(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live, from Silicon Valley. It's the Cube. Covering Google Cloud X17. >> Okay welcome back, everyone. We are live in Palo Alto for two days of coverage of Google Next 2017. I'm John Furrier, we're here with Tom Kemp, CEO of Centrify. No longer a startup, they're scaling up. You guys do it very well. Tom, great to see you. Welcome to the Cube. >> Great to be here. >> Saw you at RSA, you guys had an exceptional event. One Presence to show, obviously a security show, you're in the security business. But also mobile world congress will try to get you on again security's hot, front and center at mobile world congress. >> Yeah. >> Security is front and center at Google Cloud Next. Security is front and center at blank event. It's happening everywhere right? So give us the update. What is Centrify, obviously the "No Breach" is your tagline. What's up with Centrify? Give us a quick update on what you're up to. >> Yeah, absolutely. So we're a security company focused, as you said, on identity. And we really address the issue of too many passwords and too much privilege. The fundamental issue that's happening within security, is like 75 billion dollars is being spent on it, it's one of the fastest growing market segments, but it's failing because the breaches are far outnumbering, and growing at a faster rate, than the amount of money being spent on that. And so, we're trying to rethink security by looking at where are the breaches are coming from, and they're coming in from, like in the case of Podesta, stealing usernames and passwords. And Verizon said two thirds of breaches involve stolen credentials. And Forrester just recently said that 80 percent of breaches involve the compromise of privileged accounts, the rude accounts for the infrastructure etc. So if two thirds, to 80 percent of breaches involve identity, we fundamentally believe you need to focus a lot more on that, and that's what we're all about. Focusing on identity. >> And what is this? Is this a new revelation, or is this something that you guys have felt was happening for a long time, or has it just been the matter of fact, that's what's happening? >> You know it's, we have some great investors, and we have Excel, Mayfield, Index, Sigma now called Jex, and Square Adventures. And one of the board members told me, the markets come to you, because we've been doing this for over 10 years. And focusing on identity, and people are like, "Oh okay, that's interesting." But now, if you look at just the massive number of breaches that are occurring, and the focus that identity is the leading attack vector, and then you couple it with the whole move to the Cloud, I know we're going to be talking about what Google is doing in the Cloud, etc. It actually makes the problem even worse. And so we feel that we've been plugging along, doing and focusing on identity, and now kind of the market has come to us, because of the move to Cloud, and the hackers are going after identities. >> Yeah it's interesting, I saw a Facebook friend, I won't say his name for privacy, because I don't have the right to talk about it, he's in bitcoin, so obviously that world is an underbelly in itself. Yeah but, interesting thing is that he had two factor authentication on his phone, and someone hacked his phone and they sent the password back to his phone, all his bank accounts are gone. >> Oh my goodness. >> So this is an example of that privileged identity. So that even two factor authentication, in that case, didn't work. So you starting to see this, right? So what's the answer, and how does it relate to cloud? There's no perimeter in the cloud. Is it federated identity, is it some blocked chain thing, is there new model? What's your view on this, and how you guys attacking it specifically? >> Yeah, I mean in a world in which we're increasingly moving to the cloud, what can you secure? Like if I'm at a Starbucks in Palo Alto, on my Ipad, talking to Google apps, talking to sales force etc., I don't have any Anti Virus, I'm not using any next gen firewall, or VPN etc. So the focus needs to shift to securing the user. And you really need to start integrating, and leveraging, from a multi factor authentication biometrics as well. Use that phone, use the touch ID, to actually ensure that. And then also, in the cloud, start analyzing user behavior. And actually determine, well wait a minute, this person normally doesn't login from China, but now he's accessing the sales force, or Facebook etc. So, it's becoming, evolving more to utilizing mobile device as part of your identity, and it's also leveraging machine learning to understand what normal behavior is, and blocking abnormal behavior. >> And also using big data techniques, because your point about China is interesting. Anyone who travels might have had this situation, we go to Vegas a lot for the Cube, but like I'm in Vegas then I pull out an ATM withdrawal, next I go to use my other credit card, and it says "woah fraud alert." >> Tom: Yes. >> Well, wait a minute, I made a cell phone call, I took money out of the bank, and yet the credit card didn't know that I'm in Vegas. Now that's interesting, so conversely, China's accessing my accounts, and I'm making phone calls in Palo Alto, that should be obvious. >> Yeah. >> That just seems like it's just so disfragmented data sets. >> So historically, the definition of identity was a username, and a password. But, in a Cloud world, identity should be redefined in terms of your applications, your device, your location, and your activity. So, if you are trying to access an app from China, it should ask you for four or five additional bits of information, instead of two factors, it should be multi-factor, and it should