>>Hello. And we're here at the cube startup showcase made possible by a Ws. Thanks so much for joining us today. You know when Jim McDaid Ghani was formulating her ideas around data mesh, She wasn't the only one thinking about decentralized data architecture. Hello, Fresh was going into hyper growth mode and realized that in order to support its scale, it needed to rethink how it thought about data. Like many companies that started in the early part of last decade, Hello Fresh relied on a monolithic data architecture and the internal team. It had concerns about its ability to support continued innovation at high velocity. The company's data team began to think about the future and work backwards from a target architecture which possessed many principles of so called data mesh even though they didn't use that term. Specifically, the company is a strong example of an early but practical pioneer of data mission. Now there are many practitioners and stakeholders involved in evolving the company's data architecture, many of whom are listed here on this on the slide to are highlighted in red are joining us today, we're really excited to welcome into the cube Clements cheese, the Global Senior Director for Data at Hello Fresh and christoph Nevada who's the Global Senior Director of data also, of course. Hello Fresh folks. Welcome. Thanks so much for making some time today and sharing your story. >>Thank you very much. Hey >>steve. All right, let's start with Hello Fresh. You guys are number one in the world in your field, you deliver hundreds of millions of meals each year to many, many millions of people around the globe. You're scaling christoph. Tell us a little bit more about your company and its vision. >>Yeah. Should I start or Clements maybe maybe take over the first piece because Clements has actually been a longer trajectory yet have a fresh. >>Yeah go ahead. Climate change. I mean yes about approximately six years ago I joined handle fresh and I didn't think about the startup I was joining would eventually I. P. O. And just two years later and the freshman public and approximately three years and 10 months after. Hello fresh was listed on the German stock exchange which was just last week. Hello Fresh was included in the Ducks Germany's leading stock market index and debt to mind a great great milestone and I'm really looking forward and I'm very excited for the future for the future for head of fashion. All our data. Um the vision that we have is to become the world's leading food solution group and there's a lot of attractive opportunities. So recently we did lounge and expand Norway. This was in july and earlier this year we launched the U. S. Brand green >>chef in the U. K. As >>well. We're committed to launch continuously different geographies in the next coming years and have a strong pipe ahead of us with the acquisition of ready to eat companies like factor in the U. S. And the planned acquisition of you foods in Australia. We're diversifying our offer now reaching even more and more untapped customer segments and increase our total addressable market. So by offering customers and growing range of different alternatives to shop food and consumer meals. We are charging towards this vision and the school to become the world's leading integrated food solutions group. >>Love it. You guys are on a rocket ship, you're really transforming the industry and as you expand your tam it brings us to sort of the data as a as a core part of that strategy. So maybe you guys could talk a little bit about your journey as a company specifically as it relates to your data journey. You began as a start up. You had a basic architecture like everyone. You made extensive use of spreadsheets. You built a Hadoop based system that started to grow and when the company I. P. O. You really started to explode. So maybe describe that journey from a data perspective. >>Yes they saw Hello fresh by 2015 approximately had evolved what amount of classical centralized management set up. So we grew very organically over the years and there were a lot of very smart people around the globe. Really building the company and building our infrastructure. Um This also means that there were a small number of internal and external sources. Data sources and a centralized the I team with a number of people producing different reports, different dashboards and products for our executives for example of our different operations teams, christian company's performance and knowledge was transferred um just via talking to each other face to face conversations and the people in the data where's team were considered as the data wizard or as the E. T. L. Wizard. Very classical challenges. And those et al. Reserves indicated the kind of like a silent knowledge of data management. Right? Um so a central data whereas team then was responsible for different type of verticals and different domains, different geographies and all this setup gave us to the beginning the flexibility to grow fast as a company in 2015 >>christoph anything that might add to that. >>Yes. Um Not expected to that one but as as clement says it right, this was kind of set up that actually work for us quite a while. And then in 2017 when L. A. Freshman public, the company also grew rapidly and just to give you an idea how that looked like. As was that the tech department self actually increased from about 40 people to almost 300 engineers And the same way as a business units as Clemens has described, also grew sustainable, sustainably. So we continue to launch hello fresh and new countries launching brands like every plate and also acquired other brands like much of a factor and with that grows also from a data perspective the number of data requests that centrally we're getting become more and more and more and also more and more complex. So that for the team meant that they had a fairly high mental load. So they had to achieve a very or basically get a very deep understanding about the business. And also suffered a lot from this context switching back and forth, essentially there to prioritize across our product request from our physical product, digital product from the physical from sorry, from the marketing perspective and also from the central reporting uh teams. And in a nutshell this was very hard for these people. And this that also to a situation that, let's say the solution that we have became not really optimal. So in a nutshell, the central function became a bottleneck and slowdown of all the innovation of the company. >>It's a classic case, isn't it? I mean Clements, you see you see the central team becomes a bottleneck and so the lines of business, the marketing team salesman's okay, we're going to take things into our own hands. And then of course I I. T. And the technical team is called in later to clean up the mess. Uh maybe, I mean was that maybe I'm overstating it, but that's a common situation, isn't it? >>Yeah. Uh This is what exactly happened. Right. So um we had a bottleneck, we have the central teams, there was always a little of tension um analytics teams then started in this business domains like marketing, trade chain, finance, HR and so on. Started really to build their own data solutions at some point you have to get the ball rolling right and then continue the trajectory um which means then that the data pipelines didn't meet the engineering standards. And um there was an increased need for maintenance and support from central teams. Hence over time the knowledge about those pipelines and how to maintain a particular uh infrastructure for example left the company such that most of those data assets and data sets are turned into a huge step with decreasing data quality um also decrease the lack of trust, decreasing transparency. And this was increasing challenge where majority of time was spent in meeting rooms to align on on data quality for example. >>Yeah. And and the point you were making christoph about context switching and this is this is a point that Jemaah makes quite often is we've we've we've contextualized are operational systems like our sales systems, our marketing system but not our our data system. So you're asking the data team, Okay. Be an expert in sales, be an expert in marketing, be an expert in logistics, be an expert in supply chain and it start stop, start, stop, it's a paper cut environment and it's just not as productive. But but on the flip side of that is when you think about a centralized organization you think, hey this is going to be a very efficient way, a cross functional team to support the organization but it's not necessarily the highest velocity, most effective organizational structure. >>Yeah, so so I agree with that. Is that up to a certain scale, a centralized function has a lot of advantages, right? That's clear for everyone which would go to some kind of expert team. However, if you see that you actually would like to accelerate that and specific and this hyper growth, right, you wanna actually have autonomy and certain teams and move the teams or let's say the data to the experts in these teams and this, as you have mentioned, right, that increases mental load and you can either internally start splitting your team into a different kind of sub teams focusing on different areas. However, that is then again, just adding another peace where actually collaboration needs to happen busy external sees, so why not bridging that gap immediately and actually move these teams and to end into into the function themselves. So maybe just to continue what, what was Clements was saying and this is actually where over. So Clements, my journey started to become one joint journey. So Clements was coming actually from one of these teams to build their own solutions. I was basically having the platform team called database housed in these days and in 2019 where basically the situation become more and more serious, I would say so more and more people have recognized that this model doesn't really scale In 2019, basically the leadership of the company came together and I identified data as a key strategic asset and what we mean by that, that if we leverage data in a proper way, it gives us a unique competitive advantage which could help us to, to support and actually fully automated our decision making process across the entire value chain. So what we're, what we're trying to do now or what we should be aiming for is that Hello, Fresh is able to build data products that have a purpose. We're moving away from the idea. Data is just a by problem products, we have a purpose why we would like to collect this data. There's a clear business need behind that. And because it's so important to for the company as a business, we also want to provide them as a trust versi asset to the rest of the organization. We say there's the best customer experience, but at least in a way that users can easily discover, understand and security access high quality data. >>Yeah, so and and and Clements, when you c J Maxx writing, you see, you know, she has the four pillars and and the principles as practitioners you look at that say, okay, hey, that's pretty good thinking and then now we have to apply it and that's and that's where the devil meets the details. So it's the four, you know, the decentralized data ownership data as a product, which we'll talk about a little bit self serve, which you guys have spent a lot of time on inclement your wheelhouse which is which is governance and a Federated governance model. And it's almost like if you if you achieve the first two then you have to solve for the second to it almost creates a new challenges but maybe you could talk about that a little bit as to how it relates to Hello fresh. >>Yes. So christophe mentioned that we identified economic challenge beforehand and for how can we actually decentralized and actually empower the different colleagues of ours. This was more a we realized that it was more an organizational or a cultural change and this is something that somebody also mentioned I think thought words mentioned one of the white papers, it's more of a organizational or cultural impact and we kicked off a um faced reorganization or different phases we're currently and um in the middle of still but we kicked off different phases of organizational reconstruct oring reorganization, try unlock this data at scale. And the idea was really moving away from um ever growing complex matrix organizations or matrix setups and split between two different things. One is the value creation. So basically when people ask the question, what can we actually do, what shall we do? This is value creation and how, which is capability building and both are equal in authority. This actually then creates a high urge and collaboration and this collaboration breaks up the different silos that were built and of course this also includes different needs of stuffing forward teams stuffing with more, let's say data scientists or data engineers, data professionals into those business domains and hence also more capability building. Um Okay, >>go ahead. Sorry. >>So back to Tzemach did johnny. So we the idea also Then crossed over when she published her papers in May 2019 and we thought well The four colors that she described um we're around decentralized data ownership, product data as a product mindset, we have a self service infrastructure and as you mentioned, Federated confidential governance. And this suited very much with our thinking at that point of time to reorganize the different teams and this then leads to a not only organisational restructure but also in completely new approach of how we need to manage data, show data. >>Got it. Okay, so your business is is exploding. Your data team will have to become domain experts in too many areas, constantly contact switching as we said, people started to take things into their own hands. So again we said classic story