>> Male Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering InterConnect 2017. Brought to you by, IBM. >> Welcome back, we're live here in Las Vegas for IBM InterConnect 2017. This is theCUBE's coverage of InterConnect, I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante my co-host. Our next guest is Deon Newman, CMO of IBM Watson IoT, and Slava Rubin, the founder and Chief Business Officer of Indiegogo, great keynote today, you're on stage. Welcome to theCUBE. Deon, great to see you. >> Thanks for having me. >> So I got to first set the context. Indiegogo, very successful crowd-funder, you guys pioneered. It's pretty obvious now looking back, this has created so much opportunity for people starting companies, whether it's a labor of love or growing into a great business, so congratulations on your success. What's the IBM connection? Because I don't want, you know, there was some stuff on the tweets, I don't want to break the news, but you guys are here. Share the connection. What's the packaging, why is IMB and Indigogo working together? >> Yeah, so back up to 2008. We launched to be able to get people access to funding. And over the last several years, we've done a pretty good job of that. Sending over a billion dollars to over half a million entrepreneurs around the world. And more recently, we've had a lot more requests of Indiegogo can you do more? And we knew that we couldn't do it all on our own. So we partnered first with Arrow to be able to bring these ideas more into reality around components and engineering and supply chain. And we knew we needed more in terms of these IoT products, so they need to be smart and they need software. So we were really excited to be able to announce today, the partnership with IBM, around everything IoT Cloud, security, and being able to provide all the block chain and any other elements that we need. >> Deon I want to ask you, get your thoughts on, we had the Watson data platform guys on earlier in the segment, and the composability is now the norm around data. This brings the hacker-maker culture to IoT. Which if you think about it as a sweet-spot for some of the innovations. They can start small and grow big. Is that part of the plan? >> Yeah, I mean, if you look at what's going on we have about 6000 clients already with us in the IoT space. They tend to be the big end of town, you know whether it be a Daimler or an Airbus or whether it be a Kone, the world's biggest elevator company. Or ISS, the world's biggest facilities management company. So we were doing a lot of work up there really around optimizing their operations, connecting products, wrapping services around them so they can create new revenue streams. But where we didn't have an offering that was being used extensively, was in the start-up space. And you know when we saw what Indiegogo had been doing in the marketplace, and when our partner Arrow, who as Slava has said, has really built up an engineering capability and a component capability to support these makers. It was just a match made in heaven. You know, for an entrepreneur who needs to find a way to capture data, make that data valuable, you know, we can do that. We have the Cloud platform, we have the AI, et cetera. >> It's interesting, we just hit the stride of dude, we have our big data Silicon Valley event just last week, and the big thing that come out of that event is finally the revelation, this is probably not new to Slava and what you're doing, it that, the production under-the-hood hard stuff that's being done is some ways stunting the creativity around some of the cooler stuff. Like whether it's data analytics or in this case, starting a company. So, Slava I want to get your thought on, your views on how the world is becoming democratized. Because if you think about the entrepreneurship trend that you're riding, is the democratization of invention. Alright, there's a democracy, this is the creative, it's the innovation, but yet it's all this hard stuff, like what's called production or under-the-hood that IBM's bringing in. What do you expect that to fuel up? What's your vision of this democratization culture? >> I mean, it's my favorite thing that's happening. I think whether it's YouTube democratizing access to content or Indiegogo democratizing access to capital. The idea of democratizing access to entrepreneurship between our partnership, just really makes me smile. I think that capital is just one of those first points and now they're starting to get the money but lots of other things are hard. When you can actually get artificial intelligence, get Cloud capabilities, get security capabilities, put it into a service so you don't need to figure all those things out on your own so you can go from a small little idea to actually start scaling pretty rapidly, that's super exciting. When you can be on Indiegogo and in four weeks get 30,000 backers of demand across 100 countries, and people are saying, we want this, you know it's good to know you don't need to start ramping up your own dev team to figure out how to create a Cloud on your own, or create your own AI, you can tap right into a server that's provided. Which is really revolutionizing how quickly a small company can scale. So it proliferates more entrepreneurs starting because they know there's more accessibility. Plus it improves their potential for success, which in the long run just means there's more swings at the bat to be able to have and entrepreneur succeed, which I think all of us want. >> Explain to the audience how it works a little bit. You got the global platform that you built up. Arrow brings it's resources and ideation. IBM brings the IoT, the cognitive platform. Talk about how that all comes together and how people take advantage of it? >> Sure, I mean you can look at it as one example, like Water Buy. So Water Buy is an actual sensor that you can deploy against your water system to be able to detect whether or not your water that you're drinking is healthy. You're getting real-time data across your system and for some reason it's telling you that you have issues, you can react accordingly. So that was an idea. You go on Indiegogo, they post that idea and they're able to get the world to start funding it. You get customer engagement. You get actual market validation. And you get funding. Well now you