>> Okay, we continue now with the theme of turning ideas into insights so ultimately you can take action. We heard earlier that public cloud first doesn't mean public cloud only. And a winning strategy comprises data, irrespective of physical location on prem, across multiple clouds at the edge where real-time inference is going to drive a lot of incremental value. Data is going to help the world come back to normal we heard, or at least semi normal as we begin to better understand and forecast demand and supply imbalances and economic forces. AI is becoming embedded into every aspect of our business, our people, our processings, and applications. And now we're going to get into some of the foundational principles that support the data and insights centric processes, which are fundamental to digital transformation initiatives. And it's my pleasure to welcome two great guests, Michelle Goetz, who's a Cube alum and VP and principal analyst at Forrester, and doin' some groundbreaking work in this area. And Cindy Maike who is the vice president of industry solutions and value management at Cloudera. Welcome to both of you. >> Welcome, thank you. >> Thanks Dave. >> All right Michelle, let's get into it. Maybe you could talk about your foundational core principles. You start with data. What are the important aspects of this first principle that are achievable today? >> It's really about democratization. If you can't make your data accessible, it's not usable. Nobody's able to understand what's happening in the business and they don't understand what insights can be gained or what are the signals that are occurring that are going to help them with decisions, create stronger value or create deeper relationships with their customers due to their experiences. So it really begins with how do you make data available and bring it to where the consumer of the data is rather than trying to hunt and peck around within your ecosystem to find what it is that's important. >> Great thank you for that. So, Cindy, I wonder in hearing what Michelle just said, what are your thoughts on this? And when you work with customers at Cloudera, are there any that stand out that perhaps embody the fundamentals that Michelle just shared? >> Yeah, there's quite a few. And especially as we look across all the industries that were actually working with customers in. A few that stand out in top of mind for me is one is IQVIA. And what they're doing with real-world evidence and bringing together data across the entire healthcare and life sciences ecosystems, bringing it together in different shapes and formats, making it accessible by both internally, as well as for the entire extended ecosystem. And then for SIA, who's working to solve some predictive maintenance issues within, they're are a European car manufacturer and how do they make sure that they have efficient and effective processes when it comes to fixing equipment and so forth. And then also there's an Indonesian based telecommunications company, Techsomel, who's bringing together over the last five years, all their data about their customers and how do they enhance a customer experience, how do they make information accessible, especially in these pandemic and post pandemic times. Just getting better insights into what customers need and when do they need it? >> Cindy, platform is another core principle. How should we be thinking about data platforms in this day and age? Where do things like hybrid fit in? What's Cloudera's point of view here? >> Platforms are truly an enabler. And data needs to be accessible in many different fashions, and also what's right for the business. When I want it in a cost and efficient and effective manner. So, data resides everywhere, data is developed and it's brought together. So you need to be able to balance both real time, our batch, historical information. It all depends upon what your analytical workloads are and what types of analytical methods you're going to use to drive those business insights. So putting in placing data, landing it, making it accessible, analyzing it, needs to be done in any accessible platform, whether it be a public cloud doing it on-prem or a hybrid of the two is typically what we're seeing being the most successful. >> Great, thank you. Michelle let's move on a little bit and talk about practices and processes, the next core principles. Maybe you could provide some insight as to how you think about balancing practices and processes while at the same time managing agility. >> Yeah, it's a really great question 'cause it's pretty complex when you have to start to connect your data to your business. The first thing to really gravitate towards is what are you trying to do. And what Cindy was describing with those customer examples is that they're all based off of business goals, off of very specific use cases. That helps kind of set the agenda about what is the data and what are the data domains that are important to really understanding and recognizing what's happening within that business activity and the way that you can affect that either in near time or real time, or later on, as you're doing your strategic planning. What that's balancing against is also being able to not only see how that business is evolving, but also be able to go back and say, "Well, can I also measure the outcomes from those processes and using data and using insight? Can I also get intelligence about the data to know that it's actually satisfying my objectives to influence my customers in my market? Or is there some sort of data drift or detraction in my analytic capabilities that are allowing me to be effective in those environments?" But everything else revolves around that and really thinking succinctly about a strategy that isn't just data aware, what data do I have and how do I use it? But coming in more from that business perspective, to then start to be data driven, recognizing that every activity you do from a business perspective leads to thinking about information that supports that and supports your decisions. And ultimately getting to the point of being insight driven, where you're able to both describe what you want your business to be with your data, using analytics to then execute on that fluidly and in real time. And then ultimately bringing that