but but you didn't let it get out of control and that's important. So we actually have a picture of kind of where you're going today and it's evolved into this Pat, if you could bring up the picture with the the elephant here we go. So I would talk a little bit about the architecture, doesn't show it here, the spreadsheet era but christoph maybe you can talk about that. It does show the Hadoop monolith which exists today. I think that's in a managed managed hosting service, but but you you preserve that piece of it, but if I understand it correctly, everything is evolving to the cloud, I think you're running a lot of this or all of it in A W. S. Uh you've got everybody's got their own data sources, uh you've got a data hub which I think is enabled by a master catalog for discovery and all this underlying technical infrastructure. That is really not the focus of this conversation today. But the key here, if I understand it correctly is these domains are autonomous and not only that this required technical thinking, but really supportive organizational mindset, which we're gonna talk about today. But christoph maybe you could address, you know, at a high level some of the architectural evolution that you guys went through. >>Yeah, sure. Yeah, maybe it's also a good summary about the entire history. So as you have mentioned, right, we started in the very beginning with the model is on the operation of playing right? Actually, it wasn't just one model is both to one for the back end and one for the for the front and and or analytical plane was essentially a couple of spreadsheets and I think there's nothing wrong with spreadsheets, right, allows you to store information, it allows you to transform data allows you to share this information. It allows you to visualize this data, but all the kind of that's not actually separating concern right? Everything in one tool. And this means that obviously not scalable, right? You reach the point where this kind of management set up in or data management of isn't one tool reached elements. So what we have started is we've created our data lake as we have seen here on Youtube. And this at the very beginning actually reflected very much our operational populace on top of that. We used impala is a data warehouse, but there was not really a distinction between borders, our data warehouse and borders our data like the impala was used as a kind of those as the kind of engine to create a warehouse and data like construct itself and this organic growth actually led to a situation as I think it's it's clear now that we had to centralized model is for all the domains that will really lose kimball modeling standards. There was no uniformity used actually build in house uh ways of building materialized use abuse that we have used for the presentation layer, there was a lot of duplication of effort and in the end essentially they were missing feedbacks, food, which helped us to to improve of what we are filled. So in the end, in the natural, as we have said, the lack of trust and that's basically what the starting point for us to understand. Okay, how can we move away and there are a lot of different things that you can discuss of apart from this organizational structure that we have said, okay, we have these three or four pillars from from Denmark. However, there's also the next extra question around how do we implement our talking about actual right, what are the implications on that level? And I think that is there's something that we are that we are currently still in progress. >>Got it. Okay, so I wonder if we could talk about switch gears a little bit and talk about the organizational and cultural challenges that you faced. What were those conversations like? Uh let's dig into that a little bit. I want to get into governance as well. >>The conversations on the cultural change. I mean yes, we went through a hyper growth for the last year since obviously there were a lot of new joiners, a lot of different, very, very smart people joining the company which then results that collaboration uh >>got a bit more difficult. Of course >>there are times and changes, you have different different artifacts that you were created um and documentation that were flying around. Um so we were we had to build the company from scratch right? Um Of course this then resulted always this tension which I described before, but the most important part here is that data has always been a very important factor at l a fresh and we collected >>more of this >>data and continued to improve use data to improve the different key areas of our business. >>Um even >>when organizational struggles, the central organizational struggles data somehow always helped us to go through this this kind of change. Right? Um in the end those decentralized teams in our local geography ease started with solutions that serve the business which was very very important otherwise wouldn't be at the place where we are today but they did by all late best practices and standards and I always used sport analogy Dave So like any sport, there are different rules and regulations that need to be followed. These rules are defined by calling the sports association and this is what you can think about data governance and compliance team. Now we add the players to it who need to follow those rules and bite by them. This is what we then called data management. Now we have the different players and professionals, they need to be trained and understand the strategy and it rules before they can play. And this is what I then called data literacy. So we realized that we need to focus on helping our teams to develop those capabilities and teach the standards for how work is being done to truly drive functional excellence in a different domains. And one of our mission of our data literacy program for example is to really empower >>every employee at hello >>fresh everyone to make the right data informs decisions by providing data education that scaled by royal Entry team. Then this can be different things, different things like including data capabilities, um, with the learning paths for example. Right? So help them to create and deploy data products connecting data producers and data consumers and create a common sense and more understanding of each other's dependencies, which is important, for example, S. S. L. O. State of contracts and etcetera. Um, people getting more of a sense of ownership and responsibility. Of course, we have to define what it means, what does ownership means? But the responsibility means. But we're teaching this to our colleagues via individual learning patterns and help them up skill to use. Also, there's shared infrastructure and those self self service applications and overall to summarize, we're still in this progress of of, of learning, we are still learning as well. So learning never stops the tele fish, but we are really trying this um, to make it as much fun as possible. And in the end we all know user behavior has changed through positive experience. Uh, so instead of having massive training programs over endless courses of workshops, um, leaving our new journalists and colleagues confused and overwhelmed. >>We're applying um, >>game ification, right? So split different levels of certification where our colleagues can access, have had access points, they can earn badges along the way, which then simplifies the process of learning and engagement of the users and this is what we see in surveys, for example, where our employees that your justification approach a lot and are even competing to collect Those learning path batteries to become the # one on the leader board. >>I love the game ification, we've seen it work so well and so many different industries, not the least of which is crypto so you've identified some of the process gaps uh that you, you saw it is gloss over them. Sometimes I say paved the cow path. You didn't try to force, in other words, a new architecture into the legacy processes. You really have to rethink your approach to data management. So what what did that entail? >>Um, to rethink the way of data management. 100%. So if I take the example of Revolution, Industrial Revolution or classical supply chain revolution, but just imagine that you have been riding a horse, for example, your whole life and suddenly you can operate a car or you suddenly receive just a complete new way of transporting assets from A to B. Um, so we needed to establish a new set of cross functional business processes to run faster, dry faster, um, more robustly and deliver data products which can be trusted and used by downstream processes and systems. Hence we had a subset of new standards and new procedures that would fall into the internal data governance and compliance sector with internal, I'm always referring to the data operations around new things like data catalog, how to identify >>ownership, >>how to change ownership, how to certify data assets, everything around classical software development, which we know apply to data. This this is similar to a new thinking, right? Um deployment, versioning, QA all the different things, ingestion policies, policing procedures, all the things that suffer. Development has been doing. We do it now with data as well. And in simple terms, it's a whole redesign of the supply chain of our data with new procedures and new processes and as a creation as management and as a consumption. >>So data has become kind of the new development kit. If you will um I want to shift gears and talk about the notion of data product and, and we have a slide uh that we pulled from your deck and I'd like to unpack it a little bit. Uh I'll just, if you can bring that up, I'll read it. A data product is a product whose primary objective is to leverage on data to solve customer problems where customers, both internal and external. So pretty straightforward. I know you've gone much deeper and you're thinking and into your organization, but how do you think about that And how do you determine for instance who owns what? How did you get everybody to agree? >>I can take that one. Um, maybe let me start with the data product. So I think um that's an ongoing debate. Right? And I think the debate itself is an important piece here, right? That visit the debate, you clarify what we actually mean by that product and what is actually the mindset. So I think just from a definition perspective, right? I think we find the common denominator that we say okay that our product is something which is important for the company has come to its value what you mean by that. Okay, it's it's a solution to a customer problem that delivers ideally maximum value to the business. And yes, it leverages the power of data and we have a couple of examples but it had a fresh year, the historical and classical ones around dashboards for example, to monitor or error rates but also more sophisticated ways for example to incorporate machine learning algorithms in our recipe recommendations. However, I think the important aspects of the data product is a there is an owner, right? There's someone accountable for making sure that the product that we are providing is actually served and is maintained and there are, there is someone who is making sure that this actually keeps the value of that problem thing combined with the idea of the proper documentation, like a product description, right that people understand how to use their bodies is about and related to that peace is the idea of it is a purpose. Right? You need to understand or ask ourselves, Okay, why does this thing exist does it provide the value that you think it does. That leads into a good understanding about the life cycle of the data product and life cycle what we mean? Okay from the beginning from the creation you need to have a good understanding, we need to collect feedback, we need to learn about that. We need to rework and actually finally also to think about okay benefits time to decommission piece. So overall, I think the core of the data product is product thinking 11 right that we start the point is the starting point needs to be the problem and not the solution and this is essentially what we have seen what was missing but brought us to this kind of data spaghetti that we have built there in in Russia, essentially we built at certain data assets, develop in isolation and continuously patch the solution just to fulfill these articles that we got and actually these aren't really understanding of the stakeholder needs and the interesting piece as a result in duplication of work and this is not just frustrating and probably not the most efficient way how the company should work. But also if I build the same that assets but slightly different assumption across the company and multiple teams that leads to data inconsistency and imagine the following too narrow you as a management for management perspective, you're asking basically a specific question and you get essentially from a couple of different teams, different kind of grass, different kind of data and numbers and in the end you do not know which ones to trust. So there's actually much more ambiguity and you do not know actually is a noise for times of observing or is it just actually is there actually a signal that I'm looking for? And the same is if I'm running in a B test right, I have a new future, I would like to understand what has it been the business impact of this feature. I run that specific source in an unfortunate scenario. Your production system is actually running on a different source. You see different numbers. What you've seen in a B test is actually not what you see then in production typical thing then is you're asking some analytics tend to actually do a deep dive to understand where the discrepancies are coming from. The worst case scenario. Again, there's a different kind of source. So in the end it's a pretty frustrating scenario