actually need to make these sensors, you need to make these products, so now you get the partnership with Arrow which is really helpful cause they're helping you with the engineering, the design, the components. Now you want to be able to figure out how you can store all that data. So it's not just your own house, maybe you're evaluating across an entire neighborhood. Or as a State you want to see how the water is for the whole entire State. You put all of that data up into the Cloud, you want to be able to analyze the data rapidly through AI, and similarly this is highly sensitive data so you want it to be secure. If Water Buy on their own, had to build out all of this infrastructure, we're talking about dozens, hundreds, who knows how many people they would need? But here through the partnership you get the benefit of Indiegogo to get the brilliant idea to actually get validated, Arrow to bring your idea from the back of a napkin into reality, and then you get IBM Watson to help with all the software components and Cloud that we just talked about. >> And how did this get started? How did you guys, you know, fall into this, and how did it manifest itself? >> So can I tell the story? >> Go for it. >> So I love this story, so as Slava's explained at the front end of this it was really a partnership of Arrow and Indiegogo that came out of the need of entrepreneurs to actually build their stuff. You know, you get it funded and then you say, oh boy, now I've got a bunch of orders how do I now make this stuff? And so Arrow had a capability of looking at the way you designed, you know looking at it deeply with their engineers, sourcing the components, putting it together, maybe white-boxing it even for you. So they put that together. Now, we're all seeing that IoT and the connective products are moving for disconnection, which is actually generating data and that data having value. And so Arrow didn't have that capability, we were great partners with Arrow, you know when we all looked at it, the need for AI coming into all these products, the need for security around the connection, the platform that could actually do that connection, we were a logical map here. So we're another set of components, not the physical. You know, we're the Cloud-based components and services that enable these connected devices. >> If you think about like the impact, and it's mind-boggling what the alternative is. You mentioned that the example you gave, they probably might have abandoned the project. So if you think about the scale of these opportunities what the alternative would have been without an Indiegogo, you probably have some anecdotal kind of feeling on this. But any thoughts on what data you can share around, do you have kind of reference point of, okay, we've funded all this and 90% wouldn't have been done or 70% wouldn't have been done. Do you have any flavor for? >> It's hard to know exactly. Obviously many of these folks that come to Indiegogo, if they could've gotten funded on another path earlier in the process, they would have. Indiegogo became really a great choice. Now you're seeing instead of being the last resort, Indiegogo is becoming the first resort because they're getting so much validation and market data. The incredible thing is not to think about it at scale when you think about 500 or 700 thousand entrepreneurs, or over a billion dollars, and it's in virtually every country in the world. If you really just look at it as one product. So like, Flow Hive is just one example. They've revolutionized how honey gets harvested. That product was bought in almost 170 countries around the world and it's something that hadn't been changed in over 150 years. And it's just so interesting to see that if it wasn't for Indiegogo that idea would not go from the back of a napkin to getting funded. And now through these partnerships they're able to realize so much more of their potential. >> So it's interesting, the machine learning piece is interesting to me because you take the seed-funding which is great product-market fit as they say in the entrepreneurial culture, is validated. So that's cool. But it could be in some cases, small amounts of cash before the next milestone. But if you think about the creativity impact that machine learning can give the entrepreneur, with through in their discovery process, early stage, that's an added benefit to the entrepreneur. >> Absolutely. Yeah, a great example there is against SmartPlate. SmartPlate is trying to use a combination of a weight-sensing plate as well with photo-detection, image detection software. The more data it can feed its image detection, the more qualified it can know, is that a strawberry or a cherry, or is that beef? And we take that for granted that our eyes can detect all that, but it's really remarkable to think about instead of having to journal everything by hand or make sure you pick with your finger what's the right product and how many ounces, you can take a photo of something and now you'll know what you're eating, how much you're eating and what is the food composition? And this all requires significant data, significant processing. >> I'm really pumped about that, congratulations to you on a great deal. I love the creativity and I think the impact to the globe is just phenomenal. Thinking about the game-changing things that are coming up, Slava I've got to ask you, and Deon if you could weigh in too, maybe you have some, your favorites. You're craziest thing that you've seen funded and the coolest thing you've seen funded. (laughter) >> I mean, who is hard because it's kind of like asking well who's your favorite child? I have like 700,000 children, I'm not even Wilt Chamberlain (laughter) and I like them all. But you know it's everything from an activity tracker to security devices, to being able to see what the trend is 24, 36 months ahead. Before things become mainstream today, we're seeing these things 3, 5 years ago. Things are showing up at CES, and you know these are things we get to see in advance. In terms of something crazy, it's not quite IoT but I remember when a young woman tried to raise $200,000 to be able to get enough money for her and Justin Bieber to fly to the moon. (laughter) >> That's crazy. >> That didn't quite get enough funding. But something that's fresh right now is Nimuno Loops