back with linking to business outcomes and doing that in a continuous cycle where you can test and you can learn, you can improve, you can optimize and you can innovate. Because you can see your business as it's happening. And you have the right signals and intelligence that allow you to make great decisions. >> I like how you said near time or real time, because it is a spectrum. And at one end of the spectrum, autonomous vehicles. You've got to make a decision in real time but near real-time, or real-time, it's in the eyes of the beholder if you will. It might be before you lose the customer or before the market changes. So it's really defined on a case by case basis. I wonder Michelle, if you could talk about in working with a number of organizations I see folks, they sometimes get twisted up in understanding the dependencies that technology generally, and the technologies around data specifically can sometimes have on critical business processes. Can you maybe give some guidance as to where customers should start? Where can we find some of the quick wins and high returns? >> It comes first down to how does your business operate? So you're going yo take a look at the business processes and value stream itself. And if you can understand how people, and customers, partners, and automation are driving that step by step approach to your business activities, to realize those business outcomes, it's way easier to start thinking about what is the information necessary to see that particular step in the process, and then take the next step of saying what information is necessary to make a decision at that current point in the process? Or are you collecting information, asking for information that is going to help satisfy a downstream process step or a downstream decision? So constantly making sure that you are mapping out your business processes and activities, aligning your data process to that helps you now rationalize do you need that real time, near real time, or do you want to start creating greater consistency by bringing all of those signals together in a centralized area to eventually oversee the entire operations and outcomes as they happen? It's the process, and the decision points, and acting on those decision points for the best outcome that really determines are you going to move in more of a real-time streaming capacity, or are you going to push back into more of a batch oriented approach? Because it depends on the amount of information and the aggregate of which provides the best insight from that. >> Got it. Let's, bring Cindy back into the conversation here. Cindy, we often talk about people, process, and technology and the roles they play in creating a data strategy that's logical and sound. Can you speak to the broader ecosystem and the importance of creating both internal and external partners within an organization? >> Yeah. And that's kind of building upon what Michelle was talking about. If you think about datas and I hate to use the phrase almost, but the fuel behind the process and how do you actually become insight-driven. And you look at the capabilities that you're needing to enable from that business process, that insight process. Your extended ecosystem on how do I make that happen? Partners and picking the right partner is important because a partner is one that actually helps you implement what your decisions are. So looking for a partner that has the capability that believes in being insight-driven and making sure that when you're leveraging data within your process that if you need to do it in a real-time fashion, that they can actually meet those needs of the business. And enabling on those process activities. So the ecosystem looking at how you look at your vendors, and fundamentally they need to be that trusted partner. Do they bring those same principles of value, of being insight driven? So they have to have those core values themselves in order to help you as a business person enable those capabilities. >> So Cindy I'm cool with fuel, but it's like super fuel when you talk about data. 'Cause it's not scarce, right? You're never going to run out. (Dave chuckling) So Michelle, let's talk about leadership. Who leads? What does so-called leadership look like in an organization that's insight driven? >> So I think the really interesting thing that is starting to evolve as late is that organizations, enterprises are really recognizing that not just that data is an asset and data has value, but exactly what we're talking about here, data really does drive what your business outcomes are going to be. Data driving into the insight or the raw data itself has the ability to set in motion what's going to happen in your business processes and your customer experiences. And so, as you kind of think about that, you're now starting to see your CEO, your CMO, your CRO coming back and saying, I need better data. I need information that's representative of what's happening in my business. I need to be better adaptive to what's going on with my customers. And ultimately that means I need to be smarter and have clearer forecasting into what's about ready to come. Not just one month, two months, three months, or a year from now, but in a week or tomorrow. And so that is having a trickle down effect to then looking at two other types of roles that are elevating from technical capacity to more business capacity. You have your chief data officer that is shaping the experiences with data and with insight and reconciling what type of information is necessary with it within the context of answering these questions and creating a future fit organization that is adaptive and resilient to things that are happening. And you also have a chief digital officer who is participating because they're providing the experience and shaping the information and the way that you're going to interact and execute on those business activities. And either running that autonomously or as part of an assistance for your employees and for your customers. So really to go from not just data aware to data-driven, but ultimately to be insight driven, you're seeing way more participation and leadership at that C-suite level and just underneath, because that's where the subject matter expertise is coming in to know how to create a data strategy that