>> Live from Bahrain, it's the Cube, covering AWS Summit Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon web services. >> Welcome back everyone, we're here live with the Cube here, at Bahrain for exclusive coverage for AWS Summit and the opening in early 2019 just announced previously a few weeks ago, Amazon is opening a region here in the Middle East. It's going to be super impactful in the sense of entrepreneurship business coming together. I'm John Furrier, your host. We have two guests here, Manoj Kanorth, who is the AVP Head of Cloud Data Science Engineer at Mindtree, global company and Snehal Zaveri, Service Delivery Manager at Computer World here in Bahrain partnering. Guys welcome to the Cube. Thanks for coming. >> [Manoj And Snehal] Thank you, Thank you John. >> Good to be here. >> So talk about Mindtree first, what do guys do? Because you now are doing business here. The Cloud's here, not new to you guys, but this is an interesting time. >> It's extremely interesting time. So, we've been doing Cloud for 10 years. So, we do lot of digital transformation work. And, it's a great time that the government of Bahrain has really decided to go all digital and I think this a great, great time for us to be really engaged and we're very happy to be engaged with the Computer World. >> And what do you guys do? What's your main product? You're doing data science, big data analytics, cloud, devops? >> Yes, that's right. So to give you a sense, if you look at India as a country, so the core citizen identity for India, for all the governance initiatives which you could say either it's a big data, the data science piece, the entire piece is actually done by us. So that, what that really gives is, gives identity to citizens, and this is the base for all governance initiatives going forward. So building systems like that, where truly touching the lives of folks through digital transformation where its fundamentally about cloud, it's a big part of data and really about how to drive insights to make this happen, it's something that we're really working towards. So globally, we work with all the global 2000 companies, doing substantial work. >> So the role of data is a big advantage for Bahrain. They're going to make data come center of advantage, GDPR, it's a nightmare, everyone knows how bad that is, and you're living in Europe, people have stopped investing in some cases because of the requirements. So there's some data problems that are hard to solve, easy to say, hey let's create data sovereignty, let's protect consumers, sounds good but is a hard technical problem. Most people don't even know where their data is, nevermind removing, having all these things happen, but the cloud is an opportunity. So, Bahrain is identified data as a major advantage. Your reaction to that? Viable? Will they do it? How will they do it? Your thoughts? >> So I think having a region here is the first step, and I think the data protection act that has really been launched, I think used to form legal foundations to do that. Once you get on to that, after that, the technology pieces of how to put together, you're exactly right. Cloud is a great way to start, get the data together, design the right foundations to put that together. So I think it is just the right foundation for anything to start. >> They should give a hall pass for everyone prior to cloud. I know guys like doing storage. They, wait a minute, where's that data? Because storage is hard. If your provisioning storage. >> So incredibly more hard, in GDPR is the right to forget. So once somebody says forget me, then going back to all the storage's and reviewing information, is even more difficult. >> Still, talk about your role with Mindtree in Bahrain, Amazon, how do you feel about this? >> Great, I think I will, I would love to answer this question. So, first of all, we as a Computer World, we are three decade old company, more than three decades and we have legacy. We started with traditional data center, and then moved ourselves to virtualize us and to public cloud, private cloud to public cloud and from there, we have moved ourselves to digital transformation. Although it is a big buzzword today, but then we actually doesn't like disruption. We want people not to be a victim of disruption. So we always do that, that we always innovate ourself and keep a pace with industries, varied industries of course. Now as Bahrain is a company when government of Bahrain has chosen AWS, a very strong platform. Now what is missing is the best innovative solutions you need skills, resources, knowledge, to actually leverage this platform which is chosen by government, government of Bahrain. So I think as a strategy they'll alliance is once and we have chosen Mindtree, looking at their global presence, their IP, and we would like Bahrain customers, especially in the public sector and non public sector. Leverage their expertise as working with computer world. So this is all about we as in computer world. What we do and with respect to this government of varying initiative, I think we as in, we are not citizen, but as in residents of Bahrain, it is really a proud for us, that this is not a data center or region for Bahrain. It is a regional data center, we have to definitely look into that. So that's we're we are. >> It's a great opportunity, and the thing I want to point out is, this big demand from government to move faster because they're slow generally, but in Bahrain, they're fast compared to other governments. But the private sector is where, the action's going to be with entrepreneurship. So I got to ask you guys a question around cloud native. How do you guys see cloud native architectures? Because you got Amazon's cloud native. This hybrid cloud, sure, I get that, but cloud native is what everyone's going to be using. >> Perfect, so before he starts from by my side, would be foundation and then I think, he will take on from there. So very great question. So, we see cloud journey in four different phases. The first is migration, which might be the first step, which might not be, but that migration doesn't solve any purpose. We have to move beyond. So that's where the optimization phase comes. Whatever you how posted on cloud, how you can optimize it. Maybe one of the example, is you can move your database, as an infrastructure to the ideas or any other services and so on. From there is the innovative solutions, what you have to think beyond, whatever you have today do it better, do it fast and help it should extend to the smart city concept or smart governance concept or something which is beyond the normal data center what can deliver. So this is how we visualize and from there is the, is the time where you have to start developing native applications, cloud native, you should not think traditionally by hosting and then migrating. You change your mindset, start thinking cloud and living cloud. That's where we are and that's where I think they're >> Jump in, you don't want to do a little bit of cloud, you got to go all way in, this cloud operations is what everyone will end end up doing. >> [Manoj And Snehal] Exactly. Absolutely. Yeah. >> So globally, any application that we are working today, I think fundamentally we have to think about how it runs from the cloud, so it's inevitable that any new architectures that we do today are fundamentally cloud native. Whether those are containers or serverless applications. >> What's the consequence for people watching, if they don't do cloud native? Because this is super important and smart, smart money, smart entrepreneurs are and smart engineers and smart business people, are doing cloud native because, there are specific things that they benefit from. >> Yes. >> What are the consequences of they don't do cloud native? >> So I think a more