personal debt is now 20 trillion. Our unfunded liabilities, like Social Security, Medicare, etcetera now stands at a whopping 139 trillion. And that equates to about 422,000 per citizen. Think about this. The average liquid savings for US family is 15 K, and the U. S debt is now 111% of GDP. So we've been applying Kenzie and Economics for a while now. I'm gonna say it seems to have been working. Think about the predictions of inflation after the 8 4000 and nine crisis. They proved to be wrong. But my concern is I don't see how we grow our way out of this debt, and I worry about that. I've worried about this for a long time, but look, we're knee deep into it and it looks like there's no turning back so well, I'll try to keep my rhetoric to a minimum and stay positive here because I think there is light at the end of the tunnel. We're starting to see some some good opportunities emerging here just in terms of flattening the curve and the like. One of the things that pretty positive about is there gonna be some permanent changes from Cove it. It's kind of ironic that this thing hit as we're entering a new decade decade and as I said before, I expect digital transformations to be accelerated because of this crisis and the many companies that have talked digital from the corner office. But I haven't necessarily really walked the walk, I think will now I think is going to be more cloud more subscription less wasted labor, more automation, more work from home unless big physical events, at least in the next couple of years. So that's kind of the new expectation. As always, we're going to continue to report from our studios in Palo Alto and Boston, and we really welcome and appreciate your feedback. Remember, these segments are all available as podcasts, and we're publishing regularly on silicon angle dot com and on wiki bond dot com. Check out ctr dot plus for all the spending action, and you can feel free to comment on my LinkedIn post or DME at development or email me at David Volante Wiki. Sorry, David Vellante is silicon angle dot com. This is Dave Volante for the Cube Insights powered by CTR. Thanks for watching everyone. We'll see you next time. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

>>Live from Orlando, Florida It's the cue covering Microsoft Ignite Brought to you by Cohee City. >>Hello, everyone. And welcome to the Cubes live coverage of Microsoft Ignite. We're kicking off three days of live coverage here at the Orange County Civic Center Convention Center. Sorry, I'm your host. Rebecca Knight coasting along side of stew Minutemen. Do we have so much to cover? So many new products? So many new strategies. New Emphasis Head knew new buzzwords, tech intensity and democratization. Uh, you were here. You were in the hub. You heard Satya Nadella live on the main stage. I'd like to just get your initial impressions and initial thoughts of of his keynote, and we're gonna dig into all of >>them. Rebecca, it's great to be here second year doing it with you here. Your background, really on business. Productivity. Really enjoyed doing this one within you. Chew said Walter Wall. Three days of covered The place is just buzzing with activity. 26,000 in attendance for a show that's been called soft night for I think it's been about six years. It was tech head back in the day we talked about last year, you know, this was originally, you know, the windows and office. You know, administrators show and has really matured over time. Trust was a big topic of conversation. And you know what? With my general thing, they rearrange some of the logistics of it. I actually, you know, usually I'm sitting with the press and the analyst upfront. Actually, you know, when in the shoes of the attending here, which meant I stood in our for almost two hours waiting to be one of the 3000 out of 26,000 to go get a seat and communication was a little bit weird and we kind of move in. But I did get a nice seat. Such intel was up on front. I thought they covered a lot of ground and it ran well, logistically. For those of us that were watching from the main stage, I heard remotely, you know, as sometimes happens, you know, Internet or things that there could be some calendars. It is with all of these cloud shows that we go to you just get this barrage of so many different things, everything from you know, really interesting as your arc, which we're gonna spend a bunch of time talking about through all of the latest. Aye. Aye. And the power things that they're going on all the way down through dynamics and teams and devices and EJ and on DDE down to the browser and the search engine. So so many different things. You know, Microsoft, Of course. You know, one of the store words in technology, but clearly laying out Ah, lot of announcements, books worth of you work of all of the announcement that go out there. And you know, general, take that I get for most people is they definitely are impressed so far. And they're gonna spend all week digging in tow, learn more, >>So we're gonna We're gonna dig in right now. But But I also just want to say that setting the scene doll, this is October 25th. Microsoft was given the jet, announced it was announced it was given the jet I contract. This was a big surprise. And this is Microsoft, which is a distant number two to AWS. Did Sathya seem on a high from that still or what is your impression? >>Unless I missed it, I didn't catch anything about it. Absolutely. I've talked to some people around the show, Talk to somebody appears in the media and analyst community. That air talking about it absolutely was a big surprise. Anybody that's interested in this go check out John. For years written down on this, David Lantz has done a lot of analysis. We've been looking at this quite a bit. Amazon really had one this deal, and it went through courts and Oracle, you know, pushed against really hard to try to make for the Amazon, did it. General Mattis writes about it in his book that I think you came out recently, You know, from the president down to make sure that Amazon did not get this politics entry. The high level is it's $10 billion over 10 years, but when you look into it, number one is the minimum purchase. In the first years only like a 1,000,000. It's expected to be more like 202 150 million in the 1st 2 years, but it is a big deal. Microsoft really spent a lot of time the last couple of years going deeper into public sector, making sure they've got the governance and the compliance sergeant is Kino talked about the 54 azure regions and what they're doing. They're still work that Microsoft needs to do. They don't have the Level six security yet which Amazon does that They've been given less than a year to get that, to make sure that they can fulfill this. But a lot of pieces and there will be lots of other government contracts, but lots of intrigue there. I think it goes back to thing we mentioned trust. Can the government trust that Microsoft will allow them to do all they need to do? There's a lot of office 3 65 in the government. And, of course, Microsoft does. This other thing. There's a bunch of in the government is they use Oracle. We know that Oracle and Amazon are still butting heads. You don't expect to see Oracle on Amazon, you know, shaking hands on stage any time soon. At Oracle OpenWorld This year you saw Oracle allowing their solution to run on Azure in friendly licensing terms because you can run Oracle on AWS. But oracles gonna do everything you can to make sure that the licensing terms her onerous in that environment, they want you to do it on their infrastructure or on their environment and really opening up to Azure. Now, the government contrast that they can run it there. And for me, that trust resident. When I talk to the partner ecosystem, there definitely is some concern about Amazon's power in the marketplace and what they will do. Amazon, to their credit, has a big ecosystem there. Marketplace is phenomenal and they are open and give customers choice. But obviously, just like if you serve on amazon dot com, if it's a Amazon Basics or Amazon provider solution, they're probably going toe move that them in that way. Every company does this for, you know, Google makes sure that they optimize for their ads and everything like that. Microsoft in the past was known for optimizing their licensing revenue. Today they're more trusted. They're more open. I think Santa leaves that on the from the top. But you know so many things that they need to dig into. So Jet I not something I'd expect to spend a lot of time on this week, But thank you for bringing it up happily undertone. Because what the moral of the stories today cloud is AWS and Azure are the clear leaders. Yes, AWS still has a sizable lead. A measure is slowly eating into that lead. But as a as a user, as an enterprise, as any company out there, you can't be wrong by choosing either of those solutions. And one of Microsoft's embracing is that multi cloud environment going back to art will talk about how do I live in that multi cloud world? Eight of us still leads with their hybrid solution and use eight of us don't use other clouds. Azure is more embracing of a multi cloud world. >>So so let's talk about that now. But I just in terms of the trust at a time where there is such deep and tremendous skepticism, a big tech in government right now, the trust really is a crucial element. We're gonna We're gonna talk about that today with a lot of our guests two developments that you're most interested in. And I really want to dig into here as your ark. We're gonna start azure Arkin Power platform. But as your brand new today, uh, your thoughts, your impressions? >>Yes. So, as your ark, I can automate update with my policies across any environment, not just azure. So where I look at this and say, OK, do I manage azure with this? Absolutely. It's got kubernetes in it, so I should be able to move things around if need be. My my data center. In what? I'm putting their all of the azure stack and EJ hub all of these azure pieces in my data center. Can I manage that with us? Of course. The question is, what about if I'm using Google? Service is if I'm using A W S service is in the demo that they ran. They showed 80 was and said, Oh, we can manage that I said, That's great that they can. But will customers actually do that? There's a certain skill set. There's no way a program for it. And of course, AWS has its tooling that everybody uses their. So we've been trying to get that single pane of glass of, you know, for more than my entire career. And the techies I talked to is that pane of glass is nothing but P a. I n is the joke we always make. So it is great that they've done this by the way it's on Lee in Tech preview right now, so it's great that they have this. We've been saying for years that Microsoft, if you talk about hybrid, has the lead when you talk about thought, leadership and solutions. But really, that hybrid solution is azure and data center, and I've got my APs that live everywhere. So 03 65 or in my data center in there. What we're really hearing here is a comprehensive reimagining of hybrid, as we've been talking about it more recently is I really blur the lines between my data center, the public cloud and even the edge. So it's great to see Microsoft do this. I got a lot of friends that are at the V M World Europe Show in Barcelona this week. We've been talking about this in the V M where environment for last couple of years of the VM, where on AWS via where on Azure V M wear on Google, Oracle, IBM and more. So it's great that Microsoft has stepped up here. In some ways. It makes me really think how I thought about Microsoft because Microsoft has been, in my mind a leader and hybrid and realizing that they need to really, really make a significant change to the portfolio. To really deliver on the promise of hybrid and multi My definition of when we will have a true multi con solution is when the value that extract from the system is greater than the sum of the parts. And absolutely that's not where we are today. Microsoft has a lot of pieces. Absolutely. They have a right to be one of the leaders pulling those pieces together. And really, it is a place where you see Microsoft and IBM, where partnering, but also all going to be that leader in the management of my cloud native environment. And we're gonna spend a lot of time this week talking to the developers because that's another area that sought to spend a lot of time. Those two point 6,000,000 citizen developers, as he calls them. I'm sure you must have really loved Rebecca. 61% of job openings for developers are outside of the tech sector. >>Well, exactly, and that is that is such a huge point and that's what Sathya said. That's always been our sweet spot wear for the citizen developers and we want to democratize computing. We want to make sure that you can bring your best self to work and be your most productive self to work in. So many of the tools that they have introduced today are all about creativity, collaboration, time management, productivity, individual time productivity as well as team productivity. So there's a lot of exciting developments today. Let's talk about power platform. Speaking of the parts and pieces What what does it do? What most interests you and excites you about power platform >>boy. So you know, first, the last thing. The citizen developers. It's funny when most people do, you know, where do I start? And I started to excel. And of course, Microsoft is probably the company that most people I'm old enough now that I remember, you know, using the spreadsheets before Excel was the leader that it was there. But the power platform, The thing I've been looking at is way were here a year ago. There was no power platform. Did we talk a lot about a I Absolutely. We talk about data warehousing and business intelligence and all of these things. So I'm trying to understand how much of This is just the new umbrella. Platt, the new umbrella messaging around it and how much there's new products. I talked to a couple people that dig in straight here. I talked to a couple of Microsoft Mbps. Which way? There are lots of them here. I haven't mentioned it, Rebecca already. But the community at the show is excellent. It is welcoming. It is engaging. Diversity is front and center at this show and Microsoft Great kudos for that because it ties into that citizen developers. But when you talk about the power platform, it's about enabling the citizen developers. So a few announcements in their power automate is really there are p a solution. We've got power virtual agents, which is understanding natural language and conversations. Such actually did a cute little thing. He went toe like universal and fought the demi Gorgon from stranger things. Stranger things, fan. I thought it was really cute and everything. But, he explained, he's like, Okay, here's you know it's understanding my name and saying, Get back to me. It's understanding the movements that I'm doing and turning that into what what's happening so way. Understand that we're still relatively early into gaining the full benefits out of a I hear. But there's a lot of tooling, and from what the people I've talked to is the power platform absolutely is much more than just a rebranding. There are acquisitions that have come in. There are software launches and you know, Microsoft in the agile, continuously shipping code mode that everybody is in these days, you know, is going through a lot of veneration. So I believe that you know that the platform was announced back in the spring, and something that I've seen with Microsoft and many companies like Cisco, that air going heavily of software, a platform of software, actually could be a unifying factor forcing function between all of these groups. So rather than saying, Oh my gosh, Microsoft, you've got, you know, 1000 different software packages that I would by no, no, that's not the way you think about it. You know, they don't come on a CD or disk anymore. Instead, it's there's something that I plug into on it, cloud enabled. It's able to be, you know, purchase interruptible model. So we've got number of guests that that power platform absolutely is. You know, hearing good things in the ecosystem and absolutely, you know, you know, it is a strength of Microsoft when you talk about the leverage and use of data in a business environment, on is their legacy. >>And this is a company that is going from strength to strength right now, really firing on all four senators cylinders, azure office, 3 65 windows. We haven't talked about fortnight and the other gaming elements here, but in terms of, um, usage issues, I know there were There were a couple of hiccups last week. >>Yeah, so you know, outages or something. People are definitely worried about the cloud. There was reported last week that there was some availability and performance issues. They were throttling things back. They were saying you couldn't scale and we're like, Wait, you know, infinite compute, infinite storage on demand. That's what we need. And from some of the things I heard from the community, the gaming platforms actually were impacting this and actually gaming that run across both AWS and azure. So it definitely is a little bit of a red flag. You know, your azure, your your your microsoft, and you want to talk about that you are a leader in the face. You can trust them. We're gonna keep you going. Well, you know, cos have spent decades making sure that their data centers have the up time and reliability that we need. You know, when I talk to the big cloud providers, they have some of the same conversation we were having back in the infrastructure world, You know, 15 years ago about data availability and data loss, You know? D u D E l date on availability and data loss. It was a four letter word. You can't have it. You would have war rooms and make for the things you know. Don't go down so little bit of a red flag especially, you know, will there be any contesting of the government deal? You don't want something sitting there saying Oh, hey, wait. I have a critical you know d o d operation. That needs to happen. Wait, We can't speak out when we need it. You know that. That's a no No. >>Right. Exactly. Well, this is these air, all the topics we're going to get into and then some over the next three days, it's gonna be an action packed show. I'm looking forward to it. A lot of great guests to thanks >>so much. I can't wait. I >>hope you'll stay tuned for more of the cubes. Live coverage of Microsoft IC night coming up in just a little bit.

