>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 Special coverage sponsored by A. W s Global Partner Network. Hello. And welcome back to the cubes Live coverage of AWS reinvent 2020. It's virtual this year. Normally, were there in person doing the interviews, getting the signal from the noise. I'm John for your host. And where the cube virtual Got a great guest here. Aidan McDonald, Program manager, Justice through code the center of justice at the Columbia University. Um, this is a great story, Aiden. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate you taking the time to join me. >>Thanks so much for having me, John. >>So first of all talk about the mission of justice through code. This is such an awesome program. It really is impactful. It's one of those examples where, you know, people want to change the world. This is one. You can actually do it. And with code, take us through the mission. >>Yeah, So I think to understand the mission here, you have to understand a little bit about the problem, right? So the United States has, uh, 5% of the world's population, 25% of the global prison population. When people come home from prison, they're confronted with the reality that it's just very difficult to find jobs right. We have unemployment rates that are stratospherically higher than for the general population. And so, at the core of what we're doing in our mission is really to provide a pathway to career track employment for formerly incarcerated individuals to help support them and their families, and also to begin to change the negative stereotypes that air attached to the formerly incarcerated. >>It's an upwardly mobile mindset growth mindset. Also, there's new skills, always hard to do that, given the environmental conditions, what skills are you guys delivering? Take us through how it works. Give us a feel for kind of the skill sets and what gets what happens. >>Yeah, so we focused the program kind of in two distinct ways. So we have the technical skills aspect of the curriculum and the interpersonal skills. So as far as the technical skills go, we teach a version of a course that's taught to current Columbia MBA students eso that is set up. We teach the fundamentals of programming python, what we call phase one of the program. Then we move on to a P I S and data analysis. And then from there we do a Capstone software project. And for that project, groups of two or more students come together. Really? They conceptualize the design on day execute on building this project. And during that phase, of course, we actually pair students with mentors who are season software engineers from many of the top tech companies in the US and then in terms of the story in terms of the interpersonal skills, um, you know, we really focus on the skills that are necessary to success in the tech workforce s Oh, this is, you know, resumes, cover letters, interviewing skills and also really understanding that for many of our students, they don't have the networks that so maney people are fortunate enough to have that have gone through a traditional educational pathways. We bring in guest speakers from different corporations. Um, and, you know, having the students were quick mentors there really able to start to build that network to support themselves in their career transition when they complete the program. >>You know what's really amazing about what you're doing is and this really is so timing. The timing is perfect. Um, is that with the cloud and the tech scene, where we're at now is you don't you can come out. You can level up pretty quickly with things. In other words, you know, you could have someone go to an Ivy League school and be all the pedigree, and it doesn't matter because the skills now are different. You literally could be a surfing and be a couch potato surfing TV and get online and get an Amazon degree and through educate and and come out, make six figures. I mean, so there is definitely a path here. It's not like it's a slog. It's not like it's a huge leap, so the timing is perfect. We're seeing that across the board. There's more empty jobs, opening cybersecurity, cloud computing administration and with land in all these cool services, it's just gonna get easier. We hear that we see that clearly. What are some of the examples can you share of the graduates? What have they gone on to do? You mentioned some of the big tech companies. Take us through that that tipping point when the success kicks in. >>What s so you know, as I mentioned, one of the really integral parts of our program is this mentorship, right? So students finished the program. They often continue to work on their final projects, um, in conjunction with their mentors and then really focused during that time period on developing the skill sets that they'll need to have entering into junior level software development roles a tech companies For some of our students, this means, um, they've actually found out through the course of the class that they prefer front end web development, and they start working on JavaScript and full stack. And a few of our students have gone on to work it a or enter into apprenticeships that major tech companies, um, in those roles. And then we also have students who are focused on continuing in their development of their technical skill set with Python s. So we have some students who have actually entered into the Columbia University I t department on a big project. They're working on other students that have worked with freelance Web development agencies and projects really have a very diverse, talented group of students. And so from that we see that Everybody has different interests and definitely no one specific pathway but many successful pathways. >>How is Amazon Web services helping you guys? They contributing? They're giving you credits. What's their role here? >>Yeah, so they've provided kind of their expertise and support to the program. Just really excited to be collaborating with them on really looking at, How do we take this program to scale? Right. So we know that this is a problem that affect so many Americans, right? There's 77 million Americans currently with a criminal record. And so, um, you know, with the barriers to employment that come from having been incarcerated, I came to this work because I spent four years incarcerated for my own involvement in the marijuana industry in California Prior toe legalization. And so, you know, I saw a kind of these challenges, right? Firsthand of what it's like to try to get a job. And so, you know, we're just very invested in collaborating with AWS again. Thio bring this program to scale so we can really help uplift the communities that have been impacted by mass incarceration. >>It's interesting you talk about your personal experience, talk about this stigma that comes with that and how this breaks through that stigma. And this is really not only is a self esteem issues up this Israel, you could make more money. You have a career and literally the difference between going down or up is huge. Talk about the stigma and how this program changes the lives of the individual. >>Yeah, I think one important thing Thio consider hearing before understanding is this statement right? Is that unemployment or employment should say is the number one predictor of recidivism. Right? So we see that for people that have really jobs, they don't go back to prison on DSO. You know, we're just so invested in working on that and in terms of the stigma, uh, you know, it's just so prevalent, right? I can think through myself. Before I had going thio to prison, I had started to businesses. I was actually accepted. Thio go to Columbia University when I got out and I would apply the landscaping jobs, couldn't get to the final round, and the job offer would be rescinded, right? I mean, just this automatic sense of this person is not to be trusted because they have a history of incarceration. And so what we're really working on doing with our students is first redefining what people think it's possible, right? I saw this myself coming home from prison. The constant messaging is your life is over. You're never going to accomplish anything of meaning and so just kind of accept your lot on DSO. At first, we really focus on that with students in terms of sharing stories of success. Other people that we know that have taken this pathway on been really looking at providing leadership development. So when our students do enter into these companies, they're really able to service leaders and for people to understand that while you may have these assumptions because of depictions of people that have been incarcerated in the media, the end of they formerly incarcerated people, our brothers, sisters, family members and really deserve a chance in life. >>Yeah, And I got to say, you know, as someone who loves technology and been, uh, computer science when his early days, you know, there was a ladder, you have to have a requisite level now. I mean, you literally could be six weeks in and be fluent on Cloud Computing Administration as three bucket configurations. I mean, there are so many things that so many opportunities if you have some intelligence and some drive you're in, I mean, it's just Z pretty right? It's right there. It's great. It's attainable. It's not a fantasy, it's it's doable. And programs like yours are awesome. My hat's off to you for doing that. Thanks for sharing. >>Definitely. Thank you so much for having me >>final question before we go, How does people get involved? Can you share a minute? Give a plug for what you guys are doing? How do I get involved? How do I give support? Take a minute to >>get? Definitely. I mean, I think at the core like the most important thing that anybody can dio right is to look within the organizations that they work and work at and find out what your fair chance hiring practices are and see if if there's an opportunity to hire our students or other formerly incarcerated students. E think it also were very engaged, as I mentioned in our mentorship program s so people can confined US center for Justice that, uh, Colombia dot e d u on board, you know reach out, tow us about the mentorship program and really begin toe talk about this and share the stories of those who have succeeded and provide support Thio other people that will be returning home. >>All right. And thank you very much. Just a fur coat. Check it out. Columbia University 18 McDonald, Program manager. Thanks for joining us. I'm John for here in the Cube Cube Coverage Cube. Virtual coverage of reinvent 2020. Thanks for watching.