than consequences. Bahrain is a great opportunity to leap frog because in many places you have decide somewhere you start with a legacy, then you kind of optimize and today when you speak about and you are starting applications fresh. I think if it's directly starting on cloud native, the overall operational efficiency of how you build your applications to be more self healing. Starting fresh and leap frogging, I think is a great opportunity that a Bahrain really has. >> And certainly one of the consequences might be data impact because if we put everything in the cloud, if you're thinking cloud, you're thinking horizontally scalable and seeking a synchronous, you're thinking parallel >> You are thinking parallel >> You're thinking auto scaling, containers, microservices, service meshes. >> Fundamental service meshes you're thinking about the data discovery because you talked about GDPR and the point of resident data, so how do you apply machine learning to really understand the quality of data? How do you discover the right information and then really expose that to the different places. >> Do you think machine learning is a great weapon against GDPR or helps GDPR? >> It helps identify, classify and identify the information and even when you're sharing that information, it's a great way for you to actually get a sense of what is the classification to do it. Humanly it's not possible. >> Is it a program active, this AI can help you. >> That's where AI comes and the second big piece of how the government of bahrain is really looking at it. When the lab, the Fintech companies and the banks is going to have a lot of API's and I think serverless programming with exposing API's is just the right way for this collaboration >> it's really easy >> Makes it easy make it easy to try new things out and fail very, very quickly. >> If you think in terms of services and there's a collection of services, it's a simply API management and then you've got the future of orchestration with Cooper netties, and this is where you start to get into the state stateless applications. >> Yes >> That's where it gets a little bit difficult and some work to do there, but you can really have some fun with stateless. >> You can really have some fun with states >> and get some stuff up >> to build some stuff up and with ever increasing stability of the database in native place even the stateful applications are much more easier these days. >> This is more work involved on the micro services side. Virtually Cross has got some more to do. All right, final question. What's, what do you think is the impact of Amazon coming to the region? In the short term, medium and long term. What do you think is the impact of Amazon's region? >> Yeah, definitely. So, if you talk about the short term, first of all this is a change of mindset that I say and when government of bahrain and the top, I mean his highness, he's supporting this initiative. So the benefit is the lower costs. Operations cost has to go down. See this is not something that the one ministry or one enterprise level initiative. This is national level initiative. So end of the day when you consolidate 70, 80 ministries and you shut down the data center and host the data into AWS, then you are going to save a huge cost. And that's what AWS is found for. So with that strong commitment from the cost optimization then you get the latest technologies. You don't need to keep spending money behind your upgrades and so on that, that's >> Fine as you go up where as the security by the way people always complained about security. Oh, cloud is never going to make. I heard this right out of the gate. Security is more in the cloud than it is on premise. We hear CSO, Chief Security Officers say my worst day of security in the clouds, better than the best day on premises. >> [Manoj And Snehal] Absolute. >> And I think really in the short term, I think this is a statement of ambition. I think it really changes of the complete mindset of the region itself in terms of wanting to have the cloud here becomes the region for all new businesses to come in. And I think given in the medium term, the number of banks that are actually operate in this region, I think it's going to get great flip. to really make this as the key center of all fintech companies going forward. I think the startup initiative with the presidents of all the banks with a much more open government. I think is the right set of factors for most startups to come in, for more innovation to really drive in this region. And I think from a longterm perspective it really serves the difference in terms of how things actually are going to change and move in this particular place. >> I think you're right I think that there's going to be some poll. In that poll is going to be multidimensional. >> Got It. Got It. >> Economic, Social, Political and there is silence. >> And as Mr. Mohammad Alkiad has mentioned in his keynote during the keynote, the procurement process has reduced by 60%. That's unbelievable. You know, government with their own >> It got a home lived movement from the youth, it's going to be the summer of love. Some are a cloud because when the young people get a hold of the cloud, we're talking about young kids now. They've never provisioned Linux. >> Got It. They'd never had off server under their desk. We're talking about new new developers. >> New developers >> They go, wait a minute, what are you? Old Guys had to do all this stuff >> Exactly >> They go right to machine learning. They go right to AI. They're like, no configuration, no, no rock fetches, no mundane tasks. They want it just to be elastic. Serverless is like the right to serverless. >> and quote 9 is just a right >> creativity will come from that speed of development, creativity. So once that said, the key is setting it up >> Yup, and 2 years down the line. You will see Bahrain might be setting up a very right example for AWS to be to give everywhere. >> but we're going to be doing that. That's going to be the investment. >> We are all aligned . >> That's a good deal. That's a good deal. >> There you are. >> We are not aligned absolutely with the government policies and we will commit and that is the success guaranteed. >> I wish that I was 18 again. What I know now, I'd be killing it in the cloud. [Laughing] We went to the to tough days. Guys, thanks so much for coming on and sharing your insights. Great conversation. Its really about what's happening in innovation. It's about cloud computing, it's about scale, it's about new things. Certainly bring a lot of change and good positive change with challenges as opportunities. CUBE see here for the first time bringing to you. Stay with us for more after this short break.