>> Woman: From the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE; covering CloudNOW's Seventh Annual Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. (dramatic music) >> Hi, Lisa Martin with theCUBE on the ground at Facebook Headquarters. We're here for the Seventh Annual CloudNOW Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation event. Welcoming, one of the award-winners tonight, to the program, we've got Sce Pike, the founder and CEO of IOTAS. Sce, it's so great to have you here, and congratulations on your award. >> Thank you so much, Lisa. >> So IOTAS's cool software. >> Mm hmm. >> Tell us about that. This is for the Smart Apartments. These days we're so used to being able to talk to any device and have it control things. Smart cities are our big thing, smart everything. Tell us about IOTAS. What do you guys do when the impetus for the technology. >> Sure, I really believe that the future of smart home is actually something that is not just four walls and a roof, but actually something that is aware of you. So, aware of you and knows your preferences and settings, and actually knows everything about you and wants to actually be an ally to you, and actually can differentiate between you, and your family and friends, and potentially an intruder. And so, the only way you're going to get there is to actually work with early adopters of technology. This is when we start identifying the real estate industry with multi-family where all the early adopters were living, right, because only 30 percent of Millennials own homes. And so, we thought about this and said, "Okay, well, how are we going to actually get to those millennials?" And then a real estate developer actually approached us, saying, "Hey, I want technology differentiation for my building that I'm creating, 200 units in Portland Oregon," which is where I'm from, and said, "I want to have something different." And that's when I was like, "Oh, this is the opportunity to actually work with the real estate industry to put it into the fabric of the buildings." And that's when I got really excited when we can actually make a true smart home that has all the lights, all the outlets, all the locks, voice as you mentioned, and everything that is an experience versus just on, off. >> That's so interesting. I looked at your Web site and saw the journal and how it's talking about something that you mentioned, this awareness and learning the individuals and being able to have the intelligence to distinguish. >> Is it called stories on the website? >> Those are stories, those are the automations, so that you can have a good night story, good morning, welcome home; so everything just works for people who are moving into our apartments. They download the app within 30 seconds. They can see everything that they can control, but they can see also, all the pre-programmed automation as well. But the other notion of what we are creating is something called a living profile. And this is really relevant from a CloudNOW perspective, is that the living profile travels with you from place to place to place. So we are not only doing smart apartments but we're also working in student housing, military housing, senior living, and starting to go into single family home as well. So for us, the notion is that these smart homes, all your settings preferences, your routines, your habits, travel with you from place to place to place, eventually to hotels, to cars, working spaces, hotels, short term vacation rentals and such. >> Wow! That's phenomenal. So this is an interesting kind of collaboration between the real estate industry and some technologists. >> Exactly. Exactly. >> I love that you were approached by a real estate developer who said, "I want to have a differentiation for my business." >> Exactly. Was that sort of a surprise to you thinking, you understand tech, you have a really cool background in anthropology as well as electronic arts, but there must have been sort of an interesting opportunity going, "Well, there's a huge opportunity in the market here >> Yeah. >> that we can help tech really kick the doors wide open on real estate. >> Yes. Exactly. My previous company, Citizen, which I sold to Ernst and Young, is known for connected technology. So we were developing connected technologies in cars, in healthcare and fintech, and we were looking at smart homes for single family home. And so, for us, when that real estate developer approached us, looked at the market, saw that the market is huge. It's $500 billion to a trillion dollars, just for multi-family home alone, it's an absolutely a large market, and then realized that this was truly an opportunity to scale smart home and IoT devices in a meaningful way because you're not just selling one device, one home, not even one building, but you're selling entire portfolios of companies like Prudential or JP Morgan. All the funds that you hear about, they're all real estate funds, right? And they're changing hands 40% of the ... A 40% of the fund is changing hands every year. That means they are buying and selling, and as they're buying and selling, they're adding technology into these buildings. >> Wow! That's so interesting. So, I want to kind of pivot a little bit into your background. I mentioned anthropology degree and electronic arts. And you have, I was asking you before we went live, I love stories like that where there's a ... I hear it wasn't a STEM kit, but you have some really cool influences that your anthropology background has delivered to, not just your career but also the technology that you guys are delivering. Tell us a little bit about that. Sure. So, anthropology is a study in human behavior, right? There's physical anthropology and cultural anthropology. Physical anthropology is now considered almost like evolutionary psychology. And so that actually allowed me because I've always been curious about human; human nature, why people do things, and that actually led my career into this interesting path of user experience design. And electronic arts actually taught me how to code as well as design on the computer. And when I graduated from college in the late '90s and moved to Silicon Valley, everybody's like, "I need somebody who could code and design all these Internet sites." So I ended up actually designing the first GM e-commerce site, the first HP's e-commerce sites, and that actually was not a direct path. I never thought I'd be making websites or working in an Internet, but it was an interesting path to get there. So you're right, it doesn't have to be this straight and like you got to be in computer science. There's so many different avenues to think about how technology needs a different point of view, right, from an art background or an anthropology background, and I think that's where there's an opportunity to bring in women or girls in a different way that still goes into STEM. So steam is a huge portion of what I support. >> Yes. And you talked about, it's just different points of view, it's thought diversity, even. >> Yes. >> Tell us a little bit about the culture that you're building at IOTAS and where, maybe even some of the softer skills >> Sure. >> are key to enabling you guys to do market expansion and accomplish some pretty big goals? >> Yeah. I mean, culturally, I love my team. I think one of the things that we always strive for, though, is the ability to always give back to the community as well. So we have like, events, as well as like, once a month, everyone has like, a give-back Wednesday, right? So they can go and volunteer and do other things that is outside of just their work life, right? And so that's just one of the things that we do and that allows them to just step away from their daily activity of being driven by just the startup mentality or the startup life and just go build something, and we do this a lot, Habitats for Humanities, right? We go build homes, real homes, and we always think we should offer these homes as smart home technology. But those are the things that I think really impact who we are. The other thought I had was I travel a lot. And I had this moment where I was getting on a plane. I was looking at the pilot, I was going, "Oh gosh! So much of my life is dependent on white men, and, unfortunately, like, my investors, my board members, all my executive staff, my husband, and I was thinking, "I need to change something. I'll keep the husband." (Lisa laughs) But we (chuckles) recently added a female board member who has a cybersecurity background. I'm recruiting for a female CFO and COO as well, and I'm trying to change up my executive staff, change up my investors, change up my board 'cause this is not something that you think about, coming from my generation which is a little bit older. You just need to do what you need to do to get it done, you don't think about yourself as a female entrepreneur. I thought of myself as an entrepreneur. I think of myself as a CEO. I don't have this like, "I'm a female entrepreneur." And so you sometimes forget to support other diversity in this environment, and that's kind of this moment of realization as I was getting on the plane, "I got to change something." Right? And so, our staff is more than 40% female. I'm trying to change that a little bit more. That's one of the key things that I think is a strength of having just representation. >> And maybe one of these days, you said your point: It won't matter, you will just be able to be a CEO, an entrepreneur. >> exactly. >> One more thing, since you're recruiting, where can people to go to find out more information about the opportunities? >> Sure, they can come to our site, reach out or contact at iotashome.com. That would be the best way to reach us. >> Excellent. Well, Sce, congratulations on the award. >> Thank you. >> And for what you're doing to help revolutionize the real estate tech industry. It's such interesting technology to make it aware and personal. Thanks for your time. >> Cool. >> Thank you so much, Lisa. We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin, at Facebook Headquarters. Thanks for watching. (dramatic music)

(uplifting music) Hi, I'm Peter Burris. Welcome to another CUBEConversation from our wonderful studios in beautiful Palo Alto, California. Once again, we got a great topic today and we're going to be talking a little bit about the role that security is playing in multicloud. Now to have that conversation we've got Hari Krishnan here with us. Hari is the Senior Director of Product Management for security at Nuage Networks which is a division of Nokia. Hari, welcome to theCUBE. >> Glad to be here, thank you. >> So here's why this is so important, Hari. A lot of people for years have been talking about how, data is going to move to the cloud. Well, there's certainly going to be some of that. Increasingly, people are recognizing it. The more important strategy or the better strategy, think about how we're moving the cloud services to the data. Which means we're going to have multicloud. And as we think about moving data around making data more of a primary citizen within the business, and certainly within the networking world. It means that we have to think differently about the role that networking plays in that multicloud, specifically around security. Talk to us a little bit about first Nuage Networks, who you are? And then let's get into this question of what does it mean for networking, security in this multicloud world? >> Absolutely. I know it's a great, great question, thanks, Peter. So first of all, Nuage Networks. We are a business unit within Nokia, and we are sort of the SDN arm, if you will. Software Defined Networking and security for both data center branch and goes without saying in the multicloud era, we provide solutions that are both secure, as well as connect these an end to end multiple environments across these spread networks, both from a branch perspective as well as from from a data center and cloud perspective. >> So these are all the locations where activity is going to happen, therefore data has to be there, but they still have to be in a connected way. So talk to us about this challenge of networking in a multicloud world. Because it's not all one way. It's going to be all ... It's going to be a very, very complex arrangements of resources that have to be brought together with performance, flexibility and security. What does that require? >> Yes,that's a great question. So we have a lot of customers. We talked about our enterprise customers who have gone down this multicloud plat because they have workloads, and as you said workloads and data, and based upon the application, they are making choices for a particular cloud. Some of them may be more analytics oriented, they chose a particular cloud environment for that workload. So they have workloads invariably across multiple clouds. In addition to that they have a large set of those assets and key assets and data that are residing in their private data center as well. And they are looking at how they can provide better connectivity to these cloud applications from their branch. So as you rightly put, the problem is how do you do that in this sort of heterogeneous environments? And today a lot of the solutions are siloed. What you find is you have multicloud networking and security solutions, but they don't really tackle the problem of connecting these branches or SD-WAN, that SD-WAN vendors focus on. But they really don't address these cloud challenges. So really there are these silos that we find in the enterprise. We also see vendors going in and offering solutions that are focused on particular environments, maybe containers, for example, or maybe specific types of virtual machines. But really from an enterprise perspective, their assets and data are everywhere, and they are in different forms. So what Nuage set out to do from the very beginning, was to provide a platform that really connects these regardless of where these workloads reside, and these workloads can be heterogeneous. Really whether it is containers, whether it is virtual machines, whether it is bare metal, whether it is on-prem or in the public cloud. And really that's really been our core focus, and we have had a lot of success working with service providers on the SD-WAN, and we just announced as SD-WAN 2.0 which is really about more than connectivity, providing IT services over these IP networks, whether it is about visibility, analytics, security. So again, our platform-based approach lends well with not only addressing the SD-WAN use cases, we also have a presence with large customers, large enterprises as well as with cloud service providers using our platform for private cloud offering as well as public cloud offering. >> So if we kind of think about the problem statement. We're talking about a world that is increasingly dependent, from a digital business standpoint on the role of data is going to play. Increasingly thinking about how that data interacts with each other and how we secure that data, because that's the basis for making it private. With a lot of new workloads on the horizon and a lot of new resources that could be running those workloads, whether it's virtual machines or containers or anything that might come along in the future. And the networking has to be flexible enough that it can handle those new classes of workloads, those new notions of data and data security and the new resources, many of them software that are coming on to create these applications. Have I got that right? >> Absolutely. So your networking has to be flexible enough and your security model has to be fundamentally different. And what I mean by that is you know we have a perimeter centric approach earlier which is sufficient if you have all the workloads in one location You know, the workloads in this. >> So perimeter centric is sufficient if the device is the first citizen of the network, right? >> Absolutely. >> So keep going, I'm sorry. >> Absolutely, so with workloads as they are moved around and especially you know in a cloud environment or in a very dynamic environment such as in a container environment, these are spun up and down. The architecture needs to be more tied to the workloads and data. Security needs to be tied to the workload, and we call that the workload centric security model. And again, fundamental to this is the notion of as Forrester talked about zero trust, which is again about you know not assuming any trust, just because your workload is in a particular location, and you cannot allow certain users to just, you know access that workload because by virtue of it being in a particular location as an example, right? So really it should be tied to the workloads, and if the workloads are moved around, the policy should move with the workload. And again fundamental to this is again a change in the architecture, where the policies are enforced closer to the workload, the policies independent of where the workload resides, and the policy should govern not only a particular environment or set of environment, such as multicloud, but access from anywhere to that workload. By that I mean a user can come in from a branch, and we want to make sure that that branch user is only able to access that workload, regardless of where workload resides, right? So today if you look at it, the solutions are very siloed in the sense that you have micro segmentation implementations in a particular environment, but they really don't tie in the policy end to end. They don't do end to end segmentation from the branch to the data center. And that's really where we focus on, is providing this end to end approach to securing workloads and data, regardless of where the workloads are coming. I would say for example, if your workloads and data are moved to Mars, your policy should be able to move with the workload and secure it, right? It's really location independent. >> But fundamentally it's that security capability has to move with the workload. >> Absolutely. >> That's really what the customer... That's really what the enterprise wants. They want the security capability where the policy and some of the other resources that you're talking about are what provide that capability. >> Absolutely. >> And John Kindervag is a very, very smart guy. Ex-Forrester guy who came up with this notion zero trust. Great ex-colleague. So if we think about it, we've got this problem statement that increasingly the world's becoming digital, and now we have to make the workload and the data the first citizen. That's going to require a new architectural approach, new types of technologies, Nuage is the vanguard of providing that approach. Let's get into some of the examples. How are customers using this today to improve their security and avoid problems of the past. >> Absolutely. So, we have, customers who are using this. And I'll give you some examples of it right. And a lot of the customers when they look at us, they really see the architecture as a key advantage, being able to provide end to end security across heterogeneous environments. And I'll give you some example. They typically have a starting point, right? I mean, that's, you know, I'll give you an example of one of the large financial customers we are working with. They are looking at securing workloads in public cloud. And this is a container environment running OpenShift and Kubernetes, and they want to be able to secure the workloads. One of the key requirements in the public cloud is that, and this goes hand in hand with zero trust notion, is that they don't want to actually trust the public cloud vendor and regardless of who their vendor is. So they want to encrypt all the traffic between workloads in the public cloud, not only segmentation and getting full visibility into it, but also providing encryption. And so for for them, you know, what Nuage offers is the ability to do exactly that. We can secure these container workloads in the public cloud. We