>>from around the globe. >>It's the Cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel and AWS. Yeah. Hello and welcome back to the cubes. Live coverage of AWS reinvent 2020. It's virtual this year. Normally, were there in person doing the interviews, getting the signal from the noise. I'm Sean for your host. And where the cube virtual Got a great guest here. Aidan McDonald, Program manager, Justice through code, the center of justice at the Columbia University. Um, this is a great story, Aiden. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate you taking the time to join me. >>Thanks so much for having me, John. >>So first of all, talk about the mission of justice through code. This is such an awesome program. It really is impactful. It's one of those examples where, you know, people want to change the world. This is one. You can actually do it. And with code, take us through the mission. >>Yeah, so I think to understand the mission here, you have to understand a little bit about the problem, right? So the United States has 5% of the world's population, 25% of the global prison population when people come home from prison, they're confronted with the reality that it's just very difficult to find jobs right. We have unemployment rates that are stratospherically higher than for the general population. And so, at the core of what we're doing in our mission is really to provide a pathway to career track employment for formerly incarcerated individuals to help support them and their families, and also to begin to change the negative stereotypes that air attached to the formerly incarcerated. >>It's an upwardly mobile mindset growth mindset. Also, there's new skills always hard to do that right. Given the environmental conditions. What skills are you guys delivering? Take us through how it works. Give us a feel for kind of the skill sets and what gets what happens. >>Yeah, so we focused the program kind of in two distinct ways. So we have the technical skills aspect of the curriculum and the interpersonal skills. Soas faras. The technical skills go. We teach a version of a course that's taught to current Columbia MBA students eso that is set up. We teach the fundamentals of programming python in what we call phase one of the program. Then we move on to a P I s and data analysis. And then from there we do a Capstone software project. And for that project, groups of two or more students come together. Really? They conceptualize the design on day execute on building this project. And during that phase, of course, we actually pair students with mentors who are season software engineers from many of the top tech companies in the US And then in terms of the story in terms of the interpersonal skills, um, you know, we really focus on the skills that are necessary to success in the tech workforce s Oh, this is, you know, resumes, cover letters, interviewing skills and also really understanding that for many of our students, they don't have the networks that so maney people are fortunate enough to have that have gone through a traditional educational pathway. So we bring in guest speakers from different corporations. Um, and you know, having the students work with mentors there really able to start to build that network to support themselves in their career transition when they complete the program. >>You know what's really amazing about what you're doing is, and this really is so timing The timing is perfect. Um, is that with the cloud and the tech scene, where we're at now is you don't you can come out. You can level up pretty quickly with things. In other words, you know, you could have someone go to an Ivy League school and be all the pedigree, and it doesn't matter because the skills now are different. You literally could be a surfing and be a couch potato surfing TV and get online and get an Amazon degree and through educate and and come out, make six figures. I mean, so there is definitely a path here. It's not like it's a slog. It's not like it's a huge leap, so the timing is perfect. We're seeing that across the board. There's more empty jobs, opening cybersecurity, cloud computing administration, and with land in all these cool services, it's just gonna get easier. We hear that we see that clearly. What are some of the examples can you share of the graduates? What have they gone on to do? You mentioned some of the big tech companies take us through that, that tipping point when the success kicks in? >>Yeah, so you know, as I mentioned one of the really integral parts of our program. Is this mentorship? Right? So students finished the program. They often continue to work on their final projects, um, in conjunction with their mentors and then really focused during that time period on developing the skill sets that they'll need to have entering into junior level software development roles a tech companies For some of our students, this means, um, they've actually found out through the course of the class that they prefer front end web development and they start working on JavaScript and full stack. And a few of our students have gone on to work it a or enter into apprenticeships that major tech companies, um, in those roles. And then we also have students who are focused on continuing in their development of their technical skill set with Python s. So we have some students who have actually entered into the Columbia University I T department on a big project. They're working on other students that have worked with freelance Web development agencies and projects, um, really have a very diverse, talented group of students. And so from that we see that everybody has different interests and definitely no one specific pathway, but many successful pathways. >>How is Amazon Web services helping you guys? They contributing? They're giving you credits. What's their role here? >>Yeah, so they've provided kind of their expertise and support to the program. Just really excited to be collaborating with them on really looking at, How do we take this program to scale? Right. So we know that this is a problem that affect so many Americans, right? There's 77 million Americans currently with a criminal record. And so, um, you know, with the barriers to employment that come from having been incarcerated, I came to this work because I spent four years incarcerated for my own involvement in the marijuana industry in California Prior toe legalization. And so, you know, I saw kind of these challenges right firsthand of what it's like to try to get a job. And so, you know, we're just very invested in collaborating with AWS again. Thio bring this program to scale so we can really help uplift the communities that have been impacted by mass incarceration. >>It's interesting you talk about your personal experience, talk about this stigma that comes with that and how this breaks through that stigma and this is really not only is a self esteem issues up this Israel, you could make more money. You have a career and literally the difference between going down or up is huge. Talk about the stigma and how this program changes the lives of the individual. >>Yeah, I think one important thing Thio consider hearing before understanding is this statement, right? Is that, um, unemployment or employment should say is the number one predictor of recidivism. Right. So we see that for people that have really jobs, they don't go back to prison on dso Um you know, we're just so invested in working on that and in terms of the stigma, um, you know, it's just so prevalent, right? I could think through myself. Before I had gone thio to prison, I had started to businesses. I was actually accepted. Thio go to Columbia University when I got out and I would apply the landscaping jobs, couldn't get to the final round, and the job offer would be rescinded, right? I mean, it's just this automatic sense of this person is not to be trusted because they have a history of incarceration And so what we're