(upbeat music) >> Good morning and welcome back to fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. We're here at AWS re:Invent with wall-to-wall coverage all day long on theCUBE. My name is Savannah Peterson and I am joined this morning by the beautiful Lisa Martin. Lisa, good morning. >> Good morning. Good. >> How you feeling day three? >> Day three is we are going to be shot out of a cannon today. The amount of content coming at you from theCUBE today- >> Get ready, you all. >> Us two gals, is a lot. We're going to have some great conversations. >> And we're starting with a really great one with a Cube Alumni to the max. You've been on the show multiple times. >> John: Yeah. >> Very excited to welcome John, the CMO of Couchbase. Welcome. How you doing this morning? >> Thanks. I'm doing great. Great to be here with you. >> How do you feel about the show so far? What's your pulse? >> The show has been great. I say the energy is great. The traffic at our booth, the conversations that we're having, both with prospective customers and even just partners, right? They're all here. The ecosystem is here >> And everyone's finally back in person and it feels so good. >> John: It does. >> So, we're going to dig in a little bit but just in case the audience isn't familiar, tell us about Couchbase. >> Sure. Couchbase is a publicly traded database company. We have a cloud database platform called Capella which is hosted on AWS and GCP. It is used for building mission-critical applications. So, we have great customers, we're building apps that really matter and are using to drive their business. So, we're very excited about that. 30% of the Fortune 100 are Couchbase customers. >> Nice. Talk a little bit about the AWS relationship. >> Mm-hm. Yeah, so we have a great AWS relationship. In fact, yesterday we announced a deepening of that relationship, a strategic collaboration agreement. We're very excited. It's a multi-year agreement. It's focused on go-to market, from a sales and marketing standpoint. We're going to target, you know, various verticals and, you know, really generate joint business between the two of us. So, it's a deepening of a already strong relationship and we're really excited about that. >> Savannah: Yeah. Go ahead. >> What are some of the industry verticals that you're going to be tackling together? >> Well, gaming for one, right? Manufacturing, the workloads that Couchbase is good for are these mission-critical workloads are ones that are really suited for us to be used with AWS. So, we've done some work with them already in those areas and I'm sure we'll be digging in even deeper. >> That's exciting. Speaking of digging in deeper, tell us a little bit more about Capella. >> Capella. It's a cloud databases services I mentioned. We launched it last October and we are super excited by the uptake, the interest that we're seeing. We have a free 30 day trial, so, you know, people can come and try it and get their hands dirty just getting experience with the product and then, you know, become a customer after that. And we're seeing very strong interest from our existing customer base as well. So, we're really excited about how things are going. >> Talk about Capella and the latest release and how it's really enabling Couchbase to invest deeper into the developer experience. >> Yeah, so, at the end of October, we announced a revamp of our user interface, our user experience for Capella really focused on developers. And what we've done is make it so that it's familiar to developers, right? It's a GitHub-like experience. So, developer comes in, they're very familiar, of course, with GitHub, they are familiar with how the Couchbase Capella interface will work. And so that's something that, you know, we've really invested, in fact, we've invested in developers quite a bit. We announced a Couchbase community hub and a Couchbase ambassadors program, both focused on developers and getting out there and building our community. >> A community is a big topic that we've been talking about at all the conferences this year. We're all back in person, in community. How often are you communicating with your community to get feedback on what that experience should be like? >> Yeah, I mean, we actually have a Discord server, so we're in constant communication. (Savannah laughing) >> Savannah: Yes. (John laughing) 24/7. (laughing) >> Basically, you know, we have staff who's dedicated to making sure that the users on there are getting their answers and giving us feedback on the experience. The ambassadors are somebody who have a really strong relationship, who get early insight and give us feedback before we even release a product. So, it gives us a chance to really test-drive it with core developers and get the insight we need before we get it in the market. >> Yeah. It matters so much. You can build it, but they won't come if it's not fantastic. >> John: Exactly. >> Lisa: Right. >> Let's shift a little bit and talk about customers. How, and price, how do you guys compare? >> Customers and? >> And price, your price performance? >> Price, oh. So, customers, we also announced this week a joint customer Arthrex with AWS. Arthrex is a orthopedics medical devices company and they use our Edge capabilities along with running Couchbase on AWS. So, you think of the kinds of surgeries that orthopedic surgeons do, it's scopes and they are often inside. So, what it does is it collects the data, the video data and all of that on a medical devices and then brings it back to a centralized app for the doctors to use sort of in post when they're actually doing further medical recommendations. >> Savannah: It's so cool. >> So, it's cool, the thing about it is it can work whether it's online or offline, it's one of the reasons that Arthrex selected us because the fact that it can, you know, often sometimes there's not connectivity in the operating room, I'd say deep inside of a hospital. So, these devices work regardless and then when they get connectivity, it sinks back to that centralized service. So, it's one of the main reasons that they selected us. >> That's outstanding. You know, one of the things that John Furrier, you know, John, well, you guys go way back. >> John: Way back. >> He had a sit down with Adam Selensky, oh, about 10 days or so ago. He gets an exclusive with the CEO of AWS every pre re:Invent. And one of the things that Adam said is that the role or the title, data analyst, is going to go away, in that every role will have responsibilities of analyzing data. And I always think of that in terms of operations, marketing, finance, sales, but you just brought up physicians as data analysts in their jobs, right? Probably not, we're thinking about it in that way. >> Yeah. >> But it's so interesting how data is really being democratized. >> John: Yeah. >> And how Couchbase is an enabler of that in an operating room. >> John: Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> That's amazing. >> It's a great story. There's many others and I think, you know, we have embedded operational analytics in Couchbase Capella, and, you know, in our offerings in general. So, what that does is allows us to do real-time, highly personalized applications based on that analytics that are coming in real-time from the data from the applications. And so that's something that's actually driving a highly interactive user experience, one that's very personalized and customized. And that's one of the things that our customers really like about what we do. >> It's fascinating. I never thought about it from a medical device perspective. >> Lisa: No, no. >> John: No. >> My gosh is if doctors don't have enough cognitive burden load. >> John: I know. >> You know, right? Like, they don't need to be a data analyst. I would much rather they were just good at the surgery part. That's a piece of the puzzle I need them to do. Yeah, for sure. That's a fascinating customer example. Can you share any other joint AWS examples with us? >> Joint AW- I mean, there's many in the gaming area where, because Couchbase is memory-first architecture, we deliver very, very interactive user experiences and we're used a lot for session management, user ID management in the gaming space, specifically with AWS. It's an area we've done some joint work already and had a lot of success, you know, with small and large gaming companies. >> Yeah. It looks like you also, according to my notes here, we've got things in travel and hospitality