(upbeat synth music) >> Narrator: Live from San Francisco, it's The Cube, covering Oracle OpenWorld 2016. Brought to you by Oracle. Now, here's your hosts John Furrier and Peter Burris. >> Hey, welcome back, everyone. We are here live in San Francisco for Oracle Open World 2016. This is SilconANGLE Media. It's The Cube, our flagship program, where we go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, the co-CEO of SiliconANGLE Media, joined by my co-host this week, Peter Burris, head of research at SiliconANGLE Media as well as the General Manager of Wikibon Research. Our next guest is Hari Sankar, who's the group Vice President of Enterprise Performance. Welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for joining us today. So, one of the things that you're in is performance management but in a different way, kind of a CFO perspective. >> Hari: That's right. >> Which this show is all about, ROI, total cost of ownership. But Oracle has a lot of software, finance software. First, take a step back and spend a minute to describe what is performance management and your role at Oracle. >> So traditionally, performance management is really about how finance sort of manages the overall business performance of a company. It's about things like forward-looking things like planning, forecasting, and budgeting. It's about, sort of, backward-looking things like okay, our quarter is done, how do we close the books and how do we report the numbers both internally, for management recording purposes, and externally, to the street and various stakeholders. So there is the compliance side to it. There is a strategy side to it, and these things have been traditionally what is performance management. What we are seeing now is that kind of discipline is now going beyond finance into operating lines of businesses, sales and marketing and manufacturing and so on. >> The, the-- >> One of the things, sorry, John, I think one of the things that is really interesting, especially in light of this show, is as we go through a process of digital transformation, where data becomes one of the most important assets in the business, that means that the asset specificity, to use a finance term, the degree to which an asset has only one use, starts to go down because you can program it. So marketing, sales, all the assets, intellectual property, data-oriented, that they've been developing over the years now can be bought under the umbrella of Enterprise Performance Management. >> That is absolutely true. That is absolutely-- >> So how is that happening? >> So part of how this is happening is let's say you are a marketing organization. You are spending $50 million on digital marketing. Now, there is a desire from the part of the marketing department to sort of manage that spend more diligently with more discipline and drither, just like finance manages any other line item in the budget. There's more desire to provide transparency to the business, in terms of here's where we are spending it and here's where we are getting returns, here's where we are perhaps not getting returns. So that is the planning part of it, and then there is also the reporting part of it, where we are seeing the emergence of the concept of narrative reporting, where you are saying hey, look, I'm not just going to distribute numbers and charts to my stakeholders, whether it's inside the company or outside, I'm going to give them context, I'm going to give them commentary on these numbers. If there is a variance, I'm going to tell them why is this there. Do I expect this variance to be there next quarter? What am I doing about it? So, it sort of brings those numbers to life and avoids that back and forth that typically happens. >> How much is the Performance Management moving out of the CFO function, and I want to get your take on how the costs in IT is becoming not just a functional shared resource but IT is now integrated across the whole company. Mark Hurd had tweeted yesterday on Twitter, "As more CEOs and CFOs understand "the potential of the cloud, "CIOs are going to get a lot more help," implying Oracle is going to help them. But it brings up the point that the CIO now is brought into the CFO conversation, they always have in facilities and what not, but now from a business perspective their contribution is significant and now co-mingled is it. Do you see that trend happening and what does that mean for the software side of it? >> We're definitely seeing that trend happening. For example, the most important new term to come out in finance in some time is the notion of digital finance. >> John: The notion of what? >> Digital finance, right? So this is really about whether you call it digitalization or not, digital finance, digital marketing, digital sales. So this digital business idea sort of elevates this role of the CIO because, as you said, data becomes a very, very important asset in terms of how you fundamentally drive innovation in your business, and so that digital notion is sort of elevating the role of the CIO. And in the context of Performance Management, as you see this spread beyond finance into other lines of businesses, other lines of businesses are starting to be more disciplined and rigorous in how they sort of measure their performance, how they manage their performance. There's also a need to connect the dots across. You know, if I'm doing a marketing plan, which is an important element of my overall spend, if there is a fluctuation or change, a big change in my marketing spend, that needs to be reflected back in the finance budget. So connecting the dots and aligning the plans across different functions is becoming a big priority as well. So you're seeing a lot of important changes happening. >> You just said a few things that's just gotten me standing up and getting all excited. Peter and I looked at each other, digital business, digital assets, digitizing your business, these are the mega-- >> Data value. >> Data value, this comes back down to what we've been talking about all week here on The Cube and for the past year. This is now what was once a come together, have a meeting, share, cross-pollinate, somewhat automated but in the end manual, to fully integrated. This is probably the biggest business problem in digital transformation right now. How come we're not hearing more? This is a-- >> Yeah, I think that's a great point, John. At the end of the day and what we've been talking about is that so this is is a little bit of SiliconANGLE Media, Wikibon, we believe that digital business, full-stop, is how you use data to differentially create sustained customers. >> Absolutely. >> That is digital business. You can say all kinds of new channels and all this other stuff, but it all boils down to are you using data as an asset better than your competitors? >> Yep. >> So that as a basis, two things. First off, interesting that Mark Hurd, we talked about it earlier, this is a quick aside, Mark Hurd talking about how CIOs are going to get more help. Remember when we talked about how Oracle's going to have to bring a lot of the IT group forward in its new transformation. >> This is it right here. >> Absolutely, but I'm going to throw you a little bit of a curve ball. I hope I'm not going to throw you a curve ball but its a very, very important point. As the IT organization, or as increasingly, the methods that we use to create digital assets, and increasingly also products, they're iterative, they're empirical, they're opportunistic, they're agile. That the traditional, year-long budget that says you have a certain money to spend, and you spend it or it goes away and you better not fail with this money, comes under attack by Agile, and I know a lot of CIOs that I talk to are trying to reconcile the impedance mismatch between Agile and Sprints, and being opportunistic and recognizing when something isn't working, and the CFO who's still talking about annualized releases of money. So I've always felt that you could not reconcile those. You could not bring those two points of view forward without EPM. Are you seeing that as well and how are you helping it? >> Yeah, we're definitely seeing this because this older, you're absolutely right. The old notion of let's make a budget once a year, get it right, and execute on it for the rest of the year, we are seeing that seeing that fading really fast. What people are saying is, look, plans are made only to be changed. Let's not fixate on getting the perfect plan in place. Let's start with a reasonable plan with the assumption that it's going to tweak and iterate and change many, many times over the year. So the focus is now on, less on getting it right the first time, more on how do we make dynamic changes to it in an agile fashion, just to your point. >> And reflect those changes throughout the entire cost-- >> And into finances-- >> Back into finance. >> It all comes back to finance. >> It comes back to finance because at the end of the day, let's say, take a simple example of a manufacturing company-- >> Paul: Finance is the language of business. It still is. >> End of the day, your business performance is measured in dollars and cents. I mean, period, right? So, let's say, your product mix changes because your customer demand is changing. That