(upbeat music) >> It's theCUBE live in Las Vegas, covering AWS re:Invent 2022. This is the first full day of coverage. We will be here tomorrow and Thursday but we started last night. So hopefully you've caught some of those interviews. Lisa Martin here in Vegas with Paul Gillin. Paul, it's great to be back. We just saw a tweet from a very reliable source saying that there are upwards of 70,000 people here at rei:Invent '22 >> I think there's 70,000 people just in that aisle right there. >> I think so. It's been great so far we've gotten, what are some of the things that you have been excited about today? >> Data, I just see data everywhere, which very much relates to our next guest. Companies realizing the value of data and the strategic value of data, beginning to treat it as an asset rather than just exhaust. I see a lot of focus on app development here and building scalable applications now. Developers have to get over that, have to sort of reorient themselves toward building around the set of cloud native primitives which I think we'll see some amazing applications come out of that. >> Absolutely, we will. We're pleased to welcome back one of our alumni to the program. Shinji Kim joins us, the CEO and founder of Select Star. Welcome back Shinji. It's great to have you. >> Thanks Lisa, great to be back. >> So for the audience who may not know much about Select Star before we start digging into all of the good stuff give us a little overview about what the company does and what differentiates you. >> Sure, so Select Star is an automated data discovery platform. We act like it's Google for data scientists, data analysts and data engineers to help find and understand their data better. Lot of companies today, like what you mentioned, Paul, have 100s and 1000s of database tables now swimming through large volumes of data and variety of data today and it's getting harder and harder for people that wants to utilize data make decisions around data and analyze data to truly have the full context of where this data came from, who do you think that's inside the company or what other analysis might have been done? So Select Star's role in this case is we connect different data warehouses BI tools, wherever the data is actually being used inside the company, bringing out all the usage analytics and the pipeline and the models in one place so anyone can search through what's available and how the data has been created, used and being analyzed within the company. So that's why we call it it's kind of like your Google for data. >> What are some of the biggest challenges to doing that? I mean you've got data squirreled away in lots of corners of the organization, Excel spreadsheets, thumb drives, cloud storage accounts. How granular do you get and what's the difficulty of finding all this data? >> So today we focus primarily on lot of cloud data warehouses and data lakes. So this includes data warehouses like Redshift, Snowflake (indistinct), Databricks, S3 buckets, where a lot of the data from different sources are arriving. Because this is a one area where a lot of analysis are now being done. This is a place where you can join other data sets within the same infrastructural umbrella. And so that is one portion that we always integrate with. The other part that we also integrate a lot with are the BI tools. So whether that's (indistinct) where you are running analysis, building reports, and dashboards. We will pull out how those are, which analysis has been done and which business stakeholders are consuming that data through those tools. So you also mentioned about the differentiation. I would say one of the biggest differentiation that we have in the market today is that we are more in the cloud. So it's very cloud native, fully managed SaaS service and it's really focused on user experience of how easily anyone can really search and understand data through Select Star. In the past, data catalogs as a sector has been primarily focused on inventorizing all your enterprise data which are in many disciplinary forces. So it was more focused on technical aspect of the metadata. At the same time now this enterprise data catalog is important and is needed for even smaller companies because they are dealing with ton of data. Another part that we also see is more of democratization of data. Many different types of users are utilizing data whether they are fully technical or not. So we had basically emphasis around how to make our user interface as intuitive as possible for business users or non-technical users but also bring out as much context as possible from the metadata and the laws that we have access to, to bring out these insights for our customers. >> Got it. What was the impetus or the catalyst to launch the business just a couple of years ago? >> Yeah, so prior to this I had another data startup called Concord Systems. We focused on distributed stream processing framework. I sold the company to Akamai which is now called ... and the product is now called IoT Edge Connect. Through Akamai I started working with a lot of enterprises in automotive and consumer electronics and this is where I saw lot of the issues starting to happen when enterprises are starting to try to use the data. Collection of data, storage of data, processing of data with the help of lot of cloud providers, scaling that is not going to be a challenge as much anymore. At the same time now lot of enterprises, what I realized is a lot of enterprises were sitting on top of ton of data that they may not know how to utilize it or know even how to give the access to because they are not 100% sure what's really inside. And more and more companies, as they are building up their cloud data warehouse infrastructure they're starting to run into the same issue. So this is a part that I felt like was missing gap in the market that I wanted to fulfill and that's why I started the company. >> I'm fascinated with some of the mechanics of doing that. In March of 2020 when lockdowns were happening worldwide you're starting new a company, you have to get funding, you have to hire people, you don't have a team in place presumably. So you have to build that as free to core. How did you do all that? (Shinji laughs) >> Yeah, that was definitely a lot of work just starting from scratch. But I've been brewing this idea, I would say three four months prior. I had a few other ideas. Basically after Akamai I took some time off and then when I decided I wanted to start another company there were a number of ideas that I was toying around with. And so late 2019 I was talking to a lot of different potential customers and users to learn a little bit more about whether my hypothesis around data discovery was true or not. And that kind of led into starting to build prototypes and designs and showing them around to see if there is an interest. So it's only after all those validations and conversations in place that I truly decided that I was going to start another company and it just happened to be at the timing of end of February, early March. So that's kind of how it happened. At the same time, I'm very lucky that I was able to have had number of investors that I kept in touch with and I kept them posted on how this process was going and that's why I think during the pandemic it was definitely not an easy thing to raise our initial seed round but we were able to close it and then move on to really start building the product in 2020. >> Now you were also entering a market that's there's quite a few competitors already in that market. What has been your strategy for getting a foot in the door, getting some name recognition for your company other than being on the queue? >> Yes, this is certainly part of it. So I think there are a few things. One is when I was doing my market research and even today there are a lot of customers out there looking for an easier, faster, time to value solution. >> Yes. >> In the market. Today, existing players and legacy players have a whole suite of platform. However, the implementation time for those platforms take six months or longer and they don't necessarily are built for lot of users to use. They are built for database administrators or more technical people to use so that they end up finding their data governance project not necessarily succeeding or getting as much value out of it as they were hoping for. So this is an area that we really try to fill the gaps in because for us from day one you will be able to see all the usage analysis, how your data models look like, and the analysis right up front. And this is one part that a lot of our customers really like and also some of those customers have moved from the legacy players to Select Star's floor. >> Interesting, so you're actually taking business from some of the legacy guys and girls that may not be able to move as fast and quickly as you can. But I'd love to hear, every company these days has to be a data company, whether it's a grocery store or obviously a bank or a car dealership, there's no choice anymore. As consumers, we have this expectation that we're going to be able to get what we want, self-service. So these companies have to figure out where all the data is, what's the insides, what does it say, how can they act on that quickly? And that's a big challenge to enable organizations to be able to see what it is that they have, where's the value, where's the liability as well. Give me a favorite customer story example that you think really highlights the value of what Select Star is delivering. >> Sure, so one customer that we helped and have been working with closely is Pitney Bowes. It's one of the oldest companies, 100 year old company in logistics and manufacturing. They have ton of IoT data they collect from parcels and all the tracking and all the manufacturing that they run. They have recently, I would say a couple years ago moved to a cloud data warehouse. And this is where their challenge around managing data have really started because they have many different teams accessing the data warehouses but maybe different teams creating different things that might have been created before and it's not clear to the other teams and there is no single source of truth that they could manage. So for them, as they were starting to look into implementing data mesh architecture they adopted Select Star. And they have a, as being a very large and also mature company they have considered a lot of other legacy solutions in the market as well. But they decided to give it a try with select Star mainly because all of the automated version of data modeling and the documentation that we were able to provide upfront. And with all that, with the implementation of Select Star now they claim that they save more than 30 hours a