as well. >> Yes. Also Carnival Cruises is a great example. We enable their on-ship, on-board experience, highly customized, everybody wears a device called a medallion, and as they move around the ship, it knows where they are and it's able to provide customized services. You walk up to a bar, you have your favorite drink, it can be hit the bar when you land there. >> I'll take that. >> How about that? (laugh) >> That's outstanding. >> Isn't that great? >> Can we carry that onto the AWS show floor? >> Exactly. >> Or Starbucks order? >> Yeah, yeah. Yes, please. Yes, please. Well, another thing that's so interesting these days, is that every company has to be a data company. Say they have to be a software company. They have to be a data company. You just gave some great examples. Hospitality, gaming, healthcare, where that data democratization has to happen. >> John: Yeah. >> Businesses has to transform. But one of the things that Adam also told John is that CIOs, CEOs are coming to him not wanting to talk about technology but about transformation. >> Yeah. >> Huge topic. >> And that's a journey where every customer is at different levels. >> Yeah. >> How is Couchbase helping businesses transform and where are your customer conversations these days? >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, the transformation of the business is a major topic of conversation. So, we completely agree with that. How Couchbase helps is, you know, in our database, one of the things we have is the SQL engine. And so as people are looking to move and modernize their infrastructure, if they're moving off of, or from like a technology that's principally based on SQL but doesn't give all the flexibility of a JSON database or document database like we do, we actually enable them to get more easily onto our platform so that they can start that transformation. And then it's a, you know, it's a journey of how they want to transform their business and it's really focused on how do they better serve their customers and clients, whether it's internal or external? >> It really matters. I mean, and that ease of use as well as the transformation journey. It takes a long time for people to adapt. So, every piece of that puzzle, every Lego being quicker or easier, more intuitive, like you said, with the user experience, we can tell you're very thoughtful. How does this improve the total cost of ownership for your customers? >> That's one of the things that we announced along with that developer changes, was a new storage engine underneath Couchbase Capella. And it's 10 X more dense storage. And what that means is fewer servers. So, fewer servers is a much better cost of ownership story. That plus just the performance of the platform itself, we find, you know, against competition, we can do things on say six nodes that take 18 nodes for others. >> Lisa: Oh wow. >> And we have a great consolidation story as well because we have, it's a multi-modal database, meaning that it has SQL engine, document database, full tech search, eventing and analytics, all these pieces on one common data layer. So, you can actually consolidate off of other technologies onto one, onto Couchbase, and that actually saves you money. So, that's a great story for us. >> There's got to be a sustainability element to that as well? >> Yeah, I mean it's, obviously, if you're using less, using fewer servers, there's a kind of power consumption aspect of it as well. Absolutely. >> Are you finding that a lot of customers and companies we talk to these days have in their RFPs, they must only work with vendors who have an actual ESG program? Are you finding more customers coming to you saying, how can you help us dial down our carbon emissions? >> John: Yeah. >> Savannah: Great question. >> We've got a sustainability program that we've got to meet, we've got commitments to our customers. >> John: Yeah. >> Is that something that's really now kind of a hard and fast requirement? >> We're hearing it, we're definitely hearing it. I wouldn't say it's, you know, massively pervasive but I would say it's a growing component of, as you said, RFPs. And it's something that we feel like we have a great story for. And so, you know, it's something that helps when we get into those conversations, we can clearly articulate how we can provide that value and how we meet some of those needs that they have. >> Yeah, that's awesome. So, we have a bit of a challenge, new to the show at re:Invent. >> John: Mm-hm. >> Where we are prompting you to give us your 30 second Instagram Reel sizzle highlight. Don't worry, I'm not actually timing you, but your thought leadership hot-take on the most important theme or takeaway from this year's show. >> From the conference here. I would say that, and I think this was talked about a little bit by AWS as well, but the convergence of analytics and operational data, you know, through the applications is one that we're certainly seeing as well. It's the reason we have analytics in our database. But as I walk around and look at it, I see that very much as a common theme as well, in terms of what other vendors are saying and just the conversations we're having. So for me, that's one of the things I think would be a takeaway from this show. >> Yeah. Embedded analytics, real-time, everybody wants to know what's going on, in context. >> Yeah. That's right. >> Right now, not last week, not what we're processing from last month. >> Exactly. >> I mean, right? (cross-talking) >> So, I can react and take advantage or take an action if I have to. >> Exactly. And then deliver that personalized experience that we all expect these days. >> Oh, yes. >> I'll take that medallion- >> It's about the medallion. I was like, okay. >> You up with that, John? >> We'll get right on it. >> Lisa: All right. (laughs) >> About this. So, what's next for Couchbase? >> John: Well- >> I know you got the partnership, you've got all this exciting momentum. >> So, we're excited heading into next year. We're going to continue to innovate on Capella, right? Continue to deliver more value, lean into our developer community that we have. We're investing heavily, not just from a product standpoint but from a company standpoint in terms of, you know, our community meetups and some of those things. We have a big community-focused event coming up in March called Connect, Couchbase Connect. So, that's something that we'll, you know, continue to drive. That'll be a major theme for us next year. Cloud and developers and, you know, continuing to enable that ecosystem. >> Lisa: Excellent. >> I just had a Microsoft moment where I saw you saying, "Cloud developers," on stage. (Lisa and Savannah laughing) >> I'm not going Steve Ballmer on you. (all laughing) >> Pardon. I was trying to get someone to sing yesterday. I was hoping you were my Ballmer dance. Oh, man. Well, this has been a really great way to start the day. John, thank you so much for being on the show with us, seriously. And it's great that you keep coming back. I'm glad we haven't scared you off. (John laughing) >> Never. >> Savannah: We will have you anytime. >> Thank you. >> And thank you all for tuning in for yet another fantastic day of all day live coverage here from AWS re:Invent. We are in Sin City, having a fabulous time with Lisa Martin. I'm Savannah Peterson. This is theCUBE and we are the leader in high-tech technology coverage. (upbeat music) (upbeat music fades)