really working on doing with our students is first redefining what people think it's possible, right? I saw this myself coming home from prison. The constant messaging is your life is over. You're never going to accomplish anything of meaning and so just kind of accept your lot on DSO. At first, we really focus on that with students in terms of sharing stories of success. Other people that we know that have taken this pathway on been really looking at providing leadership development. So when our students do enter into these companies, they're really able to service leaders and for people to understand that while you may have these assumptions because of depictions of people that have been incarcerated in the media, the end of they formerly incarcerated people, our brothers, sisters, family members and really deserve a chance in life. >>Yeah, And I got to say, you know, as someone who loves technology and been, uh, computer science when his early days, you know, there was a ladder, you have to have a requisite level now. I mean, you literally could be six weeks in and be fluent on Cloud Computing Administration as three bucket configurations. I mean, there are so many things that so many opportunities if you have some intelligence and some drive you're in, I mean, it's just Z pretty right? It's right there. It's great. It's attainable. It's not a fantasy, it's it's doable. And programs like yours are awesome. My hat's off to you for doing that. Thanks for sharing. >>Definitely. Thank you so much for having me >>final question Before we go, How does people get involved? Can you share a minute? Give a plug for what you guys are doing? How do I get involved? How do I give support? Take a minute to >>get? Definitely. I mean, I think at the core like the most important thing that anybody can dio right is to look within the organizations that they work and work at and find out what your fair chance hiring practices are and see if if there's an opportunity to hire our students or other formerly incarcerated students. E think also were very engaged, as I mentioned in our mentorship program s so people can confined US center for Justice that, um, Colombia dot e d u on bond, you know, reach out, tow us about the mentorship program and really begin toe talk about this and share the stories of those who have succeeded and provide support Thio other people that will be returning home. >>All right. And thank you very much. Just a fur coat. Check it out. Columbia University 18 McDonald, Program manager. Thanks for joining us. I'm John for here in the Cube Cube Coverage Cube. Virtual coverage of reinvent 2020. Thanks for watching.

>> Live from San Francisco. It's the cube covering IBM thing twenty nineteen brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to the live coverage here in Mosconi North in San Francisco for IBM. Think this. The cubes coverage. I'm Jeffrey David. Launching a too great guest here. Carlos. Gavel, gavel. A chief date. Officer Clara, Columbia and Carlos. See? Good. Engage your manager. IBM data Science elite team a customer of IBM country around data science. Welcome to the Cube. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having us. So we'll hear the street, the street to shut down a i N E. Where's the big theme? Multi cloud. But it's all about the data everywhere. People trying to put end to end solutions together to solve real business problems. Date is at the heart of all this moving date around from cloud to cloud using. Aye, aye. And technology get insights out of that. So take a minute to explain your situation, but you got to try to do. >> Okay. Okay, Perfect. Right now, we're working out a lot about the business thing because we need to use the machine learning models or all the artificial intelligence toe. Take best decisions for the company. Way. We're working with Carlo in a charming mother in order to know how how come with a boy the customers left the company Because for us it's very important to maintain our our customer toe. Now, how they're how are the cables is from them. There are two facility intelligences is next selling way to do it that way. Have a lot of challenge about that because, you know, we have a lot of data, different systems, that they're running the data way need to put all the information together to run them to run the mother's. The team that Carlo is leaving right now is helping to us a lot because we WeII know how to handle that. We know howto clean the data when you have to do the right governess for the data on the IBM iniquity is very compromised with us in there in order to do that safely. That is one of the union that is very close to us right now. She was working a lot with my team in order to run the models. You saying she was doing a lot of four. I mean, over fight on right now we are trained to do it in over the system, running this park on DH that is they? They Good way that we are. We are thinking that is going to get the gold for us way Need to maintain our customers. >> So years the largest telecommunications piece Claro in Mexico for boys and home services. Is that segments you guys are targeting? Yeah, Yeah. Scope. Size of how big is that? >> Clarisa? Largest company in Colombia For telecommunication. We have maybe fifty million customers in Colombia. More than fifty percent of the market marketer also way have many maybe two point five millions off forms in Colombia. That is more than fifty percent of the customers for from services on. Do you know that it's a big challenge for us because the competitors are all the time. Tryinto take our customers on DH the charm or they'll have toe. How's the boy that and how to I hope to do their artificial intelligence to do it much learning. It's a very good way to do that. >> So classic problem and telecommunications is Charon, right? So it's a date. A problem? Yeah, but So how did it all come about? So these guys came to you? >> Yeah. They help The game does. We got together. We talked about the problem and in turn was at the top right. These guys have a ton of data, so what we did is the team got together. We have really the way to data sensibly team works is we really helped clients in three areas. It's all about the right skills, the right people, the right tools and then the right process. So we put together a team. We put together some agile approaches on what we're going to do on DH. Then we'd get started by spinning up in environment. We took some data and we took there. And there's a lot of data is terabytes of data. We took their user data way, took their use users usage data, which is like how many text, cellphone and then bill on day that we pulled all that together and environment. Then the data scientists alongside what Carlos is team really worked on the problem, and they addressed it with, you know, machine learning, obviously target. In turn, they tried a variety of models, But actually, boost ended up being one of the better approaches on DH. They came up with a pretty good accuracy about nineties ninety two. Percent precision on the model. Predicting unpredictable turn. Yeah. >> So what did you do with that? That >> that that is a very good question because the company is preparing to handle that. I have a funny history. I said today to the business people. Okay, these customers are going to leave the company. Andi, I forget about that on DH. Two months later, I was asking Okay, what happened? They say, Okay, your model is very good. All the customers goes, >> Oh, my God, What >> this company with that they weren't working with a with information. That is the reason that we're thinking that the good ways to fame for on the right toe the left because twist them which is therefore, pulls the purposes toe Montana where our customers And in that case, we lose fifty thousand customers because we didn't do nothing Where we are close in the circle, we are taking care about that prescriptive boys could have tto do it