>>Hey guys. Welcome back to the Cubes coverage of Ansible Fast 2022. This is day two of our wall to wall coverage. Lisa Martin here with John Ferer. John, we're seeing this world where companies are saying if we can't automate it, we need to, The automation market is transforming. There's been a lot of buzz about that. A lot of technical chops here at Ansible Fest. >>Yeah, I mean, we've got a great guest here coming on Cuba alumni, Dean Newman, future room. He travels every event he's got. He's got his nose to the grindstone ear to the ground. Great analysis. I mean, we're gonna get into why it's important. How does Ansible fit into the big picture? It's really gonna be a great segment. The >>Board do it well, John just did my job for me about, I'll introduce him again. Daniel Newman, one of our alumni is Back Principal Analyst at Future and Research. Great to have you back on the cube. >>Yeah, it's good to join you. Excited to be back in Chicago. I don't know if you guys knew this, but for 40 years, this was my hometown. Now I don't necessarily brag about that anymore. I'm, I live in Austin now. I'm a proud Texan, but I did grow up here actually out in the west suburbs. I got off the plane, I felt the cold air, and I almost turned around and said, Does this thing go back? Yeah. Cause I'm, I've, I've grown thin skin. It did not take me long. I, I like the warm, Come on, >>I'm the saying, I'm from California and I got off the plane Monday. I went, Whoa, I need a coat. And I was in Miami a week ago and it was 85. >>Oh goodness. >>Crazy. So you just flew in. Talk about what's going on, your take on, on Ansible. We've talked a lot with the community, with partners, with customers, a lot of momentum. The flywheel of the community is going around and round and round. What are some of your perspectives that you see? >>Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's you know, I'm gonna take a quick step back. We're entering an era where companies are gonna have to figure out how to do more with less. Okay? We've got exponential data growth, we've got more architectural complexity than ever before. Companies are trying to discern how to deal with many different environments. And just at a macro level, Red Hat is one of the companies that is almost certainly gonna be part of this multi-cloud hybrid cloud era. So that should initially give a lot of confidence to the buying group that are looking at how to automate their environments. You're automating workflows, but really with, with Ansible, we're focused on automating it, automating the network. So as companies are kind of dig out, we're entering this recessionary period, Okay, we're gonna call it what it is. The first thing that they're gonna look at is how do we tech our way out of it? >>I had a wonderful one-on-one conversation with ServiceNow ceo, Bill McDermott, and we saw ServiceNow was in focus this morning in the initial opening session. This is the integration, right? Ansible integrating with ServiceNow. What we need to see is infrastructure automation, layers and applications working in concert to basically enable enterprises to be up and running all the time. Let's first fix the problems that are most common. Let's, let's automate 'em, let's script them. And then at some point, let's have them self resolving, which we saw at the end with Project Wisdom. So as I see it, automation is that layer that enterprises, boards, technologists, all can agree upon are basically here's something that can make our business more efficient, more profitable, and it's gonna deal with this short term downturn in a way that tech is actually gonna be the answer. Just like Bill and I said, let's tech our way out of it. >>If you look at the Red Hat being bought by ibm, you see Project Wisdom Project, not a product, it's a project. Project Wisdom is the confluence of research and practitioners kind of coming together with ai. So bringing AI power to the Ansible is interesting. Red Hat, Linux, Rel OpenShift, I mean, Red Hat's kind of position, isn't it? Kind of be in that right spot where a puck might be coming maybe. I mean, what do you think? >>Yeah, as analysts, we're really good at predicting the, the recent past. It's a joke I always like to make, but Red Hat's been building toward the future. I think for some time. Project Wisdom, first of all, I was very encouraged with it. One of the things that many people in the market probably have commented on is how close is IBM in Red Hat? Now, again, it's a $34 billion acquisition that was made, but boy, the cultures of these two companies couldn't be more different. And of course, Red Hat kind of carries this, this sort of middle ground layer where they provide a lot of value in services to companies that maybe don't use IBM at, at, for the public cloud especially. This was a great indication of how you can take the power of IBM's research, which of course has some of the world's most prolific data scientists, engineers, building things for the future. >>You know, you see things like yesterday they launched a, you know, an AI solution. You know, they're building chips, semiconductors, and technologies that are gonna power the future. They're building quantum. Long story short, they have these really brilliant technologists here that could be adding value to Red Hat. And I don't know that the, the world has fully been able to appreciate that. So when, when they got on stage and they kind of say, Here's how IBM is gonna help power the next generation, I was immediately very encouraged by the fact that the two companies are starting to show signs of how they can collaborate to offer value to their customers. Because of course, as John kind of started off with, his question is, they've kind of been where the puck is going. Open source, Linux hybrid cloud, This is the future. In the future. Every company's multi-cloud. And I said in a one-on-one meeting this morning, every company is going to probably have workloads on every cloud, especially large enterprises. >>Yeah. And I think that the secret's gonna be how do you make that evolve? And one of the things that's coming out of the industry over the years, and looking back as historians, we would say, gotta have standards. Well, with cloud, now people standards might slow things down. So you're gonna start to figure out how does the community and the developers are thinking it'll be the canary in the coal mine. And I'd love to get your reaction on that, because we got Cuban next week. You're seeing people kind of align and try to win the developers, which, you know, I always laugh cuz like, you don't wanna win, you want, you want them on your team, but you don't wanna win them. It's like a, it's like, so developers will decide, >>Well, I, I think what's happening is there are multiple forces that are driving product adoption. And John, getting the developers to support the utilization and adoption of any sort of stack goes a long way. We've seen how sticky it can be, how sticky it is with many of the public cloud pro providers, how sticky it is with certain applications. And it's gonna be sticky here in these interim layers like open source automation. And Red Hat does have a very compelling developer ecosystem. I mean, if you sat in the keynote this morning, I said, you know, if you're not a developer, some of this stuff would've been fairly difficult to understand. But as a developer you saw them laughing at jokes because, you know, what was it the whole part about, you know, it didn't actually, the ping wasn't a success, right? And everybody started laughing and you know, I, I was sitting next to someone who wasn't technical and, and you know, she kinda goes, What, what was so funny? >>I'm like, well, he said it worked. Do you see that? It said zero data trans or whatever that was. So, but if I may just really quickly, one, one other thing I did wanna say about Project Wisdom, John, that the low code and no code to the full stack developer is a continuum that every technology company is gonna have to think deeply about as we go to the future. Because the people that tend to know the process that needs to be automated tend to not be able to code it. And so we've seen every automation company on the planet sort of figuring out and how to address this low code, no code environment. I think the power of this partnership between IBM Research and Red Hat is that they have an incredibly deep bench of capabilities to do things like, like self-training. Okay, you've got so much data, such significant size models and accuracy is a problem, but we need systems that can self teach. They need to be able self-teach, self learn, self-heal so that we can actually get to the crux of what automation is supposed to do for us. And that's supposed to take the mundane out and enable those humans that know how to code to work on the really difficult and hard stuff because the automation's not gonna replace any of that stuff anytime soon. >>So where do you think looking at, at the partnership and the evolution of it between IBM research and Red Hat, and you're saying, you know, they're, they're, they're finally getting this synergy together. How is it gonna affect the future of automation and how is it poised to give them a competitive advantage in the market? >>Yeah, I think the future or the, the competitive space is that, that is, is ecosystems and integration. So yesterday you heard, you know, Red Hat Ansible focusing on a partnership with aws. You know, this week I was at Oracle Cloud world and they're talking about running their database in aws. And, and so I'm kind of going around to get to the answer to your question, but I think collaboration is sort of the future of growth and innovation. You need multiple companies working towards the same goal to put gobs of resources, that's the technical term, gobs of resources towards doing really hard things. And so Ansible has been very successful in automating and securing and focusing on very certain specific workloads that need to be automated, but we need more and there's gonna be more data created. The proliferation, especially the edge. So you saw all this stuff about Rockwell, How do you really automate the edge at scale? You need large models that are able to look and consume a ton of data that are gonna be continuously learning, and then eventually they're gonna be able to deliver value to these companies at scale. IBM plus Red Hat have really great resources to drive this kind of automation. Having said that, I see those partnerships with aws, with Microsoft, with ibm, with ServiceNow. It's not one player coming to the table. It's a lot of players. They >>Gotta be Switzerland. I mean they have the Switzerland. I mean, but the thing about the Amazon deal is like that marketplace integration essentially puts Ansible once a client's in on, on marketplace and you get the central on the same bill. I mean, that's gonna be a money maker for Ansible. I >>Couldn't agree more, John. I think being part of these public cloud marketplaces is gonna be so critical and having Ansible land and of course AWS largest public cloud by volume, largest marketplace today. And my opinion is that partnership will be extensible