>>Okay. We're here at the cube covering Couchbase connect online 2021 modernized. Now this is Dave Vellante and I'm here with Couchbase CEO, Matt Kane. We just saw them at your keynote, blending out the journey to the modern enterprise. Thanks for taking some time with us. >>Hey, thanks, Dave. Great to see you again. Hope everything's well with you. >>Good. Thank you. You know, hanging in there. So look, the big themes from my standpoint, where it's not just about what I call paving the cow path. What I mean by that is just moving old to new, you know, that's good. And it's gonna allow you to simplify and be more agile. But the point I take away is you should also build a new capabilities, maybe share some of your thoughts and add some color, please, to those takeaways. >>I think that's a great takeaway, Dave. And when we think about this, we step back and we put ourselves in the shoes of our customers and whether it's retail customers or next generation financial services or healthcare providers, or what have you each and every one of our customers around the world are thinking about how to create better experiences for their customers. And Dave, we go through this every day, whether it's on our personal lives or in our professional lives, we expect our technology to help us and create better, highly interactive, personalized experiences via the applications that we leverage throughout the day. And you and I have probably access tens if not, hundreds of applications up to this point, uh, today. And we'll, we'll do that as we continue to go forward. And so if you think about, well, what are the challenges of these enterprises to create those experiences? >>Well, at the end of the day, they're writing applications and those applications need to draw upon massive amounts of data and to provide the experiences that we're talking about today. It's not just structured information, but it's unstructured information. And how do I put that together in a seamless way that I create real-time runtime experiences? Well, at the end of the day software, um, developers can, can write code to do anything, but on the critical path of all that is a database. And if you don't have a database that can serve these applications, you're dead in the water. And so as the enterprise thinks about building applications, they're constantly thinking about new capabilities. How can I provide a recommendation engine for Dave, or how can I ensure that the promotion fits the needs of him and his family when he's booking a particular trip, but at the same time, there's legacy applications that have been built and optimized for many, many years, that that are storing critical information and algorithms that need to be combined with those new capabilities to create the experience of people are after. >>And so when you really look at it from a database perspective, you have to modernize your application stack, but you also have to combine that with new capabilities. Now that's easier said than done. The challenge is to do at a database layer are fundamentally sophisticated and some of the most advanced computer science challenges that exist in all of technology. And that is what Couchbase is about. We have carefully architected a platform that bridges some of the best of relational technology with that of modern, no SQL technology in a single integrated platform that services not only enterprise architects, but application developers to provide the very experiences that you and I have come to expect, and that we're going to expect to increase as, as we go forward. So you're absolutely right. It is about putting those two things together. So is that, >>Is that w what you just described is that what you mean by multimodal two-part question? And then the second part is, are you seeing any industry patterns where that appears to be more relevant? >>So when we, when we talk about multimodal, Dave, we're very specific in, in what that means, and, and that's essentially taking a platform approach to data management. So how do we ensure that we have multiple ways to manage data inside of our platform? Couchbase is a key value cache or a document data store. We support, uh, acid transactions, and we've also added operational analytics. And so if you think about all of those modalities, a lot of application teams would think, well, do I need disparate solutions, uh, you know, to, to solve those problems. We think it's of fundamental importance as the modern database for enterprise applications, that we put that together in a single platform, because that's how applications want to be, uh, developed on top of that. We layer on additional services that developers can take advantage of to right, you know, these really rich, personalized, uh, applications. >>And so, as we think about our path forward and some of the market dynamics, we see one of the dynamics that we think is going to play out over the next few years is enterprises. Can't continue to proliferate point solutions for all these disparate problems that they solve. They need to bet on strategic solutions that are going to be platforms to support many of these needs as these go, as they go forward, particularly as they think about long-term total cost of ownership. And when we think about the modalities we're supporting and the enterprise applications we support, we want to ensure that we are a tool that can be leveraged for the right use cases, and then make sure that we have the connection points to other solutions that were not built and optimize for, to have a complete solution for our enterprise customers. So multi-modal layer consolidation platform approach. We think this is going to be absolutely critical as we get into the next chapters of the database transition. >>Great. Thank you for that. So you just described, you know, your UVP to me anyway, your unique value proposition. And I wonder if you could, in thinking about the market big waves that are occurring now, the hybrid work, digitization, the reliance on cloud and cloud migration, how does your unique value prop tie in if you will vector in to those trends that we also often talk about? >>Yeah. Great question, Dave. I appreciate you raising that. So what, what I was articulating, um, were some really important attributes of what may Couchbase Couchbase that were multimodal. We take a platform approach under the hood. Dave, we take great pride in the architectural approach that we have, um, up to this point in building that platform, uh, we're an in-memory shared nothing scale out cloud native architecture that has been designed for today and the future scale and performance. We've architected our platform to run anywhere. So enterprises enjoy the benefits of running in all major public clouds. They can run in private data centers and they can run all the way out to the edge in a single integrated platform with continuity between any point of that network. Topology, if I'm an active, active, active, fail over active, active, passive, any one of those configurations, that is the dependency of distributed applications. >>And we as users want the application to be up and running with the appropriate amount of data wherever. And whenever we are Couchbase has been built for the highest scale and performance to run in that distributed environment. With those modalities that I talked about now to increase, uh, our relevance in the enterprise. There are two personas that we think about a lot. One of them are the architects who are responsible for ensuring that things run in public clouds, that they scale and perform that they meet the SLS of the businesses they serve. But critically important. As you know, Dave is the role of application developers. They got to write killer apps. And so if you think about the needs of enterprise architects, scale performance, reliability, GDPR, CCPA security, those are really, really important. Developers are focused on flexibility, ease of use agility also really, really important, putting those together in an integrated platform. That's what makes Couchbase Couchbase. And there is no other vendor that can bring those capabilities tied to the themes of data, explosion, everything happening at the edge, a single platform that can leverage structured and unstructured information. When we talk about being ready for this moment and why we're so excited about our future and why you're hearing customers say the amazing things they are at our show, it's because of that unique architecture and, and the fact that Couchbase is truly differentiated as a modern database for enterprise applications for the future. >>You know, sometimes those things are counter poised, right? The architectural Providence, and the need for developer agility. That is a nontrivial challenge. Um, in, in one the computer science challenge that obviously you're focused on your big news here, uh, at the show is Couchbase Capella, Capella, by the way, as the brightest star in the constellation, or I go for those of you space nuts. Well, what are the critical aspects of Capella related to Couchbase's cloud strategy? And what does this announcement mean for your customers, Matt? Yeah, >>We couldn't be more excited about a Capella and I'd like to take a moment to congratulate the teams that have been working so hard at Couchbase to, to get to this moment. Um, also want to thank our customers for all the input, uh, that, that we take very seriously. And in thinking through our innovation, um, is we think about all the things we've talked about up to