include biometrics as well. So, machine learning is this going to become even more critical to reduce fraud, and the compromise of credentials. >> So, let's talk about google next. Because one of the things that, I mean really we know Google, we're living in Palo Alto, they're all around us, they're in Mountain View, Larry Page lives in the hood here. Google has always been a technology innovator, and it's clear that that's the lead for their Cloud. But the enterprise, which they're by the way serious, Dian Green is very serious with enterprise, they're just starting to move down that road. You've been there for awhile, on mobile, and in the enterprise, what is some of the things that people should know about on how hard it is in the enterprise? Specifically with Cloud, what is some of the things that you see as table stakes? >> Yeah, it's actually having meat eating sales reps out in the field. Not relying on some person who's-- >> John: Some bot. >> Yeah some bot, or some 20 year old calling from Austin, or Mountain View, but it's actually having someone there, with a technical architect, that can hop on a subway, or be there within a half hour to spend some quality time. >> John: And strategic selling too right? >> Exactly. Because they have a challenge, which is they're competing with both Microsoft and Amazon. And obviously Microsoft has the enterprise people, and Amazon is really ramping up in that area. And I think that, so you can throw the technology, but enterprise accounts want to be able to have a conversation face to face, more so than executive coming out and having a dinner with someone. >> Take me through a sales motion, because this is important. You and I have talked about this in the past, and Dave Loth and I always talk about it on the Cube. And it used to be well known in the VC circles, that sales forces are expensive because the sales motions are different. What is the typical sales motion for an enterprise like Sell. Because it's not as simple as saying, "self service, Cloud, put your credit card down," and get you know, Cooper and Eddy's support, terminal access, static IP's, virtual servers, oh by the way I got a support DB2 as well. A non Oracle database, or Oracle. >> Well, look I mean, it's very easy to have that bite over the web for when you start a developer for a new application. And Amazon's done a great job at that, Microsoft's getting there as well. So if you really want the existing applications to move to the Cloud, you have to sit down and have conversations about a hybrid Cloud environment. Because people will have on premise active directory, they'll have a set of security policies, etc. And so the conversation needs to be had, is like how do you bridge on premise, with the Cloud as well, and make that heterogeneous environment look and feel and smell like it's homogeneous from authentication, authorization, audit perspective, compliance perspective, etc. So you certainly need to first and foremost be able to put architects out there, have that conversation, etc. And you just can't rely too much on partners. And I think from there service level agreements, and then also showing that your Cloud platform is incredibly secure as well. >> Yeah I would agree, I would just say one, on the meat eating sales rep, basically what that means people understand the domain, with an architect technically that's going to SC, and then you have to really kind of have an understanding that there's a multiple stakeholder role. One's a recommender, one's an influencer, one's a decision maker, and it is a campaign. It's a multi pronged campaign. >> Yeah you have to think-- >> John: Know their problems, give them a solution, value creation. >> Absolutely. >> John: Value selling. >> Because there's just a level of complexity. And again I'm not saying that Google for new projects, with the current sales motion, can't bring on an app, and maybe that app leverages their machine learning, which seems to be world class right? >> TensorFlow's getting great traction, Intel's building chips for that as well. >> Yeah. >> Google owns a great developer mind share, and I think they've really cracked the code on open source, and they have great empathy with the developers, we were talking about with Val earlier. But with operationally I just see a disconnect. And Amazon's quietly ramping up too, they're no spring chicken either when it comes to direct selling, but they're been working more years on that. >> And I think you seen the word Hybrid Cloud, and I know you spent time with the folks at Vmware, talking about the relationship with Ama... That's all about the Hybrid Cloud, which people need, the enterprises need a bridge and on ramp. And I think, from our perspective- >> Vmware is very solid with Gelsinger and their sales force. They're very, >> Yeah absolutely. >> Very strong with enterprise selling. >> And that's what we focus, cause we initially started on premise, we tied things in to active directory for example, but now we have a Cloud platform, and we advertise and promote ourselves as addressing identity for the Hybrid environment, and providing the bridge between the two, and I think that's critical. >> Now do you guys have an enterprise sales force, right? >> Absolutely. >> So you've invested in that, over ten years? >> Oh yeah, absolutely. So we have over 60 percent of the Fortune 50, and 80 percent of our sales comes from the Global 2000. We've grown, we're over 100 million in sales, so we're in there having that conversation with enterprises all the time. >> So Tom, so we know Diane Green lives in the neighborhood, so let's pretend she calls us up, "Hey Tom, John, come over. "We'll have a cocktail, and dinner. "I need your advice on how to ramp up my