to the other public clouds over time. That just makes sense. And so you start, you know, I think we've learned this, John, you've done enough of these interviews that, you know, you start with the biggest, with the highest distribution and probability rates, which in this case right now is aws, but it'll land on in Azure, it'll land in Google and it'll continue to, to grow. And that kind of adoption, streamlining make it consumption more consumable. That's >>Always, I think, Red Hat and Ansible, you nailed it on that whole point about multicloud, because what happens then is why would I want to alienate a marketplace audience to use my product when it could span multiple environments, right? So you saw, you heard that Stephanie yesterday talk about they, they didn't say multiple clouds, multiple environments. And I think that is where I think I see this layer coming in because some companies just have to work on all clouds. That's the way it has to be. Why wouldn't you? >>Yeah. Well every, every company will probably end up with some workloads in every cloud. I just think that is the fate. Whether it's how we consume our SaaS, which a lot of people don't think about, but it always tends to be running on another hyperscale public cloud. Most companies tend to be consuming some workloads from every cloud. It's not always direct. So they might have a single control plane that they tend to lead the way with, but that is only gonna continue to change. And every public cloud company seems to be working on figuring out what their niche is. What is the one thing that sort of drives whether, you know, it is, you know, traditional, we know the commoditization of traditional storage network compute. So now you're seeing things like ai, things like automation, things like the edge collaboration tools, software being put into the, to the forefront because it's a different consumption model, it's a different margin and economic model. And then of course it gives competitive advantages. And we've seen that, you know, I came back from Google Cloud next and at Google Cloud next, you know, you can see they're leaning into the data AI cloud. I mean, that is their focus, like data ai. This is how we get people to come in and start using Google, who in most cases, they're probably using AWS or Microsoft today. >>It's a great specialty cloud right there. That's a big use case. I can run data on Google and run something on aws. >>And then of course you've got all kinds of, and this is a little off topic, but you got sovereignty, compliance, regulatory that tends to drive different clouds over, you know, global clouds like Tencent and Alibaba. You know, if your workloads are in China, >>Well, this comes back down at least to the whole complexity issue. I mean, it has to get complex before it gets easier. And I think that's what we're seeing companies opportunities like Ansible to be like, Okay, tame, tame the complexity. >>Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree with you. I mean, look, when I was watching the demonstrations today, my take is there's so many kind of simple, repeatable and mundane tasks in everyday life that enterprises need to, to automate. Do that first, you know? Then the second thing is working on how do you create self-healing, self-teaching, self-learning, You know, and, and I realize I'm a little broken of a broken record at this, but these are those first things to fix. You know, I know we want to jump to the future where we automate every task and we have multi-term conversational AI that is booking our calendars and driving our cars for us. But in the first place, we just need to say, Hey, the network's down. Like, let's make sure that we can quickly get access back to that network again. Let's make sure that we're able to reach our different zones and locations. Let's make sure that robotic arm is continually doing the thing it's supposed to be doing on the schedule that it's been committed to. That's first. And then we can get to some of these really intensive deep metaverse state of automation that we talk about. Self-learning, data replication, synthetic data. I'm just gonna throw terms around. So I sound super smart. >>In your customer conversations though, from an looking at the automation journey, are you finding most of them, or some percentage is, is wanting to go directly into those really complex projects rather than starting with the basics? >>I don't know that you're, you're finding that the customers want to do that? I think it's the architecture that often ends up being a problem is we as, as the vendor side, will tend to talk about the most complex problems that they're able to solve before companies have really started solving the, the immediate problems that are before them. You know, it's, we talk about, you know, the metaphor of the cloud is a great one, but we talk about the cloud, like it's ubiquitous. Yeah. But less than 30% of our workloads are in the public cloud. Automation is still in very early days and in many industries it's fairly nascent. And doing things like self-healing networks is still something that hasn't even been able to be deployed on an enterprise-wide basis, let alone at the industrial layer. Maybe at the company's on manufacturing PLAs or in oil fields. Like these are places that have difficult to reach infrastructure that needs to be running all the time. We need to build systems and leverage the power of automation to keep that stuff up and running. That's, that's just business value, which by the way is what makes the world go running. Yeah. Awesome. >>A lot of customers and users are struggling to find what's the value in automating certain process, What's the ROI in it? How do you help them get there so that they understand how to start, but truly to make it a journey that is a success. >>ROI tends to be a little bit nebulous. It's one of those things I think a lot of analysts do. Things like TCO analysis Yeah. Is an ROI analysis. I think the businesses actually tend to know what the ROI is gonna be because they can basically look at something like, you know, when you have an msa, here's the downtime, right? Business can typically tell you, you know, I guarantee you Amazon could say, Look for every second of downtime, this is how much commerce it costs us. Yeah. A company can generally say, if it was, you know, we had the energy, the windmills company, like they could say every minute that windmill isn't running, we're creating, you know, X amount less energy. So there's a, there's a time value proposition that companies can determine. Now the question is, is about the deployment. You know, we, I've seen it more nascent, like cybersecurity can tend to be nascent. >>Like what does a breach cost us? Well there's, you know, specific costs of actually getting the breach cured or paying for the cybersecurity services. And then there's the actual, you know, ephemeral costs of brand damage and of risks and customer, you know, negative customer sentiment that potentially comes out of it. With automation, I think it's actually pretty well understood. They can look at, hey, if we can do this many more cycles, if we can keep our uptime at this rate, if we can reduce specific workforce, and I'm always very careful about this because I don't believe automation is about replacement or displacement, but I do think it is about up-leveling and it is about helping people work on things that are complex problems that machines can't solve. I mean, said that if you don't need to put as many bodies on something that can be immediately returned to the organization's bottom line, or those resources can be used for something more innovative. So all those things are pretty well understood. Getting the automation to full deployment at scale, though, I think what often, it's not that roi, it's the timeline that gets misunderstood. Like all it projects, they tend to take longer. And even when things are made really easy, like with what Project Wisdom is trying to do, semantically enable through low code, no code and the ability to get more accuracy, it just never tends to happen quite as fast. So, but that's not an automation problem, That's just the crux of it. >>Okay. What are some of the, the next things on your plate? You're quite a, a busy guy. We, you, you were at Google, you were at Oracle, you're here today. What are some of the next things that we can expect from Daniel Newman? >>Oh boy, I moved Really, I do move really quickly and thank you for that. Well, I'm very excited. I'm taking a couple of work personal days. I don't know if you're a fan, but F1 is this weekend. I'm the US Grand Prix. Oh, you're gonna Austin. So I will be, I live in Austin. Oh. So I will be in Austin. I will be at the Grand Prix. It is work because it, you know, I'm going with a number of our clients that have, have sponsorships there. So I'll be spending time figuring out how the data that comes off of these really fun cars is meaningfully gonna change the world. I'll actually be talking to Splunk CEO at the, at the race on Saturday morning. But yeah, I got a lot of great things. I got a, a conversation coming up with the CEO of Twilio next week. We got a huge week of earnings ahead and so I do a lot of work on that. So I'll be on Bloomberg next week with Emily Chang talking about Microsoft and Google. Love talking to Emily, but just as much love being here on, on the queue with you >>Guys. Well we like to hear that. Who you're rooting for F one's your favorite driver. I, >>I, I like Lando. Do you? I'm Norris. I know it's not necessarily a fan favorite, but I'm a bit of a McLaren guy. I mean obviously I have clients with Oracle and Red Bull with Ball Common Ferrari. I've got Cly Splunk and so I have clients in all. So I'm cheering for all of 'em. And on Sunday I'm actually gonna be in the Williams Paddock. So I don't, I don't know if that's gonna gimme me a chance to really root for anything, but I'm always, always a big fan of the underdog. So maybe Latifi. >>There you go. And the data that comes off the how many central unbeliev, the car, it's crazy's. Such a scientific sport. Believable. >>We could have Christian, I was with Christian Horner yesterday, the team principal from Reside. Oh yeah, yeah. He was at the Oracle event and we did a q and a with him and with the CMO of, it's so much fun. F1 has been unbelievable to watch the momentum and what a great, you know, transitional conversation to to, to CX and automation of experiences for fans as the fan has grown by hundreds of percent. But just to circle back full way, I was very encouraged with what I saw today. Red Hat, Ansible, IBM Strong partnership. I like what they're doing in their expanded ecosystem. And automation, by the way, is gonna be one of the most robust investment areas over the next few years, even as other parts of tech continue to struggle that in cyber security. >>You heard it here. First guys, investment in automation and cyber security straight from two analysts. I got to sit between. For our guests and John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching The Cube Live from Chicago, Ansible Fest 22. John and I will be back after a short break. SO'S stick around.

