>> Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE. Covering Inforum DC 2018. Brought to you by Infor. >> Good afternoon and welcome back to Inforum 2018. Our coverage here on theCUBE as we start to wrap up our two days of coverage here at the show. We're in Washington, D.C. at the Walter Washington Convention Center, along with Dave Vellante, John Walls here. We're joined now by Mayumi Hiramatsu, who is the SVP of Cloud Operations Engineering and Security at Infor. Mayumi, how are you doing? >> Great to be here, thanks for coming. >> And a recent honoree by the way, Woman of the Year at the Women in IT Awards, so congratulations on that. (clapping) >> Awesome! >> Thank you. >> Very nice honor. >> Great. >> Tell us... big picture here, cloud strategy as far as Infor is concerned and why that separates you from the pack. What makes that stand out, you think, from your peers? >> I think there are a couple of things. One is that when I think of cloud, a lot of people will think about cloud as, it's a software running in the cloud, but it's more than that. It's about the solution and the capabilities that we're building on the cloud. And Infor is perfect, in that we're building enterprise software solutions. So if you look at Infor and compare us to the competition, we may have multiple of competition wrapped together in a solution. And that's really powerful, and you can only do that, really well, in the cloud because it's already built for that. It's integrated and the power of data is really amazing, because when you think about cloud, it's not just the software, it's the data, what you can do with it. And with the latest technologies around artificial intelligence and machine learning, there is so much insight we can give to our enterprise customers to make them successful in their business. So, I think of cloud as not only the technology, which I love, because I'm actually an engineer, but it's really the business transformation, digital transformation that the cloud enables, with the technologies like artificial intelligence, data analytics, data science, machine learning. There's just so much bolted on, that you can really only do in the cloud. >> Can you help us understand that competitive nuance? >> Yeah. >> I'm not sure I fully understand, 'cause others will say, well, we have cloud too. What's different between the way in which you provide solutions in the cloud and... pick a company. >> Yeah. >> Another company says, we have cloud, all of our SaaS is in the cloud. >> Right, so I think the first thing is, Infor's always focused on solutions, which means that our competition may have one of, let's say, a dozen things that we put together. So, if you're using our competition, they may have a cloud and some of them were born in the cloud, but then you have to figure out, how do I integrate it with the rest of the world? Because if you think about it, ERP. It's running your business. And it might be your HR and about your employees. It might be CRM and customer information. It could be supply chain and figuring out what parts I need to buy. It could be billing and figuring out how do I bill my customers. All these different solutions today, if you look at our competition, they may solve one, two, three different portions, but certainly not a dozen of these all together and then tailored towards the industry. So, we can pretty much bolt on and get started pretty quickly, if you think about, for example, healthcare. We already have a healthcare solution ready to go, so you don't have to figure out how do I put 12, 15 different software, glue it together and make it work? And maybe some of it is running in the cloud, maybe some of it is not running in the cloud, then the integration and making it work gets really complex. But ours is already pre-built, ready for that, whether it's healthcare, manufacturing, food & beverage, fashion. We have a lot of these already ready to go, so then you just have to customize it, as opposed to starting from scratch, figuring out how to integrate all these different software, making sure they work together and then harnessing the data, and then adding all these different, artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities that is so powerful today. You can't do that without the cloud and you certainly can't do it if you're trying to glue together different solutions. It's just really not easy. And I'll add one more thing, I was talking to a customer about this today, which I thought was brilliant. The other thing is security. Most people worry about security in the cloud and I run our security as well, the Chief Information Security Officer reports in to me and the whole security team does. And I can tell you, if you're combining 12, 15 different types of software and trying to have consistent security all across? Oh, that's a very difficult thing to do. But we've already figured it out. So all you have to do is buy the package, the solution, it' already working together. You already have security overlay on it. They have consistency in terms of how we manage the security, whether it's single sign-on and who has access, and making sure that that gets all the way through, all the way up to the data lake, where all of the data gets captured, all the way up to the artificial intelligence. So, if you think about security and how important that is, and how difficult it might be to do on one software, let alone a dozen software, the fact that we've already built that, is a big differentiator. >> So it's all there, and when you talked about, all you have to do is customize it, you're talking about, you're not talking about hardcore coding, you're talking about things like naming and setting it up. Is that right? >> Yeah, and-- >> Or are you talking about deeper levels of custom mods? >> In our multi-tenant cloud, we don't do mods, but instead, we have extensions. And extensibility is really important because now those are, again, essentially plug-and-play. We already built it for you, so it's so much easier than creating each piece of code every single time. Again, it's about, how do you make sure that you can integrate these very important sets of business processes together. Not only how quickly can you use it, how secure is it? And ensuring that you can actually focus on your business value, right, because trying to assemble all of this together and making it work, it's an enormous amount of work and I think, as an enterprise, you want to focus on actually giving customer value instead of trying to figure out, the mechanics underneath the hood. >> I mean, you certainly get the value of cloud software, right, and cloud ERP. Who doesn't? Like out of the industries that you're trying to, get in front of or whose attention you're trying to get. Where's the, if there's someone that's kicking and screaming a little bit, who might that be or what might that be? >> I don't think that there's a specific industry, if you will, I think some industries, in fact, and when I think about it, all industries are getting disrupted, right? If they don't, they're actually getting left behind. So, I think some industries feel it more, as in, they might be behind the curve. And I wouldn't necessarily say industry, maybe some of the companies in that industry. >> Companies within? >> Yeah, are waking up to it. I went to a Gartner Supply Chain Conference a couple years ago and they were talking about bimodal supply chain, right. You have the teams that are doing the old way and then companies that are doing the new way. And companies are literally going through this shift. And I had this interesting conversation that it's really not bimodal. Companies are essentially somewhere in that spectrum and what they need to do is figure out from point A to point B and how you make that transition. It's a huge transition. I would also say that there's a cultural element as well, and so one of the key things that, especially for companies that are moving from on-prem to cloud. As a provider, it's really important to realize it's a completely different business model. And it's not always talked about, again, a lot of times people think, oh well, you know, Infor, you just moved the software into AWS and you're calling it SaaS. It's more than that. Besides the capabilities, its a huge cultural shift that even Charles talked about on-stage, which is that, software companies you focus on the product, versus, as a SaaS, the last 'S', Software as a Service, you are focusing on the service. So, the analogy I use a lot is, maybe we were actually a food company, we'd build beautiful food, delicious food, nutritious food, maybe it was a rotisserie chicken, right? But now I switch to a restaurant. Food is only table stakes. And you know, restaurant reviews is about services, the ambiance, how quickly you respond, how clean it is, all these other elements matter. And if you think about Infor or any other company for that matter, that we're focused on product and software, to then becoming a SaaS service provider, it's a huge transformation for a company, and I can tell you we're going through that, right? Infor as an on-prem company moving to the SaaS, and there's so much focus now on customer experience, is because realizing that we're no longer a software company, we're a Software as a Service company. And there's a lot more we need to put in, in terms of making sure the customer experience is good. As our customers go through the same journey, they also need to realize, it's no longer about providing that product, but the experience that they're providing to the customers, and we see our customers actually going through that journey. Some might be harder to move within whatever industry, because maybe they have legacy product, legacy machines, right, to be able to lift and ship to quickly. But there's definitely a path, and if you think about some of these industries that's been around for a long time, they're definitely going through this transition, and in fact, I think they have to. >> So how did you set priorities in terms of, you come to that recognition that we're services, in the cloud. Luckily, you don't have to manage data centers, so you could take that off the table, so what were your priorities and where did you start, and what are you focused on now? >> One of the first things that I did was really pushing this cultural shift for the company, because a lot of people, some people may think, okay, it's software, I'm putting in the AWS, it's cloud. But all the other service elements, like that restaurant analogy, it wasn't mature in terms of where we needed to be and therefore you hear a lot about customer experience and customer success and a lot of these elements that we really have to put more emphasis on. But the other areas that I focused, so I came in, I focused on cloud operations, security, tooling, and architecture, that was the set that I was focused on. What I did was essentially transformation, right, it's People Process Technology in addition to culture, so culture we already talked about, the sense of urgency is very different as well. On-prem, maybe you don't have to respond in two seconds, but in cloud, you do, and so making sure that we had crisp KPIs, which are different than on-prem, making sure that processes were completely redefined. I've actually done benchmark with our competition to see that our SLAs and KPIs are either on par or better. I'm a big proponent of engineering and technology, so we built a lot of technology monitoring, tooling, so that we can do a lot more in terms of self-service and automation, that's really the only to scale, and execute