>>The introduction of the modern public cloud in the mid two thousands permanently changed the way we think about it at the heart of it. The cloud operating model attacked one of the biggest problems in enterprise infrastructure, human labor costs more than half of it, budgets were spent on people. And much of that effort added little or no differentiable value to the business. The automation of provisioning management, recovery optimization and decommissioning infrastructure resources has gone mainstream as organizations demand a cloud-like model across all their application infrastructure, irrespective of its physical location. This is not only cut costs, but it's also improved quality and reduced human error. Hello everyone. My name is Dave Vellante and welcome to simplifying hybrid cloud made possible by Cisco today, we're going to explore hybrid cloud as an operating model for organizations or the definition of cloud is expanding. Cloud is no longer an abstract set of remote services, you know, somewhere out in the clouds. >>No, it's an operating model that spans public cloud on premises infrastructure. And it's also moving to edge locations. This trend is happening at massive scale. While at the same time, preserving granular control of resources. It's an entirely new game where it managers must think differently to deal with this complexity. And the environment is constantly changing the growth and diversity of applications continues. And now we're living in a world where the workforce is remote hybrid work is now a permanent state and will be the dominant model. In fact, a recent survey of CIO is by enterprise technology. Research ETR indicates that organizations expect 36% of their workers will be operating in a hybrid mode splitting time between remote work and in office environments. This puts added pressure on the application infrastructure required to support these workers. The underlying technology must be more dynamic and adaptable to accommodate constant change. >>So the challenge for it managers is ensuring that modern applications can be run with a cloud-like experience that spans on-prem public cloud and edge locations. This is the future of it. Now today we have three segments where we're going to dig into these issues and trends surrounding hybrid cloud. First up is Didi Dasgupta, who will set the stage and share with us how Cisco is approaching this challenge. Next we're going to hear from Maneesh Agra wall and Darren Williams, who will help us unpack HyperFlex, which is Cisco's hyper-converged infrastructure offering. And finally, our third segment we'll drill into unified compute more than a decade ago. Cisco pioneered the concept of bringing together compute with networking in a single offering. Cisco frankly changed the legacy server market with UCS unified compute system. The X series is Cisco's next generation architecture for the coming decade, and we'll explore how it fits into the world of hybrid cloud and its role in simplifying the complexity that we just discussed. So thanks for being here. Let's go. >>Okay. Let's start things off. Gus is back on the cube to talk about how we're going to simplify hybrid cloud complexity. DD. Welcome. Good to see you again. >>Hey Dave, thanks for having me. Good to see you again. Yeah, >>Our pleasure here. Uh, look, let's start with big picture. Talk about the trends you're seeing from your customers. >>Well, I think first off every customer, these days is a public cloud customer. They do have their on-premise data centers, but um, every customer is looking to move workloads, use services, cloud native services from the public cloud. I think that's, that's one of the big things that we're seeing, um, while that is happening. We're also seeing a pretty dramatic evolution of the application landscape itself. You've got bare metal applications. You always have virtualized applications. Um, and then most modern applications are, um, are containerized and, you know, managed by Kubernetes. So I think we're seeing a big change in, uh, uh, in the application landscape as well, and probably, you know, triggered by the first two things that I mentioned, the execution venue of the applications, and then the applications themselves it's triggering a change in the it organizations in the development organizations and sort of not only how they work within their organizations, but how they work across, um, all of these different organizations. So I think those are some of the big things that, uh, that I hear about when I talk to customers. >>Well, so it's interesting. I often say Cisco kind of changed the game and in server and compute when it, when it developed the original UCS and you remember there were organizational considerations back then bringing together the server team and the networking team. And of course the bus storage team. And now you mentioned Kubernetes, that is a total game changer with regard to whole the application development process. So you have to think about a new strategy in that regard. So how have you evolved your strategy? What is your strategy to help customers simplify, accelerate their hybrid cloud journey in that context? >>No, I think you're right. Um, back to the origins of UCS, I mean, we widen the networking company, builder server, well, we just enabled with the best networking technology. So we do compute that and now doing something similar on the software, actually the software for our, um, for our and you know, we've been on this journey for about four years. Um, but the software is called intersite and, you know, we started out with intersite being just the element manager management software for Cisco's compute and hyperconverged devices. Um, but then we've evolved it over the last few years because we believe that the customer shouldn't have to manage a separate piece of software would do manage the hardware of the underlying hardware and then a separate tool to connect it to a public cloud. And then the third tool to do optimization, workload optimization or performance optimization or cost optimization, a fourth tool do now manage Kubernetes and not just in one cluster, one cloud, but multi cluster multicloud. >>They should not have to have a fifth tool that does go into observability. Anyway, I can go on and on, but you get the idea. We wanted to bring everything onto that same platform that manage their infrastructure, but it's also the platform that enables the simplicity of hybrid cloud operations, automation. It's the same platform on which you can use to manage the Kubernetes infrastructure, uh, Kubernetes clusters. I mean, whether it's on-prem or in the cloud. So overall that's the strategy, bring it to a single platform and a platform is a loaded word, but we'll get into that a little bit, uh, you know, in this, in this conversation, but that's the overall strategy simplify? >>Well, you know, we brought a platform, I, I like to say platform beats products, but you know, there was a day and you could still point to some examples today in the it industry where, Hey, another tool we can monetize that and another one to solve a different problem. We can monetize that. Uh, and so tell me more about how intersite came about. You obviously sat back, you saw what your customers were going through. You said we can do better. So w tell us the story there. >>Yeah, absolutely. So look, it started with, um, you know, three or four guys in getting in a room and saying, look, we've had this, you know, management software, UCS manager, UCS director, and these are just the Cisco's management, you know, uh, for our softwares, for our own platform. Then every company has their, their own flavor. We said, we took on this ball goal of like, we're not when we rewrite this or we improve on this, we're not going to just write another piece of software. We're going to create a cloud service, or we're going to create a SAS offering because the same is the infrastructure built by us, whether it's on networking or compute or on software, how do our customers use it? Well, they use it to write and run their applications, their SAS services, every customer, every customer, every company today is a software company. >>They live and die by how they work or don't. And so we were like, we want to eat our own dog food here, right? We want to deliver this as a SAS offering. And so that's how it started being on this journey for about four years, tens of thousands of customers. Um, but it was a pretty big boat patient because, you know, um, the big change with SAS is, is you're, uh, as you're familiar today is the job of now managing this, this piece of software is not on the customer, it's on the vendor, right? This can never go down. We have a release every Thursday, new capabilities, and we've learned so much along the way, whether it's around scalability, reliability, um, working with, uh, our own companies, security organizations on what can or cannot be in a SAS service. Um, so again, it's just been a wonderful journey, but, uh, I wanted to point out, we are in some ways eating our own dog food because we built a SAS application that helps other companies deliver their SAS applications. >>So Cisco, I look at Cisco's business model and I compete, I of course, compare it to other companies in the infrastructure business, and obviously a very profitable company or large company you're growing faster than, than, than most of the traditional competitors. And so that means that you have more to invest. You, you, you can, you can afford things like doing stock buybacks, and you can invest in R and D. You don't have to make those hard trade-offs that a lot of your competitors have to make. So It's never enough, right. Never enough. But, but, but in speaking of R and D and innovations that your intro introducing I'm specifically interested in, how are you dealing with innovations to help simplify hybrid cloud in the operations there and prove flexibility and things around cloud native initiatives as well? >>Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, look, I think one of the fundamentals where we're philosophically different from a lot of options that I see in the industry is we don't need to build everything ourselves. We don't, I just need to create a damn good platform with really good platform services, whether it's, you know, around, um, search ability, whether it's around logging, whether it's around, you know, access control, multi-tenants, I need to create a really good platform and make it open. I do not need to go on a shopping spree to buy 17 and a half companies, and then figure out how to stitch it all together. Cause it's, it's almost impossible if it's impossible for us as a vendor, it's, it's three times more difficult, but for the customer who then has to consume it. So that was the philosophical difference in how we went about building in our sites. >>We've created a harden platform that's, that's always on. Okay. And then you, then the magic starts happening. Then you get partners, whether it is, um, you know, infrastructure partners like, uh, you know, some of our storage partners like NetApp or your, you know, others who want their conversion infrastructure is also to be managed or are other SAS offerings and software vendors, um, who have now become partners. Like we do not, we did not write to Terraform, you know, but we partnered with Tashi and now, uh, you know, Terraform services available on the intercept platform. We did not write all the algorithms for workload optimization between a public cloud and on-prem, we partnered with a company called ergonomics. And so that's now an offering on the intercept platform. So that's where we're philosophically different and sort of, uh, you know, w how we have gone about this. >>And, uh, it actually dovetails well into some of the new things that I want to talk about today that we're announcing on the inner side platform where we're actually announcing the ability to attach and, and be able to manage Kubernetes clusters, which are not on prem. They're actually on AWS, on Azure, uh, soon coming on, uh, on GC, on, uh, on GKE as well. So it really doesn't matter. We're not telling a customer if you're comfortable building your applications and running Kubernetes clusters on, you know, in AWS or Azure, stay there, but in terms of monitoring, managing it, you can use in our site is since you're using it on prem, you can use that same piece of software to manage Kubernetes clusters in a public cloud, or even manage the end in, in a, in an easy to instance. So, >>So the fact that you could, you mentioned storage, pure net app. So it's intersite can manage that infrastructure. I remember the hot-seat deal. It caught my attention. And of course, a lot of companies want to partner with Cisco because you've got such a strong ecosystem, but I thought that was an interesting move Turbonomic. You mentioned. And now you're saying Kubernetes in the public cloud, so a lot different than it was 10 years ago. Um, so my last question is how do you see this hybrid cloud evolving? I mean, you had private cloud and you had public cloud, it was kind of a tug of war there. We see these, these, these two worlds coming together. How will that evolve over the next few years? >>Well, I think it's, it's the evolution of the model and really look at depending on, you know, how you're keeping time. But I think one thing has become very clear. Again, we may be eating our own dog food. I mean, innercise is a hybrid cloud SAS applications that we've learned. Some of these lessons ourselves. One thing is referred that customers are looking for a consistent model, whether it's on the edge, on the polo public cloud, on-prem no data center. It doesn't matter if they're looking for a consistent model for operations, for governings or upgrades, or they're looking for a consistent operating model. What my crystal ball doesn't mean. There's going to be the rise of more custom plugs. It's still going to be hybrid. So allegations will want to reside wherever it makes most sense for them, which is most as the data moving data is the most expensive thing. >>So it's going to be located with the data that's on the edge. We on the air colo public cloud doesn't matter, but, um, basically you're gonna see more custom clouds, more industry-specific clouds, you know, whether it's for finance or constipation or retail industry specific, I think sovereign is going to play a huge role. Uh, you know, today, if you look at the cloud providers, you know, American and Chinese companies that these, the rest of the world, when it goes to making, you know, a good digital citizens, they're they're people and, you know, whether it's, gonna play control, um, and then distributed cloud also on edge, um, is, is gonna be the next frontier. And so that's where we are trying to line up our strategy. And if I had to sum it up in one sentence, it's really your cloud, your way, every customer is on a different journey. They will have their choice of like workload data, um, you know, upgrading your liability concerns. That's really what, what we are trying to enable for our customers. >>Uh, you know, I think I agree with doing that custom clouds. And I think what you're seeing is you said every company is a software company. Every company is also becoming a cloud company. They're building their own abstraction layers. They're connecting their on-prem to their, to their public cloud. They're doing that. They're, they're doing that across clouds. And they're looking for companies like Cisco to do the hard work. It give me an infrastructure layer that I can build value on top of, because I'm going to take my financial services business to my cloud model or my healthcare business. I don't want to mess around with it. I'm not going to develop, you know, custom infrastructure like an Amazon does. I'm going to look to Cisco in your R and D to do that. Do you buy that? >>Absolutely. I think, again, it goes back back to what I was talking about with blacks. You got to get the world, uh, a solid open, flexible platform, and it's flexible in terms of the technology flexible in how they want to consume it at some customers are fine with a SAS software. What if I talk to, you know, my friends in the federal team now that does not work so how they want to consume it, they want to, you know, our perspective sovereignty, we talked about it. So, you know, job for an infrastructure vendor like ourselves is give the world an open platform, give them the knobs, give them the right API. Um, but the last thing I would mention is, you know, there's still a place for innovation in hardware. Some of my colleagues are gonna engage into some of those, um, you know, details, whether it's on our X series platform or HyperFlex. Um, but it's really, it's going to, it's going to be software defined to SAS service and then, you know, give the world and open rock-solid platform, >>Got to run on something. All right, thanks DDL. It was a pleasure to have you in the queue. Great to see you. You're welcome in a moment, I'll be back to dig into hyperconverged and where HyperFlex fits and how it may even help with addressing some of the supply chain challenges that we're seeing in the market today.

>>Okay, let's start things off Didi Dasgupta is back on the cube to talk about how we're going to simplify hybrid cloud complexity. Didi. Welcome. Good to see you again. >>Hey Dave, thanks for having me. Good to see you again. >>Yeah, our pleasure here. Look, let's start with big picture. Talk about the trends you're seeing from your customers. >>Well, I think first off every customer, these days is a public cloud customer. They do have their on-premise data centers, but every customer is looking to move workloads, use services, cloud native services from the public cloud. I think that's, that's one of the big things that we're seeing while that is happening. We're also seeing a pretty dramatic evolution off the application landscape itself. You've got bare metal applications. You always have virtualized applications and then most modern applications are, are containerized and, you know, managed by Kubernetes. So I think we're seeing a big change in, in the application landscape as well, and probably, you know, triggered by the first two things that I mentioned, the execution venue of the applications, and then the applications themselves it's triggering the change in the it organizations in the development organizations and sort of not only how they work within their organizations, but how they work across all of these different organizations. So I think those are some of the big things that, that I hear about when I talk to customers. >>Well, so it's interesting. I often say Cisco kind of changed the game and in server and compute when it, when it developed the original UCS and you remember there were organizational considerations back then bringing together the server team and the networking team. And of course the, the storage team of, and now you mentioned Kubernetes, that is a total game changer with regard to whole the application development process. So you have to think about a new strategy in that regard. So how have you evolved your strategy? What is your strategy to help customers simplify, accelerate their hybrid cloud journey in that context? >>No, I think you're right back of the origins of UCS. I mean, we, you know, why the networking company builder server, well, we just enabled with the best networking technology. So do compute that and now doing something similar on the software, actually the managing software for our hyperconvergence, for our. And you know, we've been on this journey for about four years, but the software is called intersite. And, you know, we started out with intersite being just the element manager, the management software for Cisco's compute and hyperconverged devices, but then we've evolved it the last few years because we believe that the customer shouldn't have to manage a separate piece of software would do manage the hardware of the underlying hardware and then a separate tool to connect it to a public cloud. And then the third tool to do optimization, workload optimization or performance optimization or cost optimization, a fourth tool do now manage, you know, Kubernetes and like, not just in one, one cluster, one cloud, but multi cluster multicloud. >>They should not have to have a fifth tool that does goes into observability. Anyway, I can go on and on, but you get the idea. We wanted to bring everything onto that same platform that managed their infrastructure, but it's also the platform that enables the simplicity of hybrid cloud operations, automation. It's the same platform on which you can use to manage the Kubernetes infrastructure, Kubernetes clusters. I mean, whether it's on-prem or in the cloud. So overall that's the strategy, bring it to a single platform and a platform is a loaded word, but we'll get into that a little bit, you know, in this, in this conversation, but that's the overall strategy simplify? >>Well, you know, he brought a platform. I, I like to say platform beats products, but you know, there was a day and you could still point to some examples today in the it industry where, Hey, another tool we can monetize that and another one to solve a different problem. We can monetize that. And so tell me more about how intersite came about. You obviously sat back, you saw what your customers were going through. You said we can do better. So tell us the story there. >>Yeah, absolutely. So look, it started with, you know, three or four guys getting in a room and saying, look, we've had this, you know, management software, UCS manager, UCS director, and these are just the Cisco's management, you know, for our softwares, for our own platform. Then every company has their, their own flavor. We said, we, we took on this bold goal of like, we're not when we rewrite this or we improve on this, we're not going to just write another piece of software. We're going to create a cloud service, or we're going to create a SAS offering because the same in the infrastructure built by us, whether it's on networking or compute or the cyber talk software, how do our customers use it? Well, they use it to write and run their applications, their SAS services, every customer, every customer, every company today is a software company. >>They live and die by how their assets work or don't. And so we were like, we want to eat our own dog food here, right? We want to deliver this as a SAS offering. And so that's how it started being on this journey for about four years, tens of thousands of customers. But it, it was pretty big boat invasion. Cause you know, the big change with SAS is your, as you're familiar, Dave is the job of now managing this, this piece of software is not on the customer, it's on the vendor, right? This can never go down. We have a release every Thursday, new capabilities. And we've learned so much along the way, whether it's around scalability, reliability, working with our own company's security organizations on what can or cannot be in a SAS service. So again, it's just been a wonderful journey, but I wanted to point out that we are in some ways eating our own dog food. Cause we built a SAS application that helps other companies deliver their SAS applications. >>So Cisco, I look at Cisco's business model and I, I of course compare it to other companies in the infrastructure business and obviously a very profitable company or large company you're growing faster than, than, than most of the traditional competitors. And so that means that you have more to invest. You, you, you can, you can afford things like stock buybacks, and you can invest in R and D. You don't have to make those hard trade-offs that a lot of your competitors have to make. So It's never enough, right? Never enough. But, but, but in speaking of R and D and innovations that you're introducing, I'm specifically interested in, how are you dealing with innovations to help simplify hybrid cloud in the operations there and prove flexibility and things around cloud native initiatives as well? >>Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, look, I think one of the fundamentals where we're philosophically different from a lot of options that I see in the industry is we don't need to build everything ourselves. We don't, I just need to create a damn good platform with really good platform services, whether it's, you know, around search ability, whether it's around logging, whether it's around, you know, access control multi-tenants I need to create a really good platform and make it open. I do not need to go on a shopping spree to buy 17 and a half companies and then figure out how to stitch it all together because it's, it's almost impossible if it's impossible for us as a vendor, it's, it's three times more difficult, but for the customer who then has to consume it. So that was the philosophical difference in how we went about building in our sites. >>We've created a harden platform that's that's always on. Okay. And then you, then the magic starts happening. Then you get partners, whether it is, you know, infrastructure partners, like, you know, some of our storage partners like NetApp or your, or, you know, others who want to their conversion infrastructure is also to be managed or are there other SAS offerings, software vendors who have now become partners? Like we did not, we did not write Terraform, you know, but we partnered with Tashi and now, you know, Terraform services available on the intercept platform. We did not write all the algorithms for workload optimization between a public cloud and on-prem we partnered with a company called urbanomics. And so that's now an offering on the intercept platform. So that's where we're philosophically different and sort of, you know, w how we have gone about this. And it actually ducked a dovetails well into some of the new things that I want to talk about today, that we're announcing on the underside platform, where we're actually been announcing the ability to attach and, and be able to manage Kubernetes clusters, which are not on prem. They're actually on AWS, on Azure, soon coming on, on GC, on, on GKE as well. So it really doesn't matter. We're not telling a customer if you're comfortable building your applications and running Kubernetes clusters on, you know, in AWS or Azure, stay there, but in terms of monitoring, managing it, you can use in our site, since you're using it on prem, you can use that same piece of software to manage Kubernetes clusters in a public cloud, or even manage VMs in, in a, in an instance. >>So the fact that you could, you mentioned storage, pure net app. So it's intersite can manage that infrastructure. I remember the hot-seat deal. It caught my attention. And of course, a lot of companies want to partner with Cisco because you've got such a strong ecosystem, but I thought that was an interesting move Turbonomic. You mentioned. And now you're saying Kubernetes in the public cloud, so a lot different than it was 10 years ago. So my last question is, how do you see this hybrid cloud evolving? I mean, you had private cloud and you had public cloud, and it was kind of a tug of war there. We see these, these, these two worlds coming together. How will that evolve over the next few years? >>Well, I think it's, it's the evolution of the model and really look at know $2 or $3 depending on, you know, how you're keeping time. But I think one thing is become very clear. Again, we may be eating our own dog food. I mean, innercise is a hybrid cloud SAS applications that we've learned. Some of these lessons ourselves. One thing is referred that customers are looking for a consistent model, whether it's on the edge, on the polo public cloud, on-prem no data center doesn't matter. They're looking for a consistent model for operations, for governings or upgrades or liability. They're looking for a consistent operating model. What Mike is the law doesn't mean? I think there's going to be the rise of more custom plugs. It's still going to be hybrid. So obligations will want to reside wherever it makes most sense for them, which is data moving data is it's the most expensive thing. >>So it's going to be co-located with the data that's on the edge, on the edge colo public cloud doesn't matter, but you're basically going to see more customer droughts, more industry-specific clouds. You know, whether it's for finance or constipation or retail industry specific. I think sovereign is going to play a huge role, you know, today, if you look at the cloud providers, you know, American and Chinese companies that these, the rest of the world, when it comes to making good digital citizens, they're they're people and, you know, control. And the distributor cloud is also on edge is, is gonna be the next frontier. And so that's where we are trying to line up our strategy. And if I had to sum it up in one sentence, it's really your cloud, your way. Every customer is on a different journey that will have their choice of workloads, data, you know, uptime, reliability, concerns. That's really what, what we are returning any of our customers. >>You know, I think I agree with you that custom clouds. And I think what you're seeing is you said every company is a software company. Every company is also becoming a cloud company. They're building their own abstraction layers. They're connecting their on-prem to their, to their public cloud. They're doing that. They're, they're doing that across clouds. And they're looking for companies like Cisco to do the hard work. It give me an infrastructure layer that I can build value on top of, because I'm going to take my financial services business to my cloud model or my healthcare business. I don't want to mess around with it. I'm not going to develop, you know, custom infrastructure like an Amazon does. I'm going to look to Cisco in your R and D to do that. Do you buy that? >>Absolutely. I think, again, it goes back to what I was talking about with blacks. You got to get the world a solid open, flexible, and flexible in terms of the technology, flexible in how they want to consume it. Some customers are fine with a SAS software, but as I talk to, you know, my friends in the federal team, no, that does not work. So how they want to consume it. They want to, you know, a hundred percent, no sovereignty. We, we talked about. So, you know, job for a decent structure vendor like ourselves is to give the world an open platform, give them the knobs, give them the right API. But the last thing I will mention is, you know, there's still a place for innovation in hardware. Some of my colleagues are gonna engage me to some of those, you know, details, whether it's on our X series platform or HyperFlex, but it's really, it's going to, it's going to be software defined to SAS service and then, you know, give the world and open rock-solid platform, >>Got to run on something. All right. Thanks, Deedee. Always a pleasure to have you in the cube. Great to see you. >>You're >>Welcome. In a moment, I'll be back to dig into hyperconverged and where fits and how it may even help with addressing some of the supply chain challenges that we're seeing in the market today.

