>> Announcer: From CUBE studios in Palo Alto, in Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hello everybody and welcome to this CUBE conversation, you know in our last breaking analysis we worked with ETR and they put out a new forecast on IT spending for 2020. The consensus coming into 2020 was for 4% increase, based on the survey work they've done with CIO's it's now down to 0%. Surprisingly about 40% of the the CIO's and IT practitioners that they interviewed said they expected no change in IT budget for 2020. A surprising 21% say they actually expect to increase spending as a result of work from home infrastructure. Still a very large portion of the survey sample said they're going to decrease spending and that's why they're now calling, ETR's calling for a flat spending in 2020. Clearly one of the challenges or those companies that are exposed to supply chain disruptions, whether it's manufacturing or retail or certain CPG or industrial. And with me today to talk about specifically supply chain within the storage market and within pure storage is Mike Fitzgerald, who's the VP of Operations at Pure. Mike thanks so much for coming on and talking about this important topic. No thank you Dave. Good to see you and good afternoon and good morning. >> So take us through what your seeing, well first of all what's your roll? VP of operations, your in charge of supply chain is that correct? >> Yeah, I have all of the supply chain, all of the manufacturing logistics, distribution network at PURE. >> So what's going on with, what are you seeing in the industry, talking to your colleagues. I'm sure that your discussing this with your peers. Give us the high level and the macro and then we'll get into what's going on with PURE specifically. >> Well certainly they're you know within early January we started to hear whispers out of the parties that there were going to be some potential implications with the supply chain. So at that point in time we did a lot of actions and activated at PURE to try to stay ahead of that with speed being gone of the key things that we wanted to make sure we we're focusing on. But the industry as a whole, there was a lot of focus over the last several months in how do we make sure that not only do we understand what our risk is in the Far East/China but how do we mitigate that risk? And then as we transpired and things have gotten to where we are now, the risk has become more of a global risk in terms of a supply chain management role. >> So is it really was it the exposure to China? Was it really NAND supply? Because that's been sort of zigging and zagging for the last you know several periods. Can you give us a little more color on really what you were paying attention to in terms of some of those hotspots? >> Yeah well one of the things we tried to do early on is the design of our supply chain at PURE, we've tried to diversify that. We've got a portfolio-based foot print across the globe. Early on we took a lot of steps to minimize the amount of reliance on China. A lot of that was driven by tariff implications but certainly it's become our friend as we've gotten into the situation with the COVID. So lot of actions and activity in that space to make sure that we've got a responsive supply chain in place from a global perspective. On the NAND there's a lot of discussion , lot of actions and activities in relationship to NAND, certainly with the rising price, the market demands, whats going on with the supply versus demand ratios , but one of the things that we have a huge advantage of at PURE is that we build our own SSDs. So NAND is a component is what we're buying which is not directly related to what I'll call China shortages. A lot of the NAND that's not built in China that we consume and put into our SSDs. >> So are you saying PURE's not having any kind of supply chain disruption or your managing that? What are you doing there specifically and how much of that is just sort of reduced demand versus so your approach, the supply chain? Can you address that? >> Yeah we are not seeing a reduced demand right now. One thing, kind of an overarching statement is we have plenty of supply available right now. We are, our portfolio is at standard lead time and so we've got product in place as a matter of fact we've seen an uptick in some of the demand streams, specifically in VDI, as well as PURE as-a-Service in less human element. The VDI certainly for the work-from-home type of scenarios. We're actually seeing what I would call a more of an increase in demand with shorter lead times bribing us to put product onsite in emergency situations. >> That's interesting because a lot of suppliers that I've talked to have said look we are going to manage this by communicating increased lead time to our customers. Your saying PURE is actually seeing the opposite. You've got good supply and your seeing strong demand and your able to meet either on time or even at an accelerated pace? Did I get that right? >> Yeah absolutely Dave, actually over the last three days, the weekend, we've had three separate installs in the locations on an emergency basis where we've responded in less than 24 hours and gotten product onsite, installed and saved the customers from running into situations where their work from home staff was not able to come up. >> You know Mike, you've obviously got a lot of experience in this space, operations and supply chain, you've done this for awhile. PURE as a company does a lot of things differently, I've been following them since the early days of PURE but I have to be honest I've never really dug into PURE's supply chain you know approach in any differentiation you have there. How would you compare PURE's approach to others that you've seen in the industry's maybe historically or what your seeing