month of every person that they have in the data management team. And we have a case study about that. So this is like one place where we see it save a lot of time for the data team as well as all the consumers that data teams serve. >> I have to ask you this as a successful woman in technology, a field that has not been very inviting to women over the years, what do you think this industry has to do better in terms of bringing along girls and young women, particularly in secondary school to encourage them to pursue careers in science and technology? >> Like what could they do better? >> What could this industry do? What is this industry, these 70,000 people here need to do better? Of which maybe 15% are female. >> Yeah, so actually I do see a lot more women and minority in data analytics field which is always great to see, also like bridging the gap between technology and the business point of view. If anything as a takeaway I feel like just making more opportunities for everyone to participate is always great. I feel like there has been, or you know just like being in the industry, a lot of people tends to congregate with people that they know or more closed groups but having more inclusive open groups that is inviting regardless of the level or gender I think is definitely something that needs to be encouraged more just overall in the industry. >> I agree. I think the inclusivity is so important but it also needs to be intentional. We've done a lot of chatting with women in tech lately and we've been talking about this very topic and that they all talk about the inclusivity, diversity, equity but it needs to be intentional by companies to be able to do that. >> Right, and I think in a way if you were to put it as like women in tech then I feel like that's also making it more explosive. I think it's better when it's focused on the industry problem or like the subject matter, but then intentionally inviting more women and minority to participate so that there's more exchange with more diverse attendees in the AWS. >> That's a great point and I hope to your 0.1 day that we're able to get there, but we don't have to call out women in tech but it is just so much more even playing field. And I hope like you that we're on our way to doing that but it's amazing that Paul brought up that you started the company during the pandemic. Also as a female founder getting funding is incredibly difficult. So kudos to you. >> Thank you. >> For all the successes that you've had. Tell us what's next for Select Star before we get to that last question. >> Yeah, we have a lot of exciting features that have been recently released and also coming up. First and foremost we have an auto documentation feature that we recently released. We have a fairly sophisticated data lineage function that parses through activity log and sequel queries to give you what the data pipeline models look like. This allows you to tell what is the dependency of different tables and dashboards so you can plan what your migration or any changes that might happen in the data warehouse so that nothing breaks whenever these changes happen. We went one step further to that to understand how the data replication actually happens and based on that we are now able to detect which are the duplicated data sets and how each different field might have changed their data values. And if the data actually stays the same then we can also propagate the same documentation as well as tagging. So this is particularly useful if you are doing like a PII tagging, you just mark one thing once and based on the data model we will also have the rest of the PII that it's associated with. So that's one part. The second part is more on the security and data governance front. So we are really seeing policy based access control where you can define who can see what data in the catalog based on their team tags and how you want to define the model. So this allows more enterprises to be able to have different teams to work together. And last one at least we have more integrations that we are releasing. We have an upgraded integration now with Redshift so that there's an easy cloud formation template to get it set up, but we now have not added Databricks, and power BI as well. So there are lots of stuff coming up. >> Man, you have accomplished a lot in two and a half years Shinji, my goodness! Last question for you, describing Select Star in a bumper sticker, what would that bumper sticker say? >> So this is on our website, but yes, automated data catalog in 15 minutes would be what I would call. >> 15 minutes. That's awesome. Thank you so much for joining us back on the program reintroducing our audience to Select Star. And again, congratulations on the successes that you've had. You have to come back because what you're creating is a flywheel and I can't wait to see where it goes. >> Awesome, thanks so much for having me here. >> Oh, our pleasure. Shinji Kim and Paul Gillin, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live enterprise and emerging tech coverage. (upbeat music)

(bright music) >> Welcome back to the Cube. Our continuing coverage of Snowflake Summit 22, day two, lots of content as I've said, coming at you the last couple of days. Dave and I, Dave Vellante, and Lisa Martin are here with you. We have an exciting guest here next to talk with us about data discovery. Please welcome Shinji Kim, the founder and CEO at Select Star. Welcome to the program. >> Thanks for having me. >> Dave: Great to see you. >> Excited to be here. >> Talk to us about Select Star. What do you guys do? And then we're going to uncrack data discovery. >> Yeah, why'd you start the company? (Shinji laughing) >> Sure. So, Select Star is, on fully automated data discovery platform, that helps any company to be able to find, understand and manage their data. I started this company because after I sold my last company, Concord Systems to Akamai, I started working with a lot of global enterprise companies that manages a lot of IOT devices like automakers or consumer electronics companies. And it became very clear to me that companies are not going to stop anytime soon about collecting more data, more often, and trying to utilize them as much as they can. And cloud providers, and all the new technologies like Snowflake has really helped them to achieve that goal. But the challenges that, I've started noticing, from a lot of these enterprises, is that they now have 100s or 1000s of data sets that they have to manage. And when you are trying to use that data it's almost impossible to find which specific field which specific data sets that you should use out of 1000s and 100s of 1000s of data sets you have. So, that's why I felt like this is the next problem and challenge that I would like to solve. Also because, I have a background of working as a software engineer, data scientist, product manager, in the stages of creating data, transforming data and also querying data and trying to make business decisions on data. Having a right context about the data, is so important, for me to use that data. So, for us, we are trying to solve that challenge around finding and understanding data, and we call that data discovery. >> Wow. That's music to my ears here because I can't tell you how many meetings I've been in, where somebody presents some data and I say, okay, what's the source of that data? What are the assumptions used to derive data? I have different data, you know, and then it becomes this waste of time. My data's better than your data, or everybody has an agenda. You cut through that. >> Yeah, so, data discovery, in a nutshell, we defining as finding, understanding, and managing your data. So, in Select Star, we will automatically bring out, all your, like the schema information. Where does data exist? We will also analyze the SQL query logs as well as activity logs that's generated by any applications and BI tools that are connected on top of your data warehouse, so that any time you're looking at a database any particular database table, column or dashboard, we will tell you, where did this data come from? Where did it originate from? How was this transformed? And which reporting table does this exist? Who's using this data the most inside the company? How are they using it? And which are the dashboards and reports that are built on top of this data set? So you don't have to go out and ask everybody else, "Hey, I'm looking for this type of data. "Has anybody worked with this?" This is actually something that I realize a lot of data analysts and data scientists waste their time on. So yeah, that's really the, what we call fully automated data context that we provide to our customers so that you can truly use all the data that you have in your data warehouse. >> And you do this by understanding the metadata? Or is it some kind of scanning? Or using math or code? >> It's both. So, first of all, we do connect and bring out all the metadata. So, that's all the information under information schema. And then, we also look at all the query history. So all your select SQL queries, all your create queries, create table queries, create view queries. And based on that, we will also match the metadata, where it exists inside those queries and logs. And based on that, we will generate first and foremost, what we would call column level data lineage. Data lineage is all about showing you the flow of data from where it was originated, how it was transformed, and where it exists now. And also, what we call popularity. Who's using what data? How are they using it? And in aggregate, you can also find out, which are the most important data sets in our company? Which are the data sets that can be deprecated because it was like a duplicate of other data sets and nobody's using it anymore? And we like put a, like a popularity score for every single data asset that you have in your company so you can see how that's being used. >> How do your customers take action on the information that you provide them? Do they ultimately automate it? Do they go through a process of sort of the human in the loop? >> Well, we do the automation for them. >> Yeah. >> And we do also provide them with a, really easy to use user interface so that they can add any semantic level data on top. So, that's like tags. Like whether you want to market as, this is a analyst approved table, or do not use table or if you want to put a PII classification of data you can do that on a column. And we will automatically either propagate those annotations throughout the platform. We will also automatically propagate any same matching documentation that you might want to use within the data warehouse. And we will also provide you with, more of a rich text documentation that you can also add on top as a business glossary or like a Wiki that business users can, get a better understanding of data concepts and models as well. >> How do they tag the data? Do they use another tool that does that or? >> No, they can tag it within Select Star. Any table or column has a little icon, tag icon, so you can click on it. Or, we can also give you a view of every database page will have all the tables in one place. You can add a keyword and bulk tag. >> So humans tag. >> Yeah. So humans tag. So in the beginning, humans tag, and then we will automate the propagation of that tag. So if you already tagged, let's say SSN field as a PII, then we will find all the other columns that may use the exact same data, and also tag the same, just as an example. >> Okay so you, once the human puts it in there then you automate the downstream. 