on. OK, maybe that is her name. Voice problem. We need to correct them to fix the problem in orderto avoid that. But the fetus first parties toe predict toe. Get any score for the charm on Tau handled that with people obviously working. Also at the root cause analysis because way need to charm, way, need to fix from their road, >> Carla. So walk us through the scope of, like, just the project, because this is a concern we see in the industry a lot of data. How do I attack it? What's the scoop? You just come in and just into a data lake. How do you get to the value? These insights quickly because, honestly, they're starving for insights would take us through that quick process. >> Well, you know, every every problems with different. We helped hundreds of clients in different ways. But this pig a problem. It was a big data problem because we knew we had a lot of data. They had a new environment, but some of the data wasn't there. So what we did was way spun up a separate environment. We pulled some of the big data in there. We also pulled some of the other data together on DH. We started to do analysis on that kind of separately in the cloud, which is a little different, but we're working now to push that down into their Duke Data Lake, because not all the data is there, but some of the data is there, and we want to use some of that >> computer that almost to audit. Almost figure out what you want, what you want to pull in first, absolutely tie into the business on the business side. What would you guys like waiting for the answers? Or was that some of the on your side of process? How did it go down? >> I'm thinking about our business way. We're talking a little bit about about that about their detective tow hundred that I see before data within. That is a very good solution for that because we need infested toe, have us in orderto get the answers because finally we have a question we have question quite by. The customers are leaving us. Andi. What is data on the data handed in the good in a good way with governor? Dance with data cleaning with the rhyme orders toe. Do that on DH Right now, our concern is Business Section a business offer Because because the solution for the companies that way always, the new problems are coming from the data >> started ten years ago, you probably didn't have a new cluster to solve this problem. Data was maybe maybe isn't a data warehouse that maybe it wasn't And you probably weren't chief data officer back then. You know that roll kind of didn't exist, so a lot has changed in the last ten years. My question is, do you first of all be adjusting your comment on that? But do you see a point in which you could now take remedial action or maybe even automate some of that remedial action using machine intelligence and that data cloud or however else you do it to actually take action on behalf of the brand before humans who are without even human involvement foresee a day? >> Yeah. So just a comment on your thought about the times I've been doing technology for twenty something years, and data science is something has been around, but it's kind of evolved in software development. My thought is, uh, you know, we have these rolls of data scientists, but a lot of the feature engineering Data prep does require traditional people that were devious. And now Dave engineers and variety of skills come together, and that's what we try to do in every project. Just add that comment. A ce faras predicted ahead of time. Like, I think you're trying to say what data? Help me understand >> you. You know, you've got a ninety three percent accuracy. Okay, So I presume you take that, You give it to the business businesses, Okay? Let's maybe, you know, reach out to them, maybe do a little incentive or you know what kind of action in the machines take action on behalf of your brand? Do you foresee a day >> so that my thought is for Clara, Columbia and Carlos? But but obviously this is to me. Remain is the predictive models we build will obviously be deployed. And then it would interact with their digital mobile applications. So in real time, it'll react for the customers. And then obviously, you know, you want to make sure that claro and company trust that and it's making accurate predictions. And that's where a lot more, you know, we have to do some model validation and evaluation of that so they can begin to trust those predictions. I think is where >> I want to get your thoughts on this because you're doing a lot of learnings here. So can you guys each taking minutes playing the key Learnings from this As you go through the process? Certainly in the business side, there's a big imperative to do this. You want to have a business outcome that keeps the users there. But what did you learn? What was some of the learnings? You guys gone from the project? >> They the most important learning front from the company that wass teen in the data that that sound funny, but waiting in an alley, garbage in garbage, out on DH that wass very, very important for other was one of the things that we learn that we need to put cleaning date over the system. Also, the government's many people forget about the governments of the governments of the data on DH. Right now, we're working again with IBM in our government's >> so data quality problem? Yeah, they fight it and you report in to your CEO or the CEO. Seo, your spear of the CIA is OK. That >> is it. That's on another funny history, because because the company the company is right now, I am working for planning. This is saying they were working for planning for the company. >> Business planning? >> Yeah, for business planning. I was coming for an engineer engineering on DH. Right now, I'm working for a planning on trying to make money for the company, and you know that it's an engineer thinking how to get more money for the company I was talking about. So on some kind of analysis ticks, that is us Partial Analytics on I want you seeing that in engineer to know how the network handling how the quality of the network on right now using the same software this acknowledge, to know which is the better point to do sales is is a good combination finally and working. Ralph of planning on my boss, the planning the planet is working for the CEO and I heard about different organizations. Somebody's in Financial City owes in financial or the video for it is different. That depends from the company. Right now, I'm working for planning how to handle things, to make more money for the company, how to tow hundred children. And it is interesting because all the knowledge that I have engineering is perfect to do it >> Well, I would argue that's the job of a CDO is to figure out how to make money with data. Are saying money. Yeah. Absolute number one. Anyway, start there. >> Yeah, The thing we always talked about is really proving value. It starts with that use case. Identify where the real value is and then waken. You know, technology could come in the in the development work after that. So I agree with hundred percent. >> Carlos. Thanks for coming in. Largest telecommunication in Colombia. Great. Great customer reference. Carlo thinking men to explain real quick in a plug in for your data science elite team. What do you guys do? How do you engage? What? Some of the projects you work on Grey >> out. So we were a team of about one hundred data scientists worldwide. We work side by side with clients. In our job is to really understand the problem from end and help in all areas from skills, tools and technique. And we won't prototype in a three agile sprints. We use an agile methodology about six to eight weeks and we tied. It developed a really We call it a proof of value. It's it's not a M v P just yet or or poc But at the end of the day we prove out that we could get a model. We can do some prediction. We get a certain accuracy and it's gonna add value to the >> guys. Just >> It's not a freebie. It actually sorry. I'm sorry. It's not