today. What are you guys doing that's different? >> We've designed our supply chain to be a responsive supply chain. With the recognition we're growing roughly 20% year-over-year. We're leaning into the supply chain to be able to not only be enable that growth but be able to enable surge. So some of the things that we do in designing the responsive supply chain, we talked earlier about making sure we have the right manufacturing footprint and that we've got the right risk mitigation so that we can have that portfolio coach related to diversity in this footprint but we've actually staged material in the supply chain intentionally to enable us to be able to surge in response to demand increases. We've done the same with capacity. So we've actually leaned into our network and increased capacity to be able to absorb surges in demand which is certainly paying off for us now in this situation where early on in January we started seeing the signs that we we're going to have some demand constraints. So we went out and placed buys, we went long is probably the best way to put it and try to make sure that we were stocking up accordingly. So that if indeed there was a constraint that happened or constrained environment that we had product available and that's what's paying off for us right now. >> Mike is that a brute force decision making process? In other words is it more gut feel from your tribal knowledge and experience at this? Are you using analytics in anyway to inform sort of where to turn those knobs? >> Well it's a little of both Dave, some of it is I've been in this game for awhile, I've seen these before. So we knew early on that it was time to pull the trigger. So we did. One of the advantages we've got at PURE is that we're a small team, we're a nimble team, decisions can be made today and implemented this afternoon and that is basically the way that we did it. We got the right stakeholders together we made some conscious decisions on what we were going to do to try to mitigate the risk going forward. Pulled the trigger and now we have supply available and we continue to ship. >> I wonder if we could talk a little bit about, I'll come back to that, VDI. As I said at the top of this we saw from the ETR survey data that work from home was one of the few areas that was really you know picking up. And it wasn't just video conferencing it was VPN, it was networking bandwidth, it was security infrastructure to support that work from home capability etcetera. And obviously VDI is part of that. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about that, not only in terms of what your seeing for your customers but what is PURE doing just in terms of you know, remote support and other things. Where are you focused there? >> Two things, I'll talk about the VDI solution. We've got solutions certainly that we're offering into the marketplace, we've had as I said a significant uptick in demand and I think many would say that storage is the backbone of an effective VDI solution, that's what we do for a living. We've also got several different solutions that we're implementing or having customers implement and simplify. The implementation of the VDI. And one of our key things is we're simple, we're easy, we can put things in place quickly. As I said we're loading data centers in hours versus days. The other question Dave about the support and I'll view that in two different areas. One the implementation of existing product, or the support related to that. Our support network is 100% up and running right now, we have componentry, we've actually forward stock incremental a componentry into the depots to make sure that we're able to support our key customers. One of the motto's that we've got is "We're an essential business that is in the business of supporting other essential businesses." Critical infrastructure, focusing on that to make sure that if for some reason we lose a logistics channel in the country that we've got components there so that the support infrastructure stays in place so we're able to keep our customers up and running. >> So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about some of the assumptions that your making. We have a saying sometimes hope for the best plan for the worst. In your business that's probably apropos. What are some of the assumptions your making just in terms of you know planning for the worst. >> We're doing, early on it was all about making sure that you could get blind side on supply and making sure that we've got capacity available. We did a lot of work on making sure that our alternate site across the globes were able to absorb what we couldn't get out of our China suppliers for the time being when we got the constraints there. But at the same time we are now recognizing as the COVID expands, the COVID, excuse me the incident that we're in now, that there may be some demand delay or demand destruction in the future. So what is our risk profile in relation to that? So that's something we're doing as well but right now we're more focused on what's it going to take to make sure we've got supply available to customers that need supplying now? >> So what are the, I mean I'm sure you've got a lot of KPI's but if you had to really focus in on the top ones, the two or three that your really focused on you know you look at every morning when you wake up. Where's your focus in terms of KPI's? >> Right now its, we're in a different environment than we were in let's say three months ago. And right now it's product availability. And that's in responsiveness to customer needs. In a normal environment I'd say its cost, quality and delivery, that's a typical supply chain mantra. The three legs of the stool. But right now certainly we're not minimizing the of having to have excellent quality but what