'Cause humans sometimes aren't great at classifying and tagging and inconsistencies and I would think that you could use math to improve that. >> And we do have some plans to add more automated tagging system. For example, we are already, we don't necessarily tag them, but we give our customers filters on top of their search results to see, which are the data sets that nobody's using anymore? Which are the data sets that's being created very recently? And you can also filter by who created them or who are the owners. So these are some of the aspects of the data or even like when's the last time was this data updated? So these are the aspects of the operational metadata that we are starting to automate to put more automated annotation, I would say is more coming up towards the end of the year. But in terms of semantic level tagging, like is this data set around customers? Is this data set for marketing, sales, customer support? That is something that we are giving a really easy to use interface for the data team to be able to easily organize them. >> How are you helping organizations? We think of the all the privacy regulations and legislations. How is Select Star a facilitator of data privacy for your clients? Is it part of that play? >> So, I would say, one of the main use cases of data discovery, is data governance. So, starting this company and starting to work with a lot of fortune 500 companies, as well as I would say more like recently IPOed companies that have grown very fast in Silicon valley. Some of those customers have told us that they initially adopted Select Star because they needed a good data catalog and search platform for their data team. But as they are starting to use Select Star and starting to see all these insights about their own data warehouse, they are all kicking off their new data governance projects, because they get to see a really good lay of the land, of how the data is being accessed today. So, this is why we have a very easy to use and also programmatic API so that you can add tags, ownership, and set access control through a Select Star. We are actually just releasing a beta version of our, what we call policy based access control where you can use either role based and attribute based access control so that different roles of the users get to see different versions of a Select star when they log in. And this is just the beginning. Like PII is for example, any column that's already marked as PII. We will always strip out the value before it gets fully processed within Select Star. So even if anybody might stumble upon any sequel queries that other analysts have run, those values won't be available in Select Star at all. >> And you started the company right before the lockdown, right? That must have been crazy. >> Yes, March, 2020 is our, my incorporation of Select Star. It was a very interesting time to start the company. And in a way, I'm glad I did. We had a lot of focus time to really, go heads down, build out the product, and work closely with our customer. And today it's really awesome to get to, provide that support to more customers today. >> And so, what are you doing with Snowflake? >> So Snowflake has been a great partner for us. Lot of customers and Snowflake is really great for this. Basically building single source of truth of your data by connecting all your source of, databases, as well as like your ERP, CRM systems, ad systems, marketing systems, SaaS platform, you can connect them now all to Snowflake, that will all dump all the data inside. So that, allows data team to be able to actually join and crossmatch the customer data across so many different applications. And what we see from a lot of Snowflake customers, hence they end up with many different schemas and tens of thousands of tables. And for them now they are requiring or needing more of a better data discovery tool so that they can use and leverage Snowflake data that they have. So, in that regard so we are a snowflake data governance accelerator partner. And as part of that accelerator program, one of the things that we've integrated with Snowflake is, what we call Snowflake Tag Sync. So if you create any tags in Select Star, and you marked it as a PII, we will also replicate the same tag, to Snowflake. >> Yeah. Okay. >> And so everything is synced in there. And on top of that, a lot of our customers really like using our column level lineage, because we will show how all the data tables within Snowflake is connected to another. And actually last but not least, we actually just released this feature today, called the auto generated ER diagram. ER diagram stands for Entity Relationship Diagram. ERD is like a blueprint of your data model. When your engineers and data architects start creating tables in databases, this is a diagram that they will put together, to show how they are translating business logic into data models in the databases. And that includes, which are the fields for primary keys, foreign keys, and how are different like when you look at Star schema, how different tables are joined together. When all these tables gets migrated into Snowflake, a lot of them actually lose the, the relationships of primary keys and foreign keys. So, many analysts, what we found, is that they are starting to guess, how to join different tables, how to use different data sets together. But because we know how other analysts have actually joined and used the tables in the past, we can give them the guidance and really nice diagram that they can refer to. So that is the ERD diagram that we are releasing today. Available for all customers including our free customers, where you can select any tables, and we will show you the relationship that table has, that you can use right away in your sequel queries. >> And that will facilitate, that simplifies doing more complex joins, yes? Which is an Achilles heel of Snowflake. That's not really what they are about, but they have to rely on the ecosystem to help them do that, which has always been their strategy. The company founded in March 2020, amazing. And then relatively small still, yes? Or is it self-funded? I mean, you've raised a little bit of money, but what's your status? >> Yeah, we raised our seed funding when I first started the company. We've also raised another round of bridge round last year and we plan to raise our another venture round of funding soon. >> Great. Awesome. >> And we're going to be making those investments. What are some of the key parts of the business that you're going to use that funding for? >> There's a lot to build. (Shinji laughing) >> Dave: Yeah. Engineering. >> Obviously more automation features, but having, I would say right now, we have now built a really good foundation of data discovery and that includes fully automated data cataloging for metadata, column level lineage, and also building the usage model like popularity, who's using what, all that type of stuff. So, now we are starting to build really exciting features that leverages these fundamental aspects of data discovery, like auto propagation of tags. We also do auto propagation of documentation. So you write one column description once, and it will get replicated and changed everywhere throughout your data model. We have also other things that we have in store especially more for next year, are, package support for specific use cases like data governance, self-service analytics and cloud cost management. >> Nice, lots of work-- >> Dave: Impressive, I'm blown away. >> And you've accomplished this during a pandemic that's even more impressive. Thank you so much Shinji for coming on, talking to us about Select Star. What you're enabling organizations to do, really derive the context from that data taking a lot of manual work away. We appreciate your insights and your time and wish you the best of luck. >> Well, thanks so much for having me here. This has been great. >> Good. Thanks so much. For Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube's coverage of Snowflake Summit 22, day two. Stick around. Dave has an industry analyst panel common up next. You won't want to miss it. (soft music)

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: From the CUBE studios in Palo Alto, in Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is theCUBE Conversation. >> Well, there's no question these days that in the world of business, it's all about data. Data is the king. How you harvest data, how you organize your data, how you distribute your data, how you secure your data, all very important questions. And certainly a leader in the data replication business is HVR. We're joined now by their CEO, Anthony Brooks-Williams, and by Diwakar Goel, who is the Global Chief Data Officer at GE. We're going to talk about, you guessed it, data. Gentlemen, thanks for being with us. Good to have you here on theCUBE Conversation. >> Thank you. Thanks, John. >> Yeah, well, listen, >> Thanks, John. >> first off, let's just characterize the relationship between the two companies, between GE and HVR. Maybe Diwakar, let's take us back to how you got to HVR, if you will and maybe a little bit about the evolution of that relationship, where it's gone from day one. >> No, absolutely. It's now actually a long time back. It's almost five and a half years back, that we started working with Anthony. And honestly it was our early days of big data. We all had big, different kind of data warehousing platforms, but we were transitioning into the big data ecosystem and we needed a partner that could help us to get more of the real-time data. And that's when we started working with Anthony. And I would say, John, over the years, you know we have learned a lot and our partnership has grown a lot. And it's grown based on the needs. When we started, honestly just being able to replicate a lot sources and to give you context like GBG, we have the fifth largest Oracle ERP. We have the seventh largest SAP ERP. They