is tightly connected to your business strategy. >> Great, thank you. Let's wrap, and I've got a question for both of you, maybe Cindy, you could start and then Michelle bring us home. A lot of customers, they want to understand what's achievable. So it's helpful to paint a picture of a maturity model. I'd love to go there, but I'm not going to get there anytime soon, but I want to take some baby steps. So when you're performing an analysis on an insight driven organization, Cindy what do you see as the major characteristics that define the differences between sort of the early beginners sort of fat middle, if you will, and then the more advanced constituents? >> Yeah, I'm going to build upon what Michelle was talking about is data as an asset. And I think also being data aware and trying to actually become insight driven. Companies can also have data, and they can have data as a liability. And so when you're data aware, sometimes data can still be a liability to your organization. If you're not making business decisions on the most recent and relevant data, you're not going to be insight-driven. So you've got to move beyond that data awareness, where you're looking at data just from an operational reporting. But data's fundamentally driving the decisions that you make as a business. You're using data in real time. You're leveraging data to actually help you make and drive those decisions. So when we use the term you're data-driven, you can't just use the term tongue-in-cheek. It actually means that I'm using the recent, the relevant, and the accuracy of data to actually make the decisions for me, because we're all advancing upon, we're talking about artificial intelligence and so forth being able to do that. If you're just data aware, I would not be embracing on leveraging artificial intelligence. Because that means I probably haven't embedded data into my processes. Yes, data could very well still be a liability in your organization, so how do you actually make it an asset? >> Yeah I think data aware it's like cable ready. (Dave chuckling) So Michelle, maybe you could add to what Cindy just said and maybe add as well any advice that you have around creating and defining a data strategy. >> So every data strategy has a component of being data aware. This is like building the data museum. How do you capture everything that's available to you? How do you maintain that memory of your business? Bringing in data from your applications, your partners, third parties, wherever that information is available, you want to ensure that you're capturing it and you're managing and you're maintaining it. And this is really where you're starting to think about the fact that it is an asset, it has value. But you may not necessarily know what that value is yet. If you move into a category of data driven, what starts to shift and change there is you're starting to classify label, organize the information in context of how you're making decisions and how you do business. It could start from being more proficient from an analytic purpose. You also might start to introduce some early stages of data science in there. So you can do some predictions and some data mining to start to weed out some of those signals. And you might have some simple types of algorithms that you're deploying to do a next next best action, for example. And that's what data-driven is really about. You're starting to get value out of it. The data itself is starting to make sense in context of your business, but what you haven't done quite yet, which is what insight driven businesses are, is really starting to take away the gap between when you see it, know it, and then get the most value and really exploit what that is at the time when it's right, so in the moment. We talk about this in terms of perishable insights, data and insights are ephemeral. And we want to ensure that the way that we're managing that and delivering on that data and insights is in time with our decisions and the highest value outcome we're going to have, that that insight can provide us. So are we just introducing it as data-driven organizations where we could see spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations and lots of mapping to help make longer strategic decisions, or are those insights coming up and being activated in an automated fashion within our business processes that are either assisting those human decisions at the point when they're needed, or an automated decisions for the types of digital experiences and capabilities that we're driving in our organization. So it's going from, I'm a data hoarder if I'm data aware to I'm interested in what's happening as a data-driven organization and understanding my data. And then lastly being insight driven is really where light between business, data and insight, there is none, it's all coming together for the best outcomes. >> Right, it's like people are acting on perfect or near perfect information. Or machines are doing so with a high degree of confidence. Great advice and insights, and thank you both for sharing your thoughts with our audience today, it was great to have you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay, now we're going to go into our industry deep dives. There are six industry breakouts. Financial services, insurance, manufacturing, retail communications, and public sector. Now each breakout is going to cover two distinct use cases for a total of essentially 12 really detailed segments. Now each of these is going to be available on demand, but you can scan the calendar on the homepage and navigate to your breakout session of choice. Or for more information, click on the agenda page and take a look to see which session is the best fit for you and then dive in. Join the chat and feel free to ask questions or contribute your knowledge, opinions, and data. Thanks so much for being part of the community, and enjoy the rest of the day. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> (Narrator) From around the globe, it's theCUBE. With digital coverage of IBM Think 2021. Brought to you by IBM. >> Hello, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021 virtual. Soon we'll be back in person in real life, but this year again it's a virtual conference. I'm John Furrier, your host of the cube for more cube coverage. We've got a great guest here, Debbie Vavangas, Global Garage Lead for IBM Services. Global Garage, great program. Debbie, great to see you. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me. >> So, we've covered the Garage a lot on theCUBE in the past, and a success, everyone loves the Garage. Things are born in the Garage, entrepreneurship, innovation, has been kind of categorically known for, kind of, the Garage startup. >> Absolutely. >> But also, it's become known for, really, agility, which has been a cloud phenomenon, DevOps. Now we're seeing dev SecOps as a big trend this year with hybrid cloud. So, I've got to ask you, how is Garage doing with the pandemic? Obviously, I can almost imagine people at home kind of disrupted from the office, but maybe more creativity, maybe more energy online? What's going on with the Garage? How has your transformation journey been with COVID? >> Well, John, COVID has been the leveler for us all, right? There isn't a person who hasn't had some challenge or some complexity to And that includes our clients. And I'm incredibly proud to be able to say that IBM Garage, because it is so digitally native, when the COVID pandemic has struck around the world every single one of our Garages was able to switch to being virtual without fail, without a single days lost productivity. And that's hugely beneficial to clients who are on an incredibly time-sensitive journey. And so, we've seen as a result of COVID actually there are a huge acceleration in Garages, for two reasons. So, number one, from a virtualization perspective, actually it's much easier when everybodies together in the same space. So everybody's together virtually in the same space, and we've seen, you know, acceleration in our velocity, in our collaboration, because everybody is really learning how to work in that same space. But two, because of the pandemic, because of the pressure on our client's needs to make decisions fast, know not guess, really be focused on their outcomes, not just doing stuff, the Garage really plays to that objective for them. And so we've seen a huge rise, you know, we've gone from in 2019 to just a few hundred garages, to finishing 2020 with over two and a half thousand garages. And it being embedded across services and with the goal of being the primary way our clients experience it. So COVID has been a big accelerator. >> Sorry, Debbie, can you repeat the numbers again? I just want to capture that, I missed that. >> Sure, sure. >> I did a double take on the numbers. (Debbie laughs) >> So then, we finished 2019 with just under 300 garages, and we finished 2020 with just over two and a half thousand. So, we've had a huge growth, and it isn't just the number of garages, it's the range of garages and what we're serving with our clients, and how we're collaborating with our clients, and the topics we're unpacking that has really broadened. >> Yeah, I mean I covered, and we've reported on the Garage on theCUBE and also on www.siliconangle.com in the past things and through your news coverage, but that's amazing growth. I got to believe the tailwind from COVID and just the energy around it has energized you. I want to get your thoughts on that because, you know, what we've reported on in the past has been about design thinking, human-centered design, all of those beautiful things that come with cloud-scale, right? You know, you're moving faster, you're innovating, and so that's been kind of there. But what you're getting at with this growth is, and with COVID has proven, and again, we've been pointing this out, you're seeing the pattern, it's clear. Companies are either retrenching, okay, which is refactoring, redesigning, doing those things to kind of get ready to come out of COVID with a growth strategy, and you're seeing other companies build net new innovations. So, they're building new capabilities, because COVID's shown them, kind of pulled back the curtain if you will on where the action is. So, this means there's two threads going on. You've got, "Okay, I've got to transform my business, and I got to refactor', or 'Hey, we got net new business models'. These are kind of two different things and not mutually exclusive. What's your comment on that? >> And I think that my comment on it is that is the sweet spot that Garage comes into its own, right? You mentioned lots of things in there. You talked about design thinking, and agility, and, you know, these other buzzwords that are used all the time, and Garage of course is synonymous with those. Of course, Garage uses the best design thinking, and AGILE practices, and all of those things that absolutely call to what we do. DevOps, even through down to DesignOps. You know, we have the whole range depending on what the client objective is. But, I think what is really happening now is that innovation being something separate is no longer how to accelerate your outcomes, and your business outcomes. Regardless of whether that is in refactoring and modernizing your existing estate, or diversifying, creating new ecosystems, new platforms, new offerings. Regardless of what that is, you can't do it separate to your core business. I mean, it's a well known fact, John, right? Like 75% of transformation programs fail to deliver an impact to the business performance, right? And in the same period of time there's been huge cuts in innovation funding, and that's because for the same reason, because they don't deliver the impact to the business performance. And that's why Garage is unique, because it is entirely focused on the outcome, right? We're using user research, through design thinking of course, using agile to deliver it at speed, and all of those other things. But, it's focused on value, on benefits realization and driving to your outcome. And we do that by putting that innovation at the heart of your enterprise in order to drive that transformation, rather than it being something separate. >> Debbie, I saw you gave a talk called 'Innovation is Dead'. Obviously, that's a provocative title, that's an attention-getter. Tell me what you mean by that. Because it seems to be a setup. >> I mean, if the innovation is dead, >> Of course. was it with a question mark? Were you, kind of, trying to highlight that innovation is transformation? >> So, the full