(upbeat music) >> Hi everyone. Welcome to theCUBE special presentation here in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We got two great guests, one for calling in from Germany, or videoing in from Germany, one from Maryland. We've got VMware and AWS. This is the customer successes with VMware Cloud on AWS Showcase: Accelerating Business Transformation. Here in the Showcase at Samir Kadoo, worldwide VMware strategic alliance solution architect leader with AWS. Samir, great to have you. And Daniel Rethmeier, principal architect global AWS synergy at VMware. Guys, you guys are working together, you're the key players in this relationship as it rolls out and continues to grow. So welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, greatly appreciate it. >> Great to have you guys both on. As you know, we've been covering this since 2016 when Pat Gelsinger, then CEO, and then then CEO AWS at Andy Jassy did this. It kind of got people by surprise, but it really kind of cleaned out the positioning in the enterprise for the success of VM workloads in the cloud. VMware's had great success with it since and you guys have the great partnerships. So this has been like a really strategic, successful partnership. Where are we right now? You know, years later, we got this whole inflection point coming, you're starting to see this idea of higher level services, more performance are coming in at the infrastructure side, more automation, more serverless, I mean and AI. I mean, it's just getting better and better every year in the cloud. Kind of a whole 'nother level. Where are we? Samir, let's start with you on the relationship. >> Yeah, totally. So I mean, there's several things to keep in mind, right? So in 2016, right, that's when the partnership between AWS and VMware was announced. And then less than a year later, that's when we officially launched VMware Cloud on AWS. Years later, we've been driving innovation, working with our customers, jointly engineering this between AWS and VMware. Day in, day out, as far as advancing VMware Cloud on AWS. You know, even if you look at the innovation that takes place with the solution, things have modernized, things have changed, there's been advancements. You know, whether it's security focus, whether it's platform focus, whether it's networking focus, there's been modifications along the way, even storage, right, more recently. One of the things to keep in mind is we're looking to deliver value to our customers together. These are our joint customers. So there's hundreds of VMware and AWS engineers working together on this solution. And then factor in even our sales teams, right? We have VMware and AWS sales teams interacting with each other on a constant daily basis. We're working together with our customers at the end of the day too. Then we're looking to even offer and develop jointly engineered solutions specific to VMware Cloud on AWS. And even with VMware to other platforms as well. Then the other thing comes down to is where we have dedicated teams around this at both AWS and VMware. So even from solutions architects, even to our sales specialists, even to our account teams, even to specific engineering teams within the organizations, they all come together to drive this innovation forward with VMware Cloud on AWS and the jointly engineered solution partnership as well. And then I think one of the key things to keep in mind comes down to we have nearly 600 channel partners that have achieved VMware Cloud on AWS service competency. So think about it from the standpoint, there's 300 certified or validated technology solutions, they're now available to our customers. So that's even innovation right off the top as well. >> Great stuff. Daniel, I want to get to you in a second upon this principal architect position you have. In your title, you're the global AWS synergy person. Synergy means bringing things together, making it work. Take us through the architecture, because we heard a lot of folks at VMware explore this year, formerly VMworld, talking about how the workloads on IT has been completely transforming into cloud and hybrid, right? This is where the action is. Where are you? Is your customers taking advantage of that new shift? You got AIOps, you got ITOps changing a lot, you got a lot more automation, edges right around the corner. This is like a complete transformation from where we were just five years ago. What's your thoughts on the relationship? >> So at first, I would like to emphasize that our collaboration is not just that we have dedicated teams to help our customers get the most and the best benefits out of VMware Cloud and AWS, we are also enabling us mutually. So AWS learns from us about the VMware technology, where VMware people learn about the AWS technology. We are also enabling our channel partners and we are working together on customer projects. So we have regular assembles globally and also virtually on Slack and the usual suspect tools working together and listening to customers. That's very important. Asking our customers where are their needs? And we are driving the solution into the direction that our customers get the best benefits out of VMware Cloud on AWS. And over the time, we really have involved the solution. As Samir mentioned, we just added additional storage solutions to VMware Cloud on AWS. We now have three different instance types that cover a broad range of workloads. So for example, we just edited the I4i host, which is ideally for workloads that require a lot of CPU power, such as, you mentioned it, AI workloads. >> Yeah, so I want to get us just specifically on the customer journey and their transformation, you know, we've been reporting on Silicon angle in theCUBE in the past couple weeks in a big way that the ops teams are now the new devs, right? I mean that sounds a little bit weird, but IT operations is now part of a lot more DataOps, security, writing code, composing. You know, with open source, a lot of great things are changing. Can you share specifically what customers are looking for when you say, as you guys come in and assess their needs, what are they doing, what are some of the things that they're doing with VMware on AWS specifically that's a little bit different? Can you share some of and highlights there? >> That's a great point, because originally, VMware and AWS came from very different directions when it comes to speaking people and customers. So for example, AWS, very developer focused, whereas VMware has a very great footprint in the ITOps area. And usually these are very different teams, groups, different cultures, but it's getting together. However, we always try to address the customer needs, right? There are customers that want to build up a new application from the scratch and build resiliency, availability, recoverability, scalability into the application. But there are still a lot of customers that say, "Well, we don't have all of the skills to redevelop everything to refactor an application to make it highly available. So we want to have all of that as a service. Recoverability as a service, scalability as a service. We want to have this from the infrastructure." That was one of the unique selling points for VMware on-premise and now we are bringing this into the cloud. >> Samir, talk about your perspective. I want to get your thoughts, and not to take a tangent, but we had covered the AWS re:MARS, actually it was Amazon re:MARS, machine learning automation, robotics and space was really kind of the confluence of industrial IoT, software, physical. And so when you look at like the IT operations piece becoming more software, you're seeing things about automation, but the skill gap is huge. So you're seeing low code, no code, automation, you know, "Hey Alexa, deploy a Kubernetes cluster." Yeah, I mean that's coming, right? So we're seeing this kind of operating automation meets higher level services, meets workloads. Can you unpack that and share your opinion on what you see there from an Amazon perspective and how it relates to this? >> Yeah. Yeah, totally, right? And you know, look at it from the point of view where we said this is a jointly engineered solution, but it's not migrating to one option or the other option, right? It's more or less together. So even with VMware Cloud on AWS, yes it is utilizing AWS infrastructure, but your environment is connected to that AWS VPC in your AWS account. So if you want to leverage any of the native AWS services, so any of the 200 plus AWS services, you have that option to do so. So that's going to give you that power to do certain things, such as, for example, like how you mentioned with IoT, even with utilizing Alexa, or if there's any other service that you want to utilize, that's the joining point between both of the offerings right off the top. Though with digital transformation, right, you have to think about where it's not just about the technology, right? There's also where you want to drive growth in the underlying technology even in your business. Leaders are looking to reinvent their business, they're looking to take different steps as far as pursuing a new strategy, maybe it's a process, maybe it's with the people, the culture, like how you said before, where people are coming in from a different background, right? They may not be used to the cloud, they may not be used to AWS services, but now you have that capability to mesh them together. >> Okay. >> Then also- >> Oh, go ahead, finish your thought. >> No, no, no, I was going to say what it also comes down to is you need to think about the operating model too, where it is a shift, right? Especially for that vStor admin that's used to their on-premises environment. Now with VMware Cloud on AWS, you have that ability to leverage a cloud, but the investment that you made and certain things as far as automation, even with monitoring, even with logging, you still have that methodology where you can utilize that in VMware Cloud on AWS too. >> Daniel, I want to get your thoughts on this because at Explore and after the event, as we prep for CubeCon and re:Invent coming up, the big AWS show, I had a couple conversations with a lot of the VMware customers and operators, and it's like hundreds of thousands of users and millions of people talking about and peaked on VMware, interested in VMware. The common thread was one person said, "I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to put my career in the next 10 to 15 years." And they've been very comfortable with VMware in the past, very loyal, and they're kind of talking about, I'm going to be the next cloud, but there's no like role yet. Architects, is it solution architect, SRE? So you're starting to see the psychology of the operators who now are going to try to make these career decisions. Like what am I going to work on? And then it's kind of fuzzy, but I want to get your thoughts, how would you talk to that persona about the future of VMware on, say, cloud for instance? What should they be thinking about? What's the opportunity? And what's going to happen? >> So digital transformation definitely is a huge change for many organizations and leaders are perfectly aware of what that means. And that also means to some extent, concerns with your existing employees. Concerns about do I have to relearn everything? Do I have to acquire new skills and trainings? Is everything worthless I learned over the last 15 years of my career? And the answer is to make digital transformation a success, we need not just to talk about technology, but also about process, people, and culture. And this is where VMware really can help because if you are applying VMware Cloud on AWS to your infrastructure, to your existing on-premise infrastructure, you do not need to change many things. You can use the same tools and skills, you can manage your virtual machines as you did in your on-premise environment, you can use the same managing and monitoring tools, if you have written, and many customers did this, if you have developed hundreds of scripts that automate tasks and if you know how to troubleshoot things, then you can use all of that in VMware Cloud on AWS. And that gives not just leaders, but also the architects at customers, the operators at customers, the confidence in such a complex project. >> The consistency, very key point, gives them the confidence to go. And then now that once they're confident, they can start committing themselves to new things. Samir, you're reacting to this because on your side, you've got higher level services, you've got more performance at the hardware level. I mean, a lot improvements. So, okay, nothing's changed, I can still run my job, now I got goodness on the other side. What's the upside? What's in it for the customer there? >> Yeah, so I think what it comes down to is they've already been so used to or entrenched with that VMware admin mentality, right? But now extending that to the cloud, that's where now you have that bridge between VMware Cloud on AWS to bridge that VMware knowledge with that AWS knowledge. So I will look at it from the point of view where now one has that capability and that ability to just learn about the cloud. But if they're comfortable with certain aspects, no one's saying you have to change anything. You can still leverage that, right? But now if you want to utilize any other AWS service in conjunction with that VM that resides maybe on-premises or even in VMware Cloud on AWS, you have that option to do so. So think about it where you have that ability to be someone who's curious and wants to learn. And then if you want to expand on the skills, you certainly have that capability to do so. >> Great stuff, I love that. Now that we're peeking behind the curtain here, I'd love to have you guys explain, 'cause people want to know what's goes on behind the scenes. How does innovation get happen? How does it happen with the relationships? Can you take us through a day in the life of kind of what goes on to make innovation happen with the joint partnership? Do you guys just have a Zoom meeting, do you guys fly out, you write code, go do you ship things? I mean, I'm making it up, but you get the idea. How does it work? What's going on behind the scenes? >> So we hope to get more frequently together in-person, but of course we had some difficulties over the last two to three years. So we are very used to Zoom conferences and Slack meetings. You always have to have the time difference in mind if you are working globally together. But what we try, for example, we have regular assembles now also in-person, geo-based, so for AMEA, for the Americas, for APJ. And we are bringing up interesting customer situations, architectural bits and pieces together. We are discussing it always to share and to contribute to our community. >> What's interesting, you know, as events are coming back, Samir, before you weigh in this, I'll comment as theCUBE's been going back out to events, we're hearing comments like, "What pandemic? We were more productive in the pandemic." I mean, developers know how to work remotely and they've been on all the tools there, but then they get in-person, they're happy to see people, but no one's really missed the beat. I mean, it seems to be very productive, you know, workflow, not a lot of disruption. More, if anything, productivity gains. >> Agreed, right? I think one of the key things to keep in mind is even if you look at AWS's, and even Amazon's leadership principles, right? Customer obsession, that's key. VMware is carrying that forward as well. Where we are working with our customers, like how Daniel said and meant earlier, right? We might have meetings at different time zones, maybe it's in-person, maybe it's virtual, but together we're working to listen to our customers. You know, we're taking and capturing that feedback to drive innovation in VMware Cloud on AWS as well. But one of the key things to keep in mind is yes, there has been the pandemic, we might have been disconnected to a certain extent, but together through technology, we've been able to still communicate, work with our customers, even with VMware in between, with AWS and whatnot, we had that flexibility to innovate and continue that innovation. So even if you look at it from the point of view, right? VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts, that was something that customers have been asking for. We've been able to leverage the feedback and then continue to drive innovation even around VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts. So even with the on-premises environment, if you're looking to handle maybe data sovereignty or compliance needs, maybe you have low latency requirements, that's where certain advancements come into play, right? So the key thing is always to maintain that communication track. >> In our last segment we did here on this Showcase, we listed the accomplishments and they were pretty significant. I mean geo, you got the global rollouts of the relationship. It's just really been interesting and people can reference that, we won't get into it here. But I will ask you guys to comment on, as you guys continue to evolve the relationship, what's in it for the customer? What can they expect next? Because again, I think right now, we're at an inflection point more than ever. What can people expect from the relationship and what's coming up with re:Invent? Can you share a little bit of kind of what's coming down the pike? >> So one of the most important things we have announced this year, and we will continue to evolve into that direction, is independent scale of storage. That absolutely was one of the most important items customer asked for over the last years. Whenever you are requiring additional storage to host your virtual machines, you usually in VMware Cloud on AWS, you have to add additional nodes. Now we have three different node types with different ratios of compute, storage, and memory. But if you only require additional storage, you always have to get also additional compute and memory and you have to pay for it. And now with two solutions which offer choice for the customers, like FS6 wanted a ONTAP and VMware Cloud Flex Storage, you now have two cost effective opportunities to add storage to your virtual machines. And that offers opportunities for other instance types maybe that don't have local storage. We are also very, very keen looking forward to announcements, exciting announcements, at the upcoming events. >> Samir, what's your reaction take on what's coming down on your side? >> Yeah, I think one of the key things to keep in mind is we're looking to help our customers be agile and even scaled with their needs, right? So with VMware Cloud on AWS, that's one of the key things that comes to mind, right? There are going to be announcements, innovations, and whatnot with upcoming events. But together, we're able to leverage that to advance VMware cloud on AWS. To Daniel's point, storage for example, even with host offerings. And then even with decoupling storage from compute and memory, right? Now you have the flexibility where you can do all of that. So to look at it from the standpoint where now with 21 regions where we have VMware Cloud on AWS available as well, where customers can utilize that as needed when needed, right? So it comes down to, you know, transformation will be there. Yes, there's going to be maybe where workloads have to be adapted where they're utilizing certain AWS services, but you have that flexibility and option to do so. And I think with the continuing events, that's going to give us the options to even advance our own services together. >> Well you guys are in the middle of it, you're in the trenches, you're making things happen, you've got a team of people working together. My final question is really more of a kind of a current situation, kind of future evolutionary thing that you haven't seen this before. I want to get both of your reaction to it. And we've been bringing this up in the open conversations on theCUBE is in the old days, let's go back this generation, you had ecosystems, you had VMware had an ecosystem, AWS had an ecosystem. You know, we have a product, you have a product, biz dev deals happen, people sign relationships, and they do business together and they sell each other's products or do some stuff. Now it's more about architecture, 'cause we're now in a distributed large scale environment where the role of ecosystems are intertwining and you guys are in the middle of two big ecosystems. You mentioned channel partners, you both have a lot of partners on both sides, they come together. So you have this now almost a three dimensional or multidimensional ecosystem interplay. What's your thoughts on this? Because it's about the architecture, integration is a value, not so much innovations only. You got to do innovation, but when you do innovation, you got to integrate it, you got to connect it. So how do you guys see this as an architectural thing, start to see more technical business deals? >> So we are removing dependencies from individual ecosystems and from individual vendors. So a customer no longer has to decide for one vendor and then it is a very expensive and high effort project to move away from that vendor, which ties customers even closer to specific vendors. We are removing these obstacles. So with VMware Cloud on AWS, moving to the cloud, firstly it's not a dead end. If you decide at one point in time because of latency requirements or maybe some compliance requirements, you need to move back into on-premise, you can do this. If you decide you want to stay with some of your services on-premise and just run a couple of dedicated services in the cloud, you can do this and you can man manage it through a single pane of glass. That's quite important. So cloud is no longer a dead end, it's no longer a binary decision, whether it's on-premise or the cloud, it is the cloud. And the second thing is you can choose the best of both worlds, right? If you are migrating virtual machines that have been running in your on-premise environment to VMware Cloud on AWS either way in a very, very fast cost effective and safe way, then you can enrich, later on enrich these virtual machines with services that are offered by AWS, more than 200 different services ranging from object-based storage, load balancing, and so on. So it's an endless, endless possibility. >> We call that super cloud in the way that we generically defining it where everyone's innovating, but yet there's some common services. But the differentiation comes from innovation where the lock in is the value, not some spec, right? Samir, this is kind of where cloud is right now. You guys are not commodity, amazon's completely differentiating, but there's some commodity things happen. You got storage, you got compute, but then you got now advances in all areas. But partners innovate with you on their terms. >> Absolutely. >> And everybody wins. >> Yeah, I 100% agree with you. I think one of the key things, you know, as Daniel mentioned before, is where it's a cross education where there might be someone who's more proficient on the cloud side with AWS, maybe more proficient with the VMware's technology. But then for partners, right? They bridge that gap as well where they come in and they might have a specific niche or expertise where their background, where they can help our customers go through that transformation. So then that comes down to, hey, maybe I don't know how to connect to the cloud, maybe I don't know what the networking constructs are, maybe I can leverage that partner. That's one aspect to go about it. Now maybe you migrated that workload to VMware Cloud on AWS. Maybe you want to leverage any of the native AWS services or even just off the top, 200 plus AWS services, right? But it comes down to that skillset, right? So again, solutions architecture at the back of the day, end of the day, what it comes down to is being able to utilize the best of both worlds. That's what we're giving our customers at the end of the day. >> I mean, I just think it's a refactoring and innovation opportunity at all levels. I think now more than ever, you can take advantage of each other's ecosystems and partners and technologies and change how things get done with keeping the consistency. I mean, Daniel, you nailed that, right? I mean you don't have to do anything. You still run it. Just spear the way you're working on it and now do new things. This is kind of a cultural shift. >> Yeah, absolutely. And if you look, not every customer, not every organization has the resources to refactor and re-platform everything. And we give them a very simple and easy way to move workloads to the cloud. Simply run them and at the same time, they can free up resources to develop new innovations and grow their business. >> Awesome. Samir, thank you for coming on. Daniel, thank you for coming to Germany. >> Thank you. Oktoberfest, I know it's evening over there, weekend's here. And thank you for spending the time. Samir, give you the final word. AWS re:Invent's coming up. We're preparing, we're going to have an exclusive with Adam, with Fryer, we'd do a curtain raise, and do a little preview. What's coming down on your side with the relationship and what can we expect to hear about what you got going on at re:Invent this year? The big show? >> Yeah, so I think Daniel hit upon some of the key points, but what I will say is we do have, for example, specific sessions, both that VMware's driving and then also that AWS is driving. We do have even where we have what are called chalk talks. So I would say, and then even with workshops, right? So even with the customers, the attendees who are there, whatnot, if they're looking to sit and listen to a session, yes that's there, but if they want to be hands-on, that is also there too. So personally for me as an IT background, been in sysadmin world and whatnot, being hands-on, that's one of the key things that I personally am looking forward. But I think that's one of the key ways just to learn and get familiar with the technology. >> Yeah, and re:Invent's an amazing show for the in-person. You guys nail it every year. We'll have three sets this year at theCUBE and it's becoming popular. We have more and more content. You guys got live streams going on, a lot of content, a lot of media. So thanks for sharing that. Samir, Daniel, thank you for coming on on this part of the Showcase episode of really the customer successes with VMware Cloud on AWS, really accelerating business transformation with AWS and VMware. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hi everyone. Welcome to theCUBE special presentation here in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We got two great guests, one for calling in from Germany, or videoing in from Germany, one from Maryland. We've got VMware and AWS. This is the customer successes with VMware Cloud on AWS Showcase: Accelerating Business Transformation. Here in the Showcase at Samir Kadoo, worldwide VMware strategic alliance solution architect leader with AWS. Samir, great to have you. And Daniel Rethmeier, principal architect global AWS synergy at VMware. Guys, you guys are working together, you're the key players in this relationship as it rolls out and continues to grow. So welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, greatly appreciate it. >> Great to have you guys both on. As you know, we've been covering this since 2016 when Pat Gelsinger, then CEO, and then then CEO AWS at Andy Jassy did this. It kind of got people by surprise, but it really kind of cleaned out the positioning in the enterprise for the success of VM workloads in the cloud. VMware's had great success with it since and you guys have the great partnerships. So this has been like a really strategic, successful partnership. Where are we right now? You know, years later, we got this whole inflection point coming, you're starting to see this idea of higher level services, more performance are coming in at the infrastructure side, more automation, more serverless, I mean and AI. I mean, it's just getting better and better every year in the cloud. Kind of a whole 'nother level. Where are we? Samir, let's start with you on the relationship. >> Yeah, totally. So I mean, there's several things to keep in mind, right? So in 2016, right, that's when the partnership between AWS and VMware was announced. And then less than a year later, that's when we officially launched VMware Cloud on AWS. Years later, we've been driving innovation, working with our customers, jointly engineering this between AWS and VMware. You know, one of the key things... Together, day in, day out, as far as advancing VMware Cloud on AWS. You know, even if you look at the innovation that takes place with the solution, things have modernized, things have changed, there's been advancements. You know, whether it's security focus, whether it's platform focus, whether it's networking focus, there's been modifications along the way, even storage, right, more recently. One of the things to keep in mind is we're looking to deliver value to our customers together. These are our joint customers. So there's hundreds of VMware and AWS engineers working together on this solution. And then factor in even our sales teams, right? We have VMware and AWS sales teams interacting with each other on a constant daily basis. We're working together with our customers at the end of the day too. Then we're looking to even offer and develop jointly engineered solutions specific to VMware Cloud on AWS. And even with VMware to other platforms as well. Then the other thing comes down to is where we have dedicated teams around this at both AWS and VMware. So even from solutions architects, even to our sales specialists, even to our account teams, even to specific engineering teams within the organizations, they all come together to drive this innovation forward with VMware Cloud on AWS and the jointly engineered solution partnership as well. And then I think one of the key things to keep in mind comes down to we have nearly 600 channel partners that have achieved VMware Cloud on AWS service competency. So think about it from the standpoint, there's 300 certified or validated technology solutions, they're now available to our customers. So that's even innovation right off the top as well. >> Great stuff. Daniel, I want to get to you in a second upon this principal architect position you have. In your title, you're the global AWS synergy person. Synergy means bringing things together, making it work. Take us through the architecture, because we heard a lot of folks at VMware explore this year, formerly VMworld, talking about how the workloads on IT has been completely transforming into cloud and hybrid, right? This is where the action is. Where are you? Is your customers taking advantage of that new shift? You got AIOps, you got ITOps changing a lot, you got a lot more automation, edges right around the corner. This is like a complete transformation from where we were just five years ago. What's your thoughts on the relationship? >> So at first, I would like to emphasize that our collaboration is not just that we have dedicated teams to help our customers get the most and the best benefits out of VMware Cloud and AWS, we are also enabling us mutually. So AWS learns from us about the VMware technology, where VMware people learn about the AWS technology. We are also enabling our channel partners and we are working together on customer projects. So we have regular assembles globally and also virtually on Slack and the usual suspect tools working together and listening to customers. That's very important. Asking our customers where are their needs? And we are driving the solution into the direction that our customers get the best benefits out of VMware Cloud on AWS. And over the time, we really have involved the solution. As Samir mentioned, we just added additional storage solutions to VMware Cloud on AWS. We now have three different instance types that cover a broad range of workloads. So for example, we just edited the I4i host, which is ideally for workloads that require a lot of CPU power, such as, you mentioned it, AI workloads. >> Yeah, so I want to get us just specifically on the customer journey and their transformation, you know, we've been reporting on Silicon angle in theCUBE in the past couple weeks in a big way that the ops teams are now the new devs, right? I mean that sounds a little bit weird, but IT operations is now part of a lot more DataOps, security, writing code, composing. You know, with open source, a lot of great things are changing. Can you share specifically what customers are looking for when you say, as you guys come in and assess their needs, what are they doing, what are some of the things that they're doing with VMware on AWS specifically that's a little bit different? Can you share some of and highlights there? >> That's a great point, because originally, VMware and AWS came from very different directions when it comes to speaking people and customers. So for example, AWS, very developer focused, whereas VMware has a very great footprint in the ITOps area. And usually these are very different teams, groups, different cultures, but it's getting together. However, we always try to address the customer needs, right? There are customers that want to build up a new application from the scratch and build resiliency, availability, recoverability, scalability into the application. But there are still a lot of customers that say, "Well, we don't have all of the skills to redevelop everything to refactor an application to make it highly available. So we want to have all of that as a service. Recoverability as a service, scalability as a service. We want to have this from the infrastructure." That was one of the unique selling points for VMware on-premise and now we are bringing this into the cloud. >> Samir, talk about your perspective. I want to get your thoughts, and not to take a tangent, but we had covered the AWS re:MARS, actually it was Amazon re:MARS, machine learning automation, robotics and space was really kind of the confluence of industrial IoT, software, physical. And so when you look at like the IT operations piece becoming more software, you're seeing things about automation, but the skill gap is huge. So you're seeing low code, no code, automation, you know, "Hey Alexa, deploy a Kubernetes cluster." Yeah, I mean that's coming, right? So we're seeing this kind of operating automation meets higher level services, meets workloads. Can you unpack that and share your opinion on what you see there from an Amazon perspective and how it relates to this? >> Yeah. Yeah, totally, right? And you know, look at it from the point of view where we said this is a jointly engineered solution, but it's not migrating to one option or the other option, right? It's more or less together. So even with VMware Cloud on AWS, yes it is utilizing AWS infrastructure, but your environment is connected to that AWS VPC in your AWS account. So if you want to leverage any of the native AWS services, so any of the 200 plus AWS services, you have that option to do so. So that's going to give you that power to do certain things, such as, for example, like how you mentioned with IoT, even with utilizing Alexa, or if there's any other service that you want to utilize, that's the joining point between both of the offerings right off the top. Though with digital transformation, right, you have to think about where it's not just about the technology, right? There's also where you want to drive growth in the underlying technology even in your business. Leaders are looking to reinvent their business, they're looking to take different steps as far as pursuing a new strategy, maybe it's a process, maybe it's with the people, the culture, like how you said before, where people are coming in from a different background, right? They may not be used to the cloud, they may not be used to AWS services, but now you have that capability to mesh them together. >> Okay. >> Then also- >> Oh, go ahead, finish your thought. >> No, no, no, I was going to say what it also comes down to is you need to think about the operating model too, where it is a shift, right? Especially for that vStor admin that's used to their on-premises environment. Now with VMware Cloud on AWS, you have that ability to leverage a cloud, but the investment that you made and certain things as far as automation, even with monitoring, even with logging, you still have that methodology where you can utilize that in VMware Cloud on AWS too. >> Daniel, I want to get your thoughts on this because at Explore and after the event, as we prep for CubeCon and re:Invent coming up, the big AWS show, I had a couple conversations with a lot of the VMware customers and operators, and it's like hundreds of thousands of users and millions of people talking about and peaked on VMware, interested in VMware. The common thread was one person said, "I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to put my career in the next 10 to 15 years." And they've been very comfortable with VMware in the past, very loyal, and they're kind of talking about, I'm going to be the next cloud, but there's no like role yet. Architects, is it solution architect, SRE? So you're starting to see the psychology of the operators who now are going to try to make these career decisions. Like what am I going to work on? And then it's kind of fuzzy, but I want to get your thoughts, how would you talk to that persona about the future of VMware on, say, cloud for instance? What should they be thinking about? What's the opportunity? And what's going to happen? >> So digital transformation definitely is a huge change for many organizations and leaders are perfectly aware of what