>> live from Boston, Massachusetts. It's the you covering your red have some twenty nineteen. You >> buy bread >> and welcome back to Boston as we continue our coverage here on the Cube of the Red Hat Summit twenty nineteen, along with two minimum. I'm John Walls, and we're now joined by the V, P and C e o of Delta Airlines. Mr. Rahul Samad. Good to see you, sir. Good to see you too, Jamie, For joining us. And you have a little keynote appearance coming through with five. Forty five s. So we will not be well, we won't hold you back. >> But thank you for squeezing this, and we really do. We appreciate that. >> First off, let's talk about just Delta >> from the macro level in terms of the technology emphasis that you have tohave now, obviously running an airline. Extraordinarily complex, sophisticated systems. But how the view of technology has evolved. Maybe over the last five, ten years, where it is today. >> Yeah. I mean, you know, technology has always been core. I mean, we had a reservation systems going back to the sixties on IBM mainframes, but it's as as things have digitalized and the customer experience has become the key and empowering our employees with insights and tools so they can take better care. Even better care of the customers has become the other problem, so it's kind of a two pronged approach to digitalize ing. The company and technology has become central Now. Our culture is all about people, and our frontline teammates take great care off our customers. But then technology plays a great role in empowering them to do that even better. Sighting. It's Ah, within the company. We say, you know, we're transforming technology until competitive advantage for Delta, and so relevance is not a problem. We are extremely relevant to the company, have been forever. But I think it's getting Mohr and Maury even more so today, especially at the customer interaction. Touch point. >> So we're who we understand how important technology is. You know, in your field there talk a little bit about kind of the role of the CEO. How you know, what's the business asking for you? What? The stressors on that and a little bit of that dynamic. >> Yeah, I think. Look, >> you know, I'm an equal member of the CEOs executive team, but you still have to earn your right. And so things like reliability and stability, availability, security become table stakes. And so, in sixteen and seventeen, I started in two thousand sixteen and we needed to focus on that. So I came in, you know, starry eyed going. I'm gonna digitalize the airline experience. But what I needed to focus on was, you know, the table stakes and sort of earning my place at that table rightfully And then that gives you permission to really start collaborating with the business and bringing technology solutions to bear on business opportunity. So we're there now, so it's really exciting time we launched in the Enterprise. Why the digital transformation of the company in early two thousand eighteen, which is again both employees and customers focus. And so clearly we are central to the role ofthe Delta and the airline. >> You just can you share with us? What are some of those key goals of that digital transformation? Obviously, you know, we're all your end ultimate customers wait, value there, but, you know, is data at the core of that digital train. >> You said it. You took >> the words right out of my mouth. You know, I mean any legacy legacy is like a four letter word when it comes to technology everywhere else. We take great pride in our ninety plus year legacy, but not so much with our aging technology. So part of it was, of course, you know you got to modernize the technology, so we're doing that in the background. But data was strewn all over the company. We know a lot about our customers, but we hadn't brought it together. So now we have we have a three sixty degree view. We call it the single view of the customer. Along with that, we also have a single view of the operation. So those two data repositories are now real time and building a pea eye's on top of that and unlocking the power of that data. Two equipped Like I said, the frontline employees, they've now got tools there mobile enable, and they have insights that they can take to serving the customer and then directly guessing both off your customers and directly with you. We've mobile enable the experience and given you ah, whole lot more across the entire traveled ribbon. So >> what are you >> learning then or what have you learned about customers then, in terms of that data collection, I'm sure. I mean, there's there's pretty first level stuff when they buy tickets where the travel to that kind of thing. But then I guess going deeper and learning more about behaviors and impulsive sze impulsive reactions to certain use. Whatever. >> Yep. What do you get it out? We're just >> starting. You know, that's an interesting when, John, because we we do have it. It's a huge data repository, and we're just starting to get the use case is built on that and where we focus our attention is on service. Recovered because we >> do it with >> service