title was 'Innovation is dead and transformation is pointless'. And, of course, it's meant to be an eye-catching title so people show up and listen to my pitch rather than somebody else's. But, the reality is I mean it most sincerely, it's back to that stat. 75% of these transformation programs fail to deliver the impact, and I speculate that that is for a few reasons. Because, the idea itself wasn't a good one, or wasn't at the right time. Because, you were unable to understand what the measure of good looked like, and therefore just being able to create that path. And, in order to transform a company, you must transform the individuals within a company. And so that way of working becomes incredibly holistic. And it's those three things, that I think amongst the whole myriad of others, that are the primary reasons why those programs fail. And what Garage does, is it breaks that. By putting innovation at the heart of your enterprise, and by using data-driven value orchestration, that means that we don't guess where the value to be gained is, we know. It's no longer chucking ideas at the wall to see what sticks, it's meaningful research. This is my favorite quote from my dear friend, Courtney Noll, who says, "It's not about searching for the innovation needle in the proverbial haystack, it's using your research in order to de-risk your investment, and drive your innovation to enable your outcomes." And so, if you do innovation without a view to how it's going to yield your business outcomes, I agree, I fundamentally agree that it's pointless. >> Yeah, exactly. And, you know, of course we're on the writing side, we love titles like, 'Innovation is dead, long live innovation'. So, it's classic, you know, to get your attention. >> Exactly, exactly. And of course, what I really mean is that innovation is a separate entity. >> Totally. >> There's no longer relevance for a company to make sure they achieve their business outcomes. >> Well, this is what I wanted to just double-click on that with you on is that you look at transformation. You guys are essentially saying transformation meets innovation with the Garage philosophy, if I get that right. >> Yep >> And it's interesting, and we've experienced this here with theCUBE, we're theCUBE virtual, we're not at IBM Think, there is no physical game day like some of us normally do. >> Well, as you can see, I'm at my house. (Debbie laughs) And so, I was talking to a CEO and I said, "Hey, you guys are doing really, really good. We had to pivot with the cube", and he goes, "You guys did a good pivot yourself". He goes, "No, John, we did not pivot. We actually put our business on hold because of the pandemic. We actually created a line extension, so, technically, we're going to bring that business back when COVID has gone and come back to real life, so it's technically not a pivot, we're not pivoting our business, we've created new functionality." Through the innovations that they were doing. So, this is kind of like, this is the real deal here. Share your thoughts on that. >> To me, it's about people get so focused on the output that they lose track of the outcome, right? And so, be really clear on what you're doing, and why. And the outcomes can be really broad, so instead of saying, "We're all going to implement a new ERP, or build a new mobile app". That's not an outcome, right? What we should be saying is, "What we're trying to achieve is a 10 percent growth in net promoter score in China, right? In this group." Or whatever it is we were trying to achieve, right? Or, "We want to make a 25% reduction in our operating cost base by simplifying our estate". Whatever those outcomes are, that's the starting point, and then driving that to use as the vehicle for what is the right innovation, what is going to deliver that value, and fast, right? Garage delivers three to five times faster than other models and at a reduced delivery cost, and so it's all about that speed. Speed of decision, speed of insight, speed of culture and training, speed of new skills, and speed to outcomes. >> Well, Debbie, you did a great job, love what you're doing, and Garage has got a great model. Congratulations on the growth, love this intersection, or transformation meets innovation because innovation is transformation, and vice versa, this interplay going on there. >> Exactly. >> I think COVID has proven that. Let me dig into a little bit more about the garage, what's going on. How many practitioners do you guys have there now at IBM? You've got growth, are you adding more people in? Obviously, Virtual First, COVID, is there still centers of design? Take us through what's going on at Garage. >> Certainly, so like, I think I mentioned it right up front. Our goal is to make IBM Garage the primary way our clients experience us. We've proven in that it delivers higher value to our clients and they get a really rich and broad set of outcomes. And so, in order for us to deliver on that promise we have to be enabled across IBM to deliver to it, right? So, over the last 18 months or so we've had a whole range of training programs in Enable, we've had a whole badging and certification program, we have all the skills, and the pathways, and the career pathways to find. But Garage is for everybody, right? And so, it isn't about creating a select group that can do this across IBM. This is about making all of services capable. So, in 2020 we trained over 28,000 people, in all the different skills that are needed, from selling, to execution, to QA, to user research, whatever it is. And this year we're launching our Garage Skills Academy, which will take that across all of services and make it easily available. So, you know, we've got hundreds of thousands. >> And talk about the footprint on the global side, because, again, not to bring up global, but global is what is in your title. >> Yep. >> Companies need to be global, because now with virtual workforces you're seeing much more tapped creativity and ability to execute from global teams. How does that impact you? >> Well, so it's global in two perspectives, right? So, number one, we have Garages all around the world, right? It isn't just the market of, you know, our most developed nations in Americas and Europe, it is everywhere, we see it in all emerging markets. From Latin