needs to be reflected back into finance, in terms of, okay, are we making more money or less money? Is it more revenue or less revenue? That needs to be reflected back, and so we're definitely seeing, in fact, the tagline for Enterprise Performance Management that we use these days is enabling business agility. So two parts to that, driving agile decisions, to your point, the second is, once you drive those agile decisions. Let's say I decided to expand into a new business and I did an acquisition. Fast forward six months, you need to reflect the results of that combined entity into your financial results, do it quickly, do it in a way that is correct and you're confident about the results and that's the job of finance. So it's agility of operations, agility in decision making, those two have to sort of come together. >> So here's my question then. I love this conversation because I think this speaks to the full-closed loop of Cloud and DevOps and the innovation around Agile. How much flexibility is built into the software, and I'm kind of going with the database route for a second, systems of records, schemas in database 'cause business plans can say it once a year and it's failing, I agree, I can see that failing. But, also, fixed schemas, can fail too. Well, I don't want to add the new data in 'cause the database can't handle it. I've heard that from developers before. Again, it slows the things down, so as you move from systems of record, which can be fixed and tweaked, the engagement data is the business engagement gestures. So how is that factoring into your software? You guys see that and is this AI Bot revolution and the machine learning, the smart software after engagement. Can you thread that through and explain how that fits? >> Let's start simple and sort of get a little more sophisticated quickly. The first things is we are seeing a lot more people come into the planning process than before. The old model was finance did the planning for other people. Now, people are doing their own plans, then sort of feeding it into the overall plan. People intentionally are pushing that because they want plans and decisions to be made closer to the point of action. Secondly, there is a greatest emphasis on driving fact-based decisions. For instance, we are working with some large consumer goods companies where they are saying, look, don't come here and tell me that I'm going to spend 10% less on this large line item compared to last year, Throw the last year's budget out and do a zero-based budget. I mean, zero-based budgeting is not a new concept. It's been around, but it's getting a new lease of life because in industries where profits are on the squeeze, they are saying "Look, I don't want "to do the traditional budgeting. "I want to go to a zero-based budget." >> Because they get facts that are surfacing faster. Is that kind of the premise? >> Facts, but more over to the performance of the business. >> That is definitely true. The facts that are surfacing faster, and, therefore, I want to give the tools to make use of those facts to the people who are closer to where they are surfacing. >> John: This is a digitized business in that scenario. >> Definitely true. >> Everything's instrumented. >> Good value. >> Hari: Yeah, definitely true. >> We always say on The Cube, I mean, this is the first time in the history of business in the world that you can actually measure everything. >> That is absolutely true. >> If you want to measure everything, you actually can do it. >> That is absolutely true. >> Now the CFO, which was once the measurement system, has to get integrated in. Am I getting this right? >> You are getting this right. You are getting this right. And the other part of your question is about okay, how is intelligence coming into, so some of these decisions over time, if you see a pattern, they can be perhaps automated. Plan adjustments can be, maybe some elements of plan adjustments can be automated, but I don't see finance going that far. That may be taken as an input. Maybe a recommendation comes from automated intelligence, and people will sort of take a look at it and say, "Hey, I want to go with this because it makes sense, "or I'm going to override it this way "because this doesn't take into account "what I'm planning for in the next quarter." >> Yeah, what scares me, though, in the whole bot thing, I mean, this is not a dis on Larik, I love the vision, it's got me all excited, is if they try to get too AI before they actually build the building blocks, they really can get ahead of themselves. So, you can see that head room, for sure, but a lot of companies are kind of in that planing mode. Is that true? What's this progress bar of customers right now who are into this, are in the software? I mean, track bots are great for certain things, but you can't really automate AI yet and everything. Or can you? >> I think there is probably a class of decisions that can be automated, but when it comes to finance, and finance tends to be conservative and for good reason, they definitely see the value of recommendations based on data, based on real-time data, but they still want to have the controls. >> [John} Got It. >> So that's kind of the mindset that we have seen. >> So real options valuations could really, really be helped by AI. But at the end of the day, you have to be able to close the books, and you don't need AI to help you close the books. >> This is a fascinating conversation. >> If I can add one quick conversation, just a quick point, as Enterprise Performance Management starts to weave its way into other parts of the business, institutionally, does that mean we're going to see controllers start to end up in different functions? >> Hari: (laughs) IOD of controllers? >> As a human interface that goes along with the system so that it works together. >> It's a definite possibility, right? Because if you're planning as rigorously in marketing as in finance and if you aremeasuring and reporting as rigorously in sales as you're doing in finance, maybe there's a sales controller function that becomes a legitimate need. But at the end of the day, today, you focus so much attention on reporting your numbers to the street. You focus attention on precision and accuracy and confidence in all of that. Why is that not a requirement for internal Reporting? >> It's the same argument when we talk about the technology of a structure. You move the computer to where the data is. You could move the controller where the action is, to your point earlier. It's a fascinating conversation, Hari. Thanks for sharing the insight. Love to do a follow-up on this because I think this really connects the language of business and kind of validates the digital fabric of digitization. But quick, I want to give you the last minute to give an update on the business, how you guys are doing. This is a pretty big deal. How's your business results, what's down the roadmap, what's the sales going to be like next month? I'm only kidding, I know. (all laugh) >> Sure, sure. I think the cloud has been a really game changer in this business. What the cloud has done has lowered the bar where we're seeing many mid-sized businesses start using Performance Management best practices, just like larger companies. We are seeing divisions or functions inside of larger businesses using Performance Management software for the first time. So there's a big market expansion, and we are seeing an expansion across other lines of businesses outside of finance. We are certainly seeing that. We are seeing that, you know, we introduced our first Cloud software in Enterprise Performance Management about two and a half years ago. At that time, we were not sure how the market update was going to be because we said finance tends to be conservative. Are they going to be comfortable doing their aggregated planning in the cloud, or are they going to be comfortable doing, reporting things in the cloud? We've been sort of pleasantly surprised by the willingness of finance, helped in part by the success the companies have had in deploying HR software in the cloud or CRM software in the cloud and so on. So the cloud has taken off. We have well north of 1,000 customers that have picked up EPM software in the cloud. We are very happy to see 100, 150 deployments go live every quarter, and we are seeing use cases in marketing, we are seeing use cases in HR of strategic workforce planning or marketing spend planning happened using EPM-style software. So, happy to see mid-sized businesses see real value from planning. >> John: Good integration capabilities? >> Good integration, I'm glad you mentioned it. Very good integration back into, for example, if you have financials in the cloud and EPM in the cloud, there are nice linkages between the two. So four teams are very important to us. We are seeing pervasive use of EPM software. We are seeing agile operations helped by EPM software in the cloud. We are seeing connected operations, whether it's the backbone systems or across functions. And we are seeing people take a sort of a comprehensive view of this, whether it's across functions or across processes. >> This is fascinating. We could go another hour. This is a really interesting topic because I think it really highlights a fact that, what we always say in The Cube is, you can provision technology faster and you get time to value certainly as the customers start to be creative and implement it. They get to actually put it to work and get the data around and behind. So thanks so much for spending the time on the insights on the EPM. We appreciate it, thank you so much. >> Thank you, I enjoyed the conversation. >> Okay, you're watching The Cube, live coverage here in San Francisco at Oracle OpenWorld 2016. I'm John Ferrier with Peter Burris. Thanks for watching. (upbeat synth music)

