(clicking) >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Denver, Colorado. It's our first trip actually to Denver for theCUBE, so we're excited to be here. It's DJI AirWorks show. It's the second show they've ever had, about 500, 600 people here talking about the commercial applications for drone. There's no conversation really about consumer stuff here, the spark is not here. This is really about commercial applications for drones technology, the platform, the software. We're really excited about the keynote speaker today. He's Michael Perry. He's a Director of Strategic Partnerships for DJI. Michael, welcome. >> Thanks for having me, Jeff. Absolutely, and great job on the keynote. Really enthusiastic crowd. I think you pretty much had their wrapped attention the entire time. (laughs) So before we get into today, talk a little bit about why DJI has invested in this conference, and kind of what are your high level objectives in doing AirWorks. >> Yeah, so over the last several years we started seeing more and more maturity in how people are using drones for commercial work. Ultimately what we found though, is that a lot of these conversations were happening one to one, and often they were coming to DJI to have that conversation and then we'd connect them to somebody else in the network. Instead, a year ago, we decided, why don't we just connect everybody together so they can have those conversations directly? And that was a huge success. We had end users, developers, and dealers all coming together to think about how we can push forward the future of enterprise with drones. And this year, it's even bigger. We've now included not just end users and developers, but also training companies and financial service providers, hardware providers. Everyone's coming together to look at what's the future of this industry and how we can push it forward. >> Yeah, it's pretty interesting. So really the high light of verticals if you will, so agriculture, energy, construction, public safety, and infrastructure, and of course media as well, but those are really hardcore industrial sectors where you've already seen a lot of pretty advanced solutions, and you're really pushing the solution messaging as opposed to the point products or even talking about the drones themselves. >> Yeah, that's right. So I think if we had this conversation five years ago, we'd be trying to tell everybody why drones are so useful. That's no longer the issue. The question is, how can we take these drones and operate them at scale? How can we move them from an R&D project where everyone understands the value proposition, but how can we make sure that it's able to use by the guys in the field on a daily basis? And that's what everybody here in this room is here to decide. >> Now you guys take a really interesting approach. You've really broke the drone up into pieces. So you've got the actual platform itself, the thing that flies, and you guys have spent a lot of time and effort in letting it fly itself if you will, really, with instruction. Then there's the sensors, whether that be a camera, the axsensors, infrared, all type. I mean Hasselblad is here, one of the oldest camera companies around. And then there's the software, and you opened up your API both on the mobile device side, the control side, as well as, sounds like this year, even giving the raw access to the most fundamental sensor data. So that's a pretty bold kind of path to choose. How did that go down, and obviously the results are huge. You're building an ecosystem across all of those units. >> Yeah, when we started seeing the applications for drones in the commercial space, we ultimately realized that we can't develop end to end solutions for every application for drones. It's just too big. So what we started seeing is, hey, look, there's a company that already doing fantastic work in GIS mapping. Let's just enable them to use our platform. And ultimately we're starting to look at how we can use the base core of DJI technology as a platform for other people to build on top of, to really expand the potential of drones. And that's true for everybody here in this room. >> So now you've got really a wide range of platforms if you will, but the other thing that you announced today that I thought was pretty interesting, and I'm relatively new to this space, but getting beyond kind of the one person, one drone concept, and really enabling an enterprise operation. One of the guys was up talking about their customer, Komatsu, says, we love it, can you put 20,000 of these things in the air for us? >> Yeah, that's right. >> So that's a whole different way to think about your aerial assets if you will. I think back to the early military days, right? We didn't have an air force, right? It was part of the army. But to actually now have the ability to have kind of an aerial branch within your business process that feeds into your other business process, a very different way to think about the world. >> That's exactly right. So FlightHub is the answer to that exact question. If I'm a business and I want to operate drones at scale, how am I going to do that? So FlightHub does multiple things simultaneously. Allows you to see the live feeds from multiple drones. Allows you to assign tasks to individual drone pilots. Allows you to monitor all of the drones in your fleet and see how are they performing, where have they flown, what kind of missions are they optimized for, and use all of that information to be able to operate drones across an enterprise. >> Yeah, and then you talked about the other side of the equation, which is, investors still concerns about safety and privacy and this and that. And you're coming up with another product that's really for law enforcement and airports and those types of people so they have a better view of what's happening around there airspace that they're responsible for managing. Not really for the consumers or even for the operators, but really for more of the control and the trust if you will within this bigger ecosystem. >> That's exactly right. One of the barriers to broader adoption is the perception of drones, if there's drone flying by, whose drone is that? What is it doing? Is it doing the thing that it's supposed to be doing? Is there an accountability mechanism? So with AeroScope we've designed an easy to implement accountability mechanism for law enforcement, for airspace regulators, and between the two of them, they can start saying, hey, look, there's a category of drones that can just fly and we can make sure that they're not flying in anyway that's effecting safety or security, and if they are, then there's a follow up mechanism. >> Right, right. Okay, so I got to ask you a fun question. Of all the crazy applications that the ecosystem has delivered, what are some of your favorites that either just seem, wow, who would have ever thought of that, or just really leveraging the power of the platform in a way that, again, you would of never thought of on your own? >> Honestly, every week there's a new, exciting application. The one that always brings to mind though is the Ocean Alliance had a problem in that they need to collect information about whale pods in order to assess their health and their diet and how they're faring. The best way to do that is collecting whale snot. >> Jeff: Whale snot? >> Whale snot. So previously-- >> Jeff: Who knew whales had snot? >> Exactly, so previously they would row in dinghies next to whale pods as they breach, try to collect the snot as they go up the spout. Now they're using drones to do that. It's much more time efficient, allows them to better assess the health of the whales that they're trying conserve, and it also doesn't put the researchers in harm's way. >> Yeah, it's bad news for what's his name with the dirty job show because-- >> Yup. (laughs) >> Really the drones are taking a lot of these dirty jobs. It's really a safety issue when you're inspecting. I talked to somebody over coffee inspecting oil refineries. You don't have to send somebody up a 200 foot tower anymore. You can send the drone, use software, and you can get a better indication than you could from somebody that maybe missed a spot. >> Yeah, you can decrease the amount of hazardous work hours and increase the efficiency. You can not only do the inspection faster, but I can do it more frequently and get a bigger data set so that you can take that intelligence and make your business operate a lot more effectively. >> Alright, so the goals for 2018. What will be talking about at AirWorks 2018? >> I think next year you'll see a lot more mature applications within the different protocols that you've just mentioned. There're already software providers and hardware providers trying to address them, but I think today you'll start seeing all of those solutions coming together into one platform that can easily be sold and easily scaled in these business. So you'll probably see a lot more players here talking about that. >> Alright, well Michael, again, congratulations on the show. Congratulations on the keynote. Exciting times at DJI. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Alright, Michael Ferry, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from DJI AirWorks. Thanks for watching. (clicking)

>>When AWS introduced the modern cloud in 2006, many people didn't realize the impact that it would have on the industry, but some did see the future of an as a service economy coming. I mean, SAS offerings came out several years before. And the idea of applying some of these concepts to infrastructure and simplifying deployment and management, you know, kinda looked enticing to a lot of customers and a subscription model, or, but yet a consumption model was seen as a valuable proposition by many customers. Why not apply it to infrastructure? And why should the hyperscalers have all the fun welcome to at your storage service? My name is Dave ante. And as an analyst at the time, I was excited about the, as a service trend early on. And one of the companies that caught my attention back in the beginning of last decade was pure storage. >>Pure not only was delivering cloud- simplicity, but it's no forklift approach to infrastructure was ahead of its time. And that's why we're here today to dig into what's happening with the, as a service trends that we see popping up all over the world today, we're gonna dig into three sessions with noted experts in the field. First pre Darie is the general manager of the digital experience business unit at pure storage. He's gonna join us. And then we bring in Steve McDowell, Steve's a senior analyst for data and storage at more insights and strategy, a well known consultancy and analyst firm. And finally, we close with Amil sta Emil is the chief commercial officer and chief marketing officer at open line, open lines, a managed service provider. They serve the mid-market and Emil's got a very wide observation space. He's gonna share what he's seeing with customers. So sit back and enjoy the show. >>The cloud has popularized many useful concepts in the past decade, working backwards from the customer two pizza teams, a DevOps mindset, the shared responsibility model in security. And of course the shift from CapEx to OPEX and as a service consumption models. The last item is what we're here to talk about today. Pay for consumption is attractive because you're not over provisioning. At least not the way you used to you'd have to buy for peak capacity events, but there are always two sides to every story and well pay for use more closely ties. It consumption to business value procurement teams. Don't always love the uncertainty of the cloud bill each month, but consumption pricing. And as a service models are here to stay in software and hardware. Hello, I'm Dave ante and welcome to at your storage service made possible by pure storage. And with me is Pash DJI. Who's the general manager of the digital experience business unit at pure Pash. Welcome to the program. >>Thanks Dave. Thanks for having me. >>You bet. Okay. We've seen this shift to, as a service, the, as a service economy, subscription models, and this as a service movement have gained real momentum. It's it's clear over the past several years, what's driving this shift. Is it pressure from investors and technology companies that are chasing the all important ARR, their annual recurring revenue stream? Is it customer driven? Give us your insights. >>Well, look, um, I think we'll do some definitional stuff first. I think we often mix the definition of a subscription and a service, but, you know, subscription is, Hey, I can go for pay up front or pay as I go. Service is more about how do I not buy something just by the outcome. So, you know, the concept of delivering storage as a service means, what do you want in storage performance, capacity availability? Like that's what you want. Well, how do you get that without having to worry about the labor of planning capacity management, those labor elements are what's driving it. So I think in the world where you have to do more with less and in a world where security becomes increasingly important, where standardization will allow you to secure your landscape against ransomware and those types of things, those trends are driving the ation of storage and the only way to deliver that is storage as a service. >>So that's, that's good. You maybe thinking about it differently than some of the other companies that I talked to, but so you, you, you've made inroads here pretty big inroads actually, and changed the thinking in enterprise data storage with a huge emphasis on simplicity. That's really pures rayon Detra. How does storage as a service fit into your innovation agenda overall? >>Well, our innovation agenda started, as you mentioned with the simplicity, you know, a decade ago with the evergreen architecture, that architecture was beyond the box. How do you go ahead and say, I can improve performance or capacity as I need it? Well, that's a foundational element to deliver a service because once you have that technology, you can say, oh, you know what? You've subscribed to this performance level. You want to raise your performance level and yes, that'll be a higher dollar per gig or dollar per terabyte. But how do you do that without a data migration? How do you do that with a non disruptive service change? How do you do that with a delivery via a software update, those elements of non disruptive updates. When you think SAS, Salesforce, you don't know when Salesforce doesn't update, you don't know when they're increasing something, adding a new capability just shows up. It's not a disruptive event. So to drive that standardization and sation and service delivery, you need to keep that simplicity of delivery first and foremost, and you can't allow, like, if the goal was, I want to change from this service tier to that service tier and a person needed to show up and do a day data migration, that's kind of useless. You've broken the experience of flexibility for a customer. >>Okay. So I like the Salesforce analogy, but I wanna jump out, do a little side for a second. So I I've gotta, I've gotta make some commitment to pure, right. Some baseline commitment. And if I do, then I can dial up and pay for what I use and I can dial it down. Correct? Correct. Okay. I can't do that with Salesforce. <laugh> right. I could dial up, but then I'm stuck with those licenses. So you have a better model in Salesforce. I would argue. Okay. Yeah, >>I would, I would agree with that. >>Okay. So, and I gotta pay for everything up front anyway. Um, let's go back. I was kind of pushing at you a little bit at my upfront, you know, about, you know, the ARR model, the, the all important, you know, financial metric, but let's talk from the customers standpoint. What are the benefits of consuming storage as a service from your customer's perspective? >>Well, one is when you start your storage journey, do you really know what you need? And I would argue most of the time people are guessing, right? It's like, well, I think I need this. This is the performance I think I need. Or this is the capacity I think I need. And, you know, with the scientific method, you actually deploy something and you're like, do I need more? Do I need less? You find out as you're deploying. So in a storage as a service world, when you have the ability to move up performance levels or move out capacity levels, and you have that flexibility, then you have the ability to just to meet demand as you deploy. And that's the most important element of meeting business needs today. The applications you deploy are not in your control when you're providing storage to your end consumers. >>Yeah. They're gonna want different levels of storage. They're gonna want different performance thresholds. That's kind of a pay, you know, pay for performance type culture, right? You can use HR analogies for it. You pay for performance. You want top talent, you pay for it. You want top storage performance, you pay for it. Um, you don't, you can pay less and you can actually get lower performance, tiers, not everything is a tier one application. And you need the ability to deploy it. But when you start, how do you know the way your end customers are gonna be consuming? Or do you need a dictated upfront? Cause that's infrastructure dictating business inflexibility, and you never want to be in that position. >>I, I got another analogy for you. It's like, you know, we do a lot of hosting at our home and you know, like Thanksgiving, right? And you go to the liquor store and say, okay, what should I get? Should we get red wine? We gotta go white wine. We gotta get some beer. Should I get bubbles? Yeah, I get some bubbles. Cause you don't know what people are gonna have. And so you over provision everything <laugh> and then there's a run on bubbles and you're like, ah, we run outta bubbles. So you just over buy, but there's a liquor store that actually will take it back. So I gotta do business with those guys every time. Cuz it's way more flexible. I can dial up capacity or can dial up performance and dial it back down if I don't use it >>Or you or you're gonna be drinking a lot more the next few weeks. >>Yeah, exactly. Which is the last thing you want. Okay. So let's talk about how pure kind of meets this as a service demand. You've touched upon your, your differentiators from others in the market. Um, you know, love to hear about the momentum. What, what are you seeing out there? >>Yeah. Look, our business is growing well, largely built on, you know, what customers need. Um, specifically where the market is at today is there's a set of folks that are interested in the financial transformation of CapEx to OPEX, where like that definitely exists in the industry around how do I get a pay use model? The next kind of more advanced customer is interested in how do I go ahead and remove labor to deliver storage? And a service gets you there on top of a subscription. The most sophisticated customer says, how do I separate storage production with consumption and production of storage. Being a storage producer should be about standardization. So I could do policy based management. Why is that important? You know, coming back to some of the things I said earlier in the world where ransomware attacks are common, you need the standardized security policies. >>Linux has new vulnerabilities every, every other day, like find 2, 2, 3 critical vulnerabilities a week. How do you stay on top of it? The complexity of staying on top of it should be, look, let's standardize and make it a vendor problem. And assume the vendor's gonna deliver this to me. So that standardization allows you to have business policies that allow you to stay current and modern. I would argue in, you know, the traditional storage and appliance world, you buy something and the day a, the day after you buy it, it's worthless. It's like driving a car off a lot, right? The very next day, the car's not worth what it was when you bought it. Storage is the same way. So how do you ensure that your storage stays current? How do you ensure that it gets like a fine line that gets better, better with age? Well, if you're not buying storage and you're buying a performance SLA, it's up to the vendor to meet that SLA. So it actually never gets worse over time. This is the way you modernize technology and avoid technology debt as a customer. >>Yeah. I mean, just even though words you're using in the way you're thinking about this precaution, I think are, are, are different. Uh, and I love the concept of essentially taking