>> Narrator: From theCUBE's studios in Palo Alto, in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a CUBE conversation. >> Hey everybody, this is Dave Vellante and welcome to this episode of "CXO Insights." As you know, we've been grabbing the perspectives of leaders throughout this pandemic and assessing their tips for managing in a crisis and of course, managing in good times as well. But now, as we enter the post-isolation economy, we really want to look at not just how you manage through the crisis but how you manage beyond the crisis. And I'm really excited to have Chris Riley here. He's the newly minted Chief Revenue Officer at Automation Anywhere. Chris, my friend, how you doing? I hope you and the family are well. >> Thank you, David. I wish the same for you. I think getting by as most folks are, it's the new normal, we're all getting used to it but I'm happy to be here and happy to be at Automation Anywhere. >> Yeah, I want to talk about that in detail. Eddie Walsh calls it the new abnormal but so congratulations on the new role. I want to start with your career. I met you in 1987, which ironically was the same year I met Dave Donatelli, the same year I met Michigan I. and Saul Koi, talk about great timing. And then, you came into the industry at a time, really different time. It was, the IBM people don't remember this but IBM was the dominant player and you guys unseated them amazing 12-year career at EMC and then you kind of went to the .com boom. That was amazing. You relive that ride, did a stint at HP and really turned that business around and then came back to Dell, top go to market executive. One of the top in the industry that I know and now, of course at Automation Anywhere we're going to talk about. My first question to you is, a lot of changes have occurred since 1987. What has changed the most? Now we're talking diversity, we're talking all kinds of your different sales models. From your career looking back, what's changed the most? >> I think everything has changed and candidly for the better, Dave. You just led with one of the key areas in an area I'm deeply passionate about and that is diversity and inclusion and I think there's no stronger time, at least in our country's history where the inequalities that exist have been so exposed. So I view this as an opportunity, as I did at Dell to make a difference, lead from the front and make this a destination and a company whose culture really supports and drives diversity and inclusion. So I'd say that's one area, and I know it's very passionate for you as well. The others, it was a time before laptops, desktops. I think Ken Olsen once said, who would ever need a laptop in their home and boy, the world has changed. So I think some of the things though that haven't changed and this is why I'm so excited about Automation Anywhere. At the manual processes we have our workers doing and I think there is a real opportunity. I've lived through explosive growth at EMC, top company performing stock during the 90s, I get to see VMware firsthand. I've seen what's happened with ServiceNow and I believe this RPA space, as to you is in its infancy. It's seeing 30% compounded annual growth and we're just at the beginning and I think it's going to change the way people work and really lead to that digital transformation that so many of us have been talking about for the last decade. >> Yeah and you know kind of my position. Quick aside, I don't know if you saw the Netflix announcement this morning and I've been wondering as a small business, what can we do? What more can we do for inclusion and diversity? Netflix announced they're going to take 2% of their cash and put it into banks, financial institutions that support black causes and I just talked to our CFO. I said, look, why don't we take some of our cash, let's take 2% and stick it into banks, community banks. There's 30 million small businesses in the United States. If just 1% puts 10 grand in each, that's $3 billion that go into black community. So I'm going to start a mission and I just thought I'd share that 'cause I know it's a passion of yours. >> Yeah, and we all need to be in a position to provide equal opportunity for employment and that is reaching out into those communities and starting early on in creating the opportunities for advancement professionally, mentorship and just the path forward. And I'm excited to see what Netflix is doing. I'm sure you'll come up with the right answer for your company and I think all of us are searching, what's the right answer for our respective companies? >> Yeah, so now let's get into it. You're a month in and I want to talk about this project. I've learned a lot about not only RPA but about automation. I've just had a deep dive with your team and it really brought some things into focus. Guys, if you bring up the first slide, I want to get some thoughts on the table here. So this is a chart that sort of came into my focus with a friend of mine, Dave Moschello, who really big thinker on this stuff and he pointed out, this is data from the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics and the EU and it shows the lackluster productivity that's going on in the past decade. So you can see, we had the boost in the 80s and the 90s, we had this sort of productivity uptick from laptops but now, look what's happened since 2007. And the point that Moschello made on the right hand side is we have all these huge issues that we face, whether it's climate change, we have this massive debt, healthcare, an aging population, feeding everyone, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and his point was, there's no way we're going to be able to solve all these problems by throwing humans at the problem. So I've really begun to sort of think about this just in terms of machines and the roles that machines will play. I think overnight, Chris, we've gone from, wow, I'm afraid that machines are going to take my job to you can't operate if you're not digital. >> Yeah, well digital transformation is not a new term. I think it's meant something different each year for the last 10 years and I look at this as an opportunity. The World Economic