(upbeat music) >> Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE, covering Inforum D.C. 2018, brought to you by Infor. >> Well, back here on theCUBE, we are at Inforum '18. We're in Washington, D.C. here in the Walter Washington Convention Center. Not far from the White House. It's about a mile that way, and Capitol Hill's about a mile that way, I think. I know we're right in here, but I know we are smack dab in the middle of it. Dave Vellante and John Walls and Kevin Curry, who's the SVP of the global public sector at Infor. Good to have you with us. Good to see you, sir. >> Great to be here. Thanks for your time. >> So public sector, you're in the heart of it here, and you were telling us before we went on the air that you've got more than 700 clients here at the show this week? >> We do, we do. It's the best attendance we've had yet for Inforum, and I joined about six and a half years ago. And we built this business pretty much from the ground up. So it's been a great experience, and now we're starting to get a lot of adoption within the government, across the government, from federal to state to locals. >> What's the process been like, especially across those three, because I assume they're all different? You know, local, state, federal, everybody has different pain points and there's different tolerances. >> They do, they do. I mean, there's different micro-verticals within each of those statements. As an example, if you look at local governments, it could be anything from transit agencies to K-12 schools, to public works, to police, to fire. They all have all different requirements. State's the same thing, whether it's Department of Transportation or Department of Health and Human Services. And then when you get the federal side of it, then it's from the intelligence community to Department of Defense, healthcare within Defense, like the VA and DoD and Defense agencies as well. So it's a pretty wide swatch of use cases and business cases that you need to be able to sell to. >> Charles said something interesting in the keynote today. I want to ask you about it. He said, "We made a strategic decision to go to the cloud. "We didn't want to compete with Google "and Amazon and Microsoft for CloudScale. "That didn't make any sense for us." And he said, "When we were an on-prem software vendor, "we weren't managing servers for our customers." Now what struck me there is if you look back at the software company back in the day, they really didn't care about the server, right? It was just sort of infrastructure. It was kind of irrelevant to them. The cloud feels different. It seems like a more strategic relationship with Amazon. You know, we talk about Teresa Carlson and what a force she is in the government. AWS in the GovCloud has been a huge force. They had a giant lead. So have you been able to draft off that or is it just another sort of infrastructure platform? >> No, they're a major strategic partnership there with AWS and NN4. At the company level, and especially for me, with the government, they've made the right investments at the right time, I mean, and they actually have cloud environments that are very specific to different segments of the government and to different geographies. So as an example, in the federal government they have an intelligence cloud called C2S, which we work with them on. There's a very large procurement out right now for the Department of Defense called Jedi, which Amazon's going after, as well as the other larger cloud providers, so we're obviously riding that horse with AWS. And also for local governments, and they've done all of the compliancy for the government, whether it be FedRAMP, whether it be CJIS for those departments that are worried about the justice type of requirements. And as you get outside of the U.S., they're putting clouds and we're a global company as well, putting clouds in all the right places. They have a G-Cloud offering in the U.K. and as we talked about earlier when we sat down, they're opening a cloud in the Middle East right now too, in Bahrain that I think traces on oil over there as we speak. >> Right, right. The first Middle East country to claim cloud first. But it just seems like there's a strategic advantage there. And even with the other cloud suppliers. I mean, you know, Google's got its niche, big niche, you know, Microsoft, with its software state, but it seems like Amazon, they talk about that flywheel effect, brings certain technologies that, you know, when you talk to Soma, you guys have been able to take advantage of. It just feels a lot different than the old traditional server manufacturer. Oh, it's a Unix box and there's no difference between vendor A, B and C. >> Absolutely correct. And for us, we've taken advantage of the tools that Amazon has and obviously, we're doing all the compliancy on our applications and they've got whole the infrastructure piece of it, so the two work very well together. >> And that has allowed you to focus on your knitting, if you will. >> Yes. >> The things that you do best, which is a micro-verticals, suite across the application portfolio, bringing AI to the equation, automation, we heard a lot about robotic process automation, which is probably a hot topic in the government. >> Yes. I mean, Charles famously, he may have had a quote. I'm sure you heard it. It's friends don't let friends build data centers. >> Great quote. >> You know, that's not a business we're in. We're a software company. >> Right. >> So the public sector, obviously a different animal than the private sector. Very different needs, different constituents, you got tax