just, just by the nature of just getting those systems in was a challenge. And we had to work through different, different solutions because some of the normal ones wouldn't work. As we got matured, and we started using data over the last two, three years, specifically, we had different challenges. The challenges was like, you know is the data completely accurate? Are we losing and dropping some data? When you're bringing three billion, five billion rows of data, every five to six hours, even if you've dropped 1% you've lost like a huge set of insights, right? So that's when you started working with Anthony more around like the nuances as to, you know what could be causing us to lose some data, or duplicate some datasets, right? And I think our partnership's been very good, because some of our use cases have been unique and we've continuously pushed Anthony and the team to deliver that. With the light of, you know these use cases are not unique, in some cases we were just ahead, just by the nature of what we were handling. >> Okay. Anthony, about then the HVR approach, Diwakar, just took us through somewhat higher level of how this relationship has evolved. It's started with big data, now, it's gone (mumbles) in terms of even fine tuning the accuracy, that's so important. Latency is obviously a huge topic too from your side of the fence. But how do you address it then? Let's take GE for example, in terms of understanding their business, learning their business, their capabilities, maybe where their holes are, you know where their weaknesses were, and showing that up. How did you approach that from the HVR side? >> Yeah. Do you mean wanting back a few years? I mean, obviously it starts, you get in there, you find an initial use case and that was moving data into a certain data warehouse platform, whether it be around analytics or reporting such as Diwakar mentioned. And that's, I mean, most commonly what we see from a lot of customers. It's, the typical use case is real-time analytics, and moving the data to an area for consolidated reporting. It's either most (indistinct) in these times, it's in the cloud. But GE you know, where that's evolved and GE are a top customer for us. We work across many of their business units of their different BUS. GE had another arm Predix, which is the industrial IOT platform that actually OEM must as well for a solution they sell to other companies in the space. But where we've worked with GE is, you know the ability one, just to support the scale, the complexity, the volume of data, many different sources systems, many different BUS, whether it be, you know, their aviation division or our divisions, or those types, to sending that data across. And the difference being as well where we've really pushed us and Diwakar and team pushed us is around the accuracy to the exact point that Diwakar mentions. This study is typically financial data. This is data that they run their business off. This is data that the executing CEOs get dashboards on a daily basis. It can't be wrong. You may not only do businesses these days, you want to make decisions on the freshest data that they can, and specifically over the last year, because that's a matter about survival. Not only is it about winning, it's about survival and doing business in the most cost-effective way. But then that type of data, that we're moving, the financial data, the financial data lags we built for GE that is capturing this out of SAP systems, where we have some other features benefits, you know that's where that really pushed us around the accuracy. And that's whereby you mean, you can't really, these, you can't ever, but especially these days, have a typical just customer tab vendor approach. It has to be a partnership. And that was one other thing Diwakar and I spoke a while ago. It was about, how do we really push and develop a partnership between the two companies, between the two organizations? And that's key. And that's where we've been pushed. And there's much new things we're working on for them based on where they are going as a business, whether it be different sources, different targets. And so that's where it's worked out well for both companies. >> So Diwakar, about the margin of error then, in terms of accuracy, 'cause I'm hearing from Anthony that this is something you really pushed them on, right? You know, and 96, 97%, doesn't cut it, right? I mean, you can't be that close. It's got to be spot on. At what point in your data journey, if you will, did it come to roost that the accuracy, you know had to improve or, you know you needed a solution that would get you where you needed to operate your various businesses? >> I think John, it basically stems down to a broader question. You know, what are you using the data for? You know, a lot of us, when we're starting this journey we want to use the data for a lot of analytical use cases. And that basically means you want to look at a broad pattern and say, okay, you know what, do I have a significant amount of inventory sitting on one plant? Or, you know, is there a bigger problem with how I'm negotiating with a vendor, and I want to change that? And for those use cases, you know getting good enough data gives you an indicator as to how do you want to work with them, right? But when you want to take your data to a far more fidelity and more critical processes, whether, you know you're trying to capture from an airplane, the latest signal, and if you had five more signal, perhaps you solve the mystery of the Malaysian Med Sync plan, or when you're trying to solve and report on your financials, right? Then the fidelity and the accuracy of data has to be spot on. And what you realize is, you know you unlock a certain set of value with analytical use cases. But if you truly want to unlock what can be done with big data, you have to go at the operational level, you have to run your business using the data real-time. It's not about like, you know, in hindsight, how can I do things better? If I want to make real-time decisions on, you know, how, what I need to make right now, what's my healthcare indicator suggesting, how do I change the dosage for a customer or a patient, right? It has to be very operational. It has to be very accurate. And that margin of error then almost becomes zero, because you are dealing with things. If you go wrong you can cost lives, right? So that's where we are. And I think honestly being able to solve that problem has now opened up a massive door of what all we can do with data. >> Yeah. Yeah, man. I think I would just build on that as well. I mean, one, it's about us as a company. We are in the data business, obviously. Sources and targets. I mean that's the table stakes stuff. What do we support? It's our ability to bridge these modern environments and the legacy environments, that we do. And you see that across all organizations. A lot of their data source sits in these legacy top environments, but that will transition to other either target systems or the new world ones that we see, more modern bleeding edge environments. So we have to support those but they're not the same time. It's building on the performance, the accuracy of the total product, versus just being able to connect the data. And that's where we get driven down the path with companies like GE, with Diwakar. And they've pushed us. But it's really bridging those environments. >> You know, it also seems like with regard to data that you look at this almost like a verb tense, what happened, what is happening, what will happen, right? So in looking at it to that person, Diwakar, if you will, in terms of the kind of information that you can glean from this vast repository of data as opposed to, you know, what did happen, what's going on right now, and then what can we make happen down the road? Where does HVR factor into that for you in terms of not only, you know, making those, having those kinds of insights, but also making sure that the right people within your organization have access to the information that they need. And maybe just, they only need. >> No, you're right, John. It's funny, you're using a different analogy but I keep referring to as taillights versus headlights, right? Gone are the days you can refer back as to what's happening. You need to just be able to look forward, right? And I think real-time data too is no longer a question or believe, it's a necessity. And I think one of the things we often miss out is real-time data is actually a very collaborative piece of how it brings the various operators together. Because in the past, if you think, if you just go a little bit old school, people will go and do their job. And then they will come back and submit what they did, right? And then you will accumulate what everybody did and make sense out of it. Now, as people are doing things live, you are hearing about it. So for example, if I am issuing payments across different, different places I need to know how much balance I need to keep in the bank, it's the simplest example, right? Now I can keep the math, I can always stack my bank with a ton of money, then I'm losing money because now I'm blocking my money. And especially now, if you think about GE which has 6,000 bank account. If I keep stacking it, I will practically go bankrupt, right? So if I have an inference of what's happening every time a payment card issued by anybody, I am knowing it real-time. It allows me to adjust for optimal liquidity. As simple as it sounds, it saves you a hundred billion dollars if you do it right, in a year, right? So I think it is just fundamentally changes. We need to think about real-time data is no longer, it's just how you need to operate. It's no longer an option. >> Yeah. You may, we see, what we've seen as posture, we were fortunate. We had a great 2020. Just under a hundred percent year-over-year growth. Why? It's about the immediacy of data, so that they can act accordingly. You mean these days, it's table stakes. You mean, it's about winning and, or just surviving compared to, you know, years ago when day old data, week old data, that was okay. You mean, then largely these legacy type (mumbles) technologies, well it was fine. It's not anymore. You mean exactly what Diwakar was saying. It's table stakes. It's just what, that's what it is. >> And I think John, in fact, I see actually it's getting further pushed out, right? Because what happens is I get real-time data from HVR but then I'm actually doing some stuff to get real-time insights after that. And there is a lag from that time to when I'm actually generating insights on which I'm acting on. Now, there is more and more of a need that how do I even shorten that cycle time, right? I actually, from it, we are getting, not only data when it's