>> From the theCUBE studios in Palo Alto, in Boston, bringing you data-driven insights from theCUBE and ETR. This is "Breaking Analysis", with Dave Vellante. >> The recent security breach of an Okta third party supplier has been widely reported. The criticisms of Okta's response have been harsh, and the impact on Okta's value has been obvious, investors shaved about $6 billion off the company's market cap during the week the hack was made public. We believe Okta's claim that the customer technical impact was, "Near zero," may be semantically correct. However, based on customer data, we feel Okta has a blind spot. There are customer ripple effects that require clear action which are missed in Okta's public statements, in our view. Okta's product portfolio remains solid, it's a clear leader in the identity space. But in our view, one part of the long journey back to credibility requires Okta to fully understand and recognize the true scope of this breach on its customers. Hello, and welcome to this week's Wikibon "CUBE Insights", powered by ETR. In this "Breaking Analysis", we welcome our ETR colleague, Erik Bradley, to share new data from the community. Erik, welcome. >> Thank you, Dave, always enjoy being on the show, particularly when we get to talk about a topic that's not being well covered in the mainstream media in my opinion. >> Yeah, I agree, you've got some new data, and we're going to share some of that today. Let's first review the timeline of this hack. On January 20th this year, Okta got an alert that something was amiss at one of its partners, a company called Sitel, that provides low-level contact center support for Okta. The next day, Sitel retained a forensic firm to investigate, which was completed, that investigation was completed on February 28th. A report dated March 10th was created, and Okta received a summary of that from Sitel on March 17th. Five days later, Lapsus$ posted the infamous screenshots on Twitter. And later that day, sheesh, Okta got the full report from Sitel, and then responded publicly. Then the media frenzy in the back and forth ensued. So Erik, you know, there's so much wrong with this timeline, it's been picked apart by the media. But I will say this, what appeared to be a benign incident and generally has turned into a PR disaster for Okta, and I imagine Sitel as well. Who I reached out to by the way, but they did not provide a comment, whereas Okta did. We'll share that later. I mean, where do we start on this, Erik? >> It's a great question, "Where do we start?" As you know, our motto here is opinions only exist due to a lack of data, so I'm going to start with the data. What we were able to do is because we had a survey that was in the field when the news broke, is that we were able to observe the data in realtime. So we sequestered the data up until that moment when it was announced, so before March 23rd and then after March 23rd. And although most of the responses came in prior, so it wasn't as much of an end as we would've liked. It really was telling to see the difference of how the survey responses changed from before the breach was announced to after, and we can get into a little bit more- >> So let's... Sorry, sorry to interrupt, let's bring that up, let's look at some of that data. And as followers of this program know... Let me just set it up, Erik. Every quarter, ETR, they have a proprietary net score methodology to determine customer spending momentum, and that's what we're talking about here. Essentially measuring the net number of customers spending more on a particular product or platform. So apologize for interrupting, but you're on this data right here. >> Not at all. >> So take us through this. >> Yeah, so again, let's caveat. Okta is still a premier company in our work. Top five in overall security, not just in their niche, and they still remained extremely strong at the end of the survey. However, when you kind of look at that at a more of a micro analysis, what you noticed was a true difference between before March 23rd and after. Overall, their cumulative net score or proprietary spending intention score that we use, was 56% prior. That dropped to 44% during the time period after, that is a significant drop. Even a little bit more telling, and again, small sample size, I want to be very fair about that. Before March 23rd, only three of our community members indicated any indication of replacing Okta. That number went to eight afterwards. So again, small number, but a big difference when you're talking about a percentage change. >> Yeah, so that's that sort of green line that was shown there. You know, not too damaging, but definitely a noticeable downturn with the caveat that it's a small end. But here's the thing that I love working with you, we didn't stop there. You went out, you talked to customers, I talked to a number of customers. You actually organized a panel. This week, Erik hosted a deep dive on the topic with CISOs. And we have, if we could bring up that next slide, Alex. These are some of the top CISOs in the community, and I'm going to just summarize the comments and then turn it over to you, Erik. The first one was really concerning, "We heard about this in the media," ooh, ooh, ouch. Next one, "Not a huge hit, but loss of trust." "We can't just shut Okta off like SolarWinds." So there's definitely a lock in effect there. "We may need to hire new people," i.e, "There's a business impact to us beyond the technical impact." "We're rethinking contract negotiations with Okta." And bottom line, "It's still a strong solution." "We're not really worried about our Okta environment, but this is a trust and communications issue." Erik, these are painful to read, and in the end of the day, Okta has to own this. Todd McKinnon did acknowledge this. As I said at the top, there are domino business impacts that Okta may not be seeing. What are your thoughts? >> There's a lot we're going to need to get into in a little bit, and I think you were spot on earlier, when McKinnon said there was no impact. And that's not actually true, there's a lot of peripheral, derivative impact that was brought up in our panel. Before we even did the panel though, I do want to say we went out quickly to about 20 customers and asked them if they were willing to give an opinion. And it was sort of split down the middle where about, you know, half of them were saying, "You know, this is okay. We're going to stand by 'em, Okta's the best in the industry." A few were cautious, "Opinion's unchanged, but we're going to take a look deeper." And then another 40% were just flat out negative. And again, small sample size, but you don't want to see that. It's indicative of reputational damage right away. That was what led us to say, "You know what, let's go do this panel." And as you know, from reading it and looking at the panel, well, a lot of topics were brought up about the derivative impact of it. And whether that's your own, you know, having to hire people to go look into your backend to deal with and manage Okta. Whether it's cyber insurance ramifications down the road, there's a lot of aspects that need to be discussed about this. >> Yeah now, so before I go on... And by the way, I've spent a fair amount of time just parsing, listening very carefully to Todd McKinnon's commentary. He did an interview with Emily Chang, it was quite useful. But before I go on, I reached out to Okta, and they were super responsive and I appreciate that. And I do believe they're taking this seriously, here's a statement they provided to theCUBE. Quote, "As a global leader in identity, we recognize the critical role Okta plays for our customers and our customers' end users. Okta has a culture of learning and improving, and we are taking the steps to prevent this from happening again. We know trust is earned, and building back our customers' trust in Okta through our actions and our ongoing support as their secure identity partner is our top priority." Okay, so look, you know, what are you going to say, right? I mean, I think they do own it. Again, the concern is the blind spots. So we put together this visual to try to explain how Okta is describing the impact, and maybe another way to look at it. So let me walk you through this. Here's a simple way in which organizations think about the impact of a breach. What's the probability of a breach, that's the vertical axis, and what's the impact on the horizontal. Now I feel as though business impact really is the financial, you know, condition. But we've narrowed this to map to Todd McKinnon's statements of the technical impact. And they've said the technical impact in terms of things customers need to do or change, is near zero, and that's the red dot that you see there. Look, the fact is, that Okta has more than 15,000 customers, and at most, 366 were directly impacted by this. That's less than 3% of the base, and it's probably less than that, they're just being conservative. And the technical impact which Todd McKinnon described in an interview, again, with Emily Chang, was near zero in terms of actions the customers had to take on things like reporting and changes and remediation. Basically negligible. But based on the customer feedback outside of that 366, that's what we're calling that blind spot and that bracket. And then we list the items that we are hearing from customers on things that they have to do now, despite that minimal exposure. Erik, this is new information that we've uncovered through the ETR process, and there's a long list of collateral impacts that you just referred to before, actions that customers have to take, right? >> Yeah, there's a lot, and the panel really brought that to life even more than I expected to be quite honest. First of all, you're right, most of them believe that this was a minimal impact. The true damage here was reputational, and the derivatives that come from it. We had one panelist say that they now have to go hire people, because, and I hate to say this, but Okta isn't known for their best professional support. So they have to go get people now in to kind of do that themselves and manage that. That's obviously not the easiest thing to do in this environment. We had other ones express concern about, "Hey I'm an Okta customer. When I have to do my cyber insurance renewal, is my policy going to go up? Is my premium going to go up?" And it's not something that they even want to have to handle, but they do. There were a lot of concerns. One particular person didn't think the impact was minimal, and I just think it's worth bringing up. There was no demand for ransom here. So there were only two and a half percent of Okta customers that were hit, but we don't know what the second play is, right, this could just be stage one. And I think that there was one particular person on the panel who truly believes that, that could be the case, that this was just the first step. And in his opinion, there wasn't anything specific about those 366 customers that made him feel like the bad actor was targeting them. So he does believe that this might be a step one of a step two situation. Now that's a, you know, bit of an alarmist opinion and the rest of the panel didn't really echo it, but it is something that's kind of worth bringing up out there. >> Well, you know, it just pays to be paranoid. I mean, you know, it was reported that supposedly, this hack was done by a 16-year-old in England, out of his, you know, mother's house, but who knows? You know, other actors might have paid that individual to see what they could do. It could have been a little bit of reconnaissance, throw the pawn in there and see how, you know, what the response is like. So I want to parse some of Todd McKinnon's statements from that Bloomberg interview. Look, we've always, you and I both have been impressed with Okta, and Todd McKinnon's management. His decisions, execution, leadership, super impressive individual. You know, big fans of the company. And in the interview, it looked like (chuckles) the guy hadn't slept in three weeks, so really you have to feel for him. But I think there are some statements that have to be unpacked. The first one, McKinnon took responsibility and talked about how they'll be transparent about steps they're taking in the future to avoid you know, similar problems. We talked about the near-zero technical impact, we don't need to go there anymore. But Erik, the two things that struck me as communication misfires were the last two. Especially the penultimate statement there, quote, "The competitor product was at fault for this breach." You know, by the way, I believe this to be true. Evidently, Sitel was not using Okta as its identity access platform. You know, we're all trying to figure out who that is. I can tell you it definitely was not CyberArk, we're still digging to find out who. But you know, you can't say in my view, "We are taking responsibility," and then later say it was the competitor's fault. And I know that's not what he meant, but that's kind of how it came across. And even if it's true, you just don't say that later in a conversation after saying that, "We own it." Now on the last point, love your thoughts on this, Erik? My first reaction was Okta's throwing Sitel under the bus. You know, Okta's asking for forgiveness from its customers, but it just shot its partner, and I kind of get it. This shows that they're taking action but I would've preferred something like, "Look, we've suspended our