consistently. Spent a lot of time over the last year, literally re-defining the identity of our jobs to how do we make sure we have the right skillset, and retraining some of the folks who may have a new identity and they need to learn new skills, to coming up with new tools and technologies that they can use, to changing our processes so we can up our SLA and make sure that we're either meeting or beating our customers' SLAs, complete transformation in the last year. >> You must be exhausted. (laughs) >> When do you sleep? >> I don't sleep much, but... >> You must not. >> So, new metrics, this is intriguing to me. Can you give us an example of sort of this, new KPIs as a result of this cloud, SaaS world? >> Yeah, for sure. I think every company has their own sort of core KPIs that are public, and cloud is usually uptime, right? If you have support, it could be how quickly you respond, we call it mean time to respond. Underneath the hood, I've created key KPIs for, what I call, critical cloud qualities. One is, of course, reliability, so that would be in addition to uptime, like 99.7%, which is two hours and 11 minutes by the way, per month downtime, so making sure that we're actually meeting that. >> Sorry, just to interrupt. >> Yeah. >> You're measuring from the application view right, not the green light on the server, is that fair? >> That's a great question, because that is exactly the evolution we want as well, so when I talk about the transformation at my organization, we were measuring the hardware first. We are now measuring, essentially, outages. So I don't care if the server's still running, but if the customers can't log in, it's an outage, right? But that's not something you can monitor by looking at a server because sometimes the server's up and running. But maybe a process went down. >> System's fine. >> Exactly. So that's the monitoring-- >> Okay, so slight adjustment in the typical metrics, sorry to interrupt, but please carry on. >> That was a perfect question. >> Okay. >> So KPIs, so underneath the hood, so here are some examples of metrics for availability. Mean time to detect, that's an internal metric, and my internal metric is five minutes, meaning, if you don't know we have an issue in five minutes, it's probably not automated and monitored, so we better hook up some additional monitoring as an example. Mean time to respond, that's a very public one, a lot of times, customers demand that, and if you look at competition, that is the only metric that's actually public, potentially even on a contract, right? So we have mean time to respond, we also have mean time to resolution, that's usually an internal metric. I'm sure competition has that as well, but making sure that we have that response right away, because it's one thing to respond, but if it's not resolved as quickly, it's not good. Other metrics when it comes to reliability, mean time to communicate. And this is really interesting. One of the things that I found was, we could be working on something but we're not telling the customers, so they're wondering if we're actually sleeping on the job, even though we're actually actively working in the background, right? >> Did they get the message, right? >> Right, so mean time to communicate, as an example of reliability metrics. So reliability is one of the core tenets. The other tenets? Performance, how quickly do you respond, right? And I always say that if performance is too long, it's equivalent of being down. Imagine if you're using Google and you put a search in, and it takes you three minutes to get a response time, you probably have left by then. So that performance, page load time, page response time, these response times actually matter. So we have actually metrics around that and we monitor and manage them. Security, we have a boatload of security KPIs, whether it's number of critical vulnerabilities, how quickly we respond to security incidents, a boatload of those as well, and then, last but not least, agility. So how quickly we can respond if we have to do a deployment. So what that means is, let's say, every software company has a bug, and let's say we actually had to quickly respond to that, can we do it within 24 hours if we needed to? Security is a perfect example. A mature company should be able to say, okay, there was a security alert that got to the industry, right? We should be able to quickly respond to that and apply a patch immediately and address it. A company that may not be so mature, it might take them months to go through thousands of machines. So I call that time to market, how quickly can we actually deploy something, and that's not just deploying it, but testing it and making sure it's not going to break anything and be able to test it and verify it. So these are examples of metrics-- >> Great examples. Are your SLAs... for a SaaS company, your SLAs presumably have to be more strict than you'll contractually agree to, but maybe not, then your typical SLA out of AWS or Google, or Microsoft Azure. Is that true? >> Yes. >> So you guys will commit contractually to these types of SLAs that you would expect in an enterprise, versus kind of the standard, off-the-shelf AWS SLA, and how do you reconcile the gap or do you have a different agreement with AWS? >> We do have a... The SLA is pretty much standard when it comes to AWS specifically, right? >> 'Cause they want-- >> Yeah. >> Homogeneity. >> Exactly. So I think the challenge is, every SaaS provider needs to architect around it and when you think about it, hardware failure rate is usually 4% industry-wide. You can expect the hardware will go down, right? >> Yep. >> Network goes down, various things go down. So then it's our job that sits on top of it, to make sure that we build it for reliability. Perhaps we actually have redundancy built-in, and we can actually go from one side to the other, we have that, for example. So if AWS goes down, and they do, all right? I ran data centers for many, many years, it happens. It's our job to make sure that we can fail over it, and not have that customer experience, so it's an overlay availability that we have to build-- >> You're architecting recovery into the system, I know we're tight on time, but I got to ask you, 'cause Pam couldn't make it today. You're part of the WIN, the Women Infor Network, I presume, right? >> Yes. >> So maybe we can just talk a little about that-- >> Yeah. >> It's a great topic. >> Women in technology, right? >> I got some of the best interviews at Infor shows with women, Deborah Norville came on, Naomi Tutu, Lara Logan. Just some awesome folks, but so-- >> So your thoughts, we know you're passionate about the role of women in technology, so how you feel about that, if you want, and Infor, what's being done, or what can be done about that? >> Great questions. So I'm a big proponent of women in technology. Partly because I went through my pain, right, I've always been a small percentage in terms of engineering role as female in technology. I'm also a board member of Girls in Tech, and I channel my energy that way as well as I try to mentor and help others, for example, mentoring engineering students at Berkeley. I'm a Berkeley alum. And I think it's really important that we get more women in technology and keep in them in technology, and candidly, our latest trend is actually going down. So the reason why I think it's important, besides making sure that everybody has a chance, and all those good reasons, we have statistics that actually show, the more diversity you have, the better your product is going to be, and the better it's actually going to hit your top line revenue. And over and over again, whether it's women in the board seat, or women executives, or women engineers, no matter where, by getting women's input into technology, you're actually representing 50% of the consumer base. >> The user base, right. >> Right and so, if we don't do that as a company, we're actually not going to be able to get the user base feedback and I think it's so really important, not only for the economy to have those wonderful workforce in the job, but also for the company products to actually reflect the user's needs and actually improve the revenue, right? So from that perspective, I think it's really important, I love the fact that at Infor, we do a couple of things when it comes to diversity. So one, is WIN, as you know, Women Infor Network. I think it's a fabulous program, and in fact, I get a lot of male colleagues saying they want to join WIN, and they do. My last session, there were actually women and men joining it, because it's really about leadership and how do we cultivate our next, next talented workforce to be successful. The other one is EAP, the Infor Education Alliance Program, so that not only looks at women, but just diversity, right, and bringing students into this workforce. I think it's a great way to help the economy, help the products, help the company. And at the end of the day, why not? >> You're awesome, super impressive and articulate, and really self-confident, and hopefully an inspiration for young women out there watching, so thank you so much, really appreciate it. >> And hope you get some sleep sometime too. (laughing) >> Thank you. >> Busy, busy schedule. All right, thank you. Thank you Mayumi. We're back with more here on theCUBE, you are watching us live in Washington, D.C., and we'll be right back. (upbeat music)

>> Live from Washington D.C, it's the Cube, covering inforum DC 2018 Brought to you by inforum. >> And welcome back to Washington D.C. I think you kind of guess where we are. [Mumbles] Over my shoulder there inforum 2018, along with Dave Vellante. I'm John Walls, we are live here at the Walter Washington convention center for this years show. We are joined by Martine Cadet, who is vice president of the educational arts program at Inform. Martine, good to see you. >> Thank you. >> And Jennifer Bucanan who is manger and head of the Inforum practice and CFO Solutions. Jennifer, good to see you. >> Thank You >> Let's talk about the program. Martine, ou can give us, first off, the inside scope of this. And then Jennifer you're on the other side of the fence. >> Right >> Because the very people, the individuals that Martine and her program are training, you're hiring. >> Absolutley. >> So I want to hear, first off lets talk about the program in general and then to you, Jennifer for about why. And what do you find really attractive about these people? >> Absolutley >> So the Education Alliance Program is 4 years old this year actually, so we're very excited about that. And what we really set out to do was build a talent pipeline that our company and our ecosystem of partners and customers can tap into. So there's been a lot of conversation about the fact that there's not enough talent to fill the positions that are in the industry. So we wanted to do something different where by we could actually grow that talent organically. So instead of going to the oricals and the SAP And having that revolving desk of okay we can leave this here and go to this competetor and work for them and be experienced. We need to find another way to be able to grow our talent so that as an organization, we can continue to be innovative and grow as we move forward. So EAP really kind of serves within that gap, but we do it a little differently than some of the other programs. We really focus on not just identifying talent, but really training them on the industry skill set. So what people `learn in school is amazing, but it is usually more theory. How do you take that theory and really apply it to what is really needed in the