my labor cost and transferring them to pures R and D I mean, that's essentially what you're talking about here. Um, so let's, let's, let's stick with the, the, the tech for a minute. What do you see as new or emerging technologies that are helping accelerate this shift toward the, as a service economy? >>Well, the first thing is I always tell people, you can't deliver a service without monitoring, because if you can't monitor something, how you're gonna know what your, whether you're meeting your service level obligation, right? So everything starts with data monitoring. The next step layering on the technology. Differentiation is if you need to deliver a service level, OB obligation on top of that data monitoring, you need the ability to flexibly, meet whatever performance obligations you have in a tight time window. So supply chain and being able to deliver anywhere becomes important. So if you use the analogy today of how Tesla works or a IOT system works, you have a SaaS management that actually provides instructions that push pushes those instructions and policies to the edge. In Tesla's case, that happens to be the car it'll push software updates to the car. It'll push new map updates to the car, but the car is running independently. >>It's not like if the car becomes disconnected from the internet, it's gonna crash and drive you off the road in the same way. What if you think about storage as something that needs to be wherever your application is? So people think about cloud as a destination. I think that's a fallacy. You have to think about the world in the world in the view of an application, an application needs data, and that data needs to sit in storage wherever that application sits. So for us, the storage system is just an edge device. It can be sitting in your data center, it can be sitting in a Equinix. It can be sitting in hosted, an MSP can run. It can, can even be sitting in the public cloud, but how do you have central monitoring and central management where you can push policies to update all those devices? >>Very similar to an I IOT system. So the technology advantage of doing that means that you can operate anywhere and ensure you have a consistent set of policies, a consistent set of protection, a consistent set of, you know, prevention against ransomware attack, regardless of your application, regardless of, uh, you know, where it sits, regardless of what content in you're on that approach is very similar to the way the T industry has been updating and monitoring edge devices, nest, thermostats, you know, Tesla cars, those types of things. That's the thinking that needs to come to. And that's the foundation on which we built PI as a service. >>So that implies, or at least I infer that you've obviously got control of the experience on Preem, but you're extending that, uh, into AWS, Google Azure, which suggests to me that you have to hide the underlying complexity of the primitives and APIs in that world. And then eventually, actually today, cuz you're treating everything like the edge out to the edge, you know, maybe, maybe mini pure at some point in time. But so I call that super cloud that abstraction layer that floats above all the clouds on-prem and adds that layer of value. And is this singular experience? What you're talking about pushing, you know, policy throughout, is that the right way to think about it and how does this impact the ability to deliver true storage as a service? >>Oh, uh, that's absolutely the right way of thinking about it. The things that you think about from a, an abstraction kind of fall in three buckets, first, you need management. So how do you ensure a consistent management experience creating volumes, deleting volumes, creating buckets, creating files, creating directories, like management of objects and create a consistent API across the entire landscape. The second one is monitoring, how do you measure utilization and performance obligations or capacity obligations or uh, you know, policy violations, wherever you're at. And then the third one is more of a business one, which is procurement because you can't do it independent of procurement. Meaning what happens when you run out, you need to increase your reserve commits. Do you want to go on demand? How do you integrate it into company's procurement models, such that you can say, I can use what I need and any, it's not like every change order is a request of procurement. That's gonna break an as a service delivery model. So to get embedded in a customer's landscape where they don't have to worry about storage, you have to provide that consistency on management, monitoring and procurement across the tech. And yes, this is deep technology problems, whether it's running our storage on AWS or Azure or running it on prem or, you know, at some point in the future, maybe even, um, you know, pure mini at the edge. Right. <laugh> so, you know, tho all of those things are tied to our pure, a service delivery. >>Yeah, technically non-trivial but uh, Hey, you guys are on it. Well, we gotta leave it there. Pash. Thank you. Great stuff. Really appreciate your time. >>All right. Thanks for having me, man. >>You're very welcome. Okay. In a moment, Steve McDowell from more insights and strategies, it's gonna give us the analyst perspective on, as a service, you're watching the cube, the leader in high tech enterprise coverage. >>Why are customers making the change to pure as a service >>Other vendors, offering flexible consumption models will promise you the world on the surface. It's just what you need. But then you notice the asterisk that dreaded fine print. That turns just what you need into long-term commitments, disruptive upgrades and unpredictable costs, pure storage, launched pure as a service to provide the flexibility to respond to your ever changing needs. With clear per unit costs, no large upfront purchases and no asterisks. A usage based model should be simple, innovative, and adapt with the changing market. Unlike other vendors, pure is offering exactly that with options, for service tiers and short term contracts in a single unified subscription that allows you to improve your discounts over time. Pure makes sure you can grow and upgrade without ever taking your environment offline and without the constant worry of hidden costs with complete billing, transparency, unlike any other, you only pay for what you use and pure one helps track and predict demand from day to day, making sure you never outgrow your storage. So why are customers making the change to pure as a service convenient solutions with unlimited potential without the dreaded fine print? It's as simple as that, >>We're back with Steve McDowell, the principal analyst for data and storage at more insights and strategy. Hey Steve, great to have you on, tell us a little bit about yourself. You got a really interesting background and kind of a blend of engineering and strategy and what's your research focus? >>Yeah, so my research, my focus area is data and storage and all the things around that, right? Whether it's OnPrim or cloud or, or, or, you know, software as a service. Uh, my background, as you said, is a blend, right? I grew up as an engineer. I started off as an OS developer at IBM. Uh, came up through the ranks and, and shifted over into corporate strategy and product marketing and product management. Uh, and I've been doing, uh, working as an industry analyst now for about five years, more insights and strategy. >>Steve, how do you see this playing out in the next three to five years? I mean, cloud got it all started. It's gonna snowballing, you know, however you look at it, percent of spending on storage that you think is gonna land in as a service. How, how do you see the evolution here? >>I think it buyers are looking at as a service, a consumption based is, is, uh, uh, you know, a natural model. It extends the data center, brings all of the flexibility, all of the goodness that I get from public cloud, but without all of the downside and uncertainty around cost and security and things like that, right. That also come with a public cloud and it's delivered by technology providers that I trust and that I know, and that I've worked with, you know, for, in some cases, decades. So I don't know that we have hard data on how much, uh, adoption there is of the model, but we do know that it's trending up, uh, you know, and every infrastructure provider at this point has some flavor of offering in the space. So it's, it's clearly popular with CIOs and, and it practitioners alike. >>So Steve organizations are at a they're different levels of maturity in their, their transformation journeys. And of course, as a result, they're gonna have different storage needs that are aligned with their bottom line business objectives. From an it buyer perspective, you may have data on this, even if it's anecdotal, where does storage as a service actually fit in and can it be a growth lever >>Can absolutely be, uh, a growth leader. Uh, it, it gives me the flexibility as, as an it architect to scale my business over time, without worrying about how much money I have to invest in, in storage hardware. Right? So I, I get kind of, again, that cloudlike flexibility in terms of procurement and deployment. Uh, but it gives me that control by oftentimes being on site within my permit. And I manage it like a storage array that I own. Uh, so you know, it, it's, it's beautiful for, for organizations that are scaling and, and it's equally nice for organizations that just wanna manage and control cost over time. Um, so it's, it's a model that makes a lot of sense and fits and, and certainly growing in adoption and popularity. >>How about from a technology vendor perspective you've worked for in the, in the tech industry mm-hmm <affirmative> for, for companies? What do you think is gonna define the winners and losers in this space? If you were running strategy for, uh, storage company, what would you say? >>I, I think the days of, of a storage administrator managing, you know, rate levels and recovering and things of that sort are over, right, what would, what these organizations like pure delivering, but they're offerings is, is simplicity. It's a push button approach to deploying storage to the applications and workloads that need it, right. It becomes storage as a utility. So it's not just the, you know, the consumption based economic model of, of, uh, as a service. Uh, it, it's also the manageability that comes with that, or the flexibility of management that comes with that. I can push a button, deploy bites to, to, uh, you know, a workload that needs it. Um, and it just becomes very simple, right. For the storage administrator in a way that, you know, kind of old school OnPrim storage can't really deliver. >>You know, I wanna, I wanna ask you, I mean, I've been thinking about this because again, a lot of companies are, are, you know, moving, hopping on the, as a service bandwagon, I feel like, okay, in and of itself, that's not where the innovation lives, the innovation is gonna come from making that singular experience from on-prem to the clouds across clouds, maybe eventually out to the edge. Um, do you, do you, where do you see the innovation in as a service? >>Well, there there's two levels of innovation, right? One, one is business model innovation, right? I, I now have an organizational flexibility to build the infrastructure, to support my digital transformation efforts. Um, but on the product side and the offering side, it really is, as you said, it's about the integration of experience. Every enterprise today touches a cloud in some way, shape or form, right. I have data spread, not just in my data center, but at the edge, uh, oftentimes in a public cloud, maybe a private cloud, I don't know where my data is and it really lands on the storage providers to help me manage that and deliver that, uh, uh, manageability experience, uh, to, to the it administrators. So when I look at innovation in this space, you know, it's not just a storage array and rack that I'm leasing, right? This is not another lease model. It's really fully integrated, you know, end to end management of my data and, and, you know, and all of the things around that. >>Yeah. So you, to your point about a lease model is if you're doing a lease, you know, yeah. You can shift CapEx to OPEX, but you're still committed to, to, you have to over provision, whereas here, and I wanted to ask you about that. It's, it's, it's, it's an interesting model, right? Cuz you gotta read the fine print. Of course the fine print says you gotta commit to some level typically. And then if, you know, if you go over you, you charge for what you use and you can scale that back down and that's, that's gotta be very attractive for folks. I, I wonder if you will ever see like true cloud-like consumption pricing, that is two edges to it. Right. You see consumption based pricing in some of the software models and you know yeah. People like it, the lines of business maybe cuz they pay in by the drink, but then procurement hates it cuz they don't have predictability. How do you see the pricing models? Do you see that maturing or do you think we're sort of locked in on, on where we're at? >>No, I, I do. I do see that maturing. Right? And, and when you work with a company like pure to understand their consumption based and as a service offerings, uh, it, it really is sitting down and understanding where your data needs are going to scale, right? You, you buy in at a certain level, uh, you have capacity planning. You can expand if you need to, you can shrink if you need to. So it really does put more control in the hands of the it buyer than uh, well certainly then traditional CapEx based on-prem but also more control than you would get, you know, working with an Amazon or an Azure. >>Okay. Thanks Steve. We'll leave it there for now. I'd love to have you back. Keep it right there at your storage service continues in a moment. >>Some things are meant to last your storage should be one of them say hello to the evergreen storage program, say goodbye to refreshes and rebates. Forget planned downtime, performance impact and data migrations. Forget forklift upgrades. Evergreen storage starts with your agile storage architecture and covers the entire life cycle of the array from first purchase to ongoing use. And whenever it's time to modernize and grow, your satisfaction is covered with an evergreen subscription. You can get a full refund within 30 days for any reason, >>Our right size guarantee lets you buy just the storage you need never too much. Never not enough. Your array software is all inclusive. Even future releases and features maintenance and support costs remain constant throughout the life of your array. Proactive expert support is a true white glove experience. Evergreen maintenance ensures availability of any replacement components. Meet the demands of your business and protect your investment. Evergreen gold includes controller upgrades every three years. And if something unplanned comes up, evergreen gold provides upgrade flex the leading anytime upgrade feature to upgrade controllers whenever you need it. As you expand evergreen gold provides credits to consolidate storage with denser more modern flash. Evergreen is your subscription to continuous innovation for storage that lasts 10 years or more. Some things are meant to last make your storage. One of them >>We're back at your storage service. Emil Stan is here. He's the chief commercial officer and chief marketing officer of open line. Thank you Emil for coming on the cube. Appreciate your time. >>Thank you, David. Nice. Uh, glad to be here. >>Yes. Yeah. So tell us about open line. You're a managed service provider. What's your focus? >>Yeah, we're actually a cloud managed service provider and I do put cloud in front of the managed services because it's not just only the spheres that we manage. We have to manage the clouds as well nowadays. And then unfortunately, everybody only thinks there's one cloud, but it's always multiple layers in the cloud. So we have a lot of work in integrating it. We're a cloud manages provider in the Netherlands, focusing on, uh, companies who have head office in the Netherlands, mainly in the, uh, healthcare local government, social housing logistics department. And then in the midst size companies between say 250 to 10,000 office employees. Uh, and that's what we do. We provide 'em with excellent cloud managed services, uh, as it should be >>Interesting, you know, a lot early on in the cloud days, highly regulated industries like healthcare government were somewhat afraid of the cloud. So I'm sure that's one of the ways in which you provide value to your customers is helping them become cloud proficient. Maybe you could talk a little bit more about the value prop to customers. Why do they do business with you? >>And I think, uh, there are a number of reasons why they do business with us or choose to choose for our manage services provider that first of course are looking for stability and continuity. Uh, and, and from a cost perspective, predict predictable costs. But nowadays you also have a shortage in personnel and knowledge. So, and it's not always very easy for them to access, uh, those skill sets because most it, people just want to have, uh, a great variety in work, what they are doing, uh, towards, towards the local government, uh, healthcare, social housing. They actually, uh, a sector that, uh, that are really in between embracing the public cloud, but also have a lot of legacy and, and bringing together best of all, worlds is what we do. So we also bring them comfort. We do understand what legacy, uh, needs from a manager's perspective. We also know how to leverage the benefits in the public cloud. Uh, and, uh, I'd say from a marketing perspective, actually we focus on using an ideal cloud, being a mix of traditional and future based cloud. >>Thank you. I, you know, I'd like to get your perspective on this idea of as a service and the, as a service economy that we often talk about on the cube. I mean, you work with a lot of different companies. We talked about some of the industries and, and increasingly it seems like organizations are focused more on outcomes, continuous value delivery via, you know, suites of services and, and they're leaning into platforms versus one off product offerings, you know, do you see that? How do you see your customers reacting to this as a service trend? >>Yeah. Uh, to be honest, sometimes it makes it more complex because services like, look at your Android or iPhone, you can buy apps, uh, and download apps the way you want to. So they have a lot of apps about how do you integrate it into one excellent workflow, something that works for you, David or works for me. Uh, so the difficulty, some sometimes lies in, uh, the easy accessibility that you have to those solutions, but nobody takes into account that they're all part of a chain, a workflow supply chain, uh, and, and, uh, they're being hyped as well. So what we also have a lot of time in, in, in, in managing our customers is that the tremendous feature push feature push that there is from technology providers, SaaS providers. Whereas if you provide 10 features, you only need one or two, uh, but the other eight are very distracting from your prime core business. Uh, so there's a natural way in that people are embracing, uh, SA solutions, embracing cloud solutions. Uh, but what's not taken into account as much is that we love to see it is the way that you integrate all those solutions toward something that's workable for the person that's actually using them. And it's seldomly that somebody is only using one solution. There's always a chain of solutions. Um, so yeah, there are a lot of opportunities, but also a lot of challenges for us, but also for our customers, >>You see that trend toward, as a service continuing, or do you actually see based on what you're just saying that pendulum, you know, swinging back and forth, somebody comes out with a new sort of feature product and that, you know, changes the dynamic or do you see as a service really having legs? >>Ah, I, I think that's very, very good question, David, because that's something that's keeping our busy all the time. We do see a trend in a service looking at, uh, talk about pure later on. We also use pure as a service more or less. Yeah. And that really helps us. Uh, but you see, uh, um, that sometimes people make a step too, too fast, too quick, not well thought of, and then you see what they call sort of cloud repatriation, tend