Forum projected that IA and RPA will create 58 million new jobs. It's an astounding number. What COVID-19 has exposed is this work from home phenomenon that really exposes the risk of manual processes within the enterprise. So I think those two things combined is almost a perfect storm and I think what it'll do is accelerate the adoption of RPA and IPA. So something that might've taken years or decades to really be adopted in force, in this new normal, I think is going to be accelerated quite dramatically. >> So, the combination of your go to market execution, you managed complex sales motions before. Automation Anywhere obviously has some great product capabilities. Guys, I want to bring up the next slide and Chris, you might have seen this in some of the stuff that I wrote but this is data from ETR Enterprise technology research. They're a data partner of ours. Now it's clear that Automation Anywhere has the right product market fit and you can see on this chart, this is a methodology that we use. ETR goes out and they ask people, are you adopting a platform new? Are you increasing spending relative to last year? Are you flat, decreasing or replacing? And you can see here, there is zero churn in the Automation Anywhere base. And so obviously you got product market fit. Churn is the silent killer, obviously of SAS companies and so, you've picked a winner and I'm learning more about this. At first I thought the team office is quite large, I sized it. I actually think it's bigger than I originally thought. Chris, I thought this was going to be a winner-take-all type of market. I'm really rethinking that after, especially the deep dive I've had with your team in terms of how you guys go to market with an end-to-end sort of life cycle approach as opposed to sort of putting point products in. So I wonder if that narrative that I just laid out, resonates with you, is it sort of consistent with what you're seeing and then maybe some of the reasons why you joined Automation Anywhere? >> Yeah, I would say the most aggressive software growth that I've seen in the last decade or so, and two companies stand out for me. That's VMware and ServiceNow. They don't have a point product, they have a platform and that's what attracted me to Automation Anywhere is this platform approach. And Dave as you know, I've spent most of my career calling on the enterprise' strong relationships with those types of companies and they aren't looking to develop a point product solution and then cobble together lots of disparate islands of solutions. They're looking for a platform that can grow as they grow. They can extend from the back office to the front office but all centered around workforce, transformation, productivity and just as importantly, resiliency. And as we start to develop more and more capabilities that will be delivered through this platform approach, I think we're going to see explosive growth as the industry goes through its explosive growth. >> Well, I know your approach and your approach is to stay very close to customers. So as you were doing your due diligence on Automation Anywhere and as you enter your sort of first part of your 100-day journey here, I'm sure you've talked to a lot of customers. What are they telling you? What are the big takeaways right now that you're hearing? >> Yeah, so I think some of the data you pointed out with 4,000 customers in essence, zero churn, the opportunity to upsell those customers with more products and solutions clearly is there. New account acquisition has been a tremendous source of growth for the company in a strong professional services organization that actually is able to deliver the outcomes that our customers expect. From an enterprise perspective, I couldn't have come into a better situation with 4,000 customers, 50% of the fortune 500, 2 million bots deployed, those types of strategic relationships are going to be more and more critical as this company continues to accelerate its growth. Most of the RPA solutions really got in through the back office and candidly, really weren't even a component of an IT solution. Now, as you go to the front of the house, where you're looking at customer facing applications and worker productivity, these are CEO, CFO, COO and IT initiatives. So I really believe we're coming into our own, at the front of the house with senior executives that really want to create a better working environment for their employees and de-risk a lot of these manual processes that have existed for years. >> So I know why you chose Automation Anywhere. My question is, why did Automation Anywhere choose Chris Riley? I know your capabilities but obviously when somebody hires a executive like yourself, they say, "Hey, Chris, we want you to help us "get to the next level," but what does that mean? Are we talking about changes in the go to market? Are we talking about your ability to recruit and coach, to manage complex of sales motions? What is it that you want to bring to Automation Anywhere? >> I think it's all those, Dave. Having built a reputation throughout my 30 plus year career around a people-centric focus, a customer-centric focus and those two things kind of aren't interchangeable. When you look at customers, they put their faith and confidence in people and they put their faith and confidence in companies. And what I see here at Automation Anywhere is that the ability to kind of expand upon the great culture that the company already has but do it with someone whose role in a company at scale globally and can put a lot of the best practices and disciplines in place to do that 'cause it is difficult but also, how do we start to do larger, more complex deals and build relationships with the CIO, the CFO, the CEO? And I think a big reason why I'm here is, that experience in doing that, doing large complex multi-year opportunities but also being able to deliver upon the outcomes that we told our customers we could achieve and do that together with our customers and again we have a strong professional services organization and an incredible ecosystem of partners that have demonstrated year over year, the company's ability to actually deliver upon