this point. Those are fundamentally important. And we think about the capability of a database that enterprises need. What we also spend a lot of time thinking about is how do customers consume all of that capability, right? And, and enterprises want freedom of choice on how they consume deploy, run, and manage their database for a lot of our customers, they're very happy leveraging our platform and managing that. And they're very diverse, very customized, specific environments, but there are a lot of customers that want us to take over the management and the operation of the database. >>They want the fastest path to D developer, agility and productivity, uh, and they want the best TCO relative to other databases of service offerings. And that is exactly what we have provided with Couchbase Capella. So customers can now come to us, they're up and running with the best database in the industry. Self-serve easy to use up and going, you know, the, the, the most simple experience and the fastest path to value, but that TCO point is fundamentally important. And what's interesting the way we've architected this, the more you scale with Couchbase Capella, the better the TCO gets. And I think that demonstrates our focus on enterprise, the mission critical nature of, of the applications that we support. Um, but you know, we're, we're really excited about Capella. We think it's going to be a great experience for our existing customers, our new customers, um, along with the announcement of the product today, you've heard some things about some of the packaging and ways in which developers can try out the solution in a really unique and cool way. We're providing other great experiences for developers on technical integrations and ideas from other customers on how to take advantage of the Couchbase platform. So we're thinking pretty holistically about consumption, uh, experience. Uh, and again, the fact that it's built on a kind of the foundation of, of Couchbase server seven oh, and, and our, our core platform with all the advantages that that brings with it. Uh, we're, we're pretty excited about the, uh, the announcement and all that that has for, for the company in front of us. So let's on >>For a minute and I want to double click on the, how you see the uniqueness of Capella. So when I think about Couchbase's heritage, the idea of next-generation not, not only SQL database, the acid properties that you talked about, the scale and the performance required for mission critical workloads and your focus on sequel fluency, these tenants of differentiated Couchbase, is it sort of the same kind of approach for Capella and what specifically differentiates Capella in your mind from the spate of other database databases, a service offerings that are out there in the marketplace? >>Well, look at it. When, when enterprises are thinking about applications, particularly the applications that they're running their business on, I like to say the good enough is not a viable strategy for the database. And what that means is you've got to have high performance, you've got to have scale, you've got to have, you know, distributed, uh, attributes. We believe fundamentally that you need to go cloud to edge. Um, that's going to be paramount and we're going to continue to innovate on our core database. So to take all of that power and then put it in a consumption model, as easy as Capella, I mean, Dave, we now have people being able to get up and running in a matter of minutes and, and they're writing applications, uh, on Capella leveraging the full power and breadth of all the capabilities, uh, in, in Couchbase. And going back to something that we talked about earlier dynamics in, in the industry will enterprise is really need to think about total cost of ownership. >>So how am I innovating and solving some of my most fundamental application challenges, but mindful of, you know, the cost and the return of that over time for us to come out with the highest performing database at the lowest TCO for those applications. I mean that that's pretty radical innovation and, and pretty true differentiation that our enterprise and other customer segments are really looking forward to. And then you layer in the fact that we're doing all of this in the de facto language that everybody in the world, the database speaks, which is cul you know, we like to say, it's easy SQL you get up and running, you're going, we speak your dialect. And we give you all of the benefits of this modern platform that are gonna make your job easier. Uh, you know, I think there's a reason why it's the brightest star in, uh, in, in the hemisphere. >>You know, it's funny, you, you, you, you used to talk about your, your S your SQL prowess. And, and that was that, that was the epiphany to me in the early days of big data. It was like the killer app for big data was SQL. And that changed. Everybody's thinking, let's talk about what's next for Couchbase you're a public company now, what are your priorities? How are you spending your time met? >>Well, look, Dave, we're, we're, uh, we're, we're gonna main remain maniacally focused on ensuring that we continue to innovate and solve the biggest problems, the biggest database challenges for enterprise customers. Um, we believe deeply in architecting differentiation that can be sustained over time. Uh, we've done that up to this point and we're going to remain steadfast in that mission. Uh, at the same time, we are entirely focused on satisfying our customers and, uh, demonstrating that we're a business partner, not just, just a vendor. So, you know, building partnerships, making sure we have the appropriate technical integration, supporting customers on their digital transformation strategies, continuing to invest in those capabilities to support customer journeys and make sure they're successful through that through their transformation. I mean, we're investing across all aspects of the business, across all aspects of the world. Uh, we're going to continue to be extremely proud of not just what we do, but how we do it. >>We are a values based organization. We have an incredible world-class team that we continue to grow on on a daily basis. And I'm going to make sure that we're spending time on each one of those and those things are in harmony. So we can continue to build a very vibrant, uh, company that's going to be around for a long, long time and continue to do great things for our customers. When we think about next generation technology, we are in the early innings of what we believe to be truly a generational market transition and the demands of applications and all things digital and combining, you know, technology that goes truly out to the edge and redefining what the edge is even, uh, and, and really thinking through how a platform needs to go, where the data resides to provide people, the experience and machines, the experiences that they need, uh, to, uh, complete their mission of digital transformation. Uh, there's some really mind-bending stuff that we're thinking through as we get, as we get way out there. Uh, but we're gonna continue to do it through the lens of solving big customer problems, making sure they're successful and then continuing to innovate as we go forward. >>Well, we're really excited to follow you guys report on this. And the database is no longer just kind of a bespoke bucket. It's a fundamental component of, of a digital fabric that's growing and becoming ubiquitous as part of a new data era. So we want to thank everybody for watching this keynote summary with Matt Kane, CEO of Couchbase Matt. We wish you all the best in the years ahead, and we look forward to seeing you in person, hopefully in the near future. >>Thanks a lot. See you soon, Dave. Appreciate >>It. All right. Thank you for watching our coverage at Couchbase connect 2021 modernized. Now keep it right there for more coverage that educates and inspires. You're watching the cube.