and that's actually based of time of people that have to identify the root cause of this divergence. So in a nutshell, the highest degree of consistency is actually achieved that people are just reusing Dallas assets and also in the media talk that we have given right, we we start trying to establish this approach for a B testing. So we have a team but just providing or is kind of owning their target metric associated business teams and they're providing that as a product also to other services including the A B testing team, they'll be testing team can use this information defines an interface is okay I'm joining this information that the metadata of an experiment and in the end after the assignment after this data collection face, they can easily add a graph to the dashboard. Just group by the >>Beatles Hungarian. >>And we have seen that also in other companies. So it's not just a nice dream that we have right. I have actually worked in other companies where we worked on search and we established a complete KPI pipeline that was computing all this information. And this information was hosted by the team and it was used for everything A B test and deep dives and and regular reporting. So uh just one of the second the important piece now, why I'm coming back to that is that requires that we are treating this data as a product right? If you want to have multiple people using the things that I am owning and building, we have to provide this as a trust mercy asset and in a way that it's easy for people to discover and actually work with. >>Yeah. And coming back to that. So this is to me this is why I get so excited about data mesh because I really do think it's the right direction for organizations. When people hear data product they say well, what does that mean? Uh but then when you start to sort of define it as you did, it's it's using data to add value, that could be cutting costs, that could be generating revenue, it could be actually directly you're creating a product that you monetize, So it's sort of in the eyes of the beholder. But I think the other point that we've made is you made it earlier on to and again, context. So when you have a centralized data team and you have all these P NL managers a lot of times they'll question the data because they don't own it. They're like wait a minute. If they don't, if it doesn't agree with their agenda, they'll attack the data. But if they own the data then they're responsible for defending that and that is a mindset change, that's really important. Um And I'm curious uh is how you got to, you know, that ownership? Was it a was it a top down with somebody providing leadership? Was it more organic bottom up? Was it a sort of a combination? How do you decide who owned what in other words, you know, did you get, how did you get the business to take ownership of the data and what is owning? You know, the data actually mean? >>That's a very good question. Dave I think this is one of the pieces where I think we have a lot of learnings and basically if you ask me how we could start the feeling. I think that would be the first piece. Maybe we need to start to really think about how that should be approached if it stopped his ownership. Right? It means somehow that the team has a responsibility to host and self the data efforts to minimum acceptable standards. This minimum dependencies up and down string. The interesting piece has been looking backwards. What what's happening is that under that definition has actually process that we have to go through is not actually transferring ownership from the central team to the distributor teams. But actually most cases to establish ownership, I make this difference because saying we have to transfer ownership actually would erroneously suggests that the data set was owned before. But this platform team, yes, they had the capability to make the changes on data pipelines, but actually the analytics team, they're always the ones who had the business understands, you use cases and but no one actually, but it's actually expensive expected. So we had to go through this very lengthy process and establishing ownership. We have done that, as in the beginning, very naively. They have started, here's a document here, all the data assets, what is probably the nearest neighbor who can actually take care of that and then we we moved it over. But the problem here is that all these things is kind of technical debt, right? It's not really properly documented, pretty unstable. It was built in a very inconsistent over years and these people who have built this thing have already left the company. So there's actually not a nice thing that is that you want to see and people build up a certain resistance, e even if they have actually bought into this idea of domain ownership. So if you ask me these learnings, but what needs to happen as first, the company needs to really understand what our core business concept that they have, they need to have this mapping from. These are the core business concept that we have. These are the domain teams who are owning this concept and then actually link that to the to the assets and integrated better with both understanding how we can evolve actually, the data assets and new data build things new in the in this piece in the domain. But also how can we address reduction of technical death and stabilizing what we have already. >>Thank you for that christoph. So I want to turn a direction here and talk about governance and I know that's an area that's passionate, you're passionate about. Uh I pulled this slide from your deck, which I kind of messed up a little bit sorry for that, but but by the way, we're going to publish a link to the full video that you guys did. So we'll share that with folks. But it's one of the most challenging aspects of data mesh, if you're going to decentralize you, you quickly realize this could be the Wild West as we talked about all over again. So how are you approaching governance? There's a lot of items on this slide that are, you know, underscore the complexity, whether it's privacy, compliance etcetera. So, so how did you approach this? >>It's yeah, it's about connecting those dots. Right. So the aim of the data governance program is about the autonomy of every team was still ensuring that everybody has the right interoperability. So when we want to move from the Wild West riding horses to a civilised way of transport, um you can take the example of modern street traffic, like when all participants can manoeuvre independently and as long as they follow the same rules and standards, everybody can remain compatible with each other and understand and learn from each other so we can avoid car crashes. So when I go from country to country, I do understand what the street infrastructure means. How do I drive my car? I can also read the traffic lights in the different signals. Um, so likewise as a business and Hello Fresh, we do operate autonomously and consequently need to follow those external and internal rules and standards to set forth by the redistribution in which we operate so in order to prevent a car crash, we need to at least ensure compliance with regulations to account for society's and our customers increasing concern with data protection and privacy. So teaching and advocating this advantage, realizing this to everyone in the company um was a key community communication strategy and of course, I mean I mentioned data privacy external factors, the same goes for internal regulations and processes to help our colleagues to adapt to this very new environment. So when I mentioned before the new way of thinking the new way of um dealing and managing data, this of course implies that we need new processes and regulations for our colleagues as well. Um in a nutshell then this means the data governance provides a framework for managing our people the processes and technology and culture around our data traffic. And those components must come together in order to have this effective program providing at least a common denominator, especially critical for shared dataset, which we have across our different geographies managed and shared applications on shared infrastructure and applications and is then consumed by centralized processes um for example, master data, everything and all the metrics and KPI s which are also used for a central steering. Um it's a big change day. Right. And our ultimate goal is to have this noninvasive, Federated um ultimatum and computational governance and for that we can't just talk about it. We actually have to go deep and use case by use case and Qc buy PVC and generate learnings and learnings with the different teams. And this would be a classical approach of identifying the target structure, the target status, match it with the current status by identifying together with the business teams with the different domains have a risk assessment for example, to increase transparency because a lot of teams, they might not even know what kind of situation they might be. And this is where this training and this piece of illiteracy comes into place where we go in and trade based on the findings based on the most valuable use case um and based on that help our teams to do this change to increase um their capability just a little bit more and once they hand holding. But a lot of guidance >>can I kind of kind of trying to quickly David will allow me I mean there's there's a lot of governance piece but I think um that is important. And if you're talking about documentation for example, yes, we can go from team to team and tell these people how you have to document your data and data catalog or you have to establish data contracts and so on the force. But if you would like to build data products at scale following actual governance, we need to think about automation right. We need to think about a lot of things that we can learn from engineering before. And that starts with simple things like if we would like to build up trust in our data products, right, and actually want to apply the same rigor and the best practices that we know from engineering. There are things that we can do and we should probably think about what we can copy and one example might be. So the level of service level agreements, service level objectives. So that level indicators right, that represent on on an engineering level, right? If we're providing services there representing the promises we made to our customers or consumers, these are the internal objectives that help us to keep those promises. And actually these are the way of how we are tracking ourselves, how we are doing. And this is just one example of that thing. The Federated Governor governance comes into play right. In an ideal world, we should not just talk about data as a product but also data product. That's code that we say, okay, as most as much as possible. Right? Give the engineers the tool that they are familiar basis and actually not ask the product managers for example to document their data assets in the data catalog but make it part of the configuration. Have this as a, as a C D C I, a continuous delivery pipeline as we typically see another engineering task through and services we say, okay, there is configuration, we can think about pr I can think about data quality monitoring, we can think about um the ingestion data catalog and so on and forest, I think ideally in the data product will become of a certain templates that can be deployed and are actually rejected or verified at build time before we actually make them deploy them to production. >>Yeah, So it's like devoPS for data product um so I'm envisioning almost a three phase approach to governance and you kind of, it sounds like you're in early phases called phase zero where there's there's learning, there's literacy, there's training, education, there's kind of self governance and then there's some kind of oversight, some a lot of manual stuff going on and then you you're trying to process builders at this phase and then you codify it and then you can automate it. Is that fair? >>Yeah, I would rather think think about automation as early as possible in the way and yes, there needs to be certain rules but then actually start actually use case by use case. Is there anything that small piece that we can already automate? It's as possible. Roll that out and then actually extended step by step, >>is there a role though that adjudicates that? Is there a central Chief state officer who is responsible for making sure people are complying or is it how do you handle that? >>I mean from a from a from a platform perspective, yes, we have a centralized team to uh implement certain pieces they'll be saying are important and actually would like to implement. However, that is actually working very closely with the governance department. So it's Clements piece to understand and defy the policies that needs to be implemented. >>So Clements essentially it's it's your responsibility to make sure that the policy is being followed. And then as you were saying, christoph trying to compress the time to automation as fast as possible percent. >>So >>it's really it's uh >>what needs to be really clear that it's always a split effort, Right? So you can't just do one thing or the other thing, but everything really goes hand in hand because for the right automation for the right engineering tooling, we need to have the transparency first. Uh I mean code needs to be coded so we kind of need to operate on the same level with the right understanding. So there's actually two things that are important which is one its policies and guidelines, but not only that because more importantly or even well equally important to align with the end user and tech teams and engineering and really bridge between business value business teams and the engineering teams. >>Got it. So just a couple more questions because we gotta wrap I want