(upbeat music) >> Hello, everyone. Welcome to "theCUBE's" coverage of the International Women's Showcase, 2022. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. I'm pleased to be joined by my next guest, Madhura DasGupta Sinha, the founder and CEO of Aspire For Her. Madhura, it's great to have you on the program. >> It's lovely to be here on this program. Thank you for having me, Lisa >> Tell me a little bit about your background. >> Lisa, I have been a banker for the last 25 years but the last two years of my journey have been professionally and personally the most satisfying and fulfilling. On 8th of March, 2020, I started Aspire For Her. So today is our second birthday. >> Lisa: Happy birthday. >> Thank you, Lisa >> Tell us a little bit about Aspire For Her >> It's been a wonderful journey. >> Yeah, what was the genesis of it? You're obviously very passionate about it but talk to us about the Genesis of Aspire For Her. >> Thank you for the question. I was looking at gender data emanating from India and that left me fairly disturbed and distressed, why? Well, I was looking at the economic participation of women and I realized that we are absolutely at the bottom of a list of 156 countries. I felt someone needs to do something about this problem and I thought that someone could be me. >> And so two years ago you launched Aspire For Her. Talk to me about what that has achieved in its first two years and now embarking on year three. >> Well, I think our journey has been absolutely fascinating Today we have more than 120,000 members, mentors, supporters across the globe, across 60 different countries. We have more than 150 women leaders who are mentors at Aspire For Her, we have about 50 organizations that are working with us jointly and partnering with us in our journey to motivate more women to enter and stay in the workforce. Our vision is to add more than 1 million women to the workforce by 2025 and 10 million women to the workforce by 2030 and we want to do that by using the power of networks and communities. >> Those are really lofty goals, but fantastic. You mentioned and across 60 countries so far and we're talking about just on your second birthday, all of that you've accomplished. Talk to me a little bit about some of the mentors and how did you find some of these people? >> Well, Lisa, we use a unique five point model to change mindsets, and the first pillar in that model is mentors and role models. Because we notice that four out of five women have no successful, professional women role models in their immediate network. We give them access. So these mentors are CEOs, CXOs, women leaders who have built businesses who want to give back and they come to us and want to be part of Aspire For Her. They are a big part of our equation for success. The second pillar that we work on is learning opportunities and we work with organizations like Amazon and many others to ensure that our members stand head over shoulders over others when they are being looked at for jobs and recruitment opportunities. The third pillar that we work on is what we call career previews. Now, if you are wanting to get women excited about careers we have to understand one thing, if she can see it, she can be it. That's the mantra that we follow as we open up doors and windows of women's minds to new age career options. The fourth pillar that we work on is what we call a peer community. And what we notice is that the community connects with each other, motivates each other and elevates each other and collectively finds solutions to problems. The fifth pillar that we work with is what we call 3E, employment, entrepreneurship, or education. We want every woman in our country and across the globe to be in 3E. We want every woman to be financially independent because financial independence is the cornerstone of all other forms of independence and that is how we can break all biases. >> That is fantastic. The five point model, how it leads of the 3E's. Something you said really resonated with me and that is: if she can see it, she can be it. And we often say, we can't be what we can't see but I love this spin that you've taken on that, you've put that positive mindset, if she can see it, we want to enable her to see it across the globe. As you talked about your goals of a million women in the workforce by 2025 which is just a few years down the road, you're well on your way to accomplishing that. Talk to me about some of the data. I know you have some interesting data from McKinsey that really supported the genesis of Aspire For Her. >> Yes, Lisa, in fact, there's a report for the "Power Of Parity" report which McKinsey publishes from time to time and I notice some very interesting data in that. McKinsey says, "If we have a little more "than 10% women more in the workforce "this will be a trillion dollar opportunity for India. "A 27% increase in our GDP." So if we get more women to work, it essentially means that they will add to their families, to their country, to their society, to the world. >> So the data is there showing just a 10% increase in women in the workforce leads to a 27% increase in India's GDP. We're talking about India alone here. Talk to me about how are you working with companies like AWS to help Aspire For Her achieve it's lofty goals. >> AWS has been an absolutely wonderful partner for us. And let me start by talking about the She Dares community, their focus on diversity and their thought leadership has been absolutely wonderful for us. Well, the She Dares community is meant for all women who want to be in tech careers whether today they're in school or in college or they're working in non-tech fields, but are interested in technology as a career option or they're taking a break and they wish to come back into the workforce. The AWS She Dares community welcomes all women like this. It's very inclusive, all embracive and that's what we love about building the community with AWS. We just started two months ago and today we have more than 10,000 members in India and we've had some fantastic stories also emanating from the She Dares community in AWS. >> I love that. You've 10,000 members in two months, the Aspire For Her program, not only does it have lofty goals but you've got a really fast growth trajectory. Share a story with me, if you will of a woman that that is in the She Dares program and where she came from and where she is now. >> Yes, let me share the story of Usha and we just shared this at the launch of AWS, just a couple of days back, Lisa. So Usha worked for just two years and the next 16 years of her life, she devoted to bringing up her family. A few years back, her husband suffered Parkinson's disease and she realized that the entire weight of the family was on her so she decided to join She Dares. She decided to sign up for the AWS cloud certification program. How did she do it? Well, she had the entire family's burden on her. She worked night and day, but somehow she squeezed out hours during the night where she would sit and study and ensured that she got certified. Remember, this was a woman who just spent two years in the workforce and the next 16 years, she had absolutely no connection with anything that was even remotely career oriented. But after getting certified and getting motivated by the community of She Dares, she decided to give it a shot and apply for a job with AWS. Two days ago, she got her offer letter. So today, she's proud-- >> What a fantastic story going from two years in the workforce, 16 years taking care of her family then the burden is on her with her husband falling ill and she finds this opportunity. I love the message there. How do you talk to women who might be in similar situations to Usha going, "I haven't been in the workforce "for a really long time, Tech seems intimidating." How do you help them achieve the courage to go forward >> Lisa, it's the same five point model that we use. If she can see it, she can be it. If she can see a role model like Usha, a woman who has been out of the workforce for a long time finds the confidence, finds her voice and finds the ability to just rise up above that adversity and ensure that she jumps right back into the workforce. >> And is Aspire For Her focused on STEM only, or are you focused on all industries for women? >> We are focused on all industries for women and we like to look at fairly new age careers as well. So whether it's an Instagram influencer, whether it's somebody who's opened patisserie for the best brownies in town, we like to celebrate all women and all their career paths, but STEM is a very important part of what we do because we know that the STEM skills gap in India and globally is a very serious problem and if we train women and reskill women in STEM, they will automatically gravitate towards those roles which will open up in the India of tomorrow. >> Are you able to reach young girls like say in primary school and high school as well, is this open to women of all ages? >> It's open to women of all ages. We like to start at the age 16 because that's when women start taking career decisions whether it's about writing competitive exams or whether it's about looking at which colleges they will get into so we like to start at 16 and there's really no age limit. >> That's fantastic that there's no age limit but also starting young. One of the things that we know about the tech industry is the percentage of women in technical roles is quite low, I believe it's below 25% and has been for quite some time. We see that in a lot of countries that drop off around the high school, 16 year age, how do you help attract these young girls to be interested in not just STEM but in creating a career for herself? >> So we like telling a lot of stories, Lisa, and there are constant nudges and triggers on our platform. So today I'm speaking with you and I'm sure that this will be beamed across our platforms as well, And people will look at Lisa and say, "Hey Lisa is doing this fantastic thing as a host. "And she's working with this great organization. "Why can we not be like Lisa?" And that's the way in which we motivate folks. And we try to ensure that every woman with a career story comes in and is able to share her journey, her path with our larger community whether that's through mentorship sessions, whether that's through role modeling, whether it's through coaching, whether it's through many fireside chats that we have, we have a lot of workshops and webinars. We are a COVID baby so we are very digital and we love technology. So that's how we try to create the community, ensure that there is enough excitement going every minute of the day. It's a very buzzing, humming, active community and we ensure that finally, everyone has that one thing in mind: I have to be financially independent and I cannot ever give up on my career. >> I love that: Be financially independent and not give up on my career. You must be obviously, very intentionally, you launched Aspire For Her, you mentioned two years ago today, on the 8th of March, 2020 right in the very onset of COVID but also on International Women's Day. Talk to me a little bit about why that was so important to launch on that day in International Women's history month. >> Well, when I was looking at the problem that was staring at women in India there's another interesting piece of statistic that's struck, which was that the percentage of women in the workforce has been declining steadily in India. And I thought that someone needed to do something about that problem, and I thought that someone could be me. I'm not a great one for symbols but I thought that if we launch it on Women's day, this will be a constant reminder for us to strive harder to get to those numbers quicker than we have set ourselves up for. That's the reason why I decided when the world was talking about women, it's a great idea for this to be like a conscience keeper for us. >> Perfect timing. Well, congratulations on all of the success that you have achieved in just a short two year time period. I can't wait to see what year three brings and sign me up to be a mentor. I'm a woman in STEM, I'm a woman that hosts this program. I would love to get involved and help encourage girls and other women to follow their passion. >> That is so amazing, Lisa, you are on and we'd love to welcome you aboard as a mentor >> Oh, excellent! Lucky me, my lucky day. Madhura, thank you so much for talking with us about Aspire For Her, and again, congratulations on all of your success. >> Thank you. >> And Madhura, you've got one final message for AWS employees that you want to leave, what is that? >> Thank you, Lisa, for the question, there is a message that I'd like to leave for all AWS employees across the globe, join us, be a part of our movement, it takes about three minutes to sign up for Aspire For Her. Please be a part of the change that you wish to see. Thank you. >> Well, Madhura again, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Congratulations on the success, the momentum that you have achieved in such a short time period. We appreciate your insights and your time. >> Thank you so much, Lisa, thank you, thank you, and I am going to send you the form to become a mentor as well (chuckling). >> I'm in, sign me up. >> Thank you >> For Madhura DasGupta Sinha, I'm, Lisa Martin, you're watching "theCUBE's" coverage of International Women's Showcase, 2022. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021, brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to IBM Think 2021. This is the cubes ongoing coverage, where we go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise, of course virtually in this case, now we're going to talk about ecosystems, partnerships and the flywheel they deliver in the technology business. And with me are Jason Kelly, he's the general manager global strategic partnerships, IBM global business services and Mani Dasgupta, who's the vice president of marketing for IBM global business services. Folks it's great to see you again. I wish we were face-to-face, but this'll have to do. >> Good to see you Dave and same, I wish we were face to face, but we'll, we'll go with this. >> Soon. We're being patient. Jason, let's start with you. You, you have a partner strategy. I wonder if you could sort of summarize that and tell us more about it. >> So it's interesting that we start with the strategy because you said, we have a partner strategy Dave and I'd say that the market has dictated back to us, a partner strategy. Something that we it's not new, we didn't start it yesterday. It's something that we continue to evolve in and build even stronger. This thought of a, a partner strategy is it... Nothing's better than the thought of a partnership and people say, "Oh, well, you know you got to work together as one team and as a partner." And it sounds almost as a one to one type relationship. Our strategy is much different than that Dave and our execution is even better. And that, that execution is focused on now the requirement that the market, our clients are showing to us and our strategic partners, that one... One player, can't deliver all their needs. They can't design solution and deliver that from one place. It does take an ecosystem to the word that you called out, this thought of an ecosystem. And our strategy and execution is focused on that. And the reason why I say it evolves is because the market will continue to evolve and this thought of being able to look at a client's, let's call it a workflow, let's call it a value chain from one end to the other, wherever they start their process to wherever it ultimately hits that end user, it's going to take many players to cover that. And then we as IBM want to make sure that we are the general contractor of that capability with the ability to convene the right strategic partners, bring out the best value for that outcome, not just technology for technology's sake, but the outcome that the end client is looking for so that we bring value to our strategic partners and that end client. >> I think about when you talk about the, the value chain, you know, I'm imagining, you know the business books years ago where you see the conceptual value chain, you could certainly understand that and you could put processes together to connect them and now, you've got technology. I think of APIs. It's, it's, it really supports that everything gets accelerated and, and Mani, I wonder if you could address sort of the the go to market, how this notion of ecosystem which is so important is impacting the way in which you go to market. >> Absolutely. So modern business, you know demands a new approach to working. The ecosystem thought that Jason was just alluding to, it's a mutual benefit of all these companies working together in the market. It's a mutual halo of the brands. So as responsible, you know, for the championship of, of the IBM and the Global Business Services brand, I am very, very interested in this mutual working together. It should be a win, win, win as we say in the market. It should be a win for, our clients first and foremost, it should be a win for our partners and it should be a win for IBM, and we are working together right now on an approach to bring this go-to-market market strategy to life. >> So I wonder if we can maybe talk about, how this actually works and, and pulling some examples. You must have some favorites that we can touch on. Is that, is that fair? Can we, can we name some names? >> Sure. Names always work in debut writing. It's always in context of reality that we can talk about, as I said, this execution and not just a strategy and I'll, I'll start with probably what's right in the front of many people's minds. As we're doing this virtually because of what, because of an unfortunate pandemic. Just disastrous loss of life and things that have taken us down a path we go, whoa! (clears throat) How do we, how do we address that? Well, anytime there's a tough task IBM raises its hand first. You know, whether it was putting a person on the moon and bringing them home safely, or standing up a system behind the current social security administration, you know during the depression, you pick it. Well here we are now and why not start with that as an example because I think it calls out just what we mentioned here. First, Dave, this thought of, of an ecosystem because the first challenge, how do we create and address the biggest data puzzle of our lives which is, how do we get this vaccine created in record time? Which it was. The fastest before that was four years. This was a matter of months. So Pfizer created the first one out and then had to get it out to distribution. Behind that is a wonderful partner of ours, SAP trying to work with that. So us working with SAP, along with Pfizer in order to figure out, how to get that value chain and some would say supply chain, but I'll, I'll address that in a second, but there's many players there. And, and so we were in the middle of that with Pfizer committed to saying, how do we do that with SAP? So now you see players working together as one ecosystem. But then think about the ecosystem that that's happening where you have a federal government agency. You have Ms. State, Alocal, you have healthcare life science industry, you have consumer industry. Oh, wait a second Dave, this is getting very complicated, right? Well, this is the thought of convening in the ecosystem. And this is what I'm telling you is, is our execution and it, it has worked well and so it's, it's it's happening now and we see it still developing and being, being, you know very productive in real time. But then, I said there was a another example and that's with me, you, Mani, whomever. You pick the consumer. Ultimately we are that outcome of, of the value chain. That's why I said I don't want to just call it a supply chain because at the end is, is, is someone consuming and in this case we need a shot. And so we partnered with Salesforce, IBM and Salesforce saying, wait a minute that's not a small task. It's not just get, get the content there and put it in someone's arm. Instead there's scheduling that must be done. There's follow up, and entire case management like system. Salesforce is a master at this. So work.com team with IBM we said now, let's get that part done for the right type of UI UX capability, that user experience, user interaction interface and then also, in bringing another player in the ecosystem. One of ours, Watson health, along with our blockchain team, we brought together something called a digital health pass. So, I've just talked about two ecosystems where multiple ecosystems working together. So you think of an ecosystem of ecosystems. I call it out blockchain technology and obviously supply chain, but there's also AI, IOT. So you start to see where, look, this is truly an orchestration effort that has to happen with very well designed capability and so of course we master in design and tying that, that entire ecosystem together and convening it so that we get to the right outcome. You, me, Mani are all getting the shot, being healthy. That's a real-time example of us working with an ecosystem and teaming with key strategic partners. >> You know Mani, I, I, I mean, Jason you're right. I mean this pandemic's been horrible. I have to say, I'm really thankful it didn't happen 20 years ago because it would have been like, okay here's some big PCs and a modem and go ahead and figure it out. So, at least, the tech industry has saved the business. I mean, with, and earlier we mentioned AI, automation, data, you know, even things basic things like, security at the end point. I mean so many things and you're right. I mean, IBM in particular, other large companies, you mentioned, SAP who have taken the lead and it's really, I, I don't, I Mani I don't think the tech industry gets enough credit but I wonder if there's some of your favorite partnerships that you can talk about. >> Yeah. So I'm going to, I'm going to build on what you just said, Dave. IBM is in this unique position amongst this ecosystem. Not only the fact that we have the world's leading most innovative technologies to bring to bear, but we also have the consulting capabilities that go with it. Now to make any of these technologies work towards the solution that Jason was referring to in this digital health pass, it could be any other solution, you would need to connect these disparate systems sometimes make them work towards a common outcome to provide value to the clients. So I think our role as IBM within this ecosystem is pretty unique in that we are able to bring both of these capabilities to bear. In terms of, you know, you asked about favorites. There are, this is really a co-opetition market where everybody has products, everybody has services. The most important thing is how are we, how are we bringing them all together to serve the need or the need of the hour in this case? I would say one important thing in this, as you observe how these stories are panning out. In an ecosystem, in a partnership, it is about the value that we provide to our clients together. So it's almost like a "sell with" model from, from a go-to-market perspective. There is also a question of our products and services being delivered through our partners, right? So think about this, the span and scope or what we do here and so that's the sell through, and then of course we have our products running