use of Sitel for the time being pending a more detailed review. We've shut down that relationship to block any exposures. Our focus right now is on customers, and we'll take a look at that down the road." But I have to say in looking at the timeline, it looks like Sitel did hide the ball a little bit, and so you can't blame 'em. And you know, what are your thoughts on that? >> Well, I'll go back to my panelists again, who unanimously agreed this was a masterclass on how not to handle crisis management. And I do feel for 'em, they're a fantastic management team. The acquisition of Auth0 alone, was just such a brilliant move that you have to kind of wonder what went wrong here, they clearly were blindsided. I agree with you that Sitel was not forthcoming quickly enough, and I have a feeling that, that's what got them in this position, in a bad PR. However, you can't go ahead and fire your partner and then turn around and ask other people not to fire you. Particularly until a very thorough investigation and a root cause analysis has been released to everyone. And the customers that I have spoken to don't believe that, that is done yet. Now, when I ask them directly, "Would you consider leaving Okta?" Their answers were, "No, it is not easy to rip and replace, and we're not done doing our due diligence." So it's interesting that Okta's customers are giving them that benefit of the doubt, but we haven't seen it, you know, flow the other way with Okta's partner. >> Yeah, and that's why I would've preferred a different public posture, because who knows? I mean, is Sitel the only partner that's not using Okta as its identity management, who knows? I'd like to learn more about that. And to your point, you know, maybe Okta's got to vertically integrate here and start, you know, supporting the lower level stuff directly itself, you know, and/or tightening up those partnerships. Now of course, the impact on Okta obviously has been really serious, big hit on the stock. You know, they're piling on inflation and quantitative tightening and rate hikes. But the real damage, as we've said, is trust and reputation, which Okta has earned, and now it has to work hard to earn back. And it's unfortunate. Look, Okta was founded in 2009 and in over a decade, you know, by my count, there have been no major incidents that are obvious. And we've seen the damage that hackers can do by going after the digital supply chain and third and fourth party providers. You know, rules on disclosure is still not tight and that maybe is part of the problem here. Perhaps the new law The House just sent over to President Biden, is going to help. But the point, Erik, is Okta is not alone here. It feels like they got what looked like a benign alert. Sitel wasn't fully transparent, and Okta is kind of fumbling on the comms, which creates this spiraling effect. Look, we're going to have to wait for the real near-term and midterm impacts, but longterm, I personally believe Okta is going to be fine. But they're going to have to sacrifice some margin possibly in the near to midterm, and go through more pain to regain the loyalty of its customers. And I really would like to hear from Okta that they understand that customers, the impact of this breach to customers, actually does go beyond the 366 that were possibly compromised. Erik, I'll give you the final word. >> Yeah, there's a couple of things there if I can have a moment, and yes, Okta... Well, there was a great quote, one of the guys said, "Okta's built like a tank, but they just gave the keys to a 16 year old valet." So he said, "There is some concern here." But yes, they are best of breed, they are the leader, but there is some concern. And every one of the guys I spoke to, all CISOs, said, "This is going to come up at renewal time. At a minimum, this is leverage. I have to ask them to audit their third parties and their partners. I have to bring this up when it comes time." And then the other one that's a little bit of a concern is data-wise. We saw Ping Identity jump big, from 9% net score to 24% net score. Don't know if it's causative or correlated, but it did happen. Another thing to be concerned about out there, is Microsoft is making absolutely massive strides in security. And all four of the panelists said, "Hey, I've got an E5 license, why don't I get the most out of it? I'm at least going to look." So for Okta to say, you know, "Hey, there's no impact here," it's just not true, there is an impact, they're saying what they need to say. But there's more to this, you know, their market cap definitely got hit. But you know, I think over time if the market stabilized, we could see that recover. It's a great management team, but they did just open the door for a big, big player like Microsoft. And you and I also both know that there's a lot of emerging names out there too, that would like to, you know, take a little bit of that share. >> And you know, but here's the thing, I want to keep going here for a minute. Microsoft got hit by lapses, Nvidia got hit by lapses. But I think, Erik, I feel like people, "Oh yeah, Microsoft, they get hit all the time." They're kind of used to it with Microsoft, right? So that's why I'm saying, it's really interesting here. Customers want to consolidate their security portfolio and the number of tools that they have, you know. But then you look at something like this and you say, "Okay, we're narrowing the blast radius. You know, maybe we have to rethink that and that creates more complexity," and so it's a very complicated situation. But you know, your point about Microsoft is ironic, right. Because you know, when you see Microsoft, Amazon, you know, customers get hit all the time and it's oftentimes the fault of the customer, or the partner. And so it seems like, again, coming back to the comms of this, is that really is the one thing that they just didn't get right. >> Yeah, the biggest takeaway from this without a doubt is it's not the impact of the breach, it was the impact of their delay and how they handled it and how they managed it. That's through the course of 25 CISOs I've spoken to now, that's unanimous. It's not about that this was a huge damaging hit, but the damage really came from their reaction or lack thereof. >> Yeah, and it's unfortunate, 'cause it feels like a lot of it was sort of, I want to say out of their control because obviously they could have audited the partners. But still, I feel like they got thrown a curve ball that they really had a, you know, difficult time, you know, parsing through that. All right, hey, we got to leave it there for now. Thank you, Erik Bradley, appreciate you coming on, It's always a pleasure to have you >> Always good talking to you too, Dave, thanks a lot. >> ETR team, you guys are amazing, do some great work. I want to thank Stephanie Chan, who helps me with background research for "Breaking Analysis". Kristen Martin and Cheryl Knight, help get the word out, as do some others. Alex Myerson on production, Alex, thank you. And Rob Hof, is our EIC at SiliconANGLE. Remember, all these episodes, they are available as podcasts. Wherever you listen, just search, "Breaking Analysis podcast." I publish each week on wikibon.com and siliconangle.com. Check out etr.ai, it's the best in the business for real customer data real-time, near real-time, awesome platform. You can reach out to me at david.vellante@siliconangle.com, or @DVellante, or comment on my LinkedIn post. This is Dave Vellante, for Erik Bradley, and "theCUBE Insights", powered by ETR. Thanks for watching, be well, and we'll see you next time. (bright music)

(funky music) >> Announcer: From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE Conversation. >> Everyone, welcome to this special CUBE Conversation here in Palo Alto, California with CUBE Studios. I'm John Furrier, your host of this CUBE Conversation with Dheeraj Pandey, CEO of Nutanix. CUBE alumni, very special part of our community. Great to see you again, thanks for coming in. We're previewing your big show coming up, Nutanix NEXT in Europe. Thanks for joining me. >> It's an honor. >> It's always great to get you. I saw your interview on Bloomberg with Emily Chang. Kind of short interview, but still, you're putting the message out there. You've been talking software. We covered your show here in North America. Clearly moving to the subscription model, and I want to get into that conversation. I think there's some notable things to talk about now that we're in this cloud 2.0 era, as we're calling it, kind of a goof on web 2.0. But cloud 2.0 is a whole shift happening, and you've been on it for a while. But you got the event coming up in Europe, Nutanix NEXT. What's the focus? Give a quick plug for that event. Let's talk about that. >> Yeah, in fact, the reiteration of the message is a key part of any of our user conferences. We have 14,000 customers around the world now, across 150 countries. We've done almost more than $5 billion worth of just software business in the last six, seven years of selling. It's a billion six run rate. There's a lot going on in the business, but we need to take a step back and in our user conference talk about the vision. So what's the vision of Nutanix? And the best part is that it hasn't changed. It's basically one of those timeless things that hopefully will withstand the test of time in the future as well. Make computing invisible anywhere. People scratch their heads. What does computing mean? What does invisible mean? What does anywhere mean? And that's where we'll actually go to these user conferences, talk about what is computing for us. Is it just infrastructure? Is it infrastructure and platform? Now that we're getting into desktop delivery, is it also about business users and applications? The same thing about invisible, what's invisible? For us, it's always been a special word. It's a very esoteric word. If you think about the B2B world, it doesn't talk about the word invisible a lot. But for us it's a very profound word. It's about autonomous software. It's about continuous, virtues of continuous delivery, continuous consumption, continuous mobility. That's how you make things invisible. And subscription is a big part of that continuous delivery message and continuous consumption message. >> So the event is October 9th, around the first week of October. You got some time there, but getting geared up for that. I wanted to ask you what you've learned from the North America conference and going into the European conference. It's ultimately the same message, same vision, with a tweak, you got some time under your belt since then. The subscription model business, which you were talking in your Bloomberg interview, is in play. It is not a new thing. It's been in operation for a while. Could you talk about that specifically? Because I think most people would say, hey, hardware to software, hard to do. Software subscription, hard to maintain and grow. Where are you on that transition? Explain and clarify your mix of business, hardware, software. Where are you in the progress of that transformation? >> Well, you know, I have been a big student of history, and I can't think of a company that's gone from hardware to software and software subscription in such a short span. Actually, I don't know of any company. If you know of one, please let me know. But why? The why of subscription is to be frictionless. Hybrid is impossible without having the same kind of consumption model, both on-prem and off-prem. And if we didn't go through that, we would be hypocritical as a company to talk about cloud and hybrid itself. The next 10 years for this company is about hybrid, and doing it as if private and public are one in the same is basically the essence of Nutanix's architecture. >> Well, I can think of some hardware-software dynamics that, again, might not match your criteria, but some might say Apple. Is it a software or hardware company? Hardware drives the ecosystem, they commoditize it. Peloton bicycle is a bike, but it's mainly a software business and in-person business. So there's different models. Oracle has hardware, they have software. It doesn't always relate to the enterprise. What's the argument to say, hey, why don't you just create your own box and kick ass with that box, or is it just different dynamics? What's that? >> Well, there's a tension in the system. People want to buy experiences as opposed to buying things. They don't want to integrate things, like, oh, I need to actually now get a hardware vendor to behave as a software vendor when it comes to support issues and such. And at the same time, you want to be flexible and portable. How do you really work with the customer with their relationships that they have with their hardware vendors? So the word anywhere in our vision is exactly that. It's like, okay, we can work on multiple servers, multiple hypervisors, and multiple clouds. At the end of the day, the customer experience is king. And that's one thing that the last 10 years has taught us, John, if anything, is don't sell things to people. You know, Kubernetes is a thing. Cloud is a thing. Can you really go sell experiences? The biggest lesson in the last year for us has been integrate better. Not just with partners, but also within your own products. And now if you can do that well, customers will buy from you. >> I think you just kind of clarified where I was thinking out loud, because if you think about Apple, the hardware is part of the