payers, you got all that. When you bring the technology into the public sector, what does that do for it or how does that have to be, I don't know, re-conformed or adapted? And ultimately, what's the payoff, right? What's the return on that investment? >> So it was actually pretty shocking how quickly the government has adopted and moved towards the cloud. Typically, they're laggards. Everything happens in the commercial market and then government's a little bit of a late adopter, right? But we're seeing them very quickly go to the cloud and there's a lot of reasons for that. One being, you have an aging workforce. Okay, so the baby boomers are all retiring so a lot of that intellectual knowledge is going out the door. Two, is there's some economies of scale to be realized by doing that because once you're in the cloud, I mean, it's up to the vendor who's maintaining it to maintain that for you. So, you know, the people behind the scenes, they have to do it. You know, when you upgrade your software to go from one release to the other, it's automatically done for you. I mean, so there's real cost savings to be had, you know, from a care and feeding perspective there as well. Also a lot of the, on the ERP side of the things, a lot of the systems that are out in the marketplace today that governments have bought, like the Oracles or the SAPs, a lot of these systems are at end-of-life and the companies are no longer supporting them. So it's a re-implementation for them. You know, and so now they're looking, okay, if we have to re-implement and we have to look at our new options, we're going to do it in a cloud. >> So when you've been around as long as I have, Kevin, >> Right. >> you've seen the pendulum swing. You don't have to agree so vehemently. (laughing) But from mainframe to client server and so you're back to the cloud, and now with IoT, it seems like the pendulum is swinging back to a distributed environment. So help us understand where IoT fits to the cloud and even your on-prem business. >> Okay, so like I say, cloud is a pretty broad topic, okay? We have multiple applications that would run in that environment. So when I look at IoT, I think of things like our asset management platform. We have a very strong enterprise asset management platform that runs in the cloud or runs on-prem. And if you think about infrastructure as an example, which government has a lot of, okay. Think about the ability to have sensors on different pieces of equipment and being able to read that information. Think about using drone technology, okay, to be able to do physical inspections under bridges, so you're not having people having to climb around underneath there. I mean, so being able to do live feeds of data and be able to streamline the way you do business and have that automatically captured within an application. So yes, that is one area where we see it. I mean, I think you're going to see more and more of robotics and artificial intelligence and all the things come into play. I think you heard a lot about that here and it's here. I mean, they were things we saw in movies before but now the technology's here today. >> Well, the other thing we heard this morning that Charles has always talked a lot about the data. You guys always talked about your data lake. I like to think of it as a data ocean. You think about all the data out of GT Nexus and, you know, your customers that are providing data to inform. The data model starts to really expand and you guys have seemed to really take advantage of that. Talk about the data, the importance of data, the importance of securing data to the government. >> Well, think about that. I mean, there's islands of information that governments have that if they were able to consolidate that data and put some intelligence into it, be able to make business decisions versus, you know, one system sitting over here, one system sitting over here and none of them ever communicating or talking to each other. You know, the ability to, You could do from anything from, just think about crime statistics, okay? The ability to deploy resources where the crime is and then as it moves, be able to further deploy resources. You know, New York, years ago, did things like that with CompStat when they were cleaning up Times Square and so forth. But just think of that as a concept, realtime being able to manage data. >> So you've got, here at the show, we were talking about earlier, 700 and some odd clients, 725. You've got the federal forum for the first time. Why now? And what are you getting out of that or what do you hope to get out of that at the end of the week? >> So the whole executive team and our board of directors have made significant investments in this marketplace because they understand that government is a very large beast, if you will, and there's a lot of opportunity for deployment of our solutions and there's a real need to solve problems for constituents here as well. So they've made very significant investments in things for security like FedRAMP, compliancy. You know, some companies are doing it on some of their solutions. We're doing it across the board on all the products that we take to the government marketplace. So we're invested in it. You've probably heard today, Charles talked about the fact that we're going to have a federal cloud suite, which we are. So that means federal financials, okay? Actually being able to solve all the problems for the federal government and comply to all their needs and all the things that are part of mandated accounting for the federal government. They made all the right investments and human