within our partner companies and our partner products for example, Salesforce, running within IBM. So this is a very interesting and a new way of doing business. I would say it's almost like the, the modern way of doing business with modern IT. >> Well, and you mentioned co-opetition. I mean, I look at it, you're, you're, you're part of IBM that will work with anybody 'cause you're your customer first. Whether it's AWS, Microsoft, I mean, Oracle is a, is a, is a really tough competitor but your customers are using Oracle and they're using IBM. So I mean, as a, those are some, you know good examples I think of your point about co-opetition. >> Absolutely. If you pick on any other client, I'll mention in this case, Delta. Delta was working with us on moving, being more agile and now this pandemic has impacted the airline sector particularly hard, right? With travel stopping and anything. So they are trying to get to a model which will help them scale up, scale down be more agile, be more secure be closer to their customers to try and understand how they can provide value to their customers and customers better. So we are working with Delta on moving them to cloud, on the journey to cloud. Now that public cloud could be anything. The, the beauty of this model in a hybrid cloud approach is that you're able to put them on red hat openshift, you're able to do and package the, the services into microservices kind of a model. You want to make sure all the applications are running on a... On a portable almost a platform agnostic kind of a model. This is the beauty of this ecosystem that we are discussing as the ability, to do what's right for the end customer at the end of the day. >> How about some of the like SaaS players? Like some of the more prominent ones. And we, we, we watched the ascendancy of ServiceNow and Workday, you mentioned Salesforce. How do you work with those guys? Obviously there's an AI opportunity but maybe you could add some color there. >> So I like the fact Dave that you call out the different hyperscalers, for example whether it's AWS, whether it's Microsoft, knowing that they have their own cloud instances, for example. And when you, when you mentioned, hey, had this happened a long time ago, you know you started talking about the, the heft of the technology. I started thinking of all the, the the truck loads of servers or whatever they, you know they'd have to pull up, we don't need that now because it can happen in the cloud. And you don't have to pick one cloud or the other. And so when people say hybrid cloud, that's what comes out. You start to think of what I call, I call, you know, a hybrid of hybrids because I told you before, you know these roles are changing. People aren't just buyers or suppliers. They're both. And then you start to say, what are, what are different people supplying? Well, in that ecosystem, we know there's not going to be one player. There's going to be multiple. So we partner by doing just what Mani called out as this thought of integrating in hybrid environments on hybrid platforms with hybrid clouds, multi-clouds. Maybe I want something on my premises, something somewhere else. So in giving that capability, that flexibility, we empower and this is what it's doing is that co-opetition. We empower our partners, our strategic partners. We want them to be better with us and this is just the thought of, you know, being able to actually bring more together and move faster. Which is almost counter-intuitive. You're like, wait a minute, you're adding more players but you're moving faster. Exactly. Because we have the capability to integrate those, those technologies and get that outcome that Mani mentioned. >> I would add to one Jason, you mentioned something very, very interesting. I think if you want to go just fast, you go alone. But if you want to go further, you go together. And that is the core of our point of view, in this case is that we want to go further and we want to create value that is long lasting. >> What about like, so I get the technology players and there's maybe things that you do, that others don't or vice versa so the gap fillers, et cetera. But what about, how, maybe customers do they get involved? Perhaps government agencies, maybe they be, they they be customer or an NGO as another example. Are they part of this value chain part of this ecosystem? >> Absolutely. I'll give you... I'll stick with the same example when I mentioned a digital health pass. That digital health pass, is something that we have as IBM and it's a credential. Think of it as a health credential, not a vaccine passport cause it could be used for a test for, a negative test on COVID, it could be used for antibodies. So if you have this credential it's something that we as IBM created years back and we were using it for learning. When you think of, you know getting people certifications versus a four-year diploma. How do we get people into the workforce? That was what was original. That was a Jenny Rometty thought. Let's focus on new collar workers. So we had this asset that we'd already created and then said wait, here's a place for it to work with, with health, with validation verification on someone's option, it's optional. They choose it. Hey, I want to do it this way. Well, the state of New York said that they want it to do it that way and they said, listen we are going to have a digital health pass for all of our, all of our New York citizens and we want to make sure that it's equitable. It could be printed or on a screen and we want it to be designed in this way and we want it to work on this platform and we want to be able to, to work with these strategic partners, like Salesforce and SAP, Alocal. I mean, I can just keep going. And we said, "Okay, let's do this." And this is this thought of collaboration and doing it by design. So we haven't lost that Dave. This only brings it to the forefront just as you said. Yes, that is what we want. We want to make sure that in this ecosystem, we have a way to ensure that we are bringing together, convening not just point products or different service providers but taking them together and getting the best outcomes so that that end user can have it configured in the way that they, they want it. >> Guys, we've got to leave it there but it's clear you're helping your customers and your partners on this, this digital transformation journey that we already, we all talk about. You get this massive portfolio of capabilities, deep, deep expertise. I love the hybrid cloud and AI focus. Jason and Mani, really appreciate you coming back in the cubes. Great to see you both. >> Thank you so much, Dave. Fantastic. >> Thank you Dave. Great to be with you. >> All right, and thank you for watching everybody. Dave Vellante, for the cube and in continuous coverage of IBM Think 2021, the virtual edition. Keep it right there. (poignant music) (bright uplifting music)

>>From around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of IBM think 2021 brought to you by >>IBM. Welcome back to IBM Think 2021. This is the cubes ongoing coverage where we go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise of course, virtually in this case now we're going to talk about ecosystems, partnerships in the flywheel, they deliver in the technology business and with me or Jason kelly, general manager, global strategic partnerships, IBM global business services and Mani Das Gupta, who is the vice president of marketing for IBM Global Business services folks. It's great to see you again in which we're face to face. But this will have to do >>good to see you Dave and uh same, I wish we were face to face but uh we'll we'll go with this >>soon. We're being patient, Jason. Let's start with you. You have a partner strategy. I wonder if you could sort of summarize that and tell us more about it. >>So it's interesting that we start with the strategy because you said we have a partner strategy dave and I'd say that the market has dictated back to us a partner strategy something that we it's not new and we didn't start it yesterday. It's something that we continue to evolve and build even stronger. This thought of a partner strategy is it nothing is better than the thought of a partner ship. And people say oh well you know you got to work together as one team and as a partner And it sounds almost as a 1-1 type relationship. Our strategies is much different than that. David our execution is even better and that that execution is focused on now. The requirement that the market our clients are showing to us and our strategic partners that one player can't deliver all their needs, they can't Design solution and deliver that from one place. It does take an ecosystem to the word that you called out. This thought of an ecosystem and our strategy and execution is focused on that. And the reason why I say it evolves is because the market will continue to evolve and this thought of being able to look at a client's let's call it a a workflow, let's call it a value chain from one end to the other, wherever they start their process to wherever it ultimately hits that end user. It's going to take many players to cover that. And then we, as IBM want to make sure that we are the general contractor of that capability with the ability to convene the right strategic partners, bring out the best value for that outcome, not just technology for technology's sake, but the outcome that the incline is looking for so that we bring value to our strategic partners and that in client. >>I think about when you talk about the value chain, you know, I'm imagining, you know, the business books years ago you see the conceptual value chain, you can certainly understand that you can put processes together to connect them and now you've got technology, I think of a P. I. S. It's it's really supports that everything gets accelerated and and uh money. I wonder if you could address some of the the go to market how this notion of of ecosystem which is so important, is impacting the way in which you go to market. >>Absolutely. So modern business, you know, demands a new approach to working the ecosystem. Thought that Jason was just alluding to, it's a mutual benefit of all these companies working together in the market, it's a mutual halo of the brands, so as responsible for the championship of the IBM and the global business services brand. I am very, very interested in this mutual working together. It should be a win win win, as we say in the market, it should be a win for our clients, first and foremost, it should be a win for our partners and it should be a win for IBM and we are working together right now on an approach to bring this, go to market strategy to life. >>So I wonder if we could maybe talk about how this actually works and and pull in some examples, uh you must have some favorites that that we can touch on. Uh is that, is that fair? Can we, can we name some names, >>sure names, always working debut, right. And it's always in context of reality that we can talk about, as I said, this execution and not just a strategy. And I'll start with probably what's right in the front of many people's minds as we're doing this virtually because of what because of an unfortunate pandemic, um, this disastrous loss of life and things that have taken us down a path. We go well, how do we, how do we address that? Well, any time there's a tough task, IBM raises its hand first. You know, whether it was putting a person on the moon and bringing them home safely or standing up a system behind the current Social Security Administration, you know, during the Depression, you pick it well here we are now. And why not start with that as an example? Because I think it calls out just what we mentioned here first day, this thought of a, of an ecosystem because the first challenge, how do we create uh and address the biggest data puzzle of our lives, which is how do we get this vaccine created in record time, which it was the fastest before that was four years. This was a matter of months. Visor created the first one out and then had to get it out to distribution. Behind. That is a wonderful partner of R. S. A. P. Trying to work with that. So us working with S. A. P. Along with Pfizer in order to figure out how to get that value chain. And some would say supply chain, but I'll address that in a second. But there's many players there. And so we were in the middle of that with fires are committed to saying, how do we do that with S. A. P. So now you see players working together as one ecosystem. But then think about the ecosystem that that's happening where you have a federal government agency, a state, a local, you have healthcare, life science industry, you have consumer industry. Oh wait a second day. This is getting very complicated, Right? Well, this is the thought of convening an ecosystem and this is what I'm telling you is our execution and it has worked well. And so it's it's it's happening now. We still it's we see it's still developing and being, being, you know, very productive in real time. But then I said there was another example and that's with me, you mani whomever you pick the consumer. Ultimately we are that outcome of of the value chain. That's why I said, I don't want to just call it a supply chain because at the end is a someone consuming and in this case we need a shot. And so we partnered with Salesforce, IBM and Salesforce saying, wait a minute, that's not a small task. It's not just get the content there and put it in someone's arm instead they're scheduling that must be done. There's follow up an entire case management like system sells force is a master at this, so work dot com team with IBM, we sit now let's get that part done for the right type of UI UX capability that the user experience, user interaction interface and then also in bringing another player in the ecosystem, one of ours Watson health along with our block changing, we brought together something called a Digital Health pass. So I've just talked about two ecosystems work multiple ecosystems working together. So you think of an ecosystem of ecosystems. I called out Blockchain technology and obviously supply chain but there's also a I I O T. So you start to see where look this is truly an orchestration effort. It has to happen with very well designed capability and so of course we master and design and tying that that entire ecosystem together and convening it so that we get to the right outcome you me money all getting into shot being healthy. That's a real time example of us working with an ecosystem and teeming with key strategic partners, >>you know, money, I mean Jason you're right. I mean pandemics been horrible, I have to say. I'm really thankful it didn't happen 20 years ago because it would have been like okay here's some big pcs and a modem and go ahead and figure it out. So I mean the tech industry has saved business. I mean with not only we mentioned ai automation data, uh even things basic things like security at the end point. I mean so many things and you're right, I mean IBM in particular, other large companies you mentioned ASAP you have taken the lead and it's really I don't money, I don't think the tech industry gets enough credit, but I wonder if there's some of your favorite, you know, partnerships that you can talk about. >>Yeah, so I'm gonna I'm gonna build on what you just said. Dave IBM is in this unique position amongst this ecosystem. Not only the fact that we have the world leading most innovative technologies to bring to bear, but we also have the consulting capabilities that go with it now to make any of these technologies work towards the solution that Jason was referring to in this digital health pass, it could be any other solution you would need to connect these disparate systems, sometimes make them work towards a common outcome to provide value to the client. So I think our role as IBM within this ecosystem is pretty unique in that we are able to bring both of these capabilities to bear. In terms of you know, you asked about favorite there are this is really a coop petition market where everybody has products, everybody has service is the most important thing is how how are we bringing them all together to serve the need or the need of the hour in this case, I would say one important thing in this. As you observe how these stories are panning out in an ecosystem in in part in a partnership, it is about the value that we provide to our clients together. So it's almost like a cell with model from from a go to market perspective, there is also a question of our products and services being delivered through our partners. Right? So think about the span and scope of what we do here. And so that's the sell through. And then of course we have our products running within our partner companies and our partner products, for example. Salesforce running within IBM. So this is a very interesting and a new way of doing business. I would say it's almost like the modern way of doing business with modernity. >>Well. And you mentioned cooperation. I mean you're you're part of IBM that will work with anybody because your customer first, whether it's a W. S. Microsoft oracle is a is a is a really tough competitor. But your customers are using oracle and they're using IBM. So I mean as a those are some good examples. I think of your point about cooper Titian. >>Absolutely. If you pick on any other client, I'll mention in this case. Delta, Delta was working with us on moving, being more agile. Now this pandemic has impacted the airline sector particularly hard, right With travel stopping and anything. So they are trying to get to a model which will help them scale up, scale down, be more agile will be more secure, be closer to their customers, try and understand how they can provide value to their customers and customers better. So we are working with Delta on moving them to cloud on the journey to cloud. Now that public cloud could be anything. The beauty of this model and a hybrid cloud approach is that you are able to put them on red hat open shift, you're able to do and package the services into a microservices kind of a model. You want to make sure all the applications are running on a portable, almost platform. Agnostic kind of a model. This is the beauty of this ecosystem that we are discussing is the ability to do what's right for the end customer at the end of the day, >>how about some of the like sass players, like some of the more prominent ones and we watched the ascendancy of service now and and, and work day, you mentioned Salesforce. How do you work with those guys? Obviously there's an Ai opportunity, but maybe you could add some, you know, color there. >>So I like the fact that you call out the different hyper scholars for example, uh whether it's a W. S, whether it's Microsoft, knowing that they have their own cloud instances, for example. And when you, when you mentioned, he had this happened a long time ago, you know, you start talking about the heft of the technology, I started thinking of all the truckloads of servers or whatever they have to pull up. We don't need that now because it can happen in the cloud and you don't have to pick one cloud or the other. And so when people say hybrid cloud, that's what comes out, you start to think of what I I call, you know, a hybrid of hybrids because I told you before, you know, these roles are changing. People aren't just buyers or suppliers, they're both. And then you start to say what we're different people supplying well in that ecosystem, we know there's not gonna be one player, there's gonna be multiple. So we partner by doing just what monty called out is this thought of integrating in hybrid environments on hybrid platforms with hybrid clouds, Multi clouds, maybe I want something on my premises, something somewhere else. So in giving that capability that flexibility we empower and this is what's doing that cooperation, we empower our partners are strategic partners, we want them to be better with us. And this is this thought of being able to actually bring more together and move faster which is almost counterintuitive. You're like wait a minute you're adding more players but you're moving faster. Exactly because we have the capability to integrate those those technologies and get that outcome that monty mentioned, >>I would add to this one. Jason you mentioned something very very interesting. I think if you want to go just fast you go alone but if you want to go further, you go together. And that is the core of our point of view in this case is that we want to go further and we want to create value that is long lasting. >>What about like so I get the technology players and there may be things that you do that others don't or vice versa. So the gap fillers etcetera. But what about how to maybe customers that they get involved? Perhaps government agencies, may they be they be customer or an N. G. O. As another example, Are they part of this value chain? Part of this ecosystem? >>Absolutely. I'll give you I'll stick with the same example when I mentioned a digital health past that Digital Health Pass is something that we have as IBM and it's a credential Think of it as a health credential not a vaccine passport because it could be used for a test for a negative test on Covid, it could be used for antibiotics. So if you have this credential, it's something that we, as IBM created years back and we were using it for learning. When you think of getting people uh certifications versus a four year diploma, how do we get people into the workforce? That was what was original. That was a jenny Rometty thought, let's focus on new collar workers. So we had this asset that we'd already created and then it's wait, there's a place for it to work with, with health, with validation verification on someone's option, it's optional. They choose it. Hey, I want to do it this way. Well, the state of new york said that they wanted to do it that way and they said, listen, we are going to have a digital health pass for all of our, all of our new york citizens and we want to make sure that it's equitable, it could be printed or on a screen and we want it to be designed in this way and we wanted to work on this platform and we want to be able to, to work with the strategic Partners, a Salesforce and ASAP and work. I mean, I can just keep and we said okay let's do this. And this is the start of collaboration and doing it by design. So we haven't lost that day but this only brings it to the forefront just as you said, yes, that is what we want. We want to make sure that in this ecosystem we have a way to ensure that we are bringing together convening not just point products or different service providers but taking them together and getting the best outcome so that that end user can have it configured in the way that they want it >>guys, we got to leave it there but it's clear you're helping your customers and your partners on this this digital transformation journey that we already we all talk about. You get this massive portfolio of capabilities, deep, deep expertise, I love the hybrid cloud and AI Focus, Jason and money really appreciate you coming back in the cubes. Great to see you both. >>Thank you so much. Dave Fantastic. All >>Right. And thank you for watching everybody's day Vigilante for the Cuban. Our continuous coverage of IBM, think 2021, the virtual edition. Keep it right there. Yeah. Mhm. Mhm. >>Mhm.