experience. So they have to have it. >> Mm-hmm. >> You don't have to have the hardware to create those experiences. Is that right? >> Absolutely, which is why it's now 2% of our business, and yet we are saying that we take the burden of responsibility of supporting it, integrating with it. One of the biggest issues with cloud is operations. What is operations? It's day two patching. How do you do day two patching? Intel is coming up with microcode upgrades every quarter now because of security reasons. If we are not doing an awesome job of one-click upgrade of firmware and microcode and BIOS, we don't belong in the hybrid cloud world. I think that's the level of mundaneness that we've gotten to with our software that makes us such a high NPS company with our customers. >> I want to just drill in on the notion of a thing versus experience. You mentioned Kubernetes is a thing. I would say Hadoop was a thing. But Hadoop was a great example. It was hard to do. Kubernetes, jury's still out. People love them. Kubernetes, we'll see how that goes. If it can be abstracted away, it's not a thing anymore. We'll see. But Hadoop was a great example. Unbelievable technology direction, big data, all the goodness of object storage and unstructured data. We knew that. Just hard to work with. Setting up clusters, managing clusters. And it ended up being the death of the sector, in my opinion. What is an experience? Define what does that mean. Is it frictionless only? Is there a trust equation? Just unpack your vision on what that means. A thing, which could be a box with software on it, and experience, which is something different. >> Yeah, I mean, now you start to unpeel the word experience. It's really about being frictionless, trusted, and invisible. If you can really do these things well, around the word, define frictionless. Well, it has to be consumer-grade. It has to be web scalable, 'cause customers are looking for the Amazon architecture inside, and aren't just going and renting it from Amazon, but also saying, can I get the same experience inside? So you've got to make it web scale. You've got to make it consumer-grade. Because our operators and users, talk about Hadoop, I mean, they struggled with the experience of Hadoop itself because it was a thing, it was a technology, as opposed to being something that was consumer-grade itself. And then finally, security. Trust is very important. We must secure always on resilient. The word resilience is very important. In fact, that's one of the things we'll actually talk about at our conference, is resilience. What does it mean, not just for Nutanix stock, to be where it is today from where it was six months ago. And that's what I'm most proud of, is you go through these transitions, you actually talk about resilience of software, resilience of systems, resilience of customer support, and resilience of companies. >> So you mentioned hybrid cloud. We were talking before we came on camera about hybrid cloud. But software's a two-way relationship. Talk about what you mean by that, and then I want to ask you a follow-up question of where hardware may or may be an opportunity or a problem in that construct. >> Yeah, I mean, look, in the world of hybrid, what's really important is delivering an experience that's really without silos. Ideally, on-prem infrastructure is an availability zone. How do you make it look like an availability zone that can stand up shoulder-to-shoulder with a public cloud availability zone? That's where you sell an experience. That's how you talk about a management plane where you can actually have a single pane of glass that really delivers a cloud experience both ways. >> You're kind of a contrarian. I always love interviewing you because you seem to be on the next wave before any realizes it. Right now everyone's trying to go on-premise and you're moving from on-premise to the cloud. Not you guys moving, but your whole vision is. You've been there, done that on premises. Now you've got to be where the customers are, which is where they need to be, which is the cloud. I heard you say that. It's interesting, you're going the other way, right? >> Mm-hmm. But you could look at the infrastructure and say, hey, there's a lot of hardware inside these clouds that have a lot of hardware-specific features like hardware assist that software or network latency might not be able to deliver. Is that a missed opportunity for you guys, or does your software leverage these trends? And even on premises, there's hardware offload-like features coming. How do you reconcile that? Because I would just argue inside of the company, say, hey, Dheeraj, let's not go all in on software. We can maximize this new technology, this thing, for our software. How do you-- >> Look, I think if you look at our features, like security, the way we use TPM, which is a piece of assist that you get from Intel's motherboards for doing key encryption management. What does it mean to really do encryption at scale using Intel's vectored instructions? How do you do RDMA? How do you look at InfiniBand? How do you look at Optane drives? We've been really good at that lowest level, but making sure that it's actually selling a solution that can then go drive SAP HANA and Oracle databases and GPU for graphics and desktops. So as a company, we don't talk about those things because they are the how of the business. You don't talk about the how. You'd rather talk about the why and the what, actually. >> So from a business strategy standpoint, I just want to get this clear because there's downfalls for getting into the hardware business. You know them. Inventory, all these hardware cycles are moving fast. You mentioned Intel shipping microcode for security reasons. So you're basically saying you'd rather optimize for decoupling hardware from the software and ride the innovation of the hardware guys, like Nvidia and Intel and others. >> Absolutely, and do it faster than anybody else, but more integrated than anybody else. You know, all together now is kind of our message for .NEXT. How do you bring it all together? Because the world is struggling with things, and that's the opportunity for Nutanix. >> Well, I would say making compute invisible is a great tagline. I would add storage and networking to that too. >> Yeah, computing, by the way. >> Computing. >> I said computing. >> Okay, computing. >> 'Cause computing is compute storage networking. Computing is infrastructure, platform, and apps. It's a very clever word, and it's a very profound word as well. >> Well, let's just throw Kubernetes in there too and move up the stack, because ultimately, we're writing a lot of stories on covering this editorially, is that the world's flipped upside down. It used to be the infrastructure. We're calling this cloud 2.0, like I said earlier. The world used to be the infrastructure enabled what the apps could do, and they were limited to the resources they had. Now the apps are in charge. They're dictating terms below the software line, if you want to call it the app line. So the apps are in charge now. Whoever can serve up the best infrastructure capability, which changes the entire computing industry because now the suppliers who can deliver that elastic or flexible capacity or resource, wins. >> Absolutely. >> And that's ultimately a complete shift. >> You know, I tell people, John, about the strategy of Nutanix because we have some apps now. Frame is an app for us. Beam is an app. Calm is an app. These are apps, they're drawn on the platform, which is the core platform of Nutanix, the core hyper-convergence innovation that we did. If you go back to the '90s, who was to say that Windows really fueled Office or Office fueled Windows? They had to work in conjunction, because without one, there would be no, the other, actually. So without Office there would be no Windows. Without Windows there would be no Office. How platforms and apps work with each other synergistically is at the core of delivering that experience. >> I want to add just you're a student of history. As an entrepreneur, you've been there through the many waves and you also invest a lot, and I want to ask you this question. It used to be that platforms was the holy grail. You'd go to a VC and say, hey, I'm building a platform. Big time investment. An entrepreneur will come back: I got a tool. You're a feature. You're a feature, not a platform. Platforms was the elite engineering position to come in to look for the big money. How would you define platforms now? Because with cloud, if apps are in charge, and there's potential features that are coming around the corner that no one's yet invented, what is this platform 2.0 world look like if you were coming out of grad school or you were a young engineer or a young entrepreneur? How do you think about that right now? >> Well, the biggest thing is around extensibility and openness. You know, we were talking about openness before, but the idea of APIs, where API is the new graphically why, because the developer is the builder. And how do you really go sell to them and still deliver a great experience? And not just from the point of view of, well, I've given you the best APIs, but the best SDKs. What does it mean to give them a development kit that gets them up and running in no time? And maybe even a graphical Kickstarter. We're working with our partners a lot, where it's not just about delivering APIs or raw APIs because they're not as consumable, but to deliver SDKs and to deliver graphical structural kits to them so that they can be up and running, building applications in two months rather than two years. I think that's at the core of what our platform is. >> And data and having an operating system thinking seems to be another common pattern. Understand the subsystems of data. Running and assembling things together. >> I think what is Nutanix, I mean, if people ask me what is Nutanix, I start with data. Data is the core of the company. We've done data for virtualization. We're now doing data for applications with Nutanix Files. We have object store data. We are doing Era, which is database as a service. Without data, we'd be dead as a company. That's how important it is. Now, how do you meld that with design and delivery is basically where the three Ds come together: data-- >> I wrote a blog post. Dave Vellante always laughs when I bring this up because he always references it too. In 2007 I said, data is the new development kit. 'Cause back then, development kits existed. SDKs, software development kits. MSDN was Microsoft's thing. You remember those glory days, Dheeraj, I know. But the thesis was, if data does actually come in, it's actually an input into the software. This is what I think you guys are doing that is clever that's not well understood, is data is an input, like a software library almost. A module, but it's dynamic and it's always changing. And writing software for that is a nouveau kind of thing. This is new. >> Yeah, I know, and delivered to the developer, because right now data and hardware data is sitting in silos which are mainframe-like systems. How do you deliver it where they can spin it up on their own? Making sure that we democratize data is the biggest challenge in most companies. >> We're in a new era, I think you just pointed that out, and we talk about it at CUBE all the time. We don't really talk about up-front. It used to be UI was the thing, user interface, ease of use. I think now the new table stake feature in all companies is if you can't show value instantly in any solution that has a thing or things in it, then it's pretty much not going to happen. I mean, this is the new expectation that becomes the experience for-- >> Yeah, I mean, millennials are the new developers, and they need to actually see instant gratification, many of these-- >> Well, cost too. I don't want to spend a million dollars to find out it didn't work. I want to maybe spend something variable. >> And look, agility, the cliched word, and I don't want to talk about agility per se, but at the end of the day it's all about, can we provide that experience where you don't have to really learn something over 18 months and provide it in the next three hours. >> Great conversation here with Dheeraj Pandey, CEO of Nutanix, about his vision. I always loved your software vision. You guys have smart engineers there. Let's talk about your company. I think a lot of people at your conference and your community and others want to know, is how you're doing and how the company's doing. Because I think you guys are in the midst of a major transition we talked about earlier, hardware to software, software to subscription, recurring revenue. I mean, it's pretty much a disruptive enabler for you guys at one level as an opportunity. It's changing how you do accounting. It's having product management. Your customers are going to consume it differently. It's been a big challenge. And stock's taken a little bit of a hit, but you're kind of playing the long game. Talk about the growth strategy as you guys go forward. This has been a struggle. There's been some personnel changes in the company. What's going on? Give us the straight scoop. >> Yeah, in fact the biggest thing is about the transformation for this coming decade. And there's fundamental things that need to change for the world of cloud. Otherwise, you're basically just talking the word rather than walking the walk itself. So this last quarter I was very pleased to