that people go back to what they're doing and then they stop innovating or stop leveraging. The possibilities are actually there. Uh, so from our consultancy, our guidance and architecture point of view, we try to help them as much as possible to think in a SA thought, but just don't use the, cloud's just another data center. Uh, and so it's all about managing the maturity on our side, but on our customer side as well. >>So I'm interested in how your sort of your philosophy and, and as relates, I think in, in, in terms of how you work with pure, but how do you stay tightly in lockstep with your customers so that you don't over rotate so that you don't and send them to over rotate, but then you're not also, you don't wanna be too late to the game. How, how do you manage all that? >>Oh, there's, there's, there's a world of interactions between us and our customers. And so I think a well known, uh, uh, thing that people is customer intimacy. That's very important for us to get to know our customers and get to predict which way they're moving. But the, the thing that we add to it is also the ecosystem intimacy. So no, the application and services landscape, our customers know the primary providers and work with them, uh, to, to, to create something that, that really fits the customers. They just not looked at from our own silo where a cloud managed service provider that we actually work in the ecosystem with, with, with, with the primary providers. And we have, I think with the average customers, I think we have, uh, uh, in a month we have so much interactions on our operational level and technical levels, strategic level. >>We do bring together our customers also, and to jointly think about what we can do together, what we independently can never reach. Uh, but we also involve our customers in, uh, defining our own strategy. So we have something we call a customer involvement board. So we present a strategy and say, does it make sense? Eh, this is actually what you need also. So we take a lot of our efforts into our customers and we do also, uh, understand the significant moments of truth. We are now in this, in this broadcast, David there. So you can imagine that at this moment, not thinking go wrong. Yeah. If, if, if the internet stops that we have a problem. And now, so we, we actually know that this broadcast is going on for our customers and we manage that. It's always on, uh, uh, where in the other moments in the week, we might have a little less attention, but this moment we should be there. And these moments of truth that we really embrace, we got them well described. Everybody working out line knows what the moment of truth is for our customers. Uh, uh, so we have a big logistics provider. For instance, you does not have to ask us to, uh, have, uh, a higher availability on black Friday or cyber Monday. We know that's the most important part in the year for him or her. Does it answer your question, David? >>Yes. We know as well. You know, when these big, the big game moments you have to be on your top, uh, top of your game, uh, you know, the other thing Emil about this as a service approach that I really like is, is it's a lot of it is consumption based and the data doesn't lie, you can see adoption, you know, daily, weekly, monthly. And so I wonder how you're leveraging pure as a service specifically in what kind of patterns you're seeing in, in, in the adoption. >>Uh, yeah, pure as a service for our customers is mainly never visible. Uh, we provide storage services to provide storage solutions, storage over is part of a bigger thing of a server of application. Uh, so the real benefits, to be honest, of course, towards our customer, it's all flash, uh, uh, and they have the fastest, fastest storage is available. But for ourself, we, uh, we use less resources to manage our storage. We have far more that we have a near to maintenance free storage solution now because we have it as a service and we work closely together with pure. Uh, so, uh, actually the way we treat our customers is that way pure treats us as well. And that's why there's a used click. So the real benefits, uh, uh, how we leverage is it normally we had a bunch of guys managing our storage. Now we only have one and knowing that's a shortage of it, personnel, the other persons can well be, uh, involved in other parts of our services or in other parts of an innovation. So, uh, that's simply great. >>You know, um, my takeaway the meal is that you've made infrastructure, at least, least the storage infrastructure, invisible to your customers, which is the way it should be. You didn't have to worry about it. And you've, you've also attacked the, the labor problem. You're not, you know, provisioning lungs anymore, or, you know, tuning the storage, you know, with, with arms and legs. So that's huge. So that gets me into the next topic, which is business transformation. That, that means that I can now start to attack the operational model. So I've got a different it model. Now I'm not managing infrastructure same way. So I have to shift those resources. And I'm presuming that it's a bus now becomes a business transformation discussion. How are you seeing your customers shift those resources and focus more on their business as a result of this sort of as a service trend? >>I think I do not know if they, they transform their business. Thanks to us. I think that they can more leverage their own business. They have less problems, less maintenance, et cetera, cetera, but we also add new, uh, certainties to it, like, uh, uh, the, the latest service we we released was imutable storage being the first in the Netherlands offering this thanks to, uh, thanks to the pure technology, but for customers, it takes them to give them a good night rest because, you know, we have some, uh, geopolitical issues in the world. Uh, there's a lot of hacking. People have a lot of ransomware attacks and, and we just give them a good night rest. So from a business transformation, does it transform their business? I think that gives them a comfort in running your business, knowing that certain things are well arranged. You don't have to worry about that. We will do that. We'll take it out of your hands and you just go ahead and run your business. Um, so to me, it's not really a transformation is just using the right opportunities at the right moment. >>The imutable piece is interesting because, because, but speaking of as a service, you know, anybody can go on the dark web and buy ransomware as a service. I mean, as it's seeing the, as a service economy hit, hit everywhere, the good and the, and the not so good. Um, and so I presume that your customers are, are looking at, I imutability as another service capability of the service offering and really rethinking, maybe because of the recent, you know, ransomware attacks, rethinking how they, they approach, uh, business continuance, business resilience, disaster recovery. Do you see that? >>Yep, definitely. Definitely. I tell not all of them yet. Imutable storage. So it's like an insurance as well, which you have when you have imutable storage and you have been, you have a ransomware attack at least have you part of data, which never, if data is corrupted, you cannot restore it. If your hardware is broken, you can order new hardware. Every data is corrupted. You cannot order new data. Now we got that safe and well. And so we offer them the possibility to, to do the forensics and free up their, uh, the data without tremendous loss of time. Uh, but you also see that you raise the new, uh, how do you say, uh, the new baseline for other providers as well? Eh, so there's security of the corporate information security officer, the CIO, they're all very happy with that. And they, they, they raise the baseline for us as well. So they can look at other security topics and look from say, security operation center. Cuz now we can really focus on our prime business risks because from a technical perspective, we got it covered. How can we manage the business risk, uh, which is a combination of people, processes and technology. >>Right. Makes sense. Okay. I'll give you the last word. Uh, talk about your relationship with pure, where you wanna see that that going in the future. >>Uh, I hope we've be working together for a long time. Uh, I, I ex experienced them very involved. Uh, it's not, we have done the sell and now it's all up to you now. We were closely working together. I know if I talk to my prime architect, Marcel height is very happy and it looks a little more or less if we work with pure, like we're working with colleagues, not with a supplier and a customer, uh, and uh, the whole pure concept is fascinating. Uh, I, uh, I had the opportunity to visit San Francisco head office and they told me to fish in how they launched, uh, pure being, if you want to implement it, it had to be on one credit card. The, the, the menu had to be on one credit card. Just a simple thought of put that as your big area, audacious goal to make the simplest, uh, implementable storage available. But for us, uh, it gives me the expectation that there will be a lot of more surprises with pur in the near future. Uh, and for us as a provider, what we, uh, literally really look forward to is that, that for us, these new developments will not be new migrations. It will be a gradual growth of our services or storage services. Uh, so that's what I expect. And that was what I, and we look forward to. >>Yeah, that's great. Uh, thank you so much, Emil, for coming on the, the cube and, and sharing your thoughts and best of luck to you in the future. >>Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. >>You're very welcome. Okay. In a moment, I'll be back to give you some closing thoughts on at your storage service. You're watching the cube, the leader in high tech enterprise coverage. >>Welcome to evergreen, a place where organizations grow and thrive rooted in the modern data experience in evergreen people find a seamless, simple way to leverage data through market leading sustainable technology, financial flexibility, and effortless management, allowing everyone to innovate with data confidently. Welcome to pure storage. >>Now, if you're interested in hearing more about Pure's growing portfolio of technology and services and how they're transforming the enterprise data experience, be sure to register for pure accelerate tech Fest. 22 digital event is also taking place as an in-person event. On June 8th, you can register at pure storage.com/accelerate, pure storage.com/accelerate. You're watching the cue, the leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

>> Announcer: From San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Accenture Tech Vision 2020, brought to you by Accenture. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Rick here with theCUBE. We're high atop San Francisco on a beautiful day at the Accenture San Francisco Innovation Hub, 33rd floor of the Salesforce Tower, for the Accenture Tech Vision 2020 reveal. It's where they come up with four or five themes to really look forward to, a little bit innovative, a little bit different than cloud will be big or mobile will be big. And we're excited to have, really, one of the biggest brains here on the 33rd floor. She's Teresa Tung, the managing director of Accenture Labs. Teresa, great to see you. >> Nice to see you again. >> So I have to tease you because the last time we were here, everyone was bragging on all the patents that you've filed over the years, so congratulations on that. It's almost kind of like a who's who roadmap of what's happening in tech. I looked at a couple of them. You've got a ton of stuff around cloud, a ton of stuff around Edge, but now, you're getting excited about robots and AI. >> That's right. >> That's the new passion. >> That's the new passion. >> All right, so robots, one of the five trends was robots in the wild, so what does that mean, robots in the wild, and why is this something that people should be paying attention to? >> Well, robots have been around for decades, right? So if you think about manufacturing, you think about robots. But as your kid probably knows, robots are now programmable, kids can do it, so why not enterprise? And so, now that robots are programmable, you can buy them and apply them. We're going to unlock a whole bunch of new use cases beyond just those really hardcore manufacturing ones that are very strictly designed in a very structured environment, to things in an unstructured and semi-structured environment. >> So does the definition of robot begin to change? We were just talking before we turned on the cameras about, say, Tesla. Is a Tesla a robot in your definition or does that not quite make the grade? >> I think it is, but we're thinking about robots as physical robots. So sometimes people think about robotics process automation, AI, those are robots, but here, I'm really excited about the physical robots; the mobile units, the gantry units, the arms. This is going to allow us to close that sense-analyze-actuate loop. Now the robot can actually do something based off of the analytics. >> Right, so where will we see robots kind of operating in the wild versus, as we said, the classic manufacturing instance, where they're bolted down, they do a step along the process? Where do you see some of the early adoption is going to, I guess, see them on the streets, right, or wherever we will see them? >> Well, you probably do see them on the streets already. You see them for security use cases, maybe mopping up a store after, where the employees can actually focus on the customers, and the robot's maybe restocking. We see them in the airports, so if you pay attention to modern airports, you see robots bringing out the baggage and doing some of the baggage handling. So really, the opportunities for robots are jobs that are dull, dirty, or dangerous. These are things that humans don't want to or shouldn't be doing. >> Right, so what's the breakthrough tech that's enabling the robots to take this next step? >> Well, a lot of it is AI, right? So the fact that you don't have to be a data scientist and you can apply these algorithms that do facial recognition, that can actually help you to find your way around, it's actually the automation that's programmable. As I was saying, kids can program these robots, so they're not hard to do. So if a kid can do it, maybe somebody who knows oil and gas, insurance, security, can actually do the same thing. >> Right, so a lot of the AI stuff that people are familiar with is things like photo recognition and Google Photos, so I can search for my kids, I can search for a beach, I can search for things like that, and it'll come back. What are some of the types of AI and algorithms that you're applying with kind of this robot revolution? >> It's definitely things like the image analytics. It's for the routing. So let me give you an example of how easy it is to apply. So anybody who can play a video game, you have a video game type controller, so when your kid's, again, playing games, they're actually training for on the skilled jobs. Right, so you map a scene by using that controller to drive the robot around a factory, around the airport, and then, the AI algorithm is smart enough to create the map. And then, from that, we can actually use the robot just out of the box to be able to navigate and you have a place to, say, going from Teresa, here, and then, I might be able to go into the go get us a beer, right? >> Right, right. >> Maybe we should have that happen. (laughs) >> They're setting up right over there. >> They are setting up right there. >> That's right. So it's kind of like when you think of kind of the revolution of drones, which some people might be more familiar with 'cause they're very visible. >> Yes. >> Where when you operate a DJI drone now, you don't actually fly the drone. You're not controlling pitch and yaw and those things. You're just kind of telling it where you want it to go and it's the actual AI under the covers that's making those adjustments to thrust and power and angle. Is that a good analogy? >> That is a great analogy. >> And so, the work that we would do now is much more about how you string it together for the use case. If a robot were to come up to us now, what should it do, right? So if we're here, do we want the robot to even interact with us to get us that beer? So robots don't usually speak. Should speaking be an option for it? Should maybe it's just gesturing and it has a menu? We would know how to interact with it. So a lot of that human-robot interface is some of the work that we're doing. So that was kind of a silly example, but now, imagine that we were surveying an oil pipeline or we were actually as part of a manufacturing line, so in this case it's not getting us a beer, but it might need to do the same sort of thing. What sort of tool does Theresa need to actually finish her job? >> Yeah, and then, the other one is AI and me. And you just said that AI is getting less complicated to program, these machines are getting less complicated to program, but I think most people still are kind of stuck in the realm of we need a data scientist and there are not a lot of data scientists and they got to be super, super smart. You've got to have tons and tons of data and these types of factors, so how is it becoming AI and me, Jeff who's not necessarily a data scientist. I don't have a PhD in molecular physics, how's that going to happen? >> I think we need more of that democratization for the people who are not data scientists. So data scientists, they need the data, and so, a lot of the hard part is getting the data as to how it should interact, right? So in that example, we were saying how does Teresa and Jeff interact with the robot? The data scientist needs tons, right, thousands, tens of thousands of instances of those data types to actually make an insight. So what if, instead, when we think about AI and me, what about we think about, again, the human, not the, well, data scientists are people too. >> Right, right. >> But let's think about democratizing the rest of the humans to saying, how should I interact with the robot? So a lot of the research that we do is around how do you capture this expert knowledge. So we don't actually need to have tens of thousands of that. We can actually pretty much prescribe we don't want the robot to talk to us. We want him to give us the beer. So why don't we just use things like that? We don't have to start with all the data. >> Right, right, so I'm curious because there's a lot of conversation about machines plus people is better than one or the other, but it seems like it's much more complicated to program a robot to do something with a person as opposed to just giving it a simple task, which is probably historically what we've done more. Here, you go do that task. Now, people are not involved in that task. They don't have to worry about the nuance. They don't have to worry about reacting, reading what I'm trying to communicate. So is it a lot harder to get these things to work with people as opposed to kind of independently and carve off a special job? >> It may be harder, but that's where the value is. So if we think about the AI of, let's say, yesterday, there's a lot of dashboards. So it's with the pure data-driven, the pure AI operating on its own, it's going to look at the data. It's going to give us the insight. At the end of the day, the human's going to need to read, let's say, a static report and make a decision. Sometimes, I look at these reports and I have a hard time even understanding what I'm seeing, right? When they show me all these graphs, I'm supposed to be impressed. >> Right, right. >> I don't know what to do versus if you do. I use TurboTax as an example. When you're filing TurboTax, there's a lot of AI behind the scenes, but it's already looked at my data. As I'm filling in my return, it's telling me maybe you should claim this deduction. It's asking me yes or no questions. That's how I imagine AI at scale being in the future, right? It's not just for TurboTax, but everything we do. So in the robot, in the moment that we were describing, maybe it would see that you and I were talking, and it's not going to interrupt our conversation. But in a different context, if Teresa's by herself, maybe it would come up and say, hey, would you like a beer? >> Right, right. >> I think that's the sort of context that, like a TurboTax, but more sexy of course. >> Right, right, so I'm just curious from your perspective as a technologist, again, looking at your patent history, a lot of stuff on cloud, a lot of stuff on edge, but we've always kind of operated in this kind of new world, which is, if you had infinite compute, infinite storage, and infinite bandwidth, which was taking another. >> Yes. >> Big giant step with 5G, kind of what would you build and how could you build it? You got to just be thrilled as all three of those vectors are just accelerating and giving you, basically, infinite power in terms of tooling to work with. >> It is, I mean, it feels like magic. If you think about, I watch things like "Harry Potter", and you think about they know these spells and they can get things to happen. I think that's exactly where we are now. I get to do all these things that are magic. >> And are people ready for it? What's the biggest challenge on the people side in terms of getting them to think about what they could do, as opposed to what they know today? 'Cause the future could be so different. >> That is the challenge, right, because I think people, even with processes, they think about the process that existed today, where you're going to take AI and even robotics, and just make that process step faster. >> Right. >> But with AI and automation, what if we jumped that whole step, right? If as humans, if I can see everything 'cause I had all the data and then, I had AI telling me these are the important pieces, wouldn't you jump towards the answer? A lot of the processes that we have today are meant so that we actually explore all the conditions that need to be explored, that we do look at all the data that needs to be looked at. So you're still going to look at those things, right? Regulations, rules, that still happens, but what if AI and automation check those for you and all you're doing is actually checking the exceptions? So it's going to really change the way we do work. >> Very cool, well, Teresa, great to catch up and you're sitting right in the catbird seat, so exciting to see what your next patents will be, probably all about robotics as you continue to move this train forward. So thanks for the time. >> Thank you. >> All right, she's Teresa, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. We're at the Accenture Tech Vision 2020 Release Party on the 33rd floor of the Salesforce Tower. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