industry today, In a real job today? And that where the Education Alliance Program really kind of serves that niche. >> And generally speaking, the age group would be what? Of the trainees. >> The majority of the people that we train are more college age. So 18 all the way up to, I would say early 30's. So early in career talent is what we think about. >> Okay, are they in school? >> Some of, yeah. >> The majority of them right now are in school, but we also welcome people who are outside of school. We've kind of evolved our program where its not just partnerships with colleges and universities, but we train people who come from training organizations; like Yes We Code, and New York Urban League and things of that nature. And You're Up is another great partnership that we started having relationships with. So we do everything from the traditional integrate within a classroom setting, to more of a bootcamp model where talent gets trained over the course of a couple of months to meet this business needs that we have and are here now. >> Okay, and so Jennifer, then on the hiring side of this the advantage to you is what? >> Well for us, we are always looking for folks that coming out of school, whether it's a masters degree or a bachelors degree, that they have a little bit of a focus going into consulting and implementation services. There's a mix of skills that you look for. Some of it is that commitment to being a forthcoming service orientated person. Somebody with a little bit of perspective. And when we met the EAP students, that ambition just comes right out of those folks. And they have purpose in mind because they started to get a little bit of a taste of the real world of what they want to do. So they've got context and they've got direction and a lot of the folks that we've met with had some good accounting and finance knowledge, which we value. Plus they had the IT component, where traditionally if I just go to try to do some campus recruiting I might get one or the other, but it's hard to get both. >> So training that revolving door, that martine described which, there's still some of that going on, but you get a lot of viable knowledge. You know where the skeletons are buried. They can fast pass some of it. Trading that for excitement, diversity, maybe a different type of creativity. Certainly not as much well that's the way it's done in the enterprise. Right? Maybe discuss that a little bit. >> Yeah absolutley, the folks that, what we need coming in have that creative element and they're not just, ya know, crunching out and doing maybe the theory that you have mentioned. They've had a little bit of experience at a practical site of understanding how to apply technology and solve buisiness problems. Cause that experience that they go through in the EAP program is almost like a simulation and gives them a little taste of that. And when we talk about what we do and we introduce them to our business and try to look for a fit. They have a better understanding of what we are talking about and do. >> So Martine, in the 4 years since we've first met, what has changed? Has the scope, the goals expanded? What did you not forget that actually happened? >> Yeah Maybe you could share some of your experiences. >> Yeah, so in the four years we've gone deeper around world based training. So when we started, it was more around exposing students to different career opportunities, to what is EAP. I've been in the industry forever, but I was always more on the consumer side. So I didn't know what ERP was. [Laughing] Is this even professional? So helping students see the opportunities there, was kind of the initial focus and getting them to have kind of a toe in the water. We've gone much deeper this year, in particular going to role based training. So, what do you need? What skills encompanies you to be an amazing sales professional versus somebody who's going into the development space, or somebody who's going to manage kind of the cloud space, which is where our company is focused. So that's been one of the biggest evolutions in which we have done within EAP over the last couple years and were much more global than we were when we first started. So we are excited about that as well. And then in terms of things that surprised us. I think of of the areas that surprised us, it was a little bit harder to place students frankly, than we had initially had thought it would be. And so one of the ways that we've worked through that is we've worked with our talent science team, and they've been phenomenal at really helping identify fit. And so now we can have much richer conversations with the hiring managers around. Yes, I know that you would like an expereinced hire perhaps, but this is a reason why one of these more inexperienced hires is actually a great fit and will be your next superstar on you team. And on the flip side, we can have conversations with the talent around career opportunities that they might not have even thought about before. Cause now we've got kind of there fit for different roles. >> So were certainly seeing in many buisiness settings, that gut feel is being replaced by, you know, data and fact. When it comes to hiring people though, there's still that, well there's several things. There's gut feel, there's repor, there's biases, so are technologies like machines intelligence, and programs like this cutting through that? >> Yeah that's what we're trying to have happen. I mean it's hard, it's hard. Everyones trying to tackle these issues, but with technologies like talent signs, with having programs which address the feedback of well I don't know where to find a first talent. Well if you go to the same three schools that you always go to, that are by nature not diverse, then you're not going to find the diverse talent you are looking for. So if you can tap into a program where we go out of our way to make sure we're actually fishing in new ponds, and that we're bringing in amazing talent to the forefront that people can tap into. And we are really proud about that. >> Well, what's really key about that, and we were having this conversation earlier. Is that if you really want to bring diversity into your organization, you have to look beyond your inner circle. But it's a pain to do that, its time consuming. So what you've done, is you've fast passed that. Right? And give an opportunity for somebody to dive in. >> Yeah >> Yeah >> Sure, and some of those folks became part of our circle. Cause a year ago we met a wide group of the folks in the EAP program, and we were impressed by the broadness. Like I mentioned earlier, you've got some folks that are still sophomore, junior year that are just getting started. We've got relationships foudning with those folks. We have folks that are just getting ready to graduate, and we have folks that have been in the workplace, came back. So we've got a breath of experience, but folks from all over. And we were one of those folks who would go to the same school over and over. And you know, we would get good talent but, it's that breath, and that new perspective that comes in. And now that's our pipeline. We've got folks at different levels in their educational career that we stay in touch with. And a lot of the students reaching back to us is what helped us make connections for folks to bring on. >> So how do you find me? If I'm an interested student? >> Yeah >> Or how do I find you? >> Yeah >> If I am at a school. That's one question, and secondly once I'm in, is it like ROTC? Like I have a three year commitment after that? [Laughing] [Mumbling] >> You're invested in me. >> That's a great idea. [Laughing] >> A lot of resource time is being put into me, developing me, so what am I going to give you back? >> Yeah absolutely. >> Take on both of those if you would. >> Its more about finding the member institutions and then finding me the right talent within those organizations. Right? And so we do a lot of research and analysis on where we want to go. So we do want to make sure we are building pipelines that fit the busininesses needs first and foremost. So where do we have a majority of our offices? Where do our partners and customers have a majority of their offices? Where are the hiring needs and the types of roles? Then based on that we look for organizations that actually have core programs that align to that. And those are the ones that we want to have relationships with first and foremost. And then we seek out the talent. We actually have marketing communications people who are out there and promoting the courses and the partnerships that we have in the classroom to hopefully get the talent to actually apply to the class itself.. >> Alright so once I'm in. >> Once your in. >> You've got me. >> Yeah. >> I'm a junior, I'm studying, I'm doing my thing. >> Yeah. >> You're training me. Well I'm going to graduate in a year. So am I on the hook, or will you place me? >> We investin their training, and we also try to provide wrap around support services. So we've got people on the team who are beyond passionate and focused on making sure they've got the soft skills, who are also focused on making sure they are introduced to hiring managers within our ecosystem and within our organization who might be interested in talking to them. We set up kind of meet and greets as well, where we have events around that so placements important to us. We can't commit and guarantee a role per say, but we can open up opportunities perhaps the students didn't have before. And give them the training so that when they are compared against their peer, they can come out ahead. >> So having that Charles several times and interviewing him a number of times, this is, it certainly feels more than optics. What are the success metrics that you look at, and can you share some with us? >> Yeah, so we do look at how many people we actually trained and made it through the program. We look at how many people have been placed within Inforum as well as our ecosystem. We are looking to see how many students will actually pursue a path to certification, and go through the deeper training and learning. And then we look and see how many people are actually liking the program. Like what they're getting out of it. We'd love to see, I'd personally love to see in a couple years that people will have gone through EAP are now future customers, your future partners. You know, placement is one piece, but its also how are we influencing the industry as a whole? And for competitors, hiring EAP students, that actually goodness. Like we are trying to really change what is going on in the injustry perspective on how we grow and change talents. Because the way its working today doesn't work for everybody. So we've got to do something different. And the fact that Inforum has stepped up to actually grow it organically, I think is you know, a testimony to Charles. >> Great mindset, I mean you're not trying to just hang on and you're certainly embracing this. But if when an individual leaves, to whether even a competitor, there's some pride in that. Like hey we trained this individual and we're changing the industry. And you know, sometimes those things just have a way of coming back around. >> Yes, yeah, yes >> Absolutely >> So Jennifer, from the clients side if you will, how big could this program be for you? Like how helpful has it been, and how much more do you need it in order to meet these employee gaps? Cause as we've heard, the numbers aren't adding up right now. >> Right, right. So for us we've been having some conversations about how do we grow together on this? They've offered to say hey, CFO