can enter the communications between the workloads. We brought in the same encryption mechanism that we had, you know SD-WAN into this public cloud, to solve this use case. And not only that, we can also securely connect those public cloud workloads to their on-prem legacy data center. For certain applications they need to connect back into the data center. And so we have a consistent policy model, with security, segmentation, visibility and encryption. That's a great example of from a public cloud and the multicloud example. The other example is in a traditional data center. Often times and this is again a large enterprise, who is currently deploying this micro segmentation technology and for them they don't have sufficient East-West protection within the data center. And so where Nuage comes in is the ability to be able to provide security that is again tied to the workload, and their environment is very heterogeneous. They not only have ESXI, they have a lot of bare metal. They have some KVM deployments. So they are looking for a common way to provide security for the workloads, regardless of what virtual machine type it is or what form factor the workload is. >> And it doesn't diminish the characteristics of those resources that they use because they provide certain advantages to using those resources. >> Absolutely, absolutely. I mean a lot of the key workloads and data that they have, some of them are in, you know, bare metal. Running in bare metal, right? It's a lot important for them, to be able to secure those workloads and do that in a way consistently because you have containers that may be communicating with an infrastructure service which is running on bare metal, for example. So how do you do that in a unified way? And that's really where you know we come in as providing the single policy, unified policy and visibility, in this heterogeneous environment. So that's an example of micro segmentation, a traditional data center. Another great example, and we have lots of service providers who are offering this as our SD-WAN service, where we provide secure connectivity with more than connectivity, but also providing visibility and analytics. So they can look at all the communication from the branch, not only to other branch locations, but also to workloads in the cloud. SAS is a is a great use case, local internet breakout to these cloud applications. So we provide security there and again, we have service providers who are offering this as a service. I mean, we have now several of them. BT-tellers and several service providers, that are offering our SD-WAN service. And just I think a couple of days back we announced the SD-WAN 2.0, where we are providing security, providing visibility, enabling value added services beyond just connecting with the SD-WAN environment. So those are some of the use cases beyond, you know, a single siloed environment. We're encompassing public cloud on-prem data center, but also more importantly, connecting workloads from branch to data center as well. >> So the last thing I want to do, is I want to ask you one quick question about the relationship between, with the evolving relationship between security, models, architectures, SOCs, and networking architectures, models and NOCs, and many people saying that they should be separated. We tend to think that that's a bad idea. But talk to us a little bit about how the evolution of security and networking comes together, especially as we think about both of them, starting with analytics, understanding having a discovery and remediation palette, so that the networking telemetry is informing security, the security telemetry is informing networking and you get a reasonable high quality response, no matter where you are in the organization. >> Absolutely. And you're spot on. I mean essentially networking and security combined will give much better value in terms of use cases protection, but also detection and response. And Gartner has been preaching this in adaptive security architecture which is really around, you know using, having a prediction model which is base lining based upon telemetary, based upon other sources of intelligence that you get and using that to drive protection. And just because your workloads are protected or micro segmented, doesn't mean that attacks would not go through. It's not a matter of when you're.... whether an attack happens or not, it's really when you are attacked, right? >> Well we've discovered the bad guys are patient. >> Absolutely and they'll continue to to find new ways to attack it. And so it's not just about prevention, but also using the intelligence, sources of data in the network to be able to detect and then take an action. Really, this has been referred by Gartner and in the industry as a sort of adaptive security architecture, which really requires a mindset change from sort of this incident response to a continuous response model, right? And we think that software- >> Driven by analytics? >> Exactly. And analytics is really the core of this. Because Analytics helps drive policies, but also helps detect new types of attacks. So really network has a very key role to play here because network is the source of truth. You see a lot of these attacks that are manifested in the network, and we can use this data. We can mine this data to be able to better prevent but also detect and respond quickly to these attacks. And again the change in mindset from sort of an incident response mindset to a continuous response mindset, all built upon this rich analytics that your network provides. >> Hari Krishnan, Nuage Networks talking about the relationship between security, networking and multicloud. Thanks very much for being on theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> And once again this has been a CUBEConversation. I'm Peter Burris. Thank you very much for listening. Until next time. (uplifting music)

from New York it's the cube covering blockchain week now here's John furries hello and welcome back I'm John Fourier we're here on the ground actually on the water on the majesty bow to New York City as decentral has their big unveiling Anthony do you Arielle cube alumni a good friend of the cube is having a massive event here in New York City celebrating the new releases of their new platform their new hardware product actually called the cube to talk about that with Anthony but moreover it's part of a big holistic blockchain week in New York City exciting new projects from new financial products that Kryptos enabling technology innovation a lot of personal people going doing deals so what's going on with you you look great we are at the party looking good people are going crazy out out there we're in a boat I think this kind of environment is very friendly to the kind of community that is created by blockchain naturally so I really commend decentral and Anthony and all of their efforts around this in that they're now creating an environment where I can't walk five feet down the hallway without seeing somebody else that I know and the important thing about that is that now we're really creating this big digital conglomerate we're creating a network of people where I was just speaking to someone outside and he said that it's amazing to see people sharing all kinds of information about their new projects they're they're they're recognizing that there really is enough pie for everyone there's not it is a competition game but really that we should really compete on the application layer and that we should collaborate on the codebase we should collaborate on security and we should collaborate on these really big issues like regulation and privacy so it's amazing to see all these people and that's important that's the open source ethos right there really work together on a project not product because there's a difference between a project and a product and open source is that's languish it's important yeah that's the ethos I love that what's going on in the bug will share some anecdotes what's happening here people who didn't make it couldn't make the boat they you know ate some cars Aston Martin bracelet here what's some of the hallway conversations on the bow what are you hearing here during blockchain week well first of all blockchain week has been has been an amazing opportunity for the blockchain Research Institute to really showcase the work that we are doing to express our interest in enterprise blockchain but really also to support the growing community that is happening in the world and more so in Canada we believe that Canada has an amazing opportunity to to be a leader in blockchain and they are already really a significant amount of the people here our Canadian you know Anthony is a proud Canadian lots of different companies are and one of the major initiatives that we had at consensus was the Canadian Pavilion so we gathered together 23 Canadian blockchain companies and by the way you need a bigger room we did because so many there was a lot yeah open your own conference but the key part with that is that we really wanted to showcase the amazing Canadian innovations that are happening so that people recognize that you know Canada and the more specifically the Toronto Waterloo corridor is is the next Silicon Valley the next hub of blockchain and of quantum computing and of AI and so if you take those three together really those are done taps got an Allen snaps got our two co-founders they authored a report for the World Economic Forum and they argued that that blockchain really is the third leg of the stool that we need to provide an atmosphere for innovation and this was a really good way for us to do that and certainly it's got money tied to its the applications now have a financial component token economics a real key enabler in this to us certainly blockchain check great we love it everyone loves blockchain but it's the token economics that kick in that are starting to see money things applications tying into tokens and coins and yeah I think but that really creates a lot of it creates a lot of confusion it creates a lot of noise suddenly you know in that in the first generation of the internet we we said you know government hands off we want to you know we want to regulate this ourselves this is our thing it's the age of information like like that Tapscott said you know we're entering the internet of value but in entering the internet of value we're now we're now no longer dealing with just information we're dealing with things that matter to people we're dealing with identity and privacy and physical assets and you know real estate and all kinds of different things that are really foundations of the economy and in this case we really need the community to come together and support a regulatory environment because if we don't then the regulator's will and it won't work in the in our messengers it's got to be open open always be proprietary I'm so convinced that open source software which I have lived that generation when it was we were fighting for you know UNIX versus Xenu copyright with AT&T and then was a tea or two citizen now it runs the world's Tier one source one and the model is proven it's coming to crypto and yeah you see that do you see that coming clearly or did that I think as as platforms like you know obviously aetherium but as platforms like hyper ledger and r3s Corte and the forum platform from JPMorgan as these platforms grow in size and grow in membership and grow in in collaboration people will see that the the way to collaborate it's all about this I don't know if you've seen the graphs about fad protocols yes now we're in trusting our payments and our identities and our you know the things that really matter to us we're not giving them to the application layer anymore we're giving them to the protocol layer and if we're giving them to the protocol layer then we really need to collaborate to ensure that all that information is correct all the time and the only way we're going to be able to do that is to be able to create open source platforms and open source activities where everyone is able to participate that's the only way we can create something and if you want to take the code and do something downstream for that liberation please so we have lots of enterprise clients like Procter & Gamble and ExxonMobil and and PepsiCo and others where they're very interested in in enterprise blockchain but at the same time they want to be able to leverage the security of the public chain right it's um Matt spoke at a a Onix had a really really interesting comment about two weeks ago he said I think and he apologized in advance like this might be controversial but but I really think he's right in that he said you know five ten twenty years down the road we won't know the difference between an enterprise blockchain and a public chain right like we're gonna be up we will be a choice right I do you think we'll be able to have it we'll get to a point where it will be dumb not to use the public chain it will be dumb not to be able to leverage the security of it because if you and I enter into you know if we build our own blockchain together I mean that's great one of interesting things too you missed the panel because you might have seen Jimmy song's debate with I did yes that was very provocative so he's got a point on it's just two sides of the coin you know no pun intended right one is what you're saying that enterprises can come in Jimmy was saying is that it's a waste to use the public chain now because some inefficiencies he's technically accurate but that's gonna get better so I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater sometime no I agree but but I think there's a lot of solutions to come in the next year or two or three around interoperability and I think at the end of the day everyone should be able to use whatever blockchain that they think best fits their features but that they should integrate with it with a company like a on or icon or metronome or all these other interesting interoperability projects where you're able to to leverage the security of the public chain but also be able to continue to have your own ecosystem together yeah son of Don Tapscott about this one you interview them at an IBM event and and I'm old enough that I've seen a couple although some of these waves and I lived and I hear the same arguments all the time oh the performance is not there compared to this and easily but these are waves these are shifts right so PC oh no one's having anything with that you know Delta goes on on on web oh it's the so it's slow to dial-up and load a webpage but all of them who were shifts in growth growth was coming behind it yeah so that's the wrong conversations are happening the growth is coming so you guys really nail it with your analysis I think I had your team because it is the shift it is about not necessarily getting in the weeds over did this one thing is it good now yeah great work or well will something really move forward I think that so don actually said in 1992 i in paradigm shift he said that leaders of old paradigms often have trouble embracing the new and so for us at the blockchain research institute we really exist to bridge that knowledge gap between top-tier executives like fred smith and rob carter from FedEx like you know internally at PepsiCo we aim to bridge that knowledge gap so that they just better know how to flow funds within their own company just doing great one is doing great work well to get me to give a plug real quick love your work explaining some of the things you guys are doing you're on the right track I can say I love what you're doing I looked at it it's right on but you're open you're not like you know down on your fist on the table yeah you guys are cool with the work you guys are doing so we're doing 80 projects on the strategic applications of blockchain technology in a variety of industries so our research fits in three categories we have verticals where financial services is obviously our largest vertical but we're also looking into projects in in retail and manufacturing in supply chain in healthcare in government in media and telecommunications in resources and mining and you know you know pickaxe mining not real mining mining old-school mining yeah and then we're also looking at a lot of the management applications of blockchain so you know the first generation of the internet didn't really do a lot to change the structure of the corporation it allows that it allowed us to find people all over the world I can find people to do anything but I still have to negotiate a contract with them myself to enter into an agreement I sell to establish trust but if we now have this amazingly fluid technology that allows us to lower the cost of search the cost of negotiating contracts the cost of contracting and the cost of establishing trust then that blows the windows and the walls of the corporation wide open and in that we are really driving to help our member organizations understand the nature of the firm is changing economic theory of yesteryear being disrupted really fast way yeah vodka Jane thanks for coming up here one more question yes this week what did you hear in the out there in the city what's your observation for the people didn't make it to New York a lot of great face to face a lot of great engagement good networking good contacts growing ecosystem but still a tight-knit community people know each other they're sharing information what did you hear share some data some insights that that folks couldn't get if they didn't come I think for us a lot of the reason that we are here is that it's a you know peril if you don't show up it's being part of a community if if we are going to show a leadership role in this community then we need to show up for our colors we need to show up for companies that that you know may not be able to advocate for themselves I've met so many interesting companies this week that either do not have the resources or they're trying to raise money or they're trying to be investors and and the life of an entrepreneur obviously is is a tough one and for us we we have a growing pioneer membership at the blockchain Research Institute where we aim to connect large corporations who are looking for or looking to invest in different in different watching platforms but don't know where to start and so we run essentially a white listing service where we are partnered with lots of amazing companies like pay case and shift and Collider X and a on and all these different companies where they're they're really working to move the ball forward as well as make an impact so yeah it was for us it was it was looking for more innovative companies but also you know doing our part showing our role this was a one of the first times that I actually saw Don Tapscott a now except thought actively you know taking meanings and participating in the conversation and and being present and being there so so for us it was a lot of it was presence he was a lot of presidents we're some fun you having fun I am yes yes behind us is a boat we're on it we're in the front part we're in the anthony o diario private suite lounge here's where he can relax it gets kind of a green room behind us awesome DJ four stories of boat going down to your just past the Statue of Liberty a lot of action let's get back to the partying what are you saying alright I'm jump for it thanks for watching we're on the boat New York City thank you for watching