>>live from Boston, Massachusetts. It's the Q covering I. F s World Conference 2019. Brought to you by I. F. S. >>Welcome back to Boston, everybody. You're watching The Cube. The leader in live tech coverage is Day one coverage of the I. F s World Conference. Darren Russo's here is the CEO of F S Darren. Thanks for coming back in the Cube. Great TV again. So last year was your first year. He was kind of laid out your vision at the World Conference. How's progress? >>Yeah, Look, it's going incredibly well. We were really focused on how we go from being a pretty fragment of global business to being, you know, an integrated business where we were able to operate. You know, its scale globally in a very homogenous way, where the customer experience was the same, irrespective where they engaged with us. And, you know, we've made a tremendous amount of progress with it, So you know, the business is growing really strongly. Net revenues up 22% year on year. I lost its revenues up 40% year on year are clouds up in the triple digits, so you know it's tough to be critical of how it's going so far. >>That's great, Great. You're growing faster than your peers. I think the stat was you gave us three Ex factory except in the industry would be awesome. Is that means that your primary benchmark do you want? You want to gain share? You want to go faster than the big whales, I presume. I >>think two things One is customer satisfaction, we believe, is the key indicator of long term success. S O. You know, we're the number one ranked European efforts. Salmon gotten appearance sites. That's that is and always will be my number. One metric. Can we be way the number one from a customer satisfaction perspective? And then I believe the revenue stats will follow and you know that's where we are. So certainly, if you look at our our core peers, the big G R P vendors, all of them are flat on. Dhe were growing 20 ships since >>one of the things you mentioned in your Cube interview last year was one of the things that you wanted to focus on was I'll call regional alignment. Paul and I used to work for I D. G. I worked for I. D. C. You were editor in chief of Computer World. We work for a company, had more offices overseas and IBM, and it was really hard to herd the cats. And that was one of the things that you cited. Have you been able to get people generally poor or at the same time? And how has that affected your business? Yeah. Look, I >>think the big challenge before I arrived was that there wasn't really a strategy of global strategy for the business. My face had a way of working and there was a strong culture, but there wasn't really a strategy. And obviously it's difficult to be critical of people when they not following the strategy when there isn't one s o. You know, Step one was really making sure that we had a strategy on DDE that was really about being focused on the five industries that we focused on, focused on three solutions on dhe focused on the six segments of customer, which is half a 1,000,000,000 to 5 billion. So now, globally, you know, irrespective the office that you go to, um anywhere in the world, they're focused on those five industries they focused on those three solutions and they're focused on their customer segments. So it helps me. P. M >>I said during our preview video video this morning that I've been around this industry as long as I f s has, until last year had never even heard of it. Is that just me being clueless? There's something there >>that we were just saying before we started that we're the definitely the biggest software business you've never heard of. Um, and and and that's common, I think, you know, we were There are a couple of factors. One is that the business was very European centric. Andi didn't really engaged in a tremendous amount of marketing and media prison. So, you know, those are elements that, you know, I think we're doing a better job off now, But we have a long way to go. The challenge that we have is that where we compete, we win when we get in and were able to tell our story, and we're able to show the value we win. We just don't get into as many deals as we need to. And that's the challenge we have. >>Yeah, there was a lot of talk this morning about the importance of those five pillars of those five industries. If you're going to become the next S A P, you're gonna have to branch out beyond that. What is your thinking about diversify >>becoming the next? They say he is definitely not my ambition, You know, I think way remain focused on customer satisfaction. And, you know, I think that there's a there's a difference. Whatever it is leading them, it's not customer satisfaction. You worked >>there for four years. >>I worked there for four years. I know. I think the big thing for me is is that we've got to stay focused on their customer voice. They focused on what delivers value for our customers beyond just the rhetoric and hyperbole. You know, I think when you when you listen to a lot of the complexity that our customers are facing today, any customers are facing. Companies are facing increasingly disruptive times, and the tech industry is making life more difficult for them. The more best of breed solutions get both. The more fragments that potential the landscape is, the more complex it becomes for customers if they have to try and figure out. How do we integrate these things and derive value from this highly fragmented landscape? So you know, we're trying to solve that problem. How do we make it easier for customers to challenge in their industry? And that's where this whole for the challenges has check comes from. How do we help him to be disruptive in their industry? Have competitive advantage? >>That seems to be a sort of a fundamentally different thing about your approach, though. Is this focus on those vertical industry's most e r P companies did not do that. Is that something that is core to your values? >>Look, I >>think what we recognize is that as you move to the cloud, you have to drive to standard. That's just the reality of going to the cloud on what's happening for the horizontal E. R B vendors. So the locks of ASAP and Oracle is that they have one e r P solution that fits every industry. So if it's good for health insurance and it's good for a bank, then it's difficult to really get your head around the fact that it could be good for a defense manufacturer, but the functional requirements is simply vastly different on that means that you have to customize them. If you have to customize that, they can go to the cloud. So what we believe is that you have to have this vertical specialization, the five industries that we serve us all. A lot of commonality in the process is that they use. And that's why that vertical strategy is so key to our success. So you won't see us going into financial service is, or health care or retail worth that core application. We may in time in many years to come branch out. That will be a different solutions. >>So your tailor, that app for that module for that industry, Yes, just go deep, deep functionality. You're known for that, but at the same time you're also messaging. You want your customers to be able to tailor this for their environment. So square that circle for me. >>So I think when we talk about a choice and and I think tailoring is the wrong word, we talk about choice. We're talking about choice of deployments on Prem or in the cloud choice of customer choice of partner, rather who they're going to deploy with on Dhe, then The solution is really an industry solution that comes with that functional death. And we don't we don't advocate their customers customized that all. We really don't want them to customize it. What we explain to them in some detail is that the real value comes from adopting the solution for two standard and staying on a vanilla application. Because that vanilla application, you're going to be able to withstand future upgrades, the total cost of ownership gets lower. The processes that are embedded in that application or best of breed at the box. That's what they're intended to do, and that works when you have a vertical application. When you have a horizontal application and you're trying to have a do things that it shouldn't naturally be doing, that becomes company. >>Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that essentially the message ASAP had when it went through? It's hyper growth in the late nineties. I mean, there was a Y two k thing there, too, but ah, lot of the message was around. Do it our way and and then you don't have to get stuck in a rut, >>So I think that when it came out with that generation of application. That certainly was what they had hoped would happen. But what happened in practice is that the system integrators came in and the whole business process reengineering explosion happened on Dhe. That's not how it how it manifested