its promise. >> That was my next question to you, was the ecosystem. One of the big changes from when you started in this business, was it used to be just belly to belly, hardcore, direct sales, the importance and leverage that you get from a partner ecosystem. You point out VMware. In fact ServiceNow, it's interesting. When we first started covering ServiceNow, one of the things we said is we want to see as an indicator of success, the partner ecosystem evolve and then sure enough, it exploded with the SIs and all the kinds of developers. So maybe talk about AA's ecosystem, The Partner System. You obviously have a lot of experience there in your career, how do you see that as a leverage point? >> Yeah, it's huge. This market is far larger than we can cover with a direct sales organization and requires substantial services engagements that go well beyond the kind of professional services organization we want to build out organically in the company. So when you look at that, the company today has 1,900 partners. The global systems integrators are key, especially those with VPO type practices, the regional SIs and candidly, the regional VARs who've built out a strong service malpractice, a strong VMware practice and have the professional services capabilities to do some of these complex automation or automation type work that have also built the trust and confidence of their customers. So, in partnership with these types of companies, we believe we can expand our reach. We believe we can offer a more comprehensive outcome and solution to our customers and we, what I'm going to be looking at is, how do we enhance our channel programs to be the kind of company that the channel partners want to engage with, built upon the reputation of the company, the leadership position we have in the technology and also our willingness to go after this space together. >> So I got to go but last question is, what can you share with us about your 100-day plan? Where are you going to focus? >> On the people. There is a strong culture here, there's incredible sales talent and there's talent throughout the organization. I think Dave, you've seen for me over the years, a clarity of our mission, keep things simple and try and drive a repetitive process to deliver results. I'm very accountability focused. So I think what I'm going to look to assess is where the organization is today, how to get more out of the great talent we have, build stronger and deeper relationships with our customers and really scale and grow through our ecosystem of channel partners. >> Well, Chris, I'm super excited for you. A great hire by Automation Anywhere obviously got my attention. I think it'll get the industry's as well. Best of luck, and of course we'll be watching. >> Good, always great to see you, Dave, take care. >> Yeah, ditto, thanks so much for coming on and thank you for watching everybody. Keep it here because this month we're going to be really digging into the ETR data we've been reporting on that horse race between Automation Anywhere and UI Path. The ETR data is in the field and we'll be reporting on that. So look for that. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE and we'll see you next time. (gentle music)

>>live from Atlanta, Georgia. It's the Q covering answerable Best 2019. Brought to you by Red Hat >>Hey, welcome back, everyone. This is the Cubes. Live coverage here in Atlanta, Georgia, for Ansel Fast, part of Red Hats Annual event with their customers, their community. I'm Chon hurry with the Cuban stupid men. My co host. Our next guest is Jason Smith, vice president. North America Service is for Red Hat. Jason, welcome to the Cube. >>Thanks. Thanks for having me. >>So mostly the service is wrapped around this or huge opportunity because of the impact that the automation is having the tasks people's jobs shift on the things they can do, more things. That service is opportunity, bigot. You just take us through kind of your strategy of how you look at answerable in context of the red hat portfolio. >>Sure, yeah. So from the service's perspective, we're really responsible for ensuring customer success and sex successful adoption of all of our technologies. So across the entire portfolio and so as opposed to a service. This company that's focused on surfaces were really focused on driving customers success and making sure that customers were successful so overall, from the service's perspective we have obviously are consulting, which really focused on working with customers. Implement solutions around red technology is expanding the use of redhead technologies. We have our training business, which is our education and certification business, which has on sites, open enrollment. But also over the last couple years we released our Red Hat Learning subscription, which is basically gives customers access to the entire portfolio of training on demand in the self paced way, which is been really fast growing part of our business. And then I think we've talked to you a little bit about this before, which is our open innovation labs, which is really focused on people in process and helping customers go through that digital transformation type of journey and focus around culture and things like that. >>It's interesting you look at the interviews we had yesterday with some of your customers. It's actually have a couple different profiles. You have the man. We nailed it. Now I gotta bring us across the entire organization, get a champion driving change. Other groups are standardized with that substrate for answerable. Others were like, Wow, I have other stuff. I need to really figure this out, take us through how you guys would approach those use cases because they're different. But all would want more. Service is some to accelerate either, say a champion, some to get a new prospect on board. >>Right? So, um, we've laid out We'll release is about 90 days ago, which is called Dark Automation Adoption Journey. And this is a five phased approach where we've worked with customers hundreds of customers around the world, in every phase of adoption of automation, obviously specifically around answerable. And this really looks