>> Narrator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, it's the theCUBE covering IBM Think. Brought to you by IBM. >> Hi everybody, this is Dave Valanti and welcome back to the IBM Think 2020 digital event experience. This is the afterglow, the after thoughts, the post halo effect. Mani Dasgupta is here. She's the Vice President of Brand and Product Marketing at IBM. Great to see you again, thanks for coming back on Mani. >> Thank you Dave, it's fantastic to be here after Think which has been super successful for us, so excited to have this chat. >> You know it's really nice, one of the silver linings of these digital events is you can actually have these kinds of conversations in an afterglow, so I want to get right into it. Mark Foster kind of set things up for the division and the service, he talked about a lot of customers. He talked about the cognitive enterprise, and he gave really three sort of arcs of his content discussion. One was the market making platforms, the second was intelligent work flows, and the third is the whole enterprise experience in humanity and he tied it in to the whole COVID-19 pandemic. I wonder if you could give us your thoughts, and maybe an example? >> Sure, absolutely, sure can. You know the cognitive enterprise is a framework that businesses can adapt as they go on forward with their business transformation journey. The market making platform is in simple terms, its how do you put yourself in the route for growth? Do you need to look for new customers, do you need to look for new markets? What's your competitive advantage? Build a platform, or create a platform which signifies competitive advantage for you. So that's the first piece of it. The second piece of it pertains to the operations of the company. How well are you run? How efficient are you? How effective are your processes? How have you been able to apply the latest and greatest in technologies? Edge, 5G, automation, artificial intelligence. How are you able to apply those technologies to make your processes work better for you? So that's the second big piece. And the third piece is keeping your customers at the core of whatever you do. So the experience of the customers, the updated and newer demands of the customers. How do you address that with the human at the center of it, right? The empathy that I was talking about when we spoke last, before and during Think. It's truly important especially in these times, every company is trying to figure out, in this scenario, how do they keep their business on the growth track? And the cognitive enterprise framework helps them on this journey. >> Was there an example that came out of Think that you can point to that is reflective of this? >> Absolutely, there were actually three great case studies that clients and colleagues who joined us during Think, we had the CEO of Yara, we had Shell and we had Frito Lay. A quick example is Frito Lay, and I bring them up because this is a brand that everybody recognizes, in fact they are now in 94% of all US households. And these are name brands like your chips, especially when we are all stuck at home during this pandemic they are a name that quite often comes to mind, Frito Lay. So a good example of what they are having to deal with. They haven't changed their transformation trajectory, they have sped it up. They have just become way more agile, teams that were in different locations are now all near shore. If you think about this scenario right now, everybody is working on Webex, everybody is getting distributed agile to work, so everybody, nobody is at a disadvantage because they are somewhere in India or they are somewhere in Mexico, or they are somewhere in the US, they are all together right now working together on the same digital platform. So actually everybody's near shore. So they have sped up their direct to consumer channel, in the past one month they have been able to quickly pivot and bring snacks.com to people, everybody across the US, that's a very good example of how you can apply the changes around you to your advantage, and make sure that this contributes to the growth and success of their business, and we had Frito join us live during Think, if you want to see it you can go live to our, now on our on demand platform and watch them. >> One of the things that Mark Foster mentioned in his remarks was that a lot of executives might have been thinking prior to COVID that they wanted to shake things up a little bit. But it's risky, you know they're kind of reticent to do that well, things have been shaken up. And now they've got you know the perfect reason to disrupt their own business. And organizations have been very tactical, focus on the customer, really trying to keep the lights on, managing cash, et cetera, but as we start to come out of this, they're beginning to think of the more midterm impacts, they're rethinking the ideal customer profile, and the value proposition in this new reality. So how should customers think about getting started on this journey of the cognitive enterprise if they haven't started already? >> You know it's, the good thing is the technology right now is available to us, even if people want to get started they can do it right now. One of the ways that we have been advising our clients to get started who haven't get started this journey, is to come together in a distributed agile framework, what we call the IBM Garage our Co-Creation Workshop, put the customer at the center of it and create an empathy map. Around what is the problem that we are trying to solve? What's the most important thing that that particular business is trying to solve? And for every business it may be a different answer, right? And so it's not prescriptive, its a place where you can come and lay out the cards on the table and figure out what's the right next step for your business, and then we can use the same model to unpack the problem into solvable components and apply technology to very quickly show results. The beauty of this is not just an MVP, this is actually solving real world problems, and it is doing it at global scale. That's the beauty of it and I think that's where we should start. >> You know a lot of these big events, the big physical events, of course we love them it's something theCUBE has been doing for 10 years, but the disappointing thing is oftentimes after the event everybody disappears, they go back to work and it's sort of forgotten. The great thing about these digital events is you can kind of continue the discussion, not unlike what we're doing now, but also you have these Think Summits, and you're going to be connecting the dots in the thread from Think all the way through until this thing ends and even beyond I would predict, that digital is here to stay, at least an event standpoint, and a hybrid, and other businesses. So give us the update on the Think Summits, how do we get more information, what are they all about? >> Absolutely, for more information is always available on our on demand platforms, so you can go onto IBM.com/think, but what you said Dave is so important. That this is not a one and done, we want to keep the conversations running, we want to keep engaging with everybody who has come last week to have an engaging discussion with us, we will continue this in June, in Europe, in different cities we have a number of Think Summits. This will be followed with other Think Summits across the globe. Now as IBM we feel we have a responsibility not just that we create content and thought leadership that is consumed by millions of people across the globe, we do it in a way that is global. So we want to make sure that you and I today are talking in English, that we are able to have our colleagues in China are able to have the same conversation in the language that they prefer, and so in Japan and so on and so forth, IBM being the truly global company that we are, we want to make sure that the conversations also have nuances that are impacting these countries in real time, in the situation that we are in, not all companies are in the same space in the curve, some are recovering, some are bouncing back, some are just getting into this scenario that's all around us. So the remedy and the routes that business will take, is also slightly different. So we want to make sure we are very customized, we want to make sure we are really very relevant to that audience. So follow us on the Think Summits across the globe, as the new dates are keeping on newer dates are getting announced on the Think platform, so that's ready to go. The one last thing I would also say Dave, is that at this time what's very important is that not all tech is created equal, and not all companies are created equal. What's the cost of bad advice and so I think it's very important to be mindful of who you engage with. And make sure that we are not taken advantage of in these kind of scenarios. Be very mindful of how how well your partner understands your business, how well your partner understands what could go wrong. And plan for it, and not just show but be there with your clients, with your customers throughout the journey, and take them back to the path of growth. >> Yeah that whole notion of business resilience and not only as a defensive move, but also something that you can lean into, really try to grow your business, there's a lot of learning going on, a lot of great content on the IBM Think Digital Experience site. Of course theCUBE.net. Mani, thanks so much for coming back on, and breaking down IBM Think, and giving us a forward look to the Think Summits. Great to have you. >> Absolutely my pleasure Dave, thank you. >> And thank you for watching everybody, this is Dave Valanti for theCUBE and we'll see you next time. (upbeat instrumental music)

>>From the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston. It's the cube covering IBM thing brought to you by IBM. >>All right, ready? We're back. This is the cubes continuous coverage of IBM 2020 the digital event experience. My name is Dave Volante. Dasgupta is here. She's the vice president of marketing at IBM. She's also the COO of the global business services. good to see you. Thanks for coming back in the cube. Oh, I'm so happy to be here. Deva fantastic to be here. Do you have a lot of experience with brands? IBM itself, you know, amazing well known, a leading brand well, I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on what you're seeing in terms of how brands are responding to the 19 crisis. There are things out there that you're seeing that are inspiring you and yeah. What should we be looking for? Oh my gosh. I mean all around the last two, two months we have been living now in a, in an, in a new reality and this is not going to go back, do what we knew was normal. >>Right. This is going to be the new normal and how brands react to it sets us up for future growth and future success. You know, as a in the global business services steam as a CMO there I meet a lot of every single day and they are coming to us with business challenges. What makes the big difference right now? I think in terms of of being a successful brand is the resilience and the adaptive. If you see a company like IBM and you've talked a little bit about how iconic this brand is, it's been there for about 108 hundred and nine years now and it is being able to successfully reinvent itself every turn of the century and every turn of what's happening around us. Uh, it being able to I think it's extremely important. What also is important as a brand is the emphasis that you can feel towards the growth and success of your client's business. I think sets, um, any, any brand apart from growth. So adaptability and empathy. Those would be my two big thanks. We talked to a number of CIO is IBM came out as one of the companies really helping. It wasn't just IBM, there were many, many large organizations, small organizations that really had this empathic, we're in this together. >>That's exactly right. If you look at it, it's, it's both of what we do for our clients but also what we do for our own employees. Um, 95% of our work IBM is not working from home in a safe and secure environment. We've been able to work with our clients and move those teams that work with our clients also in a more safe and safe your environment. For example, something like our cocreation workshop, the IBM garage would think that for cocreation innovation, you all need to be together in a room and put up sticky notes on the board behind you. Okay. Yeah. We have moved into to be a virtual experience and we are now offering free trials of a lot of our products and solutions to our clients for the next 90 days where they can get their most resting business. Yes. Problem solved. You know, we just want to make sure we get that together and get the economy back on track. Get the companies back on the track of. >>Now, one of the other passions of yours I know is this notion of of the cognitive business, a smarter business. And, and I want to ask you, help us understand what that is. You know, beyond the sort of marketing taglines, what is a smarter business? >>Yes, a smarter business is adaptive and resilient. that would be the biggest things, um, that I would highlight. Now, how do they do that? They do that because they are able to have business arms. They use the data that they have at their disposal. Then mind you, this is not the, um, data that is searchable online. 80% of or customer data is with. The organizations themselves. Now, how do they use that data to create business plans, forms that give them competitive advantage is one of the core tenets of what makes a smarter business. The second piece is around workflows that are more intelligent. Now, what makes these work, those more intelligent, what are these words? Those, these are end to end processes. So think of supply chain. How do you make your supply chain more resilient in the covert crisis right now that many, um, many companies are grappling with. >>How do you strengthen your direct to consumer routes? Many companies that used to deliver to stores now are figuring out how to get direct to consumers. So yeah, making these work close more intelligent, more resilient. How do you manage your work of course, right? Um, how do you make sure that the customer data that many employee's work is safe and secure? Sure. So second is the intelligence. Yes. And the third thing is all about the expedience and being able to engage with your customers in you are ways, if you think of some specific industries that are dealing with customer claims, you know, you look at the health, yeah. Provider industry, you're looking at insurance claims and and things like that. They are grappling with this new reality and being to then connect with your customers in new and engaging ways. I think is of utmost importance. So the three things, platforms, most expedience is what makes us smarter business possible. And that business is adaptive and resilient. >>Uh, the way in which brands are engaging dramatically different then it was just a few months ago. And our thinking is there's going to be some permanent changes here. What, what are your thoughts in that regard? >>Absolutely. 100% agree. Um, when we go back work, when we all get out of our home offices, um, it's going to be an a new way of. Right. Okay. And we're already seeing, uh, the engagement within our own work. Forced rising. Yeah. For example, I just came off of a, one of our all hands calls and we create these new videos on how we have new coworkers. We have, you know, pets and kids and parents cared for at home. Yeah. Mmm. all of this though, there is a greater sense of togetherness. There is a greater sense of solidarity. And what inspires me the most is when I look at the people around us in the delivery, uh, deems, you know, across the world. If you look at India, if you look at Philippines in our big teams that are delivering for clients every single day, the resiliency that they have shown in being able to overcome these, these hurdles are giving us ideas that this is not a one and done. >>This could actually be the new normal going beyond it. The automation that we have been able to apply. Um, uh, when you have like AI, how do you processes different if things are more efficient, wouldn't it be a better idea? Just have that go throughout to the rest of, you know, um, what's the new normal around us? So this is absolutely gonna change the way we work, the way we engage with our clients and the kind of, um, new ways of a new routes to market. I think that is the most exciting to me. How can we, how can we feel T and find out new routes to market new customers and be able to provide them value. The Watson Watson digital assistant is, is interesting to me because it allows us as one example of a hospital to be able to put out information that's accurate and timely. >>These things have to be done in near real time. As we know, the Covance situation, it changes daily. You know, maybe the change is, is decelerating a little bit, but it's still several times a week. there was a period of time where it was changing multiple times for days. Yes. So for instance, do I wear a mask? Do I not wear a mask? How far do I have to stand away? Can I can I actually get this by walking behind somebody, et cetera, et cetera. So much information that changed so quickly is the medical community got that. So you have to be able to access that data and you know, to your point about that, yeah, intelligent workflow, be able to do that in near real time. And that's what to me anyway, it's about operationalizing that data, you know, AI capability across the organization. >>Not just in some stovepipe where I have to ask somebody to some analysis for me that that is a huge change in the way in which businesses operate, isn't it? It is a huge change. And I think it's also about visibility, um, that the common man is right now the citizens that the people who are, who are, um, trying to access these technology. Yes. I think it gives them a renewed hope, um, in what technology could really provide. How are we are still being able to work while we are stuck in our homes, how we are still able to buy things online and the not jeopardize the safety of our loved ones who, you know, I'm the who maybe immunocompromised. You cannot go out and shop how we are able to still do the delivery. And, and the beauty of this is we in the technology industry we knew this, so >>go back one year we were working with. Um, no a company that supplies life saving medicines to many parts of Africa, the supply chain there and the technology and the intelligence that we had embedded in that hello made it possible for this human and tech interaction. And I think that is what the beauty of this is the renewed understanding of what technology can do for you. Yeah. And the ability to interact with the technology to make that happen. For example, in Africa, you have to sometimes rely on the Goodwill of the local villagers when there are floods and the pats are run over with water. You have to trigger, um, uh, an email or you know, you have to go to your cell phone so that the locals can then the medicine's over. Yeah. Uh, over the flooded planes to the hospitals. The interaction of the human with the technology that is there to help you and make your lives easier. I think right now there's renewed understanding and acceptance of that and I think it's a, it's a good thing. It's a good thing for all of us. >>I mean, it really is the, the uniqueness of IBM, deep industry expertise, knowledge, and yet know tons of R and D and technology. Oh, galore. Manny, thanks so much for coming back on the cubes. Great to see you. Hopefully next time it'll be face to face, but I really appreciate your time. >>Oh, I, I so wished for that I, so I, I do miss the the live connections, but you know, technology will take us forward till then and, uh, fantastic to be here. I loved it. Toxin. >>Great. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Volante, but the cube for the IBM digital event experience, you 2020. We'll be right back right after this short break.