(upbeat music playing) >> Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of Couchbase ConnectONLINE Mary Roth, VP of Engineering Operations with Couchbase is here for Couchbase ConnectONLINE. Mary. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on remotely for this segment. >> Thank you very much. It's great to be here. >> Love the fire in the background, a little fireside chat here, kind of happening, but I want to get into it because, Engineering and Operations with the pandemic has really kind of shown that, engineers and developers have been good, working remotely for a while, but for the most part it's impacted companies in general, across the organizations. How did the Couchbase engineering team adapt to the remote work? >> Great question. And I actually think the Couchbase team responded very well to this new model of working imposed by the pandemic. And I have a unique perspective on the Couchbase journey. I joined in February, 2020 after 20 plus years at IBM, which had embraced a hybrid, in-office remote work model many years earlier. So in my IBM career, I live four minutes away from my research lab in Almaden Valley, but IBM is a global company with headquarters on the East Coast, and so throughout my career, I often found myself on phone calls with people around the globe at 5:00 AM in the morning, I quickly learned and quickly adapted to a hybrid model. I'd go into the office to collaborate and have in-person meetings when needed. But if I was on the phone at 5:00 AM in the morning, I didn't feel the need to get up at 4:30 AM to go in. I just worked from home and I discovered I could be more productive there, doing think time work, and I really only needed the in-person time for collaboration. This hybrid model allowed me to have a great career at IBM and raise my two daughters at the same time. So when I joined Couchbase, I joined a company that was all about being in-person and instead of a four minute commute, it was going to be an hour or more commute for me each way. This was going to be a really big transition for me, but I was excited enough by Couchbase and what it offered, that I decided to give it a try. Well, that was February, 2020. I showed up early in the morning on March 10th, 2020 for an early morning meeting in-person only to learn that I was one of the only few people that didn't get the memo. We were switching to a remote working model. And so over the last year, I have had the ability to watch Couchbase and other companies pivot to make this remote working model possible and not only possible, but effective. And I'm really happy to see the results. A remote work model does have its challenges, that's for sure, but it also has its benefits, better work-life balance and more time to interact with family members during the day and more quiet time just to think. We just did a retrospective on a major product release, Couchbase server 7.0, that we did over the past 18 months. And one of the major insights by the leadership team is that working from home actually made people more effective. I don't think a full remote model is the right approach going forward, but a hybrid model that IBM adopted many years ago and that I was able to participate in for most of my career, I believe is a healthier and more productive approach. >> Well, great story. I love the come back and now you take leverage of all the best practices from the IBM days, but how did they, your team and the Couchbase engineering team react? And were there any best practices or key learnings that you guys pulled out of that? >> The initial reaction was not good. I mean, as I mentioned, it was a culture based on in-person, people had to be in in-person meetings. So it took a while to get used to it, but there was a forcing function, right? We had to work remotely. That was the only option. And so people made it work. I think the advancement of virtual meeting technology really helps a lot. Over earlier days in my career where I had just bad phone connections, that was very difficult. But with the virtual meetings that you have, where you can actually see people and interact, I think is really quite helpful. And probably the key. >> What's the DNA of the company there? I mean, every company's got the DNA, Intel's Moore's Law, and what's the engineering culture at Couchbase like, if you could describe it. >> The engineering culture at Couchbase is very familiar to me. We are at our heart, a database company, and I grew up in the database world, which has a very unique culture based on two values, merit and mentorship. And we also focus on something that I like to call growing the next generation. Now database technology started in the late sixties, early seventies, with a few key players and institutions. These key players were extremely bright and they tackled and solved really hard problems with elegant solutions, long before anybody knew they were going to be necessary. Now, those original key players, people like Jim Gray, Bruce Lindsay, Don Chamberlin, Pat Selinger, David Dewitt, Michael Stonebraker. They just love solving hard problems. And they wanted to share that elegance with a new generation. And so they really focused on growing the next generation of leaders, which became the Mike Carey's and the Mohan's and the Lagerhaus's of the world. And that culture grew over multiple generations with the previous generation cultivating, challenging, and advocating for the next, I was really lucky to grow up in that culture. And I've advanced my career as a result, as being part of it. The reason I joined Couchbase is because I see that culture alive and well here. Our two fundamental values on the engineering side, are merit and mentorship. >> One of the things I want to get your thoughts on, on the database questions. I remember, back in the old glory days, you mentioned some of those luminaries, you know, there wasn't many database geeks out there, there was kind of a small community, now, as databases are everywhere. So you see, there's no one database that has rule in the world, but you starting to see a pattern of database, kinds of things are emerging, more databases than ever before, they are on the internet, they are on the cloud, there are none the edge. It's essentially, we're living in a large distributed computing environment. So now it's cool to be in databases because they're everywhere. (laughing) So, I mean, this is kind of where we are at. What's your reaction to that? >> You're absolutely right. There used to be a few small vendors and a few key technologies and it's grown over the years, but the fundamental problems are the same, data integrity, performance and scalability in the face of distributed systems. Those were all the hard problems that those key leaders solved back in the sixties and seventies. They're not new problems. They're still there. And they did a lot of the fundamental work that you can apply and reapply in different scenarios and situations. >> That's pretty exciting. I love that. I love the different architectures that are emerging and allows for more creativity for application developers. And this becomes like the key thing we're seeing right now, driving the business and a big conversation here at the, at the event is the powering of these modern applications that need low latency. There's no more, not many spinning disks anymore. It's all in RAM, all these kinds of different memory, you got centralization, you got all kinds of new constructs. How do you make sense of it all? How do you talk to customers? What's the main core thing happening right now? If you had to describe it. >> Yeah, it depends on the type of customer you're talking to. We have focused primarily on the enterprise market and in that market, there are really fundamental issues. Information for these enterprises is key. It's their core asset that they have and they understand very well that they need to protect it and make it available more quickly. I started as a DBA at Morgan Stanley, back, right out of college. And at the time I think it was, it probably still is, but at the time it was the best run IT shop that I'd ever seen in my life. The fundamental problems that we had to solve to get information from one stock exchange to another, to get it to the SEC are the same problems that we're solving today. Back then we were working on mainframes and over high-speed Datacom links. Today, it's the same kind of problem. It's just the underlying infrastructure has changed. >> Yeah, the key, there has been a big supporter of women in tech. We've done thousands of interviews and why I got you. I want to ask you if you don't mind, career advice that you give women who are starting out in the field of engineering, computer science. What do you wish you knew when you started your career? And if you could be that person now, what would you say? >> Yeah, well, a lot of things I wish I knew then that I know now, but I think there are two key aspects to a successful career in engineering. I actually