>> From Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2018. Brought to you by NetApp. >> Hi, welcome to theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin, with Keith Townsend, and we are with NetApp in their booth at SAP SAPPHIRE 2018. Welcoming Mike McGibbney to theCUBE, from SAP. You're the SVP of SuccessFactors Service, Delivery and Operations. Welcome. >> Well, thank you. >> So, SuccessFactors, largest people cloud in the world. So you probably a little bit busy. >> Just a little bit. >> Tell us about what you're doing at SuccessFactors. >> So I'm responsible for the delivery and operation of the cloud service. So we service all of our customers and continue to introduce new capabilities into that cloud. We support them from payroll, all the way through recruitment. Basically, from hire to retire. >> So Mike, not your first cloud. Little background and history. Me and Mike have been on the, well probably one of the toughest projects, politically, I've ever been on. >> Yes, definitely. >> So there's history, but great history. We deliver success. This isn't your first cloud. >> No. >> You've built clouds before. What's fundamentally different about the SAP people cloud versus clouds you've built in the past? >> I think the speed. The way this is accelerating, both the breadth of the capabilities that we're offering when you think about the integrations into SAP, and the growth. So this is moving truly at cloud speed. The things that we're shooting for today are already past. So we constantly have to be focused out there on the horizon. We've gotta adapt very quickly. And we've gotta implement very quickly. Our customers need it to accelerate their business. And our services need that support underneath them as well. >> So you guys, as you said, have this, have this long history, so I'll let you guys chat in a minute. But in terms of customer experience, customer engagement, customer influence, that was kind of a lot of undertone in the keynote this morning. 50 million business users on SuccessFactors and 60 industries. How do you, needing to get to the speed that you just mentioned how do you get that customer feedback to drive evolution of the product as fast as they're demanding it? >> Well, so the product and engineering team have a whole system around customer engagements with delivery panels and steering committees. But from an operations side, we felt that it was important as well. We have a whole organization that is focused on engaging the customer. We built our operational centers. And we do probably about 60 customer tours a year through our operational centers. We also do about 200 customer calls from the operational team a month. So globally, we work with the pre-sales, the CEE groups, and some of the other SAP support groups, to make sure that we have boots on the ground, understanding what our customers want, understanding what their experience is, so we can continue to adjust and reset the bar where it needs to be. >> So Lisa, I'm not gonna dominate the conversation. Me and Mike can probably, we'll crack open a beer in a minute, (laughter) and we'll continue. But there's other hero numbers on the stage. Let's talk about the high level first and then me and Mike can geek out. What are some of the other Xers reveals? >> Oh, good question. I think just some of the industries. I always like to see which industries are kind of leading edge here. So he mentioned 23,000 HANA users and 25 different industries. And I'm curious, that's a lot. And I'm curious to see what some of the key use cases are that you guys are driving with helping some customers in many industries that hire to retire. What are some of the key use cases that you're helping those customers to drive? >> Well, I think we have a good presence in about every vertical, from both the public and the private sector. The suite of tools that we have, service the entire, each of those use cases. I think when you start to think about the SAP suite and the integration story that they talked about, with the intelligence and the analytics on top, that just takes it to another level. And I think that's really underlying important message. I think and that's what's gonna help, not only SuccessFactors, but SAP continue to drive and lead across the board. >> So can we talk a little bit about customer interaction? I think traditionally, you've served up infrastructures to developers directly. But a lot of cases, your direct customer may be your actual business user looking to transform digitally. Talk about the experience, the difference in experience of running the cloud that was consumed by other technologies, to potentially running a cloud that's centered on people who are thinking about people and customers. >> Yeah, that's a great question because these are business-critical activities. You think about something like learning, right? That's used to certify pilots before they can take off. So we can actually, the availability and the delivery of that service, is critical. Large amusement parks have to certify all the ride handlers. So this thing has to be available 24 by seven, 365 days a week. And that's just something like learning. When you think about some of the other facets, they are entrenched in our customers' modern business processes. And they're all critical. So when we look at these, we have to look at 'em like we used to, some of the most critical functions in the backend. So we run them like you would, from an operational perspective, like a bank, okay? With that resilience, those practices, that focus. But we also have to do it at the speed of cloud. (laughs) >> I was just gonna ask that question. You have two competing episodes. You know, I like to, well, people. Well, SAP process is 70 percent of the transactions in the world. It is called, has been called, the cash register of the cloud. It is the ultimate system of record. Therefore, it should never be touched. However, we have to move fast. We have to digitally transform their commercial entities that want to build cool new applications on Fiori, et cetera. There are other business integrations. How do you weigh those two, what seems like competing