America, through to all parts of eastern Europe, which are really beginning to come into their own. So, we see all these different Garages at different scales and opportunities. So, definitely global from that image. But, what virtualization has also enabled is truly global teams. Because, it's really easy to go, "Oh, I need one of those. Okay, I need a supply chain expert, and I need an AI expert, and I need somebody who's got industry experience in whatever it is." And you can quickly gather them around the virtual table, you know, faster than you can in a physical table. But, we still leverage the global communities with those physical. >> It's an expert network. You have an expert network there at IBM. >> We have a huge network, yeah. And both within IBM, and of course a growing network of ecosystem partners that we continue to work with. >> Well, Debbie, I'm really excited. Congratulations on the growth. I'm looking forward to partnering with you on your ecosystem as that develops. I can almost imagine you must be getting a lot of outside IBM practitioners and experts coming in to collaborate in a social construct. >> Absolutely. >> It's a great program, thanks for sharing. >> My pleasure, it's been great to be here, thank you. >> Okay, IBM's Global Garage Lead, Debbie Vavangas, who's here on theCUBE with IBM Services. A phenomenon, it's a social construct that's helping companies with digital transformation. Intersecting, with innovation. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(upbeat techno music) >> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS re:Invent 2019. Brought to you buy Amazon Web Services and Intel, along with its equal system partners. >> Welcome back everyone. CUBE's live coverage here in Las Vegas for AWS, re:Invent 2019. I'm John Furrier and my cohost Dave Vellante. We're here extracting the signal from the noise with theCube covers for three days. Our next two guests, Mark Lohmeyer, Senior Vice President, General Manager, Cloud platform, business unit for VMWare. Ben Tanner, Director of Cloud Enable for IHS Market. Guys, thank you for coming on theCube. Good to see you again. >> Yeah, great to be here again. >> You got a customer here, customer at Momentum Store, but before we get into that I just want to get your quick take on the key note from Andy Jassy. Clearly, the VMWare relationship with AWS, really paying off well. >> Mark Lohmeyer: Right. >> Dave's going to dig into some customer spending data in the marketplace. Great momentum, I mean, looking back a few years when you guys launched this, I mean, come on. You got to be happy. (gentlemen laughing) >> Yeah, we're pleased. I mean, I think, as you said the partnership has never been stronger and I think the foundation of that is really the tremendous customer demand we're seeing for the service. And this initial idea that Pat and Andy had together of how do we create the best of both worlds here, right? The enterprise class capabilities of VMWare are combined with everything customers love about the AWS Cloud. I think that's really come to fruition and, you know, what's been great to sort of see over the last two years is, really the customer momentum and the use cases and the way they're able to take advantage of that service to really solve some really big challenges for their business, right? And for it to become a platform for them for innovation. So really pleased to see that momentum. >> John Furrier: Ben, talk about your use case. You obviously, the story here to reinvent is don't tire kick the Cloud, you got to kind of go all in as Chastity would say, but you've got to leverage the transformational aspects of the scale, but when you get in the reality, which you live, talk about what's real about the Cloud. >> Ben Tanner: We're an information company. Data is king to us so, you know, it's real hard for us to be part in on the Cloud. You know, we have a data gravity problem, so how do we get our workload to there without necessarily having to refactor them. How do we do it with a way that we can minimize the risks? So for me, you know, getting all in on the Cloud means getting the data to the Cloud and enabling the developers to work in a way that's going to deliver business value quicker to our customers. So, that's really where VMC kind of helps bridge that gap for us, I think. Originally, we were looking at it as like a short-term capacity first venue, but then we look under the covers. Actually, you know, we can go build a brace to VMC and really get to the Cloud quicker. >> John Furrier: VMC, VMWare Cloud? >> VMWare Cloud, sorry. >> I want to make sure I get it out there. >> I want to dive in on some of the spending data that we have access to from ETR, Enterprise Technology Research. And essentially, they do these these quarterly surveys. And a survey, the most recent one, there was 1,300 people who responded. 708 of U.S. customers, of which 150 said we are spending heavily on VMWare Cloud on AWS. So my first question is, to what do you attribute, sort of the momentum, maybe you can give us the update there. And then I want to follow up on the customer point of view. >> Mark Lohmeyer: Yeah, absolutely not. I'll sort of build on some of Ben's comments, because I think what he articulated is one of the killer use cases of VMWare Cloud on AWS that I think is driving that momentum, right, which is we think it's one of the best uses in the marketplace and customers have told us this, to enable them to migrate and modernize, right? So let's talk about the migrate piece first, right? I mean, you have customers that have these tremendous enterprise-class applications, running on vSphere in their data centers. They're built on top of that platform. They depend upon it for performance availability, everything else. With VMWare Cloud in AWS, we can migrate those applications with zero downtime, no refactoring, no additional costs, in a matter of weeks or months, as opposed to if you had to refactor everything, could take years and millions of dollars, right? So that Cloud migration use case I would say is the killer for us and that's, you know, exactly what Ben was referring to. >> John Furrier: We've got a special report on siliconangle.com called The Great Migration and it's about Cloud. Talk about this particular issue