announce that we finally showed the first strong point of this whole transformation. There's a really good data point coming out that the company is growing back again. We beat street estimates on pretty much every metric. Billings, revenue, gross margin. And we also guided above street estimates for billings, revenue, and gross margin, and I think that's probably one of the biggest things I'm proud of in the last six, nine months of this subscription transition. We're also telling the street about how to look at us from software and support billings point of view as opposed to looking at overall billings and revenue. If you take a step back into the company, I talk about this in our earnings call, 'til three years ago, we were a commercial company, also doing federal and some international. And the last three years we proved to ourselves and to the community that we can do enterprise, you know, high-end customers, upmarket, and also do a very good job of international. Now, the next three years is really about saying, can we do both enterprise and commercial together? All together now, which is also our, coincidentally, our .NEXT message, is the proof that we actually have to go and show that we can do federal, enterprise, and commercial to really build a very large business from it. >> Well, federal's got certification levels. We know that's different depending upon which agency you're talking to. Commercial, a little bit different ball game. SaaS becomes important, cloud becomes important. The big trend is on-premise hardware. Outposts for AWS, Azure Stack for Microsoft. How do you fit into that? Because you, again, you said you're both ways. >> Mm-hmm. >> So are you worried about that? Is that a headwind, tailwind for you? What's the impact for this now fashionable on-premises shift? Which I think is just a temporary thing as cloud continues to grow. But I still argue with Michael Dell about this. I think cloud is going to be a bigger TAM. Even though there's a huge total addressable market on enterprise, that's like saying there's a great TAM for horses and buggies when cars are coming out. It's different world between public cloud and on-premises. How does that impact Nutanix, this on-premise-- >> Well, remember I said about the word anywhere in our vision? Make computing invisible anywhere? With software you can actually reduce the tension between public and private. It's not this or that. It's this and that. Our software running on Outpost is a reality. It's not like we're saying, Outpost is one thing and Nutanix is another. And that's the value of software. It's so fungible, it's so portable, that you don't have to take sides between-- >> Are you guys at ISV inside Amazon Marketplace? >> No, but again, it's still a thing. Marketplace is still not where it should be, and it's hard to search and discover things from there. So we are saying, let's do it right. Remember, we were not the first hyper-convergence company. Right? We were probably the ninth one, like the way Google was as a search engine, actually. But we did it right, because the experience mattered. You know that search box that did everything? That's what Nutanix's overall experience is today. We will do the public cloud right with our software so that we can use the customer's credits with Amazon-- >> But you're still selling direct. And your partners. >> Well, everything is coming through partners, so at the end of the day we have to do an even better job of that, like what we're doing at HPE now. I think being able to go and find that common ground with partners is what commercial is all about. Commercial is a lot about distribution. As a company, we've done a really good job of enterprise and federal. But doing it with partners-- >> What are the biggest impact areas for your business and business model, elements with software transition that you're scaling up on the subscription side? What are the biggest areas? >> Well, one is just communication, 'cause obviously a lot is changing. At a private company, things change, nobody cares. The board just needs to know about it. But at a public company, we have investors in the public market. And many of them are in the nosebleeding section, actually, of this arena. So really, you're sitting in the arena, being the man in the arena, or the woman in the arena. How do you really take this message to the bleachers section is probably the biggest one, actually. >> Well, I think one of the things I've always speculated on, you look at the growth of, just pick some stocks that we all know. VMware, Microsoft. You look at the demarcation point where, right when the stock was low to high was the shift to cloud and software. With VMware, it was they had a failing strategy and they kill it and they do a deal with Amazon. Game has changed, now they're all in the software-defined data center. Microsoft, Satya Nadella comes in, boom, they're in cloud. Real commitment. And with Microsoft specifically, that was a real management commitment. They were committed to software. They were committed to the cloud business model, and took whatever medicine they needed to take. >> That's it. That's it, you take short-term pain for long-term gain, and look, anything that becomes large over time, to me it's all about long-term greed, and I use this word a lot. I want all our employees and our customers and our investors to really think about the word. There's greed, but it's long-term greed, and that's how most companies have become large over time. So I think for us to have done this right, to say, look, we are set for the next 10 years, was very important. >> It's interesting. Everyone wants to be like Jeff Bezos. Everyone wants to be like you guys now, because long-term greed or long-term thinking is the new fashion. It's the new standard and tack. >> Yeah, I mean, look the CEOs, the top 200 CEOs, came out and talked about, are we taking good care of main street, or are we just focused on this hamster wheel of three months reporting to Wall Street alone? And I think consensus is emerging that you got to take care of main street. You and I were talking about, that I look at investors as customers, and I look at customers as investors. Which is really kind of a contrarian way of thinking about it. >> It's interesting. We live in the world, we've seen many waves. I think the wave we're on now from an entrepreneurial and venture creation standpoint, whether you're public or private, is the long game is the new 3D chess. It's where the masters are playing their best game. You look at the results of the best companies. I just bought the book about Uber from Mike Isaac from the New York Times. Short-term thinking, win at all costs, that's not the 3D chess game that's going on with entrepreneurs these days. All the investment thesis is stay long-term. And certainly now, with this perceived bubble popping, or this downturn that may or may not happen, long-term game is more important than ever. Your thoughts on it? >> I think the word authenticity has never been more important, not just in the Valley, but around the world, actually. What you're seeing with all this Me Too movement and a lot of skeletons in the cupboard out there, I think at the end of the day, the word authentic cannot be artificially created. It has to come from within. What you talk about, Satya... I look at Shantanu Narayen, the Adobe CEO, and they're authentic CEOs. I mean, I look at Dara now, at Uber, he's talking about bringing authenticity to Uber. I think there's no shortcuts to success in this world. >> I think Adobe's a great example. What they've done has been amazing. I know you're on the board there, so congratulations. Final word, I'll let you get your plug in for the event and your customer base. Talk to your customers and investors out there that might watch this. From your state of mind, what's the state of the union for Nutanix? Speak directly to your customers and investors right now. >> Well, the tagline for .NEXT Copenhagen is all together now. We're bringing clouds together. We're bringing app infrastructure and data together. I think it's a really large opportunity for us to go sell an experience to our customers, rather than selling things. All these buzzwords that come up in technology, as a company, we've done a really good job of integrating them, and the next decade is about integrating the public cloud and the private cloud. And I look at investors and customers alike. I talk about long-term greed with them. Providing an experience to them is the core of our journey. >> Thanks for your insight, Dheeraj. This was a CUBE Conversation here in Palo Alto. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (funky music)

from the VMware campus in Palo Alto California it's the Cuban covering women transforming technologies hi I'm Lisa Martin on the ground with the cube at VMware in Palo Alto at the third annual women transforming Technology event and we're here with a cube alumni Betsy Sutter SVP & chief people officer at V and we're so great to have you back on the cube thank you it's great to be here this is a very exciting day yes I love these types of events because you walk in and you just feel the sense of community and empowerment and and that's one of the great things that WT squared is in in and of itself its acronym of organizations that's right industry academia and nonprofits to help women connect learn from each other and support each other not just here in Silicon Valley but beyond and this is 30 annual this was sold out like within hours yes amazing amazing momentum that you guys have brought now to the third year great yeah we're really excited we're really excited and it's a new approach right it's creating as you said a consortium of companies to come together and just have real-time conversations about what's going on around gender equality and so yeah I'm really proud of this conference mostly because it just brings such a diverse set of people together men and women we have more men attending this year than ever before and so the conversations are just elevated they're fun yeah so you started at VMware when I was a startup with about a hundred people and here you were now managing this organization that of 20,000 people yeah big undertaking yeah talk to me about kind of the cultural change in shifts that you've seen and probably been able to drive from you know the last 15 years or so yeah you know the culture has been a pretty deliberate strategy from day one and I give the first CEO and founder Diane Greene a tremendous amount of credit for being really clear about what she wanted to build and she really wanted to build a sustainable company and a culture and she knew culture was the differentiator and even the current CEO today Pat Gallagher and I know that this is the single biggest differentiator that we can continue to strengthen in the company and then all the diversity inclusion and conversations are just part of that at this point in time but it was a deliberate regi plain and simple always keeping an eye on that and the values are at the core of that right and then the culture and the behavior reflect the values and so it's just been steadfast and stalwart on who we want to be over the past 20 years it's our 20th anniversary as a company and yeah I've been here for 17 of those but that's the work that I've really focused on it's been terrific that being deliberate is really key there yep so this third event inclusion in action is the theme yep how do you see that Bing how do you how do you live that and infiltrate that at VMware yeah well you know we are a company that has wanted to disrupt the tech space and so in order to do that we've had to stay focused on innovation innovation innovation and we really innovate in everything not just in our technology and our products but how we bring them to market how we support them but it also affects a lot of the work that I do in my space and in order to innovate you have to be inclusive of just a lot of different viewpoints and I like to say that we started out sort of in as an industrial research kind of company we were born out of Stanford a lot of computer science you know graduate students creating what we've now become and that's just been kind of the path is just collaboration even though we're 22,000 people now we still kind of take that approach to everything we do and speaking of Stanford big news out yes morning yeah gratulations thank you is investing 15 million dollars in a new women's leadership Innovation Lab that's right Danford that's amazing yeah we're thrilled we are so excited and Shelly Carell professor of sociology at Stanford we our partnership has been with Stanford since 2013 I think they've really helped us navigate everything that we've done in the inclusion and diversity space and so this is a new chapter and it's around women's leadership and it's around women's leadership and innovation and this lab I think is gonna reap some great results research based work is sort of at the heart and soul who we are right and so this is just more of that it's gonna be great to take progressive research groundbreaking research and put it into practice and so Shelley and I couldn't be more excited about what's next awesome well one of the interesting things is I was reading in the press release this morning that came out that according to McKinsey companies with diversity at the executive level 21 percent write more profitable that's right why