that means. And that also means to some extent, concerns with your existing employees. Concerns about do I have to relearn everything? Do I have to acquire new skills and trainings? Is everything worthless I learned over the last 15 years of my career? And the answer is to make digital transformation a success, we need not just to talk about technology, but also about process, people, and culture. And this is where VMware really can help because if you are applying VMware Cloud on AWS to your infrastructure, to your existing on-premise infrastructure, you do not need to change many things. You can use the same tools and skills, you can manage your virtual machines as you did in your on-premise environment, you can use the same managing and monitoring tools, if you have written, and many customers did this, if you have developed hundreds of scripts that automate tasks and if you know how to troubleshoot things, then you can use all of that in VMware Cloud on AWS. And that gives not just leaders, but also the architects at customers, the operators at customers, the confidence in such a complex project. >> The consistency, very key point, gives them the confidence to go. And then now that once they're confident, they can start committing themselves to new things. Samir, you're reacting to this because on your side, you've got higher level services, you've got more performance at the hardware level. I mean, a lot improvements. So, okay, nothing's changed, I can still run my job, now I got goodness on the other side. What's the upside? What's in it for the customer there? >> Yeah, so I think what it comes down to is they've already been so used to or entrenched with that VMware admin mentality, right? But now extending that to the cloud, that's where now you have that bridge between VMware Cloud on AWS to bridge that VMware knowledge with that AWS knowledge. So I will look at it from the point of view where now one has that capability and that ability to just learn about the cloud. But if they're comfortable with certain aspects, no one's saying you have to change anything. You can still leverage that, right? But now if you want to utilize any other AWS service in conjunction with that VM that resides maybe on-premises or even in VMware Cloud on AWS, you have that option to do so. So think about it where you have that ability to be someone who's curious and wants to learn. And then if you want to expand on the skills, you certainly have that capability to do so. >> Great stuff, I love that. Now that we're peeking behind the curtain here, I'd love to have you guys explain, 'cause people want to know what's goes on behind the scenes. How does innovation get happen? How does it happen with the relationships? Can you take us through a day in the life of kind of what goes on to make innovation happen with the joint partnership? Do you guys just have a Zoom meeting, do you guys fly out, you write code, go do you ship things? I mean, I'm making it up, but you get the idea. How does it work? What's going on behind the scenes? >> So we hope to get more frequently together in-person, but of course we had some difficulties over the last two to three years. So we are very used to Zoom conferences and Slack meetings. You always have to have the time difference in mind if you are working globally together. But what we try, for example, we have regular assembles now also in-person, geo-based, so for AMEA, for the Americas, for APJ. And we are bringing up interesting customer situations, architectural bits and pieces together. We are discussing it always to share and to contribute to our community. >> What's interesting, you know, as events are coming back, Samir, before you weigh in this, I'll comment as theCUBE's been going back out to events, we're hearing comments like, "What pandemic? We were more productive in the pandemic." I mean, developers know how to work remotely and they've been on all the tools there, but then they get in-person, they're happy to see people, but no one's really missed the beat. I mean, it seems to be very productive, you know, workflow, not a lot of disruption. More, if anything, productivity gains. >> Agreed, right? I think one of the key things to keep in mind is even if you look at AWS's, and even Amazon's leadership principles, right? Customer obsession, that's key. VMware is carrying that forward as well. Where we are working with our customers, like how Daniel said and meant earlier, right? We might have meetings at different time zones, maybe it's in-person, maybe it's virtual, but together we're working to listen to our customers. You know, we're taking and capturing that feedback to drive innovation in VMware Cloud on AWS as well. But one of the key things to keep in mind is yes, there has been the pandemic, we might have been disconnected to a certain extent, but together through technology, we've been able to still communicate, work with our customers, even with VMware in between, with AWS and whatnot, we had that flexibility to innovate and continue that innovation. So even if you look at it from the point of view, right? VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts, that was something that customers have been asking for. We've been able to leverage the feedback and then continue to drive innovation even around VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts. So even with the on-premises environment, if you're looking to handle maybe data sovereignty or compliance needs, maybe you have low latency requirements, that's where certain advancements come into play, right? So the key thing is always to maintain that communication track. >> In our last segment we did here on this Showcase, we listed the accomplishments and they were pretty significant. I mean geo, you got the global rollouts of the relationship. It's just really been interesting and people can reference that, we won't get into it here. But I will ask you guys to comment on, as you guys continue to evolve the relationship, what's in it for the customer? What can they expect next? Because again, I think right now, we're at an inflection point more than ever. What can people expect from the relationship and what's coming up with re:Invent? Can you share a little bit of kind of what's coming down the pike? >> So one of the most important things we have announced this year, and we will continue to evolve into that direction, is independent scale of storage. That absolutely was one of the most important items customer asked for over the last years. Whenever you are requiring additional storage to host your virtual machines, you usually in VMware Cloud on AWS, you have to add additional nodes. Now we have three different node types with different ratios of compute, storage, and memory. But if you only require additional storage, you always have to get also additional compute and memory and you have to pay for it. And now with two solutions which offer choice for the customers, like FS6 wanted a ONTAP and VMware Cloud Flex Storage, you now have two cost effective opportunities to add storage to your virtual machines. And that offers opportunities for other instance types maybe that don't have local storage. We are also very, very keen looking forward to announcements, exciting announcements, at the upcoming events. >> Samir, what's your reaction take on what's coming down on your side? >> Yeah, I think one of the key things to keep in mind is we're looking to help our customers be agile and even scaled with their needs, right? So with VMware Cloud on AWS, that's one of the key things that comes to mind, right? There are going to be announcements, innovations, and whatnot with upcoming events. But together, we're able to leverage that to advance VMware cloud on AWS. To Daniel's point, storage for example, even with host offerings. And then even with decoupling storage from compute and memory, right? Now you have the flexibility where you can do all of that. So to look at it from the standpoint where now with 21 regions where we have VMware Cloud on AWS available as well, where customers can utilize that as needed when needed, right? So it comes down to, you know, transformation will be there. Yes, there's going to be maybe where workloads have to be adapted where they're utilizing certain AWS services, but you have that flexibility and option to do so. And I think with the continuing events, that's going to give us the options to even advance our own services together. >> Well you guys are in the middle of it, you're in the trenches, you're making things happen, you've got a team of people working together. My final question is really more of a kind of a current situation, kind of future evolutionary thing that you haven't seen this before. I want to get both of your reaction to it. And we've been bringing this up in the open conversations on theCUBE is in the old days, let's go back this generation, you had ecosystems, you had VMware had an ecosystem, AWS had an ecosystem. You know, we have a product, you have a product, biz dev deals happen, people sign relationships, and they do business together and they sell each other's products or do some stuff. Now it's more about architecture, 'cause we're now in a distributed large scale environment where the role of ecosystems are intertwining and you guys are in the middle of two big ecosystems. You mentioned channel partners, you both have a lot of partners on both sides, they come together. So you have this now almost a three dimensional or multidimensional ecosystem interplay. What's your thoughts on this? Because it's about the architecture, integration is a value, not so much innovations only. You got to do innovation, but when you do innovation, you got to integrate it, you got to connect it. So how do you guys see this as an architectural thing, start to see more technical business deals? >> So we are removing dependencies from individual ecosystems and from individual vendors. So a customer no longer has to decide for one vendor and then it is a very expensive and high effort project to move away from that vendor, which ties customers even closer to specific vendors. We are removing these obstacles. So with VMware Cloud on AWS, moving to the cloud, firstly it's not a dead end. If you decide at one point in time because of latency requirements or maybe some compliance requirements, you need to move back into on-premise, you can do this. If you decide you want to stay with some of your services on-premise and just run a couple of dedicated services in the cloud, you can do this and you can man manage it through a single pane of glass. That's quite important. So cloud is no longer a dead end, it's no longer a binary decision, whether it's on-premise or the cloud, it is the cloud. And the second thing is you can choose the best of both worlds, right? If you are migrating virtual machines that have been running in your on-premise environment to VMware Cloud on AWS either way in a very, very fast cost effective and safe way, then you can enrich, later on enrich these virtual machines with services that are offered by AWS, more than 200 different services ranging from object-based storage, load balancing, and so on. So it's an endless, endless possibility. >> We call that super cloud in the way that we generically defining it where everyone's innovating, but yet there's some common services. But the differentiation comes from innovation where the lock in is the value, not some spec, right? Samir, this is kind of where cloud is right now. You guys are not commodity, amazon's completely differentiating, but there's some commodity things happen. You got storage, you got compute, but then you got now advances in all areas. But partners innovate with you on their terms. >> Absolutely. >> And everybody wins. >> Yeah, I 100% agree with you. I think one of the key things, you know, as Daniel mentioned before, is where it's a cross education where there might be someone who's more proficient on the cloud side with AWS, maybe more proficient with the VMware's technology. But then for partners, right? They bridge that gap as well where they come in and they might have a specific niche or expertise where their background, where they can help our customers go through that transformation. So then that comes down to, hey, maybe I don't know how to connect to the cloud, maybe I don't know what the networking constructs are, maybe I can leverage that partner. That's one aspect to go about it. Now maybe you migrated that workload to VMware Cloud on AWS. Maybe you want to leverage any of the native AWS services or even just off the top, 200 plus AWS services, right? But it comes down to that skillset, right? So again, solutions architecture at the back of the day, end of the day, what it comes down to is being able to utilize the best of both worlds. That's what we're giving our customers at the end of the day. >> I mean, I just think it's a refactoring and innovation opportunity at all levels. I think now more than ever, you can take advantage of each other's ecosystems and partners and technologies and change how things get done with keeping the consistency. I mean, Daniel, you nailed that, right? I mean you don't have to do anything. You still run it. Just spear the way you're working on it and now do new things. This is kind of a cultural shift. >> Yeah, absolutely. And if you look, not every customer, not every organization has the resources to refactor and re-platform everything. And we give them a very simple and easy way to move workloads to the cloud. Simply run them and at the same time, they can free up resources to develop new innovations and grow their business. >> Awesome. Samir, thank you for coming on. Daniel, thank you for coming to Germany. >> Thank you. Oktoberfest, I know it's evening over there, weekend's here. And thank you for spending the time. Samir, give you the final word. AWS re:Invent's coming up. We're preparing, we're going to have an exclusive with Adam, with Fryer, we'd do a curtain raise, and do a little preview. What's coming down on your side with the relationship and what can we expect to hear about what you got going on at re:Invent this year? The big show? >> Yeah, so I think Daniel hit upon some of the key points, but what I will say is we do have, for example, specific sessions, both that VMware's driving and then also that AWS is driving. We do have even where we have what are called chalk talks. So I would say, and then even with workshops, right? So even with the customers, the attendees who are there, whatnot, if they're looking to sit and listen to a session, yes that's there, but if they want to be hands-on, that is also there too. So personally for me as an IT background, been in sysadmin world and whatnot, being hands-on, that's one of the key things that I personally am looking forward. But I think that's one of the key ways just to learn and get familiar with the technology. >> Yeah, and re:Invent's an amazing show for the in-person. You guys nail it every year. We'll have three sets this year at theCUBE and it's becoming popular. We have more and more content. You guys got live streams going on, a lot of content, a lot of media. So thanks for sharing that. Samir, Daniel, thank you for coming on on this part of the Showcase episode of really the customer successes with VMware Cloud on AWS, really accelerating business transformation with AWS and VMware. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>>Hey guys. Welcome back to the Cubes coverage of Ansible Fast 2022. This is day two of our wall to wall coverage. Lisa Martin here with John Ferer. John, we're seeing this world where companies are saying if we can't automate it, we need to, The automation market is transforming. There's been a lot of buzz about that. A lot of technical chops here at Ansible Fest. >>Yeah, I mean, we've got a great guest here coming on Cuba alumni, Dean Newman, future room. He travels every event he's got. He's got his nose to the grindstone ear to the ground. Great analysis. I mean, we're gonna get into why it's important. How does Ansible fit into the big picture? It's really gonna be a great segment. The >>Board do it well, John just did my job for me about, I'll introduce him again. Daniel Newman, one of our alumni is Back Principal Analyst at Future and Research. Great to have you back on the cube. >>Yeah, it's good to join you. Excited to be back in Chicago. I don't know if you guys knew this, but for 40 years, this was my hometown. Now I don't necessarily brag about that anymore. I'm, I live in Austin now. I'm a proud Texan, but I did grow up here actually out in the west suburbs. I got off the plane, I felt the cold air, and I almost turned around and said, Does this thing go back? Yeah. Cause I'm, I've, I've grown thin skin. It did not take me long. I, I like the warm, Come on, >>I'm the saying, I'm from California and I got off the plane Monday. I went, Whoa, I need a coat. And I was in Miami a week ago and it was 85. >>Oh goodness. >>Crazy. So you just flew in. Talk about what's going on, your take on, on Ansible. We've talked a lot with the community, with partners, with customers, a lot of momentum. The flywheel of the community is going around and round and round. What are some of your perspectives that you see? >>Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's you know, I'm gonna take a quick step back. We're entering an era where companies are gonna have to figure out how to do more with less. Okay? We've got exponential data growth, we've got more architectural complexity than ever before. Companies are trying to discern how to deal with many different environments. And just at a macro level, Red Hat is one of the companies that is almost certainly gonna be part of this multi-cloud hybrid cloud era. So that should initially give a lot of confidence to the buying group that are looking at how to automate their environments. You're automating workflows, but really with, with Ansible, we're focused on automating it, automating the network. So as companies are kind of dig out, we're entering this recessionary period, Okay, we're gonna call it what it is. The first thing that they're gonna look at is how do we tech our way out of it? >>I had a wonderful one-on-one conversation with ServiceNow ceo, Bill McDermott, and we saw ServiceNow was in focus this morning in the initial opening session. This is the integration, right? Ansible integrating with ServiceNow. What we need to see is infrastructure automation, layers and applications working in concert to basically enable enterprises to be up and running all the time. Let's first fix the problems that are most common. Let's, let's automate 'em, let's script them. And then at some point, let's have them self resolving, which we saw at the end with Project Wisdom. So as I see it, automation is that layer that enterprises, boards, technologists, all can agree upon are basically here's something that can make our business more efficient, more profitable, and it's gonna deal with this short term downturn in a way that tech is actually gonna be the answer. Just like Bill and I said, let's tech our way out of it. >>If you look at the Red Hat being bought by ibm, you see Project Wisdom Project, not a product, it's a project. Project Wisdom is the confluence of research and practitioners kind of coming together with ai. So bringing AI power to the Ansible is interesting. Red Hat, Linux, Rel OpenShift, I mean, Red Hat's kind of position, isn't it? Kind of be in that right spot where a puck might be coming maybe. I mean, what do you think? >>Yeah, as analysts, we're really good at predicting the, the recent past. It's a joke I always like to make, but Red Hat's been building toward the future. I think for some time. Project Wisdom, first of all, I was very encouraged with it. One of the things that many people in the market probably have commented on is how close is IBM in Red Hat? Now, again, it's a $34 billion acquisition that was made, but boy, the cultures of these two companies couldn't be more different. And of course, Red Hat kind of carries this, this sort of middle ground layer where they provide a lot of value in services to companies that maybe don't use IBM at, at, for the public cloud especially. This was a great indication of how you can take the power of IBM's research, which of course has some of the world's most prolific data scientists, engineers, building things for the future. >>You know, you see things like yesterday they launched a, you know, an AI solution. You know, they're building chips, semiconductors, and technologies that are gonna power the future. They're building quantum. Long story short, they have these really brilliant technologists here that could be adding value to Red Hat. And I don't know that the, the world has fully been able to appreciate that. So when, when they got on stage and they kind of say, Here's how IBM is gonna help power the next generation, I was immediately very encouraged by the fact that the two companies are starting to show signs of how they can collaborate to offer value to their customers. Because of course, as John kind of started off with, his question is, they've kind of been where the puck is going. Open source, Linux hybrid cloud, This is the future. In the future. Every company's multi-cloud. And I said in a one-on-one meeting this morning, every company is going to probably have workloads on every cloud, especially large enterprises. >>Yeah. And I think that the secret's gonna be how do you make that evolve? And one of the things that's coming out of the industry over the years, and looking back as historians, we would say, gotta have standards. Well, with cloud, now people standards might slow things down. So you're gonna start to figure out how does the community and the developers are thinking it'll be the canary in the coal mine. And I'd love to get your reaction on that, because we got Cuban next week. You're seeing people kind of align and try to win the developers, which, you know, I always laugh cuz like, you don't wanna win, you want, you want them on your team, but you don't wanna win them. It's like a, it's like, so developers will decide, >>Well, I, I think what's happening is there are multiple forces that are driving product adoption. And John, getting the developers to support the utilization and adoption of any sort of stack goes a long way. We've seen how sticky it can be, how sticky it is with many of the public cloud pro providers, how sticky it is with certain applications. And it's gonna be sticky here in these interim layers like open source automation. And Red Hat does have a very compelling developer ecosystem. I mean, if you sat in the keynote this morning, I said, you know, if you're not a developer, some of this stuff would've been fairly difficult to understand. But as a developer you saw them laughing at jokes because, you know, what was it the whole part about, you know, it didn't actually, the ping wasn't a success, right? And everybody started laughing and you know, I, I was sitting next to someone who wasn't technical and, and you know, she kinda goes, What, what was so funny? >>I'm like, well, he said it worked. Do you see that? It said zero data trans or whatever that was. So, but if I may just really quickly, one, one other thing I did wanna say about Project Wisdom, John, that the low code and no code to the full stack developer is a continuum that every technology company is gonna have to think deeply about as we go to the future. Because the people that tend to know the process that needs to be automated tend to not be able to code it. And so we've seen every automation company on the planet sort of figuring out and how to address this low code, no code environment. I think the power of this partnership between IBM Research and Red Hat is that they have an incredibly deep bench of capabilities to do things like, like self-training. Okay, you've got so much data, such significant size models and accuracy is a problem, but we need systems that can self teach. They need to be able self-teach, self learn, self-heal so that we can actually get to the crux of what automation is supposed to do for us. And that's supposed to take the mundane out and enable those humans that know how to code to work on the really difficult and hard stuff because the automation's not gonna replace any of that stuff anytime soon. >>So where do you think looking at, at the partnership and the evolution of it between IBM research and Red Hat, and you're saying, you know, they're, they're, they're finally getting this synergy together. How is it gonna affect the future of automation and how is it poised to give them a competitive advantage in the market? >>Yeah, I think the future or the, the competitive space is that, that is, is ecosystems and integration. So yesterday you heard, you know, Red Hat Ansible focusing on a partnership with aws. You know, this week I was at Oracle Cloud world and they're talking about running their database in aws. And, and so I'm kind of going around to get to the answer to your question, but I think collaboration is sort of the future of growth and innovation. You need multiple companies working towards the same goal to put gobs of resources, that's the technical term, gobs of resources towards doing really hard things. And so Ansible has been very successful in automating and securing and focusing on very certain specific workloads that need to be automated, but we need more and there's gonna be more data created. The proliferation, especially the edge. So you saw all this stuff about Rockwell, How do you really automate the edge at scale? You need large models that are able to look and consume a ton of data that are gonna be continuously learning, and then eventually they're gonna be able to deliver value to these companies at scale. IBM plus Red Hat have really great resources to drive this kind of automation. Having said that, I see those partnerships with aws, with Microsoft, with ibm, with ServiceNow. It's not one player coming to the table. It's a lot of players. They >>Gotta be Switzerland. I mean they have the Switzerland. I mean, but the thing about the Amazon deal is like that marketplace integration essentially puts Ansible once a client's in on, on marketplace and you get the central on the same bill. I mean, that's gonna be a money maker for Ansible. I >>Couldn't agree more, John. I think being part of these public cloud marketplaces is gonna be so critical and having Ansible land and of course AWS largest public cloud by volume, largest marketplace today. And my opinion is that partnership will be extensible to the other public clouds over time. That just makes sense. And so you start, you know, I think we've learned this, John, you've done enough of these interviews that, you know, you start with the biggest, with the highest distribution and probability rates, which in this case right now is aws, but it'll land on in Azure, it'll land in Google and it'll continue to, to grow. And that kind of adoption, streamlining make it consumption more consumable. That's >>Always, I think, Red Hat and Ansible, you nailed it on that whole point about multicloud, because what happens then is why would I want to alienate a marketplace audience to use my product when it could span multiple environments, right? So you saw, you heard that Stephanie yesterday talk about they, they didn't say multiple clouds, multiple environments. And I think that is where I think I see this layer coming in because some companies just have to work on all clouds. That's the way it has to be. Why wouldn't you? >>Yeah. Well every, every company will probably end up with some workloads in every cloud. I just think that is the fate. Whether it's how we consume our SaaS, which a lot of people don't think about, but it always tends to be running on another hyperscale public cloud. Most companies tend to be consuming some workloads from every cloud. It's not always direct. So they might have a single control plane that they tend to lead the way with, but that is only gonna continue to change. And every public cloud company seems to be working on figuring out what their niche is. What is the one thing that sort of drives whether, you know, it is, you know, traditional, we know the commoditization of traditional storage network compute. So now you're seeing things like ai, things like automation, things like the edge collaboration tools, software being put into the, to the forefront because it's a different consumption model, it's a different margin and economic model. And then of course it gives competitive advantages. And we've seen that, you know, I came back from Google Cloud next and at Google Cloud next, you know, you can see they're leaning into the data AI cloud. I mean, that is their focus, like data ai. This is how we get people to come in and start using Google, who in most cases, they're probably using AWS or Microsoft today. >>It's a great specialty cloud right there. That's a big use case. I can run data on Google and run something on aws. >>And then of course you've got all kinds of, and this is a little off topic, but you got sovereignty, compliance, regulatory that tends to drive different clouds over, you know, global clouds like Tencent and Alibaba. You know, if your workloads are in China, >>Well, this comes back down at least to the whole complexity issue. I mean, it has to get complex before it gets easier. And I think that's what we're seeing companies opportunities like Ansible to be like, Okay, tame, tame the complexity. >>Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree with you. I mean, look, when I was watching the demonstrations today, my take is there's so many kind of simple, repeatable and mundane tasks in everyday life that enterprises need to, to automate. Do that first, you know? Then the second thing is working on how do you create self-healing, self-teaching, self-learning, You know, and, and I realize I'm a little broken of a broken record at this, but these are those first things to fix. You know, I know we want to jump to the future where we automate every task and we have multi-term conversational AI that is booking our calendars and driving our cars for us. But in the first place, we just need to say, Hey, the network's down. Like, let's make sure that we can quickly get access back to that network again. Let's make sure that we're able to reach our different zones and locations. Let's make sure that robotic arm is continually doing the thing it's supposed to be doing on the schedule that it's been committed to. That's first. And then we can get to some of these really intensive deep metaverse state of automation that we talk about. Self-learning, data replication, synthetic data. I'm just gonna throw terms around. So I sound super smart. >>In your customer conversations though, from an looking at the automation journey, are you finding most of them, or some percentage is, is wanting to go directly into those really complex projects rather than starting with the basics? >>I don't know that you're, you're finding that the customers want to do that? I think it's the architecture that often ends up being a problem is we as, as the vendor side, will tend to talk about the most complex problems that they're able to solve before companies have really started solving the, the immediate problems that are before them. You know, it's, we talk about, you know, the metaphor of the cloud is a great one, but we talk about the cloud, like it's ubiquitous. Yeah. But less than 30% of our workloads are in the public cloud. Automation is still in very early days and in many industries it's fairly nascent. And doing things like self-healing networks is still something that hasn't even been able to be deployed on an enterprise-wide basis, let alone at the industrial layer. Maybe at the company's on manufacturing PLAs or in oil fields. Like these are places that have difficult to reach infrastructure that needs to be running all the time. We need to build systems and leverage the power of automation to keep that stuff up and running. That's, that's just business value, which by the way is what makes the world go running. Yeah. Awesome. >>A lot of customers and users are struggling to find what's the value in automating certain process, What's the ROI in it? How do you help them get there so that they understand how to start, but truly to make it a journey that is a success. >>ROI tends to be a little bit nebulous. It's one of those things I think a lot of analysts do. Things like TCO analysis Yeah. Is an ROI analysis. I think the businesses actually tend to know what the ROI is gonna be because they can basically look at something like, you know, when you have an msa, here's the downtime, right? Business can typically tell you, you know, I guarantee you Amazon could say, Look for every second of downtime, this is how much commerce it costs us. Yeah. A company can generally say, if it was, you know, we had the energy, the windmills company, like they could say every minute that windmill isn't running, we're creating, you know, X amount less energy. So there's a, there's a time value proposition that companies can determine. Now the question is, is about the deployment. You know, we, I've seen it more nascent, like cybersecurity can tend to be nascent. >>Like what does a breach cost us? Well there's, you know, specific costs of actually getting the breach cured or paying for the cybersecurity services. And then there's the actual, you know, ephemeral costs of brand damage and of risks and customer, you know, negative customer sentiment that potentially comes out of it. With automation, I think it's actually pretty well understood. They can look at, hey, if we can do this many more cycles, if we can keep our uptime at this rate, if we can reduce specific workforce, and I'm always very careful about this because I don't believe automation is about replacement or displacement, but I do think it is about up-leveling and it is about helping people work on things that are complex problems that machines can't solve. I mean, said that if you don't need to put as many bodies on something that can be immediately returned to the organization's bottom line, or those resources can be used for something more innovative. So all those things are pretty well understood. Getting the automation to full deployment at scale, though, I think what often, it's not that roi, it's the timeline that gets misunderstood. Like all it projects, they tend to take longer. And even when things are made really easy, like with what Project Wisdom is trying to do, semantically enable through low code, no code and the ability to get more accuracy, it just never tends to happen quite as fast. So, but that's not an automation problem, That's just the crux of it. >>Okay. What are some of the, the next things on your plate? You're quite a, a busy guy. We, you, you were at Google, you were at Oracle, you're here today. What are some of the next things that we can expect from Daniel Newman? >>Oh boy, I moved Really, I do move really quickly and thank you for that. Well, I'm very excited. I'm taking a couple of work personal days. I don't know if you're a fan, but F1 is this weekend. I'm the US Grand Prix. Oh, you're gonna Austin. So I will be, I live in Austin. Oh. So I will be in Austin. I will be at the Grand Prix. It is work because it, you know, I'm going with a number of our clients that have, have sponsorships there. So I'll be spending time figuring out how the data that comes off of these really fun cars is meaningfully gonna change the world. I'll actually be talking to Splunk CEO at the, at the race on Saturday morning. But yeah, I got a lot of great things. I got a, a conversation coming up with the CEO of Twilio next week. We got a huge week of earnings ahead and so I do a lot of work on that. So I'll be on Bloomberg next week with Emily Chang talking about Microsoft and Google. Love talking to Emily, but just as much love being here on, on the queue with you >>Guys. Well we like to hear that. Who you're rooting for F one's your favorite driver. I, >>I, I like Lando. Do you? I'm Norris. I know it's not necessarily a fan favorite, but I'm a bit of a McLaren guy. I mean obviously I have clients with Oracle and Red Bull with Ball Common Ferrari. I've got Cly Splunk and so I have clients in all. So I'm cheering for all of 'em. And on Sunday I'm actually gonna be in the Williams Paddock. So I don't, I don't know if that's gonna gimme me a chance to really root for anything, but I'm always, always a big fan of the underdog. So maybe Latifi. >>There you go. And the data that comes off the how many central unbeliev, the car, it's crazy's. Such a scientific sport. Believable. >>We could have Christian, I was with Christian Horner yesterday, the team principal from Reside. Oh yeah, yeah. He was at the Oracle event and we did a q and a with him and with the CMO of, it's so much fun. F1 has been unbelievable to watch the momentum and what a great, you know, transitional conversation to to, to CX and automation of experiences for fans as the fan has grown by hundreds of percent. But just to circle back full way, I was very encouraged with what I saw today. Red Hat, Ansible, IBM Strong partnership. I like what they're doing in their expanded ecosystem. And automation, by the way, is gonna be one of the most robust investment areas over the next few years, even as other parts of tech continue to struggle that in cyber security. >>You heard it here. First guys, investment in automation and cyber security straight from two analysts. I got to sit between. For our guests and John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching The Cube Live from Chicago, Ansible Fest 22. John and I will be back after a short break. SO'S stick around.