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel, AWS and our community partners. Welcome to the Virtual Cube and our coverage of aws reinvent 2020. I'm Lisa Martin. I'm joined by Ali Siddiqui, the chief product officer of BMC Software. We're gonna be talking about what BMC and A W s are doing together. Ali, it's great to have you on the Cube. Thank >>you, Lisa. Get great to be here and be part off AWS treatment. Exciting times. >>They are exciting times. That is true. No, never a dull moment these days, right? So all he talked to me a little bit. About what? A w what BMC is doing with AWS. Let's dig into what you're doing there on the technology front and unpack the benefits that you're delivering to customers. Great >>questions, Lisa. So at BMC, we really have a close partnership with AWS. It's really about BMC. Placido Blue s better together for our customers. That's what it's really about. We have a global presence, probably the largest, uh, off any window out there in this in our industry with 15 data centers, AWS data centers around the globe. We just announced five more in South Africa. Brazil Latin Um, a P J. A couple of them amia across the globe. Really? The presence is very strong with these, uh, data centers because that lets us offered local presence, Take care of GDP are and we have great certification. That is Aw, sock to fedramp. I'll four Haifa dram. We even got hip certifications as well as a dedicated Canada certifications for our customers. Thanks to our partnership, close partnership with the WS and on all these datas into the cross. In addition, for our customers, really visibility into aws seamless capability toe do multi cloud management is key and with a recent partnership with AWS around specifically AWS >>s >>S m, which gives customers cream multi cloud capabilities around multi cloud management, total visibility seamlessly in AWS and all their services whether it's easy toe s s s three sage maker, whatever services they have, we let them discover on syphilis. Lee give them visibility into that. >>That 360 degree visibility is really key to understand the dependencies right between the software in the services and help customers to optimize their investments in a W s assume correct. >>Exactly. With the AWS s s m and r E I service management integration. We really give deep visibility on the dependency, how they're being used, what services are being impacted and and really, AWS s system is a key, unique technology which we've integrated with them very, very happy with the results are customers are getting from it. >>Can you share some of those results? Operational efficiencies, Cost savings? Yeah, >>Yeah, least another great question. So when I look at the general picture off E I service management in the eye ops, which we run with AWS across all these global dinner senses and specifically with AWS S S M people are able to do customers. And this is like the talkto hyper scale, as we're talking about, as well as large telcos like Ericsson and and some of the leading, uh, industry retail Or or, you know, other customers we have They're getting great value because they're able to do service modeling, automatically use ascend to get true deep visibility seamlessly to do service discovery with for for for all the assets that they run or using our S service management in the eye ops capabilities. It really is the neck shin and it's disrupting the service idea Some traditional service management industry with what we offering now with the service management, AWS s, S M and other AWS Cloud needed capabilities such as sage Maker and AWS, Lex and connect that we leverage in our AI service management ai absolution. We recently announced that as a >>single >>unified platform which allows our customers to go on BMC customers and joined with AWS customers to go on this autonomous digital enterprise journey Uh, this announcement was done by our CEO of BMC. I'm in Say it in BMC Exchange recently, where we basically launched a single lady foundation, a single platform for observe ability, engagement with automation >>for the autonomous digital enterprise. I presume I'd like to understand to, from your perspective, this disruption that you're enabling. How is it helping your customers not just survive this viral disruption that we're all living with but be able thio, get the disability into their software and services, really maximize and optimize their cloud investments so that their business can operate well during these unprecedented times, meet their customer demands, exceed them and meet their customers. Where? There. How is this like an accelerator of that >>great question, Lisa. So when we say autonomous digital enterprise, this is the journey All our customers they're taking on its focus on three trips, agility, customer center, city and action ability. So if you think about our solutions with AWS, really, it's s of its management. AI ops enables these enterprises to go on this autonomous digital enterprise journey where they can offer great engagement to the employees. All CEOs really care about employee engagement. Happy employees make for more revenue for for those enterprises, as well as offer great customer experience for the customers. Uh, using our AI service management and AI ops combined. 80 found in this single platform, which we are calling 80 foundation. >>Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. >>No, go ahead, please. >>I was going to say I always look at the employee experience, and the customer experience is absolutely inextricably linked with the employee experience is hampered. That's bride default. Almost going to impact the customer experience. And right now, I don't know if it's even possible to say both the employee experience and the customer experience are even mawr essential to really get right because now we've got this. You know this big scatter That happened a few months ago with some companies that were completely 100% on site to remote being able, needing to give their employees access to the tools to do their jobs properly so that they can deliver products and services and solutions that customers need. So I always see those two employees. Customer experience is just inextricably linked. >>Absolutely. That's correct, especially in this time, even if the new pandemic these epidemics time, uh, the chief human resource offers. The CEOs are really thick focused on keeping the employees engaged and retaining top talent. And that's where our yes service management any other solution helps them really do. Use our digital assistance chat boards, which are powered by a W X and Lex and AWS connect and and and our integration with, uh, helix control them, which is another service we launched on AWS Helix Control them, which is our South version off a leading SAS product automation product out there, a swell as RP integrations we bring to the table, which really allows them toe take employing, give management to the next level And that's top of mind for all CEOs and being driven by line of business like chief human resource officers. Such >>a great point. Are you? Are you finding that mawr of your conversations with customers are at that sea level as they look to things like AI ops to help find you in their business that it's really that that sea level not concerned but priority to ensure that we're doing everything we can within our infrastructure, wherever where our software and services are to really ensure that we're delivering and exceeding customer expectations? That a very tumultuous time? >>Yes, What we're finding is, uh, really at the CEO level CEO level the sea level. It's about machine learning ai adopting that more than the enterprise and specifically in our capabilities when I say ai ops. So those are around root cause predictive I t. And even using ai NLP for self service for self service is a big part, and we offer key capabilities. We just did an acquisition come around, which lets them do knowledge management self service. So these are specific capabilities, predictability, ai ops and knowledge management. Self service that we offer that really is resonating very well with CEOs who are looking to transform their I T systems and in I t ops and align it with business is much better and really do innovation in this area. So that's what's happening, and it's great to see that we will do that. Exact capabilities that come with R E Foundation. The unified platform forms of ability and lets customers go on this autonomous digital enterprise journey without keeping capabilities. >>Do you see this facilitating the autonomous digital enterprise as as a way to separate the winners and losers of tomorrow as so much of the