(orchestral music) >> Hello everyone. Welcome to the special CUBE conversation here in theCUBE's Palo Alto studio. I'm John Furrier. Where conversation around venture capital, entrepreneurship, crypto currencies, block chain, and more, Jonathan Ebinger our friend with BRV, formerly Blue Run Ventures, but BRV for short, sounds better, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thanks John, looking forward to it. >> Great to see you, we've known each other for a long time and you've been a great investor, your firm has done a lot of great stuff, deals are really famous deals, but also you dig into the companies and you really stand by your portfolio companies, but you've also done a lot of work in China. >> Yes. >> So you have a good landscape of what's going on. What's the, what's going on in China? >> Well China is really expanding in ways which we had not foreseen when we first started investing there almost 15 years ago. We were really active for five to 10 years, investing in companies that initially were considered copycat companies, you can't really use that term anymore. In fact what's happening more and more, you're seeing Chinese ideas coming to the United States. Businesses like We Chat are being copied as fast as they can, you're seeing Snapchat, Messenger and so forth, they're quickly trying to amalgamate as many assets as they can within their viewership much like we're seeing in a lot of the other Chinese analogs over there. It's exciting to see, it's very much an arms race. >> It's been interesting to watch. We were at the Ali Baba Cloud Conference last year, at the end of last year, it's interesting the innovation and entrepreneurial thirst has really changed. If you go back just 10 years ago when you guys were first getting in there, I remember the conversations were what's going on in China, it's very developmental but what's going on 10 years ago, they are dominating the mobile space, they're mobile usage is really much different makeup in how they do startups, the apps. How much of that has influenced some of their success just the demand? >> Always on, location always available, it opens up a whole new level of communication services. The idea of the larger screen format, people used to think in the United States, these large devices coming out of Korea first and then China, we thought these would never play in the United States, now Apple 10, larger screen size, it makes sense, it's mobile first right from the get go for a now billion plus users. >> So BRV, how many active portfolio companies do you guys have and what's the profile that you're looking for for entrepreneurs, what are some of the kind of companies? >> We're about 45 active companies right now. We're putting about, we're putting money in about 10 new companies a year at this point. We have a very disciplined approach of investing in Series A style companies, Series A of course means a lot of different things to people, but generally, we like to put $3 to $5 million to work early on and then follow on. >> How much do take for that, just a third? >> Typical in the 20%-25% range. There's a lot of companies out there that still fit that profile. Of course you're seeing some super sized Series A's that happen, we don't play in those but for the traditional software companies, evaluations are really right in our sweet spot. >> How big is the fund now, just what's the number in terms of capital? >> We're in fund six, we're just over $150 million. >> And you got to save some for follow on rounds. >> Exactly. >> Talk about the changes in venture capital because what's interesting, I had a conversation with Greg Sands with Costanoa Ventures, another great investor, formerly I think the first employee of Netscape I think or the business plan. Great guy, he talked about the dynamics of, you don't need that much cash anymore because if you can get unit economic visibility into what the business is working, you can do so much more with that and I'm calling it the hourglass effect, you get through that visibility, you're in control, you own your own destiny, versus the old Silicon Valley model which seems to be fading away, which is hey, what do you need? $40 million, or here's $100 million. That really limits your exit options and sometimes you can drown in your own capital. Talk about that dynamic. >> You're seeing the $40 million rounds with businesses that are much more capital intensive and that's coming back in vogue now but for the most part, I agree with what Greg's saying and this whole advent of seed funds and super seed funds and angel funds and so forth has been really great for the traditional series A investor. A lot of that early fundamental and foundational work is being done and then when the series A comes, it's more about expansion so we're effectively getting what was a Series B type stage company now we're investing in Series A. We're saying hey, this product works, there's product market fit, let's put dollars to work to really grow the market. >> So you're saying Series B was a kind of prove the business model, shifted down to the A because the cost to get there is lower and hence that's opened up a seed round lower in numbers, so it just shifts down a little bit. >> It really has, it really has and that plays into our sweet spot. We really like working on business models, distribution strategies, things like that. >> And what kind of startups do you want to invest in? What are some of the categories? >> Love financial services, we like health tech, we're doing education, we're really pretty omnivorous when it comes to the sector. What we're looking for is really businesses that are using data, real time data to disrupt the numbers. >> So you're not sector driven, you're disruption oriented. >> That's right. >> Okay let's talk about disruption, my favorite trend. Obviously I love the China dynamic because you're not sure what it is, but it's really doing well so you can't ignore it and they're innovative and they're hustling hard and they've got massive numbers. Block chain, we're super excited about, we love crypto, we think it's the biggest wave coming out there, so a lot of my smart, entrepreneurial friends are jumping on their surfboards literally and jumping out into those waves and there's a lot of action there. At the same time, people are saying, stay away from that crypto thing, it's a scam. Kind of a different perspective, what's your thoughts on that? >> If you look at, you separate the cryptocurrencies from block chain, I think it becomes a lot more clear. Block chain is for real. Tracking provenance on transactions, real estate transactions, multinational transactions, makes a lot of sense, dovetails nicely with security, so there's a real business there. You saw the announcement with IBM and Mersk the other day, what they are taking enterprise level block chain into their whole supply chain. I think that's really important. We have a company in the category called pay stand which is doing the same sort of thing with smaller size businesses, just accelerating the whole process on accounts receivable, taking working capital. >> And they're doing block chain for that? >> Yes block chain is an option, we're not forcing people onto block chain, but the idea of hey, let's give people more cost effective ways to transact, get rid of the paper checks, get rid of the invoicing and just join the modern world, much like you use Venmo if you and I are going to exchange money. >> That's pay stand, that's one of your hot companies. >> Yeah it is, absolutely. >> So are they using block chain or not? >> They are, yes. >> Okay, because it's a physical asset, it's kind of a supply chain thing? >> They use it to track the funds themselves, unlike a credit card where you have to pay a big fee or ACH which you can't really get proof of funds, with their block chain technology, you can be sure that you have the funds available and you get it instantly. >> Let's talk about use cases that you think out there, I'd like you to just weigh in on use cases for block chain that a mainstream person that's not in the tech business would understand, because they say, is it real or not? I agree block chain is legit, what are some use cases that would highlight that? >> I think if you've ever been involved in real estate, bought a home, things like that, just tracking title insurance, you're going all the way back if you live in California, you're going all the way back to pre-statehood days, you have to track the provenance of that land all the way through. You're paying title insurance, title insurance is a business you don't really need if you have accurate provenance tracking through block chain. I think that's one most of us can understand. Obviously bills of weighting with things coming over on ships. That's natural and right now things get held up in port because people are trying to find a clipboard before you can sign off on who, is this bill of weighting actually clean, that stuff can be done automatically with 2D barcodes, block chain usage. >> Certainly with perishable goods too, we learned that with IBM's example. >> Sure. >> Okay let's get into the hot companies you got going on. Name some of the hot investments that you've done. >> Sure, well I talked about pay stand a minute ago, really excited about them, another one we really like is a company called aerobotics. I know you're a fan of autonomous flying. If you think about drones and everyone knows DJI and they're a great company, that's one to one, one person flying one drone, that's not scalable obviously, it scales at one to one. With autonomous flying, you can have a whole army of drones out doing your business, whether they're doing site exploration, checking for chemical spills, looking at traffic and so forth. The company is now operating in three continents, it's just, if you think about what a drone is, effectively it's a flying cell phone. It's a cell phone that goes around, takes pictures, transmits data back, we know something about cell phones at BRV, we've been investing in this category for a long time so when we say aerobotics come along, we said this is just a natural extension of real time data, cellular technology, and location based services. >> You guys don't get a lot of credit as much as you should, in my opinion on that, you guys were very early on the mobile, mobile connectivity side and mobile footprint and device and software. That's playing well into the hottest trend that we see, that's not the sexiest trend, that's IOT. >> Absolutely. >> Because drones are certainly, industrial IOT is a big one. Instrumenting physical plants, equipment, and IOT in general the edge of the network. What's your thoughts on IOT and how would you, how do you see that evolving? It's more than just the edge of the network issue, it's bigger. >> It is, well of course the devices and sensors are important. I think a lot of that's been commoditized. The business that we've been seeing develop and there's a lot of folks, they've moved from analytics of the web to analytics of IOT, so there's a lot of interesting companies coming in the analytic space. We're not playing in that as much, we tend to like to invest in companies that are big enough that you need to have analytics for them. We like companies that have proprietary control of analytics versus necessarily running analytics for company X. >> So you're not poopooing IOT per se, just that from an investment thesis standpoint, it's not on your radar yet. >> That's right, they're either too capital intensive for us as a firm or you're basically managing someone else's data. I want to be in companies that we're managing our own data for a proprietary advantage. >> That's really what I was going to get to next, the role of data driven, so we've lived in dupe world, theCUBE started in 2010 in the offices of Cloud Air actually and people don't know the history and it's been interesting, Hadoop was supposed to save the world, the data, but it really started the data trend, the data driven trend, Mike Olsen, Amar Omadala and the team over there really nailed it but it didn't turn into be just Hadoop, it's everything so we're seeing that now become a bumper sticker, data driven marketer, I'm a data driven executive, I'm a data driven interviewer, all that stuff, what does it actually mean? What does data driven mean to you? >> Data is, there's big data and then there's actionable data obviously people talk about exhaust, the data coming off, we really got started with, as you know, we were investors in Waze, awful lot of data coming out of your cell phone, extracting just the important pieces of it are really what's important. We're investors in a company called Cabbage which looks at every transaction a small business makes to determine their credit worthiness. It's really the science. People talk about data scientists, what do they actually do? What they're actually doing is separating out the wheat from the chaff because it's just a crush of data. I saw your interview with Andy Jazzy to other day from AWS, the amount of data that's being stored, it's almost unfathomable but the important people. >> They have a lot of data. You'd like to invest in them now. >> Exactly, but that's really the thing, it's being able to separate the good data from the bad. >> You look at Amazon, I was talking to Jesse and he didn't really go there because he was kind of on message but when I talked with Swami who runs the AI group over there, we were talking about, I said to him straight up, I'm like, you're running a lot of workloads on your cloud, I'm sure you have data on those workloads. Just the impact of what they could do with that data. This is the virtuous cycle that their business model is made up of, but it's changing the game for what they can become. The thing that we're seeing in the data world is, sometimes the outcome might not be what you think because if you can use the data effectively, it's a competitive advantage, not a department. >> Right and you have to really stay true to your commitment to data. What we've seen happen is when companies, if you've been around for 10 years or so, you start to trust your gut, that's important, but it can also not lead you to see obvious conclusions because the world changes. >> And also committing to data also means from a practitioner's standpoint, investing in the tech, investing in things to be data driven, not just to say it. >> Exactly. >> Okay so what's the future for you guys? What are you looking at next year, what are some of the things you'd like to accomplish for investment opportunities, besides getting all the hot deals, you did Waze, that was an amazing deal, one of my favorite products, how did that go down? How many people passed on Waze? >> I don't know how many people passed, but we were lucky, they wanted to bring us in to the initial syndicate, they wanted to have some folks who understood. >> But it wasn't that obvious though at the beginning. What was the original pitch? >> The initial pitch was that they were going to have folks have the dash devices, the product would sit on your dashboard and they were going to be using it to map Eastern Europe because Eastern Europe was just coming into the Western world and they didn't really have good roads and good maps. We thought, that's interesting but they probably also don't have smartphones, so why don't we come across the Atlantic and let's make this thing work in the US and then from there, the rest took off country by country we were the number one navigation app in I think 150 countries at one point. >> What's the biggest thing that you've learned over the past few years in the industry that's different now I mean obviously there's some context that I'll share which is obviously the big cloud players are becoming bigger, scale's a big thing, you got Google, you got Microsoft and Amazon, you've got Facebook's out there as well. Then you get the political climate. You go to Washington D.C. and New York, Silicon Valley is not really talked highly about these days on the hill in Washington, yet GovCloud is completely changing the game of how the government is going to work with massive innovations and efficiencies, literally overnight, it's almost weird. >> It is and it isn't. If you look at it through a longer term horizon, Silicon Valley is again at the forefront, we're really the first ones with more transparency in the industry, all the different movements which are really important and all the conversations that are happening are important and they're happening here first. I think you're starting to see a ripple effect, you're seeing it going through entertainment, you're going to see it in the government, industry after industry I think is going to start to have to be more open as Silicon Valley has led the way on that. >> That's a great point. Take a minute to describe the folks out there watching that aren't from here, what is Silicon Valley about in your opinion? >> Silicon Valley is, of course it's more than a mindset, but folks who are here are here on purpose. They come here intentionally. There are very few people that I know who were born and raised here, so they're coming here because they want to be part of a shared ethos around success, around success, around shared values and competition so it's a very healthy environment, I came, I used to live in Washington D.C. and I couldn't be happier to be 3000 miles away. >> If you're a technology entrepreneur, this is where all the sports and action is, as I always say, we always love sports analogies. Okay, I got to ask you about the VC situation around ICOs, initial coin offerings are being talked about as an alternative to fundraising, there's some security options on token sales as a utility, the SEC has started to put some guidelines down on what that looks like, but the general sentiment is, it's a new way to raise money and some people are doing private rounds with venture capital and doing token sales through ICOs. You see some hybrids, but for the most part, the hard core I don't want to say right or left wing, is there a wing of the political spectrum, but the hard core ICO guys are like, this is all about disrupting the VC community and you're a VC, so you got to take that a little bit personal but the point