because this is like top of mind of everybody. How do you do it right if you're a VMWare customer, what do you pay attention to? What are some of the things that you learned and what are the things to watch out for? >> Ben Tanner: That's a great question. I think ultimately you have to listen to your customers. So for me, that sort of element community and then within IHS Market and then ultimately, their customers. So we cover like three broad sectors. Oil and gas, the energy division, we have transportation division and then we have our financial services division. So each one of those division's got a different risk appetite. So depending on that appetite, we'll very much govern how we take the approach of moving to the Cloud. We've done the classic lift and shift using tools like VMWare's HCX. We actually, as a kick the tires, we moved a thousand workloads in six weeks into VMC, which was kind of exciting. >> Mark Lohmeyer: Yeah, pretty impressive. >> We enjoyed that. And then in other areas we're looking at, well we don't want to take all that tentacle debt that lives in our data center with us, so can we do what we call a lift and fix approach, where we'll leverage sort of private Cloud ultimation tool and build over VMC to rapidly spin up new workloads there but without changing our operating model. And then that's one of the big things I call out about VMC, it allows you to get into that public Cloud space without having to drastically change how IT operates. And then you can start to shift to more of a public Cloud focus. So there's really that lift and shift, lift and fix, and then where we're developing new capabilities, or where there is definite business value, and that's the key thing, refactor of a Cloud native. So it's a spectrum. >> So you ultimately want to change your operating model- >> Ben Tanner: Absolutely. >> Just not today. >> Ben Tanner: Well no, I don't want to do it in a big bang. You know, that's very disruptive while we're doing that we're, you know, it takes our focus off away from delivering business value. So we're trying to find a way to do it in a more incremental manner. VMC's, VMWare Cloud Native is one of the things that's going to help us do that. >> John Furrier: Are you guys looking at Amazon's other services because you now, in AWS- >> Ben Tanner: Well we're heavy Amazon customers as it stands so we have a lot of Cloud Native Apps going out there. It was really interesting today, seeing where they're going with the HPC workloads, particularly where we're starting to look at ML and AI. We have a data late program that's at an AWS. So for our new developments, we're definitely embracing Cloud Native, but very much in the sort of hybrid Cloud methodology with the MC. >> John Furrier: Well Ben, I want to get your take on a meme that we've been kicking around all week around Cloud Native. The T, if we take the T out, which stands for trust, it's Cloud Naive. (laughter) So a lot of customers, they're trying, I think they're doing Cloud, they've got to factor into all these operational disruptions. >> Ben Tanner: Yep. >> You have staff issues, you have cost and inefficiencies that kick in. Disruption. Development choices. So where's the naivety, where's the native, savvy, where should people start thinking about when they start moving in the Cloud? >> Ben Tanner: It's a maturity conversation ultimately. I think if we look at, certainly within IHS Market, we've very much grown by acquisition. We have different sort of cultures within the firm. We have 650, 700 products, 700 different ways of doing things sometimes and they've all gone to the public Cloud at different rates and in different ways. So for us, it was assuming that we could do that in a manageable, controlled-cost, safely-governed way. And really understanding that, you know, you can't go out there as individual Dev teams and expect it all to be perfect. We need to start building almost a collabed community within the company and then starting to layer in governance. But again, that's if you say take the T out, trust. We within IT, we have to build up trust with our products teams because I think why they go to the Cloud is sometimes because IT hasn't been able to deliver on it. You know, it's customer's expectations. >> John Furrier: You can't move fast enough. >> Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And you know, we're never going to be able to compete with the likes of Amazon or VMWare in security and functionality and scalability. Why would we try to compete? Let's embrace that. Extend, enable it, and really try to give our customers a consistent, delightful experience. >> So Ben, where are you placing your bets? Obviously Cloud, Hybrid, those are two things. Any other places where you're really trying to focus? >> Ben Tanner: So I think that's interesting. Again, my job is to make life easy for my developers. So what do they need? And this is something that we're going through, again, internal transformation, starting to run IT more like a product management organization and actively listening and soliciting feedback and really delivering what they need. You know, we're getting a lot of talk around containers, what are our plays going to be in that space. Some of the development teams are on that. Some of them want to go and embrace the new stuff like Fargate and EKS and that's great as well, but ultimately, I want to get out of tickets and weight states and get out of the way of the developers. >> John Furrier: I want to ask you a question around developers, cause one of the trends we're seeing and we're kind of picking out of the announcements is when you look at the DevOps movement that started roughly around 2007-2008, '09 timeframe, that early wave of pioneers created infrastructure as code. >> Ben Tanner: Yeah. >> That essentially became, "I don't want to configure the software. Operating models like VMWare, make it easy." Things are just running under the covers. Now with the data modeling you're seeing, if you've got large scale infrastructure, you're seeing now all these data toolings. So there's almost a data as code kind of theme going on here where developers just want to access the data, they don't to have to get into the wrangling. >> Ben Tanner: I think that's where we're sort of seeing things