>> Announcer: Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering ServiceNow Knowledge 2018. Brought to you by ServiceNow. >> Welcome back, everyone, to theCUBE's live coverage of ServiceNow Knowledge18. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We are theCUBE. We are the leader in live tech coverage. I'm joined by Landon Cook. He is a director of Customer Service for the State of Tennessee. It's your first time on theCUBE. You're going to live it. >> Okay, great, I hope so. Brand new. >> So, you're a director of Customer Service, before the cameras were rolling, we were talking. Does every state have such a department? >> Not exactly, and even in our department, the idea of customer service being a focal point and the creation of an office for us, it's all brand new. So, my office of customer service didn't even exist until five years ago, and I've had one predecessor in that time. And this all came from a new focus and state government on the Customer Service Delivery Model. And usually we had been focused on federal rules and regulations, audit findings, always being good stewards of taxpayers dollars, but service delivery hadn't come from the mouth of the governor, usually itself. So, this is all pretty new for us, and from peers I talk with in other areas, I may have a contact who is maybe the lead of customer service in their area, but the idea of an office that exclusively exists to improve customer service throughout our department, and eventually throughout the state, I believe we're in new territory here. >> So this is really the baby of your governor, Bill Haslam, who has really said he wanted, what was it, Customer Focus Government. So what does that mean? >> So, Customer Focus Government started right after Governor Haslam came to office, in 2011. The idea behind it, he created an initiative, and he stated that our goal was to provide the best possible customer service, at the lowest possible cost. And again, that may not seem that new in many industries, but in state government, state operations, that was kind of ground breaking. And that's what's led to us talking, actually, about the customer experience, the agent experience, and how can we actually redefine customer service in government? And my department, we are one of 47 state agencies. In my department, I talked just briefly about the history, going back there five years, and you see this slowly popping up in all these different departments, and the idea is that we're all going to, at some point, be able to come together and deliver customer service as a state, instead of as each individual department. We're actually going to be able to share the scope of services, and really tailor service delivery to each citizen's need through a log in portal, there's all sorts of stuff we talk about now that's brand new, I'm sorry. >> So it's helping citizens do their citizenship duties. So this is helping them register to vote, registering at the DMV, getting fishing licenses, building permits, that kinds of thing. So, how do you do it? How do you service now? >> So, we're babies, here. So ServiceNow is, the new CSM solution, for the entire enterprise, for the state of Tennessee. My department, the Department of Human Services, we are the pilot agency for all those 47 I described. And we're about seven months in, so it's all been pretty fresh for us. But how this works right now, is we're using it primarily for inquiry management, phone calls, emails, web forms and chat, things people typically think of as customer service. And so, what we're doing with service now, and we started very carefully, very small, we had a very tiny pilot to start with, but once we launched, after October, we very quickly realized that ServiceNow was so collaborative and cooperative with us, and they were just as engaged in our success as we were, that we were building a partnership with CSM. It's kind of new to ServiceNow, too, right? So, it was new to us, new to them, and we're really kind of intertwining and growing together here. Even though we're using it, just now, for inquiry management and typical customer service delivery, once our department has it fully integrated through all of our various, we have 12 divisions just within our department, once we have it integrated there, we're going to take that model, and we're going to go to other state agencies. We've actually already had, there are three other state agencies that are probably going to be joining on board, if they haven't already. This has been a very fast standup for us. And we're going to, eventually it's going to go from, "Well, wow, DHS delivers great customer service," and then instead, DHS is partnering with the Department of Health to deliver customer service to people who need it. And we'll start, slowly, just putting everyone together so in the future citizens of Tennessee can just ask for assistance with something, and the state knows what they need, and the state knows how to deliver it, and can do all that assignment and sharing in the responsibilities behind the scenes, through ServiceNow. >> Anything you can do to improve the DMV experience. So, I mean, that is the thing. You're trying to make people's lives easier, better, simpler, more streamlined, but what was Haslam's goal? What was his impetus for starting this? >> You know, that's actually a hard one for me to say. I've gathered that, you know, he came from a corporate background. I think he had a different perspective on customer service than what is typical of state government. So he brought something new along with all of his prior experience. And I think he was the first who really made it a priority, because I think he understood that the expectation of the customer is different nowadays, and it's different today than it was yesterday and last year, and it's always growing and changing. And people of my generation, and the generation following me, they're always expecting something to be simpler, faster, and more based on their needs, right? And we, state agencies, have been so slow to react, we still use a log of legacy systems, before we launched with ServiceNow, all of our inquiry management was through Excel spreadsheets and Outlook emails. Those are great tools, but their not designed for CSM. And so, we had done a really deep dive within DHS and within state government, to look at okay, where does customer service need to be focused on? Is it the people? It's not the people, we found out very quickly we have passionate people in the state of Tennessee. It's not the processes, because people are doing what they can, but we needed a tool. So, with Governor Haslam's initiative, and our understanding that we had to find a tool to better deliver service, we came on to ServiceNow, just a year ago. So, I've been smiling ever since. I feel it in my face. >> You're a good advertisement. So, what are some of the improvements that you have seen? >> Even when we were doing just our pilot phase, we launched on October 2nd, and I was talking with a lot of people from ServiceNow then, and from the governor's office, and they said, "Try "to get a snapshot of the before, "and be sure to compare it with the snapshot of afterwards." So I figured two months would be actually sufficient, and we were still in our kind of test and pilot stages, but we knew pretty quickly we wanted to continue on with ServiceNow. So, the two months prior, we were averaging inquiry assignment time, so if you filled out an application or you submitted an inquiry to my unit, the Office of Customer Service, the amount of time it would take to get from the time you submitted it, to a person in the field, or in program, who could actually help with it, that was taking about 36 hours average. Some were faster, some were slower, some reached up to three days, and that's not even a resolution. Sometimes that's just for us to even acknowledge that we got it, that someone's working on it. Afterwards, I looked at those two months following, so October and November, and we were at like eight or nine minute average. And it's because, we knew we wanted something enterprise wide, but we didn't quite anticipate the difference that workflow management would provide us. So all the parts that normally were all these handoffs, and I looked at it last Friday, it was 100 seconds. You know, we've entered new measurement criteria, every time I go back and look at it. >> So it's lightening speed, lightening fast changes. >> Yes, and our resolution time on this has come right on board along side that. We've cut it down to about 30% of what it used to be. We're able to just do our jobs faster, so we can get back to what people coming to DHS to do is, they come here to serve, they come here to try to help people, and this has taken away all that administrative responsibility, so we can do what we're actually good at. >> Well, we're going to look forward to hearing what it is, next year at Knowledge19. Thanks so much for joining us, Landon it was great having you on theCUBE >> I appreciate it >> I'm Rebecca Knight. We'll have more from ServiceNow Knowledge18, and theCUBE's live coverage just after this. (electronic music)

>> Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE! Covering, Red Hat Summit 2018. Brought to you by Red Hat. >> Hey, welcome back everyone. We're here live in San Francisco for Red Hat Summit 2018, I'm John Furrier, my co-host John Troyer. Next guest is CUBE alumni, been on so many times. I can't remember. I think you're a VIP CUBE alumni, Doug Balog, general manager, IBM Storage Client Success and IBM's partners executive leading the Red Hat relationship. Welcome back to theCUBE, great to see you. >> It's always great to be on it again. I think that's a new category you just invented, a VIP alumni, as to something. >> On theCUBE.net site we actually have badges for CUBE VIPs that says VIP. Great to see you. Again, we have a little history. Your role at IBM, you've been there for a lot of time. You've seen their history. Power's been your wheelhouse, you built that from scratch. An open community with the Power Systems at IBM, but you launched OpenPOWER, an open consortium, very much open source model. And you know that's very successful, congratulations on that. >> Thank you. >> Now your role with Red Hat, you're the lead executive. You're the guy to call with any problems, or anything, opportunities. What's going on? Give us the update. >> Yeah, so I think it was mentioned by Matt on stage today where we're actually celebrating 20 years of partnering together with Red Hat. I think a lot of folks take pause at that not realizing how far back this relationship goes. Hate to say I was there in 1998 when we struck this agreement. I think at that time a lot of folks inside IBM were scratching their heads saying, who's Red Hat, and what is Linux, and why are we doing this? At the end of the day, we have had a longstanding belief in open collaboration, drives innovation, drives value to clients. That was the fundamental reason we jumped in when it was just an operating system discussion back in the early 2000s. We brought that across at that time. Our Intel server base, then our mainframe, and then in 2013 our Power platform. We brought our software along as well back then too. Running on that operating system. Then it became a virtualization discussion and brought Rev onto the platforms, our software supported that. Now here with some exciting announcements today around the partnership around cloud with a common container strategy. Which I think for enterprise clients will help build a larger ecosystem, give clients choice of how they want to bring that value to clients. So it's been a long, deep relationship and one that I think the two companies are more aligned than not in many ways. >> And you guys are humble, I'll say. And you guys were a catalyst moment. Linux, the Linux coming together at that time became an industry standard literally overnight, because the industry rallied around it. You guys supported it with a big contribution and since then. But that was back in the day, that was when it was tier two citizen in the world. Now open source is tier one, it's powering everything you see and open source software and storage and networking, software-defined data center, now CloudScale, this is a big deal. >> It's a big deal. >> For the world. Now, the cloud story's interesting to me. So you got the Red Hat powering a lot of the enterprise. Hybrid cloud's number one thing on the agenda, multi-cloud's kind of being discussed, but that's with the end in mind. Hybrid cloud is a number one work area, which essentially cloudifying, creating cloud operations for the enterprise. How is this partnership with Red Hat impact IBM's customers and what's in it for the Red Hat customers? >> I think as, and I know you just had Arvin on here a moment ago. It was literally just about six months ago, that Arvin and I and Paul Cormier and Jim Whitehurst sat down and said, you know what, I think the next big thing for us to partner around is containers. There is so much advantage for speed of software deployment, this hybrid cloud structure you talked about and the fact that, listen, I think we're much more mature in the industry talking about cloud. There were moments a year or two ago where the answer was everything's going to the public cloud, on-prem's dead. I think it's a much more mature conversation now in terms of the role of hybrid. Which means clients are still going to have plenty of their data. Especially if they're a regulated industry. That data's going to stay on-prem, but that still doesn't mean there are parts of their infrastructure, parts of their applications that they're going to want to run on a public cloud, like the IBM cloud. So that ability to have a common container approach, a common container management structure, like IBM cloud private, with OpenShift as the partner, I think it brings tremendous freedom of choice to clients, so where they run what with a common development platform. >> It's interesting, the definition's changed, and we're always squinting through the noise, but the bottom line is if everything's cloudified if you will, using that word, on-prem and public cloud doesn't really make a difference where you locate it because it's cloud operations and Wikibon had the True Private Cloud rapport which basically stated that True Private Cloud is essentially on-premise activity, just operating in a cloud framework meaning same code bases, more operational dashboard. Especially cloud operations not traditional IT. So I think there is the distinction, so it's still on-prem. >> Still on-prem. >> But now you've got the edge of the network as well. Software Base2, so you've got IoT Edge, public cloud, hybrid, all coming together. >> You know we used to, when the world was just on-prem for the most part, we used to talk about different architectures being fit for purpose. What's the right workload to run what kind of applications. I was just up with a large financial institution in your neck of the woods on Friday and we were having this fit for purpose conversation around the cloud based on what kind of workload it is, how sensitive is the data, is it redacted of your and my names and social security numbers, right? All that stuff that's important. Where should that cloud workload run? What cloud should it run in? Or should it run on-prem or across both? So listen, a lot of what's old is always new, but of course it keeps evolving here now to this world of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud as you said. >> What's going on with customers at IBM? Tell us what's happening in your world. Obviously the industry's replatforming as the entire business. It's not just companies. It's an entire infrastructure's changing. You call it cloud infrastructure, data insfrastructure, AI, you're doing the Power stuff being successful. It's a global rearchitecture. >> That's right. >> This is not a one company. >> No. >> This is a complete standard. >> Everybody's transforming and I don't think there's ever an end to transformation. I think transformation is a train ride you decide to get on and you better get on, and you're going to stay on it once you get on. There's milestones along the way that demonstrate progress. But there's no resting anymore in terms of being comfortable in today's world. So transformation is going on forever. In the systems business we're constantly transforming. We brought out a new mainframe last year, we call it the z14. And now recently kind of a sum of our little skinny Zs, the ZR1s. Which are really designed for the modern data center because they fit in a standard, an industry standard rack. So we're bringing that robust security to not only our traditional Z clients, but to brand new Z clients, running Linux by the way. >> Arvin nailed it in his description and then I think this is true. You've got TCP/IP, HTTP, these are seminal moments and now you've got this glue layer with containers and say Kubernetes. This is going to change how software's being built and software being run, and how businesses will be running. So that's an industry wide dynamic shift over. At the infrastructure level. Instrumentation, and all the software behind it. Okay, that's happening. We're agreeing with that and totally agree with that. Now the impact to the customer. What do they have to do? Because they have to now adapt to this new world. Which means they got to put the legacy in. Plugging into the legacy they have to have microservices. So what does that software-defined infrastructure look like for the customer? You've seen the systems side through storage. What does software-defined mean in this new architecture? >> It certainly, part of the objective of ICP, IBM Cloud Private, was to create that on-prem cloud experience. Because again, so many clients were looking for not just having their traditional IT, which they're going to continue to have, but continue to modernize. But also move to a new environment that was much more self-service, all the things and the benefits of the public cloud, but still being careful around their data in many ways, and their core applications. So they're transforming and modernizing from legacy IT to on-prem IT, and then branching out with the fit for purpose discussion to the multi-cloud, to the hybrid cloud world. >> I love that that in the fit for purpose you can it that in so many parts of the stack. We, I think open source, one of its characteristics is it develops in public. And 20 years ago the question was, not is it fit for purpose, but when is Linux going to be ready? When's it going to be ready? Is it going to be ready? I think that answer is pretty clear now, and I think the same thing has been going through with containers and with Kubernetes. On theCUBE you're tracking Kubernetes, the growth of Kubernetes. Is this a real moment where IBM says, okay now, Kubernetes and OpenShift is now ready for the enterprise? >> Absolutely. Absolutely. If I think about kind of big moments in IT that provide a ubiquitous access to developers, you had, we talked about Linux as an operating environment, once all the platforms, the different architectures ran Linux, the ability for application portability while still bringing out the value of the platform, became very much true. Java, from an application programming model was another one. If you wrote in Java, you had the ability then to move that Java workload around without recompilation in many cases, to different architectures getting the value out of where you chose. Containers are the next one. So now we're containerizing workload. And again you have sort of freedom of choice of where you run it. And if you run it in this cloud or that cloud. Or this system or that system. You get different values out of it. >> And we're not just containerizing microservices. Now we're talking about containerizing WebSphere. >> WebSphere and databases and message queuing, and kind of that robust runtime that somebody in the audience joked, gosh I haven't seen those queues in a long time. Not that they haven't been there, they've always been there. But again, this is back to how do you take what you have from a legacy IT and modernize it for this cloud era? Much more than cloud washing. This is really transforming the IT. >> It preserves the adjustment. The bottom line, if I'm a CIO or I'm an executive looking at this market, I say okay, I've got a