for paint service. It's a freebie is no cough you've got. But I don't like to use >> free way. Don't charge, but >> But it's something that clients could take advantage of if they're interesting problem and maybe eventually going to do some business. >> If you the largest telecommunication provider in the country, to get a freebie and then three keys, You guys dig in because its practitioners, real practitioners with the right skills, working on problems that way. Claro, >> Colombia's team. They were amazing. In Colombia. We had a really good time. Six to eight weeks working on it. You know, a problem on those guys. All loved it, too. They were. They were. Before they knew it. They were coding and python. And are they ready? Knew a lot of this stuff, but they're digging in with the team and became well together. >> This is the secret to modernization of digital transformation, Having sales process is getting co creating together. Absolutely. Guys do a great job, and I think this is a trend will see more of. Of course, the cubes bring you live coverage here in San Francisco at Mosconi. Nor That's where I said it is. They're shutting down the streets for IBM. Think twenty here in San Francisco, more cube coverage after the short break right back.

>> Announcer: Live, from Washington, DC, it's the cube. Covering dot next conference. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back to DC everybody, this is the Nutanix dot next conference #NEXTConf, and this is the cube, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm here with my co-host Stu Miniman. Dr. Arthur Langer is here, he's a professor at Columbia University, and a cube alum. Good to see you, thanks very much for coming on. >> Great to be back. >> Dave: Appreciate your time. So, interesting conversations going on at dot next. People talking about cloud and you hear a lot about virtualization and infrastructure. We're going to up level it a bit. You're giving a talk-- you're hosting a panel today, and you're also giving a talk on strategic IT. Using IT as a competitive weapon. It wasn't that long ago where people were saying does IT matter. We obviously know it matters. What's your research showing, what is your activity demonstrating about IT and how is it a strategic initiative? >> Well, if you were to first look at what goes on on board meetings today, I would say, and I think I mentioned this last time, the three prominent discussions at a board is how can I use technology for strategic advantage, how can I use predictive analytics, and how are you securing and protecting us? And when you look at that, all three of those ultimately fall in the lap of the information technology people. Now you might say digital or other parts of it, but the reality is all of this sits at the heart of information technology. And if you look at many of us in that world, we've learned very efficiently and very good how to support things. But now to move into this other area of driving business, of taking risks, of becoming better marketers. Wow, what an opportunity that is for information technology leadership. >> Dave: So, obviously you believe that IT is a strategic advantage. Is it sustainable though? You know, I was sort of tongue-in-cheek joking about the Nick Car book, but the real premise of his book was it's not a sustainable competitive advantage. Is that true in your view? >> I don't believe that at all. I live and die by that old economics curve called the S curve. In which you evaluate where your product life is going to be. I think if you go back and you look at the industrial revolution, we are very early. I think that the changes, the acceleration of changes brought on by technological innovations, will continue to haunt businesses and provide these opportunities well past our life. How's that? So, if anybody thinks that this is a passing fad, my feeling is they're delusional. We're just warming up. >> So it can be a sustainable competitive advantage, but you have to jump S curves and be willing to jump S curves at the right time. Is that a fair difference? >> Yeah, the way I would say it to you, the S curve is shrinking, so you have less time to enjoy your victories. You know, the prediction is that-- how long will people last on a dow 500 these days? Maybe two, three years, as opposed to 20, 30, 40 years. Can we change fast enough, and is there anything wrong with the S curve ending and starting a new one? Businesses reinventing themselves constantly. Change a norm. >> Professor Langer, one of the challenges we hear from customers is keeping up with that change is really tough. How do you know what technologies, do you have the right skill set? What advice are you giving? How do people try to keep up with the change, understand what they should be doing internally versus turning to partners to be able to handle. >> I think it's energy and culture and excitement. That's the first thing that I think a lot of people are missing. You need to sell this to your organizations. You need to establish why this is such a wonderful time. Alright, and then you need to get the people in, between the millenials and the baby boomers and the gen x's, and you got to get them to work together. Because we know, from research right now, that without question, the millenials will need to move into management positions faster than any of their predecessors. Because of retirements and all of the other things that are going on. But the most important thing, which is where I see IT needing to move in, is you can't just launch one thing. You have to launch lots of things. And this is the old marketing concept, right. You don't bat a thousand. And IT needs to come out of its shell in that area and say I have to launch five, six, eight, 10 initiatives. Some of them will make it. Some of them won't. Can you imagine private equity or venture people trying to launch every company and be successful? We all know that in a market of opportunity, there are risks. And to establish that as an exciting thing So, you know what, it comes back to leadership in many ways. >> Great point, because if you're not having those failures, your returns are going to be minuscule. If you're only investing in things that are sure things, then it's pretty much guaranteed to have low single-digit returns, if that. >> Look what happened at Ford. They did everything pretty well. They never took any of the money, right, but they changed CEO's because they didn't get involved in driverless cars enough. I mean these are the things that we're-- If you're trying to catch up, it's already over. So how do you predict what's coming. And who has that? It's the data. It's the way we handle the data. It's the way we secure the data. Who's going to do that? >> So, that brings me to the dark side of all this enthusiasm, which is security. You see things like IOT, you know the bad guys have AI as well. Thoughts on security, discussions that are going on in the board room. How CIOs should be thinking about communicating to the board regarding security. >> I've done a lot of work in this area. And whether that falls into the CISO, the Chief Information Security Officer, and where they report. But the bottom line is how are they briefing their boards. And once again, anybody that knows anything about security knows that you're not going to keep 'em out. It's going to be an ongoing process. It's going to be things like okay what do we do when we have these type >> response >> How do we respond to that? How do we predict things? How do we stay ahead of that? And that is the more of the norm. And what we see, and I can give you sort of an analogy, You know when the President comes to speak in a city, what do they, you know, they close down streets, don't they? They create the unpredictability. And I think one of the marvelous challenges for IT is to create architectures, and I've been writing about this, which change so that those that are trying to attack