like data late coming to the forefront. You know, again, IHS Market Information Company. How do we pool all that information together in a way that, you know, creates new business value, creates new ideas. You know, broad ease of access for our developers and our customers, but at the same time, how do we protect things like data sovereignty. If we've got PII data out there, you know, we have to think about that. Whether they're alter motive customers. You know, you've got different state legislation so again, it's how do we as the IT and sort of the develop community facilitate broad safe access to data. Data is a service. Yeah. >> John Furrier: Yeah. 100%. >> Absolutely. >> So Mark, as customers move to the Cloud and they want to change their operating model, what role is VMWare playing in terms of facilitating that? >> Mark Lohmeyer: Yeah, you know, I think essentially you said you wanted to make life as easy as possible for the developers, right? And I think we want to make life as easy as possible for Ben and IT so he can make it easy for developers. And I think we know one of the ways that we love to do that is, and the way I think about is, we want to provide him and customers like him the broadest, most powerful tool kit that they can choose from, right, as they're enabling their developers. If you think about VMWare Cloud and AWS, it can actually enable that, right? Because you have access to all of the VMWare tools and capabilities, not just your existing workloads, but also for modernized applications with things like Kubernetes and some of the capabilities we're bringing to bear there. So we provide all of those services in the VMWare environment, but then we also allow their IT teams and their development teams to also have access to all the Native AWS services and some of the data tools that they might want to leverage from AWS- >> So is it- >> All in a single environment. >> So you've got core VMWare, now you have pivotal- >> Mark Lohmeyer: That's right. >> For the developer angle and you've got all the security acquisitions you've made, not the least which is carbon black so that's the package that you're delivering to your customers. >> Mark Lohmeyer: Absolutely. Right. And we want to do all of that, obviously, as a service on top of AWS, right, bringing that same sort of simplicity of operations for all of those capabilities. >> John Furrier: Mark, talk about what's coming next for you guys at VMWare and the Cloud platform. Obviously, we saw that Outpost, Native Outpost, which is Amazon shipping, available now. >> Mark Lohmeyer: Yeah. >> 2020 we're going to see VMWare on AWS, VMWare Cloud and AWS roughly shipping behind it. So that's looking like good news too. Architectural shifts are happening, can you share any insight into what's next for you and your team? >> Mark Lohmeyer: Yeah, I mean, it's a really exciting time. I think, look at this point, I think the customer's have spoken, its a hybrid Cloud world, right? They want to have the flexibility to run apps across their own data centers, across public Clouds, across edge environments. It's a hybrid Cloud world. >> John Furrier: AWS agrees. >> Yeah, I mean, even AWS agrees. You know, as VMWare as a company, we're looking to really enable the most seamless, most consistent hybrid Cloud experience. Obviously, we're the standard in most enterprise customer's data centers today. With VMWare Cloud and AWS, we're bringing that capability to AWS. And then we're really excited, of course, about VMWare Cloud and AWS Outpost because we can now bring that same Cloud delivered model back, you know, on-prem and into edge environments, right? And so we think that full set of services, right, what you have in your data center today, what you can do on AWS with VMC and now back on-prem, it opens up a lot of possibilities for customers like IHS. >> John Furrier: And Chastity kind of hinted at it, well he talked specifically about networking- >> Mark Lohmeyer: Right. >> In context of 5G latency, different use cases around latency. So networking is going to be a big thing. >> Mark Lohmeyer: I mean networking, if you think about a hybrid Cloud world, right? I mean, networking is kind of at the heart of it, right? And if you look at technologies like NSX, right, that gives you a consistent software networking layer that can work across any hardware on-prem. Obviously, it's the heart of VMWare Cloud and AWS, also in Outpost, it's a really important construct that fundamentally enables things like the seamless migration of workloads between these different environments. >> John Furrier: On Open Source as well. Guys, thanks for coming on. Final word, your thoughts on the keynote, the presence here at AWS. What's your takeaway from the day one. >> Ben Tanner: I think for me for day one, it's really exciting to see the development in things like the HPCP's. How that's going to enable us as a customer to do more with things like AI and ML. I think, for me, Outpost is really fascinating. We were talking about this earlier, where we've got regulatory requirements, performance requirements. We can still deliver that consistent experience in the Cloud, in the data center. So those for me are going to be, potentially, really transformative. >> John Furrier: And this really highlights what we've been debating. I challenged Gelsinger, Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMWare in 2013 about hybrid being a halfway house to the public Cloud. He's like, "What are you talking about? It is the model." Pat if you're watching, you were right, I was wrong. I admit it. (laughter) But hybrid Cloud is certainly a visibility, but the Cloud as an operating model and what Chastity's saying and what Microsoft and other's are saying is, "Hey, the Cloud is the operating model, not the old way." So center of gravity is Cloud, but the on-premise for these specific things like governance, compliance, use cases. This is the new normal. This is very clear, no one debates this. >> John Furrier: Congratulations. Congratulations on your success, so say hello to Ragu and the team. >> Will do. >> John Furrier: Thanks for coming on. VMWare and custom momentum. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. AWS re:Invent. Be back with more coverage after the short break. (upbeat techno music)