we're really focused on now is making sure we are providing product into critical infrastructure, essential customer sites, so it's all about availability. I'd say the majority of my day is focusing on what do we need to do to make sure we got product available for the market place. >> Well Mike, we're seeing you know the people around the world, not only in United States but globally respond to this crisis we're all doing our own part. Clearly your, I assume before you we're waking up that assumes you we're sleeping but I know your not getting much sleep but I want to thank you for coming on and sharing with is some of the things that are going on with PURE. You know keep up the great work, your customers need this, I mean storage is part of critical infrastructure and really appreciate all the effort. Thanks to you and all the team at PURE. >> Well thank you Dave, I appreciate it, have a great day. >> You too, it's great to have you. Thank you everybody for watching. We'll keep broadcasting here daily from the CUBE studios, this is Dave Vellante. This CUBE conversation we'll see ya. (bouncy music)

>> live from Miami Beach, Florida It's the que covering demon 2019. Brought to you, by the way. >> Welcome back to Miami. Everybody watching the Cube, The leader in live tech coverage. This is Day two of the mon 2019 3 cubes. Third year at V mon, We did New Orleans. We did Chicago last year. Course here at the Fountain Blue in Miami. Great venue for an event like this. I'm Dave a lot. It was my co host, Peter Burroughs. Abba Dabbas. Eye is Adi is here. He's the head of a Charles Russell speech. Liza London based law firm. How about great. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Thankyou. So you tell us about this judge. Interesting name. Charles Russell. Speech lease. It was a merger of two firms, Right. Tell us how it all came about. >> Back in 2,014 Charles, loss of species performed for a merger between two different companies. Charles docile and speaks Lee Burcham from a 90 perspective. That was very interesting for the two departments coming together s So we have a limited time period where we had to merge these two companies Two different systems different data centers, different data sets. So it was formed by emerging back in 2,014 for five years on way here today >> that we see this a lot, you know, Emanate goes down. The acquiring company of this sounds like it was a merger. You know, they sort of battle. Okay, who's going toe? Really? Which framework is going to win? Because I'm sure had that conversation. But so to take us through that merger, what it entailed what? What the scenario looked like and how you plan for it. Sure. >> So I was part of the Charles. Also legacy Charles Russell team on, then obviously speaks about. Some had their own team as well. So initially, when we first found out about the merger, it was essential for the two teams to get together to work out. Okay, What systems? You have free mail. What systems you have for document management system playing trump cards. Which is who's got the best system and which way do we wantto move forward? A little. >> Ah, >> so but being a law firm, most law firms around the world and in the UK especially used the same types of software so essentially that from that perspective it was It was it was quite simple. But then way had to work out. How do we How do we go forward with this? Because two different headquarters in the London area. Which office do we move into? Sort of logistics around that. Can we fit in pre merger? It was six. Charles Lawson had sickle. Roughly 600 people, especially birds, had roughly 500 people. So pretty comparable. Yeah, yeah. So working out space logistics was was an issues >> making that even even more complicated, right? Yeah. >> One of the things that's interesting about a law firm, like versus a traditional manufacturer or AW financial services firm that has a lot of very fast right writing systems and have to scale on those lines is a law firms feature very complex dogs, very complex in from out of files, a lot of files that are written. But at the same time, you have to be repurposed to a lot of different work flows very sensitive to external contingent regulatory change. And so you have all of that happening, especially, I mean, two years ago from now on MySpace steak, and it was you're getting into brexit stuff, too, so that also had to be a source of uncertainty. So how has it been combining external regulatory issues the way that technology is being used in law firms and some of the new work clothes that you guys trying to support? And then adding, On top of that, the complexity of bringing these two firm GPR >> GPO itself was It was a year old project for us on. Obviously, we've got offices. The Middle East, but obviously is in the Far East on DH in Central Europe has well, so data logistics or where it sits, is an issue for us as well. So GDP, ours being a big project for us in terms of the merger itself. It was it was very, very difficult for the two I T departments to come together on actually work out. How how do we go to one unified systems? Essentially one doctor man, just in one email system. All of that took a lot of plan in law project management on essentially within the legal press itself. We got doubted in the time frames that we had that we can achieve it on within. I think It was 18 month period. We had merged order, different systems and various offices because speech the Bertram and Time is what I had. Offices in Zurich and Geneva were to merge with different offices together as well. So it was. It was a big, big task for the i T department on the firm itself. >> They're very tight migration deadlines. And and as you started to approach those deadlines you had to worry about, Okay, When we're going to