world has changed and some amount of this is going to be permanent, imagine that's got to be a competitive advantage to customers in any industry. >>We believe enterprises that have the growth mindset and and want to go into the next generation, and that's most of them. Toe, to be honest, are really looking at the ready autonomous digital price framework that we offer and work with our customers on the way to grow revenue to get more customer centric, increase employee engagement. That's what we see happening in the industry, and that's where our capabilities with 80 Foundation as well as Helix. Whether it's Felix Air Service management, he likes a Iot or now recently launched Helix Control them really enable them toe keep their existing, uh, you know, tools as well as keep their existing investments and move the ICTY ops towards the next generation off tooling and as well as increase employee engagement with our leading industry leading digital assistant chat board and and SMS management solution that that's what we see. And that's the journey we're taking with most of our customers and really, the ones with the growth mindset are really being distinguished as the front runs >>talk to me about some validation from the customer's perspective, the industry's perspective. What are you guys hearing about? What you're doing s BMC and with a w s >>so validation from customer that I just talked about great validation. As I said, talk to off the hyper skills users for proactive problem management. Proactive incident management ai ops a same time independent validation from Gardner we are back wear seven years and I don't know in a row So seven years the longest street in Gartner MQ for I t s m and we are a leader in that for seven years the longest run so far by any vendor. We are scoring the top in the top number one position in 12 of the 15 critical capabilities. As you know, Gardner, I d s m eyes really about the critical capability that where most customers look. So that's a big independent validation. Where we score 12 off the way were number one in 12 of the 15 capability. So that was the awesome validation from Gardner and I. D. S M. We also recently E Mei Enterprise Management Associates published a new report on AI Ops and BMT scored the top spot on the charts with Business impact and business alignment. Use cases categories for AI ops. So think about what that means. It's really about your business, right? So So we being the top of the chart for business impact and business alignment for ai ops radar report from Enterprise Management associated with a create independent validation that we can point toe off our solutions and what it is, really, because we partner very closely with our customers. We also got a couple of more awards than we want a lot more, but just to mention two more I break breakthrough, which is a nursery leading third party sources out there for chat boards and e i base chat board solution lamed BMC Helix Chat Board as the best chat board solution out there. Uh, SAS awards another industry analysts from independent from which really, uh really shows the how we're getting third parties and independents to talk about our solutions named BMC SAS per ticket and event management, which is really a proactive problem and proactive incident solution Revolution system as as the best solution out there for ticketing and event management. >>So a lot of accolades. A. Yes. It sounds like a lot of alcohol. A lot of validation. How do customers get How do you get started? So customers looking to come to BMC to really understand get that 3 60 degree visibility. How did they get started? >>Uh, well, they can start with our BMC Discovery, which integrates very tightly with AWS s s M toe. Basically get the full visibility off assets from network to storage toe aws services. Whether there s three. Uh, easy to, uh doesn't matter what services they did. A Kafka service they're using whatever. So the hundreds of services they're using weaken seamlessly do that. So that's one way to do that. Just start with BMC Helix Discovery. Thea Other one is with BMC Knowledge Management on BMC Self Service. That's a quick win for most of our customers. I ai service management, tooling That's the Third Way and I I, off stooling with BMC, Helix Monitor and AI ops that we offer pretty much the best in the industry in those that customers can start So the many areas, and now with BMC, control them. If they want to start with automation, that's a great way to start with BMC control them, which is our SAS solution off industry leading automation product called Controlling. >>And so, for just last question from a go to market perspective, it sounds like direct through BMC Channel partners. What about through a. W. S? >>Yes, absolutely. I mean again, we it's all about BMC and AWS better together we offer cloud native AWS services for our solutions, use them heavily, and I just mentioned whether that S S M or chat boards or any of the above or sage maker for machine learning I and customers can contact the local AWS Rep toe to start learning about BMC and AWS. Better together. >>Excellent. Well, Ali, thank you for coming on the program, talking to us about what BMC is doing to help your customers become that autonomous digital enterprise that we think up tomorrow. They're going to need to be to have that competitive edge. I've enjoyed talking to you >>same year. Thank you so much, Lisa. Really. It's about our customers and partnering with AWS. So very proud of Thank you so much. >>Excellent for Ali Siddiqui. I'm Lisa Martin and you're watching the Cube.

>> Live from Miami Beach Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering VeeamON 2019. Brought to you by Veeam. >> Welcome back to Miami everybody, we're here at the Fontainebleau hotel. You're watching theCUBE, the leader of live tech coverage. This is day one of our coverage of VeeamON, the third year that we've covered Veeam, they've selected this great location here in Miami. I'm Dave Vellante, with my co-host Peter Burris. Ratmir Timashev is here, he is the co-founder and executive vice president, world-wide sales of Veeam, business guru, sales and marketing maven, a very successful entrepreneur, welcome to the theCUBE and thanks so much for having us. >> Thank you Dave, thank you Peter, thanks for having us. Thanks for doing this at our event. >> You're very welcome, so first of all congratulations, you hit that billion dollar milestone. You predicted it back in 2013, you missed it by about six months Ratmir, you know, (laughs) but really, great. Trailing 12 months, a billion dollars in revenue that includes of course your Ratable revenue, the subscription revenue, which who could have predicted that back in 2013, so amazing milestone, congratulations. And great venue here, you must be really pleased with the turnout, couple thousand people, your thoughts? >> Yeah absolutely, I personally love Miami, this is the best city. Always sunny, always ocean, always blue sky, awesome. And always sand, like that's the best place. So I've always had the dream to have VeeamON in Miami, so the dream comes true, we have over 2,000 people here and many more are watching livestream online. Very excited, very excited. >> Well, Veeam's always been a hip company, always a lot of fun, this is obviously a hip place, good fun part of the country. Let's talk about act one and act two. Act one was, you guys really rode the virtualization wave and you talked today about act two really being cloud and hybrid cloud data management. What are the similarities and the differences between act one and act two? >> So like we discussed during the keynote session, every 10 years or so there is a major industry transformation shift from one platform to another platform, so Veeamware 10 years ago created this technology visualization that dramatically fundamentally changed the way modern data centers are built and managed. And Veeam was very lucky to be at the earlier stage of that virtualization revolution that changed the whole data center. that changed the whole data center. So we were at the right time at the right place. We created the new market, Veeamware backup, and then we extended it to hyperV and HV. So we dominated that mode of data LAE share. But in the last few years we expanded our platform. So beyond just the virtualization, we added the physical support, the Unix support, the cloud support. So now Veeam represents broad, what we call Veeam Availability Platform that supports LAE clouds, virtual, physical clouds. That was act one, we dominated it. We grew from zero to 1 billion within 10, 12 years. We added 350,000 customers over that timeframe. And now it's act two, what is act two? Act two is the, again, the new major industry transformation to a hybrid cloud. What are the similarities? Again, Veeam is in a great position because we're at the right time at the right place with a brilliant product. We have the broad LAE system of our channel partners. We have a broad customer base, 350,000. And we have great technology partnerships with HP, Cisco, NetUP, Nutanix, Pure, and others, so as well as AWS, and Microsoft, and Google, and IBM cloud. So we are in extremely great position to dominate this second wave, what we call second