itself. So what you see is, you see, he's very large, monolithic ASAP applications that were customized over in some cases decades, not not. You know, if a customer is deploying for two standard, then they should be able to deploy in a period mission. In weeks, we spoke about our deployment with Racing Point. If one team and going live in 12 weeks, you know, we're a 700 million global business. We deployed a knife s in 24 weeks. You know, if a customer's deploying for two standard, it's measured in weeks. As soon as they start to talk about two years or three years or five years or seven years there, customizing the solution significantly. Yeah, I >>mean, it became just sort of a perpetual upgrade, maintenance and up for the time it had a business impact. But boy, you think a cloud today agility, you know, getting rid of waterfall approaches, Missus. Antithetical to today's Look >>what I don't point fingers here. I think that this just maturity come with experience. The line of business applications you'll see our EMS and your HR solutions have taught people that you can, if you think about this is look at sea. Are Emma's an example? You had Siebel before people would implement stable. They would customize Siebel that would take long implementations. They were highly bespoke applications and then sells. Force came along and just destroyed them, and they destroyed them. Because what people learned very quickly was that there was a really easy to consume, really easy to use application that functionally might be inferior. But the compromises that you'd make from a functionality perspective will weigh, outweighed by their time to value in ease of use. And and the learnings from CR mnh are in procurement. Those line of business applications have now being backed into in the e. R. P >>world. So in terms of capital allocation, you're owned by private equity, which is actually a public company. I'm interested in how you're allocating capital R and D, where you're where your emphasis is. You don't have to you have to do stock buy back, but, you know, describe the P relationship. >>So look, one of my learning's to see survive this is that not all private equity firms or equal they have different strategies are very fortunate to be with Ekiti, who are a growth investor. They're known as a growth investor on dhe, and they buy companies that are strong growth tech firms on dhe. They've been hugely supportive of us investing because they understand that the investment in technology is important. So, you know, just looking at some detail today we invest twice as much in R and D as we did three years ago, just to give you, you know, one data point. So there's a big focus on technology, and the thing is, is that we we have to invest in technology to drive those attributes that are discussed earlier. How do we How do we enable customers to adopt a solution? It's a standard so they can go alive quicker. How do we enable customers to be able to sit down in the front of the application like we do with the mobile phone and intuitively know how to use it? How do we reduce the total cost of ownership through automation. Those are capabilities that you know that they don't come for free. We have to invest in them. So big investments in technology. And >>I think the private equity guys, at least the modern ones, have realized Why should the V. C's have all the fun they realize? Hey, we can actually put some money in tow and the transforming we can have a bigger exit and actually make much better returns than sucking the company drive. Yeah, well, look, I think the other >>thing is is that you know, in public companies, you have the downside off. You know this this courtly metric Ondas quarterly cadence. Andi, you see very compromising decisions being made because you know, people can't afford to miss 1/4. There's no long term planning that's done on dhe. That's fundamentally not the case and the private equity world, you know, not unusual now for four p firms to hold companies for 5678 years on, and that allows you to take a very long term strategic view. If if if a shift from perpetual to subscription is the right thing to happen, they can do that without worrying that, you know, because of the definite earnings are revenue that you're going to get caned by the market next quarter. Andi. I think that that needs to, I think, better decision making for the long term. >>A lot of companies are struggling. >>If you have the right P for because you get bought by the firm of events, you want to go public. But the the you said something this morning that 50% of your customers each year or net knew, How are you pulling that off >>That 50% of our license revenue? Eso way we went about 300 odd new customers a year. Obviously, that's growing, as I said, you know, 40%. But you know, it's ah, I think, having done this for 25 years, there are companies that are or good at extracting revenue from their installed based. One of the analysts here has as a hashtag wallet Fracking is what do you think It's such a great So you know, they're good at Wallick fracking and and I think the customers that that our customers off those vendors know exactly who they are and you know I think that for us to that the fact that we're able to go out and win 50% of our license revenue from net new name customers, I think is a really strong indicator of the health of the business. It's much harder to do than just extracting revenue out of the install base. You know, we don't have a compliance practice. We've never charged a customer for you in direct access. You know, these are principles that we stand by, and it's easier to say that your customer centric on get 80% of your revenue, have your installed base because you're doing compliance rounds. But, you know, we put our money where our mouth is, and that's not that's not how we do it. >>Are these net new customers? Are they? Are they migrating from QuickBooks or they migrating from a Competitors >>know, because of the segment that we're in this half a 1,000,000,000 to 5 billion? I would say the majority of them are what I would call first generation the Rp solution. So you know you're talking about you know, the original generation of Microsoft's acquisitions, the divisions and the eggs actors and the Solomon's and so on on. And then, you know, it's a P R two and our three customers you're talking about customer sitting on, you know, the solutions that in for hoovered up the matrix B picks type customers, ace 400 customers. So they're you know, they're first generation your P solutions that simply don't have the flexibility to deal with the complexity and demands of modern business world. >>From 2009 about 2017 I f. S was pretty inquisitive and then just actually, I was gonna ask you >>when I started, you stopped >>it, right? But then, you know, today you announced an extra small acquisition, But how should we think about M and a >>look? The first year for me was really about trying to build a functional business. You know, we spoke about how fragmented this really hit to Jenna's business. Andi just occurred to me. You know, if we go out and we start to buy things, how do we integrate them into a business that's completely fragments? And you know, it had no identity or culture. So, you know, the last year has been focused on how do we build their common understanding of what it is that we're doing. We now have a very clear strategy. Five industries, three solutions, one segment. And you know, when you when you have that clarity of vision that it's really easy to guard and do him and I because you know what fits and what doesn't fit, you can understand exactly how you're gonna build value for customers on dhe. That's why the S t a deal is so good for us. Because we're now the undisputed leader in field service management, you