to talk a little bit about the business outcome. I know it's hard to quantify and I'll talk about that in a moment but but major learnings, we've got some of the challenges that you cited. I'll just put them up here. We don't have to go detailed into this, but I just wanted to share with some folks. But my question, I mean this is the advice for your peers question if you had to do it differently if you had a do over or a Mulligan as we like to say for you golfers, what would you do differently? Yeah, >>I mean can we start with from a from the transformational challenge that understanding that it's also high load of cultural change. I think this is this is important that a particular communication strategy needs to be put into place and people really need to be um supported. Right? So it's not that we go in and say well we have to change towards data mesh but naturally it's in human nature, you know, we're kind of resistance to to change right? Her speech uncomfortable. So we need to take that away by training and by communicating um chris we're gonna add something to that >>and definitely I think the point that I have also made before right we need to acknowledge that data mesh is an architecture of scale, right? You're looking for something which is necessary by huge companies who are vulnerable, data productive scale. I mean Dave you mentioned it right, there are a lot of advantages to have a centralized team but at some point it may make sense to actually decentralized here and at this point right? If you think about data Mash, you have to recognize that you're not building something on a green field. And I think there's a big learning which is also reflected here on the slide is don't underestimate your baggage. It's typically you come to a point where the old model doesn't doesn't broke anymore and has had a fresh right? We lost our trust in our data and actually we have seen certain risks that we're slowing down our innovation so we triggered that this was triggering the need to actually change something. So this transition implies that you typically have a lot of technical debt accumulated over years and I think what we have learned is that potentially we have decentralized some assets to earlier, this is not actually taking into account the maturity of the team where we are actually distributed to and now we actually in the face of correcting pieces of that one. Right? But I think if you if you if you start from scratch you have to understand, okay, is are my team is actually ready for taking on this new uh, this news capabilities and you have to make sure that business decentralization, you build up these >>capabilities and the >>teams and as Clements has mentioned, right, make sure that you take the people on your journey. I think these are the pieces that also here, it comes with this knowledge gap, right? That we need to think about hiring and literacy the technical depth I just talked about and I think the last piece that I would add now which is not here on the flight deck is also from our perspective, we started on the analytical layer because that's kind of where things are exploding, right, this is the thing that people feel the pain but I think a lot of the efforts that we have started to actually modernize the current state uh, towards data product towards data Mash. We've understood that it always comes down basically to a proper shape of our operational plane and I think what needs to happen is is I think we got through a lot of pains but the learning here is this need to really be a commitment from the company that needs to happen and to act. >>I think that point that last point you made it so critical because I I hear a lot from the vendor community about how they're gonna make analytics better and that's that's not unimportant, but but through data product thinking and decentralized data organizations really have to operationalize in order to scale. So these decisions around data architecture an organization, their fundamental and lasting, it's not necessarily about an individual project are why they're gonna be project sub projects within this architecture. But the architectural decision itself is an organizational, its cultural and what's the best approach to support your business at scale. It really speaks to to to what you are, who you are as a company, how you operate and getting that right, as we've seen in the success of data driven driven companies is yields tremendous results. So I'll ask each of you to give give us your final thoughts and then we'll wrap maybe >>maybe it quickly, please. Yeah, maybe just just jumping on this piece that you have mentioned, right, the target architecture. If we talk about these pieces right, people often have this picture of mind like OK, there are different kind of stages, we have sources, we have actually ingestion layer, we have historical transformation presentation layer and then we're basically putting a lot of technology on top of that kind of our target architecture. However, I think what we really need to make sure is that we have these different kind of viewers, right? We need to understand what are actually the capabilities that we need in our new goals. How does it look and feel from the different kind of personas and experience view? And then finally, that should actually go to the to the target architecture from a technical perspective um maybe just to give an outlook but what we're what we're planning to do, how we want to move that forward. We have actually based on our strategy in the in the sense of we would like to increase that to maturity as a whole across the entire company and this is kind of a framework around the business strategy and it's breaking down into four pillars as well. People meaning the data, cultural, data literacy, data organizational structure and so on that. We're talking about governance as Clements has actually mentioned that, right, compliance, governance, data management and so on. You talk about technology and I think we could talk for hours for that one. It's around data platform, better science platform and then finally also about enablement through data, meaning we need to understand that a quality data accessibility and the science and data monetization. >>Great, thank you christophe clement. Once you bring us home give us your final thoughts. >>Can't can just agree with christoph that uh important is to understand what kind of maturity people have to understand what the maturity level, where the company where where people organization is and really understand what does kind of some kind of a change replies to that those four pillars for example, um what needs to be taken first and this is not very clear from the very first beginning of course them it's kind of like Greenfield you come up with must wins to come up with things that we really want to do out of theory and out of different white papers. Um only if you really start conducting the first initiatives you do understand. Okay, where we have to put the starts together and where do I missed out on one of those four different pillars? People, process technology and governance. Right? And then that kind of an integration. Doing step by step, small steps by small steps not boiling the ocean where you're capable ready to identify the gaps and see where either you can fill um the gaps are where you have to increase maturity first and train people or increase your text text, >>you know Hello Fresh is an excellent example of a company that is innovating. It was not born in Silicon Valley which I love. It's a global company. Uh and I gotta ask you guys, it seems like this is an amazing place to work you guys hiring? >>Yes, >>definitely. We do >>uh as many rights as was one of these aspects distributing. And actually we are hiring as an entire company specifically for data. I think there are a lot of open roles serious. Please visit or our page from better engineering, data, product management and Clemens has a lot of rules that you can speak about. But yes >>guys, thanks so much for sharing with the cube audience, your, your pioneers and we look forward to collaborations in the future to track progress and really want to thank you for your time. >>Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Dave >>thank you for watching the cubes startup showcase made possible by A W. S. This is Dave Volonte. We'll see you next time. >>Yeah.

>>from around the globe. It's the queue with digital coverage of AWS Public sector online brought to you by Amazon Web services. Everyone welcome back to the Cube's virtual coverage of AWS Public sector online summit, which is also virtual. I'm John Furrier, host of the Cube, with a great interview. He remotely Jennifer Cronus, who's the general manager with the D. O. D. Account for Amazon Web services. Jennifer, welcome to the Cube, and great to have you over the phone. I know we couldn't get the remote video cause location, but glad to have you via your voice. Thanks for joining us. >>Well, thank you very much, John. Thanks for the opportunity here >>to the Department of Defense. Big part of the conversation over the past couple of years, One of many examples of the agencies modernizing. And here at the public sector summit virtual on line. One of your customers, the Navy with their air p is featured. Yes, this is really kind of encapsulate. It's kind of this modernization of the public sector. So tell us about what they're doing and their journey. >>Sure, Absolutely. So ah, maybe er P, which is Navy enterprise resource planning is the department of the Navy's financial system of record. It's built on S AP, and it provides financial acquisition and my management information to maybe commands and Navy leadership. Essentially keep the Navy running and to increase the effectiveness and the efficiency of baby support warfighter. It handles about $70 billion in financial transactions each year and has over 72,000 users across six Navy commands. Um, and they checked the number of users to double over the next five years. So essentially, you know, this program was in a situation where their on premises infrastructure was end of life. They were facing an expensive tech upgrade in 2019. They had infrastructure that was hard to steal and prone to system outages. Data Analytics for too slow to enable decision making, and users actually referred to it as a fragile system. And so, uh, the Navy made the decision last year to migrate the Europe E system to AWS Cloud along with S AP and S two to s AP National Security Services. So it's a great use case for a government organization modernizing in the cloud, and we're really happy to have them speaking at something this year. >>Now, was this a new move for the Navy to move to the cloud? Actually, has a lot of people are end life in their data center? Certainly seeing in public sector from education to modernize. So is this a new move for them? And what kind of information does this effect? I mean, ASAP is kind of like, Is it, like just financial data as an operational data? What is some of the What's the move about it Was that new? And what kind of data is impacted? >>Sure. Yeah, well, the Navy actually issued a Cloud First Policy in November of 2017. So they've been at it for a while, moving lots of different systems of different sizes and shapes to the cloud. But this migration really marked the first significant enterprise business system for the Navy to move to the actually the largest business system. My migrate to the cloud across D o D. Today to date. And so, essentially, what maybe Air P does is it modernizes and standardizes Navy business operation. So everything think about from time keeping to ordering missile and radar components for Navy weapon system. So it's really a comprehensive system. And, as I said, the migration to AWS govcloud marks the Navy's largest cloud migration to date. And so this essentially puts the movement and documentation of some $70 billion worth of parts of goods into one accessible space so the information can be shared, analyzed and protected more uniformly. And what's really exciting about this and you'll hear from the Navy at Summit is that they were actually able to complete this migration in just under 10 months, which was nearly half the time it was originally expected to take different sizing complexity. So it's a really, really great spring. >>That's huge numbers. I mean, they used to be years. Well, that was the minicomputer. I'm old enough to remember like, Oh, it's gonna be a two year process. Um, 10 months, pretty spectacular. I got to ask, What is some of the benefits that they're seeing in the cloud? Is that it? Has it changed the roles and responsibilities? What's what's some of the impact that they're seeing expecting to see quickly? >>Yeah, I'd say, you know, there's been a really big impact to the Navy across probably four different areas. One is in decision making. Also better customer experience improves security and then disaster recovery. So we just kind of dive into each of those a little bit. So, you know, moving the system to the cloud has really allowed the Navy make more timely and informed decisions, as well as to conduct advanced analytics that they weren't able to do as efficiently in the past. So as an example, pulling financial reports and using advanced analytics on their own from system used to take them around 20 hours. And now ah, maybe your API is able to all these ports in less than four hours, obviously allowing them to run the reports for frequently and more efficiently. And so this is obviously lead to an overall better customer experience enhance decision making, and they've also been able to deploy their first self service business intelligence capabilities. So to put the hat, you know, the capability, Ah, using these advanced analytics in the hands of the actual users, they've also experienced improve security. You