cut over, how do we avoid downtime? How do we make sure that we don't? You know, I have bad data, data, corruption and the like. So how did you plan for that? And how did it go? >> So wait, we're here. C'mon on DH. Veen was It was it was a big part of our migration process. So where we had two different parts of the business Different storage systems, Different actualization system's way used to mean a CZ. The middleman basically, to my great data, from one day to center to another, using swink it. So where there was a large amount of terabytes and terabytes, amount of data way had swing kit available to us using team were able to be to be essentially a love the environments into the swing care and then bring them over to the other side of the business. And vain was essentially part on on top of that, making sure that the data that we were coming that will bring in a cross is true and not corrupt on DH, that using some of their technology is sure backups and stuff like that really, really was essential to, you know, do migration going well >> And was was Wien installed and both organizations at the time? Or was that something that you had to sort of redeploy? >> And yeah, So Legacy Charles also had way was actually myself going back probably eight years ago. Version For a time, I think team had 20,000 customers. So to here >> there were version 10 now 33 150 >> 1,001,000, 4,000 month. >> That makes me proud that we invested in vain when we did good car. So yeah, it was It was a good call from us, and essentially three other side of the business did not have. But then we just wait. Expanded our Venus State to look at both sides and then bring him across on. And then, ever since then, we've grown our vamos state across the world, across all of officers. So >> So how did you do that? So that was that was another migration that had to occur. And did you? You kind of do those simultaneously. Did you do the theme of migration first, and then bring the two systems together? >> Do you seem to do Stouffer special sauce in the migration? >> Yeah. So Veen was essentially a tool that we used to my great data sensors from one data center to another using their backup technology using their replication technology, we were able to replicate all of one side's virtual machines to the other. And then that gave us that gave us the flexibility as well. When when we had the limited down time periods that we've had, they give us the flexibility to actually Circe the business is during these particular ours. We're not gonna be able to You're not gonna have access to these systems because we're going to bring up systems from point A to point B. So veen was essential to them if >> you had to do it over again. If he had a mulligan, what would you have done differently? What what advice might you give to somebody who's trying to go through a similar migration? >> I would say Give your partners and lawyers more realistic time. Pray the time frame that we would get. >> Or don't let them give you an unrealistic time for him. >> Exactly. Yeah, so says ensured that the amount of work it's it's not just day to itself. You know, we're talking network and we're talking security. We're talking, you know, to to similar sized companies coming together. We were very, very limited time frame, consolidating all of their systems into one which is essential for the two parts of the business to collaborate together because, you know, way could have taken our time. We could have got to take this free four years a CE, far as we're concerned. But the fact that we did do it in such a quick time for him and that business to parts of the business from Day one can collaborate much better with each other. So >> we talked a lot about digital business transformation and you know, our approach or our observations on the digital business transformations, the process by which you altar and change your firm to re institutionalize the work. Change your game. Tomato Grover. All governments model as you use data as an asset, so that's affecting every firm everywhere. How's it affecting a law firm and you know your law from specifically on? How is that going to change your stance in your approach to data protection >> Data is incredibly important to unlawful. A zit is to most most organizations, but in terms of, you know, one of one of the things that's quite important in terms of law firms. We work with the financial institutions, so we held information by that. We hold personal data way hold all times of information. Charles Oscar speech leads works with Aware is of law apart from Kunal. So the areas of law that they worked with his vast in terms of the amount of data that we hold and essentially I mean, for us data is the most important thing that runs the firm and having visibility tow our data. How do we How do we work that data? How do we then market based on the data that we have? How do we market ourselves from that data. You know, there might be one area the business that's dealing with a family issue, family law. But then, you know that that could correspond with the litigation issue. You know, how do we work that data? To be to be an advancing to our businesses is extremely important. For >> what? What do you think of the announcements this week? I'm kind of curious. I was liketo ask the practitioners of what they think about. You know what was announced. You had, uh, well, you had the ve made $1,000,000,000. That's kind of fun and cool, but But you had the with the program, which was kind of interesting. The whole ap I look the beam availability orchestrator, where they're really talking about recovering from backups as a host that needed to recover from, you know, a replicated instance. You know, some of the automated testing stuff was kind of interesting. They talked about