act, which will be the next decade of hybrid cloud. >> Yeah, so optionality was a key, being able to support multiple use cases and supporting different environments. You're well positioned, you're saying, in act two. Act one you really didn't have a lot of competition, you kind of schooled the competition, I think Dell took out some of your early competition then you ran circles around everybody else. A lot more money pouring into this space now, you showed the slide, 15 billion, you've got a 15th of it. Tell us again why you feel like you can, you just used the word, dominate, with all this competition. You got the big guys now sort of learning from you and trying to copy some of your moves and maybe pre announcing some stuff to try and freeze the market. What gives you great confidence that you will dominate act two. >> Again, we have a history of innovation, so we know that there are new requirements for the hybrid cloud. People not only want to protect the data, they want to make sure that when they move to a hybrid cloud, when they put the workloads in a public cloud, that that data is protected, is secured and protected. So that's one capability that customers are looking for. Another capability, they want to be able to move the data back on-prem, or between the clouds, what we call cloud mobility, so they want to have this flexibility and freedom, be cloud agnostic or avoid that cloud lock-in. So they want to also make sure that from compliance standpoint, they are able to move the data if needed. In other use cases they want to leverage the cloud for different data protection capabilities. They want to leverage the cloud for backup, for disaster recovery as well as for long term retention, what we call cloud tier, so they want to, instead of tape, they want to replace tape with the public cloud low storage. So they want to use the cost and the skill ability of the public cloud for long term retentions. So all these use cases, extension of our platform. So we already have the, we own the one component of the hybrid cloud which is on-prem, modern data center, what some people call private cloud. We already own one component and we have 350,000 customers. Most of these customers are going to deploy hybrid cloud. In fact, according to our survey, 73% of our customers are deploying or planning to deploy a hybrid cloud. So most of them I think, in how to leverage the performance, the skill ability, and the elasticity, of the public cloud. So we own this component, we have the capabilities and we're developing product capabilities for the public cloud and with our orchestration on top of it and monitoring and analytics capabilities. So it's a complete solution. >> So Ratmir, I want to build upon this notion of act one and act two because good for you guys over ten years but the industry also is going through an act one to act two when you come right down to it. Where data, for the first four years of this industry, was about recording events that have happened. And now data going forward is becoming a strategic asset that's actually shaping the events that are happening or will happen. And it requires a new approach. It requires that data be regarded as a strategic asset and capabilities have to be established to support that data. I'm especially itched in with the introduction that you made because it suggests that you guys are going to look to an ecosystem to bring that degree of specialization and uniqueness and invention, on top of your platform, to serve a rapidly expanding range of strategic capability requirements when we think about data protection, data assurance. Do you see it the same way? >> Absolutely yeah, I 100% agree. I talked about that briefly during my keynote. We see that there are this four technology superpowers what Pat Galson from Veeamware calls technology superpowers. And those are the cloud, the mobile, artificial intelligence and age in internal things. So all this four technology superpowers. The biggest producers and consumers of the data. So it has to be both in the cloud and on the age so the new product and services are built on that data. Either we are talking about self driving cars, or we are talking about breakthrough in DNA research or cancer research. It's all built both in the cloud and on the age. And Veeam has this technology called data lapse. So when we've actually provide the access to the data, to a field party, either security or compliance or analytical tenders. So they can build more solutions on top of our data lapse. >> So talk a little bit about how you planned to deploy capital going forward, particularly as you try to leverage the opportunities in cloud two. You're seeing all kinds of new emerging technologies. We talk about coup berneties and containers all the time. You've made some acquisitions in the cloud area. Should we think about your emanate strategies as just sort of advancing your ability to either form ecosystems or actually bring in more cloud like capabilities, beyond act one into act two? >> Yeah I mean, first of all, we have a very powerful product and RNZ group. Partially we have this mentality not invented here so in other words we want to invent more in house. However, there are some cases where we need to extend our platform and we might not have the bandwidths or time through market so we're looking at some adjacent in the cloud management space, in the cloud optimization, course optimization, analytics. Those areas are very interesting for us to expand our platform to. >> I'm guessing that NIH mentality, acquisitions you make have to fit into that platform, that architecture. How do you evaluate? You say okay, can we do this ourselves? You say do we have the bandwidth? Is that technology here now? >> Does with Veeam help? >> Yeah with Veeam that's a great problem that we announced today as well. Yeah so the way we evaluate is that, is this adjacent market to what we're doing? For example, AWS or Asur, how close the buyer is. Or Office 365 backup we evolved in house. Or Office 365 backup we evolved in house. Azureware developed in house. Some technologies we are looking to acquire. The question is, is that the same buyer? If the buyer is the same, we prefer to develop in house. If the buyer, for now, is different, we would like to acquire the company and let it grow, and then merge into Veeam later. >> So your co founder runs RND correct? >> Correct >> And you run sales and marketing? So you guys fight over how you're going to allocate the dollars. But as a specialist in data protection, you're allocating all of your RND funding toward data protection. Presumably that helps you compete against the guys who are doing primary storage, secondary storage, all kinds of other software. So when you think about that road map, you told the story about how you got inspiration. You went to Silicon Valley and you were flying back and your partner said, well you know the best product just doesn't always win but you said, whoa so what, do we not invent the best products? You want to have the best products. Talk a little about that sort of organic development. How you guys think about that approach. Where the ideas come from. Is it obviously the customer input? Your knowledge of the space? Where do you see that going? >> So Veeam we believe is very different from other companies. First, we don't build long term road map because the technology is changing so fast that we want to keep that flexibility and agility to change our roadmap. We only disclose our release that we're imminent. Within the next six, nine months we already know. Beyond that, we don't provide the roadmap. We have the vision but we don't have the roadmap with the exact specific dates. >> But it's not a waterfall thinking. It's more agile applied to our-- >> Exactly, agile and flexibility that's what's, agility and flexibility that's what's most important. For example, a year ago or even two years ago when we announced version 10. We didn't know that object storage will become such a needed hot thing that all our customers are asking for. Including the on-prem object storage and the cloud object storage. So we changed our plans and we put lots of resources into object storage. And we finally released the best capability to use the object storage. We believe that object storage is the next cool thing in cloud data management because it will provide 10 times more capacity at the 10th of the course and 10 times faster performance. So it's like it's the next cool technology. That's just one example. Another thing is that, what differentiates Veeam in terms of RNZ and product strategy is that, if we release the feature, we don't do it as a marketing check box, we do cloud storage or we do object storage or we do this or we support Azure. When we design the feature, we think about is it going to be really really valuable? So that our customers, when they get it, they say wow, that's exactly what I needed. So we don't do as a marketing check box, we do provide and our customers really value that. They expect from Veeam that when Veeam releases something, it's going to be useful. >> And easy to use. >> Easy to use and very useful. >> That's important because when you're on offence, you don't have to do check box marketing. We know that a lot of times companies will do check box marketing 'cause they'll hear it in the field. The innovater has it, oh we have it too. And when you really peel the onion you see the differences and start to move forward. Okay so let's talk a little about customers. You had United Health on today. What are you hearing from customers? What are the customers saying that are inspiring you and your team? >> Today's conversations with the customers they start with the modernizing the, continue modernizing their data. A lot of customers still use the legacy backup solutions. They want to modernize. But the conversation quickly shifts to the hybrid cloud. How Veeam is going to help me not only modernize the backup data management on-prem, but how Veeam is going to help me to move to the cloud, manage the data, orchestrate the data movement in the cloud and maybe if needed, bring the data back for compliance reasons. So that conversation always occurs with any size companies. In fact, according to our survey, 73% of our customers say that they have a hybrid cloud strategy. Only 10% say no, we will always stay 100% on-prem. And about 15% say I will move everything to a public cloud. The huge majority is in the middle. 