getting refresh, I actually get signals when I need to add something. So I think in fact, the need of the future is going to be also far more event-driven, where every time something happens that I need to act on, how can technologies like HVR even help you with understanding those? >> Anthony: Yes. >> Anthony, what does scale do to all this? Diwakar touched on it briefly about accuracy and all of a sudden, if you know, if you have a, if you've got a, you know a small discrepancy on a small dataset, no big deal, right? But all of a sudden, if there are issues down the road and you're talking about, you know, millions and millions and millions of inputs, now we've got a problem. So just in terms of scale and with an operation the size of GE, what kind of impacts does that have? >> Yeah. Massive. You mean, it's part of the reason why we went, why we've been successful. We have the ability to scale very well from this highly distributed architecture that we have. And so that's what's been, you know, fortunate for us over the last year, as we know. What does the stat mean? 90% of the world's data was generated over the last two years or something like that. And that just feeds into more, human scale is key. Not only complexity at scale is a key thing, and that's where we've been fortunate to set ourselves apart on that space. I mean we, GE push us and challenge us on a daily basis. The same we do with another company, the biggest online e-commerce platform, massive scale, massive scale. Then that's, we get pushed the whole time and get pushed to improve all the time. But fortunately we have a very good solution that fits into that, but it's just, and I think it just doesn't get, worse is the wrong word. It's just, it's going to continue to grow. The problem is not going away. You know, the volumes are going to increase massively. >> So Diwakar, if I could, before we wrap up here, I'm just curious from your, if you put on your forward-thinking glasses right now, in terms of the data capabilities that HVR has provided you, are they driving you to different kinds of horizons in terms of your business strategy or are your business strategies driving the data solutions that you need? I mean, which way is it right now in terms of how you are going to expand your services down the road? >> It's an interesting question. I think, and Anthony keep correcting me on this one, but today, you know because if you think about big data solutions, right? They were largely designed for a different world historically. They were designed for our IOT parametric set of data sets in different kind of world. So there was a big catch up that a lot of these companies had to do to make it relevant even for the other relational data sets, transactional data sets and everything else, right? So a big part of what I feel like Anthony and other companies have been focusing on is really making this relevant for that world. And I feel like companies like HVR are now absolutely there. And as they are there they are now starting to think about solving or I would say focusing on people who are early in their stage, and how can they get them up and quick, you know, efficient early, because that's a lot of the challenges, right? So I would say, I don't know if Anthony's focuses me in, right? So it should not be me, but it's, I think like where they're going, for example like how do they connect with all the different cloud vendors? So when a company wants to come live and if they're using data from, you know the HR Workday solution or Concord Travel solution, they can just come pitch. We are plug and play. And say, okay, enable me data from all of these and it's there. Today what took us six months to get there, right? So I think rightly so, I think Anthony and the team are focusing on that. And I think we have been partnering on with Anthony more, I would say, perhaps pushing a little more on you know, getting not only accurate data but also now on the paradigm of compliant data. Because I think what you're going to also start seeing is as companies, especially in like different kind of industries, like financial, healthcare and others, they would need data certification also of various kinds. And that would require each of these tool to meet compliance standards that were very, they were not designed for again, right? So I think that's a different paradigm, that again Anthony and the team are really doing great in helping us get there. >> Yeah. I think there's, that was good Diwakar. There's quite a bit to unpack there, you know. With companies such as GE, we've been on a journey for many years. And so that's why we deployed across the enterprise. And let's start off with, I have this source system, I'll move my data into their target system. These targets systems you know, become more frequently either data lakes or environments that were on-premise to running in the cloud, to newer platforms that are built for the cloud, like we've seen the uptake in companies like Snowflake and those types. And you mean, we see this from you know big query from Google and those type of environments. So we see those. And that's things we've got to support along the way as well. But then at the same time, more and more data starts getting generated in your non-traditional trial platforms. I mean, cloud-based applications and those things which we then support and build into this whole framework. But at the same time to what Diwakar was saying, the eyes, you know, the legal requirements, the regulator requirements on the type of data that is now being used. Before you would never typically have years ago companies moving their most valuable or their financial data into these cloud-based type environments. Well, they are today. It happens. And so with that comes a whole bunch of regulation in security. And we've certainly seen particularly this last year the uptake in when these transactions have another level of scrutiny when you're bringing in new products into these environments. So they go through, you know, basically the security and the legal requirements are a lot longer and more depth than they used to be. And that's just the typical of the areas that they're deploying these technologies in as well, and where you're taking some technologies that weren't necessarily built for the modern world that they are now adopt in the modern world. So it's quite complex and a lot to unpack there, but it's, you've got to be on top of all of that. But that's where you then work with your top customers, like at GE, that future roadmap, that feeds where one, you obviously make a decision and you go, this is where we believe the market's going, and these are the things we need to go, we know we need to go support, no matter that no customer has asked us for it yet. But the majority of it is still where customers that are pushing, bleeding edge, that are pushing you as well, and that feeds the roadmap. And, you know, there's a number of new profile platforms GE even pushed us to go support and features that Diwakar and the team have pushed us around accuracy and security and those types of things. So it's an all encompassing approach to it. >> John, we could like-- >> Actually, I think we've set up an entirely new CUBE Conversation we're going to have down the road, I think. >> Yeah. (laughing) >> Hey, gentlemen, thank you for the time. I certainly appreciate it. Really enjoyed it. And I wish you both a very happy and importantly, a healthy 2021. >> Great. >> Thank you both. Appreciate your time. >> Thank you. >> Thanks, John. >> Thank you. >> Thanks, Anthony. Bye bye. >> Bye bye. (upbeat music)

>>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel and AWS. >>Welcome back to the cubes coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 live I'm Lisa Martin. Really exciting topic coming up for you next, please. Welcome Blake shoulda, founder and CEO of boom supersonic Blake. It's great to have you on the program. Thank you for having me, Lisa, and your background gives me all the way with what we're going to talk about in the next few minutes or so, but supersonic flight has existed for quite a long time, like 50 or so years. I think those of us in certain generations remember the Concorde for example, but the technology to make it efficient and mainstream is only recently been approved by or accepted by regulators. Tell us a little bit about boom, your mission to make the world more accessible with supersonic commercial flight. Well, a supersonic flight has >> actually been around since 1949 when Chuck Yeager broke the speed barrier or sorry, the sound barrier. >>And as, as many of you know, he actually passed yesterday, uh, 97. So very, very sad to see one of the supersonic pioneers behind us. Uh, but, uh, but as I say goodbye to Jaeger, a new era of supersonic flight is here. And if you look at the history of progress and transportation, since the Dawn of the industrial revolution, uh, we used to make regular progress and speed. As we went from, uh, the horse to the iron horse, to the, the boats, to the, the early propeller airplanes that have the jet age. And what happened was every time we made transportation faster, instead of spending less time traveling, we actually spent more time traveling because there were more places to go, more people to meet. Uh, we haven't had a world war since the Dawn of the jet age. Uh, places like Hawaii have become, uh, a major tourist destination. >>Uh, but today, uh, today it's been 60 years since we've had a mainstream re uh, step forward and speed. So what we're doing here at boom is picking up where Concord left off building an aircraft that flies faster by factor to the, anything you can get a ticket on today. And yet is 75% more affordable than Concorde was. So we want to make Australia as accessible as a why yesterday. We want to enable you to cross the Atlantic, do business, be home in time, detect your kids into bed, or take a three-day business trip to Asia and let you do it in just 24 >> hours. I like the sound of all of that. Even getting on a plane right now in general. I think we all do so, so interesting that you, you want to make this more accessible. And I did see the news about Chuck Yeager last night. >>Um, designing though the first supersonic airliner overture, it's called in decades, as you said, this dates back 60 years, rolling it out goal is to roll it out in 2025 and flying more than 500 trans oceanic routes. Talk to me about how you're leveraging technology and AWS to help facilitate that. Right. Well, so one of the really fascinating things is the new generation of airplanes, uh, are getting born in the cloud and then they're going to go fly through actual clouds. And so there are, there are a bunch of revolutions in technology that