is, what do you think about that? Is that talked about? >> I think that's good salesmanship. The VC industry such as it is, you can fit every VC into one section of Stanford stadium. There just aren't that many VCs to really go after. We're a small group of folks. I think that going after maybe disrupting the way folks are raising money through Kickstarter and things like that, that's all great. We're not going to stop it, we're going to embrace it. I think that there's plenty of different ways to raise capital, I have no compunction about those things. >> Do you think it's more of a democratization trend or a new asset class, so you don't see it disrupting the VCs per se, but if it's only a handful of VCs that could fit into Stanford Stadium, for instance, then certainly there's more options, it's a dilution. >> I think you look at it as it's just an alternative financing method, do I take debt, do I take equity, do I take venture, do I take friends and family? It's just one more arrow in the quiver of the entrepreneur, I think you have to be smart about it because thinking that you're going to get the same level of attention from an investor in your ICO that you are going to get from a series A investor who owns 20% of your company, those are two very different value propositions. >> So you see a lot of pitches and sometimes, you have to say no a lot and that's the way the game is, but a lot of times, you want the best deals. But the founders' side of the table, they're looking at the VC, I need money. So that's one of the options, what they really want is a value added partner, so what's your current take on what that means these days? Sometimes it means a firm, sometimes it means a partner, sometimes it means the community. How are you guys looking at BRV as value add versus the worst case scenario which is value subtract, you just want to have that be positive. >> I see that written about venture too. >> I know, some people experienced it. >> I think it helps that we've been around now for almost 20 years, we got started in '98 so you have to look at our body of work and the continuum of investments and founders and CEOs and CTOs that we've invested in. There's hundreds and hundreds of people who have taken money from BRV, and so that's one of the real positives about this current state we're in is that there's so much transparency. The fact that we are, I like to think we're good actors and have been for a long time, that comes out, now through our words but through the words of. >> What would they say about you guys? What would your entrepreneurs say about BRV? >> Aside from using buzzwords like value add, they say, they know their industry, they're not afraid to ask for help, they try to call problems when they see it, things like that. >> You stand by your companies. >> Absolutely. >> Awesome, well what's your favorite trend that you're personally interested in? >> I think you have to go after health care right now. It is just such a big market right now. People have been nibbling all different sides of it right now, there's been folks who are trying to expedite processing, there's actual innovations happening on the medical side, I think there is just, technology is just now starting to get into that, technology has gotten into education. >> How about the startup you guys funded that's related to the health care field. >> Yes, we're in a company called Hello Heart which is really at the confluence of a number of trends. It starts off, what Hello Heart is, it's a personal blood pressure cuff for you as an employee of a big company, more and more companies are starting to self insure. If you're a big enough company, 10,000 plus employees or even fewer, you're going to want to self insure to save money but also, your employees get very much more comfortable with you as an employer, you care about my well being, so it's a very virtuous cycle for the employees. >> So companies themselves insuring their own employees. >> Absolutely. >> They have to be super big, this company. >> This is just one component of a self insured business. You also, of course you still have access to doctors and stuff, I'm not making the pitch for being self insured as a company, I'm just saying that. >> But that's a trend. >> It's absolutely a trend and you're seeing a lot of what I would call point solutions stepping in, whether it's psychiatric, whether it's opioid help, whether it's working on heart conditions, these are all different point solutions which are being amalgamated together to help companies which are self insuring. >> So is Hello Heart for consumers or for business? >> It's sold to businesses but individual employees have it so they can keep track of their blood pressure. >> But I can't buy one if I wanted one? >> Not today, but I'll make sure I can get one to you. >> I need one, get all of our employees instrumented. >> Exactly. >> Drug tested all that stuff going on. People worry about the privacy, that's something I would be concerned with, putting. >> That's taken a really fast pendulum swing. A few years ago, Generation X was privacy, there is no privacy, the default was, location is always on, that's just flipped 180 degrees in the last few years. >> Well Jonathan, thanks for coming into this CUBE conversation, I want to ask you one final question, one thing we're passionate about is women in tech and underserved minorities, obviously Silicon Valley has to do a better job, it's out on the table, and it's working but we're still seeing a lot more work to be done, we're seeing titles not being at the right level, but pay's getting there in some places but titles aren't, some paying still below for women, still a lot more to do, what are you guys doing for the women in tech trend, how are you guys looking at that? Certainly it's a sensitive topic these days, but more importantly, it's one that's super important to society. >> It is, I think like a lot of things that have long term value, it's really about your actions versus your words, so our firm has two out of the five investment professionals are female, one of the last three CEO's we've founded is a female CEO, we have technologists, we have marketing people, we have CEO's that are females it's very much of a cross the board, sex, race and so forth. >> You guys are indiscriminate, a good deal's a good deal. >> Exactly right. >> It's about making money, VC's are in the business of making money, a lot of people don't understand, you guys have a job to do but you do a good job. >> We're in the business of making money but our investors for the most part are not for profits. Large universities, our biggest investor is the Red Cross, so when we do well, the Red Cross does well and the country does well. >> You're mission driven at this point. >> Exactly. >> Is that by design or is that just, your selection? >> We're delighted with our LP's, it's important that we have synergies aside from just finances with our investors. >> That's super well, I appreciate you coming on, I think it's super great that you're tying society benefits into money making and entrepreneurship, great stuff Jonathan Ebinger here on theCUBE, BRV check them out, great VC firm here in Silicon Valley. It's a CUBE conversation, we're talking about startups and entrepreneurship I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (dramatic music)

>> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We're in Denver, Colorado at the DJI Airworks Show. It's about 600 people, talking about commercial drones. Nothing for fun, no film, no movies. This is all commercial, agriculture, construction, public safety and really excited to have someone on the agricultural side, it's Greg Emerick. He's the co-founder, EVP of Bus Dev for Sentera. Greg, great to see you. >> Yeah, thanks for letting me be part of this. >> Absolutely, so it's pretty interesting. I think a brilliant move by DJI to break the drone up into the platform, the payload, and the software which we kept hearing about over and over in the keynote and even the software, they break into the mobile software to control the thing, and then the actual software on the drone itself to collect the data. And you guys have a really interesting product. You have a different payload option, then what comes out of the box and what most people think of. So tell us a little bit about what Sentera's all about and how you use this capability to build your business. >> Sure, we're based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We have a team of engineers, a long history in remote sensing. And so what we've done is, we've taken these sensors that we build, there are a multitude of different types of the ones that we build, and we integrate them onto different DJI platforms. We've engaged their software developer's kit and so we fly the aircraft with the mobile app. When the airplane lands, we pull the data out, pull it into our software, do the analytics on it and then push it into other analytics tools that are used for agricultural purposes. >> So what kind of sensors do you use? What are the sensors? >> Some of them are as simple as a red, green, blue camera, just a simple image. >> Alright. >> Other times, it's multi-spectral imagery. It could be near infrared or red edge that would be used for crop stress or maybe the opportunity to apply nitrogen in some instances We also do machine learning, and so we'll do things where we're counting plants, identifying the location of weeds in the field, and then pushing that into other tools or other implements that then could go do something and apply maybe something to the field, or do something to help improve the crop production. >> So how was that done before there were these efficient, small, and easy to operate drones? >> Manually, and then, there was a lot of interpolation, where someone would go out instead of we can count every plant in the crop and in some instances, that can be done if you have a really small crop. Otherwise, they're just sampling and it's not very accurate and there's a lot of interpolation between maybe six different locations in the field on 160 acres versus counting all of them. >> Right, it's pretty interesting because we've seen that time and time again in technology space. Now with big data, we have the capability to not sample anymore, but to actually take all the raw input and take action on the raw input. >> That's right. >> It's got to be way more productive than a sample. >> Right, and what we're doing is actually facilitating a lot of tools that are out there today. They already know how much fertilizer they've applied. They know what the soils are like. They know how much precipitation they've had. But they don't know the status of the crop. And so what they need is sort of this real-time opportunity to look at it, understand what might be a problem or maybe there's no problem at all, but in the end, they identify what they might want to do and then, from there, create an application or a prescription to go out and do something. >> Okay, and then, from your business model, do they buy a drone outfitted with your sensors, do they buy the sensors, do you provide this as a service, how does the business model work? >> Yeah, so for us, it's all about the sensor and the software and so a customer will come to us, and they'll typically buy a solution. We've taken the time and invested the energy to make sure that they function and operate on all of the DJI equipment. And then, from there, they'll purchase a solution and that solution will then be used for their own business applications. It might be at the enterprise level, or it might just be a big grower. And from there, they'll take the data and then push it into their analytics tools. >> And push it into whatever analytics tools they have. >> That's right. >> That's awesome. So as you turn the calendar to 2018, hard to believe we're through 2017, I'm still, kind of can't believe that. What are some of your priorities for 2018? Where are you guys going next? How do you see this evolving, as both the market matures for acceptance as well as the technology and some of the cool things they announced here at DJI today? >> Sure, well you know, of course DJI does great things and we continue to work with them. You'll see new sensors come from Sentera. You'll see tighter integration into the platforms themselves and you'll also see a lot more data that comes from them, and how they'll be able to be used in other analytics tools. >> Excellent, alright Greg, well, congrats to you and your business, it's fun. We hear about the ag application all the time. I stumbled upon on YouTube, a dedicated channel just for drones for rice farming, which I thought was fascinating. (laughter) Like, wow, I didn't know that was a thing. >> Sure. >> But clearly huge impact in agriculture. Huge, huge benefit to food production, farmers and ultimately more food for all of us. >> That's the motivator for us. I mean, that's what get us up everyday, so it's great to have someone understand what we're trying to do, so thank you. >> Oh, a pleasure, alright, he's Greg, I'm Jeff, you're watching the Cube, from DJI Airworks, 2017. Thanks for watching.

>> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We are here in Denver, Colorado at the DJI AirWorks show, it's their second show; about 600 people talking about commercial applications for the DJI drone platform. Really exciting agriculture, construction, public safety, no fun stuff, well, it's all kind of fun, really about the commercial applications, and we're excited to have Chris Boots with us, he is the chief engineer of Quadrocopter. Chris, good to see you. >> Good to see you. >> So we talked a little bit about what Quadrocopter does, and you're really into the enterprise space, these are not platforms that are generally available, you've got to get them through a dealer, they're expensive, they're complicated pieces of equipment, and that's a place you guys have been playing for a long time. >> Absolutely. For example, the Wind Series was unveiled today, the 4 and the 8; AirWorks 2016 introduced the Wind 1 and 2, and what these are, are basically universal platforms that allow customers to put various different, whether it be gimbals or sensors, it's kind of just a blank slate DJI product. That way you're not constrained to the limitations of an M200 or an Aspire or anything like that. When Quadrocopter began almost a decade ago, we prided ourselves on delivering custom-tailored systems to various different customer needs, so we felt right at home when DJI unveiled the Wind series. >> So really what you mean is it's kind of stripped down to its bare bones components so that you can design it at whatever payloads you want for the specific application, and they're also big, heavy lifters, right? We saw the agricultural one, I think it holds like two and a half gallons, 22 pounds of liquid, so these are also heavy lift machines, these are not little Mavics or Sparks. >> Yeah, precisely, yeah. If you need to lift something lightweight, there's the Wind 1. If you need to lift something extremely heavy, there's the Wind 4 and the Wind 8 which can lift well over 20 to 25 pounds of payload, so you're lifting some big stuff with this. >> So when you talk to enterprise customers, and kind of their journey into getting into and using a drone platform for their business process, how do they get started, you know, what do you see as kind of their first steps where people have some success and then you know, build into more of a fleet if you will, integrate it more to their processes? How do most companies get started? Do they say yeah this looks like a cool platform, how do we use it? >> That's kind of exactly how it happens. It just all starts with an idea. Most of our customers if they're not already existing UAS corporations and companies, they can be just somebody like you or I that comes up with an interesting UAV solution and you know, they do some Google searching, they do some research, they find something like this doesn't exist. Where do I go from here? So it doesn't take them very long to start making phone calls, and more often than not they call us at Quadrocopter, and one of my pet peeves is I don't like saying no to a customer when they have an idea, so that basically takes their idea, it takes our resources whether it be DJI or third party integrations, and making their dream a reality, so it's not always cinematography and cameras, it can be sensors or you name it, so yeah! >> So what are some of the more innovative uses that you've seen people use the DJI platform for that you would have never thought of, most people on the street would never have an idea that this is a useful application for this platform? >> Sure, well, I'll talk a little bit about the latest Wind application that we designed this year. We utilized the larger of the four copters, the Wind 8, which is an octocopter, and the client had the idea of inspecting methane pipelines. Now these pipelines need to be inspected every six months per governmental regulation. Currently, the only way that most companies like BP and other gas industries are doing this is by foot, by ATV, with handheld sensors, or on a large scale with rotorcraft like helicopters and people hanging off the sides of them, again with handheld devices. >> And what, they've got specialty sensors that they're looking for leaks and this and that, it's not really visual inspection I take it, or is it both probably? >> A lot of times they use either a laser-based or a thermal-based handheld sensor, so like a flare thermal camera. In our case, we didn't want to be constrained to the environmental influences that thermal can sometimes have, whether it's cold or it's dark or bright out, it can really skew the results, so in our case, it was our goal to find something that isn't influenced by the external environments. So we officially landed on a laser-based methane detector and paired that with the Wind 8, which then flies the pipeline route in 10 to 20 foot segments, comes back, and that data is used in mapping software to find out what the results were along that pipeline. If it is found that something is leaking, that file that is pulled off the aircraft will say exactly where it was, how concentrated it was at that exact point, at which point somebody can on the ground inspect that further. It totally gets rid of the whole safety issue of somebody on the ground or in the air and the expensive part of man power, of walking a pipeline. We can do it more efficiently, we can do it way more safer, and we get if not better results. >> The 10 to 20 feet doesn't sound like very long. Is that just because of, >> 20 miles. >> Oh 20 miles. You said feet. So it's 10 to 20 mile runs, then in parts they take the data and run it again. And what was the weight of that payload? >> The sensor itself doesn't really weigh much, I'd say two or three pounds. Most of the payload on the Wind 8 is actually the batteries. So the whole all-up weight of the craft is somewhere around 30 pounds. It's not extremely heavy, but for endurance sake, she'll fly for well over an hour. So at 10, 15 miles per hour, you can really cover some pipeline with battery to spare. >> So was that an initial trial for this customer, to try this solution? >> Yeah, this particular combination of sensor and copter had never been tried before, so it very much is an industry first in this regard, at least with DJI and the sensor. >> So where do they want to go next? I mean, it begs the question. The whole theme of today's keynote was like scale, no longer single operator, single machine, single data, but really starting to think in terms of fleets and multi-units, so is that somewhere where this particular customer wants to go, or how do you see it progressing for them? >> This particular client is a third party, so they aren't directly with BP, but BP often, I don't want to speak on behalf of BP, but a lot of gas companies outsource their inspection services to other different companies, so this particular land surveying company will use this and meet their demands of inspecting whatever section of pipeline that they're designated every six months. >> Yeah, that's great, alright, Chris, thank you for spending a few minutes, I mean that's a great case study and using the big heavy lift stuff, much more fun probably than the Spark! >> Absolutely, yeah, if you guys have any questions, hit me up at quadrocopter.com! >> Alright, he's Chris Boots, I'm Jeff Frick, you are watching the Cube. We're at DJI AirWorks 2017 in Denver. Catch you next time; thanks for watching.