know, 8000 our customers globally, which is way more than anybody else. Scott, Andi, you know, you should absolutely expect more from us. But it will be in the five industries, three technology segments and one customers. Isaac. >>Well, in the A p I enablement should obviously facility. >>Absolutely. I mean, I was just with a partner of ours now, and they have this amazing augmented reality solution. You know, it will be a combination of off going out there to build market, share a cz well, as finding you know, really innovative solutions that can help us advance the technology that we provide customers. >>You have a new slogan this year for the challengers, which seems to be aimed at companies that that imagine themselves as challenging the Giants, which is great. But if you're not a company that season sees themselves that way. Are the studies level home with I have s Look, >>I I think I was with a group of CEOs from one of the big analyst rooms, and they had the portfolio companies and their private equity firm and analysts that CEOs of the companies are having a conversation with him about digital transformation. And I I made a rather provocative statement which, you know, got unanimous agreement, which is that all of the CEOs there with either in an industry that was being disrupted and we're trying to figure out how they respond to that disruption or they would soon not every job and they all acknowledge that they absolutely fit into that category. In other words, all of them were being disrupted. All of them were facing a challenge. It was kind of like, you know, if it is happening to all of us at a more rapid pace than we have ever had before. So my view is, is that you know if if you're in the room and you're going, you know, if it's might not be for us because we're not a challenger. Yeah, The lights may not be on >>for Long s o double click on that. What role does I s play in terms of digital transformation? >>If I could just hold on there because the thing is, there are leaders in Mama, there challenges. And there are leaders. The leaders typically are gonna go with seif solution. They're gonna go with one of the legacy our peace. So I'm not suggesting that everybody necessarily is a challenger. There are leaders, you know, Nokia was a leader until they weren't because they were complacent. Andi, I think they you know, they didn't run on I office. So, you know, I think there are two segments. There are leaders and there are challenges, and we're there for the ones that are ready to disrupt. Sorry. >>Please clarify that. No. Good. So So get back to it. Sort of digital transformation and disruption. What do you see? Is the role of AARP generally, but specifically I f s. >>Look, I think we digital information. A lot of discussion about it on the stage this morning. I've just touched on it now. I think that it takes very different forms. What most industries are finding is that they're facing a lot of non traditional competition and they're having to innovate around their business models. They can't going to market in the same way as they did before. They're having to innovate because of this non traditional competition. Andi. Understanding your your customer's understanding, your your staff, understanding your supply chain understanding your financials are all critical parts of being able to respond to whatever their changes, and that's where the RP solution comes into it. I think there's an interesting challenge now, which is that as those applications have become more fragmented and you've got more based debris cloud applications Ah, lot of the value often E. R P was that you had this integrated set of applications that you had this one source of the truth andan. Fortunately for many customers today, they don't have that because they've got import all of these best of breed applications and they don't have one source of the truth that multiple invoices made it multiple versions of their customer in the databases. Andi we still stand for a single integrated the r p. So, you know, I think understanding those elements of your businesses key. I was with a customer of ours in Nebraska a short while ago, and they were talking about our existing office customer. They were talking about the steel import duties that were imposed through the trade war with China. And they were saying, Look, that they had been able to respond to that in a way that they had good visibility of the supply chain, who was improved, imposing the tariffs, how they were going to impact them when they were going to impact them. And because they had this integrated Siara AARP. They were able to pass those pricing changes onto their customers, and they survived this. What could have been a cataclysmic event for their business had they not had an integrated your pee? They not being able to have this visibility into the supply chain and the customer base. They may well have gone out of business just because of that one change >>to meet all day and all comes back to the data, putting their putting data at the core of their business. That integrated data pipeline is essentially what they get out of that last question. So thinking about the next 18 to 24 months, what are the milestones that observers should look for? One of the barometers that we should be watching. >>So look, in the next two years, it's it's really about us building incremental scale. We have, ah, four year plan, which I built when I came in. We're halfway through that plan. We've hit all of the metrics and exceeded most the metrics that we had on their plan. It's really continue to focus on the strategy. As I said, we focus on those five industries, continue to build market share, continue to focus on those three solution types and build market share and market dominance on those three solutions. Andi in that segment that I defined before, so no change from a strategy perspective. I think there's really value in the consistency that we bring on on their talk track and, you know, along the way we passed the $1,000,000,000 mark, which we will do, I think, in 2021 organically if we accelerate, some of the money will pass the 1,000,000,000 before, but you know business. The margins continue to expand. We focus on customer satisfaction and, you know, it's a It's a pretty straight, you know, traditional prey book that we have to execute on now. >>Well, congratulations. It's a great playbook, and you're growing very nicely. So love that. Look, we really an honor to the last couple of years. Learn a little bit about the company in your industry. So appreciate meeting you guys. Thank you. All right. And thank you for watching over right back with our next guest. Ready for this short break day Volonte with Paul Gill in. You're watching the Cube from I f s World Conference from Boston 2019 right back.