interests? >> I think Bert laid out the data strategy and how we're gonna integrate the data across the suite. And that's gonna be the key, right? Instead of integrating and porting to, we're gonna have single sources of data where data is gonna reside. We're gonna use that as a system of record, as the suite evolves. That'll give it the data integrity that it needs, also the performance and integration perspective. >> So we're sponsored by the data driven company, NetApp, who is powering one of the most powerful data platforms on the planet, SAP. Talk about the relationship and importance of NetApps, NetApp vision in supporting your vision. >> So NetApp was here at SAP long before I started, but I have a, probably a 20 year, probably 17 to 20 year history, with that app. And you know, data is critical. The storage, the access, the performance. And they've been a critical part of almost every architecture I've worked on today. Rock solid performance, rock solid reliability, but more important to me, is the partnership with the company, and the support that we get. Not just on the stuff that we're doing today, but thinking about how we're gonna change in the future, and supporting us as we evolve, and helping us plan and think through that as well. >> One of the things that Bill talked about this morning, as well, is getting to this 4th gen of customer experience. That these expectations, we've talked about speed. That it's, everything has to be done yesterday, right? How are you guys working with NetApp delivering that 4th generation customer experience, internally and to your 50 million business users? >> Well, I think you touched on bits and pieces of it. It's a whole suite of-- It's a whole program of plans, right? Between Fiori, you know, all those things in the front end, where the customer touches. But in the backend, it's about speed and reliability to their data, right? So our architectures are getting simplified. Our data's getting condensed. We need the compliance pieces and that's where NetApp kinda play a core role in, in those pieces. >> So back in traditional infrastructures and operations, we could tell speeds and feeds as one of the best features of why you should use one service over another. As you describe the way, everyone expects speeds and feeds. What are some of the value props or KPIs for your new environment? >> So, we've really shifted. So one of the things that we've done is we've actually added operational intelligence. So we have basically a brain that sits on top of our cloud environment. It looks at all of the transactions. It filters out all the noise. So the speeds and feeds are part of a, now a service or a business function, that we're delivering. That metric down by itself is important. But unless you can correlate it to some business impact, or something happening, it doesn't really have the weight that it needs. >> Right. >> So now what we're looking at is we've ingested and mapped all of the business transactions. We can proactively focus on the ones. So we filter out 99 and change percent of the noise. And then we prorate the things that we need to kinda pivot and focus on. We have three global operational centers around the world. One in Budapest. One in Bangalore. And one in Reston. And then we have a global operation center that sits on the top, so the regionals sit in the region. And they look at all of that feedback from that intelligence. >> So getting those key performance indicators out of the system As I looked at LinkedIn, I looked at some of the common folks we have. You have a pretty consistent core team that support you over the past two or three different major iterations you've done. Talk through how collectively your team has looked at new innovations and operation deliveries such as DevOps. And you've changed the way that your core team approaches these challenges and the outcomes that you've been able to realize. >> So for us, it's about, you know the architecture and technology evolves. As it evolves, it makes a few things simpler. And also, introduces some usually more complex challenges. But it's mitigating risk, delivering performance and reliability, and maturing your actions. So if we do those basic things as we mature the technology underneath, we can drive that. So the team has been focused on, when we think about DevOps, we think about delivering seamlessly new capabilities, features into the cloud. How do we do that with a minimized risk, through automation, and seamless, right? So it's how we segmented the application, how we built the resilience in, how our processes understand and validate and be able to stand in if something happens. >> I'm wondering on that, from maybe a pivot is, we talk about often times, at different events. Whether we're talking about advanced analytics or data science skills gap. Or I think Bill even said like, upskilling. Think I heard that term this morning. I'm curious, as you were saying that, that the folks that you've been working with for a long time on different projects. What are some of the skills that they're able to, you may be able to enable them to learn, by being part of SAP? Is it something that helps accelerate their ability to develop even better, more competitive products? >> Yeah, so SAP has one of the best talent pools I've ever seen across. Some very brilliant people in every business line. So there's best practices that can be learned from everything that we do. All you have to do is be able to have the conversations and look around. When we brought the team in, about two years ago, we did a whole skills analyses, gap analyses, of the skills that we had. We looked at our operating model, created a new operating model that was enabling us to evolve from an operational perspective. And then put plans in place, and use the tools that we sell to help deliver development to the team. So basically, we became our own customer. We drove development of our, upskilling our existing resources, and we supplemented where needed. And we also pulled from the collective knowledge of SAP. So doing those three things, helped us really accelerate and execute something that typically would take