know, we talk a lot about the security benefits of migrating to the cloud, but it's given them of the opportunity to increase their data protection because now there's only one based as a. We have data to protect instead of multiple across a whole host of your traditional computing hardware. And then finally, they've implemented a really true disaster recovery system by implementing a dual strategy by putting data in both our AWS about East and govcloud West. They were the first to the Navy to do those to provide them with true disaster become >>so full govcloud edge piece. So that brings up the question around. And I love all this tactical edge military kind of D o d. Thinking the agility makes total sense. Been following that for a couple of years now, is this business side of it that the business operations Or is there a tactical edge military component here both. Or is that next ahead for the Navy? >>Yeah. You know, I think there will ultimately both You know that the Navy's big challenge right now is audit readiness. So what they're focusing on next is migrating all of these financial systems into one General ledger for audit readiness, which has never been done before. I think you know, audit readiness press. The the D has really been problematic. So the next thing that they're focusing on in their journey is not only consolidating to one financial ledger, but also to bring on new users from working capital fund commands across the Navy into this one platform that is secure and stable, more fragile system that was previously in place. So we expect over time, once all of the systems migrate, that maybe your API is going to double in size, have more users, and the infrastructure is already going to be in place. Um, we are seeing use of all of the tactical edge abilities in other parts of the Navy. Really exciting programs for the Navy is making use of our snowball and snowball edge capabilities. And, uh, maybe your key that that this follows part of their migration. >>I saw snow cones out. There was no theme there. So the news Jassy tweeted. You know, it's interesting to see the progression, and you mentioned the audit readiness. The pattern of cloud is implementing the business model infrastructure as a service platform as a service and sass, and on the business side, you've got to get that foundational infrastructure audit, readiness, monitoring and then the platform, and then ultimately, the application so a really, you know, indicator that this is happening much faster. So congratulations. But I want to bring that back to now. The d o d. Generally, because this is the big surge infrastructure platform sas. Um, other sessions at the Public sector summit here on the D. O. D is the cybersecurity maturity model, which gets into this notion of base lining at foundation and build on top. What is this all about? The CME EMC. What does it mean? >>Yeah, well, I'll tell you, you know, I think the most people know that are U S defense industrial base of what we call the Dev has experienced and continues to experience an increasing number of cyber attacks. So every year, the loss of sensitive information and an election property across the United States, billions each year. And really, it's our national security. And there's many examples for weapons systems and sensitive information has been compromised. The F 35 Joint Strike Fighter C 17 the Empty Nine Reaper. All of these programs have unfortunately, experience some some loss of sensitive information. So to address this, the d o. D. Has put in place, but they all see em and see which is the Cybersecurity Maturity Models certification framework. It's a mouthful, which is really designed to ensure that they did the defense industrial base. And all of the contractors that are part of the Defense Supply Chain network are protecting federal contract information and controlled unclassified information, and that they have the appropriate levels of cyber security in place to protect against advanced, persistent, persistent threats. So in CMC, there are essentially five levels with various processes and practices in each level. And this is a morton not only to us as a company but also to all of our partners and customers. Because with new programs the defense, investor base and supply take, companies will be required to achieve a certain see MNC certification level based on the sensitivity of the programs data. So it's really important initiative for the for the Deal E. And it's really a great way for us to help >>Jennifer. Thanks so much for taking the time to come on the phone. I really appreciate it. I know there's so much going on the D o d Space force Final question real quick for a minute. Take a minute to just share what trends within the d o. D you're watching around this modernization. >>Yeah, well, it has been a really exciting time to be serving our customers in the D. And I would say there's a couple of things that we're really excited about. One is the move to tactical edge that you've talked about using out at the tactical edge. We're really excited about capabilities like the AWS Snowball Edge, which helped Navy Ear Key hybrid. So the cloud more quickly but also, as you mentioned, our AWS cone, which isn't even smaller military grades for edge computing and data transfer device that was just under £5 kids fitness entered mailbox or even a small backpacks. It's a really cool capability for our diode, the warfighters. Another thing. That's what we're really watching. Mostly it's DRDs adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning. So you know, Dear D has really shown that it's pursuing deeper integration of AI and ML into mission critical and business systems for organizations like the Joint Artificial Intelligence. Enter the J and the Army AI task force to help accelerate the use of cloud based AI really improved war fighting abilities And then finally, what I'd say we're really excited about is the fact that D o. D is starting Teoh Bill. New mission critical systems in the cloud born in the cloud, so to speak. Systems and capabilities like a BMS in the airports. Just the Air Force Advanced data management system is being constructed and created as a born in the cloud systems. So we're really, really excited about those things and think that continued adoption at scale of cloud computing The idea is going to ensure that our military and our nation maintain our technological advantages, really deliver on mission critical systems. >>Jennifer, Thanks so much for sharing that insight. General General manager at Amazon Web services handling the Department of Defense Super important transformation efforts going on across the government modernization. Certainly the d o d. Leading the effort. Thank you for your time. This is the Cube's coverage here. I'm John Furrier, your host for AWS Public sector Summit online. It's a cube. Virtual. We're doing the remote interviews and getting all the content and share that with you. Thank you for watching. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

>>Live from Washington, D C it's the cube covering Boomi world 19 how to bide booming. >>Welcome to the cube at Lisa Martin at Boomi world 19 in Washington DC and with John furrier and John and I are pleased to welcome to the cube Jason Maynard, the SVP of global field operations from NetSuite. Jason, welcome. Thanks for having me. It's great to be in D C and on the cube. It is. We were just talking about baseball, so we'll have to park that for a second and talk about some other sexy stuff besides baseball, ERP. So nets we, I saw you on stage this morning. You guys have been a partner of the first Alliance partner with Boomi for about 12 years. Thousands of joint customers. candy.com is one of them. Yep. They're going to be on later today. So I'm excited to have my afternoon sugar rush. Make sure he brings a big bag. You got it. So talk to us about you guys. We're also, I noticed Boomie's 2019 Alliance partner of the year. Lots of innovations going on. Give our audience a little bit of an overview of what NetSuite is doing with Boomi. >>Great. So Boomi is, has been one of our longest partners. I said I think we, we first inked the partnership in 2007 so it goes back 12, 13 years. Um, we, we, when we sell ERP, you always end up having to connect to a legacy on prem system, right? Or you may have to connect to new marketplaces to sell and so there's always need for integration. And so from day one, Boomi wanted to really kind of push the envelope work with cloud players. You know, when we started NetSuite 20 years ago, it was kinda crazy to put business applications on the internet and they'd been there from day one with us really on this journey. And so they've been a great partner to sort of help all those customers migrate and move their business to the cloud. >> You guys had success with Boomi on the customer front. >>Can you unpack that a little bit? Because the customer equation around data is interesting. You guys have turned this into an opportunity with nets. We talk about how that works. Yeah, I mean look EV every customer needs to get more insight out of their data. And you know, the ERP system is one of the major hubs in any organization, right? You've got a handful of system of records, right? And core financials is one of the main systems of record and inevitably every customer will have probably 1520 legacy data sources, right? That are going to be necessary for an ERP. And so for us, working with Boomi across not just the U S but across the globe with a lot of different international customers, it's a natural fit because we're not obviously going to be connecting with all of the systems that they're touching today. It brings a lot more value of data into NetSuite, which obviously then helps our customer out. >>So you guys were at, you said an early partner of Boomi back in 2007 when they were founded. We got to speak with Rick Nucci yesterday. So one of the interesting things that we talk about, and John even pointed out yesterday is you know, they took a big bet, Boomi dead way back then with building this architecture that's pretty unique to this day. This single instance, multi-tenant cloud application. Take us back to, because obviously NetSuite's been around longer, you a lot of choice, there are more iPods vendors out there. What is it about the way that Boomi is architected that is enabling your customers to achieve so much success but also really that you buy saw back in Oh seven I think this is something that's going to be a real big opportunity for NetSuite. >>You know, it's, it's, it's been an interesting ride because if you go back even to Oh seven and didn't even maybe eight or nine years ago, it was not a foregone conclusion with a lot of technology vendors that the world was going to shift to the cloud. Yeah, right. There were a lot of server huggers out there. There still are. They still want to hug this, they still want to hug the machine. Right. And so it's important, I think that we work with partners who have the same true North in terms of where we think that the technology is going. And I think that alignment, which is, you know, we're 100% in the cloud, always have been, always will be. Boomi shared that vision early on. So it was easier to make a bet then right, with a vendor who was going to have that commitment. >>And so that's been, to their credit, the vision that they've had for obviously years now. And I think that's what's helped them grow so quickly. And one of the things that you observed obviously is that the customers have choices, but the world software's changing, right? I mean cloud has changed the software development life cycle. I mean just in the past decade alone, the business of change, you still going to have the system of records. Okay. But with containers and Kubernetes and some of these cloud native opportunities, there's more flexibility in how people are deploying legacy and or core apps. Yeah. So they're not getting thrown away as everyone had predicted. So, I mean, there was some funded saying, well, everyone's going to move to the cloud and not really. Yeah, well I look at it, it's a good point because there's no packaged applications. They're not the entirety of the application market as you know. >>Right? Custom application development will never go away. You will always have, you know, things that are custom. People build apps on NetSuite, right? Things that are very close to ERP you'll build on the NetSuite platform. But there are things that are not, you know, native to our platform that need to connect to NetSuite. And there are customers that we share who are, have legacy COBOL applications for example. Right? And they may need to put a wrapper around that and get certain forms into NetSuite. So it really does run the gamut. And so it'll never be one thing, right? We just sort of, in the technology industry, we never go from, you know, 100 to zero in terms of what's deployed in the legacy. We sort of layer in compost technology. And I think that's what's happening. And so, you know, we'll replace certain systems. We go in and we pretty much always replace a an on prem system but there are a lot of on-prem technologies that a will never, never go away. >> I was digging around about Boomi and you guys net suite looking at some of the use cases. One thing that caught my eye was, you know, the growth startup for instance, might be born in the cloud. Yup. Never have an it department. Um, they have kind of a um, hacked together system of record at HR and ERP kind of things, but at some point they've got to grow and they hit a growth spurt and they just become rapid growth. Eventually goes public. You guys have had good success with Boomi in these kinds of startups. It's pretty normal. You've seen this before. Can you talk about that dynamic because at some point people got to start establishing formal, is this the