>> From Bahrain, it's theCUBE covering AWS' Public Sector Bahrain, brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back everyone, it's theCUBE coverage. We are here for the Amazon Web Services Summit in Bahrain in the Middle East where cloud computing is changing the game for start-ups, businesses, and the government, and society Amazon announcing their new read, it's up and running. We've got two great guests to talk about all the integration and opportunities. We have Hassaini who is the CEO of ACME and we have Cherian Abraham, who is the general manager of Computer World. Gentlemen, thank you for joining me. >> Thank you, John. I'm so excited to be here. (laughter) >> Thank you John. It's a pleasure to be here. >> It's a great day, it's a bigger venue than last year. It's our second time here, but what's striking from this event is the explosion of innovation, not just start-ups. You're seeing the businesses, large, global ISV's are here. Seeing new ISV's, new software environments, and the demand for cloud computing is off the charts. So, there's a real need, thirst, for cloud computing. >> Absolutely. >> What's your assessment? >> I believe that most customers have started to look into digital transformation and customers have started buying into a new experience, of moving from Imperium into Cloud. And I think that's a great story because customers are looking to move from CapEx to OpEx and driving innovation and driving more for their businesses. >> And the cloud's first message here in Bahrain has been mandated from the top. >> Absolutely. >> And that's been forcing all the ministries to do it, that's changing the citizen relationship to society, which includes entrepreneurs and business, and now they got to integrate it in the banking systems behind it, so good business for you guys. What's the business impact? >> The new diplomacy in business, I think we are on the right track with the cloud business, with interviews in particular. Just to add to all Abraham's mentioned, you know, I think it's an entire eco system which is working well for the whole cloud objective. I was just speaking to one of, a gentleman who was from one of the news cities, he was teaching there, and what he mentioned to me, you know, that we have been giving students, good students, who were like on the verge of getting certified, now we are going to make them certified and hand them over to you. So we'll have limited people available to us. I think the policies right from the cloud-first policy, you know the banking policies, you know. As the last awareness that AWS has got to the market, it's been a game-changer all of a sudden. >> And it's causing a pipe-lining for talent, that's going to allow people to participate. >> Yup. >> Yes. >> Has there been a business driver behind all this? What's been the big business benefit, besides the mandates? Have you seen from customers, is it software development? What's the business driver? >> The key driver has been, you know, every entity would like to have an edge in the business, you know. It's no more of the old days, where you have the set in a competitors. You all of a sudden see new faces, new companies, who become big challengers. I think the very need to face this challenge as well as the desire to grow more and do more, which is driving the whole cloud momentum. >> You know, one of the things as Agility, we've heard that message here, and we go to all the other cloud events. Agility, agility, agility. Data, data, data. Compute, storage networking. Less about storage networking, because that's become elastic, that's available. That's what Amazon brings to the table. >> True. >> Data and agility now drive a lot of the business conversation because now they got to go hire software developers, who need to build on top of something, that's going to be Amazon or something else. This is a big part of the business architecture. >> Mmhmm, true. >> What are some of the things that you guys have done? Can you talk in generalities about some of the projects? >> We have looked at the elasticity of the platform. We looked at the scalability of the platform. What it brings to our customers? And how do we build innovation, bringing in new technology that helps customers' insight from their existing data, and build onto it. >> What are some of the challenges that you guys have seen that are now available to be overcome, that weren't maybe a few years ago. >> I think that the overall resistance to adapting to Cloud. I think that was one of the major challenges that we've seen a couple of years back, because people felt that going to Cloud is going to hinder the way they do the job, the work. In addition to that, the Cloud brought in a lot of security-related issues where people were not aware. But today, people are embracing it. Customers have started to embrace technology because they see value in cloud data >> The culture fear of change- >> Yes. >> And then the security are being addressed. The banks are going cloud. That's a good tell-sign. >> Absolutely. And there are a lot of ISB's that brings in resilient solutions that addresses customer requirements. >> What's the number one conversation you have with customers? >> Thank you. How do we build further on the cloud? How do we take good applications into cloud and take it into modernizing them? How do we take our digital transformation strategy, moving forward? >> Your conversations? >> I think we talk about longevity in terms of how the business can move forward and stay in the game for a longer time. That's so the discussion starts okay, then we start talking about you know, what it means to modernize the applications, so that you know you have the agility to address newer opportunities, you know, to have the growth that you always wanted to have. And, of course you know, the awareness and education that has happened in this country in particular, in the recent times, that has helped us a lot. Okay, we are no more talking about, you know, the challenges of security, whether it's going to be secure in Cloud or not. We are talking about how the business is going to behave once they make the move. >> I got to put you guys both on the spot with a question, I'd like you both to answer it because I think, any conference you go to that's always the hallway conversations that are interesting, because what happens in the hallways, you see someone you know. You mentioned before we came on camera you see people here. Everyone knows each other, it's growing. What are some of the hallway conversations that you guys have had here that you could share with folks watching. >> We need to adopt the Cloud. We need to build a strategy on Cloud. We need to look at innovations. >> If it is a comment, it is about, you know more services that they can offer. It's an ongoing sector, the new revenue streams that they can generate, these are the conversations that I have most of the time . >> It gets business deals done. Come on, come on. You've got some deals happening. >> Yes. We're getting a lot of good traction with people showing a lot of interest in new areas of business. >> I've found there's three types of companies in digital transformation. One's that know they got to do it, people that are doing it and they get stuck a little bit, and folks that are done it and are like "Wow, maybe I can do it over again" or are successful. So, three kind of phases. How would you categorize the market here in terms of progress, more phase one, two or three? What do you guys see the distribution? >> I think it's phase one and two. We haven't reached phase three yet. There are some customers who have started looking at phase three, but it's all centered around phase one, phase two. >> Understand the playbook? >> Yes. >> Yup. >> What systems to start with, those kinds of things? >> Absolutely. >> Fixing the culture, making more buy into it. >> Absolutely. >> Okay, other question I wanted to get your thoughts on, I think it's important that we're reporting here, is that cultural shift, this new generation of workers, we alluded to it about the young people coming to the university, there's a generational shift happening. >> Absolutely. >> It's almost pride. You see the sparkle in the entrepreneurs eyes that like, there's a whole 'nother thinking out there. >> (Husseini) Sure. >> How do you guys relate to that? What's your observations, being that we're the older, mature generation, kind of looking back at the young guns coming up. >> I think it works very well for us, innovating the event for a combined strategy, you know. We come from a strong lineal system integration and application delivery, and we have a lot of people who are very much tuned to offering turnkey solutions. So, I work first on them okay, because I wanted to have those mindsets with