Solutions, would you like to be involved in some of the teaching opportunities? So we've been having dialouge about how that might be. And we've been talking about particular skill sets. You know, they start out with kind of a broad skill set and we work with a very specialized component of that. So we've been talking about the product mix that they involve in their program and bringing something more direct to what we're working with. So that's a big. >> Personalized learning. >> Yes. So its helping us kind of refine our pipeline because we know what's going to be coming out of it and we know that is is getting that slice of this US and the world if necessary right? It gives us a little assurity that we can get folks at different levels of their career. We can start talking to them now and we can start working with these guys on honing the skillset that they'll be coming in with. The soft skills piece that you had mentioned earlier was on of the real standout skills that we saw come out of this. All these folks, I can't overemphasize the driviness, the commitment they had, the communicating with me over a year period. And they're boldness, cause that's one of the main things that we need out of the folks that we bring and put in front of our clients. >> So this is all awesome, touchy feely stuff too, but at the end of the day, I've read that it has a buisiness impact. >> Absolutely, absolutley. >> So what's your experience been in terms of the bottom line? >> Well, so buiness impact wise, when we take a risk and bring somebody fresh out of school, and we bring him to a porject where you require very specialized skills, we need people that we can take a risk on, who will hit the ground running. So if I go and grab somebody from anywhere, I don't know what I'm going to get. I don't know if they're going to like their career. I don't know if they're going to understand what we are doing. And there's a lot of ramp up time, time before I can bill for that source, just to be practical. And when we bring in Eap students, I know they've had a taste of it, and they're ambitious and driven for it. And I can get them billable more quickly. And then I can be proud to have them out in front, because they can tell a story. A lot of this is a relationship business. I can have them come to a project kickoff and they can talk about what they've come from. And that they've had an involvement with Inforum, not just hey I'm fresh out of school. I don't know what I'm doing here. It's hey, I've been working with a product for a couple years. Even now and they hit the ground running just so much more quickly. >> So faster time to value. >> Yes, faster time to value. We've seen internally for the folks we've hired, that we've got one hundred percent voluntary retention rate. >> That's amazing. >> For early retention rate. For early career talent, four years into the program, where that's about 20% better than the rest of the talent that we have, right? So we're looking at retention, cause we know if you lose somebody, that's nine months of salary probably to replace them and to retrain somebody else. >> That's right, yes >> Absolutely >> Much easier to hang onto somebody than go find somebody new. >> Okay so you're getting the billing faster, higher quality, I heard. Which means better customer retention and less employee turnover. >> Less employee turnover. >> Which means lower cost. >> Absolutely. >> And on the recruiting side of things too, the development of trying to find talent, there's a lot of time invested and we're a firm that has a very lean operations team. A lot of us wear many hats. So one of my hats is my recruiting and development, and this just streamlines things for me and makes it so much easier. I don't have to spread myself thin trying to find folks. I know I've got kind of a pipeline and I've been sharing it with my other leadership in the other practices to kind of share that along the firm >> And to put it in context, I mean so for the trainings that are around rules and careers, were looking at getting the students to have 200 plus hours of training over bootcamp experience. Now, put that against somebody else who has zero right? You're getting to faster productivity, you're shaving off anywhere from 3 to 4 to 6 months of on boarding time by hiring somebody through this program. >> Yeah. >> And minimizing on boarding frustration which would help. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Sympathize with. >> Makes perfect sense. Great sounding program, we appreciate the insight today. Thanks for being with us. >> Martini- Yeah, thank you. >> And you're wearing many hats, you'll need a rain hat out there today. >> I will, I will. [Laughing] >> Congratulations. >> One more, yeah. Great program, thank you ladies. We're back with more on Live. The Cube is in Washington D.C at Inforum 2018.

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at the Girls in Tech Catalyst event. About 700 people listening to two days of short presentations by senior leaders, mainly women senior leaders, and it's a really good event. We were here a couple years ago. Girls in Tech's a great organization, and so we're excited to have a board member with us right now. She's Mayumi Hiramatsu. She's a senior vice president, Cloud Ops, Engineering and Security for Infor. Great to see you. >> Great to see you, too. Thanks for inviting me. >> Absolutely. So let's just jump in. So you've spoken in prior years, you're not speaking this year, but from a corporate perspective as well as a personal perspective, what does this event mean to you? >> From a corporate perspective, from Girls in Tech's perspective, it's just amazing. Every year year it gets better. I did speak the last two years, and I'm humbled by the speakers this year. So I'm actually really enjoying it. (laughing) It's quite a caliber of-- It's kind of fun when you can just sit and relax and watch everybody else speak, right? >> Exactly. And quite a caliber the team's put together. So as a board member, I can't be prouder than what the team's pulled together. And it's so much buzz. Everybody's inspired, I see people taking notes. Folks are really taking this to heart in terms of takeaways, practical tips, and getting energized. So I think it's great. From a personal perspective, a little bit about myself: So I'm from originally Japan, I came here at 17. I didn't speak any English. I wasn't planning on getting in engineering, I have an economics degree. So you can imagine, I got into engineering and built my career here. It was not easy. For a foreigner, a female, Asian, a non-speaking English person. >> You checked all the wrong boxes, right? >> Yeah. I don't know why I choose to do something harder than it needs to be, and I don't even have an engineering degree. I have an economics degree. But I love technology. I've been doing this for 20 plus years, and I think it's a wonderful place for any woman like me to be able to give it a chance and actually have a wonderful career. I also love the fact that it sort of gives, it evens out everybody's potential. So with an economics degree, or from another country, I've been at Silicon Valley and have done great. So if I can do it, I know anybody else can do it. So for me, giving back to the community and making sure the next generation can successfully come through the technology ranks, or have their own company, is really exciting. So it's great to be on the board of Girls in Tech, and I can channel my energy through that way, and I think Girls in Tech is one of the largest, if not the largest world non-profit organization to help women with very practical, and great tips, as well as, not only these Catalyst conferences, but, my goodness, we do hackathons, we do pitch nights and give entrepreneurs a chance to actually shine, global classrooms where we can actually give a lot of teaching opportunities, and learning opportunities. So, super excited to be here. >> Then what about from the Infor perspective? Did you spearhead the Infor participation? Did Girls in Tech, Adriana come seek you out? How did you get directly involved, how did you sell it, and why does it matter to Infor? >> Yeah, so I've been a board member for year and a half, and not so coincidentally you can see Cisco's also there. I used to be a Cisco. Once I introduced Cisco and Infor to Girls in Tech, everybody was really excited. There's just so much win-win. So for Infor, it's great on a couple of things. You may know that Infor is a pretty large company. We're the third or fourth largest ERP. And we have really important business solutions software. For example, focus on verticals; for example, health care, manufacturing, retail, and as a company we're doing really well, but the other thing that really attracted me to Infor is our diversity programs. So we have two of them. One is WIN, Women Infor Network, and it's about essentially women network to help each other out and continue to grow our career, which is important. But the other program is EAP, which is Education Alliance Program. And I love the fact that we actually have a program, we have 80 plus universities that we tie in with, to bring in a diverse workforce, and teach them in the universities and bring them into the workforce, whether it's Infor or not, candidly. So it's STEM programs that gives diversity, whether it's gender, or background, or international location, or even age, right? Because we're bringing in college grads. I just love the programs that Infor has. >> So what is that? How does the relationship go between Infor and the universities? What's kind of the formal structure? >> Yeah, so there's a program called Education Alliance Program, EAP, very, very successful as I mentioned. 80+ universities that we work with already. And what we do is we essentially give these students in the university training program that teaches our software, and there are actually a couple of great things that come out of it. Of course, it's promoting STEM, and making sure that these kids have, young adults, have great technology STEM education coming out of college. It's also great for Infor because we also have people graduating with our technology skillset. So not only directly impacts us as they join our company, but also even if they don't join our company, we've given them a chance to get into technology and it's very, very successful. I'm very proud of it. So Infor is big on diversity in technology as you can see. And, of course, we're proud to be here this year as one of the sponsors. >> So I'll give you the last word as a board member to the audience. How can they get involved with Girls in Tech? How should they get involved? What are some of the ways that you would suggest for them to get their toe in the water if they're not familiar with the organization? >> Yeah, girlsintech.org is a great place to start. We have a wonderful website, of course, and we have various types of programs involved so depending on what it is. If you want to learn you can actually join some of the hackathons or global classrooms to get some practical skills. If you're a founder and you actually want to pitch your idea and get some funding, you can actually go to Pitch Night. There are different programs that we can leverage and I highly encourage everybody to join. >> Alright, well Mayumi thanks for taking a few minutes. Congrats on the sponsorship and all your good work on the board. >> Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. She's Mayumi, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. We're at Girls in Tech Catalyst 2018 in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching.