dynamic documentation, things you saw this week that you'll actually go back and say, Hey, I can apply that to solve a problem. Sure. >> So, essentially, I think I've been a really good question is very relevant to us many of not just ourselves law firm but many of the other law firms around the world are now looking at cloud based services now for us. I mean, this was a big thing five years ago way you know, everyone was talking about public clouds. Us. We're now we're now looking clouds and where basically, we've bean pushed by the vendors themselves to go towards cloudlike Citrix, for example. Their licensing model was based around their services. So is Microsoft in Mike's off? You don't you don't really have, you know, exchange anymore. Within premises you have off 365 A lot of the SAS applications are moving toward the cloud on DH. What wrote me? I had to say doing the keynote in regards to act, too. And how team are trying to be the visionaries in terms of look at that cloud is their next big thing for the next 10 years, offering often a crucial and for businesses like ours who have limited exposure to cloud technologies limited understanding, essentially having a tool that could migrate from one cloud to another. It's fantastic, you know, we've offered, you know I've spoken to, obviously are United directors around the other law firms where I wanted to have gone to the public cloud. But they don't know how to come back in and having a tall that essentially gives you that flexibility to bring it back in house to go form a ws to zoo. Or if there's a particular assess application, for example, that piers better with a W s. But you've got your other application that piers with that particular application is your Why would you want to have in the door? You'll probably want to move into a W eso for us, I think. What? The message coming out of'em on this year has bean really, really helpful for us. >> So So when you started with theme, they had it said 20,000 custom You like the 20001st customer on DIT was coincided with the virtual ization, you know, craze. Do you feel like the team knowing what you know about them, you have a lot of experience with them Consort of Replicate that success in this town intendant and in Act two, >> I think when I first looked at them, Wow, this is really, really simple. It's a bit like an iPhone. You know you given iPhone to your grandmother or to your children, and they have to play with it. And I see the beam as an intuitive piece of software that easy fighting professionals to get on with it, as their slogan said a few years ago. It just works. It does just work. Wear were great advocates of him. It's worked wonders for us. We've acquired smaller businesses using we've managed companies using and when I see you know, when you go to the sessions and you see the intelligence behind their thinking, I think going back to your question I think Wei si oui, si, vamos a strategic partner for us when we see their vision and we believe in their vision, and I think what they're doing in terms of what they working on next few years, I think we're well favor there, and I think, you know, essentially, that's where the most of their business is going to come from, >> where you sit down with, you know, rat mayor over over vodka and he says, Tell me the one thing I could do to make your life you know, easier, better you can't say cut prices s a hellhole. But what would you advise him to >> make my life better >> other than Jim instead of >> yeah, eyes that >> would make you crazy. >> So in terms of a zoo, a technology, >> your business relationship or something, she'd like to see them do that would. I >> think in terms of mergers and acquiring companies, seen license rentals will be a good thing. I know, I know. They give you a valuation license keys, and that's something that you can use. So, for example, if we were to acquire a company that has hundreds of servers and PM's having license rentals for a period of time, able >> to spin it up and spin it down actually allowed >> Exactly. Yeah, that would be an advantage. I think in terms of what you know what they're doing in the marketplace, and a lot of law firms use him. I feel I can't do any more than they are doing now. And in all the years that we've used to be my fingers on eight years now, but we've only had one serious problem, and the way they got that problem, you know the way, the way they communicated to reverse the way they a lot of different teams across the the Europe and the US go involved. I think, you know, in terms of service, in terms of software, in terms of what they what they do for us. I don't think there's anything more to add. Teoh. Right? Maia's vision. >> That's great for their custom of it. Well, thanks so much for coming on. The Cube is not heavy. Really? Thank you very much. You're welcome to keep it right there, buddy Peter, and I'll be back with our next guests right after this short break. We're live from Miami at the front of Blue Hotel. You're watching the Cube from Vienna on 2019 right back.

>> Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE. Covering Inforum, DC 2018. Brought to you by Infor. >> We are back this afternoon here in Washington, D.C., at the Walter Washington Convention Center. As we continue our coverage here of Inforum 2018 along with Dave Vellante, I'm John Walls, and we now welcome Mr. Cormack Watters to the program today, EVP of Emea and APAC at Infor. Cormack, good to see you sir. >> Nice to be here. >> So, we're going to talk about Guinness, over in Ireland (chuckling). Cormack's from Dublin, so we had a little conversation. We're getting a primer here. >> It's actually the best conversation we should have, right? >> Right, we'll save that for the end. How about that? So, you're fairly new, right? About a year or so. >> Ten months or so, not that I'm counting it by the day >> No no no, always going forward, never backward. But a big plate you have, right, with EMEA and APAC? Different adoptions, different viewpoints, different perspectives... We've talked a lot really kind of focusing domestically here for the past couple of days. Your world's a little different than that though, right? >> It is. It is. And it's very good that you've actually recognized it because that's actually the biggest challenge that we have. To be a little bit humble about it, I think we've got world-class products and solutions. I actually fundamentally believe that. But we have lots of different languages, cultures, and localization requirements in the multiple Countries that we look after. So, it's great to have great products, but it needs to be in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Finish, Arabic, which most of them are. Customers realize that we are actually international and localized for many, many markets. But now we've become an intriguing option for them, if you're a multi-national business, with subsidiaries all over the world. So, it's good that Infor is big enough to do that. We need to do a better job of letting everybody know that we've done that, if that makes any sense. >> Sure. >> So what's happening in Europe? Europe's always pockets, there's no..I mean.. Yes, EU but there's really still no one Europe. What's going on? Obviously, we have Brexit hanging over our head. I felt like U.S. markets are maybe a little bit overheated in Europe has potential upside. >> Yeah >> And it seems like others seem to agree with that. What happening on the ground? Any specific, interesting areas? Is Southern Europe still a concern? Maybe you can give us an update? >> Yeah, so Brexit is quite a dominant conversation. I am from Ireland. I live in Dublin, but I'm working all over Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Far East. So, I don't get to be at home very often, except the weekends. London is really our regional headquarters from a European perspective, and Brexit is on everybody's mind. Interestingly, when you go outside the UK, Brexit is not such a big topic because... That's Europe. And they kind of go, "Well if you don't want to be here, then you don't need to be here." Right? So it's a little bit of that, and they're saying, "Well, we'd like for them to stay, but if they don't want to stay, well, don't wait around." But in the UK, it's causing a lot of uncertainty. And the UK's one of our biggest markets. It's a lot of uncertainty, and what would be best is if we just knew what was going to happen, and then we could deal with it. And actually, once we know what's going to happen, that's going to bring a degree of change. And change, from our industry perspective means there's going to be some requirements that emerge. So, we need to be ready to serve those, which is opportunity. But the uncertainty is just slowing down investment. So, we need that to be resolved. >> So, clarity obviously is a good thing obviously a good thing in any market. Are there any hotspots? >> Yeah, actually for us, we're doing, for us the Hotspots right now, we're doing incredibly well in Germany. Which, one of our lesser known competitors is a small Company called SAP. And they're headquartered in Germany. It's quite interesting to see that we're actually taking a lot of market there in Germany, which is fantastic. That's a little bit unexpected, but it's going very well right now. We're seeing a ton of activity in the Asia Pacific, I would say that region is probably our fastest growing in all of Infor. And consistently so for several quarters and maybe past a year at this point. So Asia Pacific, Germany, U.K., and then as it happens, we are doing very well in Southern Europe, which is a combination of countries really. France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece. Hard to put it down to which particular Country is doing well, but there seems to be a general uplift in that region. Because they were hit the hardest, arguably, by the crash back in 2008. So they've definitely come out of that now. >> And when they come out, excuse me I'm sorry John, but, they come out, Cloud becomes more important to them, Right? >> Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Anyone who's been delaying investment for years, can actually leapfrog what's been happening and jump straight to what you might call the future. So lots of Companies, lots of our Customers, are trying to simplify their Business. So Cloud is a great equalizer. We believe in your, what we call Last Mile of Functionality per industry. And that should make the projects shorter, more compact more predictable and the infrastructure worries go away, because that's our responsibility to the Customers. >> We definitely so that in the U.S., 2008-2009, CFO's came in said shift to the Cloud, because we want to shift Capx to Opx, and when we came out of the downturn, they said "wow this stuff works pretty well, double down on it" and then there were other business benefits that they wanted to accelerate, and so maybe Southern Europe was a little bit behind >> I think that may be the case right, and they are picking up. And what we're seeing are a lot of other advantages. Not to make this a sale's pitch, but, I am here so >> Go for it >> You've got a microphone >> I've got a microphone and I'm Irish, so I've got to talk right? What the Cloud is actually doing is, lots of Companies have put in big ERP over the years, the decades. And then they get stuck at various points and maybe years behind, because upgrades become painful and really want to avoid them. So what they're seeing is, if they can get onto the Cloud, they never need to upgrade again. Because it's always