>> Male: TheCUBE presents, UIPATH, Forward 5 brought to you by, UIPATH. >> Okay the party has started here at forward 5 UIPATH big customer event if you're watching the cube. We're wrapping up day one with the co-CE0 segment. Daniel Dines is here. He's the founder and Co-CEO of UIPATH and Rob Enslin, is co-CEO. Gents, great to see you. Thanks for spending some time with us. I know you're super busy. >> Thanks Dave. >> So I've been looking forward to this. Daniel you know I've followed the company for a long time. The really interesting path you took, to get to where you are today. How did you guys meet? And why did you decide to hire Rob? >> Male: (laughs) >> Rob: Well let me start. I uh, I was looking for a partner. Actually, in our work to your stand here, we are talking about how, how you feel in this job. You feel so alone. Because you are the center of all pressure points. And having a partner, having someone that has your back, it's kind of awesome. So I was looking for a partner. And our current friend, Carl Escenbach, he introduced us to each other, and we instantly clicked. And this is the type of job where it's uh either work well or it doesn't. It cannot be anything in the middle. >> Right, okay with Carl, we know Carl well. Awesome operator. Knows the business super well. So Rob, what attracted you to UIPATH? You had a great situation at google. You guys were growing like crazy. Why did you decide to come here? What did you see that attracted you? >> Yeah you know when I, when I went to google, I went to google because I really believed that data and AI was necessary for companies. And business is to be competitive in the future. And we did some great stuff at google cloud in the 3 years. But I knew UIPATH from a couple of years ago when they were mainly a RPA space. And I just felt that there was a place in time when automation was going expand. And as I sat down with Carl a couple of times, spoke to carl. And then I sat down with Daniel, I knew that there was something special with UIPATH, that could be a generational opportunity. Not any for myself but for the company in the future. And then I, you know I got to know Daniel. And at this stage of my career I was like, I'm pretty fussy about what I want to do and what I want and where I want to go. First of all, I want to go to a company that had great product, had a great culture, and I wanted to work with somebody that we could shake the future together and you know, Daniel and I just hit it off from the very first time we met. He got to meet my family, my dogs and we did the whole, we did the whole courting thing before we actually decided this was going to be a good thing for both of us. >> Dave: That's good. >> Rob: Yeah. >> Dave: You got to meet the family. That's very good. >> We just had, John Furrier and I just had, Mohit Aron and Sanjay Poonen into out studio. Cause Mohit, you know, formal google. Long time. And they decided to kind of split duties. Mohit's going into product, he didn't keep his CEO title. He walked. How are you guys splitting you time? What are each of you going to, responsible for? >> Daniel: Well its, its kind of similar. On a day by day operation I, I rely heavily on Rob. We do it together. Strategic decisions about the company's destiny. I'm doing mostly the product these days. Which is a big relief for me. And I think we also split a bit of customers visit. Which is great. I still enjoy meeting customers. I need, customers are food for my cause. >> Dave: (laughs) yeah and your awesome product visionary. You've been there since day one. Now Rob, you said in the key note today that you've seen around about a hundred customers. You've transverse the world. What did you learn from them that informed you? That gave you confidence that the the move to the internet platform, even though you had already started that. >> Male: Yeah. >> But you're really doubling down on that >> Rob: You know when I... >> from a stand point. >> Rob: You know Dave, when you think about it, like I was, I was so impressed that Daniel had the vision to create a platform 3 years ago. >> Dave: Yeah. >> All right. And as we went around the world. As I went around the world, and it was one of the very first things I've seen. I've got to understand how customers see UIPATH, from their advantage point. What are they looking for from us? Why is this company, why doe customers like this company so much? And as I went around the world. I went to Asia a couple, I went to Asia, Australia, Singapore, Japan. I was in Europe twice. We did the trip together. We went to visit customers. And it was very much the same thing. Helps us expand automation faster. And we are so surprise, at the break of your platform. We never knew that. And so it kind of just had, for me, it was conviction. It's like, this walls is the right decision you've made. There's so much opportunity there. And that's, you know that's kind of what I've learned through the last four five months. >> Dave: Now as you know Daniel, I've written a lot about your company. One of the things I've said is that, that start ups, if I can call you that back pre-IPO, typically don't have as much international exposure as UIPATH had. I mean you sort of, you sort of started as an international company and became more US centric. You said, in the, in the key note today, you're talking to Ray Wong about people may don't understand that challenges of FX. Point being, when you convert international dollars into US dollars there are less of them cause the dollars stronger. But still, I've always felt like that international footprint is an advantage. Rob you came from SAP, you know, again European based company. I don't, (stutters), do you regret that? Now? I mean I know it's technical, I'm sure you don't, but talk about that sort of international exposure? Why that's a long term benefit. >> Well, you, first of all, you expand faster. I think we expanded faster than our competition because our global footprint was larger. And we had the courage. Go in Japan, for instance. Everybody told me, it's impossible to make for such a small starter. It's impossible to make a business in Japan. But we didn't believe it. We're just crazy and we went there, and be built a very sizable business in Japan. Fifty-five percent of our revenue, even today, it's outside U.S. Now of course that has a down side. When uh, When the local currencies, you know, are losing the value compared to the dollars, we're impacted. As we go to... to investors, until now, so we are seeing like a (indistinct) in terms of ARI. It's huge. Only because (indistinct) and losing the business in Russia. But it still, it's the strength of our company. Things will come back. And then, you know, the growth engine will re-accelerate again. >> Dave: Yeah but when the dollars weakens that'll be in your favor. Rob I want to pick up on something you said today in your keynote. You went back and started, you know the cycles of ERP and you know, internet, et cetera. I kind of have a love hate with ERP. I have to be honest. >> Male: (laughing) >> But it, but but (chuckles) but if I go back to that. Late eighties nineties, you wouldn't have be able to pick SAP as the winner. And then SAP emerged. You know, very clearly. But the more interesting thing, is that the customers who are implementing ERP well. The practitioners did better than their peers, and dominated their industries. And their stocks went up. Their evaluations went up. Different worlds obviously but, do you see the same thing happening with RPA and automation? What gives you confidence that that's the case? >> I absolutely do see the same thing happening with automation and RPA being a part of, in being a part of that. The reason, the reason I believe that is speed is so critical. (stutters) And if you think about how hard it is for a CIO or a c level executive to consume the technology coming at them, plus all the changes in the world being thrown at them. It's compiling and compiling and compiling. We have an incredible solution, that can help companies. And there comes certain times, the love outcomes to the business. Like no one else gets. And when I see that, I view that as just like the beginning of what's going to happen in the future so, in many ways, and I've said this to many of my friends, it feels like 1992, 1993 to me. And it's interesting because no one really understood then why SAP would be great in 1992 and 93. And they got a couple of things right. They got the eco system right. Their new partners were important. And the knew they needed to drive business outcome for companies, in which they did. And so I feel like we are in a very similar place. Very different technology obviously. And the speed of change now is so dramatic, compared to what it was. And there's very few technology that can provide that level of speed and accomodation to their customers. >> All right, let's talk about priorities. You guys got a lot of work to do and you've, you've laid it out to the financial community. You've got to have profitable growth, because of FX, it part, you've lowered your forecast. But I think there's some conservative in their as well. Um, but you got to do that balance. You've given some guidance on gross margins. Cloud maybe brings that down a little bit. RnD I saw wide range. Thirteen to seventeen percent. I hope you keep spending on RnD. Big fan of that. You know stock buybacks and, RnD if in your position are going to be better. And the product priorities, continue to build that out. But question, let's start with the product. So you've got an on-prem stack and you've got a cloud stack that's emerging, how do you balance those out? How do you do the integration? You've done a great job with the integration. Does it, are you concerned about your ability to continue to work at that speed with two code bases? I wonder if you could address that? >> Daniel: We've become a cloud first company. We deliver all of our products first in the cloud. We've deliver on the two week (indistinct) in the cloud. So that helps us integrate quite fast. I think we made a very good business decision to build our cloud team in Seattle. In Bellevue to be specific. And we have access to great talent that knows how to build serious cloud service. Which is hard to find dollar. And uh, so, and also we, we have, we benef- one of our only benefits was, we have the really good architecture. We have an architecture that work easily on-prem and on the cloud. And even today, our work flow foundation, our local designers, were easy to modernize. So right now we are launching studio weapon. But behind the scene, it's the same workflow engine. Our customers don't have to rewrite anything. It just works. And it does the same to take our own brand product and brand it in the multicloud. So, it's, there is no friction at all. Actually cloud is just helping us accelerate. But we benefit then again of a really solid architectural foundation. >> Daniel: Architecture matters. We've seen that in this industry. We got the B52s rocking out in the background, I love it, but I've got so many questions for you guys. I want to talk about the go to market. Because Rob, it's obviously a strength of yours. You've come in. You've communicated to the street, that you're reshaping the sales floors. Are they lowering the ratios of sales? People, the customers at the high end, mid range as well, using digital. I mean the numbers are one to ten now. At the top. One to maybe fifty at the mid range. Where are you in terms of that journey? You've got to find people, you got to train them, how do you get the productivity out of those guys? Take us through your thinking there? >> Rob: Yeah firstly, I think we have enough resources. Having resources is not an issue. Um, we have an incredible vehicle to acquire customers inside the company. Our digital sales motion, it's probably the best I've seen. And so we have the ability to acquire customers really fast. And we get the first workload in really fast. The challenge is we need to, we need to be able to drive a (indistinct) model and we graduate customs when we acquire them into the direct sales floors. And then direct sales floors, we're not going to go one to thirty, we're talking one to ten for the direct sales floor. And even the high up in the pyramid, we want to have an even denser model than that. And the whole purpose is to drive the time to consumption much quicker, much faster. So we know exactly if we acquire a customer, will they spend? Do they have a (indistinct) spend? On what level do they have a (indistinct) spend? And therefore when we capture them, we can immediately surround them, and put the right resources so we can grow faster. We think this will have a significant impact on the organization. We'll start to implement certain pieces in the next quarter. Um, things like packaging solutions. Putting them in, enabling the sales organization. And buy the beginning of next year, we'll be ready to actually go full board, globally. We already put some pieces in place when I joined. Chris Weber, my chief business officer, did a great job doing some of those pieces. So we're on the journey already. >> Dave: Yeah and even before you guys were public and you weren't publishing your NRR numbers. Our ETR survey partner, we, we always thought you had very low churn. And I think you broke out just yesterday. The, the NRR for overseas vs U.S, U.S I think was 140 plus percent. >> Male: Yeah >> Very very strong. A little, a little less overseas but the churn is still very low. >> Male: Yep. >> Okay so that's super positive. Customer affinity, I was wanted to code these events. I listen to the key notes very carefully, and then interview customers on the cube, and I try to identify, is there alignment there? And I see very strong alignment, I have to say, and strong customer affinity. So that's in your favor. I have, Daniel, I got another question for you on product. What is Symantec automation? What the heck is that? Can you explain that? I don't understand >> Dave, have you seen the demo in my (indistinct)? >> Dave: You know, I had to leave and do interviews, so I, uh, I missed it. >> I think, I think that demo answer complete your question. So in the s-, you know there saying that great, you can not distinguish great technology by magic. I think technology should be simple. And we, we show today, one of the simplest demo that you can imagine. But it's so, such a complex technology behind the scene, that you also can not imagine. So what was demo? We show how one business user, without any technical skills, can build any type of document. Can be a passport, can be an invoice, can be a legal (indistinct), and just go, "I want to copy data from here, and I want to paste data there". Can be a spreadsheet, can be another obligation, and like a human user, without understanding, without having prior knowledge about data, document layout, about screens, screens layouts, nothing, we analyze real time. Document. We discover, we discover the meaning of the information. We analyze the screen. We understand the screen but we understand the meaning of the screen. And we understand how the information in one side relate to the other side. And we just connects the dots and we copy the information and we paste it. A job that you'll do as a human user, maybe three minutes, is done in ten seconds. This is powerful. >> Yeah that is powerful. Thank you for that. I mean, and you take the date, whether it's transaction data or unstructured data and and and bring meaning out of it. That's powerful. Last question and I'll let you guys go. Rob, you got traders, and you've got long term investors. All right traders going to be defensive, today. I get that. Make the case for UIPATH, for long term investors. >> Rob: I think we're going to be a multi-gern- multi-billion company and we're going to be a generational company of our time. And we will define enterprise automation. And it's going to be a long term game and we feel like really strong that we'll be the lead in that game. >> Dave: Guys, thanks so much for coming to the cube. Great show. Always fun at UiPath Forward. Really appreciate your time. Thank you. >> Thanks dave. >> Appreciate it as well. >> Okay wrap it up, day one, we're here tomorrow, first thing, Dave Vellante and Dave Nicholson. Thanks for watching, forward 5, Uipath big customer event, we'll see you tomorrow. (music)

The Cube Presents UI Path Forward five. Brought to you by UI Path. >>I Ready, Dave Ante with David Nicholson. We're back at UI Path forward. Five. We're getting ready for the big guns to come in, the two co CEOs, but we have a really special analyst panel now. We're excited to have Daniel Newman here. He's the Principal analyst at Future and Research. And Andy Dai, who's the Vice president and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. Guys, good to see you. Thanks for making some time to come on the queue. >>Glad to be here. Always >>Good. So, >>Andy, you're deep into ai. You and I have been talking about having you come to our maor office. I'm, I'm really excited that we're able to meet here. What have you seen at the show so far? What are your big takeaways? You know, day one and a half? >>Yeah, well, so first of all, I'm d AI because my last name has AI and I >>Already talk about, >>So, but, but all jokes aside, there are a lot of good things I heard from the conference, right? I mean, one is the last two years because of the pandemic, the growth has been phenomenal for, for a lot of those robotic automation intelligent automation companies, right? So because the low hanging through position making processes have been already taken care of where they going to find the next growth spot, right? That was the question I was looking answers to. And they have some inverse, one good acquisition. They had intelligent document processing, but more importantly they're trying to move from detrimental rules based RPA automation into AI based, more probabilistic subjective decision making areas. That's a huge market, tons of money involved in it, but it's going to be a harder problem to solve. Love to see the execut. >>Well, it's also a big pivot for the, for the company. It started out as sort of a a point product and now is moving to, to platform. But to end of the macro is not in UI pass favor. It's not really in any, you know, tech company's favor, but especially, you know, a company that's going into a transition transitioning to go to market cetera. What are you seeing, what's your take on the macro? I mean, I know you follow the financial markets very closely. There's a lot of negative sentiment right now. Are you as negative as the sentiment? >>Well, the, the broad sentiment comes with some pretty good historical data, right? We've had probably one of the worst market years in multiple decades. And of course we're coming into a situation where all the, the factors are really not in our favor. You've got in interest rates climbing, you've got wildly high inflation, you've had a, you know, helicopters dumping money on the economy for a period of time. And we're, we're gonna get into this great reset is what I keep talking about. But, you know, I had the opportunity to talk to Bill McDermott recently on one of my shows and Bill's CEO of ServiceNow, in case anybody there doesn't know, but >>Former, >>Yeah, really well spoken guy. But you know, him and I kind of went back and forth and we came up with this kind of concept that we were gonna have to tech our way out of what's about to come. You can almost be certain recession is gonna come. But for companies like UiPath, I actually think there's a tremendous opportunity because the bottom line is companies are gonna be looking at their bottom line. A year ago it was all about growth a deal, like the Adobe Figma deal would've been, been lauded, people would've been excited. Now everybody's looking at going, how are they paying that price? Everybody's discounting the future growth. They're looking at the situation, say, what's gonna happen next? Well, bottom line is now they're looking at that. How profitable are we? Are you making money? Are you growing that bottom line? Are you creating earnings? We're >>Gonna come in >>Era, we're gonna come into an era where companies are gonna say, you know what? People are expensive. The inflationary cost of hiring is expensive. You know, what's less expensive? Investing in the cloud, investing in ai, investing in workflow and automation and things that actually enable businesses to expand, keep costs somewhat contained fixed costs, and scale their businesses and get themselves in a good position for when the economy turns to return to >>Grow. So since prior to the pandemic cloud containers, m l and RPA slash automation have been the big four that from a spending data standpoint have been above the line above all kind of the rest in terms of spending momentum up until last quarter, AI and RPA slash automation declined. So my question is, are those two areas discretionary or more discretionary than other technology investments you heard? >>Well, I, I think we're in a, a period where companies are, I won't say they've stopped spending, but you listened to Mark Benioff, you talked about the elongated sales cycle, right? I think companies right now are being very reflective and they're doing a lot of introspection. They're looking at their business and saying, We hired a lot of people. We hired really fast. Do we need to cut? Do we need to freeze? We've made investments in technology, are we getting a return on 'em? We all know that the analytics, whether it's you know, digital adoption platforms or just analytics in the business, say, What is all this money we've been spending doing for us and how productive are we? But I will tell you universally, the companies are looking at workflow automations that enable things. Whether that's onboarding customers, whether that's delivering experiences, whether that's, you know, full, you know, price to quote technologies, automate, automate, automate. By doing that, they're gonna bring down the cost, they're gonna control themselves as best as possible in a tough macro. And then when they come out of it, these processes are gonna be beneficiary in a, in a growth environment even more so, >>Andy UiPath rocketed to a leadership position, largely due to the, the product and the simplicity of the product relative to the competition. And then as you well know, they expanded into, you know, platform. So how do you see the competitive environment? A UI path is again focusing on that platform play Automation Anywhere couldn't get to public market. They had turnover at the go to market level. Chris Riley joined a lot of, lot of hope left Microsoft joined into the fray, obviously is having an impact that you're certainly seeing spending momentum around Microsoft. Then SAP service Now Salesforce, every software company the planet thinks they should get every dollar spent on software. You know, they, they see UI pass momentum and they say, Hey, we can, we can take some of that off the table. How do you see the competitive environment right now? >>So first of all, in in my mind, UI path is slightly better because of a couple of reasons. One, as you said, it's ease of use. >>They're able to customize it variable to what they want. So that's a real easy development advantage. And then the, when you develop the bots and equal, it takes on an average anywhere between two to maybe six weeks, generally speaking, in some industries regulated government might take more so that it's faster, quicker, easier than others in a sense. So people love using that. The second advantage of what they have in my mind is that not only they are available as a managed SA solution on, on cloud, on Azure Cloud, but also they have this version that you can install, maintain, manage any way you want, whether it's a public cloud or, or your own data center and so on so forth. That's not available with almost, not all of them have it, Few have it, but not all of the competitors have it. So they have an advantage there as well. Where it could become useful would be one of the areas that they haven't even expanded is the government. >>Government is the what, >>Sorry? The government. Yeah, related solutions, right? Defense, government, all of those areas when you go, which haven't even started for various reasons. For example, they're worried about laying off people, worried about cost, worried about automating things. There's a lot of hurdles to overcome. But once you overcome that, if you want to go there, nobody's going to use, or most of them will be very of using something on the cloud. So they have a solution for version variation of that. So they are set up to come to that next level. I mean, I don't know if you guys were at the keynote, the CEO talked about how their plans to go from 1 billion to 5 billion in ar. So they're set up to capture the market. But again, as you said, every big software company saw their momentum, they want to get into it, they want to compete with them. So >>Well, to get to 5 billion, they've gotta accelerate growth. I mean, if you do 20% cer over the next, you know, through the end of the decade, they don't quite get there. So they're gonna have to, you know, they lowered their forecast out of the high 20 or mid twenties to 18%. They're gonna have to accelerate that. And we've seen that before. We see it in cloud where cloud, you know, accelerates growth even though you got the lower large numbers. Go ahead Dave. >>Yeah, so Daniel, then how do we, how do we think of this market? How do we measure the TAM for total addressable market for automation? I mean, you know, what's that? What's that metric that shows how unautomated are we, how inefficient are we? Is there a, is there a 5% efficiency that can be gained? Is there a 40% efficiency that can be gained? Because if you're talking about, you know, how much much of the market can UI path capture, first of all, how big is the market? And then is UI path poised to take advantage of that compared to the actual purveyors of the software that people are interacting with? I'm interacting with an E R p, an ER P system that has built into it the ability to automate processes. Then why do I need 'EM UI path? So first, how do you evaluate TAM? Second, how do you evaluate whether UI Path is gonna have a chance in this market where RPAs built into the applications that we actually use? Yeah, >>I think that TAM is evolving, and I don't have it in front of me right now, but what I'll tell you about the TAM is there's sort of the legacy RPA tam and then there's what I would sort of evolve to call the IPA and workflow automation tam that is being addressed by many of these software companies that you asked in the competitive equation. In the, in the, in the question, what we're seeing is a world where companies are gonna say, if we can automate it, we will automate it. That's, it's actually non-negotiable. Now, the process in the ability to a arrive at automation at scale has long been a battle front within the nor every organization. We've been able to automate things for a long time. Why has it more been done? It's the same thing with analytics. There's been numerous studies in analytics that have basically shown companies that have been able to embrace, adopt, and implement analytics, have significantly better performances, better performances on revenue growth, better performances and operational cost management, better performances with customer experience. >>Guess what? Not everybody, every company can get to this. Now there's a couple of things behind this and I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to close my answer out cause I'm getting a little long winded here. But the first thing is automation is a cultural challenge in most organizations. We've done endless research on companies digitally transforming and automating their business. And what we've found is largely the technology are somewhat comparable. Meaning, you know, I, I've heard what he is saying about some of the advantages of partnership with Microsoft, very compelling. But you know what, all these companies that have automation offerings, whether it's you know, through a Salesforce, Microsoft, whether it's a specialized rpa like an Automation Anywhere or a UI path, their solutions can be deployed and successful. The company's ability to take the investment, implement it successfully and get buy in across the organization tends to always be the hurdle. An old CIO stat, 50% of IT projects fail. That stat is still almost accurate today. It's not 50% of technology is bad, but those failures are because the culture doesn't get behind it. And automation's a tricky one because there's a lot of people that feel on the outside rather than the inside of an automation transformation. >>So, Andy, so how do you think about the, to Dave's question, the SAPs the service nows trying to, you know, at least take some red crumbs off the table. They, they're gonna, they're gonna create these automation stove pipes, but in Automation Anywhere or, or UI path is a horizontal play, are they not? And so how do you think about that progression? Well, so >>First of all, all of this other companies, when they, they, whether it's a build, acquire, what have you, these guys already have what, five, seven years on them. So it's gonna be difficult for them to catch up with the Center of Excellence knowledge on the use cases, what they got to catch up with them. That's gonna be a lot of catch up. Just to give you an idea, Microsoft Power Automate has been there for a while, right? They're supposedly doing well as well, but they still choose to partner with the UiPath as well to get them to the next level. So there's going to be competition coming from all areas, but it's, it's about, you know, highlights. >>So, so who is the competition? Is it Microsoft chipping away an individual productivity? Is it a service now? Who's got a platform play? Is it themselves just being able to execute >>All plus also, but I think the, the most, I wouldn't say competition, but it's more people are not aware of what areas need to be automated, right? For example, one of the things I was talking about with a couple of customers is, so they have a automation hub where you can put the, the process and and task that need to be automated and then you prioritize and start working on it. And, and almost all of them that I speak to, they keep saying that most of the process and task identification that they need to do for automation, it's manual right now. So, which means it's limited, you have to go and execute it. When people find out and tell you that's what need to be fixed, you try to go and fix that. But imagine if there is a way, I mean the have solutions they're showcasing now if it becomes popular, if you're able to identify tasks that are very inefficient or or process that's very inefficient, automatically score them up saying that, you know what, this is what is going to be ROI and you execute on it. That's going to be huge. So >>I think ts right, there's no shortage of, of a market. I would, I would agree with you Rob Sland this morning talked about the progression. He sort of compared it to e R P of the early days. I sort of have a love hate with E R P cuz of the complexity of the implementation and the, and the cost. However, first of all, a couple points and I love to get your thoughts for you. If you went back, I know 25 years, you, you wouldn't have been able to pick SAP out of a lineup and say that's gonna be the leader in E R P and they ended up, you know, doing really, really well. But the more interesting angle is if you could have figured out the customers that were implementing e r p in, in a really high quality fashion, those are the companies that really did well. You buy their stocks, they really took off cuz they were killing their other industry competitors. So, fast forward to automation. Will automation live up to its hype and your opinion, will it be as transformative and will the, the practitioners of automation see the same type of uplift in their markets, in their market caps, in their competitiveness as did sort of the early adopters and the excellent adopters of brp? What are your thoughts? Well, >>I think it's an interesting comparison. Maybe answer it slightly different way. I think the future is that automation is a non-negotiable in every enterprise organization. I think if you're a large organization, we have absolutely filled our, our organizations with waste too much overhead, too much expense, too much technical debt and automation is an answer. This is the way we want to interact, right? We want a chat bot that actually gives us good answers that can answer on a Tuesday at 11:00 PM at night when we want to know if the right dog food, you know, and I'm saying that, you know, that's what we want. That's the outcome we want. And businesses have to be driven by the outcome. Here's what I'm not sure about, Dave, is we have an era where over the last three to five years, a lot of products have become companies and a lot of 'EM products became companies ended up in public markets. >>And so the RPA space is one of those areas that got this explosive amount of growth. And you look at it and there's two ways. Is this horizontally a business rpa or is this going to be something that's gonna be a target of those Microsofts and those SAPs and say, Look, we need hyper automation to be deeply integrated at the E R P crm, hcm SCM level. We're gonna build by this or we're gonna build this. And you're already hearing it in the partnerships, but this is how I think the story ends. I I think either the companies like UiPath get much bigger, they get much more rounded in their, in their offerings. Or you're gonna have a large company like a Microsoft come in and say, you know what? Buy it rather >>Than build can they can, they can, can this company, maybe not so much here, but can a company like Automation Anywhere stay acquisition? Well, >>I use the, I use the Service now as an, as a parallel because they're a company that I thought would always end up inside of a bigger company and now you're like, I think they're too big. I think they've they've dropped >>That, that chart. Yeah, they're acquisition proof. I would agree. But these guys aren't yet Nora's automation. They work for >>A while and it's not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes getting bit bought is good, but what I mean is it's gonna be core and these big companies know it cuz they're all talking >>About, but as independent analysts, we want to see independent companies. >>I wanna see the right thing. >>It just makes it fun. >>The right thing >>Customers. Yeah, but you know, okay, Oracle buy more customers, more >>Customers. >>I'm kidding. Yeah, I guess it's the right thing. It just makes it more fun when you have really good independent competitors that >>We >>Absolutely so, and, and spend way more on r and d than these big companies who spend a lot more on stock buyback. But I know you gotta go. Thanks so much for spending some time, making time for Cube Andy. Great to see you. Good to see as well. All right, we are wrapping up day one, Dave Blan and Dave Nicholson live. You can hear the action behind us, forward in five on the Cube, right back.