>> Hey. Welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here, with The Cube. We're in Denver, Colorado at the Airworks show, put on by DJI, and who knew that we would fly, like a thousand miles to see the keynote speaker, guest speakers, the Menlo Park Fire Department, real close to us in Palo Alto, So, we're excited to have them here, and, also, to learn about the practical applications of drone technology for public safety. So, we're joined by Michael Ralston, he runs the Crisis Response and Innovation in Technology Practice Initiative at Menlo Park Fires. So, Michael, great to see you. >> Thank you. Thanks for having me here, Jeff. >> Absolutely. You're obviously here on the invitation of DJI so you guys must be doing some pretty interesting things. Not only with drones, but really looking at a broader technology suite of things that you guys can bring to bare, to save lives and put out fires. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. We're excited to be here, and the thing about DJI is that we've been working with them for years. We've been getting into the whole concept of using drones and using technology in crisis response. And so, it's all coming together right at the right time. We're excited about the announcements that are going on here because it really represents a culmination of what we've been trying to do. >> Right. But still, you're a real customer, and I thought it was interesting. The first part of the story was you guys decided to get drones and use them, you got one, and then it sat on the shelf for two years. Right? I mean, it's just not as easy, and then I think the other really important message that came out of your talk was, you kept kind of stumbling on to all these new requirements. Insurance, training, certifications. So, it wasn't easy, but that was years ago. And now, you guys are really leading the charge in using this technology. >> There is many, many people in the country who are all uncovering this Van Gogh at the same time. And so, what we really try to do, and try to bring across in our program is that it's not all about us and we're not necessarily the leaders. We may be one of the ones who are leading the charge, but what we've discovered over the years, over the years in our term, right? Which is really months. Is that that initial foundation stage, getting the drone and having it sitting there, we discovered quite a bit. We discovered that you have to do this first. Oh, wait. You got to do this first, you got to do this. And once we got to that point, where we had the right regulatory and political, community support, then we got into this growth stage. This is an exciting time. It was a transition point where now we're starting to ... Things are moving faster, we're starting to learn. We got out of middle school, we're now in high school. But that growth phase, that was... As exciting as it was, we started doing more and more missions. Use whichever cliche you want. "Two steps forward, one step back," whatever. We discovered that there's an ecosystem out there. This ecosystem is bigger than we are, and involves all kinds of other critical elements that have to be put in place and have to be developed, have to get deep. Things that are beyond our expertise, things such as logistics, such as training or support, or other regulatory elements. All those things, and technology, obviously. As we learned about this ecosystem, we started to realize that that's what's going to make all this work. It's not just us, we're like a start-up company. We're like a technology start-up company, within the fire district. But we realized, like any start-up company, that market has to be made. And so, we've spent a lot of time, a lot of effort putting together things, bringing people together, saying... People listen to us, we're the fire department. It's kind of fun to hangout with us, or we like to think so, but... >> It is (laughs). >> But, what that means is we say, "Hey, why don't we get everybody together, and let's have a conversation together." And, it's that symbiosis. It's that synergy, energy coming together, that new links, new networks are formed, and people start to realize, "Oh wow. You're doing that? We're doing that, too. Let's work together." And, we just stand by and go, "This is awesome," because it gets us to where we want to be, which is saving lives, obviously. >> It's interesting because you showed a symposium that you put on at Slack, again not only the ecosystem to enable you, but then you guys took a real active role then in passing that knowledge on to other departments and other institutions. Wondering if you can explain a little bit, how did that come together? How well was it received? And is that now part of an ongoing thing that you guys are going to continue to support. >> Well, brief answer. Absolutely, it's an ongoing thing. It's an ongoing thing beyond just drones, so we're calling it Technology Symposium. Meaning, we started to realize that there's all kinds of inventive technology. My program, Crisis Response, Innovation, and Technology is how do we go and leverage... make use of all the things we can put into the fire service to help us do what we do. Now, specifically to your question, this symposium. We had all these folks there together, and it was great. It was very well received and a lot of people came up to us afterwards saying, "I'm so glad you did this." And, it was because everyone thought it should be done. We are blessed by the fact of where we are, or geographically speaking. And, by the fact that when we do knock on people's doors they tend to answer, they're excited to go and participate. So, we're good at hosting a party. But we were hosting a party, that's what it was. We contributed what we knew, which was, "Hey, we're trying to climb this mountain, and we took this path." But there's lots of other people who have just as important programs, and they've learned a lot of other things we haven't learned because they took this path. Let's get them all together, and the only way we can get to the mountain top together is to share that information. >> Give us some specific examples of things that you guys do with drones that you could not do before that have been some of the really... Like, "Wow," "A-ha" moments when you deploy these things. >> How much time do you go? >> Give me your top couple, we've got time. You're the fire department, we got time. Nothing's burning, they are running drones back there. You could probably hear them in the background. >> There's quite a bit. The first place that I would start is we are the fire department and we do regular fire department things. We put out fires, we go to auto accidents, we go to medical things. All those things that we do can come up with a use case for a drone because when you think about it, as Chief Calvert mentioned earlier on in our presentation, our fire district, like any other fire department around the country, around the world, we protect life, we protect property, we protect the environment, right? Well, but when you think about, "What can a drone do?" "What can technology do, in general?" It can do three main things, right? And, these are critical things to us. One, is provide more safety. One, is provide better situational awareness, two. And three is, of course, better response time. Well, response time, situational awareness, and safety, that applies to medical calls, applies to car accidents, applies to fire. A more specific example is, you have a fire, and, conceptually, we live... I don't know what the traffic is like where-- >> I live right by you, in Palo Alto. So, it's not good (laughs). >> Picture yourself needing the fire department to get there, you call 911 and there's traffic. Now, lights and sirens are going to let people know, but you can't go anywhere if you're in a traffic jam. We face the same challenge. What if a drone could go straight over head, line of sight, and get there. Now, in some cases, that's life saving stuff. Bring an AED. An AED is a defibrillator. >> Right. >> That's one way that you can actually make use of a drone to get life-saving stuff there faster. Or, what happens if someone calls 911, it's a car accident, because you're supposed to do that, but it's a minor accident. Well, it's safer for us to drive code two, what we call.. You know, to drive without lights and sirens, just to go there and check it out, but it's not an emergency. It's safer for the citizens, it's safer for us. Send a drone there, you see right away that this is a fender bender, off to the side of the road, go there to check it out, but don't go lights and sirens. It's safer for them, it's safer for us. Or, "Hey, this is a fire. It's getting bigger and bigger." Not just send one engine, but send the calvary. So, another example is situational awareness. If you're on scene somewhere, if you think about it... And, you know, for those of us who are parents out there, we know what it's like to run a zone defense on your kids. You're processing a lot of things at once. Well, the act of a battalion chief or incident commander on scene of a fire or of a large incident, it's chaos. There's a lot of stuff going through that person's mind. He or she has to remain focused on their mission, but also take in a lot of information. And they're constantly looking around, they're constantly moving. What if, they had eyes in the sky. What if, instead of them having to walk around the building to get a 360 view, they had a screen here, and you have a drone that's just circling. It would provide tremendous amount of information for them. That'd be a game changer. >> Yeah, and it really came up in the keynote, too, about having someone who's trained, looking at the picture, who knows what to look for. What are the key signs they want to check out. So, again, really invaluable service. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Yeah. Well, very exciting times, and congrats for being highlighted, and keep doing the great work that you do. >> Great. Thanks for having us. >> All right. He's Michael Ralston, I'm Jeff Rick. From Menlo Fire, I'm from The Cube. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time.

(camera shutters) >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Denver, Colorado at the DJI Airworks conference. It's their second conference, about 550, 600 people. Really interesting, all about commercial drones. Everybody knows DJI for the Maverick Pro and the Spark and all their consumer stuff. But there's a whole industrial play and commercial play, enterprise play... We're excited to be here, these are really fun kind of shows 'cause everybody's into it and we're excited. Our first guest, Yariv Geller, he is the CEO of vHive. Welcome. >> Hey. Great talking to you. >> Absolutely, so what is vHive all about? >> So, as you mentioned, there are a lot of commercial users, enterprises, who want to use drones. And while it's really fun flying a drone as a consumer, enterprises don't really care about the fun factor. It's all about making stuff scalable, and autonomous. Now, we're taking it to the next level, so not just using a single drone. Once we've computerized a system that can fly a drone autonomously, we're actually looking at a swarm or a fleet of drones that are flying in unison. So, a user can define a mission, and the system will manage multiple drones that are actually collaborating on the same mission. Getting the work done much faster, any scale. Stuff that organizations really look for in an ongoing basis. >> So you're here, you know it's a DJI event... It's a really interesting approach that they've taken to break this thing up. You know, people probably don't think there's a platform. There's the flight platform, there's the payload, and then they opened up the SDKs. Not only in the controller in the mobile app, but also inside the unit itself. So, clearly it's something you're taking advantage of. Putting your software energy in, using the SDKs and leveraging that to create kind of a new flight pattern, I would imagine, and a new inter-drone communication system. >> Right, I think this is a very smart move that DJI is doing, we've seen it before. Take Apple for example, a company that builds wonderful hardware. And they said the best efficient way for us to sell this hardware is to create a platform where people can create amazing applications. So, they've created the environment and the ecosystem to support their wonderful hardware. I think DJI is doing the same kind of approach, where they say we have cutting-edge hardware that nobody else has. We can take this hardware to a certain limit with our focus, and then we'd like to develop an ecosystem around our platforms that can actually make use in different industries and take the applications forward. >> Right, so a lot of industries' really being highlighted at this show. Construction, energy, residential... You just had the Menlo Park Fire Department, next door to my house at home, talking about using it in security. So, for your application, it's interesting. Before we turned on the cameras, you talked about the distinction between a fleet and a hive... >> Right. >> And a swarm, excuse me, a swarm. Which obviously you think of bees, right? A smart swarm of bees doing crazy things. So, what are the type of applications that your customers are using your solution for? >> Right, so what we help customers do on a typical application is to digitize the field. Is to bring the field into the organization. So, if I'm a company who has large-scale field operations and it cost me a lot to send out people to the field, and actually understand what's going on, and bring piece by piece information inwards, this new domain of drones enables us to capture the field and to bring the information so the entire organization can view it very effectively. Now, one of the limitations that the industry is seeing is there's this paradigm of a single person, a single drone, which is kind of limited in scale. So, typically people will complain drone only has 20 minutes worth of battery. I can cover only so much, it takes me some time to do larger scale work. We're looking at this next phase. Of how do organizations actually cover more in less time, and more effectively. So, we work well with companies in infrastructure. wWich include civil engineering companies. So, not just construction where I focus on a building or a small area, but I want to look at an entire neighborhood, or a 15 mile stretch of road that's being constructed. We work with utility companies. So, we've done a lot of work with water utilities where they want to look at pipelines and infrastructure that they need to gauge over time. And they want to understand if there is an issue or a problem that they need to pay attention to. We work on infrastructure like cell towers and so on. Where instead of sending a person to climb up on a 200 feet tower with all the risk and safety issues associated and insurance costs. You can send a few drones to cover your infrastructure much more effectively. So, we're excelling in areas where scale is of importance, time is of importance, and costs. Which is everywhere pretty much. And I think one of the basic things that we say is very simple math. Throw a second drone into your mission, you cut time by half. You cut cost by half of being in the field. So, this scales up for organizations to do any kind of mission, any scale, any size, at half the time or less. >> Right, except you got to have the good software or else you start adding communication overhead and management overhead. So, it doesn't always equal one plus one makes two. Sometimes you have demission returns. But, just an opportunity for you. It's fascinating to me, this concept too, came up in the keynote earlier of taking physical data via the sensors on the drones. Whether that be photography or IR or... Lord knows what other kind of sensors you put on this. And really converting it into digital data that you can now almost treat as log data to feed into digital systems that we've been very familiar with in IT and manufacturing and other businesses. But now the drone becomes this interface between the physical world and the digital world in a space that's not necessarily wired. 'Cause it's new construction or it's a water pipeline. It's a really fascinating way to attack the problem and be able to apply analytic software, data-driven analytics to what was never... You couldn't do that before, right? >> Yeah, absolutely, and I think you're touching on a few points here that are important. First of all, in the end of the day, the drone is not the goal. The drones are the means, right? In the end of the day what companies are interested in is an acquiring data, processing data, and managing data. So that they can make smarter decisions in the end of the day. Manage projects and save cost and so on. So, drones are really enabling that. Another point that you touch upon, is drones generate a lot of data. So, every time we fly a mission for a customer, we're generating gigabytes and terabytes of information. And there needs to be a way to manage that effectively. Some of the organizations felt the pain, originally, by sending out drones and then piling up tons of information. And software solutions like ours generate the IT environment to manage all this data so that you're both able to drill down through it, link between it, and collaborate within your organization outside on that data. So, we're seeing, for example, companies in civil engineering, who both use the data internally for planning purposes. They use it to manage contractors in the field so that they can monitor what's going on from a bird's-eye view, and manage to compare between actual and planned activities. And they're also using it to manage upwards where they need to share information with whoever's investing in the project. They can show them actual progress, visual progress. Instead of sending them a written report, we're on track, check mark, and actually view progress over time. >> Right, right. So, as you look ahead to 2018, we're almost done with 2017. Is there any significant challenges, you know, that need to be overcome? Is it just people are afraid of 'em, is it privacy issues? Is it the software's still not up to snuff? Is it flight times and batteries? What are some of the, not giant challenges, but short-term challenges that the industry as a whole will be able to really address in 2018? >> So, first of all, the part of the industry that's our customers'... They're on this accelerating ramp up of adopting this new technology. So, we're seeing companies who have already identified drones as an excellent solution for them to acquire information from the field. We're seeing them starting to test out how they can use drones in making decisions that this is a good technology for them. And now they're experiencing some of the pains of how do you scale up. And I think, again this is a theme that we've heard today a lot. And this is probably the most immediate challenges. Moving from adoption to scaling up operations. So, I think we're going to see a lot of solutions that help organizations take drones to the next step. It's not just, yes we want the drone, yes we have a person or a group in our organization that's going to handle these. It's creating then their workflows and the infrastructure that lets them do this on a daily basis, in a repeated way. In a way that actually makes commercial sense, in terms of scale. And I think that's one of the key interesting challenges that we're going to see, as the industry grows from naissance to actual adoption. >> Right, well Yariv, thanks for taking a few minutes out of your time. Look forward to watching what happens at vHive, and a really exciting industry to be a part of. >> Thanks a lot, my pleasure. >> Alright, he's Yariv Geller, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from Airworks, in Denver, Colorado. Thanks for watching. (camera shutters)