got started as a math major and the reason I became a math major is a little convoluted. As a girl, I was told we were bad at math. And so for some reason I decided that I had to major in it. That's actually how I got my start, but I've had a great career. And I think there are really two key aspects. First, is that it is a discipline in which respect is gained through merit. As I had mentioned earlier, engineers are notoriously detail-oriented and most are, perfectionists. They love elegant, well thought-out solutions and give respect when they see one. So understanding this can be a very important advantage if you're always prepared and you always bring your A-game to every debate, every presentation, every conversation, you have build up respect among your team, simply through merit. While that may mean that you need to be prepared to defend every point early on, say, in your graduate career or when you're starting, over time others will learn to trust your judgment and begin to intuitively follow your lead just by reputation. The reverse is also true. If you don't bring your A-game and you don't come prepared to debate, you will quickly lose respect. And that's particularly true if you're a woman. So if you don't know your stuff, don't engage in the debate until you do. >> That's awesome advice. >> That's... >> All right, continue. >> Thank you. So my second piece of advice that I wish I could give my younger self is to understand the roles of leaders and influencers in your career and the importance of choosing and purposely working with each. I like to break it down into three types of influencers, managers, mentors, and advocates. So that first group are the people in your management chain. It's your first line manager, your director, your VP, et cetera. Their role in your career is to help you measure short-term success. And particularly with how that success aligns with their goals and the company's goals. But it's important to understand that they are not your mentors and they may not have a direct interest in your long-term career success. I like to think of them as, say, you're sixth grade math teacher. You know, you getting an A in the class and advancing to seventh grade. They own you for that. But whether you get that basketball scholarship to college or getting to Harvard or become a CEO, they have very little influence over that. So a mentor is someone who does have a shared interest in your long-term success, maybe by your relationship with him or her, or because by helping you shape your career and achieve your own success, you help advance their goals. Whether it be the company success or helping more women achieve leadership positions or getting more kids into college on a basketball scholarship, whatever it is, they have some long-term goal that aligns with helping you with your career. And they give great advice. But that mentor is not enough because they're often outside the sphere of influence in your current position. And while they can offer great advice and coaching, they may not be able to help you directly advance. That's the role of the third type of influencer. Somebody that I call an advocate. An advocate is someone that's in a position to directly influence your advancement and champion you and your capabilities to others. They are in influential positions and others place great value in their opinions. Advocates stay with you throughout your career, and they'll continue to support you and promote you wherever you are and wherever they are, whether that's the same organization or not. They're the ones who, when a leadership position opens up will say, I think Mary's the right person to take on that challenge, or we need to move in a new direction, I think Mary's the right person to lead that effort. Now advocates are the most important people to identify early on and often in your career. And they're often the most overlooked. People early on often pay too much attention and rely on their management chain for advancement. Managers change on a dime, but mentors and advocates are there for you for the long haul. And that's one of the unique things about the database culture. Those set of advocates were just there already because they had focused on building the next generation. So I consider, you know, Mike Carey as my father and Mike Stonebraker as my grandfather, and Jim Gray as my great-grandfather and they're always there to advocate for me. >> That's like a schema and a database. You got to have it all right there, kind of teed up. Beautiful. (laughing) Great advice. >> Exactly. >> Thank you for that. That was really a masterclass. And that's going to be great advice for folks, really trying to figure out how to play the cards they have and the situation, and to double down or move and find other opportunities. So great stuff there. I do have to ask you Mary, thanks for coming on the technical side and the product side. Couchbase Capella was launched in conjunction with the event. What is the bottom line for that as, as an Operations and Engineering, built the products and rolled it out. What's the main top line message for about that product? >> Yeah. Well, we're very excited about the release of Capella and what it brings to the table is that it's a fully managed and automated database cloud offering so that customers can focus on development and building and improving their applications and reducing the time to market without having to worry about the hard problems underneath, and the operational database management efforts that come with it. As I mentioned earlier, I started my career as a DBA and it was one of the most sought after and highly paid positions in IT because operating a database required so much work. So with Capella, what we're seeing is, taking that job away from me. I'm not going to be able to apply for a DBA tomorrow. >> That's great stuff. Well, great. Thanks for coming. I really appreciate it. Congratulations on the company and the public offering this past summer in July and thanks for that great commentary and insight on theCUBE here. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >> Okay. Mary Roth, VP of Engineering Operations at Couchbase part of Couchbase ConnectONLINE. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music playing)

(upbeat music) >> This is Dave Vellante, and I'd like to welcome you back to The Cube's coverage of Couchbase ConnectONLINE, where the theme of this event is Modernize Now. And one of the big announcements is Capella, which of course, as you all undoubtedly know, is the brightest star in the constellation Auriga, which is Latin for Charioteer. Yup, you can find that in the constellation, that constellation in the night sky in late Feb, early March, in the Northern hemisphere. So with that little tidbit, I'd like to welcome in Scott Anderson to The Cube, who's the Senior Vice President of Product Management and Business Operations at Couchbase. Scott, welcome. Good to see you. >> Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. >> Yeah, it's our pleasure. So, you've launched Couchbase Capella. If I understand correctly, it's built on Couchbase server 7, which you launched just a few months ago in the middle of the Summer. Can you give us an overview of Capella? >> Yeah, absolutely. So Couchbase Capella, is our fully managed databases service for enterprise applications. One of the goals of launching Capella and our database as a service offering that we just announced today is, about increasing the accessibility of Couchbase. So, it's about making it easy for a Developer or an Enterprise to get up and running in just a few clicks and a couple of minutes. And about making it more affordable and accessible through the development phase, through the test phase, the production phase. So really it's about ease of use, having the right offerings aligned to the phase of development that a customer's in, and eventually into the production of their enterprise application, leveraging Capella and Couchbase Server 7. >> So let me ask you, I went pretty deep with Ravi on the, the technical side, and I want to understand, what makes Capella different from some of the competitive offerings? Is it the, sort of the fundamentals that I learned from Ravi about how you guysbhave really done a awesome focus on SQL. But been able to maintain acid compliance, deal with distributed architectural challenges, and then bringing that over to database as a service? Is that the fundamental? What