have happened since Concord's time that are enabling what we're doing now, their breakthroughs and materials. We've gone from aluminum to carbon fiber they're breakthroughs and engines. We've gone from after burning turbo jets that are loud and inefficient to quiet, clean, efficient turbo fans. But one of the most interesting breakthroughs has been in a available to do design digitally and iteration digitally versus, uh, versus physically. >>So when conquer was designed as an example, they were only able to do about a dozen wind tunnel tests because they were so expensive. And so time consuming and on, uh, on our XP one aircraft, which is our prototype that rolled out in October. Um, uh, we did hundreds of iterations of the design in virtual wind tunnels, where we could spin up a, uh, a simulation and HPC cluster in AWS, often more than 500 cores. And then we'd have our airplanes flying through virtual wind tunnels, thousands of flights scenarios you can figure out which were the losers, which were the winners keep iterating on the winners. And you arrive at an aerodynamic design that is more efficient at high speed. We're going very safely, very quickly in a straight line, but also a very smooth controllable for safe takeoff and landing. And the part of the artist supersonic airplane design is to accomplish both of those things. One, one airplane, and, uh, being able to design in the cloud, the cloud allows us to start up to do what previously only governments and militaries could do. I mentioned we rolled out our XP one prototype in October. That's the first time anyone has rolled out a supersonic civil aircraft since the Soviet union did it in 1968. And we're able to do as a startup because of computing. >>That's incredible born in the cloud to fly in the cloud. So talk to me about a lot of, of opportunity that technology has really accelerated. And we've seen a lot of acceleration this year in particular digital transformation businesses that if they haven't pivoted are probably in some challenging waters. So talk to us about how you're going all in with AWS to facilitate all these things that you just mentioned, which has dramatic change over 12, uh, when tone test for the Concord and how many times did it, >>Uh, I mean for 27 years, but not that many flights, never, it never changed the way mainstream, uh, never, never district some of you and I fly. Right. Um, so, so how, how are we going all in? So we've, you know, we've been using AWS for, uh, you know, basically since the founding of the company. Uh, but what we, what we're doing now is taking things that we were doing outside of the cloud and cloud. Uh, as an example, uh, we have 525 terabytes of XP one design and test data that what used to be backed up offsite. Um, and, and what we're doing is migrating into the cloud. And then your data is next. Your compute, you can start to do these really interesting things as an example, uh, you can run machine learning models to calibrate your simulations to your wind tunnel results, which accelerates convergence allows you to run more iterations even faster, and ultimately come up with a more efficient airplane, which means it's going to be more affordable for all of us to go to go break the sound barrier. >>And that sounds like kind of one of the biggest differences that you just said is that it wasn't built for mainstream before. Now, it's going to be accessibility affordability as well. So how are you going to be leveraging the cloud, you know, design manufacturing, but also other areas like the beyond onboard experience, which I'm already really excited to be participating in in the next few years. >>Yeah. So there's so many, so many examples. We've talked about design a little bit already. Uh, it's going to manifest in the manufacturing process, uh, where the, the, the, the, the supply chain, uh, will be totally digital. The factory operations will be run out of the cloud. You know, so what that means concretely is, uh, you know, literally there'll be like a million parts of this airplane. And for any given unit goes through their production line, you'll instantly know where they all are. Um, you'll know which serial numbers went on, which airplanes, uh, you'll understand, uh, if there was a problem with one of it, how you fixed it. And as you continue to iterate and refine the airplane, this, this is one of things that's actually a big deal, uh, with, with digital in the cloud is, you know, exactly what design iteration went into, exactly which airplane and, uh, and that allows you to actually iterate faster and any given airline with any given airplane will actually know exactly what, what airplane they have, but the next one that rolls off the line might be even a little bit better. >>And so it allows you to keep track of all of that. It allows you to iterate faster, uh, it allows you to spot bottlenecks in your supply chain before they impact production. Um, and then it allows you to, uh, to do preventive maintenance later. So there's to be digital interpretation all over the airplane, it's going to update the cloud on, you know, uh, are the engines running expected temperature. So I'm gonna run a little bit hot, is something vibrating more than it should vibrate. And so you catch these things way before there's any kind of real maintenance issue. You flag it in the cloud. The next time the airplane lands, there's a tech waiting for the airplane with whatever the part is and able to install it. And you don't have any downtime, and you're never anywhere close to a safety issue. You're able to do a lot more preventively versus what you can do today. >>Wow. So you have to say that you're going to be able to, to have a hundred percent visibility into manufacturing design, everything is kind of an understatement, but you launched XQ on your prototype in October. So during the pandemic, as I mentioned, we've been talking for months now on the virtual cube about the acceleration of digital transformation. Andy, Jassy talked about it in his keynote at AWS reinventing, reinventing this year, virtual, what were some of the, the, the advantages that you got, being able to stay on track and imagine if you were on track to launch in October during a time that has been so chaotic, uh, everywhere else, including air travel. >>Well, some of it's very analog, uh, and some of it's very digital. So to start with the analog, uh, we took COVID really seriously at Bo. Uh, we went into that, the pandemic first hit, we shut the company down for a couple of weeks, so we'd kind of get our feet underneath of us. And then we sort of testing, uh, everyone who had to work on the airplane every 14 days, we were religious about wearing masks. And as a result, we haven't had anyone catch COVID within the office. Um, and I'm super proud that we're able to stay productive and stay safe during the pandemic. Um, and you do that, but kind of taking it seriously, doing common sense things. And then there's the digital effort. And, uh, and so, you know, part of the company runs digitally. What we're able to do is when there's kind of a higher alert level, we go a little bit more digital when there's a lower alert level. >>Uh, we have more people in the office cause we, we still really do value that in-person collaboration and which brings it back through to a bigger point. It's been predicted for a long time, that the advent of digital communication is going to cause us not to need to travel. And, uh, what we've seen, you know, since the Dawn of the telephone is that it's actually been the opposite. The more you can know, somebody even a little bit, uh, at distance, the hungry you are to go see them in person, whether it's a business contact or someone you're in love with, um, no matter what it is, there's still that appetite to be there in person. And so I think what we're seeing with the digitization of communication is ultimately going to be very, um, uh, it's very complimentary with supersonic because you can get to know somebody a little bit over a long distance. You can have some kinds of exchanges and then you're, and then the friction for be able to see them in person is going to drop. And that is, uh, that's a wonderful combination. >>I think everybody on the planet welcomes that for sure, given what we've all experienced in the last year, you can have a lot of conversations by zoom. Obviously this was one of them, but there is to your point, something about that in-person collaboration that really takes things can anyway, to the next level. I am curious. So you launched XB one in October, as I mentioned a minute ago, and I think I read from one of your press releases planning to launch in 2025, the overture with over 500 trans oceanic routes. What can we expect from boom and the next year or two, are you on track for that 2025? >>Yeah. Things are going, things are going great. Uh, so to give a sense of what the next few years hold. So we rolled out the assembled XB one aircraft this year, uh, next year that's going to fly. And so that will be the first civil supersonic, uh, flying aircraft ever built by an independent company. Uh, and along the way, we are building the foundation of overture. So that design efforts happening now as XB one is breaking the sound barrier. We'll be finalizing the overture design in 22, we'll break ground in the factory in 23, we'll start building the first airplane and 25, we'll roll it out. And 26 we'll start flight tests. And, uh, and then we'll go through the flight test methodically, uh, systematically as carefully as we can, uh, and then be ready to carry passengers as soon as we are convinced that safe, which will be right around the end of the decade, most likely. >>Okay. Exciting. And so it sounds like you talked about the safety protocols that you guys put in place in the office, which is great. It's great to hear that, but also that this, this time hasn't derailed because you have the massive capabilities of, to be able to do all of the work that's necessary, way more than was done with before with the Concorde. And that you can do that remotely with cloud is a big facilitator of that communication. >>Yeah. You're able to do the cloud enables a lot of computational efficiencies. And I think about the, um, many times projects are not measured in how many months or years exactly does it take you to get done, but it's actually much easier to think about in terms of number of iterations. And so every time we do an airplane iteration, we look at the aerodynamics high speed. We look at the low speed. We look at the engine, uh, we look at the, the weights. Uh, we look at stability and control. We look at pilots, light aside, et cetera, et cetera. And every time you do an iteration, you're kind of looking around all of those