(digital music) >> Welcome back to VeeamON 2022. We're in the home stretch, actually, Dave Nicholson and Dave Vellante here. Daniel Fried is the general manager and senior vice president for EMEA and Worldwide Channel. Daniel, welcome to theCUBE. You got a big job. >> No, I don't have a big job. I have a job that I love. (chuckles) >> Yeah, a job you love. But seriously Veeam, all channel. I mean it has been. >> Yeah, I mean, it's something which just, just a few seconds on, on that piece here, the channel piece, it's something that I love because the ecosystem of partners, an ecosystem of partners, is something which is spending its time moving and developing and changing. You've got a lot of partners changing their roles, their missions, the type of services, type of product that they offer. They all adapt to what the market needs and all the markets around the world are very different because of all these different cultures, languages, and everything. So it's very interesting. In the middle of all that, you know, these tens of thousands of partners and you try to create and try to understand how you can organize, how you can make them happy. So this is fantastic. >> So you're a native of the continent in Europe, obviously. We heard Anton, today, who couldn't be here or chose not to be here, cause he's supporting family and friends in Ukraine. What's the climate like now? Can you share with us what's it like Europe? Just the overall climate and obviously the business climate. >> So the overall climate, the way I see it or I feel it, and obviously there may be some different opinions, that I will always appreciate as also very good opinions. My view is that it seems in Europe that there are a distinction between what people do for businesses, Their thinking for the business, which may be impacted by the situations that we know in Europe between, because of obviously the issues between Ukraine, because of Russia, let's put it this way. And then there is the personal view, which is okay. That happens from time to time, but life continues and we just continue pushing things and enjoying life, and getting the families together and so on and so forth. So, this is in most of the countries in Europe. Obviously, there are a number of countries, which are a little bit more sensitive, a little bit more impacted. All the ones who are next to Russia, or Belarus, so on and so forth. From an emotional standpoint, which is totally understandable. But overall, I'm pretty impressed by how the economy, how people, how the businesses are, you know, continue to thrive in Europe. >> Has Brexit had any...? What impact, if any, has it had? >> So for us Veeam, the impact is... So first there is an impact which is on the currencies. So all the European currencies are no, have slowed down and, and the US dollar is becoming much stronger. >> Despite its debt. >> Right. >> Shouldn't be, but yeah. >> But that doesn't impact on the business. I just... >> Yeah. Right. >> So everything which is economical, macroeconomical is impacted. We have the inflation also, which has an impact, which also has increased because of the oil, because of the gas of everything that they have been stuck, to be stuck. But people get used to it. As Veeam from a business standpoint, one of the big things is we stopped sales, selling into Russia and into Belarus and we are giving our technology, our product, our solutions for free to Ukraine. And that was a piece of the business that we were doing, within EMEA, which was non-neglectable. So it's, I would say a business hole, now that we need to try to fill with accelerating the business service in the other countries of Europe. >> I mean, okay. So thank you for that but we really didn't see it in last quarter's numbers that you guys shared with I mean, IBM. Similarly IBM said, it's noticeable, but it's not really a big impact on our business, but given the cultural ties that you had to Russia and the affinity, I mean you knew how to do business in Russia. It's quite remarkable that you're able to sort of power through that. How about privacy in, around data, in Europe, particularly versus the US? it seems like Europe is setting the trend on things like privacy, certainly on things like acquisitions, we saw the arm acquisition fail. >> Yeah. So there is a big difference. Effectively, there is a big difference between, I would say North America and the rest of the world. And I would say that EMEA, and within EMEA would say the EU is leading very much on what we call server sovereign cloud. So data privacy, which in other words, data is to as much as possible is to remain within either the EU or better within each of the countries, which means that there is again... It's I would say for in EMEA it's good, I would say for the business, for the partners, because then they have to develop around the cloud a number of functions to ensure that because of this data privacy, because of this GDPR or rules and things, all the data remains and resides in a given geographical environment. So it's, which is good because it creates a number of opportunities for the partners. It makes obviously the life of customers and their self a bit more difficult. But again, I think it's good. It's good. It's part of all the way we structure and we organize. And I think that it's going to expand because data is becoming so key, a key limit, a key asset of companies that we absolutely need to take care of it. And it is where Veeam plays a big role in that because we help paying companies managing their data and secure the data in sort of way. >> Yeah. Ransomware has been a big topic of conversation this week. Do you sense that the perception of that as a threat is universal? Are there, are there differences between North America and the EU and other parts of the world? Universal? >> Yeah, it is universal. We see that everywhere. And I think this is a good point, a good question too, is that it's very interesting because we need to get acquainted to the fact that we are going to ever. And so we are going to be attacked. No way out, no. There... Anybody the morning, is waking up, is going on emails and click clicking on an email. Too late. Was a run somewhere. What can you do against that? You know, all humans make mistakes. You can't so it'll happen, but where, where it's absolutely very important and where Veeam plays a big role and where our partners are going to play an even bigger role with our technology is that they can educate the customers to understand that, to have run somewhere is not an issue. What has, what happened is not a problem. What they have to do is to organize so that if they have run somewhere, their letter is safe. And this is where our place a big place. A couple hours back, I was, I was doing a kind of bar with something else. It's totally crazy, but that's okay. I'm going to say it. It's about the COVID. What, no, what do we do? Do we have, do we have something against COVID? No. People were going to get COVID, certainly many people still doing it, but what is important is to be capable of not being too sick. So it is the prevention, which is important. It's the same thing here. So there is this mindset we have psychologically with the partners and they have, they have to provide that services to their customers on how to organize their data using the technology of Veeam in order to be safe, if anything happens. >> So another related question, if I may. When Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA and divulged that the NSA was listening to all the phone calls, there was seemed to be at the time, as I recall, a backlash sentiment in Europe, particularly toward big tech and cloud providers and skepticism toward the cloud. Has the pandemic and the reliance on cloud and the rise of ransomware changed that sentiment? Had the sentiment changed before then? Obviously plenty of Cloud going on in Europe. But can you describe that dynamic? >> Yeah, no, I think that's... Yeah. I think that people were too... You know, as usual. It absolutely reminds me when I was at VMware, when we went from the physical boxes to the virtual machines. I remember the IT people in the company said, "No, I want to be capable of touching." Something here. When you talk about cloud, you talk about something which is virtual, but virtual outside, even outside somewhere. So there is a resistance, psychological resistance to where is my data? How do I control my data? And that is, I think that is very human. Then you need to, you know, it takes time. And again, depending on the cultures, you need to get acquainted to it. So that's what happened be before the pandemic, but then the pandemic took place. And then there was a big problem. There was nobody anymore in the data centers because they couldn't work there and then people were starting to, to work remotely. So the IT needed to be organized to compensate for all these different changes. And cloud was one of them where the data could be stored, where the data could reside, where things could happen. And that's how actually it has accelerated at least in a number of countries where people are a bit leg out to accept the adoption of cloud, cloud-based data. >> So is there a difference in terms of the level of domination by a small group of hyperscale clouds versus smaller service providers? You know, in theory, you have EU behaving in a unified way in sort of the same way that the United States behaves in sort of a federated way. Do you have that same level of domination or is there more, is there more market share available for smaller players in cloud? Any regional differences? >> Yeah. There are big differences. There are big differences again, because of this sovereignty, which is absolutely approved very much in Europe. I'm tell you, I'm going... I'm giving you an example that it was in, I think in October last year, somewhere. The French, the French administration said, "We don't want anymore. Any administration investing in Microsoft 365, because the data is in Azure. The data is out in the cloud." That's what they said. So now these last days, this last week that has changed because Microsoft, you know, introduced a number of technologies, data centers in France, and so on and so forth. So things are going to get better. But the sovereignty, the fact that the data, the privacy of data, everything has to remain in the countries is doing something like the technology of the hyperscalers is used locally wrapped by local companies like systematic writers, local systematic writers, to ensure that the sovereign is set and that the privacy of the data is for real and according to GDPR. So again, it's a value add. It makes things more complex. It doesn't mean that the Google, the Google cloud, the Azure, or the AWS are not going to exist in Europe, but there are going to be a number of layers between them and the customers in order to make sure that everything is totally brought up and that it complies with the EU regulations. >> Help us understand the numbers, Daniel. So the number of customers is mind-boggling it's over 400,000 now, is that right? >> Yeah. Correct. >> Yes. Comparable to VMware, which is again, pretty astounding and the partner ecosystem. Can you help us understand the scope of that? Part one. part two is how do you service and provide that partnership love to all those companies? >> The partners. So yeah, we have about 35,000 around the world, 35,000 partners, but again, it's 10 times less than Microsoft, by the way. So, and this is very interesting. I often have the questions, how do we manage? So first of all, we do tiering, like anybody does. >> Sure. >> We have an organization for that. And we have a two chair sales motion. That means that we use the distributors to take care of the mass, the volume of the smaller, smaller partners. We help the distributors, we help. So it's a leverage system. And we take care obviously more directly, of the large partners or the more complex partners or the ones of interest. But we don't want to forget any of those because even the small one is very important to us because he has these customers maybe in the middle of nowhere, but he's got a few of them. And again, to have a few of these customers, when you adapt, you know, it makes.. At the end, it makes a big business. You know, one plus one plus 1 million times makes, you know, makes huge things. And plus we are in the recurring business now, now that we've introduced three, four years ago, our subscription licenses, which means that it's only incremental. So it's just like the know the telephony, know the telephony business, where the number, the cell phone plans, you know, it's always grabbing as many as possible consumers in this case. So it was the same thing or I have the same, the same kind of, I do a parallel with the French, the French bakery, the French Boulangerie where I say they do their business with the baguette. And then from time to time, they sell the patisserie or they sell the cake, cookie or something, but the same of small things makes a big things. So it is important to have all these small partners everywhere that, that have their small customers or big customers, and that can serve them. So that's that's way. We segment by geography and what we do now is, it is something which is new. We segment by competencies. So it's what I call the soft segmentation. Because if not, we will have a lot of these partners competing to each other, just to sell Veeam. Veeam being number one in many countries, that is what is taking place. And we want them to be happy. We want, we don't want them to fight against each other. So what we do is we do soft segmentation and soft segmentation is this partner is competent in this field with that kind of use case doing this or this or this or this. It's just like you, when you go to the restaurant, you want the restaurant next to your place. So you click for the geography and then you want to, to go for Indian food. So you click restaurant Indian food, and then you want something. So we want to give that possibility to the customers to say, "Yeah, I think I know what I want." And then you can just click and get the partners or the list of partners, which are the most suited for, for his needs. So it's what I call the soft segmentation. The other thing which is important is the network. It's very interesting because when we look at a lot of companies, it's not the network. You've got VARs, you've got cloud and service providers. You've got SARs, you've got all the things. But if you take each of those individually, they don't have the competencies to answer all the request of the customer. So the networking is partnering with partner. That means to have the, the connection so that the partner A who has his customer, but these customer's are requests that this partner cannot fulfill because it's not its competency. That it's going to find the partners or the other partners that can feel this competency and work together. And then it's between them to have the model that they want so that together they can please the customer with their requests. >> Do you ever want to have VeeamON... I mean, I'm happy it's in the US and I like going to Europe, but you, have you ever want to have VeeamON in Europe? >> Yeah, we have VeeamON. We have many VeeamONs in Europe. >> Yeah. The mini ones. Okay. >> VeeamON tours. >> Globally. So where do you have them? >> Europe in APJ, that's what we do. Yes. >> Where do you do it in a APJ? In Japan, obviously in... >> Yeah. I don't know all the locations, tens and tens of them. >> A lot of them. Okay. >> The small ones. What we do, replicate what is done here on one day and then it goes. >> And you'll do that in UK. France, Germany. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Local. >> And also small countries in Saudi, in South Africa, in Israel, in Bulgaria, in all these countries. Because, you know, we can be virtual. That's nice. >> Oh, right. >> But I love to be having a breakfast or a lunch or drink next to a partner or a customer because you learn so much more. The informal information is so important to understand how the business and how the market develops and what the needs are of customers and so on and so forth. >> How was the European attendance this year? It must have been down. It's hard to get into US. It's actually easier to go back to Europe. >> Virtually I, don't have the numbers, but I- >> No. Virtual. I'm sure it was huge. Yeah. But physical. >> Physical here, we've got about 300, 300 Europeans. >> Yeah. Okay. Out of, do we know? What are the numbers here? Do we know? Have we heard numbers? >> I know 45 was supposed to be around 45K combined. >> That's hybrid. >> So, yeah. >> It's hard to get into the US. We're still figuring that out. So I'm not surprised, but now you... >> But it's complimentary. Yeah. >> Do you go to 'em all? >> No >> You can't. >> No. That's not possible. I cannot. I actually, I would love... >> But some, yes. >> I would love to be capable of duplicate myself, but- >> You go to the one. >> I'm unique. >> You go to the one in France, obviously. Yeah? >> Yeah. Usually in France. Well... >> Depends if you're home. >> Yeah. You know, that is interesting is, the way we organize, the way we organize in Europe is I really want the local leaders to be the ones managing the countries. I'm there to support. I'm not there to be, you know? Yeah. The big boss is coming, he showing. No. It is not that. Again, if they request me to come, if they want me to pass a message to certain type of customer partners, I'll do that. But I don't want to run the show. It's not the way I manage that. >> Yeah. I get that. You want to respect that as if you show up in France and that's your home country, it's like rat man showing up here. It's like taking over the stage. You'll be like, you know, it's our turn. >> But it's just like, you know, I give you another example. So obviously we have... It's even the headquarters, the EMEA headquarters is in France. Right? But it is the French office. And I don't go there. I try not to be there because it is the place for the French people taking care of the French market. And for the French manager, if I go there, everybody's going to come and ask me questions and ask me to make decisions and things. No, they have to run their business. >> So where do you spend, where and how do you spend your time? >> In airports and in planes. (indistinct) What are you asking? >> Of course. >> Do you have another question? >> Actually, if we have time really quickly on just on that subject of sovereignty, we are here in Nevada just across the border, California. People in California have no problem at all, replicating things here for disaster recovery, because it's in the US. Now, is there sort of a cultural sense that tearing down those borders from a sovereignty perspective within Europe would fundamentally change the business climate and maybe tilt things in favor of the AWS and GCPs of the world instead of local regional business? The joke that I heard recently from someone, I thought it was funny. I don't know if it would offend either Germans or French, but it was that it was that AWS was confused and they were planning on putting a data center in Strasbourg, because they thought it was in Germany and it was- >> A joke. >> But the point is, the point is it's like, it's a gum bear. >> Is it true? >> No. But it was a dumb American joke. This was told by a French person basically saying... >> But this person was certainly not from- >> Yes. Right. >> Tell you, because I would've been a very bad way. >> But the point is this idea that you have these mega hyper clouds coming in and saying, "Okay, boom, we're putting one here and you're going to use us regardless of the country you're in." How does that, you know... Is there a push within the EU to tear those barriers down? Or are those sovereignty walls enjoyed by the majority because of the way that it changes the business climate? Any thoughts from that perspective? >> Oh yeah. Yeah. To me, it's very simple. It is a hybrid thing. That means that these big hyperscalers are there, not going to be used but what they do is they're going to partition themselves and work with these local people. So that their big thing appears as being independent, smaller data centers. That's the only thing, you know. You build a house and then you put walls between the different, between the different rooms. That's the only thing that happens. So it's not at all, no. At all to Azures or Google cloud. No, it's not that. It just means that there is a structure and organization that has to be put in place in order that the data resides in given geographical locations using their infrastructures, their technologies. That make, does it make sense? >> Yeah. Except that it puts them in the position of having to have a physical presence in each place, which is advantageous in one way and maybe less efficient in another. >> Yeah. But there are some big markets. >> Yeah. And they eventually got to get there. Right. I mean... >> Yeah. >> They started it. One patient in the world where they restarted was in ANZ. And that's what they did. You know, what, 5, 6, 7 years ago. They put their data centers over there because they wanted to gain the Australian market and the New Zealand market. >> So build it and they will come. Daniel, thanks so much for coming to the theCUBE. Very interesting conversation. >> Pleasure. >> Appreciate it. >> Thank you very much. >> All right, we're wrapping up. Day two at VeeamON 2022. Keep it right there. Dave and I will be back right after this break. (vibrant music)

>> Announcer: From the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering UiPath FORWARD IV brought to you by UiPath. >> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. We are wrapping up day two of our coverage of UiPath FORWARD IV. Lisa Martin here with Dave Vellante. We've had an amazing event talking with customers, partners, and users, and UiPath folks themselves. And who better to wrap up the show with than Daniel Dines the founder and CEO of UiPath. Welcome, Daniel, great to have you back on theCUBE. >> Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm becoming a regular at theCUBE. >> Yeah, it's good to see you again. >> You are, this is your fifth... >> Fifth time on theCUBE. >> Fifth time, yes. >> Fifth time, but as you said before we went live, first time since the IPO. Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> UiPath has been a rocket ship for a very long time. I'm sure a tremendous amount of acceleration has occurred since the IPO. We can all see the numbers. You're a public company now, ARR of 726 million. You've got over 9,000 customers. We got the chance to speak with a few of them here today. We know how important the voice of the customer is to UiPath and how very symbiotic it is. But I want to talk about the culture of the company. How is that going? How is it being maintained especially since the big splashy IPO just about six months ago? >> Well, I always believe that in order to build a durable company, culture is maybe the most important thing. I think long lasting companies have very foundational culture. So we've built it, and we invested a lot in the last 5-6 years because in the beginning when it's just a bunch of people, they don't have a culture. It's maybe like a vibe of a group of friends. But then when you go and try to dial in your culture, I think it's important that you look at your roots and who are you? What defines you? So we ended up of this really core values, which is to be humble. To me, it's one of quintessential value of every human being. And all of us want to work with humble people much more inclined to listen, to change their mind. And then we say, you have to be humble, but you have to be bold in the same time. This rocket ship need a bold crew onboard. So you need to be fast because the fastest company will always win. And you need to be immersed because my theory with life and jobs is in whatever you do, you have to be immersed. I don't believe necessarily in life-work balance. I believe in life-work cycles, in life-work immersion. So when you are with family, you are immersed. When you work, you are immersed. That will bring the best of you and the best of productivity. So we try so much to keep our culture alive, to hire people that add to the culture, that nicely fit into the culture. And recently we took a veteran of UiPath and we appointed her as Chief Culture Officer. So I'm very happy of this move. So I think we are one of the few companies that really have a Chief Culture Officer reporting directly to the CEO. So we're really serious of building our culture along the way. And as I said yesterday in my keynote, I think our values are universal values. I think they have the value of the new way of working. All of us would like to work in a company, in an environment that fosters these values. >> I certainly think the events of the last 18 months have forced many more people to be humble and embrace humility. Because everybody on video conferencing, your dog walks in, your kids walk in, you're exposed. They have to be more humble because that's just how they were getting work done. I've seen and heard a lot of humility from your folks and a lot of bold statements from customers as well. We had the CIO of Coca-Cola on talking about how UiPath is fundamental in their transformation. I think that the fact that you are doing an event here in person, whereas as Dave was saying earlier this week, your competitors are on webcams is a great example of the boldness of this company and its culture. >> Well, thank you. I think that we've made a really good decision to do this event in person. Maybe on Zoom over the last 18 months, we kind of lost a bit how important is to connect with people. It's not only about the message, it's about the trust. And I think we are deeply embedded into the critical systems of our customers. They need to trust us. They need to work with the company that they look in their eyes and say, "Yes, we are here for you." And you cannot do it over Zoom. Even I really like Zoom and Eric Yuan is a friend of mine, but a combination I think, and going into this hybrid world, I think it's actually extremely beneficial for all of us. Meeting in person a few times a year, then continuing the relationship over Zoom in time, I think it's awesome. >> Yeah, and the fact that you were able to get so many customers here, I think that's, Lisa, why a lot of companies don't have physical events 'cause they can't get their customers here. You got 2000 customers here, customers and partners, but a lot of customers. I've spoken to dozens and they're easy to find. So I think that's one point I want the audience to know. You've always been on the culture train. And enduring companies, CEOs of great enduring companies, always come back to culture. So that's important. And of course, product. You said today, you're a product guy. That's when you get excited. You've changed the industry. And I think, I've never bought into the narrative about replacing jobs. I'd never been a fan of protecting the past from the future. It's inevitable, but I think the way you've changed the market, I wonder if you could comment is... You had legacy RPA tools that were expensive and cumbersome. And so people had to get the ROI and it took a long time. So that was an obvious way to get it is to reduce headcount. You came in and said, short money you can actually try it even a free version. You compressed that ROI and the light bulb went off, and so people then said, "Oh, wow, this isn't about replacing jobs, but making my life better." And you've always said that. And that's I think one way in which you've changed the market quite dramatically, and now you have a lot of people following that path. >> That was always kind of our biggest competitive advantage. We showed our customers and our partners, this is a technology that gives you the faster time to value and actually faster time to value translate into much higher return on investment. In a typical automation project, the license cost is maybe 5% of the project cost. So the moment you shrink the development time, the implementation time, you increase exponentially the return on investment. So this is why speaking about our roadmap, and we always start with this high level, how can we reduce the development time? So how can we reduce the friction? How can we expand the use cases? Because these are essential themes for us, always thinking customer first, customer value and that serves us pretty well really. We win a lot in all the contests where we go side by side with other competitors. It was a very simple strategy for us. Asking customers, "Just go and test it side-by-side and see," and they see. We implement the same process in halftime, half of resources involved. It's an easy math multiplied by a thousand processes and it's done. >> When theCUBE started Daniel in 2010. It was our first year. And so it coincided with big data movement. And we said at the time that the companies who can figure out how to apply big data are going to make a lot of money, more than the big data vendors. And I think in a way now the problem with big data was too complicated, right? There were only a few big internet giants who could figure out Hadoop and all that stuff. Automation, I think is even bigger in a way, 'cause it involves data. It involves AI, it's transformative. And so we're saying the same thing here. The companies that are applying automation, and we've seen a lot of them here, Coca-Cola, Merck, Applied Materials, on and on and on, are actually the ones that are going to not only survive but thrive, incumbents that don't have to invent AI necessarily or invent their own automation. But coming back to you 'cause I think your company can make a lot of money. You've set the TAM at 60 billion. I think it actually could be well over 100 billion, but we don't have to have that conversation here. It's just convergence of all these markets that guys like IDC and Gartner, they count in stove pipes. So anyway, big, no shortage of opportunity. My question to you is feels like you have the potential to build a next great software company and with the founder as the CEO, and there aren't a lot of them left. Michael Dell is not a software company, but his name is still, Larry Ellison is still there, Marc Benioff. How do you think about the endurance, the enduring UiPath? Are you envisioning building the next great software company, may take 20 years? >> People were asking me for a long time. Did you envision that you'd get here from the beginning? And I always tell them, no. Otherwise I would have been considered mad. (Lisa and Dave laughing) So you build the vision over time. I don't believe in people that start a small SaaS company and they say, "We are going to change the world." This is not how the world works. Really, you build and you understand the customer and you build more. But at some point I realized we change so much how people work, we get the best out of them. It's something major here. And if you look in history, we are in this trap that started with agriculture. This is the trap of manual, repetitive, low value tasks that we have to do. And it took the humanity of us. And I talked to Tom Montag about with this book "Sapiens". It's interesting and that book comes with the theory that our biggest quality is our ability to collaborate. Well, our technology gives people the ability to collaborate more. So, in this way, I think it's truly transformative. And yes, I believe now that we can build the next generation of software company. >> How do you like... That's the wrong question. How are you doing with the 90-day shot clock as Michael Dell calls it? It's a new world for you, right? You've never been a CEO of a public company, the street's getting to know you like, "Who is this guy?" I'll give you another cute story. There were three companies in the early CUBE days, Tableau, Splunk, and ServiceNow that had the kind of customer passion that you have. I think ServiceNow could be one of the next great software companies. Tableau now part of Salesforce. I think Splunk was under capitalized, but we see the same kind of passion here. So now you're the CEO of a public company, except the street's getting to know you a little bit. They're like, "Hmm, how do we read the guy?" All that stuff. That'll sort itself out. But so what's life like on the public markets? >> Well, I don't think anyone prepares you for the life of a public company. (Dave laughing) I thought it's going to be easier, but it's not, because we were used to deal with private investors and it's much easier because I think private investors have access to a lot more data. They look into your books. So they understand your business model. With public investors, they have access only to like a spreadsheet of numbers. So they need to figure out a business model, the trajectory from just a split. It's way more difficult. I've come to appreciate their job. It's much more difficult. So they have to get all the cues from how I dress, how do I say this word? They watch the FED announcements. What do they mean to say by this? And I and the shim we are first time in a job as a public company CEO, public company CFO. So of course it's a lot of learning for us and like in any learning environment, initial learning curve is tough, but you progress quite a lot. So I believe that over the next few quarters, we will be in the position to build trust with the street and they will understand better our business model, and they see that we are building everything for creating durable growth. >> It's a marathon, it's not a sprint. I know it's a cliche, but it really does apply here. >> You've certainly built a tremendous amount of trust within your 9,000 strong customer base. I think I was reading that your 70% of your revenue comes from existing customers. I think this is a great use case for how to do land and expand really well. So, the DNA I think is there at UiPath to be able to build that trust with the street. >> Yeah, absolutely. Our 9,000 plus customers, it's our wealth. This is our IP in a way. It's even better than in our pro. It's our customers. We have one of the best net retention rate in the industry of 144%. So that speaks volume. >> Lisa: It does. >> Automation for good. I know you've read some of the stuff I've written. I've covered you guys pretty extensively over the years. And that theme sounds like a lot of motherhood and apple pie, but one of the things that I wrote is that you look at the productivity decline and particularly in Western countries over the last two decades. Now I know with the pandemic and especially in 2021, productivity is going up for reasons that I think are understood, but the trend is clear. So when you think about big problems, climate change, diversity, income inequality, health of populations, overpopulation, on and on and on and on. You're not going to solve those problems by throwing labor at them. It has to be automation. So that to me is the tie to automation for good. And a lot of people might roll their eyes at it. But does that resonate with you? >> It totally resonates with me. Look at US. US population is not growing at the rates that we were used to. It's going to plateau at some point. It's just obvious. Like it plateaued in Japan, in Japan it's decreasing. US will see a decrease at some point. How do you increase the GDP? If your population is declining, productivity is declining. How do you increase GDP? Because the moment we stop increasing GDP, everything will collapse. The modern world is built on the idea of continuous economical growth. The moment growth stops, the world stops. We'll go back to our case and restart the engine. So, automation is hugely important in continuous GDP growth, which is the engine of our life. >> Which by the way is important because the chasm between the haves and the have-nots, that's how growth allows the people at the bottom to rise up to the middle and the middle to the top. So that's how you deal with that problem. You asked Tom Montag about crypto. So I have to ask you about crypto. What are your thoughts? Are you a fan? Are you not a fan? Do you have any wisdom? >> I have to admit, I never really understood the use cases of crypto. Technology behind crypto, blockchain is fascinating technology, but crypto in itself, I was never a fan. Tom Montag today gave me one of the best explanation of the very same. Look, Daniel, from Americans perspective we have the dollars, and this is the global currency. Crypto doesn't have so much sense, but think about a country like Columbia or Venezuela, countries where there people don't have so much trust in their currency, and where different political system can seize your assets from you. You need to be able to be capable of putting them into something else that is outside government context. I believe this is a good use case but I still don't believe that crypto is that type of asset that you know will survive the test of time. I think it's really too much... To me the difference between gold and Bitcoin is that it's too... You cannot replicate gold whatever you... It's impossible, unless you are God you cannot create gold two, right? It's impossible, but you can create Bitcoin 2. And at some point the fashion will move from Bitcoin 2 to Bitcoin 3. So I don't think the value that you can build in one particular crypto currency right now will stay over time. But it's just me. I was the wrong so many times in my life. >> You've been busy. You haven't had time to study crypto. >> I agree, totally agree. (Lisa and Dave laughing) >> What's been some of the feedback from the customers that are here. We saw yesterday a standing room only keynote. I'm sure it was great for you to be on stage again actually interacting with your customers and your partners. What's been some of the feedback as we've seen really this shift from an RPA point solution to an enterprise automation platform? >> Well, first of all, it was really great to be on stage. I don't know, I'm not a good presenter, really. But going there in front of people felt me with energy. Suddenly I felt a lot of comfort. So, I was capable of being myself with the people, which is really awesome. And the transition to a platform, from a product to a platform was really very well received by our customers because even in our competitive situations, when we are capable of explaining to them, what is the value of having an independent automation platform that is not tied to any big silos that application providers creates, we win and we win by default somehow. You've seen them now. So I think even the next evolution of semantic automation, this one is very well with our customers. >> Well, Daniel, it's been fantastic having you on. We have a good cadence here, and I hope we can continue it. On theCUBE, we love to identify early stage companies. Although as I wrote, you had a long, strange path to IPO because you took a long, long time and I think did it the right way to get product market fit. >> Absolutely. >> And that's not necessarily the way Silicon Valley works, double, double, triple, triple, and that you got product market fit, you got loyal customer base, and I think that's a key part of your success and you can see it and so congratulations, but many more years to come and we're really watching. >> Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to meeting you guys again. Thank you, that was awesome really. Great discussion. >> Exactly, good. Great to have you here in person and thanks for having us here in person as well. We look forward to FORWARD V. >> You will be invited forever. Thank you, guys, really. >> Forever, did you hear that? All right, for Daniel Dines and Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. This is theCUBE's coverage of UiPath FORWARD IV day two. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>>it's mhm Okay, we're here in the cube unpacking the HPD Green Lake announcements, Daniel neumann series Principal analyst and founder of your um research Damn. You're good to see you again, >>Dave always going to jump jump on with you. It's good to have a minute sit down. So >>what's your favorite announcement from from Green Lake? What do you, what do you make of what they announced today? >>Well, I love the opportunity for the company to position itself up against a growth monster like snowflake. I mean looking at the ability to handle the breath of the data at scale and offer a data service that can compete in that space. That's exactly the kind of narrative that I think the markets, the outside world is going to want to hear from HP is how you're not just competing with your traditional, the doubles, the Ciscos, the IBM, you're going after the, the mega growth cloud players and data services. And for me that's really attractive because I've been really on top of hb saying, hey, you're doing a lot of the right things, but people have to feel and see the growth. >>To me this is a major move toward the tam expansion strategy. It's kind of the job of every Ceo right, is to expand the tam. And I'm interested to see how HP e plays this and communicates this because, you know, traditionally it's a hardware company, uh moving into data management Data services. That's an enormous market. We'll talk about how important data is but the data management is just huge. And to do it in a cloud like fashion, how do you see that as potentially expanding the total available market for HP? >>Well, first, let's just almost walking back a second, Dave HP is a cloud player. Okay. And that's the story that it is trying to get out there. It is not a hardware player that's tinkering in software. Hp has done software, this isn't its first go. But if you want to be a cloud player, you look at the big hyper scale as you look at the AWS, as you look at the google, you look at as the google built, not just on hardware, it's built that big C and I've had this conversation before, all the things that make up the cloud, it's the hardware, it's the software, it's the services, the platform, you got to put all these things together. And if HP wants to be a public cloud experience, taking advantage of where we're moving with hybrid and offering it private, it has to have that same subset of services. Look at the investment, whether it's been a W S or google or Azure in data services, HP has to be in this space. So, seeing this come to fruition, in my opinion, is directionally the right path, getting it to be well received, winning the right customers and showing the growth from these investments is going to be the next important phase. >>Do you see that as a service model as being more margin friendly for HP and and if so why? Well, I think >>universally we found there's two major improvements that moving to the as a service. One is, it does over time create expanded operational margin. It's just economies of scale. You can utilize every resource more efficiently. Of course there are Capex expenses, You've seen the amount that hyper skeletons have had to spend to expand their their footprints globally. So there is some Capex upfront but that also on the back end creates the depreciation and different bottom line profit creators. At the same time though, as a service is huge for the multiples and evaluation, which by the way is one of the things that has been a real in focus point for H. P. E. Is how does it up that that number, You know, you look at the snowflakes, not even profitable but getting huge. You know, um, you know, huge multiples on revenue. And then you see even the other hyper scale is all getting bigger plays on revenue and on E. P. S. Most of it has to do with the fact that recurring revenue is beloved by investors, but it's also really sticky and creates a ton of stability within the company for the culture of the business to say, hey, we have customers, they're going to stay with us. They're not going anywhere. They're subscribed to our services. They're buying into what we're doing and by the way, net revenue expansion as you get them sticky, you layer in new services. We've seen how this has worked across the board with public cloud, with software with SAS, can HP do it as well? And of course it's been something they're doing, but it's something we need to watch really closely and I think it's an opportunity that the company needs to lean into it. And I think they will, >>you mentioned snowflake a couple times, there's a there's a, there's a discussion in the industry, it was sort of prompted by martin casado and sarah wang about repatriation and particularly as it relates to software, saas companies uh that the the the cloud bill is so high at some point, they're giving away margin, so they're going to have to come back on prem, I'm not sure that to date that has applied to the general audience of customer, although there's a lot of debate as well between the expensive cloud, obviously, you know, egress charges. So it's hard sometimes to squint through that when you think about HP E bringing Green Lake to market at scale bringing repeatable processes, driving automation, etcetera. How do you think that that cloud repatriation argument, which frankly, I haven't seen a huge cloud repatriation in in the macro, but how do you think that will play out over time, Do you feel like the on prem play can be as cost effective or more cost effective or maybe you feel like it is already today? >>Well, I also listen to the injuries and Horowitz uh, repatriation narrative as well. I think there are economies of scale with cloud that companies have to look at closely. But I also think that has a lot to do with why hybrid has been sort of the story of the day. That's why hyper sailors are going on prem or, and that's why I'm primes are moving to the cloud is because it's always going to be some, you know, some group of different placements of workloads to ultimately get to that optimized result. And so, you know, when you look at, you know, sort of what you asked in my opinion, you know, ultimately it's all about the efficiency of your organization trying to accomplish what your business is. And will there be some repatriation of workloads possibly. But there will be a very important hybrid mix. And I think we're gonna continue to see that trend and I think that's exactly where everyone's going in. Hp is going as well. >>All right, then we've got to leave it there. Thanks so much for your insights, appreciate it. We're gonna definitely have you back you and I are going to do some cool stuff together. So we'll talk next time. Thanks all right, and thank you for watching, this is Dave Volonte for the keeps coverage of H P E Green Lakes announcement, keep it right there. Mm