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at the Girls in Tech Catalyst event. About 700 people listening to two days of short presentations by senior leaders, mainly women senior leaders, and it's a really good event. We were here a couple years ago. Girls in Tech's a great organization, and so we're excited to have a board member with us right now. She's Mayumi Hiramatsu. She's a senior vice president, Cloud Ops, Engineering and Security for Infor. Great to see you. >> Great to see you, too. Thanks for inviting me. >> Absolutely. So let's just jump in. So you've spoken in prior years, you're not speaking this year, but from a corporate perspective as well as a personal perspective, what does this event mean to you? >> From a corporate perspective, from Girls in Tech's perspective, it's just amazing. Every year year it gets better. I did speak the last two years, and I'm humbled by the speakers this year. So I'm actually really enjoying it. (laughing) It's quite a caliber of-- It's kind of fun when you can just sit and relax and watch everybody else speak, right? >> Exactly. And quite a caliber the team's put together. So as a board member, I can't be prouder than what the team's pulled together. And it's so much buzz. Everybody's inspired, I see people taking notes. Folks are really taking this to heart in terms of takeaways, practical tips, and getting energized. So I think it's great. From a personal perspective, a little bit about myself: So I'm from originally Japan, I came here at 17. I didn't speak any English. I wasn't planning on getting in engineering, I have an economics degree. So you can imagine, I got into engineering and built my career here. It was not easy. For a foreigner, a female, Asian, a non-speaking English person. >> You checked all the wrong boxes, right? >> Yeah. I don't know why I choose to do something harder than it needs to be, and I don't even have an engineering degree. I have an economics degree. But I love technology. I've been doing this for 20 plus years, and I think it's a wonderful place for any woman like me to be able to give it a chance and actually have a wonderful career. I also love the fact that it sort of gives, it evens out everybody's potential. So with an economics degree, or from another country, I've been at Silicon Valley and have done great. So if I can do it, I know anybody else can do it. So for me, giving back to the community and making sure the next generation can successfully come through the technology ranks, or have their own company, is really exciting. So it's great to be on the board of Girls in Tech, and I can channel my energy through that way, and I think Girls in Tech is one of the largest, if not the largest world non-profit organization to help women with very practical, and great tips, as well as, not only these Catalyst conferences, but, my goodness, we do hackathons, we do pitch nights and give entrepreneurs a chance to actually shine, global classrooms where we can actually give a lot of teaching opportunities, and learning opportunities. So, super excited to be here. >> Then what about from the Infor perspective? Did you spearhead the Infor participation? Did Girls in Tech, Adriana come seek you out? How did you get directly involved, how did you sell it, and why does it matter to Infor? >> Yeah, so I've been a board member for year and a half, and not so coincidentally you can see Cisco's also there. I used to be a Cisco. Once I introduced Cisco and Infor to Girls in Tech, everybody was really excited. There's just so much win-win. So for Infor, it's great on a couple of things. You may know that Infor is a pretty large company. We're the third or fourth largest ERP. And we have really important business solutions software. For example, focus on verticals; for example, health care, manufacturing, retail, and as a company we're doing really well, but the other thing that really attracted me to Infor is our diversity programs. So we have two of them. One is WIN, Women Infor Network, and it's about essentially women network to help each other out and continue to grow our career, which is important. But the other program is EAP, which is Education Alliance Program. And I love the fact that we actually have a program, we have 80 plus universities that we tie in with, to bring in a diverse workforce, and teach them in the universities and bring them into the workforce, whether it's Infor or not, candidly. So it's STEM programs that gives diversity, whether it's gender, or background, or international location, or even age, right? Because we're bringing in college grads. I just love the programs that Infor has. >> So what is that? How does the relationship go between Infor and the universities? What's kind of the formal structure? >> Yeah, so there's a program called Education Alliance Program, EAP, very, very successful as I mentioned. 80+ universities that we work with already. And what we do is we essentially give these students in the university training program that teaches our software, and there are actually a couple of great things that come out of it. Of course, it's promoting STEM, and making sure that these kids have, young adults, have great technology STEM education coming out of college. It's also great for Infor because we also have people graduating with our technology skillset. So not only directly impacts us as they join our company, but also even if they don't join our company, we've given them a chance to get into technology and it's very, very successful. I'm very proud of it. So Infor is big on diversity in technology as you can see. And, of course, we're proud to be here this year as one of the sponsors. >> So I'll give you the last word as a board member to the audience. How can they get involved with Girls in Tech? How should they get involved? What are some of the ways that you would suggest for them to get their toe in the water if they're not familiar with the organization? >> Yeah, girlsintech.org is a great place to start. We have a wonderful website, of course, and we have various types of programs involved so depending on what it is. If you want to learn you can actually join some of the hackathons or global classrooms to get some practical skills. If you're a founder and you actually want to pitch your idea and get some funding, you can actually go to Pitch Night. There are different programs that we can leverage and I highly encourage everybody to join. >> Alright, well Mayumi thanks for taking a few minutes. Congrats on the sponsorship and all your good work on the board. >> Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. She's Mayumi, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. We're at Girls in Tech Catalyst 2018 in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching.