and saying, what can I make better? But each one of those, uh, lines up a little bit differently with the rest now, for example, uh, uh, to get the best airplane aerodynamically, doesn't have a good view for the pilot. >>And that's why Concord had that droop nose famously get the nose out of the way so we can see the runway. And so we're able to do digital systems for virtual vision to let the pilot kind of look through the nose of the runway. But even then they're, trade-offs like, how, how good of an actual window do you need? And so your ability to make progress in all of this is proportional to how quickly you can make it around that, that iteration loop, that design cycle loop. And that's, that's part of where the cloud helps us. And we've, we've got some, uh, uh, some stuff we've built in house that runs on the cloud that lets you basically press a button with a whole set of airplane parameters. And bam, it gives you a, it gives you an instant report. I'm like, Oh, was it that this is a good change or bad change, uh, based on running some pretty high fidelity simulations with a very high degree of automation. And you can actually do many of those in parallel. And so it's about, you know, at this stage of the program, it's about accelerating, accelerating your design iterations, uh, giving everyone of the team visibility into those. And then, uh, I think you get together in person as it makes sense to now we're actually hitting a major design milestone with over-treat this week and we're, COVID testing everybody and get them all in the same room. Cause sometimes that in-person collaboration, uh, is really significant, even though you can still do so much digitally. >>I totally agree. There's there's certain things that you just can't replicate. Last question since my brother is a pilot for Southwest and retired Lieutenant Colonel from the air force, any special training that pilots will have to have, or are there certain pilots that are going to be maybe lower hanging fruit, if they have military experience versus commercial flight? Just curious. >>Yeah. So our XB one aircraft is being flown by test pilots. There's one ex Navy one ex air force on our crew, but, uh, overture, uh, will be accessible to any commercial pilot. So, uh, think about it as if you're, if you're used to flying Boeing, it'd be like switching to Airbus, uh, or vice versa. So the, uh, Concord is a complicated aircraft to fly because they didn't have computers. And all the complexity, the soup of supersonic flight was right there and the pilots and an overture, all that gets extracted by software. And, uh, you know, the, the, the ways the flight controls change over speed regimes. You don't have to worry about it, but the airplane is handled beautifully, no matter what you're doing. And so, uh, and so there are many, many places to innovate, but actually pilot experience, not one of them, >>Because the more conventional you can make it for people like your brother, the easier it's going to be for them to learn the aircraft. And therefore the safer it's going to be to fly. I'll let them know, like this has been fantastic, really exciting to see what boom supersonic is doing and the opportunities to make supersonic travel accessible. And I think at a time when everybody wants the world to open up, so by 20, 26, I'm going to be looking for my ticket. Awesome. Can't wait to have you on board. Likewise for Blake shul, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the QS live coverage of AWS reinvent 2020.

>> Announcer: Live from Midtown Manhattan it's theCUBE. Covering Big Data New York City 2017. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media and its ecosystem sponsors. >> Welcome back everyone live here in New York City this theCUBE's coverage of our fifth annual annual event that we put on ourselves in conjunction Strata Hadoop now called Strata Data. It's theCUBE and we're covering the scene here at Hadoop World going back to 2010, eight years of Coverage. I'm John Furrier co-host of theCUBE. Usually Dave Vellante is here but he's down covering the Splunk Conference and who was there yesterday was no other than Josh Rogers my next guest the CEO of Syncsort, you were with Dave Vellante yesterday and live on theCUBE in Washington, DC for the Splunk .conf kind of a Big Data Conference but it's a proprietary, branded event for themselves. This is a more industry even here at Big Data NYC that we put on. Welcome back glad you flew up on the on the Concord, the private jet. >> Early morning but it was was fine. >> No good to see you a CEO of Syncsort, you guys have been busy. For the folks watching in theCUBE community know that you've been on many times. The folks that are learning more about theCUBE every day, you guys had an interesting transformations as a company, take a minute to talk about where you've come from and where you are today. Certainly a ton of corporate development activity in your end it, as you guys are seeing the opportunities, you're moving on them. Take a minute to explain. >> So, you know it's been a great journey so far and there's a lot more work to do, but you know Syncsort is one of the first software companies, right. Founded in the late 60's today has a unparalleled franchise in the mainframe space. But over the last 10 years or so we branched out into open systems and delivered high performance data integration solutions. About 4 years ago really started to invest in the Big Data space we had a DNA around performance and scale we felt like that would be relevant in the Big Data space. We delivered a Hadoop focused product and today we focus around that product around helping customers ingest mainframe data assets into their into Hadoop clusters along with other types data. But a specific focus there. That has lead us into understanding a bigger market space that we call Big Iron to Big Data. And what we see in the marketplace is that customers are adapting. >> Just before you get in there I love that term, Big Iron Big Data you know I love Big Iron. Used to be a term for the mainframe for the younger generation out there. But you're really talking about you guys have leveraged experience with the installed base activity that scale call it batched, molded, single threaded, whatever you want to call it. But as you got into the game of Big Data you then saw other opportunities, did I get that right? You got into the game with some Hadoop, then you realize, whoa, I can do some large scale. What was that opportunity? >> The opportunity is that you know large enterprise is absolutely investing heavily in the next generation of analytic technologies in a new stack. Hadoop is a part of that, Spark is a part of that. And they're rapidly adopting these new infrastructures to drive deeper analytics to answer bigger questions and improve their business and in multiple dimensions. The opportunity we saw was that you know the ability for those enterprises to be able to integrate this new kind of architecture with the legacy architectures. So, the old architectures that were powering key applications impede key up producers of data was a challenge, there was multiple technology challenges, there's cultural challenges. And we had this kind of expertise on both sides of the house and and we found that to be unique in the marketplace. So we put a lot of effort into understanding, defining what are the challenges in that Big Iron to Big Data space that helped customers maximize their value out of these investments in next generation architectures. And we define the problem two ways, one is our two components. One is that people are generating more and more data more and more touch points and driving more and more transactions with their customers. And that's generating increased load on the compute environments and they want to figure out how do I run that, you know if I have a mainframe how to run as efficiently as possible contain my costs maximize availability and uptime. At the same time I've got all this new data that I can start to analyze but I got to get it from the area that it's produced into this next generation system. And there's a lot of challenges there. So we started to isolate, you know, what are the specific use cases the present customers challenge and deliver very different IT solutions. Overarching kind of messages around positioning is around solving the Big Iron to Big Data challenge. >> You guys had done some acquisitions and been successful, I want to talk a little bit about the ones that you like right now that happened the past year or two years. I think you've done five in the past two years. A couple key notable ones that set you up kind of give you pole position for some of these big markets, and then after we talk then I want to talk about your ecosystem opportunity. But some of the acquisitions and what's working for you? What's been the big deals? >> So the larger the larger we did in 2016 was a company called Trillium, leader in the data quality space. Long time leader in the data quality space and the opportunity we saw with Trillium was to complement our data movement integration capabilities. A natural complement, but to focus very specifically on how to drive value in this next generation architecture. Particularly in things like Hadoop. what I'd like to be able to do is apply best in class data quality routines directly in that environment. And so we, from our experience in delivering these Big Data solutions in the past, we knew that we could take a lot of technology and create really powerful solutions that were that leverage the native kind of capabilities of Hadoop but had it on a layer of you've proven technology for best in class day quality. Probably the biggest news of the last few weeks has been that we were acquired by a new private equity partner called Centerbridge Partners. In that acquisition actually acquired Syncsort and they acquired a company called Vision Solutions. And we've combined those organizations. >> John: When did that happen? >> The deal was announced July, early July and it closed in the middle of August. And vision solutions is a really interesting company. They're the leader in high availability for the IBM i market. IBM i was originally called AS/400 it's had a couple of different names and a dominant kind of market position. What we liked about that business was A. That market position four thousand customers generally large enterprise. And also you know market leading capability around data replication in real time. >> And we saw IBM. >> Migration data, disaster recovery kind of thing? >> It's DR it's high availability, it's migrations, it's also changed data capture actually. And leveraging all common technology elements there. But it also represents a market leading