>> Live from San Diego, California It's the queue covering Sisqo live US 2019 Tio by Cisco and its ecosystem barters >> Welcome back. We're here, Cisco Live San Diego. You're watching the Cubans to minimum. My co host is Dave Volante and happy to welcome to the program. First of all, I have to tell Valente, no relation was the vice president of product management who are Cloud Platform in Solutions group at Cisco. And joining us is also Santana Dasgupta, who's a distinguished systems engineer at Cisco. We're gonna be talking about service Friday. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. Of course. Alright, so jail let let's start the service. Freida Group, Of course. You know, we've heard for a long time how important service fighters are out there. Everything from service writers were going to become the new channel. A Sze Yu know customers less unless they're building their own data centers. You know, service fighters become a bigger environment. Tell us a little bit about you know your organ the latest What's going on in your customers? >> Yeah, So you know what? Cisco Obviously they are trying to help Ray in the transformation to actually multi cloud leveraging. Actually, the cloud benefits not only for enterprises and public sectors, but also for the service providers so that they can also reaped the benefit off the new actually trans technologies coming out, including five g on in that context. Obviously, if you really want to take advantage of Far Gina proper way going forward, starting actually with an evolution of architectures, you really have to look at the clouds and specifically what we call the telco cloud. >> Yeah, so the Espy market is going through a mass killed transformation, transformation in the business model and architecture and how you take the services to the market on one key. And it blew up the transformation that we believe is virtual elation, adopting the whole notion of telco cloud very virtualized your core functions for enabling the delivery of services in a more agile fashion into the market. But also it's all about transforming the court services construct itself. How do we push on the services element into the age of the net for being closer to the proximity of the Indians so that it enables much? Lord didn't see a new monitor visible applications, which is where service order to have a lot of open right now. >> So if I could just dig in on that for 1st 2nd you talk about services. So we watched that wave of network functions virtual ization, NFI where before it was I just had lots of appliances and rolling out each service individually, as opposed to what people want is they want, you know, the basically, you know, at market for the enterprise. And, you know, I just want to be able to get my services. You know, when I'm a consumer and you know, I want to do things well, I've got the Internet and I get those things. I need a similar environment from the service fighters going out to the Enterprise. Do I have that kind of high level, right? >> Yes, actually, we had on that bath. I mean, they're completely years as an industry were on the journey to actually get there on go. We initially talked about most of the core functions, like think ofthe armory packet corner policy or some some value added engine at the back end. But the world is evolving faster. To actually also think through that how we can add more consumer facing applications and services on top of it, like augmented reality, virtual reality, cloud gaming and all that sort >> of stuff. Dale, this is a real imperative for telcos, and it's a complicated situation, right, because they've got decades and decades of infrastructure built up. Don Tapscott famously said one time that God may have created the world in six days, but he didn't have an install base. And so the telcos they have of kind of a fossilized, hard installed based built around making sure it's up and not necessarily agile. Now you got all these over the top players coming in, and all these value other services on top of dumb pipe, the price is air coming down. The demand for data is going up, so they gotta change. That's right, right? So what? What do they have to do and what role this Cisco play? >> So again, it told about that software defined transformation and win that is required. And they, you know, we talked already a bit more about the record, an example that was actually even showcase briefly this morning because certainly, obviously it's a greenfield operator, so it's a bit of difference, but We think that there is a lot off applique ability to brown field as well tow the legacy. You have to actually chuck into the different domains what, that service provider environment and really start looking at how you can offer both consumer services and business services at a price point at a level of automation and agility that makes sense. And that is pretty much comparable to a large extent to what the cloud providers of the week. Um, you know, there are advantages the service providers hive in terms ofthe. Obviously, the services they deliver today thie assets that they own, the proximity, the locations as well, that they have the relationships. But really, there is a, as we said earlier, Nassif transformation that start with the network, but also with those pockets where you need to Software eyes will turn to software many of those assets >> essentially talking about a specialized telco cloud, if you will. So how is that different from you know, the clouds that we know the private clouds, the hybrid clouds, the public clouds, one of the attributes that are different in how do people get on the company's getting telcos? Get in that journey. >> Yeah, well, I mean, if you look at, uh, the telco industry in general, including ourselves, like the vendors. I mean, I call myself for ourselves as, like, you know, coming back from the era of dinosaurs, right? So, I mean, if you look at the access technology for last three decades, what have changed? Nothing way have been moving from one G Tito Tito treaty to 40. Now we're talking a five g without talking off. A fundamentally destructive are differentiated architecture. So that's something which is actually being coming up all in the front front at the moment on, that's changing the way the networks can be built. How you can build on how you can break the monolithic supplication and adopt a more decomposed, desegregated our conjecture and also, at the same time, drive all the services and applications in a more distributed manner with a flexible placement capability, so that you can enable all sort of new applications and services. And again, I mean at the other. And given the fact that this is mostly a brown Fillon moment, it is largely all about culture transformation, given the fact that you know, unless the people process on, the culture revolves. This would be a very tough journey. Moving for >> one of the point back to your question is wellies. Though there are nuances big ones between a 90 cloud, uh, today in the cloud that are generally club general purpose Cloud that offered, you know, buy are obviously partners ws Microsoft, Google it and really a telco clan based on the nature ofthe those network functions. The workload on the nature of this were close. The traffic demand that they have the understanding or cliff There are how the hardware itself or the underpinning the infrastructure needs to have some specific attributes to make this work at scale. But we're trying to mimic as much as possible the scaling capabilities, the flexibility, agility, the elasticity of a cloud so that service providers can read the prophet off pretty much a general cloud >> involvement. Conceptually, there are a lot of similar out similarities. I presume that from a developer standpoint, there's a Dev ops analog, analog, maybe a cloud native, maybe serve earless. Something like server list functions absolutely in Telco cloud. >> Absolutely, absolutely. So what we see is the idea under Telco World are actually coming together because I need a lot ofthe telco expertise were also at the same time. I need a lot of expertise because that's what exact exactly right now happening. I mean, there's some fundamental differences between a standard righty private, our hybrid Claude and tell the cloud like I deploy our thousands or hundreds of locations are set a few locations. The applications are different. It's highly Io intensive. You're dealing with a lot of packets like millions of packets which are mostly are transiting function going in and out. But having said that while this initial deployment wave is being targeted for mostly for those delicate type of obligations, we're seeing a very clear demand on a journey towards a common goal of setting up our one unified cloud, right so that you can host it and telco all in the same cloud on that's exactly what they want sexually takes a reality. >> Well, in one of the things I'm surprised we haven't touched on yet is EJ Computing is, you know, critical for these environment. And I can't just have bespoke solutions for all of them. From my corrida edge toe, you know, Telco, there need to be communications amongst all of these because data is going to flow between them and therefore, it can't be. You know, Moz, in between them, I need to be able to pass data and have my applications access these various pieces. >> Absolutely. In fact, the way we have he'll concede some of the systems is a unified architecture that is distributed as a Delco plowed. So that actually from the new service managers or the new ways says B. S s. They see, actually, one unified cloud with placement capabilities based on constraints where you can actually put the workload where they need to be based on Soleil is based on the requirements in technical resources that are available, you know, from forage to a central DC and all the way to actually a public cloud because we're starting seeing some of the customers around the world. It's really a massive transformation that is global. Some of them are starting to look at how they can leverage the public cloud for bursting purposes, for disaster recovery, or even for other functions for specific applications that maybe less demanding, actually on the side. >> Well, since I know you were talking about how that one of the differences that hell cozier more distributed, you know, greater io intensity. My question is, can we learn from the telco clouds from a security model standpoint? Because normally if they go tell coz we're kind of behind traditional i t. But from a security model astounds maybe more challenging. And you always hear the traditional i t. So we it's going to the edge, the telcos already there. So is the security model actually more advanced than what can we learn from that? And how is it >> evolving? Yeah, the security model is still evolving. So in fact, I would say for the total cloud which is being done at the more Court Central Data Center location, the security model is pretty advanced. But when things go towards the edge, especially its computing, which is huge, the security model is actually evolving. And we see a lot of promises with things such as, you know, secure chain of trust, or even block Chinn actually coming there and trying to play a huge role. So I think that's one area which we expected you all over the next few years. It's a lot of challenge but also you know, it's very exciting in that particular space. >> And actually those. This is a very key point because that infrastructure from service providers is actually usually many of the country's part of the national assets the cyber securities. The agencies in those countries work actually with Cisco Security Trust officer letters to really make sure that we do have a level of security that goes beyond maybe even the boundaries of what we've seen on enterprise. So yes, to your point, there is a lot of advances in that area as well. >> All right, so jail, half the shows I've been to this year have had a breakout for Telco. There's there's no denying that there's a lot of growth and a lot of change happening in that environment. What differentiates Cisco's approach from the rest of the people looking at the multi cloud and software pieces >> so more people are murky? Pool area is first. Obviously we have these murky cloud or this hybrid cloud view in which we have worked with the best out there. The Web scale providers, the cloud providers. In fact, if I look at racket and others there are even mimicking this notion off a sorry the Google approach to, you know, really the reliability enginering the transformation off those class cloud in a very specific way. Theater aspect is we're doing it. We have a holistic view at the Telco Cloud. It's not just the infrastructure, it's the automation. The automation is absolutely critical that there is absolutely no touch from humans to be able actually to manage of that scale even more so if you deploy it in 1,000 of edge points, it has to be completely actually automated. So the aspect ofthe automation, the aspect of security, the aspect of people transformation, organizational as well is something that, between the service component to this other solution and the products is very unique. And what we do, it's Cisco. >> Yeah, if I may just add one thing on top of that, just chill said right. So if you look at our playing the Espy or telco market, we have a comprehensive solution. We are solutions right from routing Optical Jacinto Compute Telco, Claude Watch television automation, melodic or being gcm. Here's a bunch of stuff, right? But what becomes very interesting is if you look at 55 g and we all are talking up. The five G is going to be all about enterprise services now. Think about it for a while, right? Who is the number one dominant player in the market for a better price, with the deepest portfolio absolution and the farthest reaching there? No price market that Cisco. So that's what we believe, that we can actually really, you know, creator right confluence of border side of the technology to create the right offer for our customers and held them to take to the market. >> In fact, we've taken a number off our very large enterprise customers that journey to understand, from their point of view as well how they could leverage five g wife like six in the context off a mobile first cloud first type environment. And it's across permeates, actually, obviously what those service providers need to offer to grow again beyond customer services, which is not where, actually the you know, the hyper growth will be as faras Service school sir, >> Well, jail in Santa Ana. Thank you so much for sharing the updates. What happened? Tell Cho service provider space. Thanks so much for joining us. Everybody alright, We'll be back with lots more water wall coverage here at Cisco alive. San Diego 2019 for David Dante on stew Minimum. And thank you for what? Thank you.

>> Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering IBM Think 2019. Brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to Moscone North, this is IBM Think 2019. You're watching theCUBE, I'm Stu Miniman, and we're going to dig into a segment talking about the cognitive enterprise. And helping me through that, I have one returning guest and one new guest to theCUBE, so furthest away from me, the returning guest is Jesus Mantas, who is the managing partner strategy for the digital platforms and innovation in the IBM Global business services. Jesus, welcome back. >> Thank you >> A little bit of a mouthful on the title. And Mani Dasgupta, CMO of the same group, the IBM Global business services. Thanks so much both for joining us. Alright, so cognitive enterprise. We're going to play a little game here first. Buzzword Bingo here, you know, can we talk about, what cognitive is, where you can't say AI, ML, platform, or enterprise in there. So do we start with the CMO first? >> Sure, I can go. Cognitive enterprise, those are two bing bing right there. What's your core competitive advantage, is what I would say. As a company, do you know why you exist? And once you get to that, how do you then take it to your clients, in a way that would help you grow, and sustain growth in the future. That truly is the future of a smart business, what we call the cognitive enterprise. >> So, Jesus, data is something we talk about a lot, at all the shows, we hear all the tropes about it's the new oil, the rocket fuel that are going to drive companies. You've got strategy and innovation in your title, I'd love you to build off as to where this cognitive enterprise fits in to those big trends of AI that we were talking about. Jinny was just on the keynote stage, talking about Watson, talking about all those pieces, so where does that fit with some of these megawaves that we're talking about. >> I think it's the way that we define this new, smarter organizations that use data to the fullest extent. And I think the way that we define it is, one is this reuse of data, your own data, the external data, and the way you aggregate it, the way that you apply AI or other things to use that. But the technology itself is a means to an end, it's not the end, so these organizations change the way the work flows, and they also train people to make sure that they understand how to operate in a world where they have more information and they can make better decisions with that data that they could before. All of that is what we are labeling. It's more than digital, it's more than AI. It is this concept of a cognitive enterprise. It's a smarter way to do what a company does. >> Okay, I'd love if you could give us a little bit of a compare, contrast. You know, the wave of big data was, there's massive amounts of data, we're going to allow the business practitioner, to be able to leverage that data. Was a great goal, unfortunately when we did research, at least half the time it wasn't really panning out there. Doesn't mean we didn't learn good things, and there weren't lots of great tools and business value generated out there. So, give us, you know, what's the same and what's different, as to this new wave. >> This is how do you make that data work for you, really. It is about, when you talk of data, you think of data that's out there, but 80% of the data today, is owned by you. And by you, I mean a business, right, you own your customers' data, you know your customer better than anybody else. So what do you really do with it? And we are at an inflection point right now, where these technologies that you just talked about, be it blockchain, be it internet of things, be it AI. You can truly bring the power of these technologies, to start making sense of that data that you own, and use it to create, what we call, your competitive advantage, your business platform. So, think about it, I can break it down. Would you just be a retailer of clothes? Or, would you be a fashion expert? And which one would have long-term success for you? Or if you think of a completely different industry, would you be an insurance provider, you sell insurance products, or would you be a risk management expert? That decision to be who you want to be, is really at the heart of the cognitive enterprise, and what we are proposing to the clients here. >> Alright, help frame for us your group, where that fits in. IBM sells hardware, software, has a huge services organization. What are the deliverables and the services and products involved in your group? >> Sure, we are the services organization of IBM, and one of the core reasons why we exist is to help our clients solve their toughest business problems. And so, if you think about it, you think about it as different puzzle pieces, but they don't quite always fit together. We exist to sharpen the edges, to sometimes round the edges, make it customized, make it right for you, so that at the end of the day, you're able to deliver results for your customers and be closer to them than ever before. >> The balance we look at in this multi-cloud world, it'd be nice if you have a little bit more standardization, but of course we know when we talk with businesses, every company is different and is challenging. So, where are the architectural engagements? What are the design criteria? Where is some of the hard work your group gets involved in? >> Yeah, I think we've been spending a lot of work and a lot of time on understanding how to get clients, most clients have done a lot of experimentation. But they rarely figured out how to get that experimentation into real production, at scale, with impact. So that's where we've spent a lot of the time. Fundamentally it has to do with, not only understanding Agile as a method, but being able to combine that with taking that journey all the way through to production, actually integrating with compliance requirements that, if you're in a regulated industry, you have to do, and do that in a way that doesn't become a digital island. I think what we have learned is, when companies see this big divide between, that's the legacy world and that's the new world you can never put those two together. So we came up with this concept of IBM Garage, which is the way in which our team, the services side, can actually bring it all together, and it gets massively enhanced and improved, with technology like containers, like Kubernetes, because now you can actually open up architectures, without reinventing them, and connect them with new technology, and do that synchronously. So you can basically be modernizing your legacy, you can be creating new innovation, in the form of new platforms, but you can do it at the same time, and as you do that through cycles, you also change the skillsets that you have in your company, because if you don't change that skillset, you're always going to have a problem scaling. That's what we do, that's what we help the clients do. >> Yeah, skillsets are so critical. Something we've been hearing over and over is, that whole digital transformation, this isn't some 18 to 24 month going to deploy some software, bring in a lot of consultants, they go and do it, hopefully it works and then they walk away. We're talking about much faster time frames, usually agile methodology, talk about skillset-changing. How do we help customers move fast and accelerate, because that's really the faster, faster, faster, it's just one of those driving things we hear. >> I was talking to one of the clients this morning, and what she said is, it's so helpful to have a framework, just to know where to start, and also to know, sometimes it's there in their mind, but they want to see it in front of them, how to break a problem down into smaller components, so that you can get to value faster, so we have actually a seven-step process, of the cognitive enterprise. So we start with, what is your core platform? In fact, Jesus coined this term, he calls it the digital Darwinism. Do you want to talk about the digital Darwinism, Jesus? >> Yeah, I think it reflects very well this urgency. In the analog world when most businesses are based on how clients choose you based on proximity, based on convenience, based on brand, based on trust, based on price. Even if you're not great at it, you have enough friction in an analog world, that the clients will keep coming. All of us and more of our things that we do every day, are in our phone, and they are digitally accessible, all of that friction disappears, and what happens then is, the people that are very good at something becomes, everybody goes to them, and the people that are not the best. I call it, they either thrive or they die very quickly. So in the digital world, being really good at something is a lot more important than in the analog world. You can survive being average in the analog world. Once you get to the digital world, it's transparent. Everyone will know, you're the best, you're not the best, and nobody would pick you if you're not the best, so it's really important to reconfigure yourself, and understand the trust and your brand, understand how digitally you translate what you are, and then make sure that your clients will keep choosing you in a digital world as much as they were choosing you in an analog world. >> I tell you, that resonates really well with me. The old line you used to hear is, if you want to get something done, give it to someone who's really busy, because they will usually figure out a way to do it. I spent a handful of years in my career doing operations, and what I did when I was in operations, when I talked to people in IT, is tell me next quarter and next year, do you think you're going to have more or less work more data to deal with, more thing thing, and of course the answer is, we all know that pace of change is the only thing that's constant in this industry. So, if I don't figure out how I automate, change, or get rid of the stuff that I'm not good at, we're just going to continue to be buried. Are there commonalities that you see, as success factors or how do you help measure, what are some key KPIs that customers