systems applications? You're gonna need payroll, you're gonna need HR. I mean this is blocking and tackling. You guys have been successful there. >> Well, you know, we, we like to think about we can be the first system that you'll ever need and hopefully we'll be the last system that you'll ever need. Right? And what ends up happening is we've architected NetSuite to let you start small and then add more functionality as you grow. So you may start with just basic financials. You may add order management, move into full fledged ERP, maybe you're going to use our HR system down the road. And so we kind of, we kind of stairway a customer through their journey. Boomi does the same thing. Maybe you start with two connectors, right? You're just connecting two basic applications and, and that's sweet. And then you evolve into something more sophisticated, right? Where as you saw today and some of the technology demos where, you know, they're tapping into all sorts of different systems that are not even ERP or CRM, it's, you know, IOT and just all sorts of different insights that they can bring from the different technologies. >>Better together message is legit and this works. Yeah. You know, we look at, technology is all about coopertition these days, right? Is every vendor, right? In some way we overlap, you know, Boomie's owned by Dell, NetSuite's owned by Oracle, right? We're, we're all sort of inner inner locked in one way or another. But ultimately we have to work together because we share so many customers and so customers don't have the patience and nor should they for any of the sort of the, the vendor warfare. And I think that's the cool thing that's evolved with technology standards. It's easy for us to work together and we have to do it and we want to do it because it's what's the right thing for the customer. >>Let's talk about net suite as a launching pad for a lot of tech IPOs in the last few years. Give us your perspectives on what you guys started to recognize as a lot of these tech companies have kind of, that's why it just seems to me like net suite has been this sort of launchpad for that. Talk to us about what you've achieved there. >>Yeah, no, it's, we're, we're really humbled by the fact that more companies go, Poe tech companies go public on NetSuite than frankly you need any other ERP system. Um, you know, we help invent the industry. Early on, 20 years ago, Evan Goldberg and Larry had the famous four minute phone call to, you know, kind of crazily idea to put business apps on the web. Um, and so we've been, you know, at the forefront of this, but it's not just technology. It's, you know, we, we're a subscription business right from day one. Like we didn't sell a license with maintenance. We sold a subscription. So I think a lot of customers look at us and say, okay, they've been through the journey that we have. You know, we went public 12 years ago, you know, we past $1 billion in sales, you know, we got acquired. So the journey that we've been on, most of our customers are going to be on that journey in one form or another. >>We're going to, we've made acquisitions. Our customers make acquisitions, right? So we tried it and this was sort of the genius of what Evan and the team built is a system that can handle any business model. So whether you're selling time as a service, whether you're selling time or you're selling a subscription, you're selling a widget, maybe you're going to sell a widget as a service in the future. We can kind of handle any of the business models and most of the IPS are innovative companies that innovate not just with what they sell, but in how they sell it. >> Show about some stories from the field that you've seen out there. Anecdotally, share some turn situation. What are customers going through right now? Enterprises as they go through their journeys, they realize cloud's there. They got some stuff on premise is going to keep there. >>There's obviously certain reasons you're gonna run payroll in the cloud. You're going to have to have multitenancy is allows it news cases and clouds, not that straightforward. When you start thinking about having an enterprise and the hybrid mode of operations, what are some of the customers feeling? What's a, what's the mindset? What's their architecture look like? What are some of the examples? Can you share? Yeah. You know, I'd say three things come to mind. So first off, it's this business model innovation, right? The, the on prem systems tend to lock you into a model, right? And there's nothing, and when they were built, they were innovative 1520, 30 years ago. Most companies, business models have outgrown that legacy system. So they need to move off that to enable some new thing that they want to do. So that's a big driver. I think the other thing is, is globalization is here to stay. >>Um, you know, whether you're in the United States or you're in the UK or you're in Asia, right? We're one interconnected global economy. And so you may, you know, source from Asia, you may design in California, you may do nearshore assembly in Mexico and then you do omni-channel distribution. So you have to be global. And I would say the thing that's changed in the last 10 years is companies are being global from day one. It's not just something you add on five, seven, eight years down the road. You see companies designed for being global. And that I think those two things, business model, innovation global are our big catalyst right now. I mean we had, Oh one more thing real quick. So we have a Cuba alumni set on the cube data's the new software. Yeah. So if you've got a global business, data's critical as the data needs to be acted upon, you've got policy, you got regulations, regulatory issues, personal privacy stuff, company policy. >>As you have this global layer of data, making it available, addressable across multiple systems is a huge task. What's your view on that? Well it's, it's, it's an interesting question cause we think of it and kind of three pillars. It's we give you visibility, we give you control and then we give you the agility, right? So you've got to, first off, you've got to have visibility into the data, right? You need to know what's happening. Like how much did we sell in the Australian subsidiary yesterday, right? You need to have controls. If your CFO, you need to have global financial controls. You may have sold a lot in Australia. You've got to make sure you're spending too much. Right? How do you manage that? And then ultimately the agility is how do you make a decision on that? Right. And so that's those three things I think all play into it. >>And how does the consumerization effect impact it? Visibility, control, agility. Because as consumers we have this expectation whether you know in our personal lives we can get anything that we want within a couple of clicks. So when you're talking to a tech, whether it's a young tech company or even not a tech company like candy.com which is seems like a mixture. You and I were talking before of a number of different industries, all, all in one. How does, has NetSuite evolved to enable that consumer to go from their personal life to being able to interact with ERP next, struck the value from it in the ways that they want? Anywhere, anytime. >>Let's, let's be honest, for a second, ERP kinda got a dirty reputation. You know, in the nineties nobody loved their ERP implementations. Books had been written on this, right? ERP was like, it was like going like a bad trip to the dentist office in the 90s and that was sort of the catalyst for our company. But that's not enough just to be in the cloud. It's you have to make your user experience consumer grade, right? We always talk about enterprise grade. It's all the, reliability, scalability, all that kind of stuff. That's sort of a given, like you have to do that, but I think you have to, you have to adopt the consumer grade. So we spent a lot of time and we're doing a lot more and we're going to be rolling out some new stuff around user interface and just how easy is it to have a dashboard on your phone so that you can run your business from your smartphone versus actually having to be tethered to the desktop because we're all mobile, we're all traveling. You're a business owner, you're a CFO, you're CEO. You need to be connected. Maybe you're too connected. Maybe that's part, maybe we have screen-time problems. We do business. If we, if we can give our customers Screentime addiction to watch their business in real time, I guess that's a good thing. Right? And so we want to be able to make sure that they can have all that insight at their fingertips, whether they're in the office or at the beach. >>And speaking of insight, talk to us about brain yard. What that is, why you developed it and what it's enabling. >>Yeah. Thank you. That's like my, I was hoping you were gonna ask me. It's my secret, but not so secret anymore. Pet project. So one of the things being in the cloud, we have 18,000 customers, right? We have a single instance of NetSuite and so we've had the unique seat at the table to see all of these different companies grow in all these different industries. We evolved into selling by industry. So we have a retail version of software version of manufacturing, nonprofit, 1213 different industries. What we had in that is we had all these insights by industry. What is the right DSO number for a software company, right? What is the thing that a nonprofit needs to look at? And so we had trapped inside of NetSuite, all these brains sitting in all this information and PowerPoint and word docs and just everywhere. And so we decided to crack the hood open and literally open source that information and put it on the website. >>And so there's a subtle message here is that we have to do more than just sell bits. We, we're ultimately selling customer success or a business outcome, whatever you want to call it. So we need to transfer that knowledge to our customers so they can run their business better. So it's our investment back into the customer saying, Hey, you know what, if you're a software company and your DSO is at this level, you know, best in class is actually, you know, five days lower on a day sale, outstanding. How do you get your business to close that gap? And that's where we can really add value comms. People love comparables and best practices. You're essentially taking that heavy lifting work. It's giving it up there. It's benchmarking, it's analysis. You know, I was a former wall street analyst, so this one's near and dear to my heart, which is comparison, you know, how is this company doing versus that company? >>And so we have lots of data, um, that we've gleaned over the years. Lots of insights. So we kind of know what those best practices are. This is just the first phase of what we're doing. We're working with a lot of partners across the industry to give us some of their industry data so we kind of mash it up and come up with the insights. So it wasn't as an analyst, I'd love to get your thoughts real quick and take the, take the net suite hat off, put your industry participants hat on. Lot of wall street challenges around we worked, pulled their IPO, their GP gross profit was down. Other SAS businesses have huge margins. Their successful zooms public. There's a new formula developing in this cloud 2.0 world software world where the dynamic between classic software and software economics in the cloud are changing. What's your thoughts on this? >>If a startups out there and growing companies that are really looking to crack the code by at all costs and then monetize, get the margins that would, what's your, what's your analysis? No, it's, I, this is an area that I think a lot of companies raise too much, too much capital. Right? And they, we've been in this very unique environment over the last kind of eight or nine years where I'd argue a lot of startups who've been overfunded and when you have overfunding you chase growth at really no, you know, at without any limit on terms of the cost and what you see as you sort of distort the reality of what's happening in the business. And so I would argue that we've had, you know, zero in basically free money in terms of access to capital and we've lost track of some of the basics that you need to build a profitable, sustainable business. >>So, you know, when I was working on wall street, you couldn't go public, you know, if you were within say four quarters of cashflow break even, right? Those are some of the things that we used to have. But you've seen, you know, business fundamentals. Yeah, I need, and so what's happening right now? It's just a little bit of her. I think it's mean reversion. Honestly. I think you're seeing, you know, the public markets, you know, if you will veto some of the frothiness that's been in the private markets. And so this is, I think companies, some marketplaces do. That's what they, that's there. It's fantastic. It's a self correcting mechanism, right? I mean it's, you know, just cause you marked up your last round when you were private to a good Jillian dollars doesn't mean that the buy side on, you know, the pension fund is going to want to pay that and we work so you can't be high and run a business. You know, as we were saying, you know, trying, you know, God bless them, they're trying, but it's probably not the best practice I would not have. I would not recommend that. It's not a good look for wall street. How a good luck, you know, you can get on the Joe Rogan show there, knock yourself out. If you're a Ilan, you can do it. But you know, he's the, he's the only one we're going to let, don't know. >>Probably shouldn't be publicly. Air's too much unless you want something to laugh at and you know what, in this economy, I think we all need that. Jason, thank you for sharing with us what you're doing at NetSuite with Boomi, the insights that you guys are opening up with brain yard. So from brain yard, let's go back to the other yard that I promised. The baseball yard, your Dodger fan giants fan. Hats off. You guys are there. We are not. So I will say good luck to your team. We appreciate your time and what can I say, Bri? I'll give it to ya. All right, well it's been a pleasure talking to you and thank you for your time. Thanks for John furrier. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cube from booby world 19 thanks for watching.