>> Man: Live, from Boston, Massachusetts, it's The Cube, covering Red Hat Summit 2017, brought to you by Red Hat. >> Welcome back to The Cube's coverage of the Red Hat Summit, here in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm you're host Rebecca Knight along with my co-host Stu Miniman. We're joined by Ashesh Badani. He is the Vice President and General Manager of OpenShift here at Red Hat. Thanks so much, Ashesh. >> Thanks for having me on yet again. >> Yes, you are a Cube veteran, so welcome back. We're always happy to talk to you. You're also an OpenShift veteran. You've been there five years, and before the cameras are rolling you were talking about how we really are at a tipping point here with OpenShift, and we're seeing a widespread adoption and embrace of containers. Can you share the context with us. >> Sure, so I think we've spent a fair amount of time in this market talking about how important containers are, the value of containers, DevOps, microservices. I think at this Red Hat Summit, we've spent a fair amount of time trying to ensure that people understand one containers are real, in terms of, you know, adoption level that we're seeing. They're being run in production and at scale. And across a variety of industries, right. So, just at this summit we've had over 30 customers from across the world, across industries like financial services, government, transportation, tech, telco, a variety of different industries talking about how they've been deploying and using containers. At our keynotes we had Macquarie Bank from Australia, Barclay's Bank from the U.K. We had United Health slash OPTUM. All talking about, you know, mission critical applications, how their developers running applications, both new applications, right, microservice-style applications, but also existing legacy applications on the OpenShift platform. >> Ashesh, I've been watching this for a few years, we've talked to you many times, we talked about containers. Maybe I'm oversimplifying it but let me know. It feels like OpenShift is your delivery mechanism to take some things that might be hard if I tried to do them myself and made it a lot simpler. Kind of give like Red Hat did for Linux, I have containers, I have Kubernetes, I have OpenStack, and all three of those I didn't hear a ton at the show, I heard a lot about OpenShift and the OpenShift family because underneath OpenShift are those pieces. Am I gettin' it right, or there's more nuance you need-- >> Great observation, great observation, yeah, and we're seeing that from our customers, too. So, when they're making strategic choice, they're talking about, you know, how can I find the container platform to run at scale. When they make their choice, all they're thinking about well what's the existing, you know, development tools I've got. Can it integrate with the ones that I have in place. What's the underlying infrastructure they can run on. OpenStack of course is a great one, right. We have many customers, Santander, BBVA Bank are just two examples of those, but then also, can I run the OpenShift structure in a hybrid cloud, or I guess what we're calling a multi-cloud world now. Amazon, Google, Asher, and so on. But actually interestingly enough we made some announcements with Amazon as well at the show with regard to making sure some AWS service are able to be integrated into the OpenShare platform. So, we find customers today finding a lot of value in the flexibility of the deployment platforms they have in place, integration with various developer tools. I think my colleague Harry Mower was on earlier talking about OpenShift.io, again, you know, super interesting, super exciting now it's been from our perspective with regard to giving developers more choice. And in addition to that, you know, the other parts of the portfolio, right, going to your point, earlier. We're trying to attach that increasingly as options for customers around OpenShift. Storage is a great example. So we announced some work we've doing with regard to container storage with our classified system for OpenShift. >> So you're talking about simplification and that does seem to be a real theme here. Once you've solved that problem, what's next, what are some of the other customer issues that you need to resolve and help them overcome and make their lives easier? >> Yeah, so, the rate of change in technology, as you well know, you've been following this now for a while is just dramatic, right. I think it's probably faster than we've ever seen in a long, long time. I was having a conversation with a large franchise customer with regard to, you know, just as we feel like, you know, we're getting people to adopt Hadoop, everyone seems to have moved on to Spark. And now we're on Spark and people are talking about, oh, maybe Flink is next. Now that we get to Flink, now they're saying AI and ML is next. It's just like, well, where does this stop, right. So I don't think it stops. The question is, you know, at what point of time do you sort of jump in. Embrace the change, right, that's sort of what Devops all about right, continuous change, you know, embrace it, be able to evolve with it, fail fast, pick yourself up, and then have the organization be in this sort of continuous learning, this kaizen environment. >> Yeah, Ashesh, from day one of the keynote talked about the platforms and you know Red Hat Enterprise Linux was kind of the first big platform that can live a lot of environments. Seems OpenShift is a second platform, and the scope of it seems to be growing. We talked to Harry about the OpenShift.io. He alluded to the fact that we might see expansion into the family there. What is, you said that innovation, and you know change keeps growing. What's the boundaries of what OpenShift's going to cover. Where do you see it today and where's the vision go moving forward? >> Yeah, so (laughs) great question, a double-edged sword right. Because on the one hand of course we want to make sure OpenShift is a foundation for doing a lot of stuff. But then there's also the Linux philosophy. Do one thing, do it well, right. And so there's always this temptation with regard to keeping on wanting to take new things on, right, I mean for a long time people have said, hey, why aren't we in the database business? You know, why aren't you doing more? Well the question is, you know, how many things can we do well? Because anything we commit to, as you well know, Red Hat will invest significant amount of engineering effort upstream in the community to help drive it forward, right. We've done that on Linux container front. We're doing that in Kubernetes. Obviously we do that with RHEL, we've done that Jboss technologies. So, we're very, very cognizant of making sure that we provide an environment and basically an ecosystem around us that can grow and be able to attach the momentum we have in place. As a result of that we announced the container health index at this conference, right. Mostly because, you know, there's just no way for one company to provide all the services that are possible, right. So to be able to grade applications that come in, be able to sort of give customers confidence that, you know, these can be certified and work in our environment, and then be able to kind of expand out that ecosystem is going to be really important going forward. >> Yeah, Ashesh that's an interesting one, the container health index. I'm going to play with the term there. What's the health of the container industry there. We at The Cube at DockerCon a couple weeks ago had a couple of Red Hatters on the program. There was kind of a reshuffling, you know. The Moby project, open source, we've got Docker CE, Docker EE, Docker actually referenced, you know, Fedora and CentOS and RHEL as you know, something that they did similar to but, what's your take on the announcements there? >> Sure, sure, I'll probably butcher this quote tremendously, but it was Mark Twain or someone said, "The rumors of my whatever are greatly exaggerated," so. You know, there's always, you know, some amount of change that sort of happens, especially with new technology, and you've got so many players sort of jumping in, right. I mean of course there's Docker Inc. There's Red Hat but there's, you know, Google and IBM and Microsoft and Amazon, and there's a lot of companies, right, that all look at this as a way of advancing the number of workloads that come onto their platforms. You know, we've seen some of the challenges, if you will, that Docker Inc. has been facing as well as the great work it's been doing to help drive the community forward, right. Those are both interesting things. And they've got a business to run. We've announced, we've seen the changes announced with regard to some of the renaming and Moby, and I think there's still a lot more detail that need to be fleshed out. And so I, we're going to wait for the dust to settle. I think we want to make sure our customers are confident. We've had this conversation with many customers that whatever direction that, you know, we go in, we will continue supporting that technology. We will stand behind it. We will make sure we're putting upstream engineers to help drive the community that will provide the greatest value for customers. >> Ashesh, you're one of the judges for the Innovation Awards here. Can you tell us a little bit more about the secret sauce that you're looking for. First of all, how you choose these winners, and what it is you're looking for. >> Yeah, so I'm really proud of the work I do to help support the judging of the Innovation Awards. You know, I think it's a fantastic thing we do to recognize, I was telling Stu earlier, you know we could probably have done a dozen more awards, right, the entries that are coming in are just fantastic. We try to change up the categories a little bit every year to kind of match with the changes in industry, like for example, you know, DevOps, Macquarie Bank was a great example of enterprise transformation. You know, they had this great line in their keynote right, where their ambition I think really impressed a lot of the judges with regard to, hey our competition is not necessarily the other financial service companies, it's the last app you opened. That's a remarkable thing, right. Especially for an existing traditional financial services company, you see. So, I think what we look for is scope, ambition, and vision, but also how you're executing against it, and what demonstrable results do you have for that. And so, you probably saw that, as, you know, we talked about all the various innovation awards we gave, right, whether it's Macquarie Bank or, you know, British Columbia Empower Individuals, right, so the whole notion of celebrating the impact of individual, and create an exchange for them to engage with the wider civic body. That's really important for us. >> Ashesh, one of the innovation award-winners OPTUM we talked to, they're an OpenShift customer. They're really excited with the AWS announcement. We've been chewing on it, talking to a lot of people. We think it's the most significant news coming out of the show. As you said, there's certain details that need to bake out when we look at some of these things. By the time we get to AWS Reinvent we'll probably understand a little bit some of the pricing and, you know, some of the other pieces, and it'll be there, but, you know, bring us from your viewpoint, from an