at helping customers go from more of a tactical strategy, typically is what we're seeing today. A lot of customers have and school in different pockets, doing a lot of tactical things that are driving a lot of value. But how do you take that? And then really get two more of an enterprise strategy? So that's really what we've focused on taking what we've learned with customers at all of those phases and really taking those best practices and coming up with a standardized approach that we can really work with customers to be ableto get through that journey with him. >>Jason could bring us inside the customer base a little here. You know, what we hear is it's really easy to get started. But when you lay out those five steps is everybody looking to get to st five? Is that a, you know, year journey? Are some people okay? Just being at phase two or three. Help us understand a little bit, Kind of. And we know it varies greatly, but some of the characteristics as toe how fast they move along where the end journey is for most organizations, >>right. So as I mentioned this, customers are coming in. Some have been early adopters of answerable for a long time. So we've been working at more of a department departmental level with customers where they're driving value at that departmental level. Others were kind of coming to us for the first time, saying we're hearing all about this automation stuff. We know we need it, but we need to get started. And so we're really looking at, um, kind of starting out. We typically start with the Discovery session, and so we're bringing in our architects and consultants to come in and meet with their business and technical stakeholders to really understand where they are in that journey and really defined kind of their goals and objectives. So every customer is different, so really understanding what their goals and priorities are and then being able to help kind of craft that road map with, um to get through that journey. But I'd say most of our customers looking to figure out how to take it from kind of more of those tactical implementations to how do we leverage that in a more scalable, consistent way and be able to manage it more across the enterprise? >>Well, it's a direct software development often is different at different, different parts in an organization. If you look a kind of a dev ops movement, it's, you know, trying to get a little bit consistency across those, and it sounds like answerable plays well, toe help get collaboration and you know those playbooks that could be used across and know that I have something that is supported and works, and my organization buys into it >>exactly. So a lot of customers air doing great things in those pockets. But like you said, how do you take those and not reinvent the wheel every time but take them and kind of break them down into consumable chunks, kind of validate those and then publish them. So you have a standard set of playbooks that people can use and reuse versus developing them again for the first time. Because we know that answerable. You can do things quickly, but you don't want to redo them 10 different ways to do the same thing. So having that kind of blessed standardized way and then publishing them out managing them is really important. >>Great feedback from customers on that two on. Then they get more playbooks to get more. I gotta manage that. But one of the interesting things we talked about yesterday with Stephanie Cheers with on the rail side was connecting, answerable to rail the insights. Was the analytics certainly compelling? A lot of benefits scare coming into the rest of red hat. Well, where is that opportunity? How do you guys servicing those pieces? >>Yes, so we're really looking at answerable to be part of most of the red hat portfolio. So as we're working with customers and they're adopting more and more of the Red Hat technologies, answerable becomes a bigger part of that. So whether it's kind of bringing in our training to help train and enable customer associates on using answerable not only for automation but whether you're a real admin or open shift, or no matter what kind of product you're using, being ableto have the training enablement and service is around that to help everyone learn to understand how to use an school in leverage danceable across any area of the plot. >>You guys aren't new to platforms. Answer would have been a great product. Now the platform approach, any things you guys are gonna do different is going to the same Red Hat playbook dealing with other platforms like Open shift in other things. You guys been successful with similar playbook for you guys, or what's the? Is there a nuance with the platform of sensible automation? Ours business as usual? >>Yes. From the service's perspective, we've tried to really standardize on a set of offerings, um, and leverage kind of a consistent approach, whether it's with open shift for helping customers adopt containers or helping customers build a hybrid cloud. Or we've even got a adoption journey around huts for Tokyo's the leverage to create an NFI architecture. It's the same kind of process and framework. So we try to build a standardized process and no matter kind of what type of solution customers air building We look to follow those types of >>dreams. Nice glue layer kind of fits everywhere on a personal question for you. What's the show been like here for you share with the people watching who weren't here? Why is this year important? This seems to be an inflection point for answerable fest, the vibe, the number of attendees, the moment in history where the cloud journey on premises What's What's your take on? This is your personal view. It's >>been great. I mean, I think just the size talking a lot of people that have been coming here for many, many years, even prior to the redhead acquisition of Answerable. This is really community driven event, and it's still set up like a community driven event. You won't see a big red hat stuff everywhere. It's really kind of by the community for the community. And just to see the sheer size of on the number of attendees here, and really kind of the evolution of what customers are being