is getting funded right now on Indiegogo live. And they just posted less than seven days ago and they have Lego-compatible tape. So it's something that you can tape onto any surface and the other side is actually Lego-compatible so you actually put Legos onto that tape. So imagine instead of only a flat surface to do Legos, you could do Legos on any surface even your jacket. It's not the most IoT-esque product right now but you just asked for something creative. >> That's the creative. >> I think once you got Wilt Chamberlain and Justin Bieber in the conversation, I'm out. (laughter) (crosstalk) >> Well now, how does Indiegogo sustain itself? Does it take a piece of the action? Does it have other funding mechanisms for? >> Yeah, and that's the beautiful thing about Indiegogo. It's a platform and it's all about supply and demand. So supply is the ideas and the entrepreneurs and the demand is the funders. It's totally free to use the website and as long as you're able to get money in your pocket, then we take a percentage. If you're not taking any money into your pocket, then we get no money. As part of the process, you might benefit from actually not receiving money. You might try to raise a hundred grand, only raise thirty-one and learn that your price-point is wrong, your target audience is wrong, your color is wrong, you're bottom cost it too high. All this feedback is super valuable. You just saved yourself a lot of pain. So really it's about building the marketplace we're a platform, we started out just with funding, we're really becoming now a springboard for entrepreneurs. We can't do it all ourselves which is why we're bringing on these great partners. >> You know we've done, just to add to that, I think it's a relevant part here too. We've actually announced a premium-based service for the entrepreneurs to get onto the Cloud, to access the AI, to access the services as a starting point to the complete premium model so they can get started very low barrier to entry and overseeing scale as they grow. >> What do you call that? Is it IBM IoT Premium or? >> It hasn't got a name specifically to the premium element of the, it's just the Watson IoT platform. Available on Blue Mist. >> So it's a Watson sort of, right. So it's like a community edition of Watson. So Deon, new chapter for you. You know I saw a good quarter for mainframes, last quarter. It's still drafting off your great work and now you've shifted to this whole new IoT role, what's that been like? Relatively new initiative for IBM, building on some historical expertise. But give us the update on your business. >> Yes, so about 15 months ago, we announced a global headquarters that we were going to open in Munich, and we announced the Watson IT business. Which brought together a lot of IBM's expertise and a lot of our experience over the years through smarter cities, through the smarter planet initiative. You know we've been working The Internet Of Things, but we made a 3-billion dollar commitment to that marketplace, that we were going to go big and go strong. We've built out a horizontal platform, the Watson IoT platform. On top of that we've got market-leading enterprise asset management software, the Maximo portfolio, TRIRIGA for facilities management. And then we have a whole set of engineering software for designing connected products as well. So we've built out a very comprehensive industry-vertical-aligned IoT business. We added last year, we went from about 4000 to about 6000 clients. So we had a very good year in terms of real enterprises getting real outcomes. We continue to bring out new industry solutions around both connected products and then operations like retail, manufacturing, building management, telco, transportation. We're building out solutions and use-cases to leverage all that software. So business is going well. We officially the Watson IoT headquarters three weeks ago in Munich. And we're jam packed with clients coming through that building, building with us. We've got a lot of clients who've actually taken space in the building. And their using it as a co-laboratory with us to work on PSE's and see the outcomes they can drive. >> Alright, Deon Newman with IoT Watson, and IoT platforms. Slava Rubin, founder of Indiegogo, collective intelligence is cultural shift happening. Congratulations outsourcing and using all that crowdfunding. It's real good data, not just getting the entrepreneur innovations funded but really using that data and your wheelhouse IoT. Thanks for joining us on theCUBE, appreciate it. >> Thank you John. >> More live coverage after this short break, with theCUBE live in Las Vegas for IBM InterConnect. We'll be right back, stay with us. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering InterConnect 2017, brought to you by IBM. >> OK, welcome back everyone, live here in Las Vegas for IBM InterConnect 2017. This is theCUBE's coverage of InterConnect. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante, my co-host. Our next guest is Deon Newman, CMO of IBM Watson IoT, and Slava Rubin, the founder and Chief Business Officer of Indiegogo. Great keynote today, you're on stage, welcome to theCUBE. Deon, great to see you. >> Thanks for havin' me. >> I got to first set the context. Indiegogo, very successful crowdfunder you guys pioneered. It's pretty obvious now, looking back, this creates so much opportunity for people starting companies, whether it's a labor of love or growing into a great business, so congratulations on your success. What's the IBM connection? Because there was some stuff on the tweets, I don't want to break the news, but you guys are here, share the connection. What's the packaging? Why is IBM and Indiegogo working together? >> Yes, so back up to 2008, we launched to be able to get people access to funding and over the last several years, we've done a pretty good job of that, sending over a billion dollars to over a half a million entrepreneurs around the world, and more recently, we've had a lot more requests of Indiegogo, can you do more? And we knew we couldn't do it all on our own, so we partnered first with Arrow, to be able to bring these ideas more into reality around components and engineering and supply chain, and we knew we needed more in terms of these IoT products, so they need to be smart and they need software, so we