us and they're looking for the street to take inside of the network. We got to kind of have a more dynamic architecture. To create unpredictability. So these are all of the things that come into strategy, language, how to educate our boards. How to prepare the next generation of those board members. And where will the technology people sit in those processes. >> Yeah, we've had the chance to interview some older companies. Companies 75, 150 years old, that are trying to become software companies. And they're worried about the AirBnB's of the world disrupting what they're doing. How do you see the older companies keeping pace and trying to keep up with some of young software companies? >> Sure, how do you move 280 thousand people at a major bank, for example. How do you do that? And I think there's several things that people are trying. One is investing in startups with options to obtain them and purchase them. The other is to create, for lack of a better word, labs. Parts of the company that are not as controlled, or part of the predominant culture. Which as we know historically will hold back the company. Because they will just typically try to protect the domain that has worked for them so well. So those are the two main things. Creating entities within the companies that have an ability to try new things. Or investing entrepreneurially, or even intrapreneurally with new things with options to bring them in. And then the third one, and this last one is very difficult, sort of what Apple did. One of the things that has always haunted many large companies is their install base. The fact that they're trying to support the older technologies because they don't want to lose their install base. Well remember what Steve Jobs did. He came in with a new architecture and he says either you're with me or you're not. And to some extent, which is a very hard decision, you have to start looking at that. And challenge your install base to say this is the new way, we'll help you get there, but at some point we can't support those older systems. >> One of my favorite lines in the cube, Don Tapps, God created the world in six days, but he didn't have an install base. Right, because that handcuffs companies and innovation, in a lot of cases. I mean, you saw that, you've worked at big companies. So I want to ask you, Dr. Langer, we had this, for the last 10 years, this consumerization of IT. The Amazon effect. You know, the whole mobile thing. Is technology, is IT specifically, getting less complex or more complex? >> I think it's getting far more complex. I think what has happened is business people sometimes see the ease of use. The fact that we have an interface with them, which makes life a lot easier. We see more software that can be pushed together. But be careful. We have found out with cybersecurity problems how extraordinarily complicated this world is. With that power comes complexities. Block chain, other things that are coming. It's a powerful world, but it's a complicated one. And it's not one where you want amateurs running the back end of your businesses. >> Okay, so let's talk about the role of those guys running. We've talked a lot about data. You've seen the emergence of the chief data officer, particularly in regulated industries, but increasingly in non-regulated businesses. Who should be running the technology show? Is it a business person? Is it a technologist? Is it some kind of unicorn blend of those? >> I just don't think, from what we've seen by trying marketing people, by trying business people, that they can really ultimately grasp the significance of the technical aspects of this. It's almost like asking someone who's not a doctor to run a hospital. I know theoretically you could possibly do that, but think about that. So you need that technology. I'm not caught up on the titles, but I am concerned, and I've written an article in the Wall Street Journal a couple years ago, that there are just too many c-level people floating around owning this thing. And I think, whether you call it the chief technologist, or the executive technical person, or the chief automation individual, that all those people have to be talking to each other, and have to lead up to someone who's not only understanding the strategy, but really understands the back end of keeping the lights on, and the security and everything else. The way I've always said it, the IT people have the hardest job in the world. They're fighting a two-front war. Because both of those don't necessarily mesh nicely together. Tell me another area of an organization that is a driver and a supporter at the same time. You look at HR, they're a supporter. You look at marketing, they're a driver. So the complexities of this are not just who you are, but what you're doing at any moment in time. So you could have a support person that's doing something, but at one moment, in that person's function, could be doing a driving, risk-taking responsibility. >> So what are some of the projects you're working on now? What's exciting you? >> Well, the whole idea of how to drive that strategy, how to take risks, the digital disruption era, is a tremendous opportunity. This is our day for the-- because most companies are not really clear what to do. Socially, I'm looking very closely at smart cities. This is another secret wave of things that are happening. How a city's going to function. Within five, seven years, they're predicting that 75% of the world's population will live in major cities. And you won't have to work in the city and live there. You could live somewhere else. So cities will compete. And it's all about the data, and automation. And how do organizations get closer with their governments? Because our governments can't afford to implement these things. Very interesting stuff. Not to mention the issues of the socially excluded. And underserved populations in those cities. And then finally, how does this mess with cyber risk? And how does that come together to the promotion of that role in organizations. Just a few things, and then way a little bit behind, there's of course block chain. How is that going to affect the world that we live in? >> Just curious, your thoughts on the future of jobs. You know, look about what automation's happening, kind of the hollowing out of the middle class. The opportunities and risks there. >> I think it has to do with the world of what I call supply chain. And it's amazing that we still see companies coming to me saying I can't fill positions. Particularly in the five-year range. And an inability to invest in younger talent to bring them in there. Our educational institutions obviously will be challenged. We're in a skills-based market. How do they adopt? How do we change that? We see programs like IBM launching new collar. Where they're actually considering non-degree'd people. How do universities start working together to get closer, in my opinion, to corporations. Where they have to work together. And then there is, let's be careful. There are new horizons. Space, new things to challenge that technology will bring us. 20 years ago I was at a bank which I won't mention, about the closing of branch banks. Because we thought that technology would take over online banking. Well, 20 years later, online banking's done everything we predicted, and we're opening more branches than ever before. Be careful. So, I'm a believer that, with new things come new opportunities. The question is how do governments and corporations and educational institutions get closer together. This is going to be critical as we move forward. Or else the have nots are going to grow, and that's a problem. >> Alright, we have to leave it there. Dr. Arthur Langer, sir, thanks very much for coming in. To the cube >> It's always a pleasure to be here >> It's a pleasure to have you. Alright, keep it right there everybody, we'll be back with our next guest. Dave Vollante, Stu Miniman, be right back.