walk out of, when they go through an engagement like this? >> Yeah, just carrying on from where Jesus left off, the second step is very close to what you were just saying. It's about the data and how you're using that data. So some of the key success factors would be, what is the output of it, and it's not in the proof of concept phase anymore. It is real-time, it is big, people are doing it at a grand scale. I think, Jesus, maybe we take it through the seven steps, and then the key success criteria comes right at you, right after that. So after you do the workflow, after you do the data for internal competitive advantage, we go to the next step, which is all about workflows. You want to talk a bit about that? >> Yeah, I think one of the advantages that artificial intelligence brings to companies is, the fact that you can now, I mean as a human, there is only so much data that you can ingest. There is a limit, and most businesses try to optimize what that is and how you make decisions. But, artificial intelligence becomes this aid that will read and summarize things for you. So now you can take into account, into workflows, massive amounts of information, to optimize, or even not having to do things you had to do before, at a scale that, as a human you cannot do. This idea of inserting AI into workflows is the real idea. I think we talk a lot about AI as a technology, but that's just a means to an end. The end is a workflow that is embedded with blockchain, with AI, with IOT, and then people that are trained to engage with those workflows, so you actually change the output. And I think that's the big idea, that step of, it is workflow that is embedded with AI, it's not just about the technology, it's the combination of the main industry, and the technology that actually creates that >> And where does it sit, right? Where does it sit? Your tech choices, the architecture choices are also important. And we joked about this, like if you really like Netflix, and you're watching something and something is coming up after three seconds, how does it know what you really like? But it does, but think about this. This wouldn't be possible on a 1950s television set. So you've got to think about what's your tech platform of choice, how do you upgrade that, and what's the architecture look like? >> I want to give you both the final word. Lots of users here at the show. What are you most excited about? Give us an insight on some of the conversations you've been having already. >> Amazing conversations so far. The really aha-moment was, people really like to share within their peer set, so this morning I was at the business exchange, and people were having conversations, but just to bounce it off someone, who is facing the same issues that you do, across different industries, was a really aha-moment, and we have the IBM Garage actually right behind us on the other side of Moscone. We set it up so that clients can come in, and unpack their problems, and we helped them think it through, used design thinking, help them think it through. We are hoping in the next couple of days, we get lots of brilliant ideas, come from the sessions like that, and really putting the customer at the core of what you want to do. >> It's a recurring theme of all the client conversations, this idea of, they all want the speed and agility of a startup at the strength and scale of an enterprise. That's what they're asking us, as the services organization of IBM, to do is, help us not just experiment, that was good before, not good enough now. Help us do that with agility, with new technologies, but we want it to mean something at scale, globally implement it, create an impact. And I think again, the way in which hybrid multi-cloud can play into that, the way in which IBM Garage can combine the legacy world with the new world and moving people into new platforms is a really exciting method and approach that is resonating a lot with clients. >> Really appreciate you both sharing updates and absolutely as you painted a picture, just as in 1950 we didn't have the tools to run Netflix, now in 2019, we have the tools for customers to be able to help build the cognitive enterprise and not only test but get into real-world deployment at a speed that was really unheralded before today. Thanks so much for joining. We'll be back with more coverage here from IBM Think 2019. I'm Stu Miniman, and thanks for watching theCUBE. (upbeat techno music)

(gentle music) >> Hey! Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of WiDS 2023, the eighth Annual Women In Data Science Conference. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. We are at Stanford University, as you know we are every year, having some wonderful conversations with some very inspiring women and men in data science and technical roles. I'm very pleased to introduce Tracy Zhang, my co-host, who is in the Data Journalism program at Stanford. And Tracy and I are pleased to welcome our next guest, Rhonda Crate, Principal Data Scientist at Boeing. Great to have you on the program, Rhonda. >> Tracy: Welcome. >> Hey, thanks for having me. >> Were you always interested in data science or STEM from the time you were young? >> No, actually. I was always interested in archeology and anthropology. >> That's right, we were talking about that, anthropology. Interesting. >> We saw the anthropology background, not even a bachelor's degree, but also a master's degree in anthropology. >> So you were committed for a while. >> I was, I was. I actually started college as a fine arts major, but I always wanted to be an archeologist. So at the last minute, 11 credits in, left to switch to anthropology. And then when I did my master's, I focused a little bit more on quantitative research methods and then I got my Stat Degree. >> Interesting. Talk about some of the data science projects that you're working on. When I think of Boeing, I always think of aircraft. But you are doing a lot of really cool things in IT, data analytics. Talk about some of those intriguing data science projects that you're working on. >> Yeah. So when I first started at Boeing, I worked in information technology and data analytics. And Boeing, at the time, had cored up data science in there. And so we worked as a function across the enterprise working on anything from shared services to user experience in IT products, to airplane programs. So, it has a wide range. I worked on environment health and safety projects for a long time as well. So looking at ergonomics and how people actually put parts onto airplanes, along with things like scheduling and production line, part failures, software testing. Yeah, there's a wide spectrum of things. >> But I think that's so fantastic. We've been talking, Tracy, today about just what we often see at WiDS, which is this breadth of diversity in people's background. You talked about anthropology, archeology, you're doing data science. But also all of the different opportunities that you've had at Boeing. To see so many facets of that organization. I always think that breadth of thought diversity can be hugely impactful. >> Yeah. So I will say my anthropology degree has actually worked to my benefit. I'm a huge proponent of integrating liberal arts and sciences together. And it actually helps me. I'm in the Technical Fellowship program at Boeing, so we have different career paths. So you can go into management, you can be a regular employee, or you can go into the Fellowship program. So right now I'm an Associate Technical Fellow. And part of how I got into the Fellowship program was that diversity in my background, what made me different, what made me stand out on projects. Even applying a human aspect to things like ergonomics, as silly as that sounds, but how does a person actually interact in the space along with, here are the actual measurements coming off of whatever system it is that you're working on. So, I think there's a lot of opportunities, especially in safety as well, which is a big initiative for Boeing right now, as you can imagine. >> Tracy: Yeah, definitely. >> I can't go into too specifics. >> No, 'cause we were like, I think a theme for today that kind of we brought up in in all of our talk is how data is about people, how data is about how people understand the world and how these data can make impact on people's lives. So yeah, I think it's great that you brought this up, and I'm very happy that your anthropology background can tap into that and help in your day-to-day data work too. >> Yeah. And currently, right now, I actually switched over to Strategic Workforce Planning. So it's more how we understand our workforce, how we work towards retaining the talent, how do we get the right talent in our space, and making sure overall that we offer a culture and work environment that is great for our employees to come to. >> That culture is so important. You know, I was looking at some anitab.org stats from 2022 and you know, we always talk about the number of women in technical roles. For a long time it's been hovering around that 25% range. The data from anitab.org showed from '22, it's now 27.6%. So, a little increase. But one of the biggest challenges still, and Tracy and I and our other co-host, Hannah, have been talking about this, is attrition. Attrition more than doubled last year. What are some of the things that Boeing is doing on the retention side, because that is so important especially as, you know, there's this pipeline leakage of women leaving technical roles. Tell us about what Boeing's, how they're invested. >> Yeah, sure. We actually have a publicly available Global Diversity Report that anybody can go and look at and see our statistics for our organization. Right now, off the top of my head, I think we're hovering at about 24% in the US for women in our company. It has been a male majority company for many years. We've invested heavily in increasing the number of women in roles. One interesting thing about this year that came out is that even though with the great resignation and those types of things, the attrition level between men and women were actually pretty close to being equal, which is like the first time in our history. Usually it tends on more women leaving. >> Lisa: That's a good sign. >> Right. >> Yes, that's a good sign. >> And we've actually focused on hiring and bringing in more women and diversity in our company. >> Yeah, some of the stats too from anitab.org talked about the increase, and I have to scroll back and find my notes, the increase in 51% more women being hired in 2022 than 2021 for technical roles. So the data, pun intended, is showing us. I mean, the data is there to show the impact that having females in executive leadership positions make from a revenue perspective. >> Tracy: Definitely. >> Companies are more profitable when there's women at the head, or at least in senior leadership roles. But we're seeing some positive trends, especially in terms of representation of women technologists. One of the things though that I found interesting, and I'm curious to get your thoughts on this, Rhonda, is that the representation of women technologists is growing in all areas, except interns. >> Rhonda: Hmm. >> So I think, we've got to go downstream. You teach, I have to go back to my notes on you, did my due diligence, R programming classes through Boeings Ed Wells program, this is for WSU College of Arts and Sciences, talk about what you teach and how do you think that intern kind of glut could be solved? >> Yeah. So, they're actually two separate programs. So I teach a data analytics course at Washington State University as an Adjunct Professor. And then the Ed Wells program is a SPEEA, which is an Aerospace Union, focused on bringing up more technology and skills to the actual workforce itself. So it's kind of a couple different audiences. One is more seasoned employees, right? The other one is our undergraduates. I teach a Capstone class, so it's a great way to introduce students to what it's actually like to work on an industry project. We partner with Google and Microsoft and Boeing on those. The idea is also that maybe those companies have openings for the students when they're done. Since it's Senior Capstone, there's not a lot of opportunities for internships. But the opportunities to actually get hired increase a little bit. In regards to Boeing, we've actually invested a lot in hiring more women interns. I think the number was 40%, but you'd have to double check. >> Lisa: That's great, that's fantastic. >> Tracy: That's way above average, I think. >> That's a good point. Yeah, it is above average. >> Double check on that. That's all from my memory. >> Is this your first WiDS, or have you been before? >> I did virtually last year. >> Okay. One of the things that I love, I love covering this event every year. theCUBE's been covering it since it's inception in 2015. But it's just the inspiration, the vibe here at Stanford is so positive. WiDS is a movement. It's not an initiative, an organization. There are going to be, I think annually this year, there will be 200 different events. Obviously today we're live on International Women's Day. 60 plus countries, 100,000 plus people involved. So, this is such a positive environment for women and men, because we need everybody, underrepresented minorities, to be able to understand the implication that data has across our lives. If we think about stripping away titles in industries, everybody is a consumer, not everybody, most of mobile devices. And we have this expectation, I was in Barcelona last week at a Mobile World Congress, we have this expectation that we're going to be connected 24/7. I can get whatever I want wherever I am in the world, and that's all data driven. And the average person that isn't involved in data science wouldn't understand that. At the same time, they have expectations that depend on organizations like Boeing being data driven so that they can get that experience that they expect in their consumer lives in any aspect of their lives. And that's one of the things I find so interesting and inspiring about data science. What are some of the things that keep you motivated to continue pursuing this? >> Yeah I will say along those lines, I think it's great to invest in K-12 programs for Data Literacy. I know one of my mentors and directors of the Data Analytics program, Dr. Nairanjana Dasgupta, we're really familiar with each other. So, she runs a WSU program for K-12 Data Literacy. It's also something that we strive for at Boeing, and we have an internal Data Literacy program because, believe it or not, most people are in business. And there's a lot of disconnect between interpreting and understanding data. For me, what kind of drives me to continue data science is that connection between people and data and how we use it to improve our world, which is partly why I work at Boeing too 'cause I feel that they produce products that people need like satellites and airplanes, >> Absolutely. >> and everything. >> Well, it's tangible, it's relatable. We can understand it. Can you do me a quick favor and define data literacy for anyone that might not understand what that means? >> Yeah, so it's just being able to understand elements of data, whether that's a bar chart or even in a sentence, like how to read a statistic and interpret a statistic in a sentence, for example. >> Very cool. >> Yeah. And sounds like Boeing's doing a great job in these programs, and also trying to hire more women. So yeah, I wanted to ask, do you think there's something that Boeing needs to work on? Or where do you see yourself working on say the next five years? >> Yeah, I think as a company, we always think that there's always room for improvement. >> It never, never stops. >> Tracy: Definitely. (laughs) >> I know workforce strategy is an area that they're currently really heavily investing in, along with safety. How do we build safer products for people? How do we help inform the public about things like Covid transmission in airports? For example, we had the Confident Traveler Initiative which was a big push that we had, and we had to be able to inform people about data models around Covid, right? So yeah, I would say our future is more about an investment in our people and in our culture from my perspective >> That's so important. One of the hardest things to change especially for a legacy organization like Boeing, is culture. You know, when I talk with CEO's or CIO's or COO's about what's your company's vision, what's your strategy? Especially those companies that are on that digital journey that have no choice these days. Everybody expects to have a digital experience, whether you're transacting an an Uber ride, you're buying groceries, or you're traveling by air. That culture sounds like Boeing is really focused on that. And that's impressive because that's one of the hardest things to morph and mold, but it's so essential. You know, as we look around the room here at WiDS it's obviously mostly females, but we're talking about women, underrepresented minorities. We're talking about men as well who are mentors and sponsors to us. I'd love to get your advice to your younger self. What would you tell yourself in terms of where you are now to become a leader in the technology field? >> Yeah, I mean, it's kind of an interesting question because I always try to think, live with no regrets to an extent. >> Lisa: I like that. >> But, there's lots of failures along the way. (Tracy laughing) I don't know if I would tell myself anything different because honestly, if I did, I wouldn't be where I am. >> Lisa: Good for you. >> I started out in fine arts, and I didn't end up there. >> That's good. >> Such a good point, yeah. >> We've been talking about that and I find that a lot at events like WiDS, is women have these zigzaggy patterns. I studied biology, I have a master's in molecular biology, I'm in media and marketing. We talked about transportable skills. There's a case I made many years ago when I got into tech about, well in science you learn the art of interpreting esoteric data and creating a story from it. And that's a transportable skill. But I always say, you mentioned failure, I always say failure is not a bad F word. It allows us to kind of zig and zag and learn along the way. And I think that really fosters thought diversity. And in data science, that is one of the things we absolutely need to have is that diversity and thought. You know, we talk about AI models being biased, we need the data and we need the diverse brains to help ensure that the biases are identified, extracted, and removed. Speaking of AI, I've been geeking out with ChatGPT. So, I'm on it yesterday and I ask it, "What's hot in data science?" And I was like, is it going to get that? What's hot? And it did it, it came back with trends. I think if I ask anything, "What's hot?", I should be to Paris Hilton, but I didn't. And so I was geeking out. One of the things I learned recently that I thought was so super cool is the CTO of OpenAI is a woman, Mira Murati, which I didn't know until over the weekend. Because I always think if I had to name top females in tech, who would they be? And I always default to Sheryl Sandberg, Carly Fiorina, Susan Wojcicki running YouTube. Who are some of the people in your history, in your current, that are really inspiring to you? Men, women, indifferent. >> Sure. I think Boeing is one of the companies where you actually do see a lot of women in leadership roles. I think we're one of the top companies with a number of women executives, actually. Susan Doniz, who's our Chief Information Officer, I believe she's actually slotted to speak at a WiDS event come fall. >> Lisa: Cool. >> So that will be exciting. Susan's actually relatively newer to Boeing in some ways. A Boeing time skill is like three years is still kind of new. (laughs) But she's been around for a while and she's done a lot of inspiring things, I think, for women in the organization. She does a lot with Latino communities and things like that as well. For me personally, you know, when I started at Boeing Ahmad Yaghoobi was one of my mentors and my Technical Lead. He came from Iran during a lot of hard times in the 1980s. His brother actually wrote a memoir, (laughs) which is just a fun, interesting fact. >> Tracy: Oh my God! >> Lisa: Wow! >> And so, I kind of gravitate to people that I can learn from that's not in my sphere, that might make me uncomfortable. >> And you probably don't even think about how many people you're influencing along the way. >> No. >> We just keep going and learning from our mentors and probably lose sight of, "I wonder how many people actually admire me?" And I'm sure there are many that admire you, Rhonda, for what you've done, going from anthropology to archeology. You mentioned before we went live you were really interested in photography. Keep going and really gathering all that breadth 'cause it's only making you more inspiring to people like us. >> Exactly. >> We thank you so much for joining us on the program and sharing a little bit about you and what brought you to WiDS. Thank you so much, Rhonda. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Tracy: Thank you so much for being here. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> Alright. >> For our guests, and for Tracy Zhang, this is Lisa Martin live at Stanford University covering the eighth Annual Women In Data Science Conference. Stick around. Next guest will be here in just a second. (gentle music)