current, because we upgrade it every week, or every month and they're never falling behind. So they want to be ready to take advantage of the innovations that they know about and those that they don't even know about. So by keeping on the latest version, that opportunities open to them. Also, there's a big issue in Europe specifically about a thing called GDPR, which is data protection. Security. So we believe that we can do a better job of providing that, than any individual Company. Because we provide it for everybody, our resources can be deployed once and then deployed many times. Where as if you're an individual customer, you've got to have that speciality and put it in place. So GDPR is a genuine issue in Europe, because, the fines are absolutely huge if a Company is found to breach it. >> It's become a template for the globe now, California's started moving in that direction, GDPR has set the frame work. >> Well and just to follow up on that, and now you're dealing with a very different regulatory climate, then certainly here in the United States. And many U.S. Companies are finding that out, as we know. Overseas right now. So how do you deal with that in terms of, this kind of balkanized approach that you have, that you know that what's working here doesn't necessarily translate to overseas, and plus you have, you know, you're serving many masters and not just one or two. >> What's happening is the guys in our RND have done very well, is they understand the requirement of, in this instance, GDPR. They look at the other regulatory requirements, lets say in Australia, which is subtly different, but it is different, and they can take, well what do we have to do? What's the most extreme we have to achieve? And if we do that across our suite into our platform suite, the N4RS, that can then be applied to all the applications. And then becomes relevant to the U.S. So it's almost like some requirement across the seas, being deployed then becoming really relevant back here because over here you do need to be aware of the data protection, as well, it's just not as formalized yet. >> It's coming >> A Brewing issue right? >> What about Asia Pacific? So you have responsibility for Japan, and China, and the rest of the region. >> Right >> Which you are sort of re-distinct... >> Really are right? There are several sub regions in the one region. The team down there, as I say, arguably the most successful team in Infor right now, so Helen and the crew. So you see Australia, New Zealand then you see Southeast Asia, then you see China, Japan and so on. So different dynamics and different markets, some more mature than others, Japan is very developed by very specific. You do need very specialized local skills to succeed. Arguably Australia, New Zealand is not that similar from say some of the European Countries. Even though there are differences and I would never dream to tell an Australian or a New Zealander that they are the same as Europeans, cuz I get it. I smile when people say "you're from the U.K and you're not from Ireland?" I understand the differentiation. (laugher) And Southeast Asia, there's a ton of local custom, local language, local business practice that needs to be catered for. We seem to be doing okay down there. As I say, fastest growing market at scale. It's not like it's growing ridiculously fast but from a small base. It's as a big market already and growing the fastest. >> And China, what's that like? You have to partner up? >> Oh yeah >> To the JV in China? >> You have to partner up, there are several of the key growth markets that it's best to go in with partners. Customers like to see we've got a presence. So that they can touch and feel that Infor entity. We can't achieve the scale we need, and the growth we want fast enough without partnering. So we have to go with partners to get us the resources that we need. >> And in the Middle East, so my business partner, Co-Host, John Furrier, is on a Twenty Hour flight to Bahrain. The Cube Bahrain. Bahrain was the first Country in the Middle East to declare Cloud first. AWS is obviously part of that story, part of your story. So what's going on over there? Is it a growing market? Is it sort of something you're still cracking? >> No, no, again it's growing. We have several key markets down there, big in hospitality in that part of the world. Hotels, tourism obviously. Shopping, very interesting markets, and Healthcare, interestingly enough. I think arguably some of the worlds best Hospitals are in that region. Definitely the best funded Hospitals. >> Probably the most comfortable. (laughter) >> So again part of our stent is the number of industries we serve, so if you can put in our platform as it were, then you could have multiple of the industry flavors applied. Because what's interesting in that part of World, there seem to be a number of, I guess we call them conglomerates. So maybe family owned, or region owned, and they have just a different array of businesses all under the one ownership. So you would have a retailer that's also doing some tourism, that's also doing some manufacturing. So we can put our platform in, and then those industry flavors they can get one solution to cover it all. Which is a little bit unusual, and works for us. >> Your scope is enormous. I mean essentially you're the head of Non-U.S. I mean is that right? >> Yeah, and Latin America as well. >> That's part of it? That's not... >> Excluding the Americas. So there's Americas and then everything else, and you're everything else. >> I missed a meeting you see so they just gave it to me >> What you raised your hand at the wrong time? >> I wasn't there (laughter) >> So how do you organize to be successful? You obviously have to have strong people in the region. >> Right. So the key is people, right. We