able to talk about on stage with a value they're getting out of answerable is pretty tremendous. So just seeing the pure return on investment of leveraging, answerable and looking at all of the large customers they're here, speaking even on the panel last night was really incredible to see them talk about their journeys over the last couple of years, going from just starting to be work with, answerable to really kind of driving that across the enterprise and getting continually >>local on feedback. But they're also vocal on success. They have all these building in champions inside your inside the customer base, >>and they're all very, very excited about when you have excited customers. >>So, Jason, I'm wonder if you could help us connect the dots with how automation ties into the other journeys customers are going through. You know, the digital transformation, modernizing their applications, changing their hybrid and cloud hybrid and multi cloud environment. What's the role of automation to, you know, enable that and participate in those journeys? >>Yes, it's and it really has kind of a part in all of those journeys. So we work with lots of large customers that are going through a kind of different parts of those different journeys, and it seems like ants will becomes a part of it. And so, for instance, one of our customers that working we're working with right now through a large digital transformation, kind of across the entire enterprise from a both people process and technology perspective on this is leveraging things like open shift and modernizing all of their applications and breaking down things in the micro Service's and really transforming their business. But part of that is leveraging, answerable. And so one of the CEOs mottoes was, If we do something more than twice, we're gonna automate it. And so I hear that kind of over and over again, no matter what type of customer we're working with, no matter what type of kind of solution we're implementing, they're coming up with these monsters that they get really excited about around automation. Um, so we're not going to do things the old way with these new projects. We wanna automate everything, and I just seeing a ton of value and efficiency out of it. >>Awesome. What's the biggest surprise that you've seen over the past year on the service aside and just in terms of enterprise readiness Enterprise and appetite. Adoption, Any observations you could share around what's going on with automation, Observe, ability, a big part of the business. We're seeing that, too. Automation Observe ability to hot new sectors. Just exploding opportunity. >>Yeah, I think just continuing to see this kind of digital transformation effort across so many different customers and get everybody's really focused on not only the technology and the technology, especially things like open shift in Ansel and Rail. They're enabling all of this change in all of this movement to the cloud and the automation, but really working with customers to focus on the people in process so they can leverage those capabilities because just adopting the platforms doesn't give you all of the benefits without changing your people in process. So we spent a lot of time talking about really around the culture, and customers are looking at us saying Red Hat Service's Don't just come in with the technical experts would help us really understand how we transform our people in process along the way to really take advantage of the innovation that's going around right now with the cloud. >>So, Jason, uh, IBM Zach Wizard Read had been very clear keeping the brand, the products, the people of Red Hat. IBM knows a thing or two about service is though we think that, you know, service is really are the main focus that that will happen there. So give us a little insight as to how the scale of IBM will increase what redhead service is able to be able to dio. >>Yeah, So it's great for Red Hat, right? Because we now have a company the size of IBM out driving the adoption of our technologies. So everything that we're able to dio to date from a red hat perspective got us to one level of scale. But IBM is gonna take us to that next level of scale. And from a service's perspective, IBM already has service's departments around all of their different technologies. And so we really are gonna be treated kind of service department. So we're gonna continue to be the experts around Red Hat Technologies. But it really doesn't change that much for us because we worked with large s eyes. Um, since the time we started here and were always part of a lot of largess, I implementations so although IBM will be a very important partner of ours. They won't be on. The other part of the only partner will still work with all >>the flights. IBM That's right. And so we worked at >>IBM before the acquisition as a partner will work with him after the acquisition. But IBM What will change is on the IBM side, they will be building much larger delivery organizations around Red Hat Technologies, which will allow us to kind of get the the customer started on that journey. But when they look to really scale out than IBM can take in and kind of take that to the next level, that we would never have the scale to be able to get to that side. So it's good for us. It's good for our customers, and it's good for red hat driving adoption. >>Jim pointed this out on the many times on multiple calls around the broad portfolio. You guys have an IBM. They have somewhere broad portfolio. Thanks for coming on, sharing your insights. What's new for you? Take a quick minute to plug in what's going on your organization and what you're up to? >>Yes, So we're just continuing to scale. So, um The good news is IBM has a large service's organization, but that also drives a lot of demand for us. So we're continuing to scale, will continue to improve. Our offerings were continuing to help our customers reach those goals, moving to the cloud and everything they're looking to try to accomplish. >>Great. Thanks for coming. I appreciate it to Cuba. Coverage here. Danceable fast. I'm John for a student. Stay with us. More day, too. Live coverage after this short break.