purchase decision I've made in the past, and I have a stall base of stuff and my choice used to be I've got to replace that, hire new people, move everything over, to now your approach is a little bit different. Great, just containerize it. And then when you're ready, you deal with it on its lifecycle. So you don't really have, so it's an ROI thing and it's also preservation of preexisting conditions. >> Now the other big, of course, client transformation going on is there's not a single client on the planet who's not trying to figure out artificial intelligence and what it means to their business to bring more insights around their clients into their workflows. So that's why in addition to Watson and all the work we do around Watson, of course in our cloud, we've gone down to the system level with our Power platform and really optimized Power9 with flash storage attached to it as the best combination of a platform for this AI era. In fact, I was sharing just before we went live here, is actually a big announce day for our systems business too. We're announcing new models of our AI platform, what we call the AC922 now with six GPUs with our partnership with NVIDIA. We've got new Linux systems, kind of the fall on with Power9, that I started back, they're much better by the way, that I started back in 2013. So here we are at the Linux Summit, we've got a common cloud partnership being announced at the same time we're announcing all the way down to the metal, systems and chips that are optimized to run the Linux and open source platforms. >> The thing that I like about those environments, the level of granularity is getting down to the point where you can have your applications or down to the level, to a service level, and manage it on that based on PowerAI would be a great example of what people can tap into. >> It actually it connects it all together, right? I mean PowerAI, which again, new content there. We've just announced PowerAI on Power9 and on Red Hat for the first time. Back to new news here at the Summit. It'll be containerized later this year. So now you've got PowerAI in a container on IBM Cloud Private, running on OpenShift optimized for Power9. Starts to make your brain hurt a little bit. But that's closer to the level of the thoughtfulness of our strategy and how all the pieces work together from the software and the applications down to the systems and the chip. >> You guys do a good job keeping in the open, too. I really like how that went with Power, certainly great stuff. PowerAI for the folks watching, check it out it's from IBM. Interesting product. I think it's got a lot of capability. Your perspective as an industry participant. You've seen many waves. What's this wave like in your opinion? There's so much going on with this new infrastructure. How do you talk about it when someone says hey Doug, what's going on? All this stuff. You've got blockchain over here. You've got this going on over there. >> I think that, at least from a systems perspective, the way think about it, myself and my peers think about it is, we've gone through so many generations where it was more manufacturing process driven innovation. How do you pack more on a chip? How do you pack more on a chip? How do you pack more on a chip? And it was kind of all about that. We're now in an era where homogeneity is no longer going to cut it. You're going to really need a number of GPUs, a number of processors, different kind of architectures, to fit the kind of workload that's coming so fast at us these days. You really don't have time to step back and say, let me replumb my old data center with that next one chip. It's going to be a diversity of infrastructure. >> Its hard to provision. You need it available immediately. >> So this wave we're in really is about bringing that diversity, that heterogeneity back into the data center, and bringing that value though, back in a simplified deployment way, 'cause heterogeneity means complexity in some ways. And that's where the layering of software packages like PowerAI, like software-defined storage, like ICP and OpenShift with our partnership with Red Hat kind of help bring that diversity and bring it back to a common level of application development. That's kind of the end goal. Common application development, the platform brings out the value. The app doesn't have to worry about it, but you've got that diversity of choice underneath. >> Great, Doug, great stuff. Great to have you on theCUBE. Just to end the segment, briefly summarize for people watching, what's this relationship with Red Hat all about? Obviously you have history, but what's the value? Talk about it right now. What's the impact to the customer watching? The relationship that's announced today with the private cloud initiative with Red Hat. >> I think if we summarize the relationship without getting into the technology, it really is about bringing innovation to enterprise clients. At the end of the day that's what Red Hat's focused on, that's what we're focused on, and that's what we're focused on together. They have great minds in the industry, we have great minds in the industry. The power of those minds coming together to create some of the innovation that we just talked about here in this segment, I mean it's mind blowing for what it means to enterprise clients to help them propel themselves forward and transform. That's what it means. >> These are the kind of partnerships we're going to see now that people are rallying behind Kubernetes and containers and this new software-defined infrastructure that's going on. We expect more of it. Right? We'll see more? >> Absolutely, software-defined is the name of the game these days. Not that there isn't value in the systems by the way. It's got to run someplace. >> They're under the hood. >> They're under the hood. >> Programmable. >> And they're differentiated for sure. >> Yeah infrastructure as code, you still need servers to run this stuff on. >> It does matter. It does matter a lot. >> Doug, great to see you. >> Good to see you as always, John. John, good to see you. >> Absolutely. >> theCUBE bringing all the action here, here in San Francisco. Live coverage, I'm John Furrier, John Troyer, day one, we'll be right back with more after this short break. (electronic music)

(orchestral music) >> Hello there and welcome to this special CUBEConversation. I'm John Furrier, here in theCUBE Studios, in Palo Alto, California. I'm here with special guest, Shawn Douglass, who's the Founder and CEO of Amberdata, Amberdata.io. It's a hot blockchain-based analytics startup kind of taking a different approach. I obviously would like to highlight some of the startups that are doing pretty amazing things. Shawn welcome to this CUBEConversation >> Great, thank you very much for having me here. >> So you have an enterprise background. You're entrepreneur, technical, been a CTO at EMC. You've helped EMC run their venture capital firms over the years. Helped them build it up from scratch. Done a variety of startups. Kind of cloud, kind of like large-scale. Now doing the blockchain startup. That's, I find super interesting. I think you might have more there than you think, but that's my opinion seeing the demo. Folks watching Amberdata.io is the site. Let's talk about that, I mean obviously blockchain, we've been covering pretty heavily recently with theCUBE. We've been covering Bitcoin since 2010 on our blog SiliconANGLE.com But you're seeing a renaissance in software development, with cloud computing, but now you start to see a new wave coming. We've been documenting. We've been calling it, you know, the future of money, the future of work, the future of infrastructure, because what blockchain and decentralized applications are doing is changing the stack a bit. And you've been in, in many, involved in those waves, so you're at the heart of it. So I got to ask you, you know, as an entrepreneur, before we get into what your company does, I want to just get your take on, you know, I mean, you kind of look at this market and say, it's a wide-open space. >> Right. >> As an entrepreneur who's doing a start-up, what's it like? What's your view? And how do you see the marketplace evolving? >> Yeah, that's a great question, there's a lot there. Let me try to unpack that the best that I can. So having gone between startup to big company to investor, helped buy, build, sell, in companies and operating for as long as I have in Silicon Valley. I think, as you said, technology and innovation happen in waves. And I think that waves are mini-revolutions, if you will. And I think that revolutions are about addressing a fundamental human need. If we look at, look to history, to see where the future is going. If you look at the Industrial Revolution, it was about automation and supply, I mean, uh production chains, and to be able to produce things at scale. If you look at the Information Age it was about the ability to communicate, and the servers and the networks and the web 2.0 companies that arose out of that, was around communication. That was another major wave. If you look at what's happening with AI right now, and self-driving cars, that's about the ability, for the need to think, right? And you're starting to see algorithms and machine learning applied to Google self-driving cars, and you know, just about every facet of our life AI is touching, you're using Siri at home, whatever you're using. I think what we're seeing with blockchain is that next wave. It's that next revolution, and that revolution I believe is about trust, and about decentralization. So, coming out of web 2.0 we saw participatory and non-participatory consolidations, in creation of juggernauts of technology. The Facebooks of the world, the Amazons of the world. On the other side, the Equifaxes of the world, where you didn't opt-in, in exchange for being the product, to use their platform, they just got your data. We've seen violation of that trust in data breaches, you know, at every major player, you know. Equifax being the bad guy in this case, where they've lost every single citizen in the United States data, and we never benefited from that, but we carry the liability forward. And what we're seeing with blockchain is the ability for people to leverage decentralized platforms and smart contract platforms, specifically, as mechanisms to easily deploy with zero barrier to entry. These, you know, these smart contract vending machines, if you will, into a world where people are taking back trust. So I, that's what we see, and we see that opportunity across both the enterprise space, 'cause we're hard core enterprise people, that we're building member data, but we're also seeing new enterprises being created on chain and that list is really long. So it's pretty, it's definitely a big wave. >> Well, the one, blockchain's an infrastructure, I think people getting all crazy over that, which I think it's legit. And there's some people out there saying, "Oh, blockchain's not legit." They don't really know what they're talking about in my opinion, and that's just, and a lot of people are confused. So there's a lot of people who are, you know, obviously don't see it, some people do. But I think the phenomenon that's interesting is, you know, taking a tech stack approach is, if you look at the decentralized application market, >> Shawn: Right. >> Where Ethereum for instance has got a lot of, the most developers. And they're working fast on some technical challenges they had but they're making progress. The D applications, the distributed, I mean the decentralized applications, that's like an application server on the blockchain. >> Yeah, exactly. >> So what that happens, is the things are happening, so you almost think of it, and you and I were talking about this, is that, you know, the vending machine of the future or the transaction service layer is that decentralized smart contract. >> Absolutely. >> 'Cause that's where the value is going to be captured. >> Shawn: Absolutely. >> And created and captured. >> Let me unpack that, because that's spot-on, I 100% agree with what you're saying there. Is that, what is a blockchain? A blockchain is effectively a decentralized database and network put together. What I think is interesting, is smart contract platforms that put a virtual machine on top of that. Like Ethereum has the EVM. Where it's your application server. And what are smart contracts? Smart contracts, like you said, are vending machines. They're a vending machine that has the appropriate level of security, the appropriate level of service, and allows you to have an autonomous transaction with that. When you walk up to a Pepsi machine, you put in a dollar, you expect to get back a Pepsi, it works, you go away, you don't think anything about it. What blockchain is allowing anybody to do, is to publish a smart contract on chain and monetize that at the most elemental level. It's analogous to, if Amazon allowed you to deploy a lambda function and monetize that. It's analogous to, if E-Business Suite allowed you to monetize your plugins from an Oracle world. It's analogous to if SAP with, when Shai Agassi was still there doing composable applications, allowed you to, as a vendor, anybody publish into that SAP ecosystem and monetize that. This is a massive, massive transformation and it reduces barriers to entries for people to come in and compete with juggernauts like an Amazon or an Oracle because at the barrier to entry is, they're publishing into a globally available, decentralized, platform, right. >> And the thing too that's interesting, and just to tie that together with what's happening in the cloud world, is if you look at like Kubernetes containers, and micro-services, the ability to be efficient with micro-services, allows for that IT infrastructure to completely be re-platformized. >> Exactly. >> So what you're getting at, is with the smart contracts and the atomic nature of the transaction, you can be laser-focused and scale transactions, >> Right. >> and be efficient, so the efficiency is a big part of this. >> It is, there's efficiency, and there is the ability to decompose things, and that's been a trend, for as long as I've been in technology right. It's, first it was, you know, cloud services, then it was SOA, then it was cloud, and now it's serverless, it's blockchain, it's just on that spectrum. There's not a lot new here actually, right. It's a continuum of technology, and I think all of these waves are enabled by different revolutionary forces. >> Operational change and software drives it obviously And you got the characteristics of blockchain, immutability et cetera, et cetera and DApps is just a new way to kind of write the software for that. They create those vending machines or transactional services So I got to ask you, so with what you guys are doing, I want to tie that together, because one of the things we've been reporting on theCUBE is, the piece of action that's most hyped up is, ICOs. These blockchain apps that are changing, and the old guard and disrupting incumbents. But there's not a lot of tooling around it, so, you know, if you think about like trading platforms, >> Right. 24/7 traders have access to stuff. Now the world's a 24/7, 365 global. There's not a lot of tooling, not a lot stuff. So this instant industry's created. This new wave is coming. You're building some tooling, so I want to get your thoughts on the support needed to do this. >> Shawn: Right. >> Say I put my business on the blockchain >> Shawn: Right. >> And with, use developers to do decentralized applications. >> Yeah, so, >> I need tools. >> Aboslutely, that's exactly, so, you know, got a little gray hair here, and I grew up building internet software at scale, right. Whenever you run anything in production, you always have your network operations center. You have your AppD, you have your Splunks, you have your New Relics, you have all of this. You've instrumented your infrastructure. You've instrumented your application transactions. You've instrumented search for operational log data. You need to be able to triage a security instance. You need to be able to respond to performance or production issues. You need to be able to communicate with your customers. None of this existed when I looked at the blockchain space, and I'm like I don't get it. This is a massive opportunity, because if you look at the enterprise space, 'cause public right now, sure, it's very interesting. ICOs are the killer use case. There's 300 million dollars per hour traversing in the public at their IMNetwork, 50% of those are going to smart contracts. A lot of that is actual transactional trading volume. But step back from the hype for a second, and you look at IBM, you look at VMware, you look at Cisco, you look at Microsoft, you look at, you know, all these guys. JP Morgan with Quorum. You look at, they all have major bets that are starting to evolve around taking things and removing intermediaries, just like public chain, but they're doing it with things like swaps, credit default swaps, interest swaps, currency swaps. They're talking about removing escrow services, they're talking about, >> So pre-existing companies are going to take the efficiency side of this and drive it. >> It's going to, it is a massive transformation right, and especially when they're working with their trading partners, there's almost a, what, a 2006 VMware data center consolidation play. Remember when the data centers were full of servers, and then all of a sudden, you know, they started pulling back the number of servers and turning off the A/C because they were able to take entire data center floors and consolidate them inside of VMs where they had three and four virtual machines in a server. And I think that you're going to get those same types of efficiencies over time once they get to pass some scaling issues around blockchain where you don't have to have seven copies of your data across your front office, your back office, across your trading partner. You can have one single source of truth and operate in an open transparent world where you can reduce some of those inefficiencies. And then there's a whole business transformation play that, you know, there's there's just, I think it's a, >> It's a perfect storm. You have a consolidation piece, which is more efficient operationally, and then you got the top-line revenue opportunity with disrupting kind of industries with new transactional models, business models and token economics. So we've talked a lot about it in theCUBE. I want to talk to you about your company, Amberdata. So you guys are trying to make sense of what's happening because if you're going to put a business on the blockchain, >> You need this. >> and use decentralized applications as a transactional application server if you will, for lack of a better description. You got to know what's going on, and there's gas involved, you got to pay the mining fees, so where there's costs, you need visibility. >> Right. So the old school, the old model was, you'd have KPIs, set some alerts, dashboarding, you're doing that right? >> That's what we've done. >> So take a minute to explain what Amberdata's doing. Did you do a round of funding? What's going on with the company? You got the product up there Amberdata.io >> Right, yeah, so let me unpack, there's a lot there. So uh, we started the company end of August. We raised a round of funding with traditional enterprise venture capital firm Hummer Winblad. Lars Leckie, amazing investor, really understands enterprise software and how to enable companies to grow. Amazing partner to work with. We've been heads down building a product. About 45 days ago we launched our platform live, and what we have today, is we have instrumentation for blockchain infrastructure, decentralized applications, transactions, and an ontology-based search, that gives a clean user experience where you can be search-driven to drill into a smart contract, a