three years in less than 12 months. >> Last question, Mike, for you. This morning's energetic keynote, we've talked about it a number of times already today. Really, I think somebody on the show earlier said, likened Bill McDermott to kind of, really an evangelist, which is really refreshing. You don't see a lot of C-levels that are that, where you can feel and kinda see their passion. The SAP has been very vocal for a while about really wanting to disrupt the marketplace for CRM. Some big news coming out today. I'm just wondering, kind of culturally, to wrap this up, what excites you about this train that you're on at SAP? >> I think that the message is electrifying. And inside of SAP, you feel that. So we've been feeling it as these bits and pieces have been coming out over the last year. So this is just a culmination of all the little pieces that we've known inside and we're able to share externally. So I'm extremely excited about where we're at and where we're going. And obviously, anytime I get to hear Bill speak, it just amplifies it. >> Yeah, that energy was really, you can feel it from wherever you were. It was awesome. Mike, thanks so much for stopping by and catching up with your old buddy Keith and me and sharing what you guys are doing with SuccessFactors. >> Excellent, excellent. Thanks very much. >> Thanks for -- Oh sorry, and thanks for watching theCUBE. Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend, from SAP SAPPHIRE in the NetApp booth. Thanks for watching. (fast tempo music)

>> Announcer: Live from New Orleans, Louisiana, it's the Cube, covering .NEXT Conference 2018. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back to the Cube, I'm here with Keith Townsend and I'm Stu Miniman. Happy to have on the program first-time guest Joe Zarb, who's with SAP Labs. He's the Vice President of Global Technology Partners. And welcome back to the Cube, long-time guest, Venugopal Pai, Vice President of Customer Success with Nutanix. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. >> Great to be here, Stu, great to be here, Keith. >> All right, so Venugopal, our audience has seen him a few times. Joe, let's start, your role and inside SAP Labs what your organization does. >> Sure, happy to do that. So Joe Zarb, I head up our global technology partners within our global business development and ecosystems team. Basically helping our customers to respond to their needs and their wants for solutions that span not only SAP, but their whole digital transformation agenda. So we do that with the partners, and we do it with global service providers, we do it with software technology partners, and hardware technology partners. >> And Pai, we talked to Inder earlier today about customer success, but from an application standpoint, tell us why you're here. >> Of course, no thank you, Stu, thank you, Keith. Very good to be here again. So the reason that I'm here with Joe from SAP is we've had a long-standing relationship with SAP. Spanning almost four years. And the reason it's important is as Nutanix becomes the platform that customers start to depend on for the infrastructure, the key elements of what value we provide the customer is to mitigate a lot of the complexity that comes from infrastructure and allow them to focus on the business value of the application. And the predominant application as you start to global enterprises, large customers, SAP tends to be the lifeblood of that company. And the business value of how they drive value. So our partnership with SAP is to really make sure that as we start looking at transforming the data center and moving them to a digital platform that makes it very easy to consume, the ability for transcending the value to an SAP application, making sure that customers have that trust of, if I run SAP on Nutanix, the trust of availability, performance, capability, all the things that they need enterprise vendors to stand up to, we wanted to make sure that our journey with SAP started up early. Our journey with SAP in making sure they understand the concept of hyper-convergence and the impact of what it does for them has been a very fulfilling one and has been a journey that will continue on for a long ways to come. So that's why we're here. >> So, Joe, let's talk about digital transformation and the drivers. You know SAP, rich set of data is, I've heard it called a cash register of the world. So many transactions go through that. With that said, it's also one of those areas that we say, oh thoust dare not touch SAP. It is the system of record. However, it's a rich, rich area for digital transformation. The go fast, break things, part of the IT team, wants access to SAP, they want to get the data from there, they want to update transactions. Talk about that conflicting role that SAP has of, we're steady, rock solid versus go fast and break stuff. >> Right, so that's a great question. And what we're facing at SAP are demands that are coming from our customers around what people term as bimodal IT. They got to run their business, but they also have to innovate. So a big part of our strategy going forward is centered around HANA as you know, which is our real-time database, and it's a translytics database, right? So you could do transactions in it, you could also do analytics with the database within the same data set. So it provides a very powerful platform so that you could do your transactional operations and the analytics in a way where you could innovate. So that bimodal IT, and the relationship with Nutanix and the other hyper-convergent infrastructure players that we work with is really to focus on driving down the total cost of ownership in those operational areas, get to market quicker with those, and free up a technical center of excellence and functional center of excellence resources so that they can help the enterprise innovate. We have an entire platform that's dedicated just to innovation. It's our SAP Leonardo platform with our SAP Cloud platform, with Nutanix, and other hyper-converged players, and our transactional system. So that whole digital transformation really needs to take into account, hey, you got to protect the base, you