OpenShift standpoint what this means to kind of an extension of the product line and your customers. >> Yeah, so, we've got, at least at this show you had over 30 customers presenting about their use of OpenShift. And we typically find them deploying OpenShift in a variety of different environments including AWS. So for example Swiss Rail, right, obviously out of Switzerland, is taking advantage of, you know, running it in their own data center, taking advantage of AWS as well. When they're doing that they want to make sure that they can consume services from Amazon. Just as if they were running it on Amazon, right. They like the container platform that OpenShift provides, and they like the abstraction level that it puts in place. Of course they have different choices, right. They can choose to run it on OpenStack, they can choose to run OpenShift in some other public cloud provider, yet there are many services that Amazon's releasing that are extremely interesting and value that they provide to their customers. By being able to have relationship with Amazon, and have an almost native experience of those services with regard to OpenShift, regardless of the underlying infrastructure OpenShift runs, it is a very powerful value proposition, definitely for our customers. It's a great one for Amazon because it allows for their services to be used across a multitude of environments. And we feel good about that because we're creating value for our customers, and of course not precluding them from using other services as well. >> I'm wondering if you could shed a little light on the financials, and how you think about things. I mean, you made this great point about the banks saying our competition is the last app you opened. How do you think, with OpenShift, which is free, how do you view your competition, and how do you think about it in terms of the way companies are making their decisions about where they're putting their money in IT investments. >> Right, so OpenShift isn't free, so I'll just make sure-- (all laugh) >> OpenShift.io >> OpenShift.io, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, yes. >> So, consider OpenShift.io as a great gateway into the OpenShift experience, right. It's a cloud-based web environment allows you to develop in browsers, allows you some collaboration with other developers. There's actually a really cool part of the tech, I don't know if Harry talked about right, which is, we almost have, almost machine-learning aspect part of it, you know, that's in play with regard to, you know, if this is the code you're using, here are what other users are doing with it, making recommendations, and so on, so it's a really modern integrated, you know, development environment that we're sort of introducing. That of course doesn't mean that customers can't use existing ones that they have in place. So this is just giving customers more choice. By doing that, we're basically expanding the span of options the customers have. We introduced something called OpenShift Application Runtimes also at this conference, which is supporting existing Java languages or tools or frameworks, right, whether it's Jboss, EAP, Vortex, WildFly, Spring Boot, but also newer ones like No-JavaScript, right, so again, in the spirit of, let's give you choices, let's have you sort of use what you most want to use, and then from our perspective, right, you know, we will create value when it's been deployed at scale. >> Ashesh, before the event at the beginning of it you guys run something called OpenShift Commons. There's some deep education and a lot of it very interactive. I'm curious if there's anything that's kind of surprised you or interesting nuggets that you got from the users. Either stuff that they were further ahead or further behind, or just something that's grabbin' their attention that you could share with our users. >> Well, what I've been really happy to see with the OpenShift Commons is, well, this is a couple things, right. One is we try our best to make it literally a community event, right, so we call it OpenShift Commons but it is a community event. So in the past and even now, we have providers of technologies, even though they might compete with Red Hat and OpenShift available to talk to. Customers, users of our technology, right, so we want it to be an open, welcoming environment for various providers. Second, we're seeing more and more customers wanting to come out and share their experiences, right. So at this OpenShift Commons, I think we had maybe over 10 customers present on, you know, how they were using OpenShift, and sharing with other customers. Number three, this really attracts other customers. I just had a large financial services institution come and say, you know, we attended OpenShift Commons for the first time. This is a fantastic community. How can we become a part of this? You know, get us involved. There's no cost to join, right, it's free and open, and now our numbers are pretty significant. And then when that's in place, right, the ecosystem forms around it. Now, so we have several different ISVs, global system integrators who are all sort of, you know, coalescing, to provide additional services. >> Ashesh, thanks so much for your time, we appreciate it. It's always a pleasure to have you on the program. >> Ashesh: Thanks again, see you all next time. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. There'll be more from the Red Hat Summit after this. (relaxed digital beats)

>> Announcer: Live from Boston, Massachusetts it's the Cube, covering Red Hat Summit 2017. Brought to you by Red Hat. >> Welcome back to Boston, everybody. This is Red Hat Summit and this is the Cube, the leader in live tech coverage. I'm Dave Vellante, with my co-host, Stu Miniman and Matt Hicks is here. Is the Vice President of the software engineering for OpenShift and management, at Red Hat. Matt, welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you very much, good to be here. >> So this is where all the action is, is management and management of Clouds and inter Clouds and intra clouds, and it's the sort of next big battleground and you guys seem to be, doin really well there. Have a lot of momentum. >> It's been a good year. I think it's going to be a great year going forward, cause it, it adds a lot of customer value you know, they're seeing the drive to get applications across all these environments, and I think we've hit a good balance of what we can provide in OpenShift, or middle work portfolio management and you hear a lot of customers talking about it all through summits. >> Well we saw some pretty sick demos this morning. I got to ask ya, it was basically the reference model, was okay, got some web logic, and web sphere apps. You know, wink, wink. And you want to modernize them, and so you guys just showed like a five click modernization process. Is it really that simple? Are people really, really doing that? >> Yeah. We have customers that have moved thousands of applications like that, and they're all different sorts of applications. But going from, a proprietary EE stack to getting on something closer to EAP. To deploying it on OpenShift, that is our bread and butter. And it's great because EAP can take advantage of OpenShift, lets customers re-platform the apps that they have. And like we said on Key Net, it sort of frees up your time then to start building the fun stuff. Building the next apps, and you know we've had a ton of success with that. >> Matt so we had the opportunity to talk to some of the innovation award winners. What we haven't actually gotten to cover too much yet, is all the news. So there were a number of announcements in your space, wonder if you could help us, kind of unpack for our audience. >> Sure thing. So we, You will hear a lot about the, just the enterprise production adoption, of the new technologies. Because one of the things for us, it's easy to come up and talk about new technologies. We like actually bringing customers up that have taken that new technology to production. So that's one of the big themes you'll see here at Summit. We launched OpenShift IO. Which for us actually had great success of OpenShift as Hybrid Net platform, Prod. But as you heard from United Health Group, Optum this morning. They have 10,000 plus developers to roll that out to. And we knew we needed to close the gap on how to get empowered developers. So OpenShift IO was the new Cloud based services for that. We will also announce and talk about our container health index. So when you start really making the bed on containers, how do you know what's inside of em, how do you get a simple grading system to understand like A through F. How well maintained is this. As well as being able to look under the covers and understand what goes into that A or what goes into that F. >> And maybe explain that a little bit more, because I think about like, you know, okay, I remember like in the virtualization world, I understood that. So many of containers live a lot shorter life, so, is there, is this just a dashboard that rolls that up, because I want to know probably the general health of what's going on, because there's no way humans going to be able to keep track of it. And I mean, we're not all Google with two billion containers, being brought up and killed every week. But it tends to be, at least from what I've seen, tell me if you see otherwise, that most containers are still much shorter lived than OS's. Or you know, VM4B4. >> You know I think that's, it's one of the advantages. Is that they can be pretty volatile, like that effect. You know, we have capabilities, like in OpenShift, like Image Streams driven to say, "How do you respond and incorporate this?" At the end of the day, if you can grab a container that in our world has an A rating, no security vulnerabilities today, and in a week, you could have multiple critical CVE's, that have been open that now affect that container. And so the benefit of containers is, you can re-roll em, and you can consume that update, but if you don't know about it, and you stay on that old version, you carry the same risk as if you had an out of date OS, that was very static. >> Yeah, I think that answers back to, you know, Ben Gustav, that golden image. And they would pardon that, and they'd leave it that way for two to five years. Right. And we all laughed because my friends in the security space is like, that's the biggest problem we have, is you're not ready for that. So this is, understanding what you've got out there, being able to address that, remediate, you know, push out changes, or know like hey, if you haven't, this is what you're at risk of. >> Absolutely. And that creates for us, it creates this foundation of, both trust between our customers and Red Hat, with their consuming. But then also between Red Hat and our ISV's. Because most of out ISV's, they're not in the Linux business or they're building specialized middle work capabilities on our products. So it's equally important for them to understand that if they're on an out of date version of RHEL, and they've embedded that into their container, that can cause as many problems, and they need to apply the updates in their stack as our customers. >> But that kind of gets to the business model a little bit. And you're engineering, but so I have an engineering question. But, I think most people in our audience understands that you know, Red Hat is a company built