transaction, into a block, and you know, if you're building on top of chain, I mean, we're a classic picks and shovels play, It's pure, it's enterprise software, we built this for enterprises. Today our platform supports public Ethereum, but it was really to demonstrate, if we can do this for the entire Ethereum network and we can do this for its scale, of course we can do this for any enterprise. And today we support public Ethereum and Quorum, which is private Ethereum, it's a JPMorgan project, that I think is the one of the leaders in private blockchain, and that's a project that's being supported by the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. We will also in our working with IBM, I was just on the Hyperledger technical steering committee this morning, I participate in that. So, we will support Hyperledger in the future, we will support multiple other public and private chains so the private ecosystem today is, you know, Enterprise Ethereum à la Quorum. It is Hyperledger. It is Corda. On the public side, it is Ethereum, it is Stellar, it is, you know, things like Quantum that are emerging, Neo, or emerging. >> So is your business model SaaS? Yes, it's a SaaS model and today we support public chain as a demonstration of it, but we're also working on allowing people to, just like a data dog, or what have you, where we have a connector, we can pull your data in, and it's private, it's only visible for you, for your private blockchain. Or we could deploy into their private cloud or into (talking over each other) >> John: So is Amberdata.io like a demo site, or is that more of, >> It's a demonstration of the ability to instrument blockchain infrastructure, applications, transactions, with search, the ability to set alerts on every single panel, which are your KPIs. If you're going to run a business, you either have explicit or implicit service level agreements, and you need to be able to instrument those service level agreements with KPIs, and those KPIs you need to be able to set alerts and events, receive emails, you know, all of those. >> I love the demo, the demo, I think the demo will be a great freemium model, because it showed, just my notes here, smart contracts on the decentralized application, top 50 sorted transaction volume, token velocity change in price, because you know gas you're still paying the gas to get the transaction written. I mean this is kind of like spot pricing for Amazon almost. You need to understand what am I paying for, if there's an SLA involved in a smart contract? >> Absolutely. >> You got to know the policy involved right? So, again, this is like old-school, like enterprise thinking, >> Shawn: Right. >> The world is now a global enterprise if you think about it. >> Shawn: Yeah, you absolutely need transparency into your operating costs. Those are your transactions costs of either, for your customers to consume your service or for you to provide your service. And, prior to this, there was very little transparency. It's ironic, is that, the most trustless, transparent platform, had no real view into it. And that's what we've built. We've built transparency and are enabling you to trust the trustless platform, to get transparency into your DApp KPIs, and so for example, if you're building, like you look at like EtherDelta's, EtherDelta's is one of the non-custodial smart contract based exchanges. They're doing 70 million dollars a month in transaction value. I don't know what they did before. We've talked with people that are consumers of that. We've talked to people on pretty much all of the decentralized exchange platforms. But the ability to understand, what are the number of transactions per hour, per second, per minute, that are hitting my smart contracts? What are the token transfers, if I've tokenized my unit economics. Who are the top 10 callers to my contract? Is my smart contract calling other contracts? What are my pending transactions? What is my book of trades? What is market depth of my gas prices? What, I need to be able to search if I've got failure. Show me transactions between this date, that date, to, from, where, that is all mission-critical stuff that you need if you're going to operate any business. >> So a lot of operational data and that's phenomenal, but are you worried that people aren't going to adopt? Blockchain I mean. >> I'm not worried about that at all. I actually think that there's an entire, when we started this, we were focused on enterprises exclusively, and we saw what we were doing on public Ethereum as a marketing ploy. We're like "Hey we'll go instrument "the whole public Ethereum Network". I'm a big data guy, we've built high-throughput, four terabytes a day of social graph ingestion platforms. We're like, public Ethereum, you know, not that transactionally intensive. We're going to do this for the world. Now, after building the platform and seeing 300 million dollars an hour, with 50% of those transactions going to smart contracts, we're seeing a new Enterprise emerge. You can look at companies like, you know, Sia, Storj coin, IPFS. >> So can actually see the activity (slurred) it's encrypted, but you can look at the metadata and get the patterns. I mean you're essentially looking at the transactional volume, almost like a stock exchange. We can, we have full transparency into every transaction, that's happening on chain, and we can see, like the other day, I did a tweet on, there was a token that's traded, I don't know, we're not interested in the trading side but it's the use case that has the most buzz, and we have transparency, so we see it, we're like, "Hey, this smart contract went "from two thousand transactions, to 40 thousand "transactions. What is going on?" Right, and we actually saw that. >> You can see the pump-and-dump scams too. >> Oh you can totally see that. In providing transparency, is now, it's becoming easy for anybody to search for anything. >> Well that's a great free service, and I appreciate you, and I've been playing with that over the weekend, I love it, I'm like, "Hmm, I might get some trades on this thing." >> Thank you. Check it out. We'd love feedback from anybody that's seeing this, Amberdata.io and I can be reached at Shawn@Amberdata.io >> So, I mean obviously funding you must have a ton of VCs throwing money at you, is that the case? Are you thinking about an ICO? What's the thoughts on the capital expansion? Yes obviously got a great, hot startup here, so what's the funding strategy? >> We've been heads down on building things, and we're obviously getting inbound, but you know, we're well funded, we're in as, I think we're in a position of strength. What we're focused on is taking the mountain, and defining and being the category leader. I think right now, we have defined it. >> There's no one else doing it. >> Yeah, exactly. >> So you're like the solo, you're the only one doing it. >> So, we are going to define the space for operational monitoring analytics for public and private blockchain, and be that single pane of glass that allows enterprises to build on or around, you know, decentralized smart contract platforms, or, you know, private smart contract platforms. And we're going to take that hill, and we're going to stay out in front. So right now, we're heads down. We'll eventually, (talking over each other) >> Can I get an API to the data set? Can you just give me an API? Like a fire hose opportunity there? >> So we are enabling this as a platform, to drive network effects, and we're working with several exchanges, we're working, you know, some of non-custodial exchanges. We've got a lot of inbound interest from people more on the trading side. We're evaluating whether we do that, and we want people to be able to build on top of our platform, other analytics tools, you know, connect to exchanges, connect what have you, right and create that marketplace, create those APIs, inroads, and then allow people to drive that. And on the ICO front, we're really not focused on that. We're enterprise software. >> Well theCUBE team would love to have an API and program with it for theCUBEInsights, we'd love to look at that. >> That would be great right. >> That's something we can work together and collaborate on that. I got to ask you about the data 'cause this is fascinating, coming from the search background that I come from, it's almost like the Google crawler. You went out, >> It's a Google for blockchain. >> Is it true that you guys crawled all the Genesis nodes on Ethereum, so you got into the Genesis nodes? >> Shawn: That's correct. >> So from the Genesis nodes to today, you've essentially gotten all those instrumented, >> Shawn: Right >> And have real time data coming in. >> Yes, that is correct. So as far as I know, we're the only people that have done this. It's computationally intensive and from the data structure perspective pretty difficult to do. But what we've done is, and it has to do with the data structures in the way Ethereum works whether that be public or private, is that there's an account-based blockchain that has transactions, but then the smart contracts and transfers of tokens happen in messages. So what we've done is, we have the ability to, or we have done and we have the ability to do in perpetuity moving forward, we instrument every transaction, every internal transaction, every token transfer, with time series data, indexed, searchable, we also have graph as well as relational views into the data, to be able to give the transparency, enable trust, enable you to triage an issue. Like, you know, I think about having worked at, you know, other enterprises in the past. Where you have a, you know, a security incident, that you need to respond to. We're currently under attack we need to find out who, what are they doing, what have they done, what is our exposure, how do we contain that, how do we, you know, deal with that? Without what we have, you can't do that. You got to like right Python scripts, and do API (talking over each other) >> You're chasing a ghost basically, and by the time you get it, it's over. >> Right, and then for enterprises, they've got hard core regulatory compliance considerations that you need to deal with. Ad-hoc queries from an auditor, you need to be able to show "Hey, I've got confidentiality, I have availability, "I have integrity" >> Well, even these smart contracts are still software. They, and you know, we've interviewed Hartej Sawhney, who's got a company that's doing just that auditing, >> He's killing it right. >> Auditing, the smart contracts because someone's going to write the code, and the code's back vulnerabilities. >> Absolutely. >> So there's a compliance aspect coming, quickly. >> Yes, yes absolutely. Yeah, I mean, so there's, it's an amazing space. There's a tremendous amount going on. It's moving super fast. >> Picks and shovels for the new miners, literally miners. Shawn, great to have you on. Congratulations >> Thank you. >> On your new startup. I think you've got a great product. I've been playing with the data, I love it. I think it's fascinating. If you could summarize the data that you've learned from the tool that you've built and platformed, what's the summary? What if you had to kind of tease it out, what's actually happening right now in the market, on the Ethereum network, with the apps and blockchain? >> Right, so, there is, so at the end of the day, Ethereum is a smart contract platform, and it pans out, that 50% of the transactions are actually going to smart contracts, which is a great validation right. Two: the actual value being transferred and interacting with smart contracts is 300 million dollars an hour. That is, it's, on an enterprise software perspective, it's not huge, but it's definitely a validation. >> It's legit. >> It's legit. The number of smart contracts that have been created in the last three months, is 400%. It is just going through the roof. Some of this, there's a lot of junk, but there's a lot of stuff that are people are building new enterprises, and on the enterprise side, we're seeing real business cases going into production, working with a few large customers now, on instrumenting real, you know, removing, you know, instrumenting real, over-the-counter type use cases. It's very, very interesting times. >> Well, you know my rants. I've been ranting about some of these bankers that have come from an old-school bank, and they're young kids too, so they're not, they're younger than me but they're trying to valuation mechanisms around, you know, companies and tokens, and they're using like discounted cash flow. Now I mean I get how they could go there, 'cause they learn that in school. >> Shawn: Right. But the reality is there's a new school going on. The school's in session. If you know the data, you have very interesting valuation variables that could be constructed on these new models that need to be looked at. I mean, how do you value a company? Certainly velocity. >> Shawn: Yeah, volume. >> Who's actually doing the transactions? Are they real smart contracts? So there's a lot of gamification and, I won't say scams, but I would say the investors want the transparency too. >> Yeah, I think it's amazing is that, we have that transparency, we provide that transparency as free service to the community right now and the ability to have transparency into transaction volume for smart contracts, token velocity, number of unique callers, market capitalization, the change in price, this gives you the ability to value that. That's something that, you know, we've thought about extensively is, maybe we should just provide valuation as a service, on just these assets that are publicly available? Yeah, I don't know. >> You had a lot of opportunities, so great job. Congratulations, good work. You guys have really done the work on this project, love it. And again, it validates the reality of the smart contracts, the application side of the business changing. Shawn Douglass here, inside theCUBE for CUBEConversation here at Palo Alto. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. (orchestral music)

>> Hello, everyone. Welcome to the special CUBE conversation. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media, co-host of theCUBE. We're here at Sundance Film Festival, the Intel Tech Lounge for a one on one conversation with Kane Lee, who's the head of content at Baobab Studios in California. Thanks for joining me here at the Intel Tech Lounge. >> Really excited to be here. >> You know we just had a panel on the new creative here, and Intel is showing some great technology. Things like volumetric, all kinds of really hardcore tech. Really powering some of the VR, AR, mixed reality, all the trends that are happening around user experience. But, a new creative artist is out there. A new storyteller. It could be a 12 year old to a 50 year old. You're in the middle of it. You're an award winning producer. So you're building the stories, you're building the content. What's the biggest thing happening here at Sundance? >> I think it's really interesting, because content has always been my passion. Good storytelling. And growing up, it was always books and films, and all these traditional mediums that inspired me to sort of dream, and right here in Sundance, we're in the middle of a great sea change going on, because technology and art are coming together in such a fast pace, to really usher in the new generation of storytelling, and we're all very fortunate to be in the middle of that. This is a very unique period in our history as humans, and our culture, to challenge what storytelling really means, because VR, for us at Baobab, is the next great medium. And Sundance recognizes that. Technology companies like Intel recognize that. So we're all coming together at the film festival, and working together to define what that will mean. >> Kane, you're an Emmy award winning producer. Baobab's doing some cutting edge work. Take a minute to talk about what Baobab is doing, and why is it so relevant? We know it's cool. We've interviewed the CEO and Founder before. Share with the audience, what is Baobab doing? Why is it so relevant? >> So, we formed a couple years ago, and at the time, VR was, and it still is, in its very nascent stage. One thing that we recognized, was an opportunity to try to create content that would appeal for people from the ages of five to 105. There was a lot of documentaries, there was a lot of experiential art house type of material. And there was a lot of gaming type of content for VR. For us, we're big lovers of animation and how that unites families, kids, grandparents, teenagers, and we saw an opportunity to try to create content that could appeal to all of these different types of people through animation. So that's sort of our mission, is to inspire your childlike sense of wonder, using two mediums that are so meant for each other, which are animation and VR. >> I'd like to talk about some of the work you got going on a little bit later, but I want to talk about that 12 year old in his room, or the 16 year old that's got a full rig, tricked out with the keyboard, they're laying down music, they're building music, they're gaming, they might be creating art. They are a living, breathing creative. And, they're self learning. They're jumping on Youtube. They're jumping into VR meetups and groups. They're self learning. >> Kane: Absolutely. >> How do you connect to them? What do they do? What's the playbook? How do these people go to the next level? What's the industry doing around this? >> I think, one example I'll give is, I was at Annecy Film Festival, and that's one of the biggest animation focused film festivals in the world, and I was showcasing our very first piece, it was called Invasion, starring Ethan Hawke, where you're actually in the body of a bunny rabbit, and you meet another bunny rabbit. You create a bond. And together you thwart an alien invasion on Earth. What was so interesting to me, was I had never seen that sort of, that demo, that teenage demo, where young boys and girls would actually bring their parents back to the experience, and say this is what I want to study in college. This is what I want to do in art school. So, I think that they, growing up with all this new technology, really sort of get the idea of being in realtime, and having storytelling in realtime. And seeing that level of interest from that age group was very sort of affirming to us that we're on the right track, in terms of the next generation of storytelling. >> Well you guys are definitely on the right track, I can say that. But I think what your point confirms, and connects the dots for people that might not be in the industry is that the old tech world was, the geeks did it, software was an art and you had to be in that CS club. The democratization is a big trend here, and what you're talking about is, people are humanizing, they can see real emotional, practical examples. So the young guns, the young kids, they don't have baggage. They look at it with a clean slate and going, I want that. I can see myself using this. I can self actualize with this. So really kind of tips the scales, and proves the point. >> Absolutely. We world premiered Asteroids, our second VR experience, starring Elizabeth Banks, and one of the biggest millennial stars, Ingrid Nilson, last year at Sundance. Even had the first red carpet VR premiere in Sundance history. And watching the younger generation, it was our first piece where we actually used the controllers that had just come out in that past year. And watching them go in with no preconceived notions on what using controllers could be, to be a character in the experience, it was just fascinating, because they picked it up faster than anyone, and learned the language of being a character, and having hand controllers as a robot, so you could play fetch with an alien dog, or you could mirror their actions, or they might mirror yours, and creating these bonds and these