would call recovery. So you know whether when weather goes bad and the airline, you know, goes into what we call an irregular operation or an IRA in airline terms, you gotta put that back together and you've got to recover the customers. They might be delayed. They might have suffered a canceled flight or miss bag in spite of all our best efforts. And that's where we're applying the single view of the customer because we know the history ofthe all your interactions with us. And so at the top of the house. The executives decided that that's where we wanted to go. We wanted to make sure that we could acknowledge to you we could recognize interruptions on your next travel with us. But while it's happening, we could actually help get you out of that and on your way again. So now we're moving from that two more revenue generation and targeted offers and targeted recognition. But where we started was really around service recovery because we think you know that that's where customers sometimes feel the pain azaz. Muchas way try for them not to. But you know, whether it's not our ally at times >> and making the business case for that, then are you able to then see how behavior is modified in terms of whether it's customer reaction or customer uptake on your services, whatever and how that's translating to either pretension or business growth or something >> along Absolutely. Even even with the early use cases that we've put forward, we're seeing that I mean the the expectations off airlines over time the customers have and that they're going to use data and technology. Ah, effectively is, I think, fairly low on DSO the when we go up and our folks walk down the aisle with the handheld device on board and they acknowledge someone for hitting a million mile milestone or for achieving diamond status >> in a way, customers are are impressed and, you know, and then you go >> the next level and you're able to take care of them on a on a delay or on a cancel and re accommodate. Before they even called the service center. They've been re accommodated and rebuild. Those are things that I mean, they engender so much loyalty. Andi, I think its technology equipping our our employees in a big way. So the employees are doing great. Now you've put another helping of technology on top of it. Customers are are paying us for that way. Have ah revenue premium on. >> So you talk about internal, Tell us a little bit about your team. How much has this been in a digital transfer? Information is retraining. So how much you trying to get people from the outside? You know, we go to shows like this. Companies like yours are heavy recruiting mode. Typical absent skill sets are tough. You know what you're looking for? And give a little >> Yes, we've had >> Ah, very seasoned, you know, t team an organization. As you would expect, an attrition very low at adult. What what I needed to do was bring in about fifteen to twenty percent of the total team. Strength is knew. That's what I brought in about six hundred people in the last thirty six months. And those were people who were hired for contemporary skills. I call them Been there, done that type people. So Cloud Engineers, FBI people, agile cyber expert, and blending that with the seasoned veterans that know a lot about Del Tighty and know a lot about the airline domain was really important. So you didn't create haves and have nots because that could have easily happened. And then that causes a rupture. So we spent a lot of time on integrating those those two halves and making sure that this was a sort of a shot of adrenaline into the bloodstream. But the blood stream is strong, and the combined force of those two groups has been terrific for us. So that that's the other thing I would say. And I'm not saying that because I'm sitting here in the Red Hat Summit is the use ofthe partners, not just for products but a set of strategic partners. Whether it's Red Hat or IBM or Microsoft, right, a small set of partners becomes a force multiplier from a talent perspective. So they become an accelerant to the transformation. >> Well, you brought it up. Talk a little bit of partnerships. How do you look at this? Is it? I want to have a primary one. Is it a handful? Talk about that depth of relationship and what you're looking for from that Federico >> system. Absolutely. And look, we've got about a dozen that I meet at the the CEO president type level on an annual basis where I would say, you know, ten to twelve that we really are tight with and that are inside the tent. They understand the pillars off our transformation, and they know where they can provide swift acceleration to our transformation. And of course, right at is one and the others that I named. But they're they're they're giving us not just the product and the service, but they're in there helping us with setting the strategy and making sure that they put the right team on the ground with us or training our people. So it runs the gamut from, you know, sort of the system integrator type all the way to open source product pipes >> for the Red Happy's. Can you highlight What