>> The introduction of the modern public cloud in the mid 2000s, permanently changed the way we think about IT. At the heart of it, the cloud operating model attacked one of the biggest problems in enterprise infrastructure, human labor costs. More than half of IT budgets were spent on people, and much of that effort added little or no differentiable value to the business. The automation of provisioning, management, recovery, optimization, and decommissioning infrastructure resources has gone mainstream as organizations demand a cloud-like model across all their application infrastructure, irrespective of its physical location. This has not only cut cost, but it's also improved quality and reduced human error. Hello everyone, my name is Dave Vellante and welcome to Simplifying Hybrid Cloud, made possible by Cisco. Today, we're going to explore Hybrid Cloud as an operating model for organizations. Now the definite of cloud is expanding. Cloud is no longer an abstract set of remote services, you know, somewhere out in the clouds. No, it's an operating model that spans public cloud, on-premises infrastructure, and it's also moving to edge locations. This trend is happening at massive scale. While at the same time, preserving granular control of resources. It's an entirely new game where IT managers must think differently to deal with this complexity. And the environment is constantly changing. The growth and diversity of applications continues. And now, we're living in a world where the workforce is remote. Hybrid work is now a permanent state and will be the dominant model. In fact, a recent survey of CIOs by Enterprise Technology Research, ETR, indicates that organizations expect 36% of their workers will be operating in a hybrid mode. Splitting time between remote work and in office environments. This puts added pressure on the application infrastructure required to support these workers. The underlying technology must be more dynamic and adaptable to accommodate constant change. So the challenge for IT managers is ensuring that modern applications can be run with a cloud-like experience that spans on-prem, public cloud, and edge locations. This is the future of IT. Now today, we have three segments where we're going to dig into these issues and trends surrounding Hybrid Cloud. First up, is DD Dasgupta, who will set the stage and share with us how Cisco is approaching this challenge. Next, we're going to hear from Manish Agarwal and Darren Williams, who will help us unpack HyperFlex which is Cisco's hyperconverged infrastructure offering. And finally, our third segment will drill into Unified Compute. More than a decade ago, Cisco pioneered the concept of bringing together compute with networking in a single offering. Cisco frankly, changed the legacy server market with UCS, Unified Compute System. The X-Series is Cisco's next generation architecture for the coming decade and we'll explore how it fits into the world of Hybrid Cloud, and its role in simplifying the complexity that we just discussed. So, thanks for being here. Let's go. (upbeat music playing) Okay, let's start things off. DD Dasgupta is back on theCUBE to talk about how we're going to simplify Hybrid Cloud complexity. DD welcome, good to see you again. >> Hey Dave, thanks for having me. Good to see you again. >> Yeah, our pleasure. Look, let's start with big picture. Talk about the trends you're seeing from your customers. >> Well, I think first off, every customer these days is a public cloud customer. They do have their on-premise data centers, but, every customer is looking to move workloads, new services, cloud native services from the public cloud. I think that's one of the big things that we're seeing. While that is happening, we're also seeing a pretty dramatic evolution of the application landscape itself. You've got, you know, bare metal applications, you always have virtualized applications, and then most modern applications are containerized, and, you know, managed by Kubernetes. So I think we're seeing a big change in, in the application landscape as well. And, probably, you know, triggered by the first two things that I mentioned, the execution venue of the applications, and then the applications themselves, it's triggering a change in the IT organizations in the development organizations and sort of not only how they work within their organizations, but how they work across all of these different organizations. So I think those are some of the big things that, that I hear about when I talk to customers. >> Well, so it's interesting. I often say Cisco kind of changed the game in server and compute when it developed the original UCS. And you remember there were organizational considerations back then bringing together the server team and the networking team and of course the storage team as well. And now you mentioned Kubernetes, that is a total game changer with regard to whole the application development process. So you have to think about a new strategy in that regard. So how have you evolved your strategy? What is your strategy to help customers simplify, accelerate their hybrid cloud journey in that context? >> No, I think you're right Dave, back to the origins of UCS and we, you know, why did a networking company build a server? Well, we just enabled with the best networking technologies so, would do compute better. And now, doing something similar on the software, actually the managing software for our hyperconvergence, for our, you know, Rack server, for our blade servers. And, you know, we've been on this journey for about four years. The software is called Intersight, and, you know, we started out with Intersight being just the element manager, the management software for Cisco's compute and hyperconverged devices. But then we've evolved it over the last few years because we believe that a customer shouldn't have to manage a separate piece of software, would do manage the hardware, the underlying hardware. And then a separate tool to connect it to a public cloud. And then a third tool to do optimization, workload optimization or performance optimization, or cost optimization. A fourth tool to now manage, you know, Kubernetes and like, not just in one cluster, one cloud, but multi-cluster, multi-cloud. They should not have to have a fifth tool that does, goes into observability anyway. I can go on and on, but you get the idea. We wanted to bring everything onto that same platform that manage their infrastructure. But it's also the platform that enables the simplicity of hybrid cloud operations, automation. It's the same platform on which you can use to manage the, the Kubernetes infrastructure, Kubernetes clusters, I mean, whether it's on-prem or in a cloud. So, overall that's the strategy. Bring it to a single platform, and a platform is a loaded word we'll get into that a little bit, you know, in this conversation, but, that's the overall strategy, simplify. >> Well, you know, you brought platform. I like to say platform beats products, but you know, there was a day, and you could still point to some examples today in the IT industry where, hey, another tool we can monetize that. And another one to solve a different problem, we can monetize that. And so, tell me more about how Intersight came about. You obviously sat back, you saw what your customers were going through, you said, "We can do better." So tell us the story there. >> Yeah, absolutely. So, look, it started with, you know, three or four guys in getting in a room and saying, "Look, we've had this, you know, management software, UCS manager, UCS director." And these are just the Cisco's management, you know, for our, softwares for our own platforms. And every company has their own flavor. We said, we took on this bold goal of like, we're not, when we rewrite this or we improve on this, we're not going to just write another piece of software. We're going to create a cloud service. Or we're going to create a SaaS offering. Because the same, the infrastructure built by us whether it's on networking or compute, or the cyber cloud software, how do our customers use it? Well, they use it to write and run their applications, their SaaS services, every customer, every customer, every company today is a software company. They live and die by how their applications work or don't. And so, we were like, "We want to eat our own dog food here," right? We want to deliver this as a SaaS offering. And so that's how it started, we've being on this journey for about four years, tens of thousands of customers. But it was a pretty big, bold ambition 'cause you know, the big change with SaaS as you're familiar Dave is, the job of now managing this piece of software, is not on the customer, it's on the vendor, right? This can never go down. We have a release every Thursday, new capabilities, and we've learned so much along the way, whether it's to announce scalability, reliability, working with, our own company's security organizations on what can or cannot be in a SaaS service. So again, it's been a wonderful journey, but, I wanted to point out, we are in some ways eating our own dog food 'cause we built a SaaS application that helps other companies deliver their SaaS applications. >> So Cisco, I look at Cisco's business model and I compare, of course compare it to other companies in the infrastructure business and, you're obviously a very profitable company, you're a large company, you're growing faster than most of the traditional competitors. And, so that means that you have more to invest. You, can afford things, like to you know, stock buybacks, and you can invest in R&D you don't have to make those hard trade offs that a lot of your competitors have to make, so-- >> You got to have a talk with my boss on the whole investment. >> Yeah, right. You'd never enough, right? Never enough. But in speaking of R&D and innovations that you're intro introducing, I'm specifically interested in, how are you dealing with innovations to help simplify hybrid cloud, the operations there, improve flexibility, and things around Cloud Native initiatives as well? >> Absolutely, absolutely. Well, look, I think, one of the fundamentals where we're kind of philosophically different from a lot of options that I see in the industry is, we don't need to build everything ourselves, we don't. I just need to create a damn good platform with really good platform services, whether it's, you know, around, searchability, whether it's around logging, whether it's around, you know, access control, multi-tenants. I need to create a really good platform, and make it open. I do not need to go on a shopping spree to buy 17 and 1/2 companies and then figure out how to stich it all together. 'Cause it's almost impossible. And if it's impossible for us as a vendor, it's three times more difficult for the customer who then has to consume it. So that was the philosophical difference and how we went about building Intersight. We've created a hardened platform that's always on, okay? And then you, then the magic starts happening. Then you get partners, whether it is, you know, infrastructure partners, like, you know, some of our storage partners like NetApp or PR, or you know, others, who want their conversion infrastructures also to be managed, or their other SaaS offerings and software vendors who have now become partners. Like we did not write Terraform, you know, but we partnered with Hashi and now, you know, Terraform service's available on the Intersight platform. We did not write all the algorithms for workload optimization between a public cloud and on-prem. We partner with a company called Turbonomic and so that's now an offering on the Intersight platform. So that's where we're philosophically different, in sort of, you know, how we have gone about this. And, it actually dovetails well into, some of the new things that I want to talk about today that we're announcing on the Intersight platform where we're actually announcing the ability to attach and be able to manage Kubernetes clusters which are not on-prem. They're actually on AWS, on Azure, soon coming on GC, on GKE as well. So it really doesn't matter. We're not telling a customer if you're comfortable building your applications and running Kubernetes clusters on, you know, in AWS or Azure, stay there. But in terms of monitoring, managing it, you can use Intersight, and since you're using it on-prem you can use that same piece of software to manage Kubernetes clusters in a public cloud. Or even manage DMS in a EC2 instance. So. >> Yeah so, the fact that you could, you mentioned Storage Pure, NetApp, so Intersight can manage that infrastructure. I remember the Hashi deal and I, it caught my attention. I mean, of course a lot of companies want to partner with Cisco 'cause you've got such a strong ecosystem, but I thought that was an interesting move, Turbonomic you mentioned. And now you're saying Kubernetes in the public cloud. So a lot different than it was 10 years ago. So my last question is, how do you see this hybrid cloud evolving? I mean, you had private cloud and you had public cloud, and it was kind of a tug of war there. We see these two worlds coming together. How will that evolve on for the next few years? >> Well, I think it's the evolution of the model and I, really look at Cloud, you know, 2.0 or 3.0, or depending on, you know, how you're keeping terms. But, I think one thing has become very clear again, we, we've be eating our own dog food, I mean, Intersight is a hybrid cloud SaaS application. So we've learned some of these lessons ourselves. One thing is for sure that the customers are looking for a consistent model, whether it's on the edge, on the COLO, public cloud, on-prem, no data center, it doesn't matter. They're looking for a consistent model for operations, for governance, for upgrades, for reliability. They're looking for a consistent operating model. What (indistinct) tells me I think there's going to be a rise of more custom clouds. It's still going to be hybrid, so applications will want to reside wherever it most makes most sense for them which is obviously data, 'cause you know, data is the most expensive thing. So it's going to be complicated with the data goes on the edge, will be on the edge, COLO, public cloud, doesn't matter. But, you're basically going to see more custom clouds, more industry specific clouds, you know, whether it's for finance, or transportation, or retail, industry specific, I think sovereignty is going to play a huge role, you know, today, if you look at the cloud provider there's a handful of, you know, American and Chinese companies, that leave the rest of the world out when it comes to making, you know, good digital citizens of their people and you know, whether it's data latency, data gravity, data sovereignty, I think that's going to play a huge role. Sovereignty's going to play a huge role. And the distributor cloud also called Edge, is going to be the next frontier. And so, that's where we are trying line up our strategy. And if I had to sum it up in one sentence, it's really, your cloud, your way. Every customer is on a different journey, they will have their choice of like workloads, data, you know, upgrade reliability concern. That's really what we are trying to enable for our customers. >> You know, I think I agree with you on that custom clouds. And I think what you're seeing is, you said every company is a software company. Every company is also becoming a cloud company. They're building their own abstraction layers, they're connecting their on-prem to their public cloud. They're doing that across clouds, and they're looking for companies like Cisco to do the hard work, and give me an infrastructure layer that I can build value on top of. 'Cause I'm going to take my financial services business to my cloud model, or my healthcare business. I don't want to mess around with, I'm not going to develop, you know, custom infrastructure like an Amazon does. I'm going to look to Cisco and your R&D to do that. Do you buy that? >> Absolutely. I think again, it goes back to what I was talking about with platform. You got to give the world a solid open, flexible platform. And flexible in terms of the technology, flexible in how they want to consume it. Some of our customers are fine with the SaaS, you know, software. But if I talk to, you know, my friends in the federal team, no, that does not work. And so, how they want to consume it, they want to, you know, (indistinct) you know, sovereignty we talked about. So, I think, you know, job for an infrastructure vendor like ourselves is to give the world a open platform, give them the knobs, give them the right API tool kit. But the last thing I will mention is, you know, there's still a place for innovation in hardware. And I think some of my colleagues are going to get into some of those, you know, details, whether it's on our X-Series, you know, platform or HyperFlex, but it's really, it's going to be software defined, it's a SaaS service and then, you know, give the world an open rock solid platform. >> Got to run on something All right, Thanks DD, always a pleasure to have you on the, theCUBE, great to see you. >> Thanks for having me. >> You're welcome. In a moment, I'll be back to dig into hyperconverged, and where HyperFlex fits, and how it may even help with addressing some of the supply chain challenges that we're seeing in the market today. >> It used to be all your infrastructure was managed here. But things got more complex in distributing, and now IT operations need to be managed everywhere. But what if you could manage everywhere from somewhere? One scalable place that brings together your teams, technology, and operations. Both on-prem and in the cloud. One automated place that provides full stack visibility to help you optimize performance and stay ahead of problems. One secure place where everyone can work better, faster, and seamlessly together. That's the Cisco Intersight cloud operations platform. The time saving, cost reducing, risk managing solution for your whole IT environment, now and into the future of this ever-changing world of IT. (upbeat music) >> With me now are Manish Agarwal, senior director of product management for HyperFlex at Cisco, @flash4all, number four, I love that, on Twitter. And Darren Williams, the director of business development and sales for Cisco. MrHyperFlex, @MrHyperFlex on Twitter. Thanks guys. Hey, we're going to talk about some news and HyperFlex, and what role it plays in accelerating the hybrid cloud journey. Gentlemen, welcome to theCUBE, good to see you. >> Thanks a lot Dave. >> Thanks Dave. >> All right Darren, let's start with you. So, for a hybrid cloud, you got to have on-prem connection, right? So, you got to have basically a private cloud. What are your thoughts on that? >> Yeah, we agree. You can't have a hybrid cloud without that prime element. And you've got to have a strong foundation in terms of how you set up the whole benefit of the cloud model you're building in terms of what you want to try and get back from the cloud. You need a strong foundation. Hyperconversions provides that. We see more and more customers requiring a private cloud, and they're building it with Hyperconversions, in particular HyperFlex. Now to make all that work, they need a good strong cloud operations model to be able to connect both the private and the public. And that's where we look at Intersight. We've got solution around that to be able to connect that around a SaaS offering. That looks around simplified operations, gives them optimization, and also automation to bring both private and public together in that hybrid world. >> Darren let's stay with you for a minute. When you talk to your customers, what are they thinking these days when it comes to implementing hyperconverged infrastructure in both the enterprise and at the edge, what are they trying to achieve? >> So there's many things they're trying to achieve, probably the most brutal honesty is they're trying to save money, that's probably the quickest answer. But, I think they're trying to look in terms of simplicity, how can they remove layers of components they've had before in their infrastructure? We see obviously collapsing of storage into hyperconversions and storage networking. And we've got customers that have saved 80% worth of savings by doing that collapse into a hyperconversion infrastructure away from their Three Tier infrastructure. Also about scalability, they don't know the end game. So they're looking about how they can size for what they know now, and how they can grow that with hyperconvergence very easy. It's one of the major factors and benefits of hyperconversions. They also obviously need performance and consistent performance. They don't want to compromise performance around their virtual machines when they want to run multiple workloads. They need that consistency all all way through. And then probably one of the biggest ones is that around the simplicity model is the management layer, ease of management. To make it easier for their operations, yeah, we've got customers that have told us, they've saved 50% of costs in their operations model on deploying HyperFlex, also around the time savings they make massive time savings which they can reinvest in their infrastructure and their operations teams in being able to innovate and go forward. And then I think probably one of the biggest pieces we've seen as people move away from three tier architecture is the deployment elements. And the ease of deployment gets easy with hyperconverged, especially with Edge. Edge is a major key use case for us. And, what I want, what our customers want to do is get the benefit of a data center at the edge, without A, the big investment. They don't want to compromise in performance, and they want that simplicity in both management and deployment. And, we've seen our analysts recommendations around what their readers are telling them in terms of how management deployment's key for our IT operations teams. And how much they're actually saving by deploying Edge and taking the burden away when they deploy hyperconversions. And as I said, the savings elements is the key bit, and again, not always, but obviously those are case studies around about public cloud being quite expensive at times, over time for the wrong workloads. So by bringing them back, people can make savings. And we again have customers that have made 50% savings over three years compared to their public cloud usage. So, I'd say that's the key things that customers are looking for. Yeah. >> Great, thank you for that Darren. Manish, we have some hard news, you've been working a lot on evolving the HyperFlex line. What's the big news that you've just announced? >> Yeah, thanks Dave. So there are several things that we are announcing today. The first one is a new offer called HyperFlex Express. This is, you know, Cisco Intersight led and Cisco Intersight managed eight HyperFlex configurations. That we feel are the fastest path to hybrid cloud. The second is we are expanding our server portfolio by adding support for HX on AMD Rack, UCS AMD Rack. And the third is a new capability that we are introducing, that we are calling, local containerized witness. And let me take a minute to explain what this is. This is a pretty nifty capability to optimize for Edge environments. So, you know, this leverages the, Cisco's ubiquitous presence of the networking, you know, products that we have in the environments worldwide. So the smallest HyperFlex configuration that we have is a 2-node configuration, which is primarily used in Edge environments. Think of a, you know, a backroom in a departmental store or a oil rig, or it might even be a smaller data center somewhere around the globe. For these 2-node configurations, there is always a need for a third entity that, you know, industry term for that is either a witness or an arbitrator. We had that for HyperFlex as well. And the problem that customers face is, where you host this witness. It cannot be on the cluster because the job of the witness is to, when the infrastructure is going down, it basically breaks, sort of arbitrates which node gets to survive. So it needs to be outside of the cluster. But finding infrastructure to actually host this is a problem, especially in the Edge environments where these are resource constraint environments. So what we've done is we've taken that witness, we've converted it into a container reform factor. And then qualified a very large slew of Cisco networking products that we have, right from ISR, ASR, Nexus, Catalyst, industrial routers, even a Raspberry Pi that can host this witness. Eliminating the need for you to find yet another piece of infrastructure, or doing any, you know, care and feeding of that infrastructure. You can host it on something that already exists in the environment. So those are the three things that we are announcing today. >> So I want to ask you about HyperFlex Express. You know, obviously the whole demand and supply chain is out of whack. Everybody's, you know, global supply chain issues are in the news, everybody's dealing with it. Can you expand on that a little bit more? Can HyperFlex Express help customers respond to some of these issues? >> Yeah indeed Dave. You know the primary motivation for HyperFlex Express was indeed an idea that, you know, one of the folks are on my team had, which was to build a set of HyperFlex configurations that are, you know, would have a shorter lead time. But as we were brainstorming, we were actually able to tag on multiple other things and make sure that, you know, there is in it for, something in it for our customers, for sales, as well as our partners. So for example, you know, for our customers, we've been able to dramatically simplify the configuration and the install for HyperFlex Express. These are still HyperFlex configurations and you would at the end of it, get a HyperFlex cluster. But the part to that cluster is much, much simplified. Second is that we've added in flexibility where you can now deploy these, these are data center configurations, but you can deploy these with or without fabric interconnects, meaning you can deploy with your existing top of rack. We've also, you know, added attractive price point for these, and of course, you know, these will have better lead times because we've made sure that, you know, we are using components that are, that we have clear line of sight from our supply perspective. For partner and sales, this is, represents a high velocity sales motion, a faster turnaround time, and a frictionless sales motion for our distributors. This is actually a set of disty-friendly configurations, which they would find very easy to stalk, and with a quick turnaround time, this would be very attractive for the distys as well. >> It's interesting Manish, I'm looking at some fresh survey data, more than 70% of the customers that were surveyed, this is the ETR survey again, we mentioned 'em at the top. More than 70% said they had difficulty procuring server hardware and networking was also a huge problem. So that's encouraging. What about, Manish, AMD? That's new for HyperFlex. What's that going to give customers that they couldn't get before? >> Yeah Dave, so, you know, in the short time that we've had UCS AMD Rack support, we've had several record making benchmark results that we've published. So it's a powerful platform with a lot of performance in it. And HyperFlex, you know, the differentiator that we've had from day one is that it has the industry leading storage performance. So with this, we are going to get the fastest compute, together with the fastest storage. And this, we are hoping that we'll, it'll basically unlock, you know, a, unprecedented level of performance and efficiency, but also unlock several new workloads that were previously locked out from the hyperconverged experience. >> Yeah, cool. So Darren, can you give us an idea as to how HyperFlex is doing in the field? >> Sure, absolutely. So, both me and Manish been involved right from the start even before it was called HyperFlex, and we've had a great journey. And it's very exciting to see where we are taking, where we've been with the technology. So we have over 5,000 customers worldwide, and we're currently growing faster year over year than the market. The majority of our customers are repeat buyers, which is always a good sign in terms of coming back when they've proved the technology and are comfortable with the technology. They, repeat