enterprise, "operational empathy, and strategy." What would we advise her? What would you advise her, I have my own opinion. But go to you first. >> I really think and focus on, obviously use the machine learning as a key wedge for new applications, but really focus on the concept of Hybrid. And she mastered going from physical to virtual. Now, everyone's virtualized, and so she needs to figure out how I can get virtual to Cloud, V to C, right? And have the people, and have the conversation, and provide bridging technologies as well. So I think that is going to require, not just purely Cloud based stuff, but it's going to probably provide, she's going to need, either through partnerships, or developer stuff. >> Or M and A. >> Or M and A, she's going to have to build connectors, to help facilitate the bridging, because she can go after definitely the 20 percent of the new stuff, but if you want to attack the 80 percent of the existing stuff, and she did a masterful job of going physical to virtual-- >> At VMware. >> At VMware, and now her challenge is to go V to C. Virtual to Cloud. >> So my advice, Diane if you're watching, is the following: One, don't screw up the Google formula. And I know she's transforming Google, and that's a good thing, they need that right now. But I think, what I like about what I'm seeing at Google Next right now is that they have great technology chops. In kind of the Google, pat themselves on the back kind of way, which is they got mojo, they've always had great technology mojo, and that comes down from the founder. So the machine learning stuff, the AI, the stuff that they're doing in their portfolio has, I call the coolness-relevant factor on the tech. What I would do, is I would specifically nurture that, cause she's also a good knack for doing innovative things, and she's very innovative manager, and I've seen that at Vmware, and other places that she's been advising. So she's got a knack for, "Ahh that's cool, look we should do that cool technology "that's going to have legs in the future." So she's got a good sage picking out the technology. I would do an M and A. I would just stop expanding the existing Google culture relative to that sales motions and the enterpriseness, and just go buy somebody. Spend the billion dollars, or more, take someone out whose got full global, regional sales force, why not? Because then those guys already have the relationships, so the buy, build, to the sales force might take too long. I'm not sure that they could get there. I mean, what do you think about that? >> Yeah I think it's, I think they've been public about it. I think they have to invest in their own, but I do think that M and A, I mean they're number three, and they got to do something. Clearly the machine learning AI stuff is going to be huge. We're actually very impressed, I got emails from the folks at the show, about this whole video stuff, in terms of their ability to use the machine learning, and AI to interpret video, which is pretty impressive. But again that's going to be more for a vertical. Or a specific type of application. And so I think they're going to need to do a combination . >> Here's the thing that I'm seeing though. There's a speed of Google, and there's a speed of enterprise. They might have to throttle down, I don't want to say dumb down, that's particularly not the issue, it's more of throttle down the cadence of what enterprises are comfortable with. For example, SLA's, their SLA's are a little bit gray area, but they're awesome on, "hey it only costs X dollars, "import this great data and crunch all this stuff." So they've got great pricing. >> They need to master, Diane did a masterful job of like, overnight she had a utility that could go P to V, and you flipped it up, and everything just magically worked. And they need to prove that they can forklift the applications, with minimal to no changes, and things magically work. And that requires a bunch of software partnership technology, that it's like flipping a switch to go the Cloud. And if you don't like it, then you can roll it back as well. >> What's their security in position in your mind? You've done an audit, you been keeping track of it, or they're secure. Or what's the needs of the enterprise that they should be addressing for security? Well you guys have a relationship with any other booth at the event. >> Yeah absolutely, and we integrate at multiple levels as well. I think they're doing a pretty good job, I think that other vendors like Microsoft are really more heavily investing in areas that we're in, such as identity, so Microsoft has basically replicated the playbook with active directory, and they have something called Azure AD, and so Google doesn't have anything that's equivalent. That's good for us, that actually leads to opportunities, but they could do more in the areas of identity. I think if you look at what Amazon's doing in terms of web application firewalls, and protecting applications that are being spun up in the cloud. I think those are areas that can be improved. Encryption, key management, etc. So if you look at the slide that they have where they say insecurity, I think they list three items, but then if you were to compare it to say Microsoft, or Amazon, they've got five, six, seven items right there as well. I think that there's definitely going to be needs and requirements that need to be met and addressed there. So it's good, for us. >> Well to me it's just a matter of their evolution, they can only go as fast as they can go. That's what the people that I tend to talk to don't get. They can be critical of Google, but at the end of the day they can only go so fast. >> Yeah, and also another bit of advice, is they do have a very good install base with