>> Hello, everybody. Welcome to VeeamON 2021. You're watching theCUBE's continuous coverage of this year's event. My name is Dave Vellante, and as the saying goes, you can go faster alone but further together, and that observation is most certainly true in the technology business, and with me to talk about the importance of partners and ecosystem expansion and leverage are Daniel Fried, who's the senior vice president for EMEA and worldwide channels and Veeam, and David Harvey who's the vice president of Strategic Global Alliances at Veeam. Gentlemen, welcome to theCUBE. Come on inside. >> Thank you, Dave. >> Thanks so much. Thank you. >> So you're welcome. So Daniel, about 40 partners by my count did at VeeamON virtual this year. Wow. It's unfortunate we can't interact with them face to face, but part of the story here 25% ARR growth and partners, obviously big contributor there. Give us the update from your perspective. >> Well, yeah. So first of all, I think it's going to be much more than the 40 partners that are going to attend VeeamON, because it's a key event that we've had already for a number of years, and this one this year is going to be as huge as usual, even bigger, because it is all remote. So everybody can participate. Now going to the results of the company, it is entirely also due to the partners. All types of partners, because we are 100% partner-based. We are a travel company. So all our businesses go through the buffers to reach out to the end customers, all different types of partners. So I do thank very, very much all partners around the world, all types of partners, because they all participate to the success of Veeam software, and this fantastic 25% growth indeed. >> Yeah, so David that's pretty important when you send that message. I mean a lot of companies, a lot of tech companies, struggle with that. They have a heritage of direct sales, and they say, hey we're super partner friendly, and then they do a big reach around. You kind of clean that up from day zero, but maybe talk a little bit about your philosophy around partnering. >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's been a core pillar, as you said Dave, of Veeam from day one, and we've been true to that message all the way through, and when you look at the rich ecosystem of the ProPartner Network that Daniel was talking about, and you also look at the way that we've embraced Alliances, not only from the technology integration point of view, but also within the go-to market position. It's just been a really rich experience for the Veeam field, the alliances and partner field, but more important for the customers, because they get the best of breed from both sides. They get peace of mind on supply chain, but fundamentally, and you touched on this point Dave, a lot of people talk about it in principle. We live it all day every day, and I think when you look at the rich experience that you're going to get from VeeamON, when you look at the fact that the Alliance partners have lent in as the premium sponsors. These are the biggest guys in the industry. It's just a testament to trust, and it's a testament to delivering value to the customers. >> How should we think about the sort of partner makeup, and I'm interested in particularly the perspective from EMEA, but I mean a number of the partners, the majority of the premier partners, for example, they're U.S.-based companies, but of course they have very strong presence around the world, and then of course within EMEA, Daniel, you've got a lot of local partners as well. How should we think about that makeup? The big whales, who account for, many, many tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars but as well the collective of the larger ecosystem. How should we think about that pyramid? >> Well, this is a fantastic question. I think that we have to go back into understanding what the role of partner is to reach out to the end customers, and because Veeam is selling to companies, which are very small ones, very small SMB customers all the way to the very large complex multinationals. We need partners who have these capabilities to address all those, and of course the number of companies around the world. It's hundreds of millions of them. To give you an idea, because of the partners, our coverage is more than a hundred countries. In other words, we sell to more than a hundred countries around the world, even in places where our Veeam presence, physical presence is not there. We need different types of partners depending on what is needed, what the customers are requesting, We talk about the popup neural network, but I would like to talk, to go even farther, and talk about an ecosystem, of business ecosystems, using the theme solutions and the Veeam technologies with the alliancers, with the STEM integrators, with the VAR, with the resellers, and with the service providers, with all different types of typologies partners, and it is not one unique way of doing businesses. So you've got huge companies, but you have a lot of small ones to be capable to sell to a mom and dad shop somewhere in the middle of the desert or somewhere around the world, but we also need to have competencies, because customers have requests that become more and more complex, because the world is becoming more and more complex from an IT perspective. So we need to have competencies, and this is what we try in this co-partner network software is to bring these competencies up to be capable through the partners to answer all the requests and all the needs of all the customers around the world. >> So, David, it's not just sort of generic. I mean obviously, as a 100% channel partner company, you're looking for volume and distribution, but as Daniel just said, there's competency. So what are some of the competencies that partners bring to the table? Maybe you have some examples that you can share. >> Yeah, absolutely. So if you look at a couple of different areas, what I would say is we look at this problems that customers are dealing with in two ways. One, they're dealing with the fact that they want a technology solution to something that they're dealing with today, and secondly, they want somebody to support them with a human workflow evolution that's going on with them today, and GSIs is a good example of that one. When you look at the work we're doing and the success we're having with the large global GSIs, what we're solving in that area is two things. Workplace optimization, huge topic at the moment, and secondly, the data center modernization, and what's happening as you go through that evolution is you're dovetailing together the workflows of their business. You're using data as a lifeblood to be able to be successful and relate to their share price, et cetera, but more importantly, you want to make sure that you're bringing into account both those sides. You can't just have a technology solution without an understanding of implementation, and you can't have a great concept without a solid solution to back that up. So that's where we dovetail together. The top alliances that are out there in the market with the top global systems integrators, and both of those combined solutions benefit everybody including the channel, but obviously more importantly, the customer, and I think when you look at that, the work we're doing with Accenture, with Capgemini, the work we're doing with guys like HPE and VMware and all these large thought leaders, that's where it's a really nice dovetail, and as we talked about before, because that's been the lifeblood of our organization from day one, it's a very harmonious experience focused on solving the customer pain. >> So I like that focus on solutions. I'm just thinking about workplace optimization. You think about remote work. I mean everybody's trying to figure out hybrid now. How do I get hybrid right, and of course you guys fit in. What's the right data protection model? Modernization. There's app modernization. Because of cloud, there's a rethink of how you protect data. Maybe it's additional layers, and then of course, I mean every time I look in the paper, there's another hit of ransomware or some cybersecurity attacks. You guys fit in there. There's this solution emphasis, which really dovetails nicely into the customer problem. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that, and the role that partners play and what role you play. >> The role that we play is I'm just here, and we complements response, cause it can be a very large extended answer, and with the role we play is I would say twofold. Just to try to be, to simplify as much as we can, as much as I can. One of them is to provide solutions, and this is number one. So Veeam is providing solutions to end customers through the partners. The partners, they have these competencies, which allow them to build solutions and services to answer the request and the needs of the customers. So this is the key thing. They generate the value add on top of our technologies, on top of our solutions, to meet what the customers request, and you're totally right, because we talked about the marketplace, we talked about a lot of things, but what is very important is we see more and more customers wanted to go to services. So not for themselves to manage the infrastructures, and their back up centers, and their back ups. They are everything which is needed to the security of the data, but to have it done by a potentially third party companies like the system integrators, like the cabin service providers, like all different types of companies, even some consultants giving advices on architectures, the neighborhoods, and all kinds of different services, which are built. I even had some partners that are now developing. We talk about containers more and more, and we have, sorry to be a bit technical here, but we have some partners of ours, obviously some larger ones, which are contributing what they call microservices, which is for this new generation of containers. So they are all developing services to meet the requests and the needs of their customers. There is a big focus at the end customers. So we provide the technology. They add value. >> Well, I don't think you ever have to apologize in theCUBE for talking tech. I mean you think about containers, and your acquisition of Kasten, the whole notion of microservices. Containers used to be ephemeral and stateless, and now they're becoming a fundamental application development platform, and they need protection. So I think that's an important area. We're going to dig into that in some other conversations in theCUBE. but your point, Daniel, about value add is critical. It used to be I call it box selling even though it's, the software's in a box, but it used to be okay I'm going to make some margin just reselling. Partners today want to add value. They just don't want to be a pass through, because they'll get disinter mediated. So that's important. I wonder if you guys could talk about some of the details of your partner programs. There's the ProPartner Network, and I'm very interested in the Veeam Universal License approach that you guys take. What kind of details can you share with us on those two things? >> Daniel, that's a good one for you. >> Right, okay. So what you call the Veeam Universal License, so this is part of the technology that we provide and the licensing that we provide. It's about recurring licensing model, which is totally agnostic. So in other words, it is the same types of licensers that customers can use for whether if they are hydrates, they go with an architecture, which goes to the heartbeat clouds, or any type of architecture or premise, so they can just move down action. So it's from one place to another place when they need it. So we give them the full flexibility with this licensing model to adapt to the new needs that they may have. So to influence that, they define an architecture, which is totally frozen, and then they cannot change it anymore. With us, with our technologies, with our licensing model, with our VUL licensing system, they have full flexibility, and this is a key differentiator for a lot of customers and obviously from our own competition. >> And my understanding is when you guys really started leaning into the ARR model, you actually were were pretty innovative in the way you kind of made that transparent, or irrelevant really, for your partner's sales channels. You guys set up front. We're going to... This is like no change. Go sell. We'll figure out the economics on the backend, and most organizations in your position don't do that. They try to micromanage the margin upfront, and it's sort of the finance guys running the spreadsheet or sort of determining the relationship as opposed to the relationship working backwards. Is that a correct inference on my part? I sort of got this from talking to some of your big partners and asked them, well, isn't that a real challenge when you shift to that model. They said no. Veeam just sort of made it all transparent to us and sort of aided at the backend or however you did that. >> So I think, Dave, that this is a very, very correct statement that you got from the partners, because it is not something which is new, and it is not only on this subscription licensing model What we always try to do with all partners is to have a consistent approach and a very transparent approach with the steps and move step by step to the next grade walls, to the next strategies, to the next ways of doing businesses with them. So the key thing to have a network of partners which works, which really develop and generates a good value add, it is the trust, and I think, I don't want to be too outspoken, but I think, and they can give us feedback, I think that we've succeeded year after year after year to build that trust with the partners, which means that we have the transparency. They just move along with the moves that we do, but our moves also come from them. So in other words, depending on what the end customers request, we help the partners to meet the requests of the end customers. So we help them develop more businesses. >> David, let me ask you something. So if you had 100$ to spend of resource, and you had to spend it on going deeper, sort of the existing partners or expanding the number of partners, and maybe even the quality of partners, and thinking about where IT is headed, Veeam's role in that, how do you allocate your time and your resources? >> Great question, and I think simple answer for me. You go deeper with what you have, and the reason for that is it's expensive, and it's about building trust, as Daniel said, and it's about making sure that the customer isn't caught up in the middle of it, and I think that's the really important part related to this as well. You said at the start of the conversation, Dave, with regards to the complexity, and the reality is there's multiple decisions going on right now. How do I adjust my infrastructure based on the needs of today? How do I look at the blend on hybrid cloud? What's going where, et cetera. How do I evolve into containers? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and I think when you go down that line, and you're presented with these titans of industry that we're looking at here with some of our premium alliances, et cetera, it takes a long time to make sure that you integrate. It takes a long time to make sure you'll go to market and pain-based statements are clear. It takes a long time to go through the trenches, to learn together so that the customer is the one that has choice, doesn't have to investigate the way that Veeam wants to do it or our alliance wants to do it or our partner wants to do it. It's about looking at the best solution for their pain, and I think from that point of view you can only do that with continual commitment. I mean we add to our program in all aspects, but you will see consistency. You'll see releases from day one of the company when we launched the product, with Alliances as an example. That consistency and investment is peace of mind. It's trust, but more important it's innovative, because you get to invest for multiple years moving forwards. So that ideally we can continue our philosophy of being just ahead of what the customer needs, while listening to them and working with their other parts of the IT infrastructure, because as you said from the start again, this is an ecosystem. This is not a singular component, and I think that's where it's really key to have a philosophy, which we have here in Veeam, which is double down with your friends, make sure you make it work, look to evolve as the market evolves with some extension, but you never forget where you came from. >> I like that answer cause it was something. It was kind of a loaded question, because when I talked to a lot of companies behind the scenes, one of their big frustrations is there's a push to get more, more, more, but in reality when they look at the productivity, it's like a snake swallowing a basketball. They got a few partners that are really productive, and then the rest, and they're spending all this time doing Barney press releases. I love you. You love me and dah, dah, dah, and nothing ever happens out of it. So when you approach a strategic partnership, why Veeam? So when you approach a strategic partnership, why Veeam? Pitch me on why I should spend my time with Veeam versus one of the many other competitors that are out there. >> 100%. I mean that's the great thing. We're programmed from a history point of view, and there's nothing better than when you're talking to a strategic partner, than to be able to say you've put your money where your mouth is. Secondly, that money is key. We invest heavily, and it is expensive. It's an expensive scenario. I mean our Alliances organization globally is almost 100 people, and it's a big investment position, because you've got to make sure that you've got the ability to balance out what both sides are looking for, and sometimes you do things that maybe aren't 100% in your best interest, but that's important to your partner and your alliance and vice versa, and so from that point of view, you've got history and proven position. You've got investment potential, and the capital to be able to build together, to move forward, and thirdly, it's about the execution, and that's not just your philosophy where I started. This is about the ability to turn concept into tangible, frankly benefit, which comes down to economics for both sides, and those three things together to me are the way that we've been so successful, in not only growing and maintaining our position, but also attracting new ones as we look to see the evolution of the IT market. Daniel, you may have a different view. >> No, no, no, no, no. No, no, I totally agree. I just would like to complement your part by two things. Two things are very much marketing related. We are number two now worldwide, as IDC mentioned it. So in other words, that means that customers like our technologies, our solutions. So partners are looking for making businesses with somebody who is trusted. Also we get customers, and number two, we have a big marketing machine, and that helps very, very, very much the business, through the partners all the way to the end customers. We always involve the buffers, always systematic. >> Sorry to interrupt. I saw some of that IDC data. You guys are number two worldwide, but am I correct that you're the number one, like pure play independent or am I missing something there? >> Number one. Yeah. Number one in EMEA. >> Right. So I always ask that, because a lot of times other people, it's like cloud washing. I could throw a bunch of stuff in my cloud numbers and say I'm number one in cloud, but when you talk about Veeam all your revenue comes from backup data protection. That's the pure play. We love the pure plays, because they're easier to understand, and even though you guys are a private company, you're more transparent than most private companies. So it's helpful as an analyst to really kind of gauge the progress. So, okay guys. Hey, we got to leave it there. Thanks so much for coming on and talking about the all important partner ecosystem. You guys have done a great job there. Congratulations, and I hear it from your partners and obviously the numbers prove it out. So great job. >> Thanks. Thanks for your time today. >> All right. You're very welcome, and thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE's continuous coverage of VeeamON 2021, the virtual edition. Keep it right there for more great content.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube presenting Cuban cloud brought to you by Silicon Angle. Hi, this is David Linton. You're watching the Cubes coverage of the Cube on Cloud, our own virtual event where we're trying to understand the future of cloud, where we've come from and where we're going. And we're bringing in visionaries to really have that detailed conversation. Daniel Jones is here. He's the CEO of automation specialist. You. I path Daniel. Thanks for coming on and sharing your insights here. >>Thank you so much for inviting me. They've appreciated. >>That's always a pleasure to get together with folks that have started companies with a seed of a vision and have exploded in tow. You know, great success. And when I wanna go back to the the the founding days of you, I path 2005. It was a pre cloud. There's certainly pre cloud as we know it today. A w s came out in 2006. Aw, and then we saw the clouds Ascendancy. But but your original founding premise there was no cloud, you know, it wasn't like a startup could just spend up stuff in the cloud. But what you've seen that evolution. So when you first started to see cloud evolved, What did you think? Did you think Oh, well, we'll see what happens. Or did you? Did you know at the time that this was gonna be a bigas? It actually has become. What were your thoughts back then? >>Well, I honestly, I thought that we are kind of agent. And maybe it's stupid to not to pie foot in tow, The new trends in technology like Cloud Mobile social and I we kept, you know, working on this computer vision technology that 15 years ago, war was not really hot. But with the evolution of self driving cars and the latest development in AI, we we've been able to capture our investments in the domain that was not hot. But suddenly, you know, became the word the of the greatest minds in I t. And we definitely we specialize Our computer vision toe a narrow use case, but still, it's the It's the key of what we've done in, uh, in the end, the robots are powered by computer vision technology. This kind of a robot emulate how human user work. So obviously we use vision a lot in our day by day work and having the best technology that allows our robots to interact with the computer screen more like human user is quintessential and, uh, making our business reliable and easy to use. So we were lucky. But I always felt that maybe I should change it. And we were feeling I remember you know, many discussions with my, you know, initial developers because we like what you're doing. What we felt a bit left outside my door. What way? Got lucky in the end. >>So So I have a premise here and that when you go back to the early days of cloud, what they got right was they were attacking the human labor problem and they automate it was storage. It was it was networking. It was compute. But really the automation that they brought toe i t. And the quality that that drove and the flexibility was, you know, a game changer. Of course, we know that now. And you know, many of us at the time were very excited about Cloud. I'm not sure we predicted the impact that it had, but my premise is that there's a parallel in your business with the automation that you're driving into the business. We've talked toe people, for instance, that some of your customers have said, You know I can't do Six Sigma. I can't afford to do six Sigma before things like R P. A. For business process. I do that for Mission critical things, but now I can apply six Sigma thinking across my entire business that drives quality. It takes costs out of my business. So what do you think about that premise? That there's a parallel between the early days of cloud taking human labor out of the equation and driving quality and flexibility, cost saving speed and revenue, etcetera and what you're doing on the business side, >>it is clearly a parallel. I can tell that the cloud was built by looking at ICTY Automation use cases first of all, because this is all software engineers understand the most software engineers. Let's be you little on this. They don't understand the business work. They don't understand all how the rial work is performing a big enterprise and they don't care. Sometimes when in my own discussions with our CFO, he is surprised that I don't know all the use cases in the world. Yes, of course. I don't know exactly how an insurance company work All the processes in a health care, all the banking processes. I have intellectual curiosity how they were. But what interests me the most is our computer vision technology that works uniformly well across different. That was the same from the cloud. So initially they built and they build a cow cloud one toe, help them when what they know the best. And now, for we were put in the face of having great technology, this computer region technology, but without having a great use case in the I t world that we understood. And when we when I'm speaking about our early days like 12, 13, 14, I believe this technology has a lot less applicable bility in the real world. Because again, we were thinking of some sorts of small I T automation gigs that were not possible just doing the AP ice. But when I discovered the messy world of business processes and how important is to emulate people when you think automation, that was a big ah ha moment. So I believe that we can do for business processes what the cloud has done for I t processes on. We are really patient now about this business processes on helping people toe eliminate all the repetitive work that is their delegate. This work two robots and have the people that are required to do this work do do better. A smaller number of tasks every day. Everyone has own, as on her or him played today like, let's say, 10, 20 different activities. Some of them can be completely delegated to rob to robots, and they are the low value type of activities, while they can focus on the high value activities like interaction with people, creativity, decision making and this type of human like things that we as humans really love. >>I love that you shared that story, but you thought it was a very narrow, sort of set of use cases when you first started and then, you know, that's that's just an awesome founders, you know, really ization. I love it when we've often said in the Cube that, you know, for decades we've marched to the tune of Moore's Law. That was the innovation engine. No longer is that case. It's a combination of of data, applied machine intelligence and cloud for scale. And I guess the computer vision pieces How you in just the data you've you've made some investments in a I and there's many more to come the industry in general and the cloud is sort of the piece of that equation that we see for scale. So I wonder how you see those pieces fitting to your business. Uh, and how important is the cloud for your scale? At last? Uh, at last year, I path forward. There was a lot of talk amongst your customers about scaling. Is the cloud critical for that scale? >>Yeah, I believe so. And we are thinking of clouds in tow. Distinct ways number one. We're offering Onda manage automation service in our own close, using where we host everything by ourselves, including our orchestrator, and then be next to have the plans to include our the robots that execute the automation And people simply can't connect to our cloud building automation and just scheduled to run without any maintainers. And they will have access to oh, great analytics, Everything integrated. So this is a major force to us, and the way we launching G a. This cloud offering in April this year, and I can tell you that until now, 20% of our customers already are in a shape or another in this type of offering, not 20% dollar amount, but 20% of our customers. And it's clear that at this point this has mawr applicability into the long tail, a smaller customers than in the on our biggest customers. But the second, this thing type of cloud offering that we focus on is toe have best in class support and best in class multi cloud support for the cloud of choice of our customers. For instance, if you go in if you go in a w, g, c, p usher and you buy a subscription there, you wear buildings. Specialized editions were with one click. You will be able to install our technology in those clouds and you'll be ableto scale up and down your robots. You can connect your robots to our many service were within your tenant, but basically the angle is toe lesson. Ah lot the administration, the maintainers footprint of your installation, either on our own cloud, even on your cloud of choice. I'm a strong believer that we will see an accelerated transition from the completely on Prem Workloads into these two source of cloud workloads. >>I wanna ask you, is a a technologist if you see. So you mentioned that you're gonna take your products and your support. Multiple clouds will run on any cloud in A lot of companies are talking about that, you know, for their respective whether it's a database or, you know, whatever storage device, etcetera. Do you see the day where you'll actually start? You're collaborating across clouds. Where the user, uh, maybe maybe the user today doesn't know, but maybe a developer does know which cloud it's running on. But do you see any value in actual, you know, connecting across clouds where the data and one cloud is relevant for the data? Another cloud is I know there are latent see issues. Is that you know, technically feasible. And is it it? Will it drive business value? What do you think about that cross cloud connection? >>I believe it is already happening. There is a mesh between between various services and who knows in which cloud they are awful. Already. I feel the Leighton see is less and less of a problem as much as the biggest cloud provider have have a very distributed geographically president. So as long as I can playing AWS in East Coast, on on Asia in East Coast, it's not such a big Leighton see issue. Uh huh. Frankly, in the past, our customers at least start telling us they seen how it is to be completely looking toe one technology on people would like Toa have optionality. It's not necessarily that I will use three clothes, but I would like to use the vendor that gives me optionally even. And this is what we're trying to offer. >>Do you, when you think about the future of work? I mean, e said before the cloud one dato was infrastructure storage, networking, computing Uh, it seems like to Dato we're bringing in more ai new workloads. We're seeing, you know, analytics and machine intelligence applied to the data and then, you know, distributed at scale self serve to the business. How do you see the future of work specifically as it relates toe automation affecting that, uh on you know what role does cloud play there? What's your vision? >>So as the workloads will move to cloud. It's absolutely critical that the processes will move to cloud, so there is no way back. I think, that moving in tow, moving from home for and software into cloud will make even easier toe automate this type of workloads into the cloud. It's gonna be less maintain us. You will deal less with legacy applications that require some special care. It's kind of a bit more easier to automate modern Onley, Web based type of application so that Z we'll see an acceleration on the moving to cloud. But again, there will be different sorts of cloud from a completely manage automation service from us toe managing yourself the automation in your cloud tenant, but not on prayer. I'm not a big believer that we will accept unless very few critical sectors I don't think that we will see home Primor roads in the past five years. >>I mean, I agree in this case, the business case for on Prem just gets, you know, less and less. I mean, it'll be a certain applications for sure. My last question is, when thinking about from a software developer standpoint, you obviously you're gonna wanna run in a W S and G, C P and Azure. Uh, perhaps Alibaba, Uh, do you look at other clouds? Whether their regional clouds, of course. You got your own cloud. Maybe Oracle. IBM. How do you think about those? Do you just sort of evaluated on a case by case basis? You let customers, you know, tell you where you need to be. >>Yeah, way focus on the on the three big clouds today, but we're building on the top off Q Burnett is most of our way. We have a big shift in tow building que Burnett is micro services. And my guess is that all mother clouds would offer fantastic support for kubernetes. So what What it takes when you create a new edition for another cloud is toe is toe have the underlying services. Like if we plan to use snowflake, for instance in our analytics offering, you better have snowflake in another cloud. Otherwise, probably the the analytics will will have toe be delayed or use a less of one part technology. So it's not only about what we are building, but it's also, you know, the vast availability of other set of technologies that we try toe use when you choose a technology. Now, first of all, we are looking. We need to choose something that is multi cloud. There's who's dedicated from one cloud vendor. That's that's our first priority. This is why I've mentioned snowflake and then when when we moved into a cloud. We are limited by the offerings that are there, but I my belief is in the main clouds, probably in the US I don't know one of the region's what's gonna happen, but in the main crowds in the U. S. In I believe that they will. In the end, they will catch up in terms off offering and convincing of other defenders toe have kind of kind of similar offering on their own. I don't know if, besides, the Big Three, or you'll see someone and that is able to compete could be too much fragmented. Maybe they will be dedicated clouds for certain services. But for General Cloud, I think three is more than enough. >>Yeah, and so, you know, in the early days of cloud, people talked about dial tone, and essentially, that's what's becoming. It's the it's the value that's running on top of the cloud from software companies like ey Path and others that is really driving. So the cloud to Dato the next generation Daniel Dennett is thanks so much for sharing your vision on participating in the Cuban cloud. Really appreciate it. >>My pleasure, Dave. Thank you so much for inviting. >>You're welcome. You always great to talk to you. And thank you for watching everybody keep it right there. We'll be back with our next guest right into this short break. This is Dave Volonte for the Cube. Yeah.