were really excited to be able to announce today the partnership with IBM, around everything IoT, clouds, security, and being able to provide all the block chain and any other elements that we need. >> Deon, I want to ask you or get your thoughts on, we have the Watson data platform guys on earlier in the segments, and the composability is now the normal around data, brings the hacker-maker culture to IoT, which, if you think about it, is a sweet spot for some of the innovations. They can start small and grow big. Is that part of the plan? >> I mean, if you look at what's going on, we have about 6,000 clients already working with us in the IoT space. They tend to be the big end of town, whether it be a Daimler or a Airbus, whether it be a KONE, the world's biggest elevator company, or ISS, the world's biggest facilities management company, so we were doin' a lot of work up there, really around optimizing their operations, connecting products, wrapping services around them so that they can create new revenue streams, but where we didn't have an offering that was being used extensively was in the start-ups place, and when we saw what Indiegogo had been doing in the marketplace, and when our partner, Arrow, who, as Slava said, has really built up an engineering capability and a component capability to support these makers, it was just a match made in heaven. For an entrepreneur who needs to find a way to capture data, make that data valuable, we can do that. We have the cloud platform, we have the AI, et cetera. >> It's interesting, we just had the Strata Hadoop, we have our own big data Silicon Valley event last week and the big thing that came out of that event, finally, the revelation, this is probably not new to Slava, what you're doin' is that the production under the hood hard stuff that's being done is, in some ways stunting the creativity around some of the cooler stuff, like whether it's data analytics, or in this case, the startin' a company, so, Slava, I want to get your thoughts on your views on how the world is becoming democratized, because if you think about the entrepreneurship trend that you're riding, there's a democratization of invention. This is the creative, it's the innovation, but yet, there's all this hard stuff, that's called, like, production, or under-the-hood, that IBM's bringin'. What do you expect that to feel up? What's your vision of this democratization culture? >> It's my favorite thing that's happening. I think, whether it's YouTube democratizing access to content, or Indiegogo democratizing access to capital, the idea of democratizing access to entrepreneurship between our partnership, just really makes me smile. I think that capital is just one of those first points and now they're starting to get the money, but lots of other things are hard. When you can actually get artificial intelligence, get cloud capabilities, get security capabilities, put it into a service, so you don't need to figure all those things out on your own, so you can go from a small little idea to actually start scaling pretty rapidly, that's super exciting. When you can be on Indiegogo, and in four weeks, get 30,000 backers of demand across 100 countries, and people are saying, "We want this," it's good to know that you don't need to start ramping up your own dev team to figure out how to create a cloud on your own, or create your own AI, you can tap right into a server that's provided, which has really revolutionizing how quickly a small company can scale, so it proliferates more entrepreneurs starting, 'cause they know there's more accessibility, plus it improves their potential for success, which in the long run, just means there's more swings at the bat to be able to have an entrepreneur succeed, which I think all of us want. >> Explain for the audience how it works a little bit. You got the global platform that you built out, Arrow brings its resources and ideation, IBM brings the IoT, the cognitive platform. Talk about how that all comes together and how people take advantage of it. >> Sure, I mean you can look at it as, one example like WaterBot. So WaterBot is an actual sensor that you can deploy against your water system to be able to detect whether or not your water that you're drinking is healthy. You're getting real-time data across your system and for some reason, it's telling you you have issues, you can react accordingly. So that was an idea. You go on Indiegogo, they post that idea, and they're able to get the world to start funding it. You get customer engagement, you get actual market validation, and you get funding. Well now you actually need to make these sensors, you need to make these products, so now you get the partnership with Arrow, which is really helpful, 'cause they're helping you with the engineering, the design, the components. Now you want to be able to figure out how you can store all that data, so it's not just your own house, maybe you're evaluating across an entire neighborhood, or as a state, you want to see how the water is for the whole entire state. You put all that data up into the cloud, you want to be able to analyze the data rapidly through AI, and similarly, this is highly sensitive data, so you want it to be secure. If WaterBot, on their own, had to build out all this infrastructure, we're talking about dozens, hundreds, who knows how many people they would need, but here, through the partnership, you get the benefit of Indiegogo to get the brilliant idea to actually get validated, Arrow, to bring your idea from back of the napkin into reality, and then you get IBM Watson to help with all of the software components and cloud that we just talked about. >> Great, and how did this get started? How did you guys fall into this and how did it manifest itself? >> Take it, I tell the story? >> Go for it. >> So, I love this story. So, Slava's explained that the front end of this, it was really a partnership of Arrow and Indiegogo that came out of the need of entrepreneurs to actually build their stuff. You know, you get it funded, and then you say, "Oh boy," now I've got a bunch of orders, how do I now make this stuff? And so, Arrow had a capability; of looking at the way you designed, looking deeply with their engineers, sourcing the components, putting together, maybe whiteboxing it even for you, and so, they put that