are some of the other differentiators? >> Yeah, that, that is the fundamental. We have an amazing platform that Ravi and our core engineering team have built. And we've talked about that, and I think Ravi mentioned that, the ease of SQL and applying that to a documented oriented database. and combining some of those capabilities with the ease of use. The ability that you can get up and running, signing up for our free trial. Couple of minutes later, you've got a database endpoint that is fully managed by Couchbase. And so we're doing the monitoring. We're doing alerting. We have calls to action based off what events are occurring within the database environment, ensuring it's always available, as well as doing kind of some of the mundane tasks of backup and recovery, scaling the environment upgrades and so forth. So it's really about ease of use making it, leveraging our incredibly robust broad platform, and then making that in different consumable model for our customers and developers and getting started really easily. The other thing that we've done, is really leveraged the best practices over the last 10 or 11 years, if some of the largest enterprises in the world using Couchbase for the mission critical applications. So we've codified those best practices. And that's how we keep that service high performant, always on, highly available. And that's one of the core value propositions that we're able to bring with Capella. It's really that management capability, global visibility of your clusters, coupled with what we believe is the best, no SQL database in the marketplace today. >> What about, what about costs total cost of ownership as you scale, a lot of times when you scale out and you get diseconomies of scale, it's kind of like, you know, you get that negative curve. What are you seeing? >> Yeah, we've done third party benchmark studies, which have proven out how we were able to linearly scale the environment and continue on that curve, as you add nodes, you're getting that incremental performance that you would expect. The other thing that we do that's really unique within in Couchbase is, our multi-dimensional scaling. And this allows you to place our services, things like data index query, full-text search, indexes and analytics. You can co-locate those on single nodes within the cluster, or you can have dedicated nodes for each one of those services. The reason that is important is, you get work-life isolation for those specific services within our cluster. The other thing that you can do is, you can match the compute infrastructure to the needs of each one of those services. So some services like query are much more core compute intensive, and that allows you to have a specific instance type that is optimized for that, reducing your cost. Indexes, where do you want very fast performance? You may want to have a higher amount of memory relative to the number, of course. So that ability to mix and match the infrastructure within the existing cluster, allows us to lower overall costs. That coupled with our blazing fast performance with our in-memory architecture, allows people to get incredible performance at scale. What we've proven out in the study that I mentioned earlier is we have that linear scalability, and you're able to do more for less, at the end of the day. You're getting more operations per second, per dollar, if you want to use that as a metric data. >> Thank you for that. What do customers need to think about when they want to get started with Capella? How difficult is it for people to jump in? >> It is incredibly simple. It's as simple as going to couchbase.com Clicking on start your free trial. You go into that free trial. You provide a minimal set of information for us, and it's literally a few clicks and you're going to have a database endpoint within three minutes. And that's really been a foundation of, of what we've been focused on over the last six to nine months is removing any friction we can in the process. Cause our goal is to give a firm a tremendous user experience and get people up and running as quickly as possible. So we're really, really proud of that. And then from a paid offering perspective, we have a number of offerings which are really aligned to the needs of each customer. Some individuals who want a larger cluster and they want to be able to pay for that, we've optimized service levels around that, in terms of level of support and the features that we think are appropriate for a dev cycle, a test cycle, and then inner production. And lastly, we'll be announcing a number of promotional starter pack bundles. Really trying to couple the overall service that we have with Capella, with some of our expertise. So helping new users get up and running in terms of things like index definitions, what's the best way to do document design and schema within Couchbase. Our end goal, is to match these services and bundles with the life cycle of application development. So in my development phase, what's the offering for me, as I move for production readiness, what services capabilities I need and then production and the ongoing, if I expand my use. So we've been really focused on how do we get people up and running as quickly as possible and how do we get them to production as quickly as possible at the lowest total cost. >> That's nice. That's a nice accelerant for, for customers. So as you heard upfront, I did a little research about the name, Capella. How did you choose it and why? >> Well, one thing I learned early in my career is naming is not a strong suit of mine. I leave that to John our Chief Marketing Officer in the overall team. We all have opinions, but I trust John. And we went through, I think it was over 60 names, seven rounds of debate to come up with Capella. But we wanted a name of strength. We liked the alliteration, Couchbase and Capella together. One of the little facts may have tipped it over is, I believe in Latin, it means little goats. So we kind of played, I'm from the bay area. So I was thinking to Jerry Rice, goat, greatest of all times. So that was nice play on that also. But I leave it to them and really happy with the overall name, love the, literation, love some of the hidden meanings within that. And we're really, really excited about getting it going. So you wouldn't want me to pick the name. I get a vote, but I would say my overall influence is a little bit lower than where John's is and, and Matt Cain, who I know you spoke with previously. >> I love it. Jerry Rice definitely is the little goat. I'm from New England. So of course, we think Tom Brady is the big goat. >> I know, I grew up in that Joe Montana era. So maybe you can take that offline after this interview, we're going to have around debate, but I guess a Superbowl trophies are the ultimate measure at the end of the day. >> Oh wait, I got a little stat for you. So, so Capella is also one of the 88 modern constellations as adopted by the international astronomical union. I.e not one of the ancient constellations. Pretty clever, right? >> Yeah, exactly. >> Scott, it's great to have you on the cube. Thanks so much, really appreciate it. >> Thank you so much. I really appreciate it All right. Thank you for watching. Our pleasure. Thank you for watching The Cubes coverage of Couchbase Connect 2021. Keep it right there for more great content. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> This is Dave Vellante, and I'd like to welcome you back to The Cube's coverage of Couchbase ConnectONLINE, where the theme of this event is Modernize Now. And one of the big announcements is Capella, which of course, as you all undoubtedly know, is the brightest star in the constellation Auriga, which is Latin for Charioteer. Yup, you can find that in the constellation, that constellation in the night sky in late Feb, early March, in the Northern hemisphere. So with that little tidbit, I'd like to welcome in Scott Anderson to The Cube, who's the Senior Vice President of Product Management and Business Operations at Couchbase. Scott, welcome. Good to see you. >> Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. >> Yeah, it's our pleasure. So, you've launched Couchbase Capella. If I understand correctly, it's built on Couchbase server 7, which you launched just a few months ago in the middle of the Summer. Can you give us an overview of Capella? >> Yeah, absolutely. So Couchbase Capella, is our fully managed databases service for enterprise applications. One of the goals of launching Capella and our database as a service offering that we just announced today is, about increasing the accessibility of Couchbase. So, it's about making it easy for a Developer or an Enterprise to get up and running in just a few clicks and a couple of minutes. And about making it more affordable and accessible through the development phase, through the test phase, the production phase. So really it's about ease of use, having the right offerings aligned to the phase of development that a customer's in, and eventually into the production of their enterprise application, leveraging Capella and Couchbase Server 7. >> So let me ask you, I went pretty deep with Ravi on the, the technical side, and I want to understand, what makes Capella different from some of the competitive offerings? Is it the, sort of the fundamentals that I learned from Ravi about how you guysbhave really done a awesome focus on SQL. But been able to maintain acid compliance, deal with distributed architectural challenges, and then bringing that over to database as a service? Is that the fundamental? What are some of the other differentiators? >> Yeah, that, that is the fundamental. We have an amazing platform that Ravi and our core engineering team have built. And we've talked about that, and I think Ravi mentioned that, the ease of SQL and applying that to a documented oriented database. and combining some of those capabilities with the ease of use. The ability that you can get up and running, signing up for our free trial. Couple of minutes later, you've got a database endpoint that is fully managed by Couchbase. And so we're doing the monitoring. We're doing alerting. We have calls to action based off what events are occurring within the database environment, ensuring it's always available, as well as doing kind of some of the mundane tasks of backup and recovery, scaling the environment upgrades and so forth. So it's really about ease of use making it, leveraging our incredibly robust broad platform, and then making that in different consumable model for our customers and developers and getting started really easily. The other thing that we've done, is really leveraged the best practices over the last 10 or 11 years, if some of the largest enterprises in the world using Couchbase for the mission critical applications. So we've codified those best practices. And that's how we keep that service high performant, always on, highly available. And that's one of the core value propositions that we're able to bring with Capella. It's really that management capability, global visibility of your clusters, coupled with what we believe is the best, no SQL database in the marketplace today. >> What about, what about costs total cost of ownership as you scale, a lot of times when you scale out and you get diseconomies of scale, it's kind of like, you know, you get that negative curve. What are you seeing? >> Yeah, we've done third party benchmark studies, which have proven out how we were able to linearly scale the environment and continue on that curve, as you add nodes, you're getting that incremental performance that you would expect. The other thing that we do that's really unique within in Couchbase is, our multi-dimensional scaling. And this allows you to place our services, things like data index query, full-text search, indexes and analytics. You can co-locate those on single nodes within the cluster, or you can have dedicated nodes for each one of those services. The reason that is important is, you get work-life isolation for those specific services within our cluster. The other thing that you can do is, you can match the compute infrastructure to the needs of each one of those services. So some services like query are much more core compute intensive, and that allows you to have a specific instance type that is optimized for that, reducing your cost. Indexes, where do you want very fast performance? You may want to have a higher amount of memory relative to the number, of course. So that ability to mix and match the infrastructure within the existing cluster, allows us to lower overall costs. That coupled with our blazing fast performance with our in-memory architecture, allows people to get incredible performance at scale. What we've proven out in the study that I mentioned earlier is we have that linear scalability, and you're able to do more for less, at the end of the day. You're getting more operations per second, per dollar, if you want to use that as a metric data. >> Thank you for that. What do customers need to think about when they want to get started with Capella? How difficult is it for people to jump in? >> It is incredibly simple. It's as simple as going to couchbase.com Clicking on start your free trial. You go into that free trial. You provide a minimal set of information for us, and it's literally a few clicks and you're going to have a database endpoint within three minutes. And that's really been a foundation of, of what we've been focused on over the last six to nine months is removing any friction we can in the process. Cause our goal is to give a firm a tremendous user experience and get people up and running as quickly as possible. So we're really, really proud of that. And then from a paid offering perspective, we have a number of offerings which are really aligned to the needs of each customer. Some individuals who want a larger cluster and they want to be able to pay for that, we've optimized service levels around that, in terms of level of support and the features that we think are appropriate for a dev cycle, a test cycle, and then inner production. And lastly, we'll be announcing a number of promotional starter pack bundles. Really trying to couple the overall service that we have with Capella, with some of our expertise. So helping new users get up and running in terms of things like index definitions, what's the best way to do document design and schema within Couchbase. Our end goal, is to match these services and bundles with the life cycle of application development. So in my development phase, what's the offering for me, as I move for production readiness, what services capabilities I need and then production and the ongoing, if I expand my use. So we've been really focused on how do we get people up and running as quickly as possible and how do we get them to production as quickly as possible at the lowest total cost. >> That's nice. That's a nice accelerant for, for customers. So as you heard upfront, I did a little research about the name, Capella. How did you choose it and why? >> Well, one thing I learned early in my career is naming is not a strong suit of mine. I leave that to John our Chief Marketing Officer in the overall team. We all have opinions, but I trust John. And we went through, I think it was over 60 names, seven rounds of debate to come up with Capella. But we wanted a name of strength. We liked the alliteration, Couchbase and Capella together. One of the little facts may have tipped it over is, I believe in Latin, it means little goats. So we kind of played, I'm from the bay area. So I was thinking to Jerry Rice, goat, greatest of all times. So that was nice play on that also. But I leave it to them and really happy with the overall name, love the, literation, love some of the hidden meanings within that. And we're really, really excited about getting it going. So you wouldn't want me to pick the name. I get a vote, but I would say my overall influence is a little bit lower than where John's is and, and Matt Cain, who I know you spoke with previously. >> I love it. Jerry Rice definitely is the little goat. I'm from New England. So of course, we think Tom Brady is the big goat. >> I know, I grew up in that Joe Montana era. So maybe you can take that offline after this interview, we're going to have around debate, but I guess a Superbowl trophies are the ultimate measure at the end of the day. >> Oh wait, I got a little stat for you. So, so Capella is also one of the 88 modern constellations as adopted by the international astronomical union. I.e not one of the ancient constellations. Pretty clever, right? >> Yeah, exactly. >> Scott, it's great to have you on the cube. Thanks so much, really appreciate it. >> Thank you so much. I really appreciate it All right. Thank you for watching. Our pleasure. Thank you for watching The Cubes coverage of Couchbase Connect 2021. Keep it right there for more great content. (upbeat music)