aren't more companies even paying attention you know that that is a great question because most companies are about making money and wanting to be profitable yeah so it's it's perplexing that people aren't really honing in on what research is showing but you know suddenly it comes down to power and influence it's all about who has the power and who has the influence and so part of what we're doing with Stanford VMware Women's Leadership Innovation Lab is figuring out how to get women into more leadership positions and get them into more powerful and influential positions and that will be the thing that equalizes you know gender inequality so in the last six months we have had big movements me too yeah time's up yep growtopia there I'm Emily Chang published recently right how when you when you when that first came out with all the Harvey Weinstein stuff teachers say good we need to be able to get to leverage this moment and was that do you see that as being pulled into the tech industry and and helping to accelerate making this diversity change i I think things are getting accelerated and amplified because I think voices are being used and heard and I think there's a movement and I think women are coming together as a consortium around their gender and understanding that the real issues are around power and influence and tackling it head-on and the quality of the conversations around all of these movements is it's inspiring to me after spending 30 odd years in tech so I think things are really starting to change because women are using their voices yeah speaking of women using their voices you had Laila Ali as a keynote yeah that was so fantastic strong confident woman yeah who the daughter of Muhammad Ali who tried to talk her out of becoming a fighter right tried to - I love how she said he tried to actually kind of get me I think it was my idea to not go into it right so obviously a woman probably born with a lot of natural confidence but I loved how she kind of talked to all of us and said he sometimes that light goes out or its dimmed and I need to remind myself with you our best yeah so you probably see a good amount of females that have that sort of innate confidence that love engineering and I'm gonna do this how do you encourage those women to may be mentor some of the of the either younger or not other females who want to do something but are intimidated by you know maybe don't have that natural confidence how do you kind of facility at that empowerment yeah well I do think Leila's story is amazing and you know most importantly she's an entrepreneur and a businesswoman right I mean what she's done with her career with her foundation but what she's done with her career is most impressive and I love that digging deep and find that warrior from within yeah but I think for women today I think the difference is that we're able to have the conversation with each other and even with the opposite sex and I think companies are starting to understand that if you don't have diversity you're not going to have innovation and you're not going to win and most companies that I've worked for and VMware in particular we want to win we want to lead we want to disrupt and we want to impact the world and we want and need to make money as well but I think for women now the conversation is allowed I know that people are listening on both sides of the fence and we do a lot of VMware just to make sure that conversation is alive one of the things I'm really proud of it VMware and that I really believe is it's been the quality of the conversations since day one that have put us where we are in the world and in the industry and as a company and so the conversation shifting a little bit right we're talking more about this and it's those quality conversations that just keep it going and and that's sort of core to who we are so we'll just continue that trend and it's great being able to talk to the cube because you're allowing us to amplify the quality of the conversation so I'm grateful and we're happy to be a part of that so just just the about the event there are a number of tracks right also that was something that I was mentioned to you before we we started filming was I loved that when I walked in there was a jot yeah I love that and as well as a LinkedIn profile right resume clinic all of these you think minor things those can be really impact that's right if a woman has a great head challenge wow this is fantastic or somebody guiding her on what or what not to put on a LinkedIn profile just even providing some of these things that are foundational yep that's really huge it is really huge and it's also just a new platform for these conversations to continue whether it's just a visual because you're looking at my LinkedIn headshot or my Twitter feed or whatever it is but these are all really small things but matter really small things really matter yes and so building those up into people's psyches and their abilities is sort of what we're trying to do as part of the conference so in context of the third annual event the sold-out events and this great announcement of what VMware and Stanford are doing yeah what are some of those quick wins or exciting ones that you're looking forward to seeing the rest of 2018 yeah I think I love that question I think the key is continuing to join forces to continue to lock arms and continue the conversations and so a lot of what I love to do professionally and personally is create those platforms for people to do those kinds of things and that's what women transforming technology is about this year and has been about the last two years and I think we'll just continue to do that and people will tell us what we need to know and where we need to go awesome if you look back at your career would you have forecast your success being you know the chief people officer is c-level or would you yeah you know what was that yeah I met such that's it I'm just starting at this point in my career to really reflect on that no I never imagined having this amount of responsibility and privilege never in my wildest dreams it wasn't an aspirational goal I knew that I wanted as much influence as I could have to achieve results I'm a professional problem solver this is a pretty meaty problem that we're tackling but no I I didn't a dream it now I feel a huge amount of responsibility to start to talk about it I'm a I think I mentioned you I'm a behind-the-scenes kind of person I like to work back there understanding the problem diagnosing it coming up with a solution and then helping implement it but now it's time to kind of talk about what's happened and where we are and set course for the future with so many wonderful women last question for you yep because the attrition rate is so high for females in technology yeah what advice would you give to a woman who's on the cusp of leaving not to sort of family but just going I'm not sure I feel supported here what advice would you give her yeah I would give that person and I do give this advice on the right to go out and have lots of conversations and just start those conversations you just don't know what you don't know and I've had women come to me and at the end of 45 minutes to an hour tell me they're thinking about doing something else and it saddens me especially if they're at vmware because i don't want them to leave but go out and have those conversations and explore what's next don't be afraid of the conversation and sharing what's happening to you with you at your work and events like women transforming technology are only going to help continue to get more eyes and ears on every side of whatever gap we've got aware of this and help all of us become part of the solution that's right to accelerate diversity because as the data show companies could be far more profitable if they've got that thought diversity that's exactly right and it's just that simple but it's just that difficult exactly yeah it was that simple well Betsy thank you so much but a pleasure joining us and allowing us to be part of the voice and getting this away it's out there for women transforming technology as well as helping to hopefully empower and inspire all of the current and future generations yeah attack no I really appreciate you being here - thank you our pleasure yeah we want to thank you for watching the cube I'm Lisa Martin on the ground at women transforming Technology thanks for watching [Music]

>> Narrator: From the VMware campus in Palo Alto, California, it's theCUBE, covering women transforming technology. (electro music) >> Hey, welcome to theCUBE, I'm Lisa Martin on the ground at VMware in Palo Alto at the third annual, Women Transforming Technology event. Really excited to be here. I am joined by Shelley Correll, the director of The Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford. Shelley, exciting day, welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you, good to be here! >> Lisa: Big news. >> Very big news! >> Lisa: So you're also the founding director of The Center for Advancements of Women's Leadership. The Clayman Institute has been around since 1974, but you've been partnering with Vmware for the last five years? >> Shelley: Yes, in a variety of ways, yes. >> So talk to us about the big announcement today with Vmware and The Clayman Institute. >> Well we're very exited, we've been working with VMware for five years, as you said, in a variety of different capacities, And have really been engaged with them over the idea that we could better connect academic research with practice. And so, the news we had to announce today is that they are investing 15 million dollars into our efforts and we're going to be launching a new lab that's going to be focused on advancing women's leadership. >> Lisa: Phenomenal. Talk to us about some of the foci that you're going to be focusing on to accelerate the change we need, not just to bring more eyes and ears in dollars to it but accelerate it. >> I'm glad you used that word, that's exactly what it's about, it's accelerating. We come into this with research that shows very clearly that the progress, in terms of moving women into leadership, has just all but stalled. The progress we're making is very slow, and if we just sit back and wait, we're not going to see, you and I aren't going to see gender equality, in our lives, our daughter's lives. It's not going to happen. And so we're asking ourselves, what can we do to accelerate change? And so, to me, one of the most important things that we need to be doing is bridging the gap between academic scholarship, which tells a lot about the barriers to women's leadership, with the kind of activities that organizations are doing, the diversity initiatives their putting in place. If we can join forces, then I think we can better accelerate change. And so that was kind of the idea behind this lab. We really have three main things that we're hoping to accomplish. One is to diagnose the barriers to women's advancement, across all kinds of diversity that women occupy and own. So understanding those barriers, and then second is piloting solutions, working within companies to develop interventions that we can put in place, so we can learn how to get beyond the barriers. That's the kind of next thing that we're doing. And third, is just to be a hub of information. We're going to take these learnings from our research and translate them into tools that people can use, to be able to put research into action and in their own organizations. So that's the three-prong goal of this new laboratory. >> Lisa: So exciting. And it's something that, you know, as we talk about, it's 2018 and this is still such a massive issue. It's been very widely known for a long time that the numbers of women in technical roles in technology is what, below 25%. But something I found interesting when I was doing some research on you is that there's also this motherhood penalty that I was unaware. Tell us a little bit about what that is and how is that something that maybe this new innovation lab will help to eliminate? >> Right, and I think it's important because when we think about putting solutions into place, we know that they're not going to be, sort of, one-size-fits-all solutions. They're going to differ for different kinds of women. And in my own research on the motherhood penalty, what we found are very clear gaps between women who are childless and women who are mothers. And in fact, the wage penalty that we usually talk about, the gender wage gap, is largely a gap between mothers and childless women. And so, we got to asking ourselves, why? Why would a women who's a mother be so penalized relative to a childless woman? So we've got gender inequality, and now we've got this motherhood penalty on top of that. And so, our research found that if you take a resume for a woman and you just add in subtle information that she's a mother, >> Lisa: Like on the PTA, or something. >> The PTA association, that people are 100% less likely to recommend her for hire. >> 100%? >> 100%, yeah. You know, it's a huge gap there, and so, as we dig deeper, what we see is that people's stereotypes about mothers, are that mothers are so committed to their families that they couldn't possibly be committed to their job. Every one of us who work with mothers in the workplace know that's not the case, right? But yet that's the stereotype that's holding mothers back, in addition to what we find for women in general, if you will. >> So