huge amount of experience, ready you know, in the new era of big business. At the same time, we started getting the new team from whom we started learning and know many things in Cloud, many things in DownSoft, you know, acclimation via learning more from them. So this way I think, you know, we had the initial success. I think that you continue that strategy. >> You bring in, combine them on teams... >> Yep. >> They can learn from each other. The key is learning two ways. >> I think the younger generation does not carry baggages, unlike the older generation. >> (chuckling) Yeah. >> They are more open, they are more agile to learning new technology and they want to be entrepreneurs. They've lived new applications that create opportunity for the community, for businesses, and for themselves. >> Yeah, I mean, we had a start-up on here, a thirteen year old company, doing API's >> True >> Billions of transactions, API calls... >> Yeah >> That wasn't even possible in the old days. Remember, you had security perimeter, firewalls, everything's locked down. Not anymore, it's all open. The surface area is completely- >> Entirely new dimension. >> Yeah, security's huge. Thanks so much guys for coming on theCUBE. Take a quick minute, each of you, to give a plug for your companies, what you guys are working on, key initiatives you'd like to share. We'll start over here. >> Thank you, John. My company, Computer World, focuses on digital transformation. We help businesses thrive on new areas by building innovations. >> My company, Almoayyed Computers Middle East, we are a four decade old company and we have taken a reboot recently in Cloud data, focusing more on Cloud now, whatever we do it's all focused on Cloud and we are on to many services. We are on to the emerging technologies, RTA, AIA, machine loading... >> Yeah, the bots are coming. This is going to help humans. >> True. >> The big debate about automating jobs away kind of, I always laugh at that, because there's so many job openings. It's like (chuckling) some go away but more are born. This is the dynamic. >> Yep, yep. >> Guys, thanks so much for coming on and sharing your insights, appreciate it. CUBE coverage here in Bahrain for AWS Summit. I'm John Furrier. We'll be back with more CUBE coverage, after this short break.

>> Narrator: Live from San Diego, California, it's theCube, covering Cisco Live US 2019, brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCube, Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante, day three of our coverage of Cisco Live. We're in the DevNet Zone, we've been here all week. Dave, this DevNet Zone is the place to be at Cisco Live. >> Well, first of all, it's so packed downstairs, not that it's not packed here, but there's a little space you can walk around in, number one, and number two, it's where all the action is from the learning standpoint and education. People are just eating it up, they're like sponges. >> They are eating it up. Speaking of learning, we are pleased to welcome Mike Adams, the VP and GM of Learning at Cisco. Mike, welcome to theCube. >> Thank you, it's my pleasure to be here. >> We talked to Susie a number of times, she's actually coming on to guest host with me in an hour or so, and looking at the DevNet evolution in the last five years, 600,000 members in this community, which is mind-boggling how this is, I teased that it was like a field of dreams. >> (chuckles) >> Dave: Which also was 30 years ago. >> It is, yes. That's kind of scary isn't it? But also so is Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, I think those are two really good ways of looking at DevNet. If we look at some of the things that you guys have announced with respect to bringing software skills and software practices to network engineers, it's a big signal in Cisco's evolution. Talk to us about some of the things you guys have announced from the certification perspective and why that's a signal of changing winds. >> Yeah, absolutely. It's been exciting. Susie and I have been working together very closely for the last year in preparation for this. I'm not sure if I'm Bill or Ted in the combo. >> Lisa: Either one's pretty good. >> You're the one who started the excellent adventure. >> That's right. There's some really fundamental significant changes to the program. The most exciting, of course, is the launch of our DevNet branded software certification. It's one of a kind in the industry. There is not other company that has the mix of network engineering certifications and software certifications like Cisco does, certainly not at the scale that we do. We've certified over 1.7 million people since the program has launched over 25 years ago. You imagine the power of bringing together the community of developers with this community of network engineers that we've created. The sky's the limit. It's going to be amazing. That's the biggest announcement is the launch of the software certification, DevNet certification. We've made some other pretty important changes too, and all of these were based on the feedback that we got from customers and partners. One is you can now use continuing education credits to maintain your certification at any level. Rather than having to go back and retake the test every three years, now you can branch out and learn new things, like software as a continuing education credit to maintain that certification you have. We've also added flexibility into the program. In the past, you had to start at associate level and then go to professional and then go to expert. Today, if you feel like you're ready for professional, we invite you to start right there. If you feel like you're ready for that very rigorous CCIE Lab Exam, bring it on, we'll welcome you into it. We feel like that's going to give learners more of a choice in terms of how they process their learning and training and which certifications they want to pursue. Go on, I could go on. >> Let's keep goin'. You could essentially cut the line if you've had some field experience, and/or you just naturally have an affinity towards this. >> That's right. If you have developed depth of expertise and skill and experience, but you haven't started the certification program, why would I make you go back and take an entry level engineer exam just to work your way into the direction you wanted to go, rather we welcome you to come in and start working where you feel like you're ready. >> Can you explain more about the continuous certification, because if I infer correctly, it used to be every three years you got to re-up, kind of like an EMT has to get re-certified. That's not required anymore? You can traverse across the portfolio? >> I'll answer it very specifically. In today's program, the highest level, the CCIE, the expert level, that level can use continuing education credits to re-certify, to maintain their certification. We've extended that same principle to all the others, so today, if you had a CCNA, and you wanted to maintain that CCNA, you would have to go take that exam again. We think it's a lot more valuable, and it's interesting you would mention EMTs, there are lots of other verticals and professions, there's a lot of data and science behind this, that will say that there's more value in terms of extending and maintaining your skills by doing continuing education rather than studying for a test. >> Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. You're allowing the folks to have more control over their education. >> Mike: Exactly. >> Choose your own adventure kind of thing. >> Mike: That's right. >> Also, one of the things that sort of strikes me about what Cisco has done in this big pivot, software's becoming developer friendly, which for a large organization with a history and the girth that Cisco has is not easy to do. From a competitive