(upbeat electronic music) >> Voiceover: Live from New Orleans. It's theCUBE, covering VeeamON 2017. Brought to you by Veeam. >> We're back, Mario Angers is here. He's the senior manager of systems at the University of British Columbia. Welcome back to theCUBE, good to see you. >> Thank you, thank you. >> So how's VeeamON going? >> So far, so good. It's fabulous, actually. I love the event, cause it's not so big that you can't talk to a lot of people, and it's small enough that you get to know a lot of different folks. >> Yeah, it feels bigger, they're saying the number's 3,000. It feels bigger than that to me, but at the same time it is kind of intimate. >> Yeah no, I went to their first event, so certainly this is very different than what it was like. I think their first event was 2014? So, yeah, that's very good. >> So, tell us what's going on up at British Columbia. What's hot these days? >> Well, I spoke to this a little bit yesterday during the partner session, right? So, British Columbia's in a bit of unique position, because we have laws that prevent us from storing data outside Canada, right? So up until recently, we didn't have any of the large service providers, so we had to basically, to some degree, reinvent the wheel. So if wanted to provide or consume cloud, we had to basically build it, which is what the University of British Columbia did a few years ago. And, because we're the largest in BC, we were doing it at scale already, so we were approached by an organization inside British Columbia called BCNET, which basically services all the other higher ed, and they asked us if we wanted to provide cloud services to the community, and we've been doing this for almost three years now. >> Dave: As a partner to BCED? >> Yeah, to BCNET, yeah. >> Dave: BCNET, yeah. >> So we're basically the service operator, they're the service provider, right, but we do everything, we take care of the marketing, the communication. >> And Mark, could you walk us through, what's that stack look like? I did an interview with the OpenStack Summit with a Massachusetts higher ed cloud that they built that used OpenStack as the underlying piece. What's yours built on? >> So we went with, we're a VMware shop. So we went with the cloud directory as the front end basically, but the back end is a combination of Cisco servers, HP servers, net op storage, HP storage, data domain for our backup. Of course we use Veeam for our backup software, and then it's VMware stack end-to-end. >> Okay, it was funny, the gentlemen that I interviewed, actually, was the one who created VCD, when he was at VMware, so I'm just curious to see your viewpoint. One of the things we use to say is, cloud is not virtualization plus, but if you build a stack, if you can have kind of the orchestration and management pieces... So you feel you have a cloud, what differentiates what you have today, versus what you could have built five years ago? >> Well, I think five years ago, it would have been really challenging to provide the services in a self service capability to our end users. So today we can do that. The only involvement we have is we provision a virtual data center for our end user, and then it's self service from there, for them. We also use NSX, which is also a VMware product, so it's self service end-to-end. >> And how has your availability become better with what you have today versus what you had before? >> Veeam is a significant partner of ours, so we've been a Veeam customer for probably five or six years now, on the backup and restore side, probably about four years, and I would say it's made our jobs a lot easier. So historically our legacy backup system was just a bear and a monster to manage. So it required a huge amount of time to not just manage, but understand how it was done. With Veeam, they've really simplified that process, and we have a very large environment, and we basically have one guy managing backup. >> So it used to be, well that's pretty good productivity. So it used to be the conversation around, "Well, we're meeting our backup within the window." That was sort of the challenge. >> Mario: Yep. >> And now increasingly, it's, we want to get as close as RPO zero as possible for certain apps, not everything, as it's too expensive, and we want a much faster recovery time objective. So can you talk to us, first of all, do you converse in those terms with your line of business, and have you been able to affect those metrics? >> So, we're not quite there yet, from a sophistication, or a maturity perspective, We still have a bit of a ways to go to get there. However, can we now guarantee to our folks that we'll be able to bring workloads back within the service level that we have with our customers? Absolutely. So we can provide peace of mind now, knowing that if we lose something we can bring it back very quickly, as it's actually being restored to the production environment. >> So where do you want to go from here? It sounds like you've got the productivity thing nailed. You got one person managing all this, and you're able to meet those SLAs. What's next? >> I would say next for us is, so today we provide what I'll call a managed service around backup. So basically, the team that I manage is looking after backup for all the clients within the service, so our next step is really to provide them the ability to manage that themselves. So we're looking to do that over the summer. Once we do that, then we want to start partnering with Veeam as well and start looking at their Cloud Connect product. We've been in discussions for some time now about how we're going to do that, and that's the evolution of that. And then building on that, we're being also asked to add to the portfolio of services that we provide, and one of those services is disaster recovery as a service. So that's becoming very, very critical to the province. Vancouver is basically like San Francisco or Los Angeles. We live in one of the biggest fault zones in the world, so at one point it will happen. So now we've basically provisioned a data center in the middle of the province where it's outside your quake zone, so now we can start providing those services to our community. >> Could you speak to the relationship with Veeam with the storage arrays that you have? What's the interaction there? >> So when we went to Veeam it was really important that the full integration is there with the storage vendors that we have. So originally we were primarily in that app shop. So in that, integration was in place. So when we started looking at moving off of tape and moving onto disk for backup, we basically narrowed the list down to vendors that also fully integrated with Veeam. So we chose Data Domain, an EMC product. We've been very happy. And just recently we went to RFPing, we basically