[Music] Andre one of the things that have come up is your relation with Russia as we talked about so I have to ask you a direct question do you to work with sanctioned Russian entities or Russian companies shown we and c5 we do not work with any company that's sanctioned from any country including Russia and the same applies to me we take sanctions very very seriously the one thing you don't mess with is US sanctions which has application worldwide and so you always have to stay absolutely on the right side of the law when it comes to sanctions so nothing nothing that's something that's connection nets are trying to make they're also the other connection is a guy named Victor Vail Selberg Viktor Vekselberg Vekselberg to go with the Russian names as people know what is your relationship with Viktor Vekselberg so victim Viktor Vekselberg is a is a very well known Russian businessman he's perhaps one of the best known Russian businessman in the West because he also lived in the US for a period of time it's a very well-known personality in in in Europe he's a donor for example to the Clinton Foundation and he has aggregated the largest collection of Faberge eggs in the world as part of national Russian treasure so he's a very well known business personality and of course during the course of my career which has focused heavily on also doing investigations on Russian related issues I have come across Viktor Vekselberg and I've had the opportunity to meet with him and so I know him as a as a business leader but c5 has no relationship with Viktor Vekselberg and we've never accepted any investment from him we've never asked him for an investment and our firm a venture capital firm has no ties to Viktor Vekselberg so you've worked had a relationship at some point in your career but no I wouldn't on a daily basis you don't have a deep relationship can you explain how deep that relationship is what were the interactions you had with him so clarify that point so so I know Viktor Vekselberg and I've met him on more than one occasion in different settings and as I shared with you I served on the board of a South African mining company which is black owned for a period of a year and which Renova had a minority investment alongside an Australian company called South 32 and that's the extent of the contact and exposure I've had to so casual business run-ins and interactions not like again that's correct deep joint ventures are very kind of okay let's get back to c5 for a minute cause I want to ask you it but just do just a circle just one last issue and Viktor Vekselberg Viktor Vekselberg is the chairman of scope over the Russian technology innovation park that we discussed and he became the chairman under the presidency of President Dmitry Medvedev during the time when Hillary Clinton was doing a reset on Russian relations and during that time so vekselberg have built up very effective relationships with all of the or many of the leading big US technology companies and today you can find the roster of those partners the list of those partners on the scope of our website and those nuclear drove that yes Victor drove that Victor drove that during during in the Clinton Secretary of this started the scope of our project started during the the Medvedev presidency and in the period 2010-2011 you'll find many photographs of mr. vekselberg signing partnership agreements with very well known technology companies for Skolkovo and most of those companies still in one way or another remain involved in the Skolkovo project this has been the feature the article so there are I think and I've read all the other places where they wanted to make this decision Valley of Russia correct there's a lot of Russian programmers who work for American companies I know a few of them that do so there's technology they get great programmers in Russia but certainly they have technology so oracles they're ibm's they're cisco say we talked about earlier there is US presence there are you do you have a presence there and does Amazon Web service have a presence on do you see five it and that's knowing I was alright it's well it's a warning in the wrong oh sorry about that what's the Skog Obama's called spoke over so Andres Kokomo's this has been well report it's the Silicon Valley of Russia and so a lot of American companies they're IBM Oracle Cisco you mentioned earlier I can imagine it makes sense they a lot of recruiting little labs going on we see people hire Russian engineers all the time you know c5 have a presence there and does AWS have a presence there and do you work together in a TBS in that area explain that relationship certainly c5 Amazon individually or you can't speak for Amazon but let's see if I've have there and do you work with Amazon in any way there c-5m there's no work in Russia and neither does any of our portfolio companies c5 has no relationship with the Skolkovo Technology Park and as I said the parties for this spoke of a Technology Park is a matter of record is only website anyone can take a look at it and our name is not amongst those partners and I think this was this is an issue which I which I fault the BBC report on because if the BBC report was fair and accurate they would have disclosed the fact that there's a long list of partners with a scope of our project very well known companies many of them competitors in the Jedi process but that was not the case the BBC programme in a very misleading and deceptive way created the impression that for some reason somehow c5 was involved in Skolkovo without disclosing the fact that many other companies are involved they and of course we are not involved and your only relationship with Declan Berg Viktor Vekselberg was through the c5 raiser bid three c5 no no Viktor Vekselberg was never involved in c5 raiser Petco we had Vladimir Kuznetsov as a man not as a minority investor day and when we diligence him one of our key findings was that he was acting in independent capacity and he was investing his own money as a you national aniseh Swiss resident so you if you've had no business dealings with Viktor Vekselberg other than casual working c-5 has had no business dealings with with Viktor Vekselberg in a in a personal capacity earlier before the onset of sanctions I served on the board of a black-owned South African mining company and which Renault bombs the Vekselberg company as a minority investment alongside an Australian company called South 32 and my motivation for doing so was to support African entrepreneurship because this was one of the first black owned mining companies in the country was established with a British investment in which I was involved in and I was very supportive of the work that this company does to develop manganese mining in the Kalahari Desert and your role there was advisory formal what was the role there it was an advisory role so no ownership no ownership no equity no engagement you call them to help out on a project I was asked to support the company at the crucial time when they had a dispute on royalties when they were looking at the future of the Kalahari basin and the future of the manganese reserve say and also to help the company through a transition of the black leadership the black executive leadership of the cut year is that roughly 2017 so recently okay let on the ownership of c5 can you explain who owns c5 I mean you're described as the owner if it's a venture capital firm you probably of investors so your managing director you probably have some carry of some sort and then talk about the relationship between c5 razor bidco the Russian special purpose vehicle that was created is that owning what does it fit is it a subordinate role so see my capital so Jones to start with c5 razor boot code was was never a Russian special purpose vehicle this was a British special purpose vehicle which we established for our own investment into a European enterprise software company vladimir kuznetsov later invested as an angel investor into the same company and we required him to do it through our structure because it was transparent and subject to FCA regulation there's no ties back to c5 he's been not an owner in any way of c5 no not on c5 so C fibers owned by five families who helped to establish the business and grow the business and partner in the business these are blue chip very well known European and American families it's a small transatlantic community or family investors who believe that it's important to use private capital for the greater good right history dealing with Russians can you talk about your career you mentioned your career in South Africa earlier talk about your career deal in Russia when did you start working with Russian people I was the international stage Russian Russia's that time in 90s and 2000 and now certainly has changed a lot let's talk about your history and deal with the Russians so percent of the Soviet Union I think there was a significant window for Western investment into Russia and Western investment during this time also grew very significantly during my career as an investigator I often dealt with Russian organized crime cases and in fact I established my consulting business with a former head of the Central European division of the CIA who was an expert on Russia and probably one of the world's leading experts on Russia so to get his name William Lofgren so during the course of of building this business we helped many Western investors with problems and issues related to their investments in Russia so you were working for the West I was waiting for the West so you are the good side and but when you were absolutely and when and when you do work of this kind of course you get to know a lot of people in Russia and you make Russian contacts and like in any other country as as Alexander Solzhenitsyn the great Russian dissident wrote the line that separates good and evil doesn't run between countries it runs through the hearts of people and so in this context there are there are people in Russia who crossed my path and across my professional career who were good people who were working in a constructive way for Russia's freedom and for Russia's independence and that I continue to hold in high regard and you find there's no technical security risk the United States of America with your relationship with c5 and Russia well my my investigative work that related to Russia cases are all in the past this was all done in the past as you said I was acting in the interest of Western corporations and Western governments in their relations with Russia that's documented and you'd be prepared to be transparent about that absolutely that's all those many of those cases are well documented to corporations for which my consulting firm acted are very well known very well known businesses and it's pretty much all on the on the Podesta gaiting corruption we were we were we were helping Western corporations invest into Russia in a way that that that meant that they did not get in meshed in corruption that meant they didn't get blackmailed by Russia organized crime groups which meant that their investments were sustainable and compliant with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other bribery regulation at war for everyone who I know that lives in Europe that's my age said when the EU was established there's a flight of Eastern Europeans and Russians into Western Europe and they don't have the same business practices so I'd imagine you'd run into some pretty seedy scenarios in this course of business well in drug-dealing under I mean a lot of underground stuff was going on they're different they're different government they're different economy I mean it wasn't like a structure so you probably were exposed to a lot many many post-conflict countries suffer from predatory predatory organized crime groups and I think what changed and of course of my invested investigative career was that many of these groups became digital and a lot of organized crime that was purely based in the physical world went into the into the digital world which was one of the other major reasons which led me to focus on cyber security and to invest in cyber security well gets that in a minute well that's great I may only imagine some of the things you're investigated it's easy to connect people with things when yeah things are orbiting around them so appreciate the candid response there I wanna move on to the other area I see in the stories national security risk conflict of interest in some of the stories you seeing this well is there conflict of interest this is an IT playbook I've seen over the years federal deals well you're gonna create some Fahd fear uncertainty and doubt there's always kind of accusations you know there's accusations around well are they self dealing and you know these companies or I've seen this before so I gotta ask you they're involved with you bought a company called s DB advisors it was one of the transactions that they're in I see connecting to in my research with the DoD Sally Donnelly who is Sally Donnelly why did you buy her business so I didn't buy Sonny Donnelly's business again so Sally Tony let's start with Sally darling so Sally Donny was introduced to me by Apple Mike Mullen as a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Sally served as his special advisor when he was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Apple Mullen was one