okay here we go hi everybody this is dave vellante and you're watching thecube's coverage of the cube on cloud our own virtual event where we're trying to understand the future of cloud where we've come from and where we're going and we're bringing in visionaries to really have that that detailed conversation daniel dines is here he's the ceo of automation specialist uipath daniel thanks for coming on and sharing your insights here thank you so much for inviting me dave appreciate it that's always a pleasure to get together with with folks that have started companies with a seed of a vision and have exploded into you know great success and and but i want to go back to the the founding days of uipath 2005. it was pre-cloud there's certainly pre-cloud as we know it today aws came out in 2006 and then we we saw the clouds ascendancy but but your original founding premise there was no cloud you know it wasn't like a startup that could just spin up stuff in the cloud but you've seen that evolution so when you first started to see cloud evolve what did you think did you think oh well we'll see what happens or did you did you know at the time that this was going to be as big as it actually has become what were your thoughts back then well i honestly i i thought that we are kind of ancient and maybe it's stupid to not to private into the new trends in technology like cloud mobile social but i we kept you know working on this computer vision technology that uh 15 years ago was not really hot but with the evolution of self-driving cars and the latest development in ai we we've been able to capture our investments in a domain that was not hot but suddenly you know became the word of the greatest minds in i.t and we definitely we we specialize our computer vision to a narrow use case but still it's the it's the key of what we've done in uh in the end the robots are powered by computer vision technology this kind of a robot emulate how human user work so obviously we use vision a lot in our day by day work and having the best technology that allows our robots to interact with the computer screen more like a human user is quintessential in uh in making our business reliable and easy to use so we were lucky but i always felt that maybe i should change it and we we were feeling i i remember you know many discussions with my you know initial developers because we like what we were doing but we felt a bit left outside by the world but we got lucky in the end so so i have a premise here and that when you go back to the early days of cloud what they got right was they were attacking the the human labor problem and they automated it was storage it was it was networking it was compute but really the automation that they brought to it and the quality that that drove and the flexibility uh was you know a game changer of course we we know that now and you know many of us at the time were very excited about cloud i'm not sure we predicted the impact that it had but my premise is that there's a parallel in your business with the automation that you're driving into the business we've talked to people for instance some of your customers have said you know i can't do six sigma i can't afford to do six sigma before things like rpa for business process i do that for mission critical things but now i can apply six sigma thinking across my entire business that drives quality it takes cost out of my business so what do you think about that premise that there's a parallel between the early days of cloud taking human labor out of the equation and driving quality and flexibility cost saving speed and revenue etc and what you're doing on the business side it is clearly a parallel i can tell that the cloud was built by looking at it automation use cases first of all because this is what software engineers understand the most software engineers let's be you know honest they don't understand the business work they they don't understand all how the real work is performed in a big enterprise and they don't care sometimes when in my own discussions with our cfo he is surprised that i don't know all the use cases in the world yes of course i don't know exactly how an insurance company work all the processes in healthcare all the banking processes i have intellectual curiosity how they work but what interests me the most is our computer vision technology that works uniformly well across different that was the same from the cloud so initially they built in the they built the cloud to help them when what they know the best and now for we were put in the face of having great technology this computer vision technology but without having a great use case in the iit world that we understood and when we when i'm speaking about our early days like 12 13 14 i believe this technology has a lot less applicability in the real world because again we were thinking of some sorts of small it automation gigs that were not possible just doing the apis but when i discovered the messy world of business processes and how important is to emulate people when you think automation that was the big aha moment so i believe that we can do for business processes what the cloud has done for i.t processes and we are really patient now about these business processes and helping people to eliminate all the repetitive work that is there delegate this work to robots and have the people that are required to do this work do do better a smaller number of tasks every day everyone has one as on her or him played today like let's say 10 20 different activities some of them can be completely delegated to rock to robots and they are the low value type of activities while they can focus on the high value activities like interaction with people creativity decision making and this type of human-like things that we as humans really love i love that uh you shared that story but you you thought it was a very narrow sort of set of use cases when you first started and then you know that's that's just an awesome founders you know realization i i love it when we've often said in the cube that you know for decades we've marched to the the tune of moore's law that was the innovation engine no longer is the case it's a combination of of data applied machine intelligence and cloud for scale and i guess the computer vision piece is how you ingest the data uh you you've you've made some investments in in ai and there's many more to come the industry in general and the cloud is is sort of the piece of that equation that we see for scale so i wonder how you see those pieces fitting to your business and how important is the cloud for your scale at last uh at last ui path forward there was a lot of talk amongst our customers about scaling is the cloud critical for that scale yeah i believe so and we are thinking of cloud in two distinct ways number one we are offering and manage automation service in our own cloud using uh where we host everything by ourselves including our orchestrator and then next we have the plans to include our the robots that execute the automation and people simply can connect to our cloud build an automation and just schedule it to run without any maintenance and they will have have access to great analytics everything integrated so this is a major focus to us and the way we launching ga this cloud offering in april this year and i can tell you that until now 20 percent of our customers already are in a shape or another in this type of offering not 20 dollar amount but 20 of our customers and it's clear that at this point this has more applicability into the long tail a smaller customers than in the on our biggest customers but the second distinct type of cloud offering that we focus on is to have best-in-class support in best-in-class multi-cloud support for the cloud of choice of our customers for instance if you go in if you go in aws gcp azure and you buy a subscription there you we we are building specialized editions where with one click you will be able to install our technology in those clouds and you will be able to to scale up and down your robots you can connect your robots to our many services were within your tenant but basically the end goal is to lessen a lot the administration the maintenance footprint of your installation either on our own cloud even on your cloud of choice i'm a strong believer that we will see an accelerated transition from the completely on prem workloads into these two source cloud workloads i want to ask you as a as a technologist if you see so you mentioned that you're going to take your products and you support multiple clouds it'll run on any cloud and a lot of companies are talking about that you know for their respective whether it's a database or you know whatever storage device etc do you see the the day where you'll actually start you're collaborating across clouds where the user uh maybe maybe the user today doesn't know but but maybe a developer does know which cloud it's running on but do you see any value in actual you know connecting across clouds where the data in one cloud is relevant for the data another cloud is i know there are latency issues is is that you know technically feasible and is it will it drive business value what do you think about that cross-cloud connection i believe it is already happening there is a mesh between between various services and who knows in which cloud they are offered already i feel the latency is less and less of a problem as much as the biggest cloud provider have have a very distributed geographically present so as long as i can play in aws in east coast on azure in east coast it's not such a big latency issue and frankly in the past our customers at least are telling us they seen how it is to be completely locked into one technology and people would like to have optionality it's not necessarily that i will use three clouds but i would like to use a vendor that gives me optionality even the and this is what we are trying to offer do you when you think about the future of work i mean as i said before the cloud 1.0 is infrastructure storage networking compute and it seems like 2.0 we're bringing in more ai new workloads uh we're seeing you know analytics and and machine intelligence applied to the data and then you know distributed at scale self-serve to the business how do you see the future of work specifically as it relates to automation affecting that uh and you know what role does cloud play there what's your vision so as the workloads will move to cloud it's absolutely critical that the processes will move to cloud so there is no way back and i i think that uh moving into moving from opera and software into cloud will make even easier to automate this type of workloads into the cloud it's gonna be less maintenance you will deal less with legacy applications that require some special care it's kind of a bit more easier to automate modern only web-based type of application so that's uh we will see an acceleration on the on the moving to cloud but again there will be different sorts of cloud from a completely managed automation service from us to managing yourself the automation in your cloud tenant but not on-prem i'm not a big believer that we will ex unless very few critical sectors i don't think that we will see on-prem workloads in the past five years i mean i agree in the business the business case for on-prem just gets you know less and less i mean it'll there's certain applications for sure my last question is when thinking about from a software developer standpoint you obviously you're going to want to run in aws and gcp and azure uh perhaps alibaba do you look at other clouds whether they're regional clouds of course you've got your own cloud maybe oracle ibm how do you think about those do you just sort of evaluate them on a case-by-case basis you let customers you know tell you where where you need to be yeah we we we focus on the on the three big clouds today but we are building on the top of kubernetes most of our we we have a big shift into building kubernetes microservices and my guess is that all modern clouds will offer fantastic support for kubernetes so what what it takes when you create an edition for another cloud is to is to have the underlying services like if we plan to use snowflake for instance in our analytics offering you better have snowflake in another cloud otherwise probably the the analytics will will have to be delayed or use less of one part technology so it's not only about what we are building but it's also you know the vast availability of other set of technologies that we try to use when you choose a technology now first of all we are looking we need to choose something that is multi-cloud versus dedicated from one cloud vendor that's that's our first priority this is why i've mentioned snowflake and then when you when we move into a cloud we are limited by the offerings that are there but i my belief is in the in the main clouds probably in the us i don't know on other regions what's going to happen but in the main clouds in the us and i believe that they will in the end they will catch up in terms of offering and convincing other other vendors to to have kind of similar offering on their own i don't know if besides the big three we will see someone and that is able to compete could be too much fragmented maybe they will be dedicated clouds for certain services but for general cloud i think three is more than enough yeah and so you know in the early days of cloud people talked about dial tone and essentially that's what's becoming it's the it's the value that's running on top of the cloud from software companies like uipath and others that is really driving sort of the cloud 2.0 the next generation daniel dines thanks so much for sharing your your vision uh and participating in the cube on cloud really appreciate it my pleasure dave thank you so much for inviting you're welcome always great to talk to you and thank you for watching everybody keep it right there we'll be back with our next guest ready for this short break this is dave vellante for the cube

(upbeat music) >> Hello everyone and welcome to theCUBE. In this special power panel we're going to dig into and take a peek at the future of cloud. You know a lot has transpired in the last decade. The cloud itself, we've seen a data explosion. The AI winter turned into machine intelligence going mainstream. We've seen the emergence of As-a-Service models. And as we look forward to the next 10 years we see the whole idea of cloud expanding, new definitions occurring. Yes, the world is hybrid but the situation is more nuanced than that. You've got remote locations, smaller data centers, clandestine facilities, oil rigs, autonomous vehicles, windmills, you name it. Technology is connecting our world, data is flowing through the pipes like water, and AI is helping us make sense of the noise. All of this, and more is driving a new digital economy. And with me to talk about these topics are three great guests from IBM. Maia Sisk is the Director of SaaS Offering Management, at IBM Data and AI. And she's within the IBM Cloud and Cognitive Software Group. Stephanie Walter is the Program Director for data and AI Offering Management, same group IBM Cloud and Cognitive Software. And Daniel Berg is a Distinguished Engineer. He's focused on IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service. He's in the Cloud Organization. And he's going to talk today a lot about IBM's cloud Satellite and of course Containers. Wow, two girls, two boys on a panel, we did it. Folks welcome to theCUBE. (chuckles) >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Glad to be here. >> So Maia, I want to start with you and have some other folks chime in here. And really want to dig into the problem statement and what you're seeing with customers and you know, what are some of the challenges that you're hearing from customers? >> Yeah, I think a big challenge that we face is, (indistinct) talked about it earlier just data is everywhere. And when we look at opportunities to apply the cloud and apply an As-a-Service model, one of the challenges that we typically face is that the data isn't all nice cleanly package where you can bring it all together, and you know, one AI models on it, run analytics on it, get it in an easy and clean way. It's messy. And what we're finding is that customers are challenged with the problem of having to bring all of the data together on a single cloud in order to leverage it. So we're now looking at IBM and how we flip that paradigm around. And instead of bringing the data to the cloud bring the cloud to the data , in order to help clients manage that challenge and really harness the value of the data, regardless of where you live. >> I love that because data is distributed by its very nature it's silo, Daniel, anything you'd add? >> Yeah, I mean, I would definitely echo that, what Maia was saying, because we're seeing this with a number of customers that they have certain amount of data that while they're strategically looking that moving to the cloud, there's data that for various reasons they can not move itself into the cloud. And in order to reduce latency and get the fastest amount of processing time, they going to move the processing closer to that data. And that's something that we're looking at providing for our customers as well. The other services within IBM Cloud, through our notion of IBM Cloud Satellite. How to help teams and organizations get processing power manage them to service, but closer to where their data may reside. >> And just to play off of that with one other comment. Then the other thing I think we see a lot today is heightened concerned about risks, about data security, about data privacy. And you're trying to figure out how to manage that challenge of especially when you start sending data over the wire, wanting to make sure that it is still safe, it is still secure and it is still resident in the appropriate places. And that kind of need to manage the governance of the data kind of adds an additional layer of complexity. >> Right, if it's not secure, it's a, non-starter, Stephanie let's bring you into the conversation and talk about, you know, some of the waves that you're seeing. Maybe some of the trends, we've certainly seen digital accelerate as a result of the pandemic. It's no longer I'll get to that someday. It's really, it become a mandate you're out of business, if you don't have a digital business. What are some of the markets shifts that you're seeing? >> Well, I mean, really at the end of the day our clients want to infuse AI into their organizations. And so, you know, really the goal is to achieve ambient AI, AI that's just running in the background unchoosibly helping our clients make these really important business decisions. They're also really focused on trust. That's a big issue here. They're really focused on, you know, being able to explain how their AI is making these decisions and also being able to feel confident that they're not introducing harmful biases into their decision-making. So I say that because when you think about, you know digital organization going digital, that's what our customers want to focus on. They don't want to focus on managing IT. They don't want to focus on managing software. They don't want to to have to focus on, you know, patching and upgrading. And so we're seeing more of a move to manage services As-a-Service technologies, where the clients can really focus on their business problems and using The technologies like AI, to help improve their businesses. And not have to worry so much about building them from the ground up. >> So let's stay on that for a minute. And maybe Maia, Daniel, you can comment. So you, Stephanie, you said that customers want to infuse AI and kind of gave some reasons why, but I want to stay on that for a minute. That, what is that really that main outcome that they're looking for? Maybe there are several, they're trying to get to insight. You mentioned that trynna be more efficient it sounds like they're trynna automate governance and compliance, Maia, Daniel can you sort of add anything to this conversation? >> Yeah, well, I would, I would definitely say that, you know at the end of the day, customers are looking to use the data that they have to make smarter decisions. And in order to make smarter decisions it's not enough to just have the insight. The insight has to, you know, meet the business person that needs it, you know in the context, you know, in the application, in the customer interaction. So I think that that's really important. And then everything else becomes like the the superstructure that helps power, that decision and the decision being embedded in the business process. So we at IBM talk a lot about a concept we call the Ladder to AI. And the the short tagline is there is no AI without IA. You know, there is no Artificial Intelligence without Information Architecture. It is so critical, you know, Maia's version this is the garbage in garbage out. You have to have high quality data. You have to have that data be well-organized and well-managed so that you're using it appropriately. And all of that is just, you know then becomes the fuel that powers your AI. But if you have the AI without having that super structure, you know, you're going to end up making, get bad decisions. And ultimately, you know our customers making their customers experience less than it could and should be. And in a digital world, that's, you know, at the end of the day, it's all about digitizing that interaction with whoever the end customer whoever the end consumer is and making that experience the best it can be, because that's what fuels innovation and growth. >> Okay. So we've heard Arvind Krishna talk about, he actually made this statement IBM has to win the architectural battle for cloud. And I'm wondering maybe Daniel you can comment, on what that architectural framework looks like. I mean Maia just talked about the Information Architecture. You can't have AI without that foundation but we know what does Arvind mean by that? How is IBM thinking about that? >> Yeah, I mean, this is where we're really striving to allow our customers really focusing on their business and focusing on the goals that they're trying to achieve without forcing them to worry as much about the IT and the infrastructure and the platform for which they're going to run. Typically, if you're anchored by your data and the data is not able to move into the cloud, generally we would say that you don't have access to cloud services. You must go and install and run and operate your own software to perform the duties or the processing that you require. And that's a huge burden to push onto a customer because they couldn't move their data to your cloud. Now you're pushing a lot of responsibilities back onto them. So what we're really striving for here is, how can we give them that cloud experience where they can process their data? They can run their run book. They can have all of that managed As-a-Service so that they could focus on their business but get that closer to where the data actually resides. And that's what we're really striving for as far as the architecture is concerned. So with IBM Cloud Satellite, we're pushing the core platform and the platform services that we support in IBM Cloud outside of our data centers and into locations where it's closer to your data. And all of that is underpinned by Containerizations, Containers, Kubernetes and OpenShift. Is fundamentally the platform for which we're building upon. >> Okay. So that, so really it's still it's always a data problem, right? Data is you don't want to move it if you don't have to. Right. So it's, so Stephanie, should we think about this as a new emergent data architecture I guess that's what IA is all about. How do you see that evolving? >> Well I mean, I see it evolving as, I mean, first of all our clients, you know, we know that data is the lifeblood of AI. We know the vast majority of our clients are using more than one cloud. And we know that the client's data may be located in different clouds, and that could be due to costs, that could be due to location. So we have to ask the question, how are our clients supposed to deal with this? This is incredibly complex environments they're are incredibly complex reasons sometimes for the data to be where it is. It can include anything from costs to laws, that our clients have to abide by. So what we need to do, is we need to adapt to these different environments and provide clients with the consistent experience and lower complexity to be able to handle data and be able to use AI in these complex environments. And so, you know, we know data, we also know data science talent is scarce. And if each one of these environments have their own tools that need to be used, depending on where the data is located, that's a huge time sink, for these data scientist and our clients don't want to waste their talents time on problems like this. So what we're seeing is, we're seeing more of a acceptance and realization that this is what our clients are dealing with. We have to make it easier. We have to do Innovative things like figure out how to bring the AI to the data, how to bring the AI to where the clients need it and make it much easier and accessible for them to take advantage of. >> And I think there's an additional point to make on this one, which is it's not just easy and accessible but it's also unified. I mean, one of the challenges that customers face in this multicloud environment and many customers are multicloud, you know, not necessarily by intent but just because of how, you know, businesses have adopted as a service. But to then have all of that experience be fragmented and have different tools not just of data, but different pools of, again catalog, different pools of data science it's extremely complex to manage. So I think one of the powerful things that we're doing here, is we're kind of bringing those multiple clouds together, into more of an integrated or a unified, you know window into the client's data in AI state. So not only does the end-user not have to worry about you know, the technologies of dealing with multiple individual clouds, but also, you know it all comes together in one place. So it can be give managed in a more unified way so that assets can be shared across, and it becomes more of a unified approach. The way I like to think of it is, you know, it's true hybrid multicloud, in that it is all connected as opposed to multi-cloud, but it's pools of multiple clouds, one cloud at a time. >> So it can we stay on that for a second because it's, you're saying it's unified but the data stays where it is. The data is distributed by nature. So it's unified logically, but it's decentralized. Is that, am I getting that right? Correct. Okay. Correct. All right. I'm really interested in how you do this. And maybe we can talk about maybe the approach that you take for some of your offerings and maybe get specific on that. So maybe Stephanie, why don't you start, you know, Yes so, what do you have in your basket? Like Cloud Pak So what we have in our basket I mean lets talk about that. >> We have, so Cloud Pak for Data as a Service. This is our premier data and AI platform. It's offered as a service, its fully managed, and there's roughly, there's 30 services integrated services in our services catalog and growing. So we have services to help you through the entire AI life cycle from preparing your data, which is Maia was saying it's very, very, very important. It's critical to any successful AI project. From building your models, from running the models and then monitoring them to make sure that as I was saying before, you can trust them. You don't have to make sure that, you need to make sure that there's not biased. You need to be able to manage these models and then the life cycle them retrain them if needed. So our platform handles all of that. It's hosted on IBM Cloud. And what we're doing now, which is really exciting, is we're going to use, and you mentioned before IBM Cloud Satellite, as a way for us to send our AI to data that perhaps is located on another cloud or another environment. So how this would work is that the services that are integrated with Cloud Pak for Data as a Service they'll be able to use satellite locations to send their AI workloads, to run next to the data. And this means that the data doesn't need to be moved. You don't have to worry about high egress charges. You can see, you can reduce latency and see much stronger performance by running these AI workloads where it counts. We're really excited to to add this capability to our platform. Because, you know, we spent a lot of time talking about earlier all of these challenges that our clients have and this is going to make a big difference in helping them overcome them. Okay. So Daniel, how to Containers fit in? I mean, obviously the Red Hat acquisition was so strategic. We're seeing the real, the ascendancy of OpenShift in particular. Talk about Containers and where it fits into the IBM Cloud Satellite strategy. >> Yeah. So a lot of this builds on top of how we run our cloud business today. Today the vast majority of the services that are available in IBM cloud catalog, actually runs as Containers, runs in a Kubernetes based environment and runs on top of the services that we provide to our customers. So the Container Platform that we provide to our customers is the same one that we're using to run our own cloud services. And those are underpinned with Containers, Kubernetes, and OpenShift. And IBM cloud satellite, based on the way that the designed our Container Platform using Kubernetes and Containers and OpenShift, allows us to take that same design and the same principles and extended outside of our data centers with user provided infrastructure. And this, this goes back to what Stephanie was saying is a satellite location. So using that technology, that same technology and the fact that we've already containerized many of our services and run them on our own platform, we are now distributing our platform outside of IBM Cloud Data Centers using satellite locations and making those available for our cloud service teams, to make their services available in those locations. >> I see and Maia, this, it is as a service. It's a OPEX. Is that right? Absolutely Okay. Absolutely >> Yeah, it's with the two different options on how we can run. One is we can leverage IBM Cloud Satellite and reach into a customer's operating environment. They provide the infrastructure, but we've provide the As-a-Service experience for the Container on up. The other option that we have is for some of our capabilities like our data science capability, where, you know customer might need something a little bit more turnkey because it's, you know, more of a business person or somebody in the CTO's office consuming the As-a-Service. We'll also offer select workloads in an IBM own satellite and environment. I, you know, so that it kind of soup to nuts managed by us. But that is the key is that other than, you know providing the operating environment and then connecting what we do to, you know, their data sources, really the rest is up to us. We're responsible for, you know everything that you would expect in an As-a-Service environment. That things are running, that they're updated, that they're secure, that they're compliant, that's all part of our responsibility. >> Yeah. So a lot of options for customers and it's kind of the way they want to consume. Let's talk about the business impact. You know, you guys, IBM, very consultative selling, you know, tight relationships with customers. What's the business case look like when you go into a client? What's the conversation like? What's possible? What can you share? Stephanie, can you maybe start things off there? Any examples, use-cases, business case, help us understand the metrics. >> Yeah. I mean, so let's talk about a couple of use cases here. So let's say I'm an investment firm, and I'm using data points from all kinds of data sources right? To use AI, to create models to inform my investment decisions. So I'm going to be using, I may be using data sources you know, like regulatory filings, newspaper articles that are pretty standard. I may also be using things like satellite data that monitors parking lots or maybe even weather data, weather forecast data. And all of this data is coming together and being, it needs to be used for models to predict, you know when to buy, sell, trade, however, due to costs, due to just availability of the data they may be located on completely different clouds. You know, and we know that especially capital markets things are fast, fast, fast. So I need to bring my AI to my data, and need to do it quickly so that I can build these models where the data resides, and then be able to make my investment decisions, very fast. And these models get updated often because conditions change, markets change. And this is one way to provide a unified set of AI tools that my data scientists can use. We don't have to be trained on I'm told depending on what cloud the data is stored on. And they can actually build these models much faster and even cheaper. If you would take into egress charges into consideration, you know, moving all the all this data around. Another use case that we're seeing is you know, something like let's say, a multinational telecommunications company that has locations in multiple countries and maybe they want to reduce their customer churn. So they have say customer data that it's stored in different countries and different countries may have different regulations, or the company may have policies that, that data can't be moved out to those country. So what can we do? Again, what we can do is we can send our AI to this data. We can make a customer churn prediction model, that when my customer service representative is on the phone with a customer, and put their information, and see how likely they are to stop using my service and tailor my phone interaction and the offers that I would offer them as this customer service representative to them. If there's a high likelihood that they're going to churn I will probably sweeten the deal. And I can do all that while I'm being fast, right. Because we know that these interactions need to happen quickly. But also while complying with whatever policies or even regulations that are in place for my multinational company. So you know, if you think back to the use cases that I was just talking about you know, latency, performance, reducing costs and also being able to comply with any policy or regulations that our customers might have are really, are really the key pieces of the use cases that we've been seeing. >> Yeah. So Maia there's a theme here. I bring five megabytes of code to a petabyte of data kind of thing. And so Stephanie was talking about speed. There's a an inherent compliance and governance piece. It's it sounds like it's not a bolt on, it's not an afterthought, it's fundamental. So maybe you could add to the conversation, just specifically interested in, you know, what should a client expect? I mean, you're putting data in the hands of you know domain experts in the line of business. There's a self-serve component here, presumably. So there's cross selling is what I heard in some of what Stephanie was just talking about. So it was revenue, there's cost cutting, there's risk reduction, that I'm seeing the business case form. What can you add? >> Yeah, absolutely. I think that the only other thing I would add, is going back to the conversation that we had about, Oh you know, a lot of this is being driven by, you know the digitization of business and you know even moreso this year. You know, at the end of the day there's a lot of costs benefits to leveraging and As-a-Service model, you know, to leveraging that experience in economies of scale from a service provider, as well as, you know leveraging satellite kind of takes that to the next level of, you know, reducing some other costs. But I always go back to, you know at the end of the day, this is about customer experience. It's about revenue creation, and it's about, you know, creating, you know enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty. So there's a top-line benefits here, you know, of having the best possible AI, you know plugging that into the customer experience, the application where that application resides. So it's not just about where the data resides. You can also put it on the other side and say, you know, we're bringing the AI, we're bringing the machine learning model to the application so that the experiences at excellent the application is responsive there's less latency and that can help clients then leverage AI to create those revenue benefits, you know, of having the the satisfied customer and of having the, you know the right decision at the right time in order to, you know propel them to, to spend and spend more. >> So Daniel bring us home. I mean, there's a lot of engineering going on here. There's the technology, the people in the process if I'm a client, I'm going to say, okay, I'm going to rely on IBM R&D to cut my labor costs, to drive automation, to help me, you know, automate governance and reduce my risks, you know, take care of the technology. You know, I'll focus my efforts on my process, my people but it's a journey. So how do you see that shaping out in the next, you know several years or, or the coming decade, bring us home. >> Yeah. I mean what we're seeing here is that there's a realization that customers have highly skilled individuals. And we're not saying that these highly skilled individuals couldn't run and operate these platforms and the software themselves, they absolutely could. In some cases, maybe they can't but in many cases they could. But we're also talking about these are they're highly skilled individuals that are focusing on platform and platform services and not their business. And the realization here is that companies want their best and brightest focused on their business, not the platform. If they can get that platform from another vendor that they rely on and can provide the necessary compute services, in a timely and available fashion. The other aspect of this is, people have grown to appreciate those cloud services. They like that on demand experience. And they want that in almost every aspect of what they're working on. And the problem is, sometimes you have to have that experience in localities that are remote. They're very difficult. There's no cloud in some of these remote parts of the world. You might think that clouds everywhere, but it's not. It's actually in very specific locations across the world, but there are many remote locations that they want and need these services from the cloud that they can get. Something like IBM Cloud Satellite. That is what we're pursuing here, is being able to bring that cloud experience into these remote locations where you can't get it today. And that's where you can run your AI workloads. You don't have to run it yourself, we will run it and you can put it in those remote locations. And remote locations don't actually have to be like in the middle of a jungle, they could be in your, on your plant floor or within a port that you have across the world, right? It could be in a warehouse. I mean, there's lots of areas where there's data that needs to be processed quickly, and you want to have that cloud experience, that usage pay model for that processing. And that's exactly what we're trying to achieve with IBM Cloud Satellite and what we're trying to achieve with the IBM Cloud Pak for Data as a Service as well. Running on satellite is to give you those cloud experiences. Those services managed as a service in those remote locations that you absolutely need them and want them. >> Well, you guys are making a lot of progress in the next decade is not going to look like the last decade. I can pretty confident in that prediction. Guys thanks so much for coming on the cube and sharing your insights, really great conversation. >> Absolutely. Thank you, Dave. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome, and thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante from the cube. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>>Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cute conversation. >>Hello everyone. This is Dave Volante. Welcome to this cube conversation. This is a company that we've been following now for the last couple of years in a trend in robotic process automation, and then automation specifically, uh, it's a, it's a company in an area that we really like. Uh, we've been researching this and publishing and Daniel Dienes is here. He's the CEO of UI path. Yeah, it was great to see you again. Thanks for coming on. >>Thank you for inviting me, David. >>That's our pleasure. So let's, let's get an update in your business. You know, we covert obviously you sent everybody for a loop. We had been and have been following you guys quite, quite closely. How's how are things going for UI path? How has the pandemic affected your business? >>We we've designed this company from day one to work in a hybrid mode, local and under, obviously working from anywhere. And the transition to working from anywhere model was a really fast to implement for us. So COVID-19 itself. In the fact of the way we work on the business side, I would say that we are seeing, you know, mixed of events, some, uh, industries that was, that were mostly affected by COVID we're putting their budgets one hole while other industries were increasing 10 times. What I can tell you that in, um, in a nutshell, the numbers for us were really good. We are able to keep eating and beating the thought gets that we set pretty COVID and we focused quite a lot on helping our customers, not the gating through these murky waters. We have quite a lot of, um, involvement in healthcare and federal business. We worked with a few hospitals to help with accelerating the COVID test. In one case, we were able to save two hours a day for every nurse. So instead of filling up paperwork, they are able to focus on the patient. And that's not one isolated instance. We've done tremendous work across the, across the globe. And, uh, you know, we, uh, you know, that we raised our last round in, uh, June end of June. And that was a recognition of our accelerated business, >>Right? Yes. I mean, you raised it in the, of the pandemic, you know, I I've been saying that. I mean, everybody of course says the covert has accelerated a number of trends and I've been saying there's a, that there's now an increased mandate for automation, I think there was before, but yeah, maybe there was some complacency, although you didn't see it in your numbers, you guys obviously growing very right fast. You mentioned healthcare. I would think of banking and financial as well, which of course was a stronghold. But when you think about in the U S anyway, that the payroll protection act and the number of loans that had to be processed, you know, bank bankers would talk to me and say, we are volume, increased two orders of magnitude. We had, we had no way to do it. And they turn to automation to do that. So, so I've said that there is an automation mandate, and I think there, there, there has been because of the productivity gap, particularly in the U S in Europe, you don't see it so much in, in of course in China. Uh, but, but certainly the U S in the last couple of decades has declined in terms of productivity. So, you know, people are not going to be able to solve the world's biggest problems without automation. How are you thinking about that? Um, in, in this post COVID world, >>As you said, the awareness that we have to automate has increased 10 times compared to pre COVID the days. I would not say that yet automation is number one priority on the company's leader's agenda, not in the same way as conferencing and video conferencing, and all this directly affected, positively affected the software industries. But I believe that, uh, while automation is slower to adopt, and it requires a lot more investment to adopt it's, uh, it's gone, uh, dominate the agenda post COVID in the, in the sense that people will have to recoup, you know, all the losses that they had in the COVID, they learn their lessons. And, uh, you know, for instance, I talked to the few CEOs of watch, you know, fortune 500 businesses, and they are telling me, Daniel, I wish that we have started earlier. So now we are seeing, you know, an adoption that is more top down and adoption that is starting from the C level suite, even the CEO of large enterprises. >>Yeah. I mean, it seems to me that if a customer has tasted, you know, the benefits of, of RPA and automation, uh, and as realizes what it can do for their business, they're gonna maybe double down on it, especially in a time when revenues might be under pressure. Uh, and, and you're not hiring a, a no, a lot of people have put, you know, freezes on number of head layoffs. You've got to do more with less you guys. I wonder if you could bring up this, this chart, I want to share this and get Daniel's reaction. So we all were talking about land and expand. So what this is ETR data, and what it does is it asks customers where they're at. Do they know about a vendor in this case? It's it's UI path is on the left and automation anywhere, and then some others, but do you know about the vendor? >>And, and are you planning on, you know, are you evaluating it? Are you planning to implement it? Uh, and this chart shows those respondents that said, yes, we, we, we are a customer. And we, we plan to expand our usage and you can see over the last three surveys that the yellow is even an uptick. And so people, this essentially the takeaway here is that once people taste it, that you land, and then they expand and find new use cases, are you seeing that in your business? And maybe you can give us some, some high level examples we've seen quite the look >>We have today more than 60 customers with, uh, over a million dollars in spending with us, uh, more than, uh, like 800 customers that spend more than a hundred K we've lost. And our net expansion rate is more than 140% consistent over many past quarters that shows a very solid, uh, expansion desire from our customers. And it shows that our technology is very well suitable for large case automation, deployments, enterprise wide, especially with our, uh, program or robot for every person. We are seeing huge interest and way bigger deals. We are able to lend upfront work to upscale our existing customers. You know, in a way I don't believe that in five years from now on, we will ever have people just to mindlessly move data from one screen to the other. I think this is a thing of the past, as much as plowing the fields is a thing of the past. >>So I wonder if he could talk a little bit about the, where you've come from as a company. So, I mean, you started in 2005. So, I mean, I think of you as a startup, but you've been around for a long time. Uh, and, and my sense is you started as a product company, but, you know, recently you guys announced this end to end platform for what you call or maybe Gardner calls. I don't know their term of hyper automation, but, but you've gone from a product company to a platform company. I wonder if you could talk about how you think about that transition and, and, and the platform generally >>To become a platform requires of certain level. And it's in a way, a harder business to promote to one enterprise customer. They, uh, they are very likely to test water with the product, but when, uh, you know, bad thing, everything, automation, why don't a platform, it's a different game. So this is why we, uh, we had to go from the steps of products, you know, product then like a couple of products, and then putting everything together into a platform. The power of the platform in, uh, in this particular instance comes from, uh, the integration of all pieces in a platform and an automation, white platform will have a different sets of products that play from the discovery of the processes that you automated, the implementation and maintenance of the process into the analytics that helps you track your progress. And also you have technologies that addresses two different persona in an enterprise from, you know, software engineers, RPA developers into the citizen developers. >>So it's a, it's a, it's a huge offering. And, um, the, what is really important for us is that we give full fledged platform. So an enterprise customer knows we will be able to build everything on the top of this platform, and they will offer best in class where it matters. And we believe that best-in-class matters in few important areas like RPA, like process mining, like analytics, while they will offer good enough where they will offer integration with best-in-class products where, uh, it's, uh, it's not so important in the, in the grand scheme of deploying automation, but the integration is tremendously important piece, put yourself in the shoes of a big enterprise instead of buying 20 different products, different, a licensing agreement, different maintainers stuff, different teams to support them. You just have one and they, and you have the guarantee. They work very well together. It's a very big proposition. I did requires maturity of the platform when they are making, you know, big strides into having the credibility that you know is required to have such a big investment. >>Well, I have to bring you bring that up. I have to ask you, so you guys are obviously a RPA and automation specialist building out a platform, very focused on that. And we always talk about this best of breed versus, uh, versus integrated suites. And you're sort of talking about integration. Of course, we saw Microsoft come out and as, as well as others, IBM, I think SAP have announced sort of what I would consider one dot products, you know, not nearly as robust as you and some of your, your leading competition, but how do you think about that in terms of staying ahead of that? I mean, you know, we all know Microsoft, you used to work there, they come out with a one Datto and, you know, then the two dot O and it's just still, and then eventually they get it right? So you have to move fast. >>Yes, absolutely. And we, we proved that we can move fast. We've built this company from zero five years ago to, you know, we are almost half a billion dollar in era today. So wait, we are fast. This is one of the four tenants of our culture be fast. But speaking about what the strategy in, uh, I believe that the space of low code, no code business application development, and the hyper automation space will, uh, converge into one single space, a company like Microsoft started with, uh, a simple product like, uh, if TTT and, uh, that was dedicated only to citizen developer to build very, you know, small and quick integrations. Like if you look at, uh, if you look at the power automate use cases, you'll see one of the most common use cases to set on a lot for myself. Well, I understand the value of such use case, but it's a far cry from setting an alarm and to automating, you know, end to end, procure to pay or order to cash for a big enterprise or COVID testing. >>And basically where we are coming from two different angles. We are coming from the RPA angle that is putting computer vision at the center of the technology. And they are coming from weak API integration. And we are making, we are making progress, you know, towards each other. My belief, I believe that, um, we have an advantage here in a sense that, uh, RPA is a technology that can produce immediate returns, but the labs K Y LA while the anther type of technologies, first of all, traditional automation, and then all this new type of API economy, API integrations kind of largely failed to show scalability within big enterprises. They are nice to have, but they are not essential when you are choosing a platform. My, uh, take is that you are choosing a platform based on what you need the most. This is where you choose the best in class. And you need the certainty that you partner with a vendor that invest the most. Well, this is our bread and butter. This is where we start. And of course we are offering every piece that the other are doing while they are also getting into, into our world. But our advantage being cloud agnostic, being ERP, agnostic, being CRM agnostic, and having started from the most sensitive technology that offer you, you know, the most, uh, the most savings center, best productivity increases. It's a tremendous advantage. >>And of course, you know, I'm excited about this opportunity and I've talked to a number of your customers. And so, you know, to me, that's the proof in the pudding, but you mentioned your annual recurring revenue, you know, approaching half a billion. So I got add, and, you know, as well that in my breaking analysis, we took a look at the total available market for RPA. And then I think, well, we've extended that I think we kinda missed the broader automation agenda in the platform thinking, and we've, we've updated those figures. I mean, it's, uh, it's hundreds of billions of dollars of an opportunity at least. And so the reason I bring this up is of course, last week we saw the hottest software IPO in history, and snowflake is a company with $400 million ARR growing at 120%. The company went from, you know, early this year, $15 billion valuation went up to 20, went up to 30. >>They, they launched a 33 billion within five minutes. It was worth 80 billion. You know, of course it's settling down now in the 60 billion, but unbelievable. And I would argue that your total available market is perhaps even even larger. I would say it is larger because it has a deeper business impact, uh, than, than say a snowflake. And of course, people watching my programs know that I'm a very, very high on that company. So my question is, what do you think about that, that IPO? How are you thinking about your, your own IPO? It would seem that that UI path is in a great position to at some point become a public company. >>We, first of all, if you are speaking about the time way, nobody would argue that our team is not higher than a snowflake. Pam, I, we can argue that their market is maybe more consolidated. Everybody understands data market in a way, and our market might be way more scattered across different use cases, but in a way, it's the market of data versus the market of all data versus old processes in the world. It's way, way more people are tasked today with processes then to analyzing and working with data in the way we are going after a very large problem that we have to solve. And we have to empower people of doing what they are naturally built to do, like, you know, talking to other people, socially interact, being creative, making decision, instead of doing this numbing part of their daily jobs that aren't required by this state of the industry. >>So our time we talked with different bankers and I've seen various figures from like 200 BD, one, two way into like two, three years for something that it's happy with. So time is the problem. It's the way, the way we are. I think, uh, we, uh, what we want to build, it's a durable business and it's a, it's a durable growth. Why in the same time being a cashflow positive, and we are very close to achieve this goals. And that will look, I believe that will be a very compelling proposition for our own IPO. I don't know if we can get snowflake multiples or not, but this is the feeling not the more, the biggest thing when my agenda, my, my agenda is to build a longterm sustainable, durable business. I am looking to next five to 10 years of this business. And IPO is just the fundraising event in, in, you know, after all. >>Great. So yeah, that's good. I wanted to ask you kind of what the, what the parameters are and, you know, I think you answered it is you're not rushing to get in, to draft off of some event that you had no control over that that notion of cashflow positive is really interesting to me. I said about the snowflake. I feel they have plenty of Tam just like you guys. And I agreed somewhere between 200 billion and 3 trillion. That's about right. And so, and, but, but I think that the, what I said about Snowflake's IPO is that I'm not worried about their lack of profitability right now. At some point I'm really going to be focused on their operating cash flow. And if you can, if you can come out with the large Tam, your, your growth that you're at the large ARR and cashflow positive, I can't wait to see that IPO Daniel. That's going to be super exciting. So we'll, we'll, uh, we'll be patient, but Daniel Dienes thank you so much for coming back into QBR. I was a great guest. Really appreciate the update on your business. >>Thank you so much. I really appreciate the invitation. Thanks. You're welcome. And >>Keep it right there. Everybody we'll be back with our next guest. Run up to this short break. This is Dave Volante.

>>From around the globe with digital coverage of 2020 brought to you by beam. Welcome back. I'm assuming a man, and this is the cubes coverage of Veem on 2020 online. I'm really happy to welcome to the program. We had done the Milan many years, first time doing it online and we have two first time guests. the center square. We have Daniel freed. He is the GM and senior vice president of AMEA and the head of worldwide sitting on the other side of the screen. Is it David Harvey? He's the vice president of Dietrich alliances. Both of them, of course, with beam. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. >>Thank you. >>All right, Daniel, maybe start with you, uh, you know, the online event, obviously, uh, you know, it gives us, you know, there's some allergens, but there's also some opportunities rather than, you know, thousands of us gathering in Las Vegas where right. There's a diversity of locations because if you look up and down the street, the strip, um, and instead we really have a global event in an operation, unity, I'm speaking to you where you are in Asia right now. What, what is, you know, the online event mean? And you know, how you can relate to, you know, how many countries do you have a attending the event. Okay. Yeah. >>Okay. So, so the good, the good thing about, about being online is, as you mentioned, as you said, is, is we can have all, all people from all countries, all around the world present. Of course we are surely, uh, now with my responsibility, my worldwide responsibility for the channels, uh, all countries in the world, we have partners of all in all countries in the world, which means that all our teams, as well as all our butlers are virtual things or the kid limits, uh, of, of joining that, that event today. But that's, that's why I'm very, very happy to have these virtual events, which is much easier. And they're heading all people try flying in from all the different parts of the world, do they guess? Right. And, and, and David, you know, also with alliances standpoint, I assume since, you know, they don't actually have to fly to Vegas. We've got the special guest appearances by Satya Nadella, uh, you know, Arvin, Krishna, you know, all of the, you know, Andy Jassy, you know, everyone's coming in, but no, and also seriousness from an Alliance standpoint, uh, you know, we'd love to hear how you're, you're working with them., uh, for, for the global event. >>Yeah, no, absolutely. And security is having a tough time keeping them at Bay right now. I mean, the online thing is handy because we can just cut them off, but, uh, yeah. Uh, but you're exactly right. It, the support of the alliances has been fantastic. Uh, everyone was trying to adjust to this new world we're in, but what you're seeing this week, um, he's a fantastic mom's body alliances. So once in Mike, all items should really work and we're doing the same for their events. And it's just a really nice >>If >>Camaraderie is coming together. And so, um, they've been great in supporting us as you've as seen through the week. Um, and we're excited about know whole vibe that getting in a commitment >>That, that we're getting from the customers I'm from the alliances, which is really, really good. Excellent. Well, we know that, you know, Veeam is a hundred percent partner focus, Daniel, maybe let's start with you, uh, you know, what, what's new kind of in the last year. So since we were together, last year, so on the new, on the new things that we have been doing for the last year, it's actually continuing first to move with our hundred percent, uh, since the beginning of, of, of Veem and all the way to the fully do squatters, that's more important even that is definitely the move that we see, uh, with working with your answers, uh, and their partners, as well as working much more with the Saudis providers, meaning the cloud service providers, where are there is a big, big trend now in the market with customers requesting more and more rather than, than I would say, technologies and products on premise. >>Uh, so we see that everywhere around the world. It is actually writing now again with the nutrition that we see, well, why, because of these, Nope, this is about situation, uh, where virtual is a big move that we, uh, we, we can see from customers and the partners that we have, the ecosystem that we've built, um, all around the world, he's helping very much in this move. Excellent. And David would love to hear the, the, the progress that, uh, your group with some of the parts. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's been a, it's been a really exciting ride, uh, year over year growth rates with the alliances, continue to shoot out, which we're really excited about. Um, the VTN launch was fantastic for us for most of our major strategic alliances. So we're really pleased about that. And a lot of our technical alliances as well, they really benefited from some of the new capability coming out there. >>So what we're seeing is not only are we seeing our go to market, be enriched more and have a lot of success with the strategic alliances, the technology Alliance is a really starting to benefit from some of that new innovation that just came out and funny as well. So that global systems integrators, we've seen a massive uptick in that interest in the last, in the last couple of quarters. And that's really helping too Alison tonight. Oh, I spy. So yeah, it's been a really exciting year. And certainly when you do these types of events virtually yeah. LinkedIn, your, I am, and text messages go through the roof, which is a nice way to, to keep communication with the alliances. Yeah, I did. David, I'd like to just drill in a little bit on some of the pieces that you're talking about there, uh, you know, I really feel in the last year, yeah. We saw a real maturation in what we do talk about. Yeah. Hybrid cloud and multicloud. Um, I, I know one of the, you know, key strategic Alliance is actually from day one for Veem. Yeah. And you know, every time I saw an announcement of some of the VMware Bob pieces, I usually felt like there was soon after a Veem piece of it. Uh, could you bring us inside a little bit, especially some of the cloud pieces and maybe how beam differentiate, uh, from, from some of the competition out there, you know, both VMware, >>You know, Amazon, Microsoft and that whole ecosystem. >>Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as you touched on, uh, VMware and ops have been very close, Brown is process, and we're really excited about, uh, some of the recent work has been going on with them as well. Um, we're also have tremendous steps fools with Amazon that continues to be a strong area. And the Microsoft is a cloud in the way that we continue during the harms, the way we work with their solution. Um, it's really providing right strides forwards, especially for the enterprise customers. Uh, we also were excited about the recent announcement related to Google cloud as well. So that's another big area for us. Um, and so that was another thing that continues to differentiate us. And what I would say overall though, is it's about having that philosophy as customers continue to have there philosophical view related to on premise cloud on off premise cloud. >>What we're showing is whether it's through the hardware partners, whether it's through the application partners well through the cloud is we're enabling you to decide your workflows. And I think that's the bit it's a little bit different than, and some of the others that are out there taking that heritage, should we put into the virtual world and that mentality, there's certain it departments have. It enables us to really synergize with those different partners as they go through their evolution and a certain customers move more towards the public cloud. And then you might be look towards some workplace back to the private that synergy between all of those areas is hugely important. And even for the hardware partners that we have, do you have cloud plays, mentioning some of their value solutions as well. So it's a really sort of, um, heterogeneous world that it we're really pleased on the way that the market is accepting it. Yeah. And Daniel that this, this move and a maturation of what's happened in the cloud is a significant impact on the channel. I'd love to hear, you know, anything specifically, you know, with your, uh, your viewpoint on the channel as to, you know, how your partners are now adjusting to that, you know, VMware, Microsoft, uh, some of the other pieces is that how they are now ready, uh, to help customers, uh, through these transitions. >>Yeah. And, and let me, let me make one run back, which is very important. First of all, VIM is not Mmm. The cloud provider and will not be accepted, right. Or in other words, the idea is that we will never compete with our brothers, never. Uh, so we provide technology, which is used by our partners and a number of them. I just think that technology to provide services, a number of them are using this technology to resell, uh, or to implement some additional services for the customers. And this is a key, key element. We're not there to do anything and competition. We are here to compliment and to use it, to leverage as much as possible, all our partners, as much as we can, uh, they know very good the market, they know very good at how things are moving. They know very good where they can do they know very good where they cannot do and what their customers want or, or, Oh,. >>Um, so the big, big move that we see in the market is how everyone is moving more and more to, again, there's said initially, uh, to the cloud, um, I mean, providing cloud services, whether it's multicloud hybrid cloud, as you mentioned it, as you listed them, we have all different types of scenarios. And this is a very interesting thing, is us helping them, educating them on how to use our technology, to be able to verify we be provide services and capabilities to their end customers. So we have a big, big investments in this enablement in what we call sales acceleration software, because it's all about businesses, uh, and helping our partners to get there and to move them as fast as placebo. Again, there is a big, a big need, a big request from the end customers and the role of the partners. I understand that and have to move very quickly to this new world of services. >>And we are there to help and support because we strategically no, that this is a way not only for him, but for the entire market. Yeah. And Danielle, you know, an important point. I think anybody that thinks that, okay, editor, uh, you know, to the channel or things, you know, probably doesn't matter. Okay. Or value proposition, a Veeam. What I'm curious from your standpoint is what was the impact of know wire now? You know, obviously some management changes there. Uh, I'm, I'm curious what feedback you've gotten and how that impact, uh, you know, the channel first. Yeah. I mean, let's be open as you know, it's one of, I hope one of our qualities, that theme is the transparency and the way we communicate again with the world, with our, especially with our partners. So initially the feedback that I had and with a number of partners and partners, well, a little bit of, okay, Nope, no worries. >>Uh, no, no. What is going to happen? What is next? Are we going to, to lose the DVM culture? Are we going to, are we going to go through a number of changes eventually in the strategy of him? And actually I have to say, and I'm extremely comfortable, uh, in my, let's say regular communications and connections with, with the insight partners, we have quiet team software because they think that the strategy that we had and the strategy that we have now is the strategy they want just to keep on doing, because it is a successful strategy. And by the way, when we do get the data, uh, that we got from the market from, uh, from, from some, from IDC that that was out lately, we see that Veeam is the number one in both, all around the world, compared to all the other vendors, doing the same kind of technology. >>That means that each is a successful strategy going with the partners and through the partners, he's a very successful strategy. And there is no reason that that yeah, and insight partners understands that extremely good. And I feel very comfortable with it. Yeah. With our future. That would mean more to us, but that's okay. We'll see. In the coming quarters. Well, I, I think, uh, you know, we, we, we do need to have, make sure that VMs has a little bit more focused on getting some green in your home environments there. Um, cause normally if I'm doing an interview with green, I'm expecting with BMI Mexican and a little bit more of the, of the breaker in there, David, you know, obviously, you know, the strategic alliances, uh, you know, some of those executive relationships, good morning, bring us in a little bit, as you know, Daniel was saying there's a little bit yeah. >>Of trepidation at the bit. And they've worked ruin, uh, from the Alliance standpoint, uh, you know, what is this, uh, what what's, what's transpired. Yes, true. It's, it's one of those things. It's a really unexciting answer because they aren't similar, simple answers calmness. Um, I often 24 hours, once we announced it, my call sheet was pretty, pretty empty for the simple reason being that, uh, we've spoken to everybody very quickly and the resonant feedback was that's great news. We know insight. We trust insight. We're glad it is say a growth play. Uh, also it clears up the future. And obviously, yeah, when you have strategic alliances is always in the back of their mind, wondering when is one of our competitors going to come in and Acqua you guys Mmm. Your article feedback was, this is fantastic. This is exactly what we wanted to see. >>Um, you provide clarity to our partnership. You can continue to invest in grow, which you've demonstrated for years, and you can move that forward for the next few years. Um, but also more importantly, this enables us to feel even better doubling down on veins. And so frankly, while we haven't had any issues and I'm sure a lot of the viewers out there have been through events seeing sometimes that can be crazy. It's a Daniel was pointing the strategy. Hasn't changed, we're executing, we've got the support. And the strategic Alliance is probably for the executive level and also the day to day level on leaning in more and more of them please that we're executing on our strategy, focusing in the U S with a big push. Okay. Bringing the investment, moving forward, stabilizing the leadership team. It's just been overall. It's been fantastic. So yeah. >>Yeah. It's, it's a really unexciting new soundbite answer, but that's a, how long has inclarity clarity has been a real takeaway? Excellent. Well, one of the, the key messages in the keynote, of course talking about a digital transformation, we'd love to hear, uh, for, from both of you, uh, you know, what you're seeing and hearing how beam's message is a, you know, engaging with both partners and ultimately the, the end user itself, uh, Daniel, maybe we'll start with you on that. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for asking. It's usually always comes from the end customers and their needs, and we all know that the need for data uh he's he's getting exponential. Uh, so that is why we can't do things manually anymore. So it has to be digitalized everywhere. Yeah. The very interesting thing is that not only something that express with the end customers, but we see more and more because it's an absolute need. Uh, when partners are providing, uh, services or providing all night, chubby she's out services or providing even, even products, they have digitalize also themselves. They are doing it at very, very high speed. But I know I'm mentioning that because I'm extremely pleased with the ecosystems of partners that we have >>Because they understand it's very good, how the market is, is evolving. I'm still only about the customers, but it's also about themselves. Yeah. That they are evolving 21st. And did you digitalization of all the processors? Well, the way they work with their customers, it's definitely one of the key elements, uh, which is going to be extremely good for the future. That's why, because of all this moves in a very positive dynamic way, there is no reasons why we should change our strategies and no remaining said our rights, uh, lions first, whatever it is, uh, continue driving the ecosystem, building the ecosystems, organizing the acquisition. And he's absolutely key for the success of everyone, including people, Brittany and David, please from the Alliance side. Yeah, it's do, I'm sure you'll notice, but in anybody and, uh, we're in a fortunate situation that we probably both get to sit through, uh, all of the strategies that a lot of the Titans of industry are all focused on right now and, and, and having ecosystem we do in your line side, that rich tapestry from the very large to very small is focused on that digital transformation. >>And I think that the good news from my point of view, and I'm going to touch on one of the points Daniel mentioned before was we don't eat with them. And so, yeah, he volunteers, we've got his work hogging, a piece of that, the strategy that they're looking for, the criticality of data three is transformation is huge as everybody knows. Um, and what we're finding right now is that the approach that we take yep. Approach to focus on doing what we do extremely well is synergizing with the evolution of the customer is seeing as they go through that transformation and transformation, sometimes a scary transformation sometimes brings nervousness and they want to do it with a lot of their thought leaders. They working with the VM-ware has the Microsoft, the HBS, and then apps, et cetera. And so from that point of view, the fact that we can providing them with that peace of mind for the complete solution, it's been fantastic. >>So, you know, when you look at a 75 plus partners, there's always going to be one way you need to thread the needle. Shall we say on exactly where intellectual property provides that value to them? But the good news is we don't have to spend a lot of time on that because we're clear, we're concise. Uh, and a lot of times they've been involved in a lot of our strategy sessions. So they're on board with us. And I think the Daniels area as well with the channel, the channel sees that as well. And that's why, whether it's through the alliances channel or with us directly to the resellers, uh, we're finding that, uh, that harmony is bringing a lot of peace of mind. So you can focus on the pains of the customer. I'm not worried about your technology partners fighting with themselves. And that's really where we are, right. Uh, the overall ethic of the company. All right. Well, the final item I have for, for both of you is, you know, normally, you know, but we have a certain understanding of where we are and what the roadmap is. Look, of course, we're dealing with a global pandemic, right? So >>As we look forward to the outlook, uh, I'd love to be able to hear a little bit about, you know, what you're hearing from your partners, how that is coloring, you know, decisions that are made really for the rest of kind of the next 12 months or so. Um, and you know, okay. Any other data points that you have, uh, from your broad perspectives as to how people think the recovery is going to be know, obviously we understand there's a lot of inserts. Nope. Daniel, you've got a, uh, great global viewpoint. We understand, uh, you know, what, what is happening impacts differently locally quite a bit, but, um, what are you seeing going forward and do you know the impact? Bye bye. Yeah. So I couldn't say the contrary. Yeah. So they correct. And we see it in our numbers that the countries, which are the most impacted, I would buy the QVC. >>I would have been more difficulties than the others, uh, to move, to move forward for a business standpoint, uh, which everybody understands, but we've received in the numbers. No, the thing. And this is what I liked very much about, but our ecosystem and where is we had a plan, uh, that we said that we said in 2019 before we knew anything about curvy a con for 2020, and you know what, uh, we are now in no, in, in, in our, the second part of the month of the year, you too, and are going to make our numbers. We are going to make our plans and why are we going to make it? That's the only because, you know, it's just been because perfect, but he's very, very much because of all our partners who, despite all the issues that are, they are in country because of coverage are just getting there, biking, helping themselves, helping us, and altogether as, as a big business machine, as big business system, we all just making success. >>And this will only show extremely good at the end of the year. When we look at the market share, Jamie's going to gain again, uh, with all our butters, it will be the, the results of the success. So good results. Very good results. No. And, and do you mean just continuing to move with these, he's a network of fathers and David, obviously we've seen, you know, you know, many of the big partners, you know, uh, you know, very circumstance and their response, you know, nobody wants, are you seen as, uh, you know, doing something that is untoward towards customers taking care of business. Okay. So, you know, how how's this impacting, you know, what you're doing with your partners? And it gives a little bit of the outlook going forward. Yeah. I mean, why not use for this as energy? Mmm. Some of these headlines that you see, of course, they're not going to get picked up with the impact related to it on a day to day basis, through the discussions with the executives are in the field level, we're seeing the energy with same people want to make sure on what is a tricky situation was a very impactful situation. >>Um, but what, we're not seeing people Mmm. He was onto it. We're seeing people really want to, um, make sure that they are also relating to the needs of their customers today, whether it's more and point whether it's moving towards the user experience, but also taking this time to keep building the foundation for a lot of that infrastructure related to data protection, data availability, um, that we've enjoyed for a long period of time. So yeah, you know, you, you have a degree of disruption, but the objective that I'm seeing from all the major guys that are out there is let's make sure we drive hard. Let's not take the pedal off the metal. Let's not use this as an excuse. Let's keep moving. What, uh, I mean, I sh I would say our engagement with them has increased in sort of happened. Um, and so I don't think we ever expected to be running into tempo. >>We're running bean does it as standard, but we don't normally I have that same temperature. Okay. From some of the, uh, some of the alliances we're really pushing hard with him. So, yeah, we're excited. And we continue to evolve rudeness how, in a situation, everyone's going to be employees with a lot of aggression, a lot of desire to keep capitalizing on the work we've done together. The key solving the customer demands that are going to come over the next 18 to 24 months, um, and reading, make sure that, uh, this is really okay. Yeah. It's impactful just to be clear, but, but not one that we're going to let define our future. I'm looking into that together. So I think from us, um, we're excited about not only as Daniel said, beam success. Well, what, we're starting to see us really good attitudes, uh, from all of our lines bombs, which we love. Yeah. All right. Well, Daniel and David, thank you so much for the update. Great. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. All right. Lots more covered from Veeam on 2020 online. I'm assuming a minute. Thank you. Oh, wow. The cube.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with coverage of Susic on digital brought to you by Susan. >>Welcome back. I'm stew minimum in coming to you from our Boston area studio. And this is the Cube's coverage of Silicon Digital 20. Happy to welcome to the program. Two of the keynote president presenters. First of all, we have Dr Mr Giacomo. He is the president of engineering and innovation and joining him, his presenter on the keynote stage, Daniel Nelson, who is the Vice president of Product solutions. Both of you with Souza. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. >>Thank you. Thank you for having us. >>All right, So? So, Dr T let let's start out. You know, innovation, open source. Give us a little bit of the message for our audience that Daniel are talking about on stage. You know how you know we've been watching for decades the growth in the proliferation of open source and communities. So give us the update there, >>Andi. It's not stopping. It's actually growing even more and more and more and more innovations coming from open source. The way we look at it is that our customers that they have their business problems have their business reality. Andi s So we we have to curate and prepare and filter all the open source innovation that they can benefit from because that takes time to understand that. Match your needs and fix your problems. So it's Susa. We've always done that since 27 per sales. So working in the open source projects innovating they are, but with customers in mind. And what is pretty clear in 2020 is that large enterprises, small startups. Everybody's doing software. Everybody's doing, I t. And they all have the same type of needs in a way. They need to simplify their landscape because they've been accumulating investments all the way. Our infrastructure Joseph well, different solutions, different platforms from different bundles. They need to simplify that and modernize and the need to accelerate their business, to stay relevant and competitive in their own industries. And that's what we're focusing on. >>Yeah, it's interesting. I completely agree. When you say simplify thing, you know, Daniel, I I go back in the communities about 20 years, and in those days, you know, we were talking about the operating clinic was helping to, you know, go past the proprietary UNIX platforms. Microsoft, the enemy. And you were talking about, you know, operating system server storage, the application that it was a relatively simple environment and inherited today's, you know, multi cloud ai in your based architecture, you know, applications going through this radical transformation growth, though, give us a little bit of insight as to, you know, the impact this is having on ecosystems. And of course, you know, Susie's now has a broad portfolio that at all >>it's a great question, and I totally get where you're coming from. Like if you look 20 years ago, the landscape is completely different that the technologies were using or you're completely different. The problems were trying to solve with technology are more and more sophisticated, you know, at the same time that you know, there's kind of nothing new under the sun, every company, every technology, you know, every you know, modality goes through. This expansion of capabilities and the collapse around simplification is the capabilities become more more complex, manageable. And so there's this continuous tension between capabilities, ease of use, consume ability. What we see with open source is that that that that's kind of dynamic that still exist, but it's more online of like. Developers want easy to use technologies, but they want the cutting edge. They want the latest things. They want those things within their packets. And then if you look at operations groups or or or people that are trying to consume that technology, they want that technology to be consumable simple. It works well with others. People tend to pick and choose and have one pane of glass field operate within that. And that's where we see this dynamic. And that's kind of what the Susan portfolio was built. It's like, How do we take, you know, the thousands and thousands of developers that are working on these really critical projects, whether it's Linux is like you mentioned or kubernetes or for cloud foundry? And how do we make that then more consumable to the thousands of companies that are trying to do it, who may even be new to open source or may not contribute directly but have all the benefits that are coming to it. And that's where Susan fits and worse. Susan, who's fits historically and where we see us continuing to fit long term, is taking older is Legos. Put it together for companies that want that and then allow them a lot of autonomy and choice and how these technologies are consumed. >>One of the themes that I heard you both talked about in the keynote it was simplifying modernized. Telerate really reminded me of the imperatives of the CIO. You know, there's always run the business they need to help grow the business. And if they have the opportunity, they want to transform the business. I think you know, you said run improve in scale scale. Absolutely. You know, a critical thing that we talk about these days when I think back to the Cloud Foundry summit. You know, on the keynote stage, it was in the old way. If I could do faster, better, cheaper. Ah, you could use two of them today. We know faster, faster, faster is what you want. So >>it was a >>little bit of insight as to who you know, you talked about, you know, cloud foundry and kubernetes application modernization. You know, what are the imperatives that you're hearing from customers? And how are we with all of these tools out there? Hoping, You know, I t not just be responsive to the business, but it actually be a driver for the transformation of the business. >>It's a great question. And so when I talk to customers and Dr T feel free to chime in, you talked. You know, as many or more customers than then Ideo. You know they do have these these what are historically competing imperatives. But what we see with the adoption of some of these technologies that that faster is cheaper, faster is safer, you know, creating more opportunities to grow and to innovate better is the business. It's not risk injection when we change something, it's actually risk mitigation when we get good and changing. And so it's kind of that that that modality of moving from, um, you know, a a simplify model or very kind of like a manufacturing model of software so much more organic, much more permissive, much more being able to learn with an ecosystem style. And so that's how we see companies start to change the way they're adopting the technology. What's interesting about them is that same level of adoption that seemed thought of adoption is also how open source is is developed open source is developed organically is developed with many eyes. Make shallow bots is developed by like, Let me try this and see what happens right and be able to do that in smaller and smaller recommends. Just like we look at red Green deployments or being able to do micro services or binary or any of those things. It's like let's not do one greatly or what we're used to in waterfall, cause that's actually really risk. Let's do many, many, many steps forward and be able to transform an iterative Lee and be able to go faster iterative Lee and make that just part of what the business is good at. And so you're exactly right, like those are the three imperatives of the CIO. What I see with customers is the more that they are aligning those three areas together and not making them separate. But we have to be better at being faster and being transformed. And those are the companies that are really using I t. As a competitive advantage within the rich. >>Yeah, because most of the time they're different starting points. They have a history. They have different business strategy and things they've done in the past, you need to be able to accommodate all of that and the faster micro service, that native developments for sure, for the new APS. But they're also coming from somewhere on diff. You don't take care of that. You get are you can just accelerates if you simplify your existing because otherwise you spend your time making sure that your existing it's still running. So you have to combine all of that together. And, yeah, do you mentioned about funding and communities? And that's really I love those topics because, I mean, everybody knows about humanities. Now. It's picking up in terms of adoption in terms of innovation, technology building ai ml framework on top of it now, what's very interesting as where is that cloud? Foundry was designed for fast software development until native from the beginning, that 12 factor app on several like 45 years ago. Right? What we see now is we can extract the value that cloud foundry brings to speed up and accelerate your stuff by the Romans hikers, and we can combine that very nicely on very smoothly, simple in a simple way, with all the benefits you get from kubernetes and not from one communities from your communities running in your public clouds because you have records. They are. You have services that you want to consume from one public clouds. We have a great silicon fireside chat with open shot from Microsoft Azure actually discussing those topics. You might have also communities clusters at the edge that you want to run in your factory or close to your data and workloads in the field. So those things and then you mentioned that as well, taking care of the I T ops, simplify, modernize and accelerate for the I T ops and also accelerates forward their local themselves. We're benefiting from a combination of open source technologies, and today there's not one open source technology that can do that. You need to bundle, combine them, get our best, make sure that they are. They are integrated, that they are certified to get out of their stable together, that the security aspects, all the technology around them are integrating the services as well. >>Well, I'm really glad you brought up, you know, some of those communities that are out there, you know, we've been saying for a couple of years on the Cube. You know, Kubernetes is getting baked in everywhere. You know, Cisco's got partnerships with all the cloud providers, and you're not fighting them over whether to use a solution that you have versus theirs. I worry a little bit about how do I manage all of those environments. You end up with kubernetes sprawl just like we have with every other technology out there. Help us understand what differentiates Tuesday's, you know, offerings in this space. And how do you fit in with you know, the rest of that very dynamic and defer. >>So let me start with the aspect of combining things together on and Danielle. Maybe you can take the management piece. So the way we are making sure that Sousa, that we don't also just miles into a so this time off tools we have a stack, and we're very happy if people use it. But the reality is that there are customers that they have. Some investments have different needs. They use different technologies from the past. But we want to try different technologies, so you have to make sure that's for communities. Like for any other part of the stack. The I T stock of the stack. Your pieces are model around that you can accommodate different. Different elements are typically at Susa. We support different types off hyper visors. Well, that's focused on one. But we can support KPMG's and I probably this way, all of the of the Nutanix, hyper visor, netapp, hyper visors and everything. Same thing with the OS. There's not only one, we know that people are running, and that's exactly the same. Which humanities? And there's no one, probably that I've seen in our customer base that will just need one vendor for communities because they have a hybrid needs and strategy, and they will benefit from the native communities they found on a ks e ks decay. I remember clouds, you name them Andi have vendors in Europe as well. Doing that so far for us, it's very important that we bring us Sutro. Custom. Males can be combined with what they have, what they want, even if it's from the circle competition. And so this is a cloud. Foundry is running on a case. You can find it on the marketplace of public clouds. It could run on any any any communities. He doesn't have to be sitting on it. But then you end up with a lot of sales, right? How do we deal with that? >>So it's a great question, and I'll actually even broaden that out because it's not like we're only running kubernetes. Yes, we've got lots of clusters. We've got lots of of containers. We've got lots of applications that are moving there, but it's not like all the V M's disappear. It's not like all the beige boxes, like in the data center, like suddenly don't exist. You know, we we we all bring all the sense and decisions in the past word with us wherever we go. And so for us, it's not just that lens of how do we manage the most modern, the most cutting edge? That's definitely a part of it. But how do you do that? Within the context of all the other things you have to do within your business? How do I manage virtual virtual machines? How do I manage bare metal? How do I manage all those? And so for us, it's about creating a presentation layer on top of that where you can look at your clusters. Look at your V EMS. Look at all your deployments and be able to understand what's actually happening with the fire. We don't take a prescriptive approach. We don't say you have to use one technology. You have to use that. What we want to do is to be adaptive to the customer's needs. And so you've got these things here, some of our offerings. You've got some legacy offerings to Let's show you bring those together. Let's show you how you modernize your viewpoints, how you simplify your operational framework and how you end up accelerating what you can do with the staff that you've got in place. >>Yeah, I'm just on the management piece. Is there any recommendation from your team? You know, last year at Microsoft ignite, there was the launch of Azure are on. And, you know, we're starting to see a lot of solutions come out. There are concerns. Is that any of us that live through the multi vendor management days, um, you know, don't have good memories from those. It is a different discussion if we're just talking about kind of managing multiple kubernetes. But how do we learn from the past and you know, What do you recommend for people in this, you know, multi cloud era. >>So my suggestion to customers is you always start with what are your needs? What is strategic problems you're trying to solve, and then choose a vendor that is going to help you solve those strategic problems? So is it going to take a product centric view Isn't gonna tell you use this technology and this technology and this technology, what is going to take the view of, like, this is the problem you're gonna solve? Let me be your advisor within that and choose people that you're going to trust within that, um, that being said, you wanna have relationships with customers that have been there for a while that have done this that have a breath of experience in solving enterprise problems because everything that we're talking about is mostly around the new things. But keep in mind that there are there are nuances about the enterprise. There are things that are that are intrinsically bound within the enterprise that it takes a vendor with a lot of enterprise experience to be able to meet customers where they are. I think you've seen that you know in some of the some of the real growth opportunities with them hyper scaler that they've kind of moved into being more enterprise view of things, kind of moving away from just an individual bill perspective, enterprise problems. You're seeing that more and more. I think vendors and customers need to choose companies that meet them where they are that enable their decisions. Don't prescribe there. >>Okay, go ahead. >>Yes, Sorry. Yeah. I also wanted to add that I would recommend people to look at open source based solutions because that will prevent them to be in a difficult situation, potentially in the three years from now. So there are open source solutions that can do that on book. A viable, sustainable, healthy, open source solutions that are not just one vendor but multi vendor as well, because that leaves those open options open for you in the future as well. So if you need to move for another vendor or if you need to implement with an additional technology, you've made a new investment or you go to a new public clouds. If you based Duke Tracy's on open source, you have a little chance but later left >>I think that's a great point. Dr. T and I would you know, glom onto that by saying customers need to bring a new perspective on how they adjudicate these solutions, like it's really important to look at the health of the open source community. Just because it's open source doesn't mean that there's a secret army of gnomes that, you know in the middle of the night going fixed box, like there needs to be a healthy community around that. And that is not just individual contributors. That is also what are the companies that are invested in this, where they dedicating resources like That's another level. So what level of sophistication that a lot of customers need to bring into their own vendor selection? >>Excellent. Uh, you know, speaking about communities in open source. Want to make sure you have time share a little bit about the AI platform discussed in your >>Yeah, it's very, very interesting. And something I'm super excited about it, Sousa. And it's kind of this this, uh, we're starting to see ai done in these really interesting problems to solve and like, I'll just give you one example is that we're working with um uh, Formula One team around using AI to help them actually manage in car mechanics and actually manage some of the things that they're doing to get super high performance out of their vehicles. And that is such an interesting problem to solve. And it's such a natural artificial intelligence problem that even when you're talking about cars instead of servers or you're talking about race tracks, you know instead of data centers, you still got a lot of the same problems. And so you need an easy to use AI stack. You need it to be high performance. You needed to be real time. You need to be able to decisions made really quickly, easy, the same kinds of problems. But we're starting to see them in all these really interesting wheels in areas, which is one of the coolest things that I've seen in my career. Especially is in terms of I T. Is that I t is really everywhere. It's not. Just grab your sweater and go to the data center because it's 43 degrees in there. You know, it's also getting on the racetrack. It's also go to the airfield. It's also go to the grocery store and look at some of the problems being being being addressed himself there. And that is super fascinating. One of the things that I'm super excited up in our industry in total. >>Alright, well, really good to discussion here, Daniel. Dr B. Thank you so much for sharing everything from your keynote and been a pleasure washing. >>Thank you. >>Alright, Back with lots more coverage from Susan Con Digital 20. I'm stew minimum. And as always, Thank you for watching. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(upbeat music) >> From around the globe, it's theCUBE with coverage of SUSECON Digital. Brought to you by SUSE. >> Welcome back. I'm Stuart Miniman coming to you from our Boston area studio and this is theCUBE coverage of SUSECON Digital 20. Happy to welcome to the program two of the keynote present presenters. First of all, we have Dr. Thomas Giacomo. He is the President of Engineering and innovation and joining him his co presenter from Makino state, Daniel Nelson, who is the Vice President of Product Solutions, both of you with SUSE. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. >> All right. So, Dr. T, Let's start out, innovation, open source, give us a little bit of the message for our audience that you and Daniel were talking about on stage. We've been watching for decades, the growth in the proliferation of open source communities, so give us the update there. >> Yeah. And then it's not stopping, it's actually growing even more and more and more and more innovations coming from open source. The way we look at it is that our customers there, they have their business problems, they have their business reality. And so we, we have to curate, and prepare and filter all the open source innovation that they can benefit from, because that takes time to understand how that can match your needs and fix problems. So at SUSE, we've always done that, since 27 plus years. So, working in the open source projects, innovating there but with customers in mind, and what is pretty clear in 2020 is that large enterprises, more startups, everybody's doing software, everybody's is doing IT and they all have the same type of needs in a way they need to simplify their landscape, because they've been accumulating investments all the way or infrastructure or software, different solutions, different platforms from different vendors. They need to simplify that. They need to modernize, and they need to accelerate their business stay relevant and competitive in their own industries. And that's what we are focusing on. >> Yeah, it's interesting, I completely agree when you say simplify thing, you know, Daniel, I go back in the opportunities about 20 years. And in those days, we were talking about the operating Linux was helping to go past the proprietary Unix platform, Microsoft, the big enemy. And you were talking about operating system, server storage, the application that on, it was a relatively simple environment in there compared to today's multi cloud, AI, container based architecture, applications going through this radical Information broke, though, gives a little bit of insight as to the impact this is having on ecosystems and, of course SUSE now has a broad portfolio that at all? >> It's a great question and I totally get where you're coming from, like, if you look 20 years ago, the landscape is completely different, the technologies we're using are completely different, the problems we're trying to solve with technology are more and more sophisticated. At the same time, though, there's kind of nothing new under the sun. Every company, every technology, every modality goes through this expansion of capabilities and the collapse around simplification as the capabilities become more and more complex and more manageable. So there's this continuous tension between capabilities, ease of use consume ability. What we see with open source is that, that kind of dynamic still exists, but it's more online of like developers want, easy to use technologies, but they want the cutting edge. They want the latest things. They want those things within their packages. And then if you look at operations groups or people that are trying to consume that technology, they want that technology to be consumable simple, works well with others be able to pick and choose and have one pane of glass to be able to operate within that. And that's where we see this dynamic. And that's kind of what the SUSE portfolio was built upon. It's like, how do we take the thousands and thousands of developers that are working on these really critical projects, whether it's Linux like you mentioned, or Kubernetes, or or Cloud Foundry? And how do we make that then more consumable to the thousands of companies that are trying to do it, who may even be new to open source or may not contribute directly, but when you have all the benefits that are coming to it, and that's where SUSE fits and where SUSE has fits historically, and where we see us continuing to fit long term is taken all those Legos, put into together for companies that want that, and then allow them a lot of autonomy and choice and how those technologies are consumed. >> Right, one of the themes that I heard you both talk about, in the keynote, it was simplifying, modernize, celebrate, really reminded me of the imperatives of the CIO. There's always run the business, they need to help grow the business, and if they have the opportunity, they want to transform the business. I think you said, run improve in scale. Scale absolutely a critical thing that we talk about these days, when I think back to the Cloud Foundry summit, in the keynote stage, it was the old way if I could do faster, better, cheaper, you could do them today. We know Faster, faster, faster is what you want. So give us a little bit of insight as to, you talked about Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes, application, modernization, what are the imperatives that you're hearing from customers and how are we, with all of these tools out there helping, IT, not just be responsive to the business but actually be a driver for that transformation of the business? >> It's a great question. And so when I talk to customers, and Dr. T, feel free to chime in, you talk to as many or more customers than I do. They do have these what are historically competing imperatives. But what we see with the adoption of some of these technologies is that faster is cheaper, faster is safer, creating more opportunities to grow and to innovate betters the business. It's not risk injection, when we change something, it's actually risk mitigation, when we get good at changing. And so it's kind of that modality of moving from, a simplified model or a very kind of like a manufacturing model of software to a much more organic, much more permissimuch more being able to learn within ecosystems model. And so that's how we see companies start to change the way they're adopting this technology. What's interesting about them is that same level of adoption. That same thought of adoption, It's also how open sources is developed. Open Source has developed organically, it's developed with many eyes make shallow bugs, it's developed by like, let me try this and see what happens, right? And be able to do that in smaller and smaller increments just like we look at Red Green deployments or being able to do micro services, or Canary or any of those things. It's like, let's not, do one greatly for what we're used to and waterfall is that's actually really risky. Let's do many, many, many steps forward and be able to transform it iteratively and be able to go faster iteratively and make that just part of what the business is good at. And so you're exactly right. Like those are the three imperatives of the CIO. What I see with customers is the more that they are aligning those three imperatives together and not making them separate, but we have to be better at being faster and being transformative. Those are the companies that are really using IT as a competitive advantage within their reach. >> Yeah, because most of the time they have different starting points. They have a history. They have different business strategy and things they've done in the past. So you need to be able to accommodate all of that and the faster microservice, native development posture for the new apps, but they're also coming from somewhere, and if you don't take care of that together, you can just accelerate if you simplify your existing because otherwise you spend your time making sure that your existing is running. So you have to combine all of that together, and the two, you mentioned Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes and I love those topics because, I mean, everybody knows about Kubernetes. Now it's picking up in terms of adoption, in terms of innovation technology, uilding AI ML framework on top of it. Now, what's very interesting as well is that, Cloud Foundry was designed for fast software development, and cloud native from the beginning that by the factor apps, and several like four or five years ago, right? What we see now is we can extract the value that Cloud Foundry brings to speed up and accelerate our software development cycles, and we can combine that very nicely and very smoothly simple in a simple way, with all the benefits you get from Kubernetes, and not from one Kubernetes. From your Kubernetes running in your public clouds because you have workloads there, you have services that you want to consume from one public clouds. We have a great SUSECON fireside chat with open shot from Microsoft. Asia, we're actually discussing those topics. Or you might have also Kubernetes clusters at the edge that you want to run in your factory or close to your data and workloads in the field. So those things and Daniel mentioned that as well taking care of the IT ops, like simplify, modernize and accelerate for the IT ops and also accelerate for the developers themselves, we benefiting from a combination of open source technologies. And today, there's not one open source technology that can do that. You need to bundle combine them together and best make sure that they are integrated, hat they are certified together, that they are stable together, that the security aspects, all the technology around them are deeply integrated into services as well. >> Well, I'm really glad you brought up some of those Kubernetes that are out there. We've been saying for a couple years on theCUBE, Kubernetes is getting baked in everywhere. SUSE's got partnership with all the cloud providers and you're not fighting them over whether to use a solution that you have versus theirs. I worry a little bit about, how do I manage all those environments? Do I end up with Kubernetes sprawl just like we have with every other technology out there? Help us understand what differentiates SUSE's offerings in this space? And how do you fit in with the rest of that very dynamic and diverse. >> So, let me start with the aspect of combining things together. And Daniel, maybe you can take the management piece. So, first of all, we are making sure at SUSE that we don't force our customers into a SUSE stack. Of course we have a SUSE stack, and we're very happy people use it. But the reality is that the customer knows that they have some investments, they have different needs, they use different technologies from the past, or they want to try different technologies. So you have to make sure that for Kubernetes like for any other part of the stack, the IT stack or the developer stack, your pieces are our modular that you can accommodate different different elements. So typically, at SUSE, we support different types of hypervisors We're not like focused on one but we can support KVM, Xen, Hyper-V, vSphere, all of the nutanix hypervisor, NetApp hypervisors and everything. Same thing with the OS, there's not only one Linux that people are running, and that's exactly the same with kubernetes. There's no one probably that I've seen in our customer base that will just need one vendor for Kubernetes because they have a hybrid cloud needs and strategy and they will benefit from the native Kubernetes they found on AKA, CKA, SDK, Alibaba clouds, you name them and we have cloud vendors in Europe as well doing that. So for us, it's very important that what we bring as SUSE to our customers can be combined with what they have, what they want, even if it's from the so called competition. And so the SUSE Cloud Foundry is running on. I guess, you can find it on the marketplace of public clouds. It could run on any Kubernetes. It doesn't have to be SUSE Kubernetes. But then you end up with a lot of cells, right? So how do we deal with that then? >> So it's a great question. And I'll actually even broaden that out because it's not like we're only running Kubernetes. Yes, we've got lots of clusters, we've got lots of containers, we've got lots of applications that are moving there. But it's not like all the VMs disappeared. It's not like all the beige boxes, like in the data center, like suddenly don't exist. We all bring all the sins and decisions of the past board with us wherever we go. So for us, it's not just that lens of how do we manage the most modern, the most cutting edge? That's definitely a part of it. But how do you do that within the context of all the other things you have to do within your business? How do I manage virtual machines? How do I manage bare metal? How do I manage all those. And so for us, it's about creating a presentation layer. On top of that, where you can look at your clusters, look at your VMs, look at all your deployments, and be able to understand what's actually happening within your environment. We don't take a prescriptive approach. We don't say you have to use one technology or have to use that technology. What we want to do is to be adaptive to the customer's needs. And say you've got these things. Here's some of our offerings. You've got some legacy offerings too. Let's show you how to bring those together. Let's show you how you modernize your viewpoints, how you simplify your operational framework and how you end up accelerating what you can do with the stuff that you've got in place. >> Yeah, I'm just on the management piece. Is there any recommendations from your team? Last year at Microsoft Ignite, there was a launch of Azure Arc, and, we're starting to see a lot of solutions come out there. Our concern is that any of us that live through the multi vendor management days, don't have good memories from those. It is a different discussion if we're just talking about kind of managing multiple Kubernetes. But, how do we learn from the past? And, what, what are you recommending for people in this multi cloud era? >> So my suggestion to customers is you always start with what are your needs, what is strategic problems you're trying to solve. And then choose a vendor that is going to help you solve those strategic problems. So isn't going to take a product centric view. Isn't going to tell you, use this technology and this technology and this technology, but it's going to take the view of like, this is the problem you're going to solve. Let me be your advisor within that and choose people that you're going to trust within that. That being said, you want to have relationships with customers that have been there for a while that have done this that have a breadth of experience in solving enterprise problems. Coz, I mean, everything that we're talking about, is mostly around the new things. But keep in mind that there are nuances about the enterprise, there are things that are that are intrinsically found within the enterprise, that it takes a vendor with a lot of experience to be able to meet customers where they are. I think you've seen that in some of the real growth opportunities within the hyper scalars. They've kind of moved into being more enterprise, view of things, kind of moving away from just an individual bill perspective to enterprise problems. You're seeing that more and more. I think vendors and customers need to choose companies that meet them where they are, that enable their decisions, not prescribe their decision. >> Okay. Oh-- >> Let me just add to that. >> Please go ahead. >> Yeah, sorry. Yeah. I also wanted to add that I would recommend people to look at open source based solutions because that will prevent them to be in a difficult situation potentially, in a few years from now. So there are open source solutions that can do that. And look at viable, sustainable, healthy open source solutions that are not just one vendor, but multi vendor as well, because that leaves doors options open for you in the future as well. So if you need to move for another vendor, or if you need to complement with an additional technology, or you've made a new investment or you go to a new public cloud, if you base your choices on open source, you have a better chance but from a data. >> I think that's a great point, Dr. T, and I would glom on to that by saying, customers need to bring a new perspective on how they adjudicate these solutions. Like it's really important to look at the health of the open source community. Just because it's open source doesn't mean that there's a secret army of gnomes that you know, in the middle of the night go and fix box, like there needs to be a healthy community around that. And that is not just individual contributors. That is also what are the companies that are invested in this? Where are they dedicating resources? Like that's another level of sophistication that a lot of customers need to bring into their own vendor selection process. >> Excellent. Speaking about communities and open ports, want to make sure you have time to tell us a little bit about the AI platform discussed. >> Yeah, it's it's very, very interesting and something I'm super excited about it SUSE. And it's kind of this, we're starting to see AI done and it's really interesting problems to solve. And like, I'll just give you one example, is that we're working with a Formula One team around using AI to help them actually manage in car mechanics and actually manage some of the things that they're doing to get super high performance out of their vehicles. And that is such an interesting problem to solve. And it's such a natural artificial intelligence problem that even then you're talking about cars instead of servers or you're talking about racing stack instead of data centers, you still got a lot of the same problems. And so you need an easy to use AI stack, you need it to be high performance, you need it to be real time, you need to be able to get decisions made really quickly. These are the same kinds of problems. But we're starting to see them in all these really interesting real world scenarios, which is one of the coolest things that I've seen in my career, especially as it turns of IT, is that IT is really everywhere. It's not just grab your sweater and go to the data centre, because it's 43 degrees in there, it's also get on the racetrack, it's also go to the airfield, it's also go to the grocery store and look at some of the problems being addressed and solved there. And that is super fascinating. One of the things that I'm super excited about in our industry in total. >> All right, well, really good discussion here. Daniel, Dr. T, thank you so much for sharing everything from your keynote and been a pleasure watching. >> Thank you. >> All right back with lots more covered from SUSECON Digital 20 I'm Stuart Miniman and as always, thank you for watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)