experiences. So, that sort of fresh perspective is really exciting. >> Talk about the role of these experiences, and how they connect people, because one of the big trends also online today, in today's, I would say, yeah the peg the evolution is, you're really getting into the immersive experience, I believe that. But, content creates bonds between people, and good experiences creates glue between relationships, and forges new ones, maybe enhances existing ones. This is a big part of the media. >> Absolutely. For us, emotional connection is the key to getting people to put on headsets, and to come back to our experiences. And that emotional connection for us, is what we've witnessed, in terms of people forming bonds with our characters. So, everyone knows that VR can bring you to brand new worlds, and exciting places, and immerse you in places that you can never go. But, the one thing that I think we learned in our experience with VR, is that if you can create a bond between the user and other characters in the experience that they believe is real, and we use psychology, technology, and storytelling to do that, then they want to come back again and again. So, one of the trickiest parts of VR is trying to get people to have repeat views. And the feedback we've gotten from a lot of the technology platforms is people come back time and time again, and it seems to be because they actually believe these characters are real, and that they're friends. >> So talk about your journey, because you're at the front end of this wave, and you're participating, you're creating art, you're creating work product. You're building technology with the Baobab Studios. What would you do if you were 16? If you were a sophomore in high school, knowing what you know, and you could go back in time, or you could be today what you know at 16, what would you do? >> When I was 16, I had no idea what I was going to do. When I graduated from college, I had no idea what I was going to do. But what I will say is, VR is really unique because it's so interdisciplinary. So, it actually invites people from all different fabrics of society, and different types of education. The most, I would encourage 16 year olds to just be who they are, and to play. And if I talked to my 16 year old self, I would have just encouraged myself to follow my interest and pursuits more, because many years later, actually VR has brought me back to a lot of my roots, and different things that I studied growing up, and was fascinated by. >> So it ignited your passion. >> Absolutely. >> Or things that you were really into, that you might have forgotten. Is that- >> Yeah, I studied something called symbolic systems at Stanford University, and I had no idea what I was doing. It combined computer science, psychology, linguistics, and philosophy. And the first thing I did after college was pursue potentially a career as a lawyer. But now it all makes sense. VR makes, brings everything together. >> What could have been, you know? >> Absolutely. >> Well, a lot of neural network, symbolic systems, this is the underpinnings of this complex fabric that is powering this content market. So I'd love to get your thoughts. Is there a success formula that you're seeing emerging, I know there's no silver bullet yet. A lot of experimentation. A lot of new things happening. But as this technology, and the scaffolding around it is being built, while also original content is being built, it's still evolving. What's the success formula, and what's the pitfall? What to stay away from? >> I think it's about, it's really about good storytelling. And I think it's a time to be courageous and brave, and put forward stories that wouldn't have otherwise been told in the more traditional mediums. Our latest project in production that I'm so personally excited about, is called Legend of Crow. It stars John Legend as a beautiful bird with the most beautiful feathers, and the most gorgeous voice, who during dark and cold times, must go on a heroes journey to bring light back to the world. Something I feel like in this day and age, a lot of people can relate to. But, on top of this story being based upon a beautiful Native American legend that hasn't really been exposed to the world, we've taken the opportunity to take the themes of diversity and self sacrifice, and self acceptance, to create an all star cast of minorities and women, and that's something I feel the younger generations can really relate to, because having worked a lot in Hollywood as a producer in traditional TV and film, things take a while, and there's a certain way of casting and doing things that follow an older model, and I think younger audiences are excited to have a character like Moth in our experience who speaks both Spanish and English, because that's the way the world is today. >> So I got to ask you a quick, you brought up diversity and inclusion kind of in your comment. I got to bring this up, because you guys do hit a nice demographic that I think is super relevant and important, the younger generation. So I talk to a lot of young people all the time. I say things like, you don't need to be a computer scientist to get into this game. You can be super smart. You don't need to learn how to code hardcore coding to get into this. And they respond to that. And that's one kind of, I would say, narrative that conventional wisdom might not be right. And the other one is the diversity. So my son, 16 year old, says, "Dad, your generation is so politically correct. All this nonsense." So, the younger generation is not living what we're living in, in these dark times, I would say, certainly with diversity, but how does VR really equalize? And will the storm pass? Diversity, inclusion, all that great stuff that are core issues, certainly are being worked on. But, do we see hope here? >> Absolutely. I think disruption in the form of a new technology and a new medium is, while scary to some people, is actually the most exciting and fertile time to equalize. Our CEO, Maureen Fan, who is a college classmate of mine, always wanted to work in animation. And she finally saw the right opportunity when VR came, and we put on headsets for the first time, and saw how there could be a new wave of exciting animators, through this disruptive technology. Because everyone else in more traditional animation is so focused on the old model, and the old ways of doing things, of getting things off the ground, of financing, of creating certain kinds of content that have been proven over time, in the old sort of studio model. >> What were some of those things that were instrumental in this breakout, to forge this new ground? >> I think a lot of it is the technology finally being ready. Our CTO, Larry Cutler, actually studied virtual reality at Stanford a decade before Maureen and I were there, and he had always been waiting for the right time to go into VR. >> Does he preach down, hey kids, I used to walk in the snow with bare feet to you guys, or has he, what's his role, how's he doing? >> He's amazing. He was the head of global character tech for all of Dreamworks animation, and like I said, I think one thing that distinguishes us from some of the other people in VR is that we're so focused on characters, so focused on them making eye contact with you, or with their facial features reacting in realtime, and being very believable, and forging that bond between you and that character. So, for us, that character technology, and having the top people in that space work with us, is the long term thing that is going to differentiate us from the crowd. >> I'd like to get your reaction to my comment about the computer science, and that's mainly, mostly a Silicon Valley thing, living in Palo Alto, so, but people are struggling when they go to college. What should I major in? And there's a narrative right now, oh you got to learn how to code, you got to be a computer science major. You don't. You don't have to be a CS major. Some of the most creative and technical brilliance can also come from other disciplines. What's your reaction to that, and what's your advice? >> I think people should just follow their effort. Because, if you follow what naturally comes to you, what you're good at, and that also has meaning and interest to you, and something that you can get feedback along the way, which is the great thing about being in a growing space, you are going to just spend your, you're going to spend a lot of late nights doing that stuff, and you can always bring it into your career path when that happens. And I think, we're in a very DIY time in VR. No one knows anything. We're constantly making mistakes, but then learning from them. And that's the most exciting process of being where we are. So, to people who are of college age, I would just tell them follow your effort. If you're interested in VR, it's an exciting time to just do it yourself. Learn from your mistakes. And then, and try to create something new. >> What does the new creative mean to you. When you hear that, new creative, what does that mean to you? >> You know, it's interesting being at these talks and panels, and at all these festivals, because I feel like a lot of people are looking for that new innovator who comes out of nowhere, and sort of just redefines the industry. And that could very well happen. But I actually think what's really exciting about right now is, it's more about having, understanding the bridge between all the different mediums and disciplines. I think new things are created when you combine areas that have not been traditionally aligned. So for example, Orson Welles arguably created one of the first great cinematic masterpieces in Citizen Kane, but he was able to do so by bringing values from theater, and from radio, and areas where he sort of learned the art of storytelling. And he was able to combine them in new and interesting ways that people hadn't seen before. So, for me it's less about looking for that silver bullet of a creative person who comes out of nowhere, but these younger generations who understand these different mediums, combining them and creating connections with them in an exciting way. >> Brooks Brown from Starbury Studios said on the panel, the next breakout star is going to be the kid in the basement that no one's ever heard of. >> Very possibly, but that kid in the basement, he needs to be passionate about a lot of different disciplines. So, what we've tried to emulate in doing so, is bringing the best people in gaming, bringing the best people from traditional film, bringing people who had interests in a lot of different areas, different art forms, and letting them kind of play together and learn from each other. Argue with each other, you know? And then come up with something that no one's seen before. >> We're going to have to come up with a camera, so that could be like an experiment. Like it's just a reality show in and of itself. All that talent, multi discipline together. >> Absolutely. >> John: It's like dynamite ready to explode. >> It's the challenge, it's the blessing, it's the curse and the blessing of our medium right now, because there's so much more to discover, but if people come in and have an open mind, and are willing ... If the people from Hollywood are willing to learn from the people who do gaming in Silicon Valley, who are open to learning from the people in New York who grew up on live theater, I feel those, finding that intersection, finding those beautiful intersections are where we're going to thrive. >> Well you guys highlight that multi disciplinary thing, but also highlights why diversity is so important. Diversity brings the most perspectives to the table, the most data, most contribution. It might be a little bit longer to work through the arguments, right? You got to be patient. >> Absolutely you have to be patient. We're really lucky to be working with John Legend on our VR piece. He had actually been looking for several years to find, wanting to play in this space, but not wanting to do it with the wrong partner at the wrong time. So, it's, there's an art to timing in everything that we do right now, and when we presented to him the story we're doing with the Legend of Crow, it felt like the perfect sort of match. >> Legend of Crow coming out. Head of Content, Kane Lee here, Baobab Studios. Thanks for spending the time here on the Cube Conversation. What's the timing of the release of the program? >> Probably late spring, but we're going to be announcing some news around that soon, and we have some more exciting updates about it that I can't wait to share. >> Alright, we are here at the Intel Tech Lounge as the Cube's Conversation at Sundance Film Festival, part of our coverage of Sundance 2018. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from Munich, Germany, it's the Cube covering DataWorks Summit Europe, 2017. Brought to you by Hortonworks. >> Hey, welcome back everyone. We're here live in Munich, Germany, at the DataWorks 2017 Summit. I'm John Furrier, my co-host Dave Vellante with the Cube, and our next two guests are Gianthomas Volpe, head of customer development e-media for Alation. Welcome to the Cube. And we have Bertrand Cariou, who's the director of solution marketing at Trifecta with partners. Guys, welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. >> Big fans of both your start-ups and growing. You guys are doing great. We had your CEO on our big data SV, Joe Hellerstein, he talked about the rang, all the cool stuff that's going on, and Alation, we know Stephanie has been on many times, but you guys are start ups that are doing very well and growing in this ecosystem, and, you know, everyone's going public. Cloud Air has filed their S1, great news for those guys, so the data world has changed beyond Hadoop. You're seeing it, obviously Hadoop is not dead, but it's still going to be a critical component of a larger ecosystem that's developing. You guys are part of that. So I want to get your thoughts of why you're here in Europe, okay? And how you guys are working together to take data to the next level, because, you know, we're hearing more and more data is a foundational conversation starter, because now there's other things happening, IOT, business analysts, you guys are in the heart of it. Your thoughts? >> You know, going to be you. >> All in, yeah, sure. So definitely at Alation what we're seeing is more and more people across the organization want to get access to the data, and we're kind of breaking out of the traditional roles around IP managing both metadata, data preparation, like Trifecta's focused on. So we're pretty squarely focused on how do we bring that access to a wider range of people? How do we enable that social and collaborative approach to working with that data, whether it's in a data lake so, or here at DataWorks. So clearly that's one of the main topics. But also other data sources within the organization. >> So you're freeing the data up and the whole collaboration thing is more of, okay, don't just look at IT as this black box of give me some data and now spit out some data at me. Maybe that's the old way. The new way is okay, all of the data's out there, they're doing their thing, but the collaboration is for the user to get into that data you know, ingestion. Playing with the data, using the data, shaping the data. Developing with the data. Whatever they're doing, right? >> It's just bringing transparency to not only what IT is doing and making that accessible to users, but also helping users collaborate across different silos within an organization, so. We look at things like logs to understand who is doing what with the data, so if I'm working in one group, I can find out that somebody in a completely different group in the organization is working with similar data, bringing new techniques to their analysis, and can start leveraging that and have a conversation that others can learn from, too. >> So basically it's like a discovery platform for saying hey, you know, Mary in department X has got these models. I can leverage that. Is that kind of what you guys are all about? >> Yeah, definitely. And breaking through that, enabling communication across the different levels of the organization, and teaching other people at all different levels of maturity within the company, how they can start interacting with data and giving them the tools to up skill throughout that process. >> Bertrand, how about the Trifecta? 'Cause one of the things that I find exciting about Europe value proposition and talking to Joe, the founder, besides the fact that they all have GitHub on their about page, which is the coolest thing ever, 'cause they're all developers. But the more reality is is that a business person or person dealing with data in some part of a geography, could be whether it's in Europe or in the US, might have a completely different view and interest in data than someone in another area. It could be sales data, could be retail data, it doesn't matter but it's never going to be the same schema. So the issue is, got to take that away from the user complexity. That is really fundamental change. >> Yeah. You're totally correct. So information is there, it is available. Alation helps identify what is the right information that can be used, so if I'm in marketing, I could reuse sales information, associating maybe with web logs information. Alation will give me the opportunity to know what information is available and if I can trust it. If someone in finance is using that information, I can trust that data. So now as a user, I want to take that data, maybe combine the data, and the data is always a different format, structure, level of quality, and the work of data wrangling is really for the end user, you can be an analyst. Someone in the line of business most of the time, these could be like some of the customers we are here in Germany like Munich Re would be actuaries. Building risk models and or claimed for casting, payment for casting. So they are not technologies at all, but they need to combine these data sets by themselves, and at scale, and the work they're doing, they are producing new information and this information is used directly to their own business, but as soon as they share this information, back to the data lake, Alation will index this information, see how it is used, and put it to this visibility to the other users for reuse as well. >> So you guys have a partnership, or is this more of a standard API kind of thing? >> So we do have a partnership, we have plan development on the road map. It's currently happening. So I think by the end of the quarter, we're going to be delivering a new integration where whether I'm in Alation and looking for data and finding something that I want to work with, I know needs to be prepared I can quickly jump into Trifecta to do that. Or the other way around in Trifecta, if I'm looking for data to prepare, I can open the catalog, quickly find out what exists and how to work with it better. >> So basically the relationship, if I get this right is, you guys pass on your expertise of the data wrangling all the back processes you guys have, and advertise that into Alation. They discover it, make it surfaceable for the social collaboration or the business collaboration. >> Exactly. And when the data is wrangled, it began indexed and so it's a virtual circle where all the data that is traded and combined is exposed to the user to be reused. >> So if I were Chief Data Officer, I'd say okay, there's three sequential things that I need to do, and you can maybe help me with a couple of them. So the first one is I need to understand how data contributes to the monetization of my company, if I'm a public company or a for profit company. That's, I guess my challenge. But then, there are other two things that I need to give people access to that data, and I need quality. So I presume Alation can help me understand what data's available. I can actually, it kind