capital management would be another area. If you think about, we've got an application called Talent Science. The ability to hire the right people for the right job and retain those people. Just think about, ICE is a good example. You heard that they have to hire thousands of people to deploy on the borders, right? How do you quickly ramp and hire these right people if you don't have the right tools to do it? >> You were quoted in TIME magazine, Marc Benioff's new publication, about America's crumbling infrastructure. What role do you see technology playing generally and specifically in for software and helping with that problem? >> So we do a lot today around infrastructure. As an example, we have a very strong presence in transit agencies here in the U.S. New York City runs us, amounts to about a trillion dollars worth of assets there. So anything moving in, out or around the city, so subways, buses, trains, tunnels, bridges, Metro-North, Long Island Rail Road. L.A. runs us, San Francisco runs us, Chicago runs us, Dallas runs us and many others. So we're managing all of that infrastructure. So you hear a lot about infrastructure bills coming out of the federal government. And they're right. I mean, a lot of these tunnel, a lot of these bridges and tunnels and even roadways were built back during World War II, right? And they're aged, you know, they are starting to crumble and there's going to be a lot of money spent to do that and when it comes to rebuilding those types of things, there's a lot of assets that are going to need to be managed, you know, to do that. So we think there's a real opportunity for software such as what we bring to the marketplace to help with that process. >> How about talent retention? I mean, obviously, as administrations come and go, you know, people move, but there's been a lot of brain drain. I mean, take the Patent Office, people in commercial industry stealing some of the best and brightest out of government. Can software play a role in helping better retain, train, you know, evolve growth paths and careers? >> Yes. I guess, in a couple different ways. I mean, number one, I think the applications of today versus the applications of yesterday have changed so much. I mean, you look at, you know, the applications you have on your mobile phone. The ability to have that look and feel, I mean, our kids today are going to go into the workforce and they won't settle for anything less. They're going to want to have that look and feel. They're going to want to have those intuitive type of applications that help them do their job. And that's the kind of offering we're bringing to the marketplace. Then from just actually bringing the right people and we have an application called Talent Science, as an example, where actually there's multiple different areas of your personality that it can determine and map it back to your top performers in your company. And determine the right people for the right job where they'll fit into that environment and then they would thrive hopefully. And it should increase retention on the staff. In government, we've actually sold it to Department of Health and Human Services for hiring case workers. Okay? Or to police departments for hiring of law enforcement. So there's a real opportunity to take those types of applications and do some pretty creative things. >> What's, I hate to say, the pain side of it. But dealing with the government obviously contracts is an issue, right? And a challenge sometimes maybe for you. I'm curious, in a quickly evolving space such as yours, how do you help them keep up with you and their regulatory oversight and whatever mandated restrictions they have? All those things, you know, that come with government. It just doesn't square up with what you do. >> It is, it's a very, again, to your point, it's a different, it's a different industry with different requirements. And everything here is very open and above board. It's open procurements. Everything is competitively bid. There are contractual vehicles that you competitively bid for that'll allow you to be able to do business a lot easier in the future. I mean, in the feds you have things like the GSA 70 Schedule. U.K., you have something called the G-Cloud contract. A lot of states have vehicles where you can bid for it, so all states and local can buy off of those contracts without having to go to a competitive offering. So there's ways that the business can get done without having to go through a lot. >> Every hoop and every, yeah, right. >> The major pain process. But then there's also competitive RFPs, which, you know, well, they'll put a bid out, it'll be very detailed. You have to answer 3,000 requirements. And then after that you'll end up going into an orals and a demo process and, you know, nine months later, they're going to pick a winner. (laughs lightly) Then you go through, but then you have to go through a very painful contract negotiation process. >> That's the process I was talking about. (laughing) Exactly what I was talking about, right. >> Right. >> Yeah, yeah. Well, Kevin, thanks for being with us. We appreciate the time. >> It's my pleasure. >> And it sounds impressive, right, with the turnout you had, so I'm sure you're very, very pleased with the response you've had here on the show for so far. >> I am and I thank you for your time and >> You bet. >> have a good show. >> Look forward to seeing you down the road. Alright, sir, thank you. Back with more here live on theCUBE. We're at Inforum '18 and we are in Washington, D.C. >> I'm quite sure they got me pinned up back here, but I can't-- (upbeat music)