(click) >> Hey, welcome back, everybody, Jeff Rick here with the Cube. We're in Denver, Colorado, at the DJI AirWorks show. It's the second year they've had it, about 600 people talking about commercial applications for drones. It's not consumer, this is not fun, it's not movie making, but really, all the commercial applications, in construction, in public safety, etc. Really excited to have our next guest. He's David Lyman, the Co-founder and CEO of Betterview. David, great to see you. >> Yeah, thank you. >> For people that aren't familiar with Betterview, what's your basic business? >> Yeah, so Betterview is a platform for inspecting buildings and properties using drones. We also pull in other forms of aerial imagery like satellite, aerial imagery captured with manned aircraft. But all of it is to be able to understand the condition of a property, the buildings on it, so that action can be taken on it, risks could be identified. >> I assume you work for insurance companies, underwriters, all types of inspectors who need some physical data to validate the condition of the properties. >> Yeah, that's right, we do both pre-loss and post-loss inspections for the insurance industry. We have a few other customers as well, but that's the bulk of our business. >> OK, then this is not a new business, right? We've had title reports forever and ever and ever. >> David: Yeah. >> How has drone technology, DJI specifically, kind of changed the way you guys operate, really opened up new opportunities? >> Yeah, certainly. When we started the companies three years ago with my co-founder, Dave, he was coming at it from his family's business, which was a commercial inspections business for the insurance industry. They send inspectors in the interior of buildings to identify risks like, is the life safety systems in good shape? Are the sprinkler systems, electrical panels, so on and so forth. But one thing that we're missing, and insurance companies kept coming back to them for, was better roof data. About 30 to 40% of the property losses that are paid out each year by the insurance industry are roof related. >> 30 to 40% of the loss is roof related. >> Yeah, it's about a 100 billion a year in total losses. >> Because leakage, or I mean, what are like the big losses that they don't see? >> I mean, replacing roofs is expensive. But also, you have loss of business, you have loss of contents, and so, yeah, when the roof fails, it creates a really big problem. When there's not enough information on the underwriting side, everyone's kind of taking market risk and they're not able to actually resolve problems before they become catastrophes. >> Jeff: Right. >> David tried out a few other things like roof poles and giving everyone a ladder, but that seemed like that there was, neither one of them really solved the problem very well. >> Because it's a classic dirty job, right? People fall off of roofs, they fall off of ladders. >> David: Absolutely. >> That's like really a big deal. >> Yeah, and it's time consuming as well. Then the drone has the ability, also, to get up there and take a lot of imagery very quickly. You're getting much greater amount of data to actually analyze. >> That's interesting, because some people say, can it get enough resolution? But I suppose on the other side, A, you can shoot a lot, but you can also get under the eaves and places where a physical inspector probably just can't cover every single square inch of the roof. >> Yeah, look, there's always cases where we still need to send an inspector out in a very small percentage of the time as a follow up, but the drone is just a great place to get started. We actually find that using aerial imagery even before the drone is an even better place, start there, because that's relatively less expensive. >> Jeff: Right. >> The drone allows us to get up very close, a few feet off the roof. We can identify small hail and other types of problems. Then if you find something that looks, that you can't quite get a full read on, then send out somebody to get up on the roof, and that ends up being a much smaller percentage of the time. >> Now, it's interesting, because you said you've got a whole portfolio of different visual tools you can use, from satellite to overhead airplane flights to drones to people. It's pretty interesting that you can apply whatever the right application is for the right problem. >> Yeah, certainly. I mean, we haven't always had, we've kind of, over time, added more and more data. We're really there to solve the problem of a lack of data around these buildings and properties. As we've continued along this journey, working with our customers, getting their feedback, we've been able to better solve the problem, and found additional data points that are helpful. But the drone ends up just being, especially as the drone's, the resolution of the imagery gets higher, the collision avoidance sensors allow you to kind of get close but not hit something, all that's really helping the drone be a more and more effective tool with every new release, every year. >> What's the biggest benefit, do you think? Because I can think of, one would be kind of accuracy of the mapping, because, obviously, you have software, you can make sure you cover every space. Is it efficiency that you could do more at a time? What is the biggest benefit of using a drone application in this long time historic business? >> Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, it depends on the situation, right. We have a big insurer of churches called Church Mutual, who, they have some very challenging structures that they inspect, right, so looking at the steeple. In that case, it's just, the alternative is getting a cherry picker up there, or, quite frankly, or not looking, right. It's just too expensive to take a look. That's one example there. When you have a catastrophe scenario, like a hurricane, in Florida recently, with Irma, the benefit is that you can see a lot of properties in the same amount of time that you had. That allows companies to process claims more quickly and more accurately. Then kind of generally speaking, what's great is that we capture such a comprehensive data set. We're getting really up close and we're capturing hundreds if not thousands of images of any property that we go inspect. That creates this record, that if there's ever a conflict in the future, you can deconflict the situation. We're actually trying to get our customers to be more proactive in using all that imagery and offering it up to their customers, the insureds, so that they can really understand why a decision was made. You're just creating more transparency. >> Right. A lot of conversation in the keynotes about autonomous operations. Obviously, DJI spent a lot of money, the things basically fly themselves, you're just telling them where to go. How much of your inspections are done with an operator? Or do you see a future where you basically point it at the building and it could figure out what it needs to do from there? >> Yeah, I mean, I absolutely see a future like you described, point it at the building and go fly it. Where we are today is somewhere in between. We started out purely manual flight three years ago. Now we have partially autonomous, partially manual, and very quickly getting to fully automated flight. What that does is just continues to drive down the cost of these inspections, which allows them to be done more often. The net, kind of where we end up in all of that is, you're just going to see a lot more decision making being data driven over time in the insurance industry and beyond around these buildings and properties than it ever has been before. >> Data driven automated software based decision making, >> Right. >> We see it everywhere. All right, David, well, thanks for stopping by. >> Absolutely. >> David Lyman for Betterview. Enjoy the rest of your show >> Thank you. >> And appreciate your time. >> Oh, hey, my pleasure. Thank you. >> All right, David Lyman. I'm Jeff Rick, you're watching the Cube from Airworks 2017, thanks for watching. (click)

>> Narrator: From the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE. On the ground with Accenture Labs 30th anniversary celebration. >> Okay welcome back everyone. We're here for a special on the ground presentation, our Accenture Labs 30th year celebration of being in business at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, the heart of Silicon Valley. I'm John Furrier. Our next guest is Yvonne Wassenaar, who's the CEO of Airwave. Good to see you, Cube alumni, welcome back. >> Thank you so much, I'm happy to be here. >> So your integral executive at this event here. You've worked at VMware, you've worked at New Relic. You're now at Airware. What do you guys do? First explain what Airware is because this is fascinating. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. Airware is the most fun and impactful company on the planet. I'm a bit biased, but fundamentally I explain it as commercial drone software analytics. And the reason I say that is commercial drone is important because it's not just hobbyists, it's businesses using drones to collect data, but ultimately the important part is what do you do with the data? And we provide cloud based software analytics machine learning AI to derive business insights from what they collect. >> And drones are very practical, other than my kids loving them, put the Go Pro on it, but you can go, instead of saying go drive out and check that meter or you know, go out and take those trash out of the power lines, there's all kind of applications that drones could do with not only technical, but also getting data, visual data. So what is that looking like these days because it sounds very magical and fantasy like? What are some of the applications? >> It's a great question, and I want to start with what are some of the changes that have enabled drones to go from personal use to commercial use? The first thing is the technology, and so if you think about the drones, it's kind of like the cell phones 10 years ago when the iPhone came out. It didn't do that much compared to today, but the advancement has been amazing. So we actually had an innovator, one of our customers, duct tape a cell phone to the bottom of a drone like four or five years ago to get the visual imagery that he needed to drive insights. Now you can just buy from DJI or senseFly, really powerful drones, so you're seeing a huge uptake in what drones can do, and then on the other side, you're seeing the ability with cloud based analytics to get insights in things such as, think about it, insurance, rooftop inspection. You don't have to climb a two story steep on a ladder. You can fly a drone up, less time, more safe, and you get the historical information. Mining and quarrying, we do a lot in that space. Stockpile measurement. It's really fascinating all the things you can do. It's almost what do you not do. >> So I've been fascinated with drones ever since two years ago when Amazon had that big hype announcement where packages will be delivered to your home, and everyone can relate to that because they know Amazon delivers packages, but who's going to deliver, how does that work? I mean is there like a name space for like airspace? That's a hard compute challenge, so how will you guys deal with the spacial imagery aspect of it because this is fascinating because a new set of companies are redefining what was an old, established, boring, static industry. I mean Hoover remaps New York City every five weeks, or some number. >> Well I was going to say, what's important is you have the geo spacial coordinates, and so what we do is to actually align the images we take to geo spatially where they are. We use GCPs to do that, and then we know exactly, to the pinpoint, how to stitch images together, how to relate images over time, so actually that piece is quite easy. The harder part is when you're doing like large quarries or commercial inspections, just the volume of data you're collecting and being thoughtful on how you can upload that, process that, that's the more interesting and challenging part. >> And certainly data ingestion's huge, so given that, I've got to ask you the internet of things questions. Internet of things, the intelligent edge. Drones are moving, so they're real time. They're going to the edge of the network, they are the network, and they're pushing the edge out. How are you looking at the IOT? What's your perspective of the current IOT landscape? Intelligent, dumb, not yet defined, hasn't been to school yet? This is a big topic. Microsoft's talking about it, we've been talking about it on a research side, an intelligent edge. >> Yeah, I think we are just on the cusp of what is possible, and to me, I think about the true power being of marrying that visual data that comes from the drone with the other internet of things data. So for example, if you think about, in the aggregate space, in quarries and mining, where we play a lot. You have a lot of big equipment that has a tremendous number of sensors around, fuel efficiency and what's going on with the machine. You can map that against the hull roads that they're driving and other elements, you know that you can see from the sky. You can start to redesign your roads, you can start to get huge fuel efficiencies and other benefits, so to me the magic is really in marrying the different data sources, which is now becoming more possible as like broader technologies in the cloud and analytics of all. >> So I've got to ask you some technical, kind of high level questions. You don't have to go deep under the hood, but because you worked at VMware, you know the federation which is EMC. You guys are helping the storage guys out big time because there's a lot of data coming in. So two questions. How do you move all that big data, big fat data, through little pipes called the airwaves into the storage? What's the strategy? Is there any kind of emerging trends you see with respect to architecture? >> Yeah, so we actually spent a lot of time thinking about how you pull the huge, vast amounts of data and get it into the cloud. I'm not going to give away all of our secrets there, but what I will fundamentally say is we are big users of the cloud, so we're taking advantage of somebody else building up big data centers and their ongoing reduction in cost. Storage only gets cheaper and cheaper, and so for us, what we're really focused on is the processing power and what you can do in the clouds you put your data into. >> So cloud helps you? >> Totally, yeah, yeah, yeah. >> What would life be like without the cloud? Would you be in business? >> It would be really hard, and it would be hard on two fronts. One because it takes a lot to build and scale up your own data centers as a company today, particularly as a startup, but I think even more importantly, the ability to do, you know, training of these AI algorithms on large datasets. You want to be able to look across datasets, and that's most easily done aggregating the cloud. >> So you guys are cloud native? >> Yes. >> So what's your advice to CIOs as they look at their hybrid or private cloud, or on premise IT that's not even private cloud? What, these guys are trying to transform fast. Accenture Labs and others are helping them. What does a CIO have to do to get to the benefits of being that agile? >> Yeah, I think it's a great question, and when I was at New Relic, I was the CIO, so I have a little bit of experience in it. >> John: Trick question. >> What I would say is it is hard and I feel the pain. You have a lot to do to run the day to day business, but ultimately I think being really strategic and carving out the time and the big initiatives, and fundamentally it comes down to, all your new stuff should be in the cloud. The stuff that's really critical that's on prem that you can convert, you should do it, and the rest you got to get rid of it. You can't be held back by legacy because it will only prevent you from innovating and somebody else will. >> And do you see CIOs ultimately going to an operating model that looks like cloud even though it might be on prem? >> It does, particularly some of the larger companies, and for certain applications where you have to have, for whatever reason, data within the company, but it will be more utility based, it will be more burst capacity. You'll see more sharing as the tools and monitoring gets better. >> So I got to get your take. So as AI comes down the pipe, you're in analytics, it's a big part of your business. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> You understand analytics across your career. As jobs get automated away, we have a survey, and Market Size and Wikimon just did that says that by 2025, 150 billion dollars of non differentiated IT labor is going to go away and shift to other high value activities. So automation is going to replace those non differentiating jobs, labor. Okay, that means some other things are going to happen. So you can almost connect the dots and say software, analytics, some sort of new model. How does a company do analytics? Because what are those new value creation, you started a company on drone trend, real application, analytics is a differentiator. How does a company use analytics to help them figure out a differentiating strategy for their future? >> So I think it's a couple things. One is how to use analytics and automation to do what you currently do better, faster, cheaper. The more interesting thing is what you were talking about is if machines are doing that for you, if software's doing that for you, you have more time to think about well what's that next set of more advanced analytics I might do? Or how might I translate into better customer service? Or what's that new business model? So I think rather than jobs going away, it's really you know kind of like in the banks. The ATMs didn't get rid of the bank employees. It just gave them the ability to be personal advisors and take other. >> And they open up more branches. >> Exactly. >> And it's more people. It's actually helped create jobs. >> Exactly. >> Kind of that fallacy kind of goes away. Okay, we've got a little bit of time left. Do a quick commercial on what you guys are doing. Give a plug for Airware. How many employees do you guys have, what stage you're at, what are you guys looking to do? You're hiring, what do your customers look like, who is your customer? Take a minute to talk about your company. >> Yeah, so like I said, Airware's an amazing company. We're about six years old. We're Series C. We've got great investors and backers with Andreessen, Kleiner, Perkins, John Chambers is on our board. We're about 100 people. We've got global operations, both in EMEA and in the US. The beautiful city of Paris as well as San Francisco, so hard to beat that, and fundamentally what we're focused on is global enterprise commercial drone software analytics. And I call it an enterprise because part of the reason I ended up at Airware is I spent 17 years at Accenture. I understand what it takes to sell into enterprise. I know what they're looking for in terms of security, in terms of scalability, deployment, ease of use, and so bringing that, not just fun innovative experiments and innovation departments, but scaled deployments, and we predominantly focus on insurance and agriculture, mining, and construction right now, but we're building a platform that can be leveraged across industries, and so the real value add is how we reassemble the components to quickly innovate for other industries as well. >> I know we got time to break here, but one final question. We're going to be at the Grace Hopper celebration this year for our fourth year as part of our women in tech celebration. With all the recent Silicon Valley scandals around women in tech, I got to ask you. You've been in the business for a long time. You know, you've seen a lot of stories. I'm not going to ask you to share any specifics. What does the future have to look like to get through this novel of the generational shift that's happening, a new generation's coming on board. What kinds of norms and practices would you like to see, and any comment or color you can share on what is the preferred outcome of the current situation? >> Yeah, so I deeply believe that for companies to be competitive, you have to be diverse in perspective skillset and your employee base, and this war for talent, if you're only going after a certain profile, you're going to lose. So I think the winning companies will diversify. I'm on the board at Harvey Mudd, who's done amazing work increasing the number of women in STEM. They had more than 50% of their computer science majors were female last year, so it's definitely doable. I think we all have a lot of unconscious bias, and fundamentally what's going to shift is having more role models, and quite frankly having more white male sponsors. I mean John Chambers is a huge sponsor of mine and that makes a big difference, and so I think we need. >> And including men in the conversation. >> Totally. >> Is a really important part of it. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm 100%. My best sponsors have been men, and that's what we need is that community to make a difference. >> Yvonne, thanks so much for sharing your insight and data here. Accenture Labs celebration. Your role at Accenture, you're working with them, you've worked with them. >> Yeah. >> What's the take here? >> I'm super excited to be here. I was at Accenture for 17 years starting in 1990, so I'm old, and I got to grow up with the labs, and so. >> Were they Arthur Anderson or were they Accenture Consulting at that point? >> It was Anderson Consulting. >> Anderson Consulting. >> I'm that old, it was Anderson Consulting. But I'd say the value of the labs is it's hard when you're a big enterprise company to reimagine the future, and so having places like Accenture Labs where you can see what the possible is and you have somebody experimenting with you is really powerful, so. >> And you've got a good team of people with you. The cloud, really good timing to have a cloud operation too. >> Yeah, yeah I'm excited to be here. >> Yvonne, thanks so much. Cube coverage here at the Computer History Museum. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, on the ground for Accenture Labs, 30 years. The next 30 years ahead of us. A lot of exciting things, AI, new workforce, great action happening, drones. First of all, the drone racing leak, by the way, is really popular in my household. We're going to have drones in theCUBE >> Yvonne: Maybe we can connect you. >> With Cube coverage with drone cameras, coming soon. Thanks for watching, we'll be right back. (upbeat instrumental music)