73% have the hybrid strategy. >> Yeah that sort of answers my next question but I'm going to ask it anyway. So an observer might well aren't the cloud guys just going to do their own backup and recovery. Why wouldn't that supplant Veeam? You sort of addressed it with the hybrid approach but I want to hear your answer. All the cloud guys have some form of replication or snapshotting, granted it's not as robust, you and I know that. But for the audience, explain to them why the cloud doesn't put you out of business. >> In fact cloud represents the biggest opportunity for the next 5-7-10 years. It's just historically, the platform vendors they don't provide the good tools, security tools or backup tools. We've been in this business over 25 years. Our first company was specialized in Windows Enterprise Management so we developed lots of tools around Microsoft platforms for managing active directory exchange server, share points, equal server. We always were afraid maybe Microsoft will come up with the similar solutions but they never did. The same is for today's world. Customers want to have the independence from the platform and the vendor, like AWS or Microsoft, they will never provide the capability to move the data outside of AWS. But for the true compliance security, a vendor like Veeam you need the capability not just backup AWS to AWS but you want to be able to backup AWS to on-prem and on-prem to AWS. Or AWS to Azure. So only Veeam can platform vendors, they are not looking to do that. So they want to move the data to the cloud. They're not necessarily providing more capabilities. Move the data outside of their cloud and that's where Veeam comes in, with the cloud mobility capabilities. >> One of the things that our researchers strongly pointed out, is that there are few places within a technology set of capabilities that they must control. And data protection is one of them. So they have to have an approach for managing data protection within their business that's their approach. And there are a few companies in a position to actually provide that. >> Yeah, I absolutely agree. Some customers they think that if I put the data into AWS or Azure or Office 365, Microsoft is going to protect it or AWS. No, it's your data, microsoft protects the infrastructure. So it's a off time service. That's where Microsoft or AWS are responsible. The data is yours. You are responsible for protecting the data recovery. If you delete an email, it's not Microsoft's fault. If you need to do an e-discovery on your email system, that's not Microsoft's problem. >> If you're out of compliance, Microsoft executives aren't going to jail. >> Exactly. That's your responsibility. Your data, Your responsibility. In fact we have a white paper that talks about the shared responsibility model. So there is a shared responsibility. AWS, public cloud providers, they're responsible to keep the service up and running. So therefore resilient infrastructure. Not the data, the data is yours. That sits on top of that resilient infrastructure. >> Yeah you've gone after Office 365 as the starting point for SaaS. Maybe there's other opportunities down the road. Right now it's probably a small market but I think it could emerge over time. But the overall time, you showed $15 billion. Today you have 1/15th of it. Lot more competition today. You see some of your competitors risk $250 million you have to one up them with a $500 million risk. You told me years ago Ratmir, we're probably not going to do an IPO. Give us an update there, same stance on that? >> No we've actually very open to the idea about IPO and we're exploring different opportunities. But we believe that we can continue growing organically because the company is very profitable. So we're reinvesting money into RNZ and we have good foundation for the next act two. But speaking about Office 365 by the way, it's the fastest growing product in the history of Veeam. >> Really? >> Of backup for Office 365 is the fastest growing because we have 350,000 customers, most of them are using Office 365 and they need to protect that data. So and they love Veeam, they are buying. But also we'll actually need new customers just buying Office 365. 23% of our customers for Office 365 are new customers. Also a little bit surprising for us. >> So O365 OneDrive is another opportunity that you guys have gone after. >> It's all part of the same product, yes. >> Salesforce maybe not quite there yet but you could potentially see that emerging as an opportunity? Do you see that? >> Yes we are looking at Salesforce. We are looking at G's width. We are looking at other SaaS applications that are popular among the business customers. >> One point really quickly Dave, is that 1/15th of that $15 billion TAM is just Veeam. Your ecosystem is increasingly going to use the Veeam services to expand the Veeam share of that, the virtual Veeam share of that, even as you grow. I think that's what's particularly interesting is how will that ecosystem add additional services on top of that, to grab more of that overall share. >> And I think, and please comment on that, that's unique to Veeam and the data protection space. You have your own events. You have premier partners that come in. Some of your competitors don't, they're not quite there yet. Some of the other larger competitors it's a small little piece of their whole business so the focus really is accentuated. >> Veeam has always had a channel part in ariant stretch. From day one we were 100% channel, 100%. We don't take the deal directly. Also, we build the broad service provider system network. So we have over 20,000 what we call Veeam cloud and service providers that provide the services to our customers based on Veeam platform backup in the cloud, disaster recovery, manage backup. Finally today we announce with Veeam that's another new initiative that we are expanding our ecosystem with Veeam APS where we want our partners, together with us, build this secondary storage systems that provide a single solution because some customers they want to buy in the form of the hardware appliance, our solution. So it's going to be pre installed, similar experience, out of the box functionality, easy to deploy, easy to manage with a single interphase. All provided and with a single support wise. So those systems will be created together with our partners. Like we announced one with Nutanix as well as with ExaGrid. We are working, Nutanix is one of the most innovative companies in our industry and we were very happy to partner with them because we believe that we will develop the right solution and we will be able to take this APS and offer our other partners to Build a secondary storage system, together with us. >> Well we've seen this little company, years ago, called Veeam, what a great name, superglue itself to the virtualization trend and really ride that wave now going onto act two, which is a cloud rapid timid shift. Thanks so much for coming to theCUBE. Great to see you again. >> Thank you Dave. >> Keep right there everybody. This is theCUBE, we're here at VeeamOn2019 in Miami. We'll be right back after this short break.