advantage perspective, what are you hearing from customers, in terms of, are you seeing this as a dial-up on Cisco's competitive edge? >> Yes, absolutely. We took counsel from Gerri, our Head of Sales, she believes very strongly that the DevNet certification, in combination with our network certification program, gives us a real selling edge because it demonstrates the commitment we have to solving real world problems for our customers. We know our customers are anxious to take advantage of what software on top of the network creates for them. To take advantage of those APIs, to build applications and programs that let them maximize the use of their technology as they compete in their own marketplaces. We're absolutely hearing very positive things about how this differentiates Cisco. I'll just add one more point. Even though it looks like there's two tracks, there's a network engineering track and a software track, that's really not the case. It's one certification program. As an example, at the professional level, to earn that CCNP, you have to take a CORE exam, and then you take a concentration exam in the same technology vertical. Data Center, Enterprise, Collaboration, Security Service Bribe, or DevNet. Interestingly, in each of the first five that I mentioned, you'll take the CORE exam and then the concentration can be a DevNet concentration. So we're inviting people to begin to add that software skills into the traditional network certification track that they've had. >> I wonder if you could help us understand the philosophy of the programs. I've seen some education programs, it's like a Chinese menu. It's deep and wide. My sense is that a lot of companies, some companies, not a lot, have said, "Okay, we're really not relevant to the Cloud market, "Let's do some Cloud certifications," stamping it premature there. It seems like Cisco's strategy is to be very focused. Is that fair? Maybe you could add some comments to that. >> It's absolutely fair. We've been very thoughtful about how we have structured the program and what content we have put into it. We've been very mindful to focus on need-to-know information in the CORE exams, and then allowing the learner to choose concentrations for the nice-to-know, the things they want to round themselves out with. Around relevancy, we built the program with job-role specific skills in mind. As an example we've been talking about it this week. Dev Sec-Ops Engineer is an example. It would maybe get their CCNP in Enterprise, route switch, and then they could add on to that various DevNet concentration exams to earn them specialists that would mix that, whether it be WebEx or IOT, and then those combination of skills speak to a very specific job role, this Dev Sec-Ops Engineer, as an example. There are other ways you can mix and match the components to create the capability around skills for a job. >> I imagine as time goes on with these new certifications that you guys are going to be analyzing the different pathways that each person is taking to understand, maybe looking at some consistencies and maybe even offering some recommendation, recommended pathways. >> That's exactly right, because as those job roles evolve in the industry, we're constantly evaluating what skills are needed for those, making sure that we're bringing those to the market. I just can't say enough how important it is to DevNet certification is. Being able to have developers demonstrate their capabilities and skills through a certification is really powerful. >> What's the strategy with regard to partnering with universities, are you doing things along those line? >> I'm so glad you brought that up. There's another leader that Susie and I have been working with, Laura Quintana, she's runs Networking Academy. Networking Academy reaches out to higher education, and also to high schools, they also create networking academies in underserved areas around the globe. Laura and her team have been at this for a while. They have trained over 9.2 million people and have a goal to graduate another two million within the next year. The reason I mention that is that's the arm of Cisco that reaches into higher education and invites people in underserved areas into our industry by giving them those fundamentals. The primary certification that they graduate with is the CCNA, is that entry-level engineer, and now entry level software DevNet associate, those are the graduation that they'll focus on out of Networking Academy. We do a lot of that. >> How about the technology of learning. When you started this almost three decades ago, this is a massive scale of learning. How has the technology of learning evolved? >> Massively. Think about how you like to learn new things. Much of it is going to the web, or finding some digital format, and then doing it at your own pace. That's the other important thing here as well. We are massively transforming the way we are meeting our customers through digitized products. It's very important. Another one of the other big announcements this week was the move from Cisco's services to customer experience, you may have heard Maria Martinez on stage, day two. If you noticed there were four main pillars to the CX Strategy, one of them was learning, active learning. We know that by embedding learning and education into the digital products that we have and getting it to our customers just in time, and ideally by looking at telemetry coming back from how they're using our products, maybe I can predict what training you need before you know you even need it. That's where we're going. >> Very awesome. Last question for you, Mike. Cisco's a massive part of our Ecosystem, we've been talking with a lot of them this week, and at many events, what's to them, to your partners, what does the certification and this massive change signal to them in terms of Cisco's evolution? >> It absolutely signals where the company is going, our commitment to software, our commitment to continue to evolve and stay on the forefront of technology, giving them what they need to go serve their customers and make money in the meantime. Our partner ecosystem is so critical to this company. The software certification, as an example, is going to allow them to demonstrate to their customers, in a very quantifiable way, how many DevNet certified engineers they have. Some of these partners have over a thousand DevNet members already, but wouldn't it be great via certifications? It's a real differentiator for them. I'll mention one other thing. We have a group of very strong learning partners that we work with that extend our capability globally, that are able to take the content that we create and then form that to meet the needs of very specific customers. There's another aspect of partners that are critical to this transformation. >> So you talk about partners to your customers, to the engineers, when I was at IDG one of the most frequently read articles was the Annual Computer World Salary. >> Mike: (laughs) >> You know what, if everyone's going to publish salaries, I'm going to look and see where do I stand. That's part of it, getting more certifications, you're going to be worth more in the market. >> It is. We've got some really good data that says what an investment in professional or expert level certification should do for your W-2 at the end of the year, and we're very mindful of that. >> DevNet bringing the street-cred. Mike, it was great to have you in the program. I can only imagine how dynamic you and Susie are together. >> We have a lot of fun. >> I got to see that next time. Congrats on all the success. It's palpable. >> Thanks. >> Cool stuff. For Dave Velannte, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCube Live from Cisco Live San Diego. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)