together. Now, we'll all seeing that IoT and the connected products are moving for disconnection, it's actually generating data and that data having value. And so Arrow didn't have that capability, we were great partners with Arrow, you know, when we all looked at it, you know, the need for AI coming into all these products, the need for security around the connection platform, that can actually do that connection, we were a logical map here, so we're another set of components, not the physical. We're the cloud-based components and services that enable these connected devices to sync. >> If you think about the impact, it's mind-boggling with the alternative. You mentioned, the example you gave, they probably might have abandoned the project, so if you think about the scale of these opportunities, what the alternative would have been without an Indiegogo, you probably have some anecdotal feeling on this. Any thoughts on what data you can share, do you have any kind of reference point of like, OK, we funded all this and 90% wouldn't have been done, or 70% wouldn't have been done, do you have any flavor for what's... >> Hard to know exactly. Obviously, many of these folks that came to Indiegogo, if they could have gotten funded on another path, earlier in the process, they would have. Indiegogo became really a great choice. Now you're seeing, instead of being the last resort, Indiegogo's becoming the first resort because they're getting so much validation and market data. The incredible thing is not the thing that adds scale, when you think about 500 or 700,000 entrepreneurs or over a billion dollars and it's in virtually every country in the world, if you really just look at it as one product. So, like, Flow Hive is just one example. They've revolutionized how honey gets harvested. That product was bought in almost 170 countries around the world, and it's something that hasn't been changed in over 150 years, and it's just so interesting to see that, if it wasn't for Indiegogo, that idea would not go from the back of the napkin to getting funded, and now, through these partnerships, they're able to really realize so much more of their potential. >> So, it's interesting, the machine learning piece is interesting to me, because you take the seed funding, which is great, and product market fit as they say in the entrepreneurial culture, is validated, so that's cool, but it could be, in some cases, small amounts of cash before the next milestone, but if you think about the creativity impact that machine learning can give the entrepreneur. >> Slava: Right. >> On their discovery process, early stage, that's an added benefit to the entrepreneur. >> Absolutely. Yeah, a great example bears against SmartPlate. SmartPlate is trying to use the combination of weight sensing plate, as well with photo detection, image detection, and software. The more data it can feed its image detection, the more qualified it can know, "Is that a strawberry or a cherry or is that beef?" Right? And we take that for granted that our eyes can detect all that, but it's really remarkable to think about that instead of having to journal everything by hand or make sure you pick with your finger what's the right product, how many ounces, you can take a photo of something and now it'll know what you're eating, how much you're eating and what is the food composition? And this all requires significant data, significant processing. >> Well, I'm really pumped about that, congratulations, Deon, on a great deal. I love the creativity. I think the impact to the globe is just phenomenal. I mean, by what the game-changing things that are coming out. Slava, I got to ask you, and Deon, if you could weigh in, too, maybe you have some, your favorites, the craziest thing you've seen funded, and the coolest thing you've seen funded. >> Cool is hard, because it's kind of like asking, "Well, who's your favorite child?" I have like 700,000 children, not even Wilt Chamberlain, (laughing) and I like them all. But, you know, it's everything from an activity tracker to security devices, to be able to see what the trend is 24, 36 months ahead. Before things become mainstream today, we're seeing these things three, five years ago. Things are showing up at CES, and these are things we get to see in advance. In terms of something crazy, it's not quite IoT, but I remember when a young woman tried to raise $200,000 to be able to get enough money for her and Justin Bieber to fly to the moon. (laughter) >> That's crazy. >> That didn't get quite enough funding, but something's that flush right now is Nimuno Loops is getting funded right now on Indiegogo Live, and they just posted less than seven days ago and they have Lego-compatible tape, so it's something that you can tape onto any surface, and then the other side is actually Lego-compatible, so you're actually putting Legos onto that tape. So, imagine, instead of only a flat surface to do Legos, you could do Legos on any surfacing, even your jacket. It's not the most IoT-esque product right now, but you just asked for something creative, there you go. >> That's a creative. >> I think once you got Wilt Chamberlain and Justin Bieber in conversation, I am out. (laughter) >> Keepin' it fresh. (voices overlapping) >> Slava, how does Indiegogo sustain itself? Does it take a piece of the action? Does it have other funding mechanisms for... >> The beautiful thing about Indiegogo is, it's a platform and it's all about supply-and-demand, so supply is the ideas and the entrepreneurs, and demand is the funders. It's totally free to use the website and as long as you're able to get money in your pocket, then we take a percentage. If you're not taking any money into your pocket, then we get no money. As part of the process, you might benefit from actually not receiving money. You might try to raise 100 grand, only raise 31, and learn that your price point is wrong, your target audience is wrong, your color is wrong, your bond cost is too high. All this feedback is super value. You just saved yourself a lot of pain, so really it's about building the marketplace. We're a platform, we started out just with funding, we're really becoming now a springboard for entrepreneurs, we can't do it all ourselves, which is why we're bringing on these great partners. >> And you know, we've done, just to add to