of helps with number one as well because like you said, okay, this is the type of data, this is how the business process works. Feed it. And then the access piece and quality. I guess the quality is really where Trifecta comes in. >> GianThomas: Yes. >> What about that sequential flow that I just described? Is that common? >> Yeah >> In your business, your customer base. >> It's definitely very common. So, kind of going back to the Munich Re examples, since we're here in Munich, they're very focused on providing better services around risk reduction for their customers. Data that can impact that risk can be of all kinds from all different places. You kind of have to think five, ten years ahead of where we are now to see where it might be coming from. So you're going to have a ton of data going in to the data lake. Just because you have a lot of data, that does not mean that people will know how to work with it they won't know that it exists. And especially since the volumes are so high. It doesn't mean that it's all coming in at a greatly usable format. So Alation comes in to play in helping you find not only what exists, by automating that process of extraction but also looking at what data people are actually using. So going back to your point of how do I know what data's driving value for the organization, we can tell you in this schema, this is what's actually being used the most. That's a pretty good starting point to focus in on what is driving value and when you do find something, then you can move over to Trifecta to prepare it and get it ready for analysis. >> So keying on that for a second, so in the example of Munich Re, the value there is my reduction in expected loss. I'm going to reduce my risk, that puts money in my bottom line. Okay, so you can help me with number one, and then take that Munich Re example into Trifecta. >> Yes, so the user will be the same user using Alation and Trifecta. So is an actuary. So as soon as the actuary items you find the data that is the most relevant for what you'll be planning, so the actuaries are working with terms like development triangles over 20 years. And usually it's column by column. So they have to pivot the data row by row. They have to associate that with the paid claims the new claims coming in, so all these information is different format. Then they have to look at maybe weather information, or additional third party information where the level of quality is not well known, so they are bringing data in the lake that is not yet known. And they're combining all this data. The outcome of that work, that helps in the Reese modeling so that could be used by, they could use Sass or our older technology for the risk modeling. But when they've done that modeling and building these new data sets. They're, again, available to the community because Alation would index that information and explain how it is used. The other things that we've seen with our users is there's also a very strong, if you think about insurances banks, farmer companies, there is a lot of regulation. So, as the user, as you are creating new data, said where the data coming from. Where the data is going, how is it used in the company? So we're capturing all that information. Trifecta would have the rules to transform the data, Alation will see the overall eye level picture from table to the source system where the data is come. So super important as well for the team. >> And just one follow up. In that example, the actuary, I know hard core data scientists hate this term, but the actuaries, the citizen data scientist. Is that right? >> The actuaries would know I would say statistics, usually. But you get multiple level of actuaries. You get many actuaries, they're Excel users. They have to prepare data. They have to pin up, structure the data to give it to next actuary that will be doing the pricing model or the next actuary that will risk modeling. >> You guys are hitting on a great formula which is cutting edge, which is why you guys are on the startups. But, Bertrand I want to talk to you about your experience at Informatica. You were the founder the Informatica France. And you're also involved in some product development in the old, I'd say old days, but like. Back in the days when structured data and enterprise data, which was once a hard problem, deal with metadata, deal with search, you had schemes, all kinds of stuff to deal with. It was very difficult. You have expertise. I want you to talk about what's different now in this environment. Because it's still challenging. But now the world has got so much fast data, we got so much new IOT data, especially here in Europe. >> Oh yes. >> Where you have an industrialized focus, certainly Germany, like case in point, but it's pretty smart mobility going on in Europe. You've always had that mobile environment. You've got smart cities. A lot of focus on data. What's the new world like now? How are people dealing with this? What's your perspective? >> Yes, so there's and we all know about the big data and with all this volume, additional volume and new structure of data. And I would say legacy technology can deal as you mentioned, with well structured information. Also you want to give that information to the masses. Because the people who know the data best, are the business people. They know what to do with the data, but the access of this data is pretty complicated. So where Trifecta is really differentiating and has been thinking through that is to say whatever the structure of the data, IOT, Web Logs, Value per J son, XML, that should be for an end user, just metrics. So that's the way you understand the data. The next thing when play with data, usually you don't know what the schema would be at the end. Because you don't know what the outcome is. So, you are, as an end user, you are exploring the data combining data set and the structure is trading as you discover the data. So that is also something new compared to the old model where an end user would go to the data engineer to say I need that information, can you give me that information? And engineers would look at that and say okay. We can access here, what is the schema? There was all this back and forth. >> There was so much friction in the old way, because the creativity of the user is independent now of all that scaffolding and all the wrangling, pre-processing. So I get that piece of the Citizen's Journal, Citizen Analyst. But the key thing here is you were shrecking with the complexity to get the job done. So the question then comes in, because it's interesting, all the theme here at DataWorks Summit in Europe and in the US is all the big transformative conversations are starting with business people. So this a business unit so the front lines if you will, not IT. Although IT now's got to support that. If that's the case, the world's shifting to the business owners. Hence your start up. Is that kind of getting that right? >> I think so. And I think that's also where we're positioning ourselves is you have a data lake, you can put tons of data in it, but if you don't find an easy way to make that accessible to a business user, you're not going to get a value out of it. It's just going to become a storage place. So really, what we've focused on is how do you make that layer easily accessible? How do you share around and bring some of the common business practices to that? And make sure that you're communicating with IT. So IT shouldn't be cast aside, but they should have an ongoing relationship with the business user. >> By the way, I'll point out that Dave knows I'm not really a big fan of the data lake concept mainly because they've turned it into data swamps because IT deploys it, we're done! You know, check the box. But, data's getting stale because it's not being leveraged. You're not impacting the data or making it addressable, or discoverable or even wrangleable. If that's a word. But my point is that's all complexities. >> Yes, so we call it sort of frozen data lake. You build a lake, and then it's frozen and nobody can go fishing. >> You play hockey on it. (laughs) >> You dig and you're fishing. >> And you need to have this collaboration ongoing with the IT people, because they own the infrastructure. They can feed the lake with data with the business. If there is no collaboration, and we've seen that multiple times. Data lake initiatives, and then we come back one year after there is no one using the lake, like one, two person of the processing power, or the data is used. Nobody is going to the lake. So you need to index the data, catalog the data to know what is available. >> And the psychology for IT is important here, and I was talking yesterday with IBM folks, Nevacarti here, but this is important because IT is not necessarily in a position of doing it because doing the frozen lake or data swamp because they want to screw over the business people, they just do their job, but here you're empowering them because you guys are got some tech that's enabling the IT to do a data lake or data environment that allows them to free up the hassles, but more importantly, satisfy the business customer. >> GeanThomas: Exactly. >> There's a lot of tech involved. And certainly we've talked to you guys about that. Talk about that dynamic of the psychology because that's what IT wants. So what's that dev ops mindset for data, data ops if you will or you know, data as code if you will, constantly what we've been calling it but that's now the cloud ethos hits the date ethos. Kind of coming together. >> Yes, I think data catalogs are subtly different in that traditionally they are more of an IT function, but to some extent on the metadata side, where as on the business side, they tended to be a siloed organization of information that business itself kept to maintain very manually. So we've tried to bring that together. All the different parties within this process from the IT side to the govern stewardship all the way down to the analysts and data scientists can get value out of a data catalog that can help each other out throughout that process. So if it's communicating to end users what kind of impact any change IT will make, that makes their life easier, and have one way to communicate that out and see what's going to happen. But also understand what the business is doing for governance or stewardship. You can't really govern or curate if you don't know what exists and what matters to the business itself. So bring those different stages together, helping them help each other is really what Alation does. >> Tell about the prospects that you guys are engaging in from a customer standpoint. What are some of the conversations of those customers you haven't gotten yet together. And and also give an example of a customer that you guys have, and use cases where they've been successful. >> Absolutely. So typically what we see, is that an organization is starting up a data lake or they already have legacy data warehouses. Often it's both, together. And they just need a unified way of making information about those environments available to end users. And they want to have that better relationship. So we're often seeing IT engaged in trying to develop that relationship along with the business. So that's typically how we start and we in the process of deploying, work in to that conversation of now that you know what exists, what you might want to work with, you're often going to have to do some level of preparation or transformation. And that's what makes Trifecta a great fit for us, as a partner, is coming to that next step. >> Yeah, on Mobile Market Share, one of our common customers, we have DNSS, also a common customer, eBay, a common customer. So we've got already multiple customers and so some information about the issue Market Share, they have to deal with their customer information. So the first thing they receive is data, digital information about ads, and so it's really marketing type of data. They have to assess the quality of the data. They have to understand what values and combine the value with their existing data to provide back analytics to their customers. And that use case, we were talking to the business users, my people selling Market Share to their customers because the fastest they can unboard their data, they can qualify the quality of the data the easiest it is to deliver right level of quality analytics. And also to engage more customers. So it was really was to be fast onboarding customer data and deliver analytics. And where Alatia explain is that they can then analyze all the sequel statement that the customers, maybe I'll let you talk about use case, but there's also, it was the same users looking at the same information, so we engage with the business users. >> I wonder if we can talk about the different roles. You hear about the data scientists obviously, the data engineer, there might be a data quality professional involved, there's certainly the application developer. These guys may or may not even be in IT. And then you got a DVA. Then you may have somebody who's statistician. They might sit in the line of business. Am I overcomplicating it? Do larger organizations have these different roles? And how do you help bring them together? >> I'd say that those roles are still influx in the industry. Sometimes they sit on IT's legs, sometimes they sit in the business. I think there's a lot of movement happening it's not a consistent definition of those different roles. So I think it comes down to different functions. Sometimes you find those functions happening within different places in the company. So stewardship and governance may happen on the IT side, it might happen on the business side, and it's almost a maturity scale of how involved the two sides are within that. So we play with all of those different groups so it's sometimes hard to narrow down exactly who it is. But generally it's on the consumptions side whether it's the analyst or data scientists, and there's definitely a crossover between the two groups, moving up towards the governance and stewardship that wants to enable those users or document curing the data for them all the way to the IT data engineers that operationalize a lot of the work that the data scientists and analysts might be hypothesizing and working with in their research. >> And you sell to all of those roles? Who's your primary user constituency, or advocate? >> We sell both to the analytics groups as well as governance and they often merge together. But we tend to talk to all of those constituencies throughout a sales cycle. >> And how prominent in your customer base do you see that the role of the Chief Data Officer? Is it only reconfined within regulated industries? Does he seep into non-regulated industries? >> I'd say for us, it seeps with non-regulated industries. >> What percent of the customers, for instance have, just anecdotally, not even customers, just people that you talk to, have a Chief Data Officer? Formal Chief Data Officer? >> I'd say probably about 60 to 70 percent. >> That high? >> Yeah, same for us. In regulated industries (mumbles). I think they play a role. The real advantage a Chief Data and Analytical Officer, it's data and analytics, and they have to look at governance. Governance could be for regulation, because you have to, you've got governance policy, which data can be combined with which data, there is a lot. And you need to add that. But then, even if you are less regulated, you need to know what data is available, and what data is (mumbles). So you have this requirement as well. We see them a lot. We are more and more powerful, I would say in the enterprise where they are able to collaborate with the business to enable the business. >> Thanks so much for coming on the Cube, I really appreciate it. Congratulations on your partnership. Final word I'll give you guys before we end the segment. Share a story, obviously you guys have a unique partnership, you've been in the business for awhile, breaking into the business with Alation. Hot startups. What observations out there that people should know about that might not be known in this data world. Obviously there's a lot of false premises out there on what the industry may or may not be, but there's a lot of certainly a sea change happening. You see AI, it gives a mental model for people, Eugene Learning, Autonomous Vehicles, Smart Cities, some amazing, kind of magical things going on. But for the basic business out there, they're struggling. And there's a lot of opportunities if they get it right, what thing, observation, data, pattern you're seeing that people should know about that may not be known? It could be something anecdotal or something specific. >> You go first. (laughs) >> So maybe there will be surprising, but like Kaiser is a big customer of us. And you know Kaiser in California in the US. They have hundreds or thousands of hospitals. And surprisingly, some of the supply chain people where I've been working for years, trying to analyze, optimizing the relationship with their suppliers. Typically they would buy a staple gun without staples. Stupid. But they see that happening over and over with many products. They were never able to sell these, because why? There will be one product that have to go to IT, they have to work, it would take two months and there's another supplier, new products. So how to know- >> John: They're chasing their tail! >> Yeah. It's not super excited, they are now to do that in a couple of hours. So for them, they are able, by going to the data lakes, see what data, see how this hospital is buying, they were not able to do it. So there is nothing magical here, it's just giving access to the data who know the data best, the analyst. >> So your point is don't underestimate the innovation, as small as it may seem, or inconsequential, could have huge impacts. >> The innovation goes with the process to be more efficient with the data, not so much building new products, just basically being good at what you do, so then you can focus on the value you bring to the company. >> GianThomas what's your thoughts? >> So it's sort of related. I would actually say something we've seen pretty often is companies, all sizes, are all struggling with very similar, similar problems in the data space specifically so it's not a big companies have it all figured out, small companies are behind trying to catch up, and small companies aren't necessarily super agile and aren't able to change at the drop of a hat. So it's a journey. It's a journey and it's understanding what your problems are with the data in the company and it's about figuring out what works best for your solution, or for your problems. And understanding how that impacts everyone in the business. So it's really a learning process to understand what's going- >> What are your friends who aren't in the tech business say to you? Hey, what's this data thing? How do you explain it? The fundamental shift, how do you explain it? What do you say to them? >> I'm more and more getting people that already have an idea of what this data thing is. Which five years ago was not the case. Five years ago, it was oh, what's data? Tell me more about that? Why do you need to know about what's in these databases? Now, they actually get why that's important. So it's becoming a concept that everyone understands. Now it's just a matter of moving its practice and how that actually works. >> Operationalizing it, all the things you're talking about. Guys, thanks so much for bringing the insights. We wrangled it here on the Cube. Live. Congratulations to Trifecta and Alation. Great startups, you guys are doing great. Good to see you guys successful again and rising tide floats all boats in this open source world we're living in and we're bringing you more coverage here at DataWowrks 2017, I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. Stay with us, more great content coming after this short break. (upbeat music)