>> Live from Orlando, Florida its theCUBE covering Enterprise Connect 2019. Brought to you by Five9. >> Hello from Orlando, Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman theCUBE. We are live, day three at Enterprise Connect 2019. We have been in Five9's booth all week and we're very excited to welcome to the program for the first time Harry Moseley the CIO of Zoom Video Communications. Harry thanks so much for joining Stu and me on The CUBE today. >> Lisa, Stu its a pleasure to be here, thank you for having me. >> And you're a hall of famer, you have been inducted into the CIO Magazine's hall of fame and recognized as one of the world's top 100 CIO's be Computer World >> Yes that's right >> So we're in the presence of a VIP >> (chuckles) Well thank you for that it's, as I say its all credit back to the wonderful people that have supported me throughout my career. And I've worked with some amazing people and leaders and, who have supported me and the visions that I've created for their organizations. And so, I understand its about me but it's also about the great teams that I've worked with in my past. I can't make this stuff up, yep. >> Harry, we love talking to CIO's especially one with such a distinguished career as yours 'cause the role of CIO has gone through a lot of changes. IT has gone through a lot of changes. You know we've been doing this program for nine years. Remember reading Nick Carr's IT, does IT matter? And you know, we believe IT matters more than ever Not just IT, the business, the relationship maybe give us a little more of your view point as to the role of the CIO and technology, at a show like this. We hear about the CMO and the business and IT all working together. >> Yeah so its actually, in my opinion, there's never been a better time to be a CIO, irrespective of the company you are in, whether its a tech company like where I'm, you know Zoom Video Communications or any one of the prior companies I worked for, professional services, financial services. But even when you think about it like trucking, You think about trucking as an industry, you think about trucking as a company, its like it was a very sort of brick and mortars? But now its all about digital, right? A friend of mine runs a shipping container company and to think that they load five miles of wagons every day. And so I said to him, "how long does it take to load a wagon on a truck?" "It takes four minutes, and you know what Harry, "we're working that down to three. "And that'll increase our revenue by 20 to 25 percent.' And so its just fantastic. And the pace of change, you know it's just growing exponentially. It's just fascinating, the things that we can actually do today we only dreamed about them a year ago. And you think about it sort of' I can't wait to be back here next year, 'cause we're going to just lift the roof off this place in terms of the capabilities. And so its fantastic, yeah it's just absolutely fantastic. >> So looking at, a lot of us know Zoom for video conferencing and different things like that, but you said something very interesting in your fireside chat this morning that I hadn't thought about, and that is when, either going from audio to video, when you're on a video chat you really can't or shouldn't multi-task. So in terms of capturing peoples attention, enabling meetings to happen maybe more on time, faster, more productive. Thought that was an interesting realization, I thought, you're right. >> It just clicks, it just works. You know mobile, you know when I go back to my you know sort of' going back and again, thank you for the recognition from the key note. But when I go back earlier in my career it's like dialing that number, dialing that ten digit number, misdialing that number, what happened? I got to' hang up, I got to' get a dial tone, I got to' dial the numbers again. Now I'm like two minutes late and I know I'm late more often than I'd like, but when its late because of something like that, that's frustrating. That's really frustrating. And so the notion that you can just click on your mobile device, you can click on your laptop, I have no stress anymore, in joining meetings anywhere. I love telling the story about how I had a client meeting, I was in O'Hare Airport and I joined the client prospect meeting. I joined the prospect meeting on my phone using the free wifi service at O'Hare Airport. Put up my virtual background on my phone I just showed you this Stu, with our logo shared the content off of my phone 18 minutes into this 30 minutes call, the person I was talking to, the CIO for this firm called a halt to the meeting. This is what exactly what happened. Enough, I've heard enough. (announcement in background) >> Keep going. >> Keep going, okay. Enough, I didn't know what enough meant. And so I was a little spooked by that if you will. He goes, "you're on a phone, you're in O'Hare Airport, "you've got a virtual background, "you're sharing content, its all flawless. "Its like this is an amazing experience "that we can't get from all the technology "investment we've done in this space "for our company. "So guys, enough. "We're starting a proof of concept on Monday. "No more discussions about it. "Harry, looking forward to being a business partner." >> Does it get better than that? >> It doesn't get better than that. Its like you know, you hop through security, you get on a plane, and its cruisin' all the way home. >> Yeah I mean Harry, I do have to say, you know disclaimer, we are Zoom customers I'm actually a Zoom admin and its that simplicity that you've built into it is the experience, makes it easy. >> And then when you, and Stu, sorry to interrupt you but I got really excited about this stuff as you can tell. But, and then you look at the enterprise. So you're admin? You get into the enterprise management portal and its like Stu, I had a really bad experience. Oh let me look that up, oh yeah, okay. Where were you? You know, I was in outer Mongolia Ah okay, about five minutes into the call you had some packet loss, its like yeah it wasn't. But it still maintains the connection, right? So you can actually, so our Enterprise Management Portal is awesome. >> Yeah so that actually where I was going with the question, is you know I remember back, I actually worked for Lucent right after they spun out from AT&T. And we had videos talking about pervasive video everywhere, in my home in the business. Feels like we're almost there but still even when I have a team get together my folks that live in Silicon Valley, their connectivity's awful. You know when they have their, and its like oh well my computer or my phone don't have the cycles to be able to run. Maybe we have to turn off some of the video Are we getting there, will 5G solve some of these issues? Will the next generation of phones and computers keep up with it? Because it's, I'm sure you can guess we're big fans of video. It's a lot of what we do. >> Because video is the new voice, right. We like video. If I can only hear you and I can't see you, then when I make a statement I can't see you nodding. If I say something you like, you nod. So we get that concurrency of the experience Again it comes back Stu, where were we a year ago? The capabilities we had, where will we be a year from today? Whether its AI, whether its the power in the device in front of us whether its the network, you know, 5G is becoming a reality. It's going to take some time to get there but you've got sort of great technologies and capabilities, that you know, you look at the introduction of our real-time transcription services. I mean how cool is that? I'm sure there's lots of questions, so lots of people would ask about that real-time transcription in terms of, well what's next? I'm not going to talk about what's next. But as they say in life, watch this space. >> Yeah, just you made some announcements at the show with some partners I actually believe Otter AI is one of the ones you mentioned there. I got a demo of their thing, real time, a little bit of AI built in there. Can you talk about some of those partnerships? >> Yeah so we have great, we love our partnerships right? Whether its on the AI space, with Apple and Siri and Amazon and Otter. We also love our partnerships with Questron and Logitek and HP, and Polly of course. Again its the notion of, we have terrific software. You guys realize that, right? Its terrific software, proprietary QOS proprietary capabilities, its like its a fantastic experience every time on our software. These partners have great technologies too. But they're more on the hardware side, we are software engineers at our core. As Andreson said, I think it was about ten years go, "software is the easing thing in the world "so you take terrific software "you imbed it in terrific hardware "with terrific partners and what happens "is you get exceptional experiences." And that's what we want to deliver to people. So its not about the technology, its about the people. Its about making people happy, making easy, taking stress off the table. You go to the meeting, you light it up, you share the content, you record it, you can watch it later, its just terrific. >> So the people, the experiences you about we've been hearing that thematically for the last three days. As we know as consumers, the consumer behavior is driving so much of this change that has to happen, for companies to not just digitally transform, but to be competitive. We're in Five9's booth and they've mentioned they've got five billion minutes of recorded customer conversations. You guys can record, but its not just about the recording of the voice and the video and the transcription. Tell us about what you're doing to enable the context, so that the data and the recordings have much more value. >> Yeah so , I mean its the notion of being able to sort of rewind and replay. I'll give you another example if I may. Coming out of an office in Palo Alto jumped in the Uber, going back to San Jose for a client meeting. I'm a New Yorker as we talked about a few minutes ago and, I don't know the traffic patterns in Southern, in the Valley. And its about 5:00 o'clock, 5:15. San Jose meetings 5:45. Normally