franchise in IBM i which is in many ways very similar to the mainframe. Run optimized for transactional systems, hard to kind of get at. >> Sounds like you're reconstructing the mainframe in the cloud. >> It's not so much that, it's the recognition that those compute systems still run the world. They still run all the transactions. >> Well, some say the cloud is a software mainframe. >> I think over time you'll see that, we don't see that our business today. There is a cloud aspect our business it's not to move this transactional applications running on those platforms into the cloud yet. Although I suspect that happens at some point. But our point, our interest was more these are the systems that are producing the world's data. And it's hard to to get. >> There are big, big power sources for data, they're not going anywhere. So we've got the expertise to source that data into these next generation systems. And that's a tricky problem for a lot of customers, and and not something. >> That a problem they have. And you guys basically cornered the market on that. >> So think about Big Iron and Big Data as these two components, being able to source data and make a productive using these next generation analytics systems, and also be able to run those existing systems as you know efficiently as possible. >> All right, so how do you talk to customers and I've asked this question before so I just ask again, oh, Syncsort now you got vision you guys are just a bunch of old mainframe guys. What do you know about cloud native? A lot of the hipsters and the young guns out there might not know about some of the things you're doing on the cutting edge, because even though you have the power base of these old big systems, we're just throwing off massive amounts of data that aren't going anywhere. You still are integrated into some cutting edge. Talk about that, that narrative, and how you. >> So I mean the folks that we target. >> I used cloud only as an example. Shiny, cool, new toys. >> Organizations we target and our customers and prospects, and generally we we serve large enterprise. You know large complex global enterprises. They are making significant investments in Hadoop and Splunk and these next generation environments. We approach them and say we believe to get full value out of your investments in these next generation technologies, it would be helpful if you had your most critical data assets available. And that's hard, and we can help you do that. And we can help you do that in a number of ways that you won't be able to find anywhere else. That includes features in our products, it includes experts on the ground. And what we're seeing is there's a huge demand because, you know, Hadoop is really kind of you can see it in the Cloudera and Hortonworks results and the scale of revenue. This is a you know a real foundational component data management this point. Enterprises are embracing it. If they can't solve that integration challenge between the systems that produce all the data and, you know, where they want to analyze the data There's a there's a big value gap. And we think we're uniquely positioned to be able to do that, one because we've got the technical expertise, two, they're all our customers at this point, we have six thousand customers. >> You guys have executed very well. I just got to say you guys are just slowly taking territory down you and you got a great strategy, get into a business, you don't overplay your hand or get over your skis, whatever you want to call it. And you figure it out and see if was a fit. If it is, grab it, if not, you move on. So also you guys have relationships so we're talking about your ecosystem. What is your ecosystem and what is your partner strategy? >> I'll talk a little bit about the overall strategy and I'll talk about how partners fit into that. Our strategy is to identify specific use cases that are common and challenging in our customer set, that fall within this Big Iron to Big Data umbrella. It's then to deliver a solution that is highly differentiated. Now, the third piece of that is to partner very closely with you know the emerging platform vendors in the in the Big Data space. And the reason for that is we're solving an integration challenge for them. Like Cloudera, like Hortonworks, like Splunk. We launched a relationship with Calibra in the middle the year. We just announced our relationship. >> Yeah, for them the benefits of them is they don't do the heavy lifting you've got that covered. >> We can we can solve a lot of pain points they have getting their platforms setup. >> That's hard to replicate on their end, it's not like they're going to go build it. >> Cloudera and Hortonworks, they don't have mainframe skills. They don't understand how to go access >> Classic partnering example. >> But that the other pieces is we do real engineering work with these partnerships. So we build, we write code to integrate and add value to platforms. >> It's not a Barney deal, it's not an optical deal. >> Absolutely. >> Any jazz is critical in the VM world of some of the deals he's been done in the industry referring to his deal, that's seems to be back in vogue thank God, that people going to say they're going to do a deal and they back it with actually following through. What about other partnerships, how else, how you looking at partnering? So, pretty much, where it fits in your business, are people coming to you, are you going to them? >> We certainly have people coming to us. The the key thing, the number one driver is customers. You know, as we understand use cases, as customers introduce us to new challenges that they are facing, we will not just look at how do we solve it, but and what are the other platforms that we're integrating with, and if we believe we can add unique value to that partner we'll approach that partner. >> Let's talk customers, give me some customer use cases that you're working on right now, that you think are notable worth highlighting. >> Sure so we do a lot in the in the financial services space. You know we have a number of customers >> Where there's mainframes. >> Where there's a lot of mainframes, but it's not just in financial services. Here's an interesting one, was insurance company and they were looking at how to transition their mainframe archive strategy. So they have regulations around how long they have to keep data, they had been using traditional mainframe archive technology, very expensive on annual basis and also unflexible. They didn't have access to. >> And performance too. At the end of the day don't forget performance >> They want performance, this was more of an archive use case and what they really wanted was an ability both access the data and also lower the cost of storing the data for the required time from a regulation perspective. And so they made the decision that they wanted to store it in the cloud, they want to store it in S3. There's a complicated data movement there, there's a complicated data translation process there and you need to understand the mainframe and you need to understand AWS and S3 and all those components, and we had all those pieces and all that expertise and were able to solve that. So we're doing that with a few different customers now. But that's just an example of, you know, there's a great ROI, there's a lot more business flexibility then there's a modernization aspect to it that's very attractive. >> Well, great to hear from you today. I'm glad you made it up here, again you were in DC yesterday thanks for coming in, checking out to shows you're certainly pounding the pavement as they say in New York, to quote New Yorker phrase. What's new for you guys, what's coming out? More acquisitions happening? what's the outlook for Syncsort? >> So were were always active on the M&A front. We certainly have a pipeline of activities and there's a lot of different you know interesting spaces, adjacencies that we're exploring right now. There's nothing that I can really talk about there >> Can you talk about the categories you're looking at? >> Sure you know, things around metadata management, things around real-time data movement, cloud opportunities. There's there's some interesting opportunities in the artificial intelligence, machine learning space. Those are all >> Deep learning. >> Deep learning, those are all interesting spaces for us to think about. Security and other space is interesting. So we're pretty active in a lot of adjacencies >> Classic adjacent markets that you're looking at. So you take one step at a time, slow. >> But then we try to innovate on, you know, after the catch, so we did three announcements this week. Transaction tracing for Ironstream and a kind of refresh of data quality for Hadoop approach. So we'll continue to innovate on the organic setup as well. >> Final question the whole private equity thing. So that's done, so they put a big bag of money in there and brought the two companies together. Is there structural changes, management changes, you're the Syncsort CEO is there a new co name? >> The combined companies will operate under the Syncsort name, I'll serve as the CEO. >> Syncsort is the remaining name and you guys now have another company under it. >> Yes, that's right. >> And cash they put in, probably a boatload of cash for corporate development. >> The announcement the announced deal value was $1.2 billion a little over $1.2 billion. >> So you get a checkbook and looking to buy companies? >> We are we're going to continue, as I said yesterday, to Dave, you know I like to believe that we proved the hypothesis were in about the second inning. Can't wait to keep playing the game. >> It's interesting just, real quick while I got you in here, we got a break coming up for the guys. Private equity move is a good move in this transitional markets, you and I have talked about this in the past off-camera. It's a great thing to do, is take, if you're public and you're not really knocking it out of the park. Kill the 90 day shot clock, go private, there seems to be a lot of movement there. Retool and then re-emerge stronger. >> We've never been public, but I will say, the Centerbridge team has been terrific. A lot of resources there and certainly we do talk we're still very quarterly focused, but I think we've got a great partner and look forward to continue. >> The waves are coming, the big waves are coming so get your big surfboard out, we say in California. Josh, thanks for spending the time. Josh Rogers, CEO Syncsort here on theCUBE. More live coverage in New York after this break. Stay with us for our day two of three days of coverage of Big Data NYC 2017. Our event that we hold every year here in conjunction with Hadoop World right around the corner. I'm John Furrier, we'll be right back.