that, I think it's a relevant part here, too. We've actually announced a freemium-based service for the entrepreneurs to get onto the cloud access, the AI, or to access the services as a starting point, it's a complete freemium model, so that they can get started, very low barrier to entry and obviously, scale as they grow. >> What do you call that? Is it IBM IoT Freemium or is it? >> Hasn't been a name specifically to the Freemium element of it, it's what in IoT platform, available on Bluemix. >> So, it's like a community addition of lots of, so Deon, a new chapter for you, >> Yeah. >> I saw a good quarter for mainframes last quarter, still drafting off your great work, and now you've shifted to this whole new IoT role. What's that been like, relatively new initiative for IBM, building up on some historical expertise, but give us the update on your business. >> It's about 15 months ago, we announced a global headquarters that we're going to open in Munich and we announced the Watson IoT business, which brought together a lot of IBM's expertise and a lot of our experience over the years through Smarter Cities, through the Smarter Planet Initiative, we'd been working the Internet of Things. We'd made a three billion dollar commitment to that marketplace, though we were going to go big and go strong. We've built out a horizontal platform, the Watson IoT platform. On top of that, we've got market-leading enterprise SF management software, the Maximo portfolio, TRIRIGA for facilities management, and then we have a whole set of engineering software for designing connected products as well. So we've built out a very comprehensive industry, vertical-aligned IoT business. We added, last year, we went from about 4,000 to about 6,000 plants, so we had a very good year, in terms of real enterprises getting real outcomes. We continued to bring out new industry solutions around both connected products and then, operations like retail, manufacturing, building management, Tokyo, transportation. We're building out solutions and use-cases to leverage all that software, so business is going well, we officially opened the Watson IoT headquarters three weeks ago in Munich, and we're jampacked with clients coming through that building, building with us. We've got a lot of clients who've actually taken space in the building, and they're using the co-laboratory with us to work on PSEs and see the outcomes they can drive. >> Deon Newman, with Watson IoT platforms. Slava Rubin, founder of Indiegogo. Collective intelligence as cultural shift happening. Congratulations. Crowdsourcing and using all that crowdfunding. It's really good data, not just getting the entrepreneur innovations funded, but really using that data and way in your wheelhouse, IoT. >> Yeah. >> John: Thanks for joining us in theCUBE, appreciate it. More live coverage after this short break. It's theCUBE, live in Las Vegas, for IBM InterConnect. We'll be right back. Stay with us. (theCUBE jingle)

>> Commentator: Live from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE. Covering InterConnect 2017. Brought to you by IBM. >> Hello everyone. Welcome to theCUBE special broadcast here at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas for IBM InterConnect 2017. This is IBM's big Cloud show. I'm John Furrier. My co-host, David Vellante for the next three days will be wall-to-wall coverage of IBM's Cloud Watson. All the goodness from IBM. The keynote server finishing up now but this morning was the kickoff of what seems to be IBM's Cloud strategy here with Dave Vellante. Dave, you're listed in the keynote, we are hearing the presentation. We had the General Manager/Vice President of Data from Twitter on there, Chris Moody, talkin' about everything from the Trump presidential election being the avid tweeter that he is and got a lot of laughs on that. To the SVP of Cloud talking about DevOps and this is really IBM is investing 10 million dollars plus into more developer stuff in the field. This is IBM just continuing to pound the ball down the field on cloud. Your take? >> Well IBM's fundamental business premise is that cognitive, which includes analytics, John plus cloud plus specific industry solutions are the best way to solve business problems and IBM's trying to differentiate from the other cloud guys who David Kenny was on stage today saying, you know, they started with a retail business or the other guys started with search, we started with business problems, we started with data. And that's fundamental to what IBM is doing. The other point, I think is-- the other premise that IBM is putting forth is that the AI debate is over. The Artificial Intelligence, you know, wave of excitement in the 70s and 80s and then, you know, nothing is now back in full swing. An AI on the Cloud is a key differentiator from IBM. In typical IBM fashion for the last several Big Shows, IBM brought out not an IBMer but a customer or and or a partner. And today it brought out Chris Moody from Twitter talking about their relationship with IBM but more specifically the fact that Twitter's 11 years old. Some of the things you're doing with Twitter obviously connected into March Madness and then Arvind Krishna who has taken over for Robert LeBlanc as the head of the Cloud group, talked about IBM, AI, IBM's Cloud, blocked chain, trusted transactions, IoT, DevOPs, all the buzz words merged into IBM's Cloud Strategy. And of course, we reported several years ago at this event about Bluemix as the underpinning of IBM's developer strategy. And as well it showcased several partners. Indiegogo was a crowdfunding site and others. Some of those guys are going to be in theCUBE. So. You know as they say, this AI debate is over. It's real and IBM's intent is to the platform for business. >> Dave, the thing I want to get your thoughts on is IBM's on a 19 consecutive quarters of revenue problems with the business on general but they've been on a steady course and they kind of haven't wavered. So it's as if they know they got to shrink to grow approach but we just came off the heels of Google Next which is their Cloud Show. How the Amazon is on re-invent as the large public cloud but the number one question on the table that's going to power IoT, that's going to power AI, is the collision between cloud computing and IoT, cloud computing in big data I