it would be fine, but its rush hour, what do I know about rush hour? I know a lot more now than then. I realize I'm not going to be able to make it on time. Put up the client logo, virtual background on the phone, in the Uber, client gets on the call, Harry where are you? I'm in the back of an Uber. Again, the same sort of experience. Then he asks the question, "well with this recording capability, "can I watch it at 35,000 feet?" Of course you can. And that was it. That was the magic moment for this particular client, because he said "I'm client facing all the time. "I don't get it in time, "I don't always make my management meetings "so I won't have to ask my colleagues what happened "and get their interpretation of the meeting. "I can actually watch the meeting "when I'm at 35,000 feet on a plane, going to Europe." So that's what this is all about. >> Alright, well Harry obviously this space excites you a bunch. Can you bring us back a little bit? This brought you out of retirement and the chase, the space is changing so fast. We come a year from now, what kind of things do we think we'll be talking about, and what's going to keep you excited going forward? >> So lets talk about the first part first and then sort of' break it into two. So yes I had a fantastic career and I retired and so when I met Eric and I met the leadership team at Zoom and I dug into the technology and I understood sort of' A, the culture of the company which is amazing. When I understood the product capability and how this was built as video first, and how we would have this maniacal focus if you will on sort of being a software company at our core. And how it was all about the people. That was sort of a very big part of my decision. So that was one. Two is, look we have a labor shortage right? We can't hire enough people, we can't hire the people, we have more jobs than we have people. So and so, retaining talent is really important. Giving them the technology and the studies that have been done, if you make an investment in the technology, that helps with retention. That helps with profit. It helps with, product innovation. So investment in the people. And the ability to collaborate. It's very hard to work if you don't collaborate, right? It just makes it really, very lumpy if you will. So the ability to collaborate locally, nationally, and globally, and people say, well what's collaborating locally? It's kind of like we can just walk down the corridor. Yeah, well if you're in two different buildings how do you get there? And then it gives us, a foot of snow between you, its makes it really hard. So collaborating locally, nationally, and globally is super important. So you put all that together that was the, what convinced me to say okay you know what, retirement, we're just going to put a pause button on that. And we're going to gave some fun over here. And that really has been, so I've, over a year now and its been absolutely amazing. So yes, big advances. What's in the the future? I think the future, you know there's been a lot of discussion around AI. We hear that its like, all the time. And we've seen from a variety of different providers this week in terms of their, their thoughts around how they're going to leverage AI. Its not about the technology, its about the end of the its about the user experience. And you look at the things that we started to do, we talked about real-time transcriptions a few moments ago, you look at the partnership that we have with Linkedin where you can hover over the name and their Linkinin profile pops up. You're going to see this, I just see this as an exponential change in these abilities. Because you have these building blocks today that you can grow on an exponential basis. So, the world is our oyster, is how I fundamentally think about it. And the art of the possible is now possible, And so lets, I think the future is going to' be absolutely amazing. Who would have, sorry Lisa, who would have thought a year ago, you could get on a plane using facial recognition? Let me just throw that out there. I mean, that's pretty amazing. Who would have thought a year ago that when you rent a car, you can just look at the camera on the way out and you're approved to go? Who would have thought that? >> So with that speed I'm curious to get your take on how Zoom is facilitating adoption. You mentioned some great customers examples where your engagement with them via Zoom Video Conference basically sold the POC in and of itself, with you at an airport >> That's a great questions. >> I guess O'Hare has pretty good wifi. >> What's that? >> O'Hare has pretty good wifi. >> A little choppy but, but it worked. >> It worked. >> Because of our great software, yeah. >> There you go, but in terms of adoption so as customers understand, alright our consumers are so demanding, we have to be able to react, and facilitate collaboration internally and externally. How, what are some of the tools and the techniques that Zoom delivers to enable those guys and gals to go I get it, I'm going to use it, And I'm actually going to actually use it successfully? >> This is a question, I don't know how many clients, CIOs, CTOs, C suite execs I talk to, and they all say, they all ask me similar sorts of questions. Like we're not a video first culture. Its like video, its kind of like we're a phone culture. And then I, so I throw that right back at them and I say and why is that? Because we don't have a good video platform. Aha. Now, when you have good video, when it just works when its easy, when its seamless, when its platform agnostic. IOS, Andriod, Mac, Windows, Linux, VDI, web. When you have this sort of, this platform when you're agnostic to the platform, and its a consistent high quality experience, you use it. So its the notion of, Lisa, it's the notion of would we rather get into a room and, would we rather get into a room and have a face to face meeting? Absolutely. So why would you get on a call and not like to see the people you're talking to. You like to see the people. Why, because its a video first. >> Unless its just one of those meetings that's on my calender and I didn't want to be there and I'm not going to listen. But I totally agree with you Harry. So, another hot button topic that I think we're at the center of here and that I'm sure you have an opinion on. Remote workers. So we watched some really big companies I think really got back in the dialogue a coupla' years ago when Yahoo was like okay, everybody's got to' come in work for us and we've seen some very large public companies that said you need to be in your workforce. and as I said, I'm sure you've got some pretty strong opinions on this >> I don't know what's going on here, quite honestly Stu but its like I think you're reading my brain because these are things I love talking about. So yeah, its. Sorry repeat the question? >> Remote workers. >> Remote workers, yeah. So first of all, I was at an event recently we talked about remote work. We didn't like the term. Its a distributed workforce. >> Yes. Because if you say you're a remote worker its kind like, that doesn't give you that warm feeling of being part of the organization. So we call it, so we said, we should drop calling people remote workers and we should call them a distributed work force. So that's one. Two is, I'm in New york, I'm in Orlando, I'm in Chicago, I'm in Atlanta, I'm in Denver. I'm on planes, I'm in an Uber. I don't feel disconnected at all. Why? Because I can see my colleagues, and its immersive. They share content with me. I'm walking down Park Avenue and I've got my phone and they're sharing content and I'm zooming in and I can see them and I can hear them and I'm giving feedback and I'm marking up on my phone, as I'm walking. So I don't feel, and then when I go to, its fascinating, and then I go to San Jose and I'm walking around the office and I'm seeing people physically. It doesn't feel like I haven't seen them, its really funny. I was in San Jose last week, Wednesday and Thursday in San Jose, took the red-eye back. Hate the red-eye but, I don't like flying during the day, I think it's inefficient, a waste of time. Took the red-eye back, now I'm on calls Friday morning from my office at home with my green screen, Zoom background and everybody's got, it's like I'm talking to the same people I was talking to yesterday but they were in the flesh, now they're on video. It's like Harry where are you, why didn't you come to the room? Well I'm back in New York. It's just just that simple, yep. >> That simple and really it sounds like Harry, what Zoom is delivering is a cultural transformation for some of these newer or older companies who, there is no reason not to be a video culture. We thank you so much for taking some time >> Thank you, thank you >> To stop by theCUBE and chat with Stu and me about all of the exciting things that brought you back into tech. and I'm excited to dial up how I'm using Zoom. >> Well we can take five minutes after this and I can show you some cool tricks >> Wow, from the CIO himself. Harry Moseley, thank you so much for your time. >> Thank you, thank you >> Great to have you on the program. For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin and you're watching theCUBE (upbeat tune)