if a man on his resume has that he is a soccer coach or a baseball coach, that is not factored into the decision to not hire him? >> Well it is, but guess what? It advantages him, it doesn't disadvantage him. >> Lisa: Advantages? Yes, so for fathers, we find that people see fathers as more committed to the job than childless men. So, we're seeing how parenthood works differently for men and women in the workplace. So I think one of the barriers we want to get past is the effects of biases on how people are evaluated, and they're not just gender biases. They're biases about gender, but also about parenthood, about race, about ethnicity, about sexuality. I mean, all of those things intersect in complex ways. So, it means that we're going to see different barriers for different types of women, if you will, and that means also that we're probably going to need to have different kinds of solutions as well. >> Absolutely, so something that interests me is, you know, in the last six months, me too movement exploded on the scene, times up, Brotopia, a recent book out by Emily Chang, that is shocking to say the least, very informative, enlightening. When those movements popped up and there was a, sort of, unlikely alliance with Hollywood, I'm curious, we're you like yes, good, we have some momentum here that we need to be able to leverage to making the gaps, as you said, there's so many that women face, more sensible intact, was that kind of a let's get on the same bandwagon? Yes, you have to ride these waves when they happen. The problems that me too is identifying are certainly not new problems, and this has been going on as long as women have been in the work place, but the attention to it is what's new, and so, as a scholar when there's attention to important social problem that you research, you ride that wave. We've got the world's attention now. Let's use that attention to take the messages about what we know from research and the strategies we have and get them out to people that need them, so it is an opening that allows us to take the me too, kind of, moment that we're in and really turn it into a movement that produces sustainable change. >> We need to get our own hashtag. (laughter) What are some of the things that say in this next, what are we almost and half way through 2018, which is kind of scary. What are some of the, maybe, the small ones or the quick ones that you think with this new VMware partnership that you're going to be able to identify and uncover in 2018? >> We've been working a lot on ways to reduce unconscious biases in the workplace. I think some of the projects that we're launching are really about going into organizations and diagnosing where a bias might be affecting how they're evaluating women at the points of hire, at promotion, as we're thinking about who to put all the stretch assignments. So identifying the way those biases are occurring in workplaces and then working with managers in those organizations to design tools to help get beyond those biases. This is some work that we have stared initially that we're now expanding to more research sites and so I think that's one of the first things to do is to really go in and try to remove these biases that don't, they're not good for women, but they're not good for the organization either. If you're biased against women, what that means is you're not valuing women's talent and any organization wants to accurately assessing the talent of people in their workplace. >> I think I read in a press release this morning that a McKinsey report that said that organization, if I can, yes. According to McKinsey, companies with diversity on their executive teams are 21% more profitable than those who lack diversity. Profits. >> I know, it's profit. We see it with innovation, too. It makes sense if you think about it, right. If our biases we causing us to see women as less talented than they are and maybe men as more talented then they are, what that means is we're not hiring on average the most productive, talented people. I think all organizations want to source and hire the best people they can, and so we're moving these biases as one way of doing that. And, when we remove those biases, I think improvements or diversity will follow. >> When you look at a company that's been around for a long time and you think wow, culture is very slow to change. >> Shelley: Right. >> How do you advise organizations that have been around for decades that are predominantly male led, especially at the executive level, to just be more aware and open to changing the culture to, you know, maybe it's hey, you could be 21% more profitable. >> Shelley: Exactly. >> Who doesn't want that? >> Shelley: Who doesn't want that, yeah. >> How do you have the conversation with an accumbent about cultural change? >> Right, and I think sometimes people think culture is just sort of what it is and cannot be changed, but we can make small wins, small improvements in that culture, and so one of the things that has been most effective in our research is to go in and work with managers on trying to improve how they're hiring people, how they're promoting people, and so the conversation isn't really about culture. It is at a deep level, but it doesn't seem like that at the surface level. It's really about how can you more accurately asses talent, and when you start asking that question, what you start seeing is the ways that you were assessing talent before were flawed in some ways and they were flawed in a way that was limiting your ability to see women's abilities and their talents. The conversation really is just about doing what I think we all want to do, which is truly evaluating people based on their merits, and I think if that's the message, a lot more people are on board with that. The other thing I'll say is when we had, we were working with a company who was telling us that one of the ways they assessed people for promotion was they wanted their leaders to be very responsive to people in the organization, and that's a great value to have, right, to be responsive. When we probe them about how do you know when someone's responsive, they didn't really. First they couldn't articulate how they were evaluating that. What it became clear is without clear criteria for assessing responsiveness, they're implicit measures were like how quickly does this person respond to email. They realized that women weren't being as quick responding to email, especially during the dinner hours. I think you and I can know exactly why that is. >> Right. >> They they got to starting thing, well that isn't maybe the very, that's not a very good measure of leader responsiveness, and they went back to look at their responses from women and they were more elaborate, they were more detailed, they were more helpful, and so the measure they were using was sort of, it was biased against women, but it was also not productive for what they were trying to do. These are the kind of small wins that open people eyes to the fact that they could do things differently that would be good for diversity and inclusion and would be good for what they're trying to do as an organization, the bottom line as well. >> Wow, what are the other things. We talked about, you know, the numbers of women in technical roles is very small, under 25%. Another big challenge that we have in technology is attrition, and the fact that more women leave tech for other industries than women leave other industries. >> Shelley: Exactly. >> What are some of the things that your research has shown that companies can do to also, not just focus on bringing in young talent or working with universities on STEM programs, but for women that are maybe in the middle of their, whether they're thinking about the leaving the to have a family or simply this is not the right environment for me. That retention from middle career. What are some of the things that you found there? >> Yeah, and I'll say too about, I think one of the sort of narratives that people tell themselves in companies is that women are leaving tech to have children, but women don't leave tech to have children at any higher rate, and actually a lower rate than other professions, so it's not, that's not the reason they're tech at a higher rate than some other places. There's something else going on there. I think working on improving the inclusion and the environment is really important for retaining women. Surveys that sort of show why people left their jobs find that in tech, a big reason women leave tech compared to other places is they don't feel like they're supported in the workplace, more so than in other places, even including other STEM fields, like science and things like that. Higher exit rate because they don't feel included in the workplace, so the question is, what's the barrier there? What are we doing in our workplaces that women in tech don't feel included and what can we do to change that. I think, again, removing some of these biases, if you're in a workplace where you constantly feel like your talent is not being appreciated, that's one way you quickly don't feel included as a technical worker. I think this sort of cultural change that we're talking about is probably even more important for retention than it is for hiring. >> Do you think that younger companies maybe start us maybe, you know three to four years old or less than 10 year's, we'll say, have a better chance at being able to morph quickly and pivot than a larger company that's been around for decades? >> Yeah, I mean, it's much easier to get things right to begin with, you know, so people sometimes ask you know when they're founding a company how soon, you know, do we need to have a woman on board, and my answer is always as quickly as possible, and I you get to 10 employees with no women, you're already behind the curve. Really, kind of starting off with the idea that we want to get the culture right to begin with so that we don't end up having to scramble the eggs later down the road, and that's one of the things we've learned from working with VMware, is early on in the founding of this company, there was an attempt to create the kind of culture that I think more companies are wanting to emulate today. >> We've got Betsy Sutter coming on a little bit later and I'm really curious to talk to her about coming on years ago, when VMware was a start up 100 people. >> Shelley: Exactly. >> And now being in this chief people officer role of an organization of 20,000 and here we are at VMware today walking into a room of females who are here to really kind of embody what the charter of this consortium of WT Squared is, is connecting and inspiring, but supporting women and tech of all levels, right, not just here in Silicon Valley, but beyond as well and having the powers coming together from industry, from acidemia, from non-profits is, it's a very, the vibe when we were in the key note just an hour ago was so palpable that there's certainly that we will create change. >> Betsy's so inspirational to me in this regard, is that she has been here since 2001 and was sort of critical to getting the culture in place at that point in time and, you know, it's not that VMware doesn't have challenges with hiring and retaining a tech. All companies do, but they've created a culture from the beginning that I think is kind of a model for what companies are wanting to do today. >> Last thing before we wrap, here, is we had the opportunity to listen to Laila Ali and so cool. >> Shelley: So cool. >> I mean, just to hear a confident women, who was probably born with a natural confidence, that women have and some women don't, but to hear her talk about hey, sometimes this interwar, the flame is out or it's low and I, too, have to say this is my purpose. This is my passion. I don't want to have to look around and constantly think I'm in a man's sport. I know, this is my sport. I thought just that having that world kind of talk to us, women intact to say hey, it's going to take reminding yourself often what your purpose is, what you're passion is, but she challenged us to do that and I just thought it was a really encouraging, inspiring message for everyone to hear so early on a Tuesday morning. >> We run sort of a leadership program for high school girls and this whole issue of purpose is something that we really stress as well is when you're trying to lead and people aren't following, stop and ask yourself what was the purpose in doing what you're doing and articulate that purpose to others and that's the way you can kind of bring people along. I just loved her example today about when you're not feeling confident, go back and ask yourself why, the question of why. It's too easy to go through life just doing things and losing our sense of purpose and that really is a good source of confidence because you're doing something for a reason that really matters to you. That will help recharge you. >> Absolutely. Shelly, thanks so much for stopping by. >> I enjoyed it, I enjoyed it. >> TheCUBE this morning and sharing your purpose and the exciting news of what VMware and the Clayman Institute are going to do. We look forward to hearing some of the great stuff that comes out in the next few years. >> That sounds great. Thank you, nice to talk to you. >> And we want to thank you. You're watching theCUBE. We are on the ground at VMware at the 3rd Annual Women Transforming Technology event. I'm Lisa Martin. Thanks for watching. (funky music)