Gsuite, formerly Google apps, but they got to do a better job of leveraging that when people try to move to infrastructure as a server-- >> I think they're taken that advice because it was clear that they're at this event, was they're showcasing a lot of the stats on Gsuite, they're also talking about the apps. And that's consistent with IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft. They're throwing in their Sass layers as part of the stack as well. That's how they can differentiate from Google. What else do they have right? >> Really it's almost like a startup company that's been around for a few years. They have their initial product, and they come out with their second product and the board members will say, "Well what's the adoption of cross selling "the new product with the existing?" And so it should be interesting to see if they can get people that bought in to the Gsuite vision, to say, "Oh okay, now I'm going to start firing up servers "on the Google Cloud platform." >> Well you bring up a good point about their Gsuite, and I mentioned Microsoft using Office 365 as an example. Oracle throws their apps into the blender, if you will. On the numbers and everything. It's interesting Wikibon research is showing that the past layers squeezing, that's a big debate in our own research team, but Gartner research that I just recently looked at from February. Basically there's a new talk about Sass, so if you start including Sass, then you got to open up the conversation to Salesforce, Adobe, and on and on and on. Because there's a Cloud service provider model out there. Linkedin's a service provider. So what is Sass, I always look at it like what's the Sass equation look like. I mean, what does Cloud really look like? >> I look at the statistics, because we address both infrastructure as a service, and software as a service as well, with our identity solutions. Clearly infrastructure as a service is a much bigger market, Sass is pretty significant, but if you add up Sass, infrastructure, and Pass, it's about 24 billionish right there. But guess what, Amazon already has over 10 of it last year. Amazon has 40 percent of the Cloud market as well. And they've proven that you don't have to have a Sass capability to be incredibly successful in the Cloud. >> Well they have their one Sass that was called Amazon.com, but they broke that out. Alright, Tom what's next for you guys at Centrify. What's on your, anything coming up, things you're working on, share some quick plug for Centrify, and the progress you're making in status? >> We've been doing this for 10 years, and we feel really good about providing basically a platform for identity. And one theme and trend that we're seeing a lot of in the security market is that buyers have security fatigue, they're so sick of dealing with point solutions, and I think that's working to our advantage, that people are looking at a vendor such as us, that can address, not only single sign up, but multi-factor authentication, privilege account management as well. So we're very much focused these days on providing a set of solutions that are all built on a platform, and just kind of filling in-- >> When you say fatigue, you mean sprawl and applications they're buying just another platform, because they do try to try everything, why wouldn't they? They're getting tired of that? >> In security you just have a lack of security knowledge. There's a huge skills gap when it comes to security. And if you have to buy a point solution to address every little bit of security, you just can't hire people, right? And then you find that you have air gaps that actually makes you less secure. And so we've over time built this platform up, and now we're really seeing that people are like, I don't have to get a standalone EMM, a standalone SSO, a standalone MFA solution, a standalone password vault solution etc. So we're very much focused on selling our platform to customers and with this whole mindset of customers wanting to consolidate vendors. Historically vendor consolidation was about buyers wanting that, but now IT people want that. And so we're really just focusing on, internally articulating how we can actually address a lot of problems that people have with too much privilege, and too many passwords. >> And you guys are expanding your sales force team? >> Oh absolutely. We've definitely hit the critical mass. We're over a hundred million sales, we're growing fast, we're cash flow positive as well. >> John: Alright, congratulations. The VC's happy. Time to go public, so what's your evaluation? Unicorn. >> No comment on that, rule 40 and all that fun stuff. We got a lot of checkboxes right there. >> I think your VC partner is right, your investor, the world is spinning towards you because if you look at the identity, and nearly everything in the digital world, whether it's Cloud, data, or packets or people. It's going to be a persona based focus. Not like, what company you work for. >> We had this huge trend of consumerization of IT, so it's really about the user. So focus on securing the user, not focusing on securing the network, because the network's gone. >> Finally, 30 years later, it's coming back to the user. It's been talked about, the passports, the digital wallet. >> Exactly. >> John: Tom Kemp, CEO of Centrify, a hot startup growing over 100 million in sales. Heard here on the Cube. Very successful company. Really have a nice approach, world's spinning towards them. Really hopefully a great solution for our security and our liberties so we don't get hacked over and over again. It's the Cube, bringing you all the coverage of Google Next, here in the studio I'm John Furrier. Be right back with more, after this short break. (resonant techno music)