of the first operating parties which we had in c5 and he continues to serve Admiral Mullen the four start yes sir okay and he continues to serve as one of operating partners to this day salad only and that will Mike worked very closely with the Duke of Westminster on one of his charitable projects which we supported and which is close to my heart which is established a new veteran rehabilitation center for Britain upgrading our facility which dates back to the Second World War which is called Headley court to a brand-new state-of-the-art facility which was a half a billion dollar public-private partnership which Duke led and in this context that Ron Mullen and Sally helped the Duke and it's team to meet some of the best experts in the US on veteran rehabilitation on veteran care and on providing for veterans at the end of the service and this was a this was a great service which it did to the to this new center which is called the defense and national rehabilitation center which opened up last summer in Britain and is a terrific asset not only for Britain but also for allies and and so the acquisition she went on to work with secretary Manus in the Department of Defense yes in February Feb 9 you through the transaction yes in February 2017 Sally decided to do public service and support of safety matters when he joined the current administration when she left her firm she sold it free and clear to a group of local Washington entrepreneurs and she had to do that very quickly because the appointment of secretary mattis wasn't expected he wasn't involved in any political campaigns he was called back to come and serve his country in the nation's interest very unexpectedly and Sally and a colleague of us Tony de Martino because of their loyalty to him and the law did to the mission followed him into public service and my understanding is it's an EAJA to sell a business in a matter of a day or two to be able to be free and clear of title and to have no compliance issues while she was in government her consulting business didn't do any work for the government it was really focused on advising corporations on working with the government and on defense and national security issues I didn't buy Sonny's business one of c-5 portfolio companies a year later acquired SPD advisors from the owner supported with a view to establishing and expanding one of our cyber advising businesses into the US market and this is part of a broader bind bolt project which is called Haven ITC secure and this was just one of several acquisitions that this platform made so just for the record c5 didn't buy her company she repeat relieved herself of any kind of conflict of interest going into the public service your portfolio company acquired the company in short order because they knew the synergies because it would be were close to it so I know it's arm's length but as a venture capitalist you have no real influence other than having an investment or board seat on these companies right so they act independent in your structure absolutely make sure I get that's exactly right John but but not much more importantly only had no influence over the Jedi contract she acted as secretary mitosis chief of staff for a period of a year and have functions as described by the Government Accounting Office was really of a ministerial nature so she was much more focused on the Secretary's diary than she was focused on any contracting issues as you know government contracting is very complex it's very technical sally has as many wonderful talents and attributes but she's never claimed to be a cloud computing expert and of equal importance was when sally joined the government in february 17 jeddah wasn't even on the radar it wasn't even conceived as a possibility why did yet I cannot just for just for the record the Jedi contract my understanding is that and I'm not an expert on one government contracting but my understanding is that the RFP the request for proposals for the July contract came out in quarter three of this year for the first time earlier this year there was a publication of an intention to put out an RFP I think that happened in at the end of quarter one five yep classic yeah and then the RFP came out and called a three bits had to go in in November and I understand a decision will be made sometime next year what's your relationship well where's she now what she still was so sunny left finished the public service and and I think February March of this year and she's since gone on to do a fellowship with a think-tank she's also reestablished her own business in her own right and although we remain to be good friends I'm in no way involved in a business or a business deal I have a lot of friends in DC I'm not a really policy wonk of any kind we have a lot of friends who are it's it's common when it administrations turnover people you know or either appointed or parked a work force they leave and they go could they go to consultancy until the next yeah until the next and frustration comes along yeah and that's pretty common that's pretty cool this is what goes on yeah and I think this whole issue of potential conflicts of interest that salad only or Tony the Martino might have had has been addressed by the Government Accounting Office in its ruling which is on the public record where the GAO very clearly state that neither of these two individuals were anywhere near the team that was writing the terms for the general contract and that their functions were really as described by the GAO as ministerial so XI salient Antonia was such a long way away from this contact there's just no way that they could have influenced it in in in any respect and their relation to c5 is advisory do they and do they both are they have relations with you now what's the current relationship since since Sally and Tony went to do public service we've had no contact with them we have no reason of course to have contact with them in any way they were doing public service they were serving the country and serving the nation and since they've come out of public service we've we've not reestablished any commercial relationship so we talked earlier about the relation with AWS there's only if have a field support two incubators its accelerator does c5 have any portfolio companies that are actually bidding or working on the Jedi contract none what Santa John not zero zero so outside of c5 having relation with Amazon and no portfolios working with a Jedi contract there's no link to c5 other than a portfolio company buying Sally Donnelly who's kind of connected to general mattis up here yeah Selleck has six degrees of separation yes I think this is a constant theme in this conspiracy theory Jonas is six degrees of separation it's it's taking relationships that that that developed in a small community in Washington and trying to draw nefarious and sinister conclusions from them instead of focusing on competing on performance competing on innovation and competing on price and perhaps that's not taking place because the companies that are trying to do this do not have the capability to do so Andre I really appreciate you coming on and answering these tough questions I want to talk about what's going on with c5 now but I got to say you know I want to ask you one more time because I think this is critical you've worked for big-time company Kroll with terminus international market very crazy time time transformation wise you've worked with the CIA in Quantico the FBI nuclei in Quantico on a collaboration you were to know you've done work for the good guys you have see if I've got multiple years operating why why are you being put as a bad guy here I mean you're gonna you know being you being put out there with if you search your name on Google it says you're a spy all these evil all these things are connecting and we're kind of digging through them they kind of don't Joan I've had the privilege of a tremendous career I've had the privilege of working with with great leaders and having had great mentors if you do anything of significance if you do anything that's helping to make a difference or to make a change you should first expect scrutiny but also expect criticism when that scrutiny and criticism are fact-based that's helpful and that's good for society and for the health of society when on the other hand it is fake news or it is the construct of elaborate conspiracy theories that's not good for the health of society it's not good for the national interest is not good for for doing good business you've been very after you're doing business for the for the credibility people questioning your credibility what do you want to tell people that are watching this about your credibility that's in question again with this stuff you've done and you're continuing to do what's the one share something to the folks that might mean something to them you can sway them or you want to say something directly what would you say the measure of a person it is his or her conduct in c-five we are continuing to build our business we continue to invest in great companies we continue to put cravat private capital to work to help drive innovation including in the US market we will continue to surround ourselves with good people and we will continue to set the highest standards for the way in which we invest and build our businesses it's common I guess I would say that I'm getting out as deep as you are in the in term over the years with looking at these patterns but the pattern that I see is very simple when bad guys get found out they leave the jurisdiction they flee they go do something else and they reinvent themselves and scam someone else you've been doing this for many many years got a great back record c5 now is still doing business continuing not skipping a beat the story comes out hopefully kind of derail this or something else will think we're gonna dig into it so than angle for sure but you still have investments you're deploying globally talk about what c5 is doing today tomorrow next few months the next year you have deals going down you're still doing business you have business out there our business has not slowed down for a moment we have the support of tremendous investors we have the support of tremendous partners in our portfolio companies we have the support of a great group of operating partners and most important of all we have a highly dedicated highly focused group of investment teams of very experienced and skilled professionals who are making profitable investments and so we are continuing to build our business we have a very full deal pipeline we will be completing more investment transactions next week and we are continue to scalar assets under management next year we will have half a billion dollars of assets under management and we continue to focus on our mission which is to use private capital to help innovate and drive a change for good after again thank you we have the story in the BBC kicked all this off the 12th no one's else picked it up I think other journals have you mentioned earlier you think this there's actually people putting this out you you call out let's got John wheeler we're going to look into him do you think there's an organized campaign right now organized to go after you go after Amazon are you just collateral damage you mentioned that earlier is there a funded effort here well Bloomberg has reported on the fact that that one of the competitors for this bit of trying to bring together a group of companies behind a concerted effort specifically to block Amazon Web Services and so we hear these reports we see this press speculation if that was the case of course that would not be good for a fair and open and competitive bidding process which is I think is the Department of Defense's intention and what is in the interests of the country at a time when national security innovation will determine not only the fate of future Wars but also the fate of a sons and daughters who are war fighters and to be fair to process having something undermine it like a paid-for dossier which I have multiple sources confirming that's happened it's kind of infiltrating the journalists and so that's kind of where I'm looking at right now is that okay the BBC story just didn't feel right to me credible outlet you work for them you did investigations for them back in the day have you talked to them yes no we are we are we are in correspondence with the BBC I think in particular we want them to address the fact that they've conflated facts in this story playing this parlor game of six degrees of separation we want them to address the important principle of the independence of the in editorial integrity at the fact that they did not disclose that they expert on this program actually has significant conflicts of interests of his own and finally we want them to disclose the fact that it's not c5 and Amazon Web Services who have had a relationship with the scope of our technology park the scope of our technology park actually has a very broad set of Western partners still highly engaged there and even in recent weeks of hosted major cloud contracts and conferences there and and all of this should have been part of the story in on the record well we're certainly going to dig into it I appreciate your answer the tough questions we're gonna certainly look into this dossier if this is true this is bad and if there's people behind it acting behind it then certainly we're gonna report on that and I know these were tough questions thanks for taking the time Andre to to answer them with us Joan thanks for doing a deep dive on us okay this is the Q exclusive conversation here in Palo Alto authority narc who's the founder of c-5 capital venture capital firm in the center of a controversy around this BBC story which we're going to dig into more this has been exclusive conversation I'm John Tory thanks for watching [Music] you