selected a new vendor for virtualization storage. And the same rules apply. Full integration needs to be in place. We need to be able to know that we're going to be able to read the data off of the storage arrays, and then move it to the backup. Without that integration, there's no guarantees that we can do that successfully. >> So a data demand customer, happy with that as the backup appliance, fast, great data reduction... Didn't EMC get you in a headlock and say, "You got to buy Networker and Avamar," and really push hard? >> Mario: Oh they tried. >> Of course, they did try. >> Okay, so what led to your decision to go with Veeam? >> The complexity of those solutions. So we're not going to reinvent how we're structured or how we're architected just to put a backup solution in place. And if you look at a lot of the other really big vendors in the marketplace today, that's basically the expectation, is okay well, you're built out like this, now you're going to have to do this in order to consume our solution. That just wasn't an option for us. >> And some people would say, "Well I get one thrown to choke and that simplifies things," but you don't buy that. >> Mario: No, not at all. I think it keeps vendors honest if you have more than one. It gives you some leverage to be able to negotiate. And to be quite honest with you, I've yet to find another vendor that provides the level of quality and support that Veeam does. And they're growing as a company, and I expect that things will change to some degree, because that's part of growing. However, so far, the experience that we've had is the same we had four years ago when they were a relatively small company. >> Can you give an example of what resonates with you as customer in terms of that service experience? >> I think as a bunch of IT guys, we think we know everything, right? So when we originally acquired Veeam, we thought, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get what you're telling us, but we know better than you do." So we went ahead and implemented based on what we felt was right. It wasn't right. So they didn't come over and say, "Told you so," or "We're not going to help you now, cause you decided to go this way." No, they provided us with all the support we needed in order to actually change what we had done, and there was never any finger pointing or any... It was basically, "You're a partner, we're going to help you be successful." And that's very rare, I think, in the industry today. >> Yeah, really, respecting sort of that you wanted to do it a certain way, and now I learned. >> Yeah, they did try to talk us out of it, but we decided to move in that direction anyway. To me it's like, yeah, it's a fantastic relationship. >> Anything that you've seen here today, or this week, the announcements, that was really interesting and exciting to you? >> Yeah, I think a lot of the things that are coming in Version 10 are going to allow us to expand on the things that we provide to our customers. For example, all the stuff they talk about around availability, primarily disaster recovery stuff, which is such a big thing for us. So I think this is going to add significant value. >> Mario, anything either Veeam or your vendor ecosystem that you're looking for that would make your life easier? You seem to have a pretty opinionated view of what you need. >> So to me is, we're it the business of solving problems. So as a vendor, you're not going to help me solve my problem unless you understand what my problem is. In my experience, I'm not going to say with all vendors, but with a lot of vendors in the past couple of years, is basically the caliber of the sales people I feel have changed. So it used to be that the sales folks used to be pretty knowledgeable about what they sold. Now it feels like all they're trying to do is make their quarter. And as a customer it's becoming frustrating, because I don't want to be sold to. I want someone that's going to help me solve problems, and deliver solutions to my customers. >> You must get a lot of different storage infrastructures, but NetApp is a primary supplier, of course. >> Mario: Yep, it's still very big in our environment. >> We just had NetApp on with Veeam, and they were talking about their relationship. As a customer, how do you find the relationship between Veeam and NetApp? Is there tangible value that you see in that working relationship? How do you interact with those two different companies? >> Oh of course there's tangible value. So we're an enterprise customer, right? And as we scaled within our environment, we came into a bottleneck between Veeam and NetApp. And all we had to do was expose it to both companies, and they worked together to resolve the issue. And I believe it was Version Nine that they released a fix for it. But that's been the experience, is the work that happens behind the scenes, we're not exposed to that, it always creates a positive experience for us in the end. >> We had Dave Russell on earlier from Gartner, and he was talking about pricing, and licensing, and specifically socket-based pricing, and said that that had a big impact on the marketplace. From a customer standpoint, what can you share with us about licensing, pricing, strategies that you employ, and maybe advice for other customers? >> So I think a lot of vendors are starting to try to simplify their licensing. Because if you look, I'm not going to pick on anyone specific, but they had, "Okay well we're going to sell you a number of VMs and then the storage on top of that." And it's like, okay that doesn't make sense. I don't want a PhD in math to be able to calculate how much I'm going to spend for licensing. So give me a model that is easy to manage, and I'm going to know exactly what my cost is, and have a very predictable cost going forward. And I understand Veeam has a couple different model, but they're still very simple. So you're either subscription or you're socket. So to me, just keep it simple. >> Dave: What's your preference? >> Right now it's socket. However, I'm not opposed to looking at something different. If it makes sense for my clients, I'm perfect fine with it. >> When you go subscription, does that have an effect? Does your CFO like that? Switching to a radical model? >> Well, we're just basically turning our capital into operational. And as long as my base cost doesn't change, I think it's perfectly fine. >> Dave: So from a capital budget standpoint, it's got to be neutral and go from there. >> Excellent, alright Mario, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Great insights. >> Thank you for having me. >> Dave: You're very welcome. Keep it right there, everybody, we'll be back with our next guest. This is theCUBE, Stu Miniman, Dave Vellante. We'll be right back. (upbeat electronic music)