on, open source. And you know people say, "Why buy the cows, the milk is free." Well you've perfected that model, you know, 2.4 billion dollars in revenue. Three billion dollars in bookings. So you're obviously doing something right, although, not many have been able to, actually nobody's been able to create a business model like this. My question is from an engineering stand point. When, you're built on open source, and you're not, driven toward a proprietary mindset of okay, let's lock them in to the next REV. How does that change, sort of the engineering mindset, the culture and the protocol going forward. >> I love it. I have been in Red Hat 11 plus years, and everyday you're not tied into, dropping a new feature and pushing customers to that new version for revenue. And so it changes our mindset of, how do we provide value across the entire range of supported offerings that we have. In the case of RHEL, you could stay on some versions of RHEL for quite a while, and we provide value there in keeping that thing working. But at the same point, we're constantly moving this along, adding new innovation. We're able to provide value there. And it, as an engineer, it is refreshing. Sorry. >> I'll chat for a minute. So you, you know, a lot of companies that are 20 plus years old, are criticized. Oh, they don't, innovate. You hear that all the time. They do incremental R and D. And it's true. They may spend a lot on R and D, but R and D is like a feature here, or another feature there. Design, to just keep putting the crumbs out. And what you're saying is, incremental is not, really fundamental part of your plan. >> Absolutely. We can, you know, we want to provide the same value for our customer if they're on RHEL six, or they're looking towards the next major version of RHEL. And they can move anywhere on that life cycle, and that's what they get as part of their subscription. Same thing with OpenShift. And that choice of customers, of being able to take a product, consume anywhere on the life cycle of it, it's good for customers and it's nice for us, because they're just different ways that you innovate. Of driving like, the next new great feature. Then you have other customers, that you are going to provide value through stability. >> So, when you, we go to a lot of these events, as you can imagine. And when you talk to the traditional, you know, software players, you get this massive dose, of well we do that too. We do containers, and, you know, we do Cloud, and we do Hybrid, and. So help us understand, the difference between how they do it and how you do Cloud. >> I think for us, if we picked containers, you know, I was talking to a group of customers this morning of every upstream technology we pick, that we're going to pull together into our products, We don't just pick em up and re-package em and give em to a customer, because we're a support business. So if it breaks at 3 a.m and I have to re-roll a kernel to be able to fix it, I have to understand every piece in the stack. So we start with, we're going to drive a contributor position in the technologies. We pick our bets and we go all in on those areas. So Cooper Netties will carry you know with Google as you know a great technical partner, we run the majority of the SIGs with them. We have a top contributor position, and that we invest really heavily in understanding that technology inside and out. And I think that's what shows in the customer value of we could certainly take stuff, repackage it and ship it. It doesn't carry the same value as being able to work with a customer, drive new features into the product and keep them running in PROD. >> Matt so you mentioned Cooper Netties. And I was actually a little surprised this morning in the key note, I didn't hear Cooper Netties. And I think the reason was, because I heard a lot about OpenShift, and that's just your mechanism for rolling that out there. I'm assuming your customers kind of understand that maybe you could help, you know, explain that a little bit more. >> Absolutely. And so, OpenShift is our enterprise, distribution Cooper Netties is, and that's sort of the business we're in. We have Linux and RHEL is our enterprise distribution of that. We now have Cooper Netties, this really popular community. OpenShift is our distribution of that, and for our customers. >> I was just saying, I guess you couldn't call it RECK. Which, Red Hat Enterprise, Cooper Nettie, probably wouldn't be a good idea. >> The world changes too fast. You pick names a long time ago. But it's a nice motto, because we know it. It's what we've done for a long time, and it builds on everything we've done with RHEL and it connects our middleware portfolio as well. So I've been on the op side, and I've been on the development side, and I love seeing us address stuff right in the gap there for customers. And I think that's why we're seeing so much customer traction. It's a sweet spot for where they've had pain, and it adds a lot of value for em. >> Could you speak a little bit of your customers. Where are they with containers, Cooper Netties, that whole adoption. >> A lot of them in production. Which is nice. It's nice from a support business, because if you have excitement, or if you have early traction, we're a subscription business, so we want to make sure you know, the more customers use it, the more you know, they're going to grow and actually utilize it. And when you hear customers like UHG saying, the 4000 projects built on OpenShift there. Those are, they have built up significant deployments on that, and Barkways, and I know we have a whole list of em that are here today. And so I like that fact of, it's not just a cool technology. Customers have taken all the way into production. And they're being really successful with it. which as an engineer you love. You want to see people using your products and solving problems with them. >> Absolutely. Matt you talked about the ethos of commitment and committers, to open source projects. One of the challenges for a company like yours, is you got to support a lot of different projects. So though, you saying, you make your bets. We've talked a lot about okay, will there ever be another Red Hat that emerges in the big data space. You see Cloud air, and Hortonworks, and they're always sort of lookin at those guys, as possibility. But they always sight the challenge of having to support so many projects. How do you manage that and did you, you've been with Red Hat for a while, did you hit a tipping point, at some point? Cause I mean certainly you have software margin, 80, 90% you know margins. You got a great operating you know margins. So you've crossed that chasm so to speak to pick a bromide, but, others have had such a challenge. Is it because they have to support those projects and it just takes a long time? And you guys baked over 20 years. I wonder if you can give us some insight there. >> You know, I think it's as much art as it is science, I would love to say. Like this is a you know, cold formula that we apply but, we have a good gut feeling for, if you're going to back a technology, or an upstream project, you want to make sure that it's going to expand beyond your own investment, and we've certainly made a lot of wrong bets that the technology doesn't evolve. But you've got to be able to change, and when we see some of the early indicators like in Cooper Netties. Those are the ones where, we like how it's governed, we like how it's structured, we like the other players that are in there, and that's just been one of the unique aspect of Red Hat, is we pick pretty well. >> So Matt, I'm wondering if you're willing to comment, we were at Dockercon a couple of weeks ago, they've done a shift to, how they're managing kind of, but the Moby project to do the open source stuff, what's your take on that? What's Red Hat's positioning there? It's been an interesting dynamic between Docker and Red Hat to watch the last couple of years. >> Yeah you know, I think Moby for us, it's one of, it's about 16 hundred different upstream projects that we pull in across our portfolios. And so, we're certainly watching it, and we're seeing them evolve. We've been involved for the technology for a while now, but we don't necessarily know where that's going to go right now. But we certainly look a it like we do, you know the whole, breath of open source projects we pull in. >> What else is on your horizon? What's exciting you these days? >> You know, I think just seeing the reality of Hybrid Cloud becoming, it's becoming real for our customers. Where they're able, you know, you probably saw some of the Amazon announcements today where, you're able to take services, that might be in the public Cloud and now pull them on Premise. You heard customers talk about taking OpenShift and running that all the way out to the public Cloud. And we love that aspect, because you know, being able to use infrastructure to power applications, I think it's going to change IT and, then all the pieces that emanate around that, it's exciting for ISV's, it's exciting you know, around our management products from Ansible to Cloud forms. It's just a lot that we can do there. >> On the management products, you know, what Dave said, one of the Bromides out there, when I became an analyst seven years ago, it's like we can say, well it's security and management are the biggest problems we have. I feel like I can go to that well anytime I need to do. How are we doing in industry and management. Obviously you've got your position, but you know, as the surface area of the landscape is just expanding exponentially, every. You talked about how many customers are multi Cloud today. So you know, we know there's not a single thing that can do everything but, how are we doing as an industry, in Red Hot specifically? >> I think form Red hat's position, we've had a lot of success with Ansible. Just becoming a core automation technology, cause I think the one common thread is, you have so many choices, you have so many pieces, you have to start automating them. How we did IT 15 years ago, just will not. It won't scale anymore. I think building up from that stack. How you move to policy based management, that's earlier in the space. But there is a ton of capabilities and we've seen customers using, you know from our perspective, it's combining Cloud forms on orchestration, and satellite for content, Ansible for automation. Because I describe it, so I have the operation teams that run our OpenShift online environments. That's a, a relatively small group of people that manages millions of applications. And they change faster than a human could push a button. And so, as customers get into that world, you know we're certainly not in the Google world yet, but when you get that 4A it changes how you have to manage it. It has to become automated, it has to become policy driven, and then it's fun. I like it. Like doing ops in the 90s versus how you do it today. It is refreshing as an operator to just have these tools are your fingertips. >> High frequency application development. Matt thanks very >> It really is! >> Much for coming on the Cube. It's great to see you, and congratulations and good luck going forward. >> Fantastic, thanks S. >> You're welcome. Alright keep it right there everybody. Stu and I will be right back with our next guest. This is Cube, we're live from Red Hat Summit in Boston. We'll be right back. (upbeat music)