are you using? And, you know, are they involved in some of that training and transformation? >> And I think you know, >> the behind the scenes sort of under the hood. The platform is a service that gives us tremendous interoperability. We are young in our journey to the cloud, and like any big company, we're going to be multi cloud and hybrid. So we built our private cloud. We've got the the red had open shift container platform hosted in our private cloud. And so we're moving a lot of application components into that >> prior to that. And that's only >> about a year that we've been doing that. But prior to that, we've been big Lennox users, you know, Red Hat Enterprise, Lin X J boss, a whole plethora of products. But I think the platform is the service is really helping us with our cloud journey, and we're we're totally jazzed about that. >> You talked about hiring and six hundred two employees in a very short period of time class door. It just stood up and said, Hey, Delta Airlines, one of the top of companies for hiring software engineers >> after it was a very nice distinction to get. What does that do? Does that mean terms of first off? How do you do >> that in such an environment where you know everybody's after the same market, if you >> will. I think, you know, how do you feel about something today? I'm I'm validate a little bit really proud of that. And it actually wasn't something that you self >> nominate or you even have, you know, some kind of a selection process. It just arrived, you know, we didn't know about it. And those are some of the best ones because it's also recognition from your employees >> because they're the >> ones who are voting with their their posts and their the ones that are telling glass Door that this is a terrific place to work and we're doing a lot of new things and we're doing them at speed and it's very relevant to the customer experience into our front line employees experience. So >> there's an impact >> story this is this is the great thing about working for an airline. There's no place to run or hide when you're in I t. Because if it's down within fifteen minutes were front page news right somewhere. And so we strive hard to make sure it's never down. And on top of that, we're building, you know, these great digital experiences. So it's been really gratifying, and I think it's going to help us even further with our recruiting efforts. >> Yeah, it's interesting, you know, without getting political. It's like you're doing this modernization. But I mean, you've got heavy regulations on, you know, just some of the basic infrastructure of your industry is a little bit antiquated, you know, and comments >> on that. Well, I think it's It's a dichotomy, and I don't think we're >> unique. And I came out of banking to insurance to airlines, And you think that the way the financial services guys spend money on it, there would be no aging technology and there'd be no you no, none of that. Webb off connectivity. It's not true. I think any company that's been around forty fifties, you know, years >> has all the generations of technology still existing. So our Endeavour >> is to make sure that we deprecate out of that technology as quickly as we can and where it's useful. I mean, >> we still use mainframes >> for a really good purpose, and someone asked me just couple of weeks ago would you get out of it? And I said, >> No, it's a half a billion dollars project >> and it's a high risk project and IBM serves me really well, And for that purpose, the mainframe is exactly what the doctor ordered. So this >> isn't about >> ideology, right? This is about purpose built and custom build. So if there's a technology that fits the purpose, I'm gonna leave well alone. And I'm going to train people and recruit people so that I don't have a talent issue in ten or twenty years when it comes to mainframe people. We've had no problem in getting apprentices and keeping our mainframe talent pipeline gold so they never get away from it. >> Can you give us just a little sneak peek on the keynote tonight? >> I mean, just a maybe a high >> level here, a couple of things just for John, and it's going to be a fireside with Jim you'LL have to come in and we'll be there and listen. But I think Jim Jim's probably got a few questions up his sleeve is also, you know, Jim's got a heritage with Delta. He was our >> chief operating officer until I think about ten years ago. And so it >> should be a fun. He hasn't told me what he's going to ask, so it's gonna be interesting as to which way he's going to come. But I would assume he >> wants to talk about, you know, digital transformation and and, of course, how right ATS helping I would, I would seem there's going to be a question or two about about red >> handed. My only warning, obi, is what >> I hear when I walk on a Delta flight. Let's fasten your seat belt. >> Yes, there. Thank you. Thanks for the time and looks forward to Aquino tonight. Thank you so much, guys. All right. Back with more here on the Cube were watching coverage right now. Right. Had summit >> and we're in Boston, Massachusetts