organize somewhat differently to over here. We've gone for a regional model, so I have six sub-regions, that I worry about. So four in Europe, the Nordic Countries. Scandinavian, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark. We call Western, which is Ireland, U.K. and the Benelux. Germany is Central and East, and then Southern is the Latin Country, Spain, Portugal, Greece and so. Then we've got the Middle East, and Africa, and then we got Asia Pacific. I've got six regional teams, all headed by a regional leader, and each of them are trying to be as self contained as they can. And where we see we've got an opportunity to move into something new, we've got one team working with me directly as an incubator. For example, we're driving a specific focus on Healthcare, in our part of the world, because it's very big over here. We haven't quite cracked the code over there. When we get some scale, then it'll move into the regions, but for now that's incubating under me. >> And, what about in Country? Do you have Country Managers? One in the U.K., one in France, one in Germany. >> We have what we call local leaders, right? So in some cases it could be a sales oriented individual, it could be consulting, others it could be the local HR guy. So that's more for us to make sure we're building a sense of community within Infor. Rather than it being more customer facing. We're still trying to make sure that there is a reasonably scarcity of senior skills. So regionalizing lets us deploy across several Countries, and that works with the customer base, but for employees we need local leaders to give them a sense of feeling home and attached. >> So the regions are kind of expertise centers if you will? >> Yes >> So I was going to ask about product expertise, where does that come from? It's not parachuted in from the U.S. I presume? >> No, we're pretty much self-sufficient actually, which is great. So from both what we call solution consulting, which is the product expertise, and then consulting which is the product deployment. And we're doing more and more of our deployments with Partners. As I say, we need to really rapidly embrace that partner ecosystem to give us the growth opportunity. RND, is all over the World. That's not under my direct control. So for a major suites, take for example, LN, happens to be headquartered out of Barneveld, in the Netherlands. From a Historic perspective, which is great. And Stockholm, which is also great. But a lot of the development resource room in Nila and in India. So we work closely with the guys, even though they don't actually report to me. >> And out of the whole area, the area of your responsibility what's the best growth opportunity? We all think of China, but that's been fits and starts for a lot of people. >> Yeah, yeah I think we've got multiple opportunities, you can look at it a few ways. You can look at it geographically, and you would say China. You can look at Eastern Europe, and you can look at Africa. There's a ton of opportunity in those regions, geographically. Interestingly we are also at a point where I think the Nordics, and we've got a very solid base Historically, and so on. But we probably haven't put enough focus on there in recent times, that the opportunities are really scaled in Nordics is really quite significant. And then they can look at it from a Product Perspective. So for example, we have, what we believe to be World Leading, and actually a Company called Gartner would equally agree with us. Enterprise Asset Management, EAM, that's a product suite that can fit across all of our industries. I think that could well be the significant growth area for us across the entire six regions. And it's a huge focus for us here at the conference actually. So we can do it by product, EAM, Healthcare, or by Region. I think Eastern Europe, China, and Africa, as well as the Nordics. >> And the other big opportunity is just share gains, market share gains, particularly in Europe, I would think, with your background. >> Yup. Completely, I mean, that's why I said, it's really interesting that we are winning market share in Germany. Who'd of thought that a few years ago? That's a big market, I mean, Germany, U.K., France, Italy. They're huge. Right, I mean U.K., is what, Sixty-Five Million People? It's a big economy, so we've got many of the worlds G7, in our backyard. So we just really need to double down on those, and give them the opportunities to grow that we need. >> And just back to Japan for a second. Japan has traction, it takes a long time to crack Japan. I know it first from personal experiences. >> Yeah, Okay, Interesting. >> Yeah you just got to go many many times and meet people. >> That's it, Right. And it's a different culture, of when you think they're saying yes and you think they're there, that's just yes to the next step. (laughter) >> Alright, so it does take time to get there. We've actually cracked it to some extent, that we've now got some solid referenceability, and some good wind. We need local leaders in Japan, to really crack the code there. >> And then once you're in, you're in. >> I think that once you've proven yourself, it's a lot of word of mouth and referencing. >> Well I hope you get home this weekend. Are you headed home? >> Yes! Actually I'm lucky enough. My Wife is originally from Chicago. So she and our Daughter have come over for the weekend, to go sight seeing in Washington. So that'll be fun. So we'll be going home on Sunday. >> Your adopted home for the weekend then. >> That's exactly right. >> Well we'll talk Guinness in just a bit. Thanks for the time though, we appreciate it. >> Thank you Gentlemen. >> Good to see you, Sir. Alright, back with more here from Inforum 2018, and you're watching Live, on theCube, here in D.C. (electronic music)