should say is colliding with IoT at the center which is going to fuel AI and so, it brings up the question of enterprise readiness. Okay? So this is the number one conversation in the hallways here at Las Vegas and every single Cloud Show in the enterprise is, can I move to the cloud? Obviously it's a hybrid world, multi-cloud world. IBM's cloud play. They had a Cloud. They're in the top four as we put them in there. Has to be enterprise ready but yet it as to spawn the development side. So again, your take on enterprise readiness and then really fueling the IoT because IoT is a real conversation at an architectural level that is shifting the-- tipping the scales if you will for where the action will be. >> Well John, you and I have talked in theCUBE for years now. Going on probably five years that IBM had to shrink to grow. They've got the shrink part down. They've divested some of its business like the x86 business and the microelectronics business. They have not solved the grow problem. Let's just say 19 straight quarters of declining revenue. But here's the question. Is IBM stronger today than it was a year ago? And I would argue yes and why is that? One is its focus. Its got a much clearer focus on its strategy around cognitive, around data and marrying that to Cloud. I think the other is as an 80 billion dollar company even though it's shrinking, its free cash flow is still 11.6 billion. So it's throwing off a lot of cash. Now of course, IBM made those numbers, made its earnings numbers by with through expense control, its got lower tax right. Some of the new ones of the financial engineering. Its got some good IP revenue. But nonetheless, I would still argue that IBM is stronger this year than it was a year ago. Having said that, IBM's service as business is still 60% of the company. The software business is still only about 30% into it but 10% is hardware. So IBM-- people say IBM has exited the hardware business. It hasn't exited completely the hardware business but it's only focusing on those high value areas like mainframe and they're trying to sort of retool power. Its got a new leader with Bob Picciano but it's still 60% of the company's business is still services and it's shifting to a (mumbles) model. An (mumbles) model. And that is sometimes painful financially. But again John, I would argue that it is stronger. It is better positioned. And now its got some growth potential in place with AI and with, as you say, IoT. We're going to have Harriet Green on. We're going to have Deon Newman on. Focusing on the IoT opportunity. The weather company acquisition as a foundation for IoT. So the key for IBM is that it's strategic imperatives are now over 40% of its business. IBM promised that it would be a 40 billion dollar business by 2018 and it's on track to do that. I think the question John is, is that business as profitable as its old business? And can it begin growing to offset the decline in things like storage, which has been seeing double digit declines and its traditional hardware business. >> So Dave, this is to my take on IBM. IBM has been retooling for multiple years. At least a five year journey that they have to do because let's just go down the enterprise cloud readiness matrix that I'm putting together and let's just go through the components and then think about what was old IBM and what's new. Global infrastructure. Compute networking, storage and content delivery, databases, developer tools, security and identity, management tools, analytics, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, mobile services, enterprise applications, support, hybrid integration, migration, governance and security. Not necessarily in that order. That is IBM, right? So this is a company that has essentially (mumbles) together core competencies across the company and to me, this is the story that no one's talking about at IBM is that it's really hard to take those components and decouple them in a fashion that's cloud enabled. This is where, I think, you're going to start to see the bloom on the rose come out of IBM and this is what I'm looking at because IBM had a little bit here, they had a little bit here, then a little stove pipe over here. Now bringing that together and make it scalable, it's elastic infrastructure. It's going to be really the key to success. >> Well, I think, if again if you breakdown those businesses into growth businesses, the analytics business is almost 20 billion. The cloud business is about 14 billion. Now what IBM does is that they talk about as a service runway of you know, 78 billion so they give you a little dimensions on you know, their financials but that cloud business is growing at 35% a year. The as a service component, let's call it true cloud, is growing over 60% a year. Mobile growing, 35%. Security, 14%. Social, surprisingly is down actually year on year. You would thought that would be a growth theory for them but nonetheless, this strategic initiatives, this goal of being 40 billion by 2018 is fundamental to IBM's future. >> Yeah and the thing too about the enterprise rate is in the numbers, it speaks to them where the action is. So right now the hottest conversations in IT are SLA's. I need SLA's. I have a database strategy that has to be multi-database. So (mumbles) too. Database is a service. This is going to be very very important. They're going to have to come in and support multiple databases and identity and role-based stuff has to happen because now apps, if you go DevOps and you go Watson Data Analytics, you're going to have native data within the stack. So to me, I think, one of the things that IBM can bring to the table is around the enterprise knowledge. The SLA's are actually more important than price and we heard that at Google Next where Google tried it out on their technologies and so, look at all the technology, buy us 'cause we're Google. Not really. It's not so much the price. It's the SLA and where Google is lacking as an example is their SLA's. Amazon has really been suring up the SLA's on the enterprise side but IBM's been here. This is their business. So to me, I think that's going to be something I'm going to look for. As well as the customer testimonials, looking at who's got the hybrid and where the developer actually is. 