buyer for expanded capacity, putting more workloads on. They're using different use cases on there. And from an Edge perspective, more numbers of science. So really good endorsement of the technology. We get used across all verticals, all segments, to house mission critical applications, as well as the traditional virtual server infrastructures. And we are the lifeblood of our customers around those, mission critical customers. I think one big example, and I apologize for the worldwide audience, but this resonates with the American audience is, the Super Bowl. So, the SoFi stadium that housed the Super Bowl, actually has Cisco HyperFlex running all the management services, through from the entire stadium for digital signage, 4k video distribution, and it's completely cashless. So, if that were to break during Super Bowl, that would've been a big news article. But it was run perfectly. We, in the design of the solution, we're able to collapse down nearly 200 servers into a few nodes, across a few racks, and have 120 virtual machines running the whole stadium, without missing a heartbeat. And that is mission critical for you to run Super Bowl, and not be on the front of the press afterwards for the wrong reasons, that's a win for us. So we really are, really happy with HyperFlex, where it's going, what it's doing, and some of the use cases we're getting involved in, very, very exciting. >> Hey, come on Darren, it's Super Bowl, NFL, that's international now. And-- >> Thing is, I follow NFL. >> The NFL's, it's invading London, of course, I see the, the picture, the real football over your shoulder. But, last question for Manish. Give us a little roadmap, what's the future hold for HyperFlex? >> Yeah. So, you know, as Darren said, both Darren and I have been involved with HyperFlex since the beginning. But, I think the best is yet to come. There are three main pillars for HyperFlex. One is, Intersight is central to our strategy. It provides a, you know, lot of customer benefit from a single pane of class management. But we are going to take this beyond the lifecycle management, which is for HyperFlex, which is integrated into Intersight today, and element management. We are going to take it beyond that and start delivering customer value on the dimensions of AI Ops, because Intersight really provides us a ideal platform to gather stats from all the clusters across the globe, do AI/ML and do some predictive analysis with that, and return back as, you know, customer valued, actionable insights. So that is one. The second is UCS expand the HyperFlex portfolio, go beyond UCS to third party server platforms, and newer UCS server platforms as well. But the highlight there is one that I'm really, really excited about and think that there is a lot of potential in terms of the number of customers we can help. Is HX on X-Series. X-Series is another thing that we are going to, you know, add, we're announcing a bunch of capabilities on in this particular launch. But HX on X-Series will have that by the end of this calendar year. And that should unlock with the flexibility of X-Series of hosting a multitude of workloads and the simplicity of HyperFlex. We're hoping that would bring a lot of benefits to new workloads that were locked out previously. And then the last thing is HyperFlex data platform. This is the heart of the offering today. And, you'll see the HyperFlex data platform itself it's a distributed architecture, a unique distributed architecture. Primarily where we get our, you know, record baring performance from. You'll see it can foster more scalable, more resilient, and we'll optimize it for you know, containerized workloads, meaning it'll get granular containerized, container granular management capabilities, and optimize for public cloud. So those are some things that we are, the team is busy working on, and we should see that come to fruition. I'm hoping that we'll be back at this forum in maybe before the end of the year, and talking about some of these newer capabilities. >> That's great. Thank you very much for that, okay guys, we got to leave it there. And you know, Manish was talking about the HX on X-Series that's huge, customers are going to love that and it's a great transition 'cause in a moment, I'll be back with Vikas Ratna and Jim Leach, and we're going to dig into X-Series. Some real serious engineering went into this platform, and we're going to explore what it all means. You're watching Simplifying Hybrid Cloud on theCUBE, your leader in enterprise tech coverage. >> The power is here, and here, but also here. And definitely here. Anywhere you need the full force and power of your infrastructure hyperconverged. It's like having thousands of data centers wherever you need them, powering applications anywhere they live, but manage from the cloud. So you can automate everything from here. (upbeat music) Cisco HyperFlex goes anywhere. Cisco, the bridge to possible. (upbeat music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE's special presentation, Simplifying Hybrid Cloud brought to you by Cisco. We're here with Vikas Ratna who's the director of product management for UCS at Cisco and James Leach, who is director of business development at Cisco. Gents, welcome back to theCUBE, good to see you again. >> Hey, thanks for having us. >> Okay, Jim, let's start. We know that when it comes to navigating a transition to hybrid cloud, it's a complicated situation for a lot of customers, and as organizations as they hit the pavement for their hybrid cloud journeys, what are the most common challenges that they face? What are they telling you? How is Cisco, specifically UCS helping them deal with these problems? >> Well, you know, first I think that's a, you know, that's a great question. And you know, customer centric view is the way that we've taken, is kind of the approach we've taken from day one. Right? So I think that if you look at the challenges that we're solving for that our customers are facing, you could break them into just a few kind of broader buckets. The first would definitely be applications, right? That's the, that's where the rubber meets your proverbial road with the customer. And I would say that, you know, what we're seeing is, the challenges customers are facing within applications come from the the way that applications have evolved. So what we're seeing now is more data centric applications for example. Those require that we, you know, are able to move and process large data sets really in real time. And the other aspect of applications I think to give our customers kind of some, you know, pause some challenges, would be around the fact that they're changing so quickly. So the application that exists today or the day that they, you know, make a purchase of infrastructure to be able to support that application, that application is most likely changing so much more rapidly than the infrastructure can keep up with today. So, that creates some challenges around, you know, how do I build the infrastructure? How do I right size it without over provisioning, for example? But also, there's a need for some flexibility around life cycle and planning those purchase cycles based on the life cycle of the different hardware elements. And within the infrastructure, which I think is the second bucket of challenges, we see customers who are being forced to move away from the, like a modular or blade approach, which offers a lot of operational and consolidation benefits, and they have to move to something like a Rack server model for some applications because of these needs that these data centric applications have, and that creates a lot of you know, opportunity for siloing the infrastructure. And those silos in turn create multiple operating models within the, you know, a data center environment that, you know, again, drive a lot of complexity. So that, complexity is definitely the enemy here. And then finally, I think life cycles. We're seeing this democratization of processing if you will, right? So it's no longer just CPU focused, we have GPU, we have FPGA, we have, you know, things that are being done in storage and the fabrics that stitch them together that are all changing rapidly and have very different life cycles. So, when those life cycles don't align for a lot of our customers, they see a challenge in how they can manage this, you know, these different life cycles and still make a purchase without having to make too big of a compromise in one area or another because of the misalignment of life cycles. So, that is a, you know, kind of the other bucket. And then finally, I think management is huge, right? So management, you know, at its core is really right size for our customers and give them the most value when it meets the mark around scale and scope. You know, back in 2009, we weren't meeting that mark in the industry and UCS came about and took management outside the chassis, right? We put it at the top of the rack and that worked great for the scale and scope we needed at that time. However, as things have changed, we're seeing a very new scale and scope needed, right? So we're talking about a hybrid cloud world that has to manage across data centers, across clouds, and, you know, having to stitch things together for some of our customers poses a huge challenge. So there are tools for all of those operational pieces that touch the application, that touch the infrastructure, but they're not the same tool. They tend to be disparate tools that have to be put together. >> Right. >> So our customers, you know, don't really enjoy being in the business of, you know, building their own tools, so that creates a huge challenge. And one where I think that they really crave that full hybrid cloud stack that has that application visibility but also can reach down into the infrastructure. >> Right. You know Jim, I said in my open that you guys, Cisco sort of changed the server game with the original UCS, but the X-Series is the next generation, the generation for the next decade which is really important 'cause you touched on a lot of things, these data intensive workload, alternative processors to sort of meet those needs. The whole cloud operating model and hybrid cloud has really changed. So, how's it going with with the X-Series? You made a big splash last year, what's the reception been in the field? >> Actually, it's been great. You know, we're finding that customers can absolutely relate to our, you know, UCS X-Series story. I think that, you know, the main reason they relate to it is they helped create it, right? It was their feedback and their partnership that gave us really the, those problem areas, those areas that we could solve for the customer that actually add, you know, significant value. So, you know, since we brought UCS to market back in 2009, you know, we had this unique architectural paradigm that we created, and I think that created a product which was the fastest in Cisco history in terms of growth. What we're seeing now is X-Series is actually on a faster trajectory. So we're seeing a tremendous amount of uptake. We're seeing all, you know, both in terms of, you know, the number of customers, but also more importantly, the number of workloads that our customers are using, and the types of workloads are growing, right? So we're growing this modular segment that exist, not just, you know, bringing customers onto a new product, but we're actually bring them into the product in the way that we had envisioned, which is one infrastructure that can run any application and do it seamlessly. So we're really excited to be growing this modular segment. I think the other piece, you know, that, you know, we judge ourselves is, you know, sort of not just within Cisco, but also within the industry. And I think right now is a, you know, a great example, you know, our competitors have taken kind of swings and misses over the past five years at this, at a, you know, kind of the new next architecture. And, we're seeing a tremendous amount of growth even faster than any of our competitors have seen when they announced something that was new to this space. So, I think that the ground up work that we did is really paying off. And I think that what we're also seeing is it's not really a leap frog game, as it may have been in the past. X-Series is out in front today, and, you know, we're extending that lead with some of the new features and capabilities we have. So we're delivering on the story that's already been resonating with customers and, you know, we're pretty excited that we're seeing the results as well. So, as our competitors hit walls, I think we're, you know, we're executing on the plan that we laid out back in June when we launched X-Series to the world. And, you know, as we continue to do that, we're seeing, you know, again, tremendous uptake from our customers. >> So thank you for that Jim. So Vikas, I was just on Twitter just today actually talking about the gravitational pull, you've got the public clouds pulling CXOs one way and you know, on-prem folks pulling the other way and hybrid cloud. So, organizations are struggling with a lot of different systems and architectures and ways to do things. And I said that what they're trying to do is abstract all that complexity away and they need infrastructure to support that. And I think your stated aim is really to try to help with that confusion with the X series, right? I mean, so how so can you explain that? >> Sure. And, that's the right, the context that you built up right there Dave. If you walk into enterprise data center you'll see plethora of compute systems spread all across. Because, every application has its unique needs, and, hence you find drive node, drive-dense system, memory dense system, GPU dense system, core dense system, and variety of form factors, 1U, 2U, 4U, and, every one of them typically come with, you know, variety of adapters and cables and so forth. This creates the siloness of resources. Fabric is (indistinct), the adapter is (indistinct). The power and cooling implication. The Rack, you know, face challenges. And, above all, the multiple management plane that they come up with, which makes it very difficult for IT to have one common center policy, and enforce it all across, across the firmware and software and so forth. And then think about upgrade challenges of the siloness makes it even more complex as these go through the upgrade processes of their own. As a result, we observe quite a few of our customers, you know, really seeing an inter, slowness in that agility, and high burden in the cost of overall ownership. This is where with the X-Series powered by Intersight, we have one simple goal. We want to make sure our customers get out of that complexities. They become more agile, and drive lower TCOs. And we are delivering it by doing three things, three aspects of simplification. First, simplify their whole infrastructure by enabling them to run their entire workload on single infrastructure. An infrastructure which removes the siloness of form factor. An infrastructure which reduces the Rack footprint that is required. An infrastructure where power and cooling budgets are in the lower. Second, we want to simplify by delivering a cloud operating model, where they can and create the policy once across compute network storage and deploy it all across. And third, we want to take away the pain they have by simplifying the process of upgrade and any platform evolution that they're going to go through in the next two, three years. So that's where the focus is on just driving down the simplicity, lowering down their TCOs. >> Oh, that's key, less friction is always a good thing. Now, of course, Vikas we heard from the HyperFlex guys earlier, they had news not to be outdone. You have hard news as well. What innovations are you announcing around X-Series today? >> Absolutely. So we are following up on the exciting X-Series announcement that we made in June last year, Dave. And we are now introducing three innovation on X-Series with the goal of three things. First, expand the supported workload on X-Series. Second, take the performance to new levels. Third, dramatically reduce the complexities in the data center by driving down the number of adapters and cables that are needed. To that end, three new innovations are coming in. First, we are introducing the support for the GPU node using a cableless and very unique X-Fabric architecture. This is the most elegant design to add the GPUs to the compute node in the modular form factor. Thereby, our customers can now power in AI/ML workload, or any workload that need many more number of GPUs. Second, we are bringing in GPUs right onto the compute node, and thereby our customers can now fire up the accelerated VDI workload for example. And third, which is what you know, we are extremely proud about, is we are innovating again by introducing the fifth generation of our very popular unified fabric technology. With the increased bandwidth that it brings in, coupled with the local drive capacity and densities that we have on the compute node, our customers can now fire up the big data workload, the FCI workload, the SDS workload. All these workloads that have historically not lived in the modular form factor, can be run over there and benefit from the architectural benefits that we have. Second, with the announcement of fifth generation fabric, we've become the only vendor to now finally enable 100 gig end to end single port bandwidth, and there are multiple of those that are coming in there. And we are working very closely with our CI partners to deliver the benefit of these performance through our Cisco Validated Design to our CI franchise. And third, the innovations in the fifth gen fabric will again allow our customers to have fewer physical adapters made with ethernet adapter, made with power channel adapters, or made with, the other storage adapters. They've reduced it down and coupled with the reduction in the cable. So very, very excited about these three big announcements that we are making in this month's release. >> Great, a lot there, you guys have been busy, so thank you for that Vikas. So, Jim, you talked a little bit about the momentum that you have, customers are adopting, what problems are they telling you that X-Series addresses, and how do they align with where they want to go in the future? >> That's a great question. I think if you go back to, and think about some of the things that we mentioned before, in terms of the problems that we originally set out to solve, we're seeing a lot of traction. So what Vikas mentioned I think is really important, right? Those pieces that we just announced really enhance that story and really move again, to the, kind of, to the next level of taking advantage of some of these, you know, problem solving for our customers. You know, if you look at, you know, I think Vikas mentioned accelerated VDI. That's a great example. These are where customers, you know, they need to have this dense compute, they need video acceleration, they need tight policy management, right? And they need to be able to deploy these systems anywhere in the world. Well, that's exactly what we're hitting on here with X-Series right now. We're hitting the market in every single way, right? We have the highest compute config density that we can offer across the, you know, the very top end configurations of CPUs, and a lot of room to grow. We have the, you know, the premier cloud based management, you know, hybrid cloud suite in the industry, right? So check there. We have the flexible GPU accelerators that Vikas just talked about that we're announcing both on the system and also adding additional ones to the, through the use of the X-Fabric, which is really, really critical to this launch as well. And, you know, I think finally, the fifth generation of fabric interconnect and virtual interface card, and, intelligent fabric module go hand in hand in creating this 100 gig end to end bandwidth story, that we can move a lot of data. Again, you know, having all this performance is only as good as what we can get in and out of it, right? So giving customers the ability to manage it anywhere, to be able to get the bandwidth that they need, to be able to get the accelerators that are flexible that it fit exactly their needs, this is huge, right? This solves a lot of the problems we can tick off right away. With the infrastructure as I mentioned, X-Fabric is really critical here because it opens a lot of doors here, you know, we're talking about GPUs today, but in the future, there are other elements that we can disaggregate, like the GPUs that solve these life cycle mismanagement issues. They solve issues around the form factor limitations. It solves all these issues for like, it does for GPU we can do that with storage or memory in the future. So that's going to be huge, right? This is disaggregation that actually delivers, right? It's not just a gimmicky bar trick here that we're doing, this is something that customers can really get value out of day one. And then finally, I think the, you know, the future readiness here, you know, we avoid saying future proof because we're kind of embracing the future here. We know that not only are the GPUs going to evolve, the CPUs are going to evolve, the drives, you know, the storage modules are going to evolve. All of these things are changing very rapidly. The fabric that stitches them together is critical, and we know that we're just on the edge of some of the development that are coming with CXL, with some of the PCI Express changes that are coming in the very near future, so we're ready to go. And the X-Fabric is exactly the vehicle that's going to be able to deliver those technologies to our customers, right? Our customers are out there saying that, you know, they want to buy into to something like X-Series that has all the operational benefits, but at the same time, they have to have the comfort in knowing that they're protected against being locked out of some technology that's coming in the future, right? We want our customers to take these disruptive technologies and not be disrupted, but use them to disrupt their competition as well. So, you know, we're really excited about the pieces today, and, I think it goes a long way towards continuing to tell the customer benefit story that X-Series brings, and, you know, again, you know, stay tuned because it's going to keep getting better as we go. >> Yeah, a lot of headroom for scale and the management piece is key there. Just have time for one more question Vikas. Give us some nuggets on the roadmap. What's next for X-Series that we can look forward to? >> Absolutely Dave. As we talked about, and as Jim also hinted, this is a future ready architecture. A lot of focus and innovation that we are going through is about enabling our customers to seamlessly and painlessly adopt very disruptive hardware technologies that are coming up, no refund replace. And, there we are looking into, enabling the customer's journey as they transition from PCI generation four, to five to six without driven replace, as they embrace CXL without driven replace. As they embrace the newer paradigm of computing through the disaggregated memory, disaggregated PCIe or NVMe based dense drives, and so forth. We are also looking forward to X-Fabric next generation, which will allow dynamic assignment of GPUs anywhere within the chassis and much more. So this is again, all about focusing on the innovation that will make the enterprise data center operations a lot more simpler, and drive down the TCO by keeping them not only covered for today, but also for future. So that's where some of the focus is on Dave. >> Okay. Thank you guys we'll leave it there, in a moment, I'll have some closing thoughts. (upbeat music) We're seeing a major evolution, perhaps even a bit of a revolution in the underlying infrastructure necessary to support hybrid work. Look, virtualizing compute and running general purpose workloads is something IT figured out a long time ago. But just when you have it nailed down in the technology business, things change, don't they? You can count on that. The cloud operating model has bled into on-premises locations. And is creating a new vision for the future, which we heard a lot about today. It's a vision that's turning into reality. And it supports much more diverse and data intensive workloads and alternative compute modes. It's one where flexibility is a watch word, enabling change, attacking complexity, and bringing a management capability that allows for a granular management of resources at massive scale. I hope you've enjoyed this special presentation. Remember, all these videos are available on demand at thecube.net. And if you want to learn more, please click on the information link. Thanks for watching Simplifying Hybrid Cloud brought to you by Cisco and theCUBE, your leader in enterprise tech coverage. This is Dave Vellante, be well and we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)