>>Live from the Mandalay convention center in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's not cue at IBM insight 2014 >>you're all your hosts. John furrier and Dave Volante.. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone. We're here live inside the cube at IBM insight. I'm Sean with Dave Volante. We go after the events, extract the signal and noise. We go wall to wall covers what we do here. I don't, of course we're excited to have awesome gas. We talked to the executives, entrepreneurs, but we get the media stars in here. Uh, Katie Lyndon doll. Welcome to the cube. You are with CNN, the today show. You're the tech correspondent and you get a lot of energy. I could just tell this is going to be fun. It's been fun to hear the last few days. So I mean, Watson is the geeky story of any what, what are you seeing? Let me get the wife in a second. But outside of Watson, what's the coolest thing you've seen? >>I'm constantly on the hunt for the latest innovations in technology and I think that's probably the best part about my job. And always chasing down high level stories. I recently just came back for a dive with NASA. I learned that NASA astronauts actually train underwater to simulate microgravity and I'm like, Oh my gosh, no way. And they're like, do you want to come down to the world's only Marine underwater habitat? I was like, yes, please. So went down to the Florida keys, it's an hour off the coast and was diving literally with NASA European space agency and the Canadian space agency underwater. And again, it's the world's only underwater Marine habitat and seeing how they train in everything from asteroid mining to um, underwater surgery to actually seeing how the body responds to exercise. I guess water simulates one sixth of gravity. So it was a pretty dynamic shoot. >>I was doing that for NBC news and it's just I, those are the types of stories. I, I am a diver. I actually was doing a story on big data last year and it required me to get my dive certs and the Island of Bermuda feel very bad. It was a presentation that I was speaking on here at insight a, there was all this crowdsourced information about how the lion fish, if you've ever heard of the lion fish has been, it's an invasion in the Atlantic ocean. I took all of this information and metrics and made a story for CNN and it required me to get my advanced dive certs. So now I'm getting all these dive stories cause there's not a lot of us dive reporters. So the lion fish story for CNN too. Another good example of a piece that I go after. >>So you, you bring a lot of energy. What do you see here? I mean you see a lot of stories and you get pitched stories. I can imagine that your email box flux, I mean it's like, Oh >>I have 78,000 unread emails right now. I'm not proud of that. But yes, constantly being pitched. >>I had 40,000 I'm a little bit blind. I'm going to give that to you in the today show. Not too shabby. But what do you do? You get pitched all the time and so you got the vet stories. What's your formula for vetting stories? I mean, what gets your attention and how do you go outside your comfort zone to select good stories? What your attention. It's funny, >>you know, so I've been in television for the last 10 years and I feel like now I have this internal barometer and knowing when something's very good and the scope of the things that I cover from, you know, in the past month alone when I was talking about the NASA piece and then I'll flip the next day and do top Halloween gadgets on today's show. So it's, it's very vast, but I can instantly tell and it's, it's come through experience and being in a background in technology and knowing what's gonna work for the consumer and knowing a hot product. When I see it and I I T I gotten pretty good I think at it spotting a product that a consumer is going to love but also finding a story that is, maybe it's super nerdy, but my job is to take it and to bring it down to a level that's entertaining for any kind of audience, whether it be CNN or whether it be today. >>So it says your Guinness book of world record holder, share that in little nugget with the folks in. Yes, that is a true story. I have a Guinness world record holder in the most high fives and one minute. Okay, so this probably solicit some like how the heck did that happen? I've always been fascinated with Guinness world records and I always wanted one and I've always been obsessed with a high five like I am paranoid of huggers, there's nothing that scares me more or good high five just go for the five. I don't want to bring it in and okay, it's a little OCD. I will completely aware. So anyways, I found that this Guinness world record was held by a clown in England for the most high fives and one minute. So I convinced I was hosting a show on spike TV and I convinced them to allow me to break this record. >>So we had all these people line up in the MTV cafeteria and you have a Guinness world record adjudicator come onsite, you get two tries and if you win you get a plaque in a formal ceremony. The cube before we should do the most consecutive interviews to having a drink of water. We want to just come here and we could break something able to break something or like you said, it's his official. Yeah, we started to get like real nervous and like hot and yeah, so I had two tribes. Oh I was, I was giving him a big ass big fitness person. So I was like ready. And if clown beats me at this point, it's over your careers. division. You'll never work again because I beat it on the first try and then I advanced it on a single hand or you go, there's a whole process as you can imagine with the adjudicator's she's like real intense. >>She's like counting with her clicker on the high five so I go down this line of people and it has to be over there can't be like a mailed in like you know like a high five you go for the five names and then I got a couple that were disqualified, you know like a couple didn't count because it wasn't like a full on five four so like a film replay. Super slow motion. I like argued a few. I was like no, I was for sure up on that one. The flag, it was sponsored by PRL. It wasn't but it should have been but it was fun. So I have a plaque how many? 107 heard rumors that it's been broken but I didn't care as long as I've got a plan to that plan at one point. Okay. Let's cut to about IBM because Watson is the coolest thing I'll say is pretty mainstream. >>It hits your wheelhouse. I'll see for the day I've seen jeopardy. Absolutely. Now how does that translate into a story for sure. Stuff going on here. What do you, so what's very cool about Watson? I called my boyfriend because I've had a relationship with him now over the last few years, a few years ago on CVS. I actually got to challenge Watson on a full game of jeopardy and I think that was of course the most, the most memorable part of Watson when he took on the two, you know, jeopardy champions. But so this is like a lifetime moment for me. I got a full game of jeopardy, me Watson and another individual smoked me and actually I was doing okay and then it was like tennis vocab. I was like, Oh, I got this. You know, like I've been in sports my whole life. I've been worked at ESPN for seven years. >>I got this in the bag, I was doing good. And then they were like, Oh, we had them on the low setting. I was like, all right, really? Like really? Like I was just feeling good about myself. I finished with $2, two bucks. Um, and I thought it was so cool how gimmicky it was, you know, in a healthy beach in the tennis category. Oh, you smoking, you never in the low setting for sure. I got a few of those, a few. I actually got set in Tennessee vocab. You're going to have it right. Even watching tennis your whole life. Right. ESPN is embarrassing and disappointing. And then I weighed you too much and then the double jeopardy. Anyways, I digress. So how cool is it that I got to play Watson but then now years later seeing the power in it in many different developments and most notably I work over at as a volunteer at Sloan Memorial Kettering cancer center for a small group called Candlelighters that works with individuals that come in from around the world for cancer treatments. >>Now Sloan is one of those powerful cancer centers in the world is actually using it as predictive analysis. So here and I work with these kids and I, it's very complex. When they go in for a diagnosis, there's lots of different problems that they have and really it's, it's, it's, it's, it's guesswork for a doctor now. They can put all of these things that are happening with it, with a child into a machine, and they can pump out a hypotheses. Of course, you're going to have to have the human interaction tailored with that to have the emotional side, but I had been fascinated, especially on the medical side, watching your boyfriend at this point. That's interesting. We'll get that to the world of Facebook. It's complicated. I heard rumors that he's talks back and we'll listen to this a true statement. He's a lot smarter than I am. >>I'm intimidated by that, but what's the coolest demo with Watson that you've seen besides jeopardy? Yeah, that would have, well I actually learned something new from a few developers that I met yesterday about the new chef app. So being able to go into your pantry and to do some recipe from what you have, the ingredients you have insider, I think that's a little more consumer friendly. So I was kind of like, um, I'm excited to check that one out. Looking at the tech landscape, what are you most excited about? I mean, what's the coolest kind of consumer meats like gadget, short door, tech cloud. If you could pull a few favorites at what's, what's drawing your attention? Uh, one that we actually had here that's probably popped into mind. There's so many to choose from, but in the world of Oculus rift, and the reason I say that is not for the gaming aspect, but more for the potential in the landscape of physical therapy. >>The first time I got on Oculus raft, I was actually training on a Navy boat and I was doing a segment where all my camera men were all around me. I lost track of reality and I got so immersed into virtual reality and being there and even as a huge diver, I get very motion sick and I got motion sick on the boat. Being in this physical, this augmented reality world, we're actually shooting this at the birthplace of Oculus rift. So we really diving behind the scenes into the actual, uh, software and hardware and it was such a cool, immersive experience and realize that what this could do for physical therapy or even at the dentist at a lower end, I think the capabilities for augmented reality and taking yourself out of that moment are huge. So I think that's very exciting. How about drones? >>Oh my gosh. So yes, let's talk to, and my nephew the other day and he said, do you want to see the drone that I built? And I said, yeah, it's got this four or five quadcopter. It's a quadcopter. Yup. I said, where'd you get the software for? He goes, I'll download it. It's all open source. I hacked it a little bit. I actually have several drones. Okay. Nominal. Because this blew me away. I probably have what I consider is the best prosumer drone. It's a DGI Phantom, a DJI Phantom two and I have got some incredible aerial footage over the mountains of Montana and also over a Bermuda, the Island of Bermuda. I sent it up, put it over a shipwreck, gorgeous. And for me as a flake, being in photo and video and going out and getting my own video and not having to rely on a cop, a copter for, you know, that would be thousands of dollars worth of footage or relying on a cameraman. >>I just sent that baby up. I'm like, please don't hit anybody. It's a little hard to operate when you get the one, the higher end models. I have a couple of the parents too. There are a lot easier to operate and do it right from my iPhone, but I am just like, I'm so into it now. I think it's a little gimmicky when we talk about Amazon and pizza deliveries and taco deliveries and beer deliveries with a drone shooting surprises. Texas man, what am, I don't know about that. But uh, I think it's fascinating. I think it's a really cool technology. And again, I've personally saved tens and thousands of dollars using my drones. So you, when you flew over these sites yet proximate, so you had visual concepts. So the Phantom Jerome that I have, that's my favorite one. I actually attach a GoPro to it so I can send it up and I use the gyroscope or just kind of move my GoPro around in mid air. It goes hundreds of feet high. I mean, you've really got to get a grasp on it and know what you're doing. I had it out in a field well before I took it out to an Island on a beach. But I'm not, a drive is not something you really, it's not a remote control car. Now did you build it? Oh no. Goodness. Aww, that's totally on the market. Yeah, I got it at B and H photo >>sending them out. So in San Francisco off their balconies and then they're going out to, you know, angel Island, Alcatraz, and literally they're flying out then unregulated. It's like someday there'll be drone collisions, let's say this is unregulated. This is a huge, people are geeking out with the drones. It's super exciting. Dave camera's shooting down him sending him into football venues or you know, the world series delivering packages. But mom's a streaker. I mean Amazon. I like that. Okay. So what else is new for you? Tell us more about some, some cool behind the scenes at a today's show. Any sad night live, uh, opportunities for you next been >>to Saturday night live. Oh my gosh. By the way, that's like the hottest ticket in New York to get. I've had the opportunity to go to two shows cause my friend's a cameraman over there. The rehearsal for it is like amazing. I know that's a huge digression, but talking about something to see in person, that's one of my bucket lists. Phenomenal. Yeah. Phenomenal. What else is new in New York and the scene there? Uh, Oh, we constantly covering a lot of different pieces. Uh, one, I just came back from Africa a little bit ago. I was doing a number of pieces over there from an elephant orphanage to one of my favorite pieces that we'll be rolling out soon. I did it for cnn.com and also working on a video piece of it. I went in embedded myself in the second poorest part of the entire world in the slums of Kibera, Kenya, and it was amazing to see that in these very poor areas, 70 to 80% cell penetration. A lot of people don't think that a smartphone would be prevalent. It sure is. And these kids, yeah, absolutely. There's cell towers everywhere. These kids were, you know, they don't have much, but they have e-reader devices and they can have thousands of books when they're walking 10 miles to school. You walk into the school that doesn't have any electricity, it's a hundred degrees, but they all have e-readers, Kindles right on their desk. I was blown away. I went to several different schools around Eastern Kenya. Fascinating story to be able to cover. So >>yeah, that's a really good point. In mobile penetration. If I was talking to this startup that where their business plan is to build, sell a solar battery recharging stations because they have the exact points, like they have all these devices but it's not, they don't have the traditional electricity and the parks >>one outlet in the entire school. So fortunately for, you know, with wifi off it's about a week charge on a Kindle. So it is, >>yeah, I think, I think that's a great market opportunity. Certainly in emerging countries, the mobile penetration, I'm so suites about the IBM show here. Is this your first time here or, >>I have had the luxury and the opportunity to be a part of several IBM events and everyone is so uniquely different. And this one all about developers obviously. So something I get to nerd out in myself in that is an it girl and also a developer. It's fun to be able to learn. I picked up so much new information so I just kind of like, they're like, you can, you're done with, I'm like, I'm going to hang out for a little bit longer. >>You know, you know you're a, you know, you're a geek when you're geeking out, when you're off the clock, you know Steve and I the same way. We're like we should stop rookies now let's keep going. So CES, UFC, yes, >>yes, every year for sure. And for anyone that hasn't been to CF, it's kind of on the bucket list for anybody that's attending technology, 35 football fields full of gadgets. Amazing. Yeah, it's always one of my biggest times of the year. So we'll be back here. >>now do you enjoy CES or is it a hard slog for you because you must have to really get down and dirty for CS, I mean a lot of stuff to cover. >>I did and I tried to make it to like the most random boosts. I find someone of my best technology products and like the ma and PA type shops that don't have the million dollar booth and like you know that are really back in a corner and I'm like zero in, >>you go on to cover, by the way, do you go into cover? You kind of sneak in there and you go into the camera guys. No, I go for it. You go for it. Okay. Time. Okay. All right guys. Um, that's awesome. Well can. Thanks for coming on the cube. We really appreciate spending the time. We'd love the personality. I love the energy. I mean Dave and I think you know, we're, first of all we're huge fans of your work. Especially the ESPN part. No, we're, we're big sports fans. In fact we call this the ESPN of tech cause it's our kind of version of like trying to be like ESPN. But we think technology is going mainstream. People at this new generation are geeks and even too, you alluded to ESPN, even sports and technology, I can't tell you how many pieces I've covered in pro athletes and how tech is entering in that space. Everywhere. Disruption in the data, the social media, you know, limiting have agents that go direct to the audience. Just super exciting. I mean I'm real big fan of media, tech, sports and entertainment. Thanks for coming on the cube. We appreciate it. We'll be right back with this after the short break here inside the cube live in Las Vegas. I'm John and Dave. We write back.