'Cause I think IoT is the tell sign in the cloud game and I think a lot of people are talking about infrastructures of service but the actual B-platform as a service and the developer action. And to me, that's where I'm looking. >> Well comparing and contrasting, you know, those two companies. Google and Amazon with IBM, I think completely different animals. As you say, you know, Google kind of geeky doesn't really have the enterprise readiness yet although they're trying to talk that game. Diane Green hiring a lot of new people. AWS arguebly has, you know, a bigger lead on the enterprise readiness. Not necessarily relative to IBM but relative to where they were five years ago. But AWS doesn't have the software business that IBM has yet. We'll see. Okay so that's IBM's ace in the hole is the software business. Now having said that, David Kenny got on stage today. So he came out and he's doing his best Jeremy Burton impression. Came out in sort of a James Bond, you know, motif and guys with sunglasses and he announced the IBM Cloud Object Storage Flex. And he said, yes we have a marketing department and they came up with that name. You know, this to me is their clever safe objects tour to compete with S3, you know several years late. After Amazon has announced S3. So they're still showing up some of that core infrastructure but IBM's-- the (mumbles) of IBM strategy is the ability to layer cognitive and their SAS Portfolio on top of Cloud and superglue those things together. Along, of course, with its analytics packages. That's where IBM gets the margin. Not in volume infrastructure as a service. >> I want to get your take on squinting through the marketing messages of IBM and get down to the meat and the bone which is where is the hybrid cloud? Because if you look at what's going on in the cloud, we hear the new terms, lift and shift. Which to me is rip and replace. That's one strategy that Google has to take is if you run (mumbles) and Google, you're kind of cloud native. But IBM is dealing a lot at pre-existing enterprise legacy stuff. Data center and whatnot so the lift and shift is an interesting strategy so the question is, for you is, what does it take for them to be successful? With the data platform, with Watson, with IoT, as enterprise extend from the data center with hybrid. >> Well I think that, you know, again IBM's (mumbles) is the data and the cognitive platform. And what IBM is messaging to your question is that you own your data. We are not going to basically take your data and form our models and then resell your IP. That's what IBM's telling people. Now why don't we dig into that a little bit? 'Cause I don't understand sort of how you separate the data from the models but David Kenny on stage today was explicit. That the other guys, he didn't mention Google and Amazon, but that's who he was talkin' about, are essentially going to be taking your data into their cloud and then informing their models and then essentially training those models and seeping your IP out to your competitors. Now he didn't say that as explicitly as I just did but that's something as a customer that you have to be really careful of. Yes, it's your data. But if data trains the models, who owns the model? You own the data but who owns the model? And how do you protect your IP and keep it out of the hands of the competitors? And IBM is messaging that they are going to help you with the compliance and the governance and the (mumbles) of your organization to protect your IP. That's a big differentiator if in fact there's meat in the bone there. >> Well you mentioned data, that's a key thing. I think whether doing it really quickly is getting the hybrid equation nailed so I think that's going to like just pedal as fast as you can. Get that going. But data first enterprise is really speaks to the IoT opportunity and also the new application developers. So to me, I think, for IBM to be successful, they have to continue to nail this data as value concept. If they can do that, they're going to drive (mumbles) and I think that's their differentiation. You look at, you know, Oracle, Azure, Microsoft Azure and IBM, they're all playing their cards to highlight their differentiation. So. Table stakes infrastructures of service, get some platform as a service, cloud native, open source, all the goodness involved in all the microservices, the containers, Cooper Netties, You're seeing that marker just develop as it's developing. But for IBM to get out front, they have to have a data layer, they have to have a data first strategy and if they do that well, that's going to be consistent with what I think (mumbles). And so, you know, to me I'm going to be poking at that. I'm going to be asking all the guests. What do you think of the data strategy? That's going to be powering the AI, you're seeing artificial intelligence, and things like autonomous vehicles. You're seeing sensors, wearables. Edge of the network is being redefined so I'm going to ask the quests really kind of how that plays out in hybrid? What's your analysis going to be for the guests this week? >> Well, I think the other thing too is the degree to-- to me, a key for IBM success and their ability to grow and dominate in this new world is the degree to which they can take their deep industry expertise in health care, in financial services and certain government sectors and utilities, et cetera. Which comes from their business process, you know, the BPO organization and they're consulting and the PWC acquisition years ago. The extent to which they can take that codifier, put it in the software, marry it with their data analytics and cognitive platforms and then grow that at scale. That would be a huge differentiator for IBM and give them a really massive advantage from a business model standpoint but as I said, 60% of the IBM's business remains services so we got a ways to go. >> Alright. We're going to be drilling into it again. There's a collision between cloud and big data markets coming together that's forming the IoT. You can see machine learning. You can see artificial intelligence. And I'm really a forcing function in cloud acceleration with data analytics being the key thing. This is theCUBE. We'll be getting the data for you for the next three days. I'm John Furrier. With Dave Vellante. We'll be back with more coverage. Kicking off day one of IBM InterConnect 2017 after the short break.