got to run those core applications, but you can't take your eye off of innovation 'cause digital transformation's all about innovations. Business model reinvention as well as business process reinvention. So I think that's a big part of what we're focused on. >> So talk about Nutanix's role. How do you help customers with that goal of saying, the things that we do before are critically important, you need to keep doin' 'em, we need to do it cheaper, we need to do it faster, and we need to do it more reliably while we look to innovation. >> Absolutely. And I think that's a great story in terms of what Joe talked about in terms of SAP's lead into making sure that the ship is steady as it goes while making sure that the innovation engine is not forgotten, right? Where we start seeing is that the amalgamation between the two saying, I've got the traditional applications running as is, but I got to embrace innovation. And if we look at what Nutanix has done, and continues to do as you saw in some of the announcements at this event, is bringing the innovation in, but making sure that that innovation is brought with the respect of applications running in the data center, and still giving the customer the flexibility of hey, I want to embrace Cloud. I want to embrace the concept of what Cloud means to me, not just taking my data and moving it into the public Cloud, but giving me the way to get the Cloud-like heuristics, the Cloud-like management, Cloud-like flexibility, Cloud-like agility, the consumption of Cloud DevOps capabilities, so the combination of what we delivered in infrastructure layer, become where hardware to software, and tie it to what SAP is doing to drive that innovation from an application level is a very good partnership conversation to have, is hey, how do we now blend this software base in terms of what we're doing in the data center, and tie that to the innovation that SAP's driving at the application level, and together that's when true innovation for customers starts bringing to light. Because they focus the applications, we got the infrastructure, but this partnership then brings the two together. >> So, Pai, let's put some meat on the bone. It takes nine months, 12 months, to deploy SAP infrastructure period. Nutanix rack and stack, I can get a whole cluster up in less than an hour. However, there's still that SAP layer that basis layer that has to be laid out. How are you helping customers get more agile in that so that they wow the business? >> Absolutely. And just to put things in context, our SAP partner who has been around for four years, right? We've been SAP certified for 2 1/2 years, right? Both for SAP NetWeaver running on VMware hypervisors, and then as of a year and a half ago, running on our AHV hypervisor. So we're bringing that hypervisor innovation into the SAP world. Right, so that's one side. When you start looking at our software stack that start disseminating the focus on why things take so long for deploying an application is because the application layer is complex and the infrastructure layer is complex. So what we're doing is with the 40 to 50 customers you already have running on SAP is what we bring is if we can reduce the complexity of the infrastructure layer, the speed to value of deploying an application becomes much, much faster. So that's why customers are gravitating to Nutanix is because the infrastructure complexity has been eliminated as hey, it takes me six months to spin up a infrastructure that's meet variety of where they apply the amount of VM, which server, which storage, and you figure we're networking, and then I spin up the application. When we bring in Nutanix, the ability for us to disaggregate all that layered complexity that comes into play, speeds up the deployment of the application, therefore better time to value for customers saying, hey, I got to spin up the application a few months. I can't wait for nine months because the infrastructure's slowing me down. We start eliminating that complexity. >> Joe, one of the more interesting things to watch in the industry is the change in how customers are purchasing. Especially from software. The days of everything fully shrink-wrapped are long behind us. It's the subscription economy now. Nutanix is going along that journey from buying to software to fully subscription model. Can you touch on what you're seeing in maybe either you or Pai'll connect how that comes together with Nutanix. >> Yeah, I'd be happy to do that. So what we are seeing, and this is implemented in our strategy and our go-to market approach, is really that we live in a hybrid world. And I thought that that was a wonderful quote that I heard here at the conference or driven home in the keynote. So we do. We live in a hybrid world. SAP's strategy recognizes that. That's what our customers want. So we work very closely with Cloud partners like Microsoft Azure and Google, and of course Amazon and others. And of course we have an on-premise suite of solutions. So when we start to look at these business models, it's oftentimes about right-sizing the business model for the workload and the need of that particular customer sometimes for a particular industry. Now where Nutanix comes into play in this hyper-converged infrastructure is, there's some really difficult things that need to get done to make this world a reality. Right if you're going to move workloads and have them run in the Cloud, you might have them run at the edge if it's an IoT solution leveraging our Leonardo platform you might have them running in the core or you might have it running in a branch office. Every time you start adding those layers, you're adding complexity, you're adding cost, and you're adding a requirement for skills. So when we can work with close partners to downgrade the skills, downgrade some of the number of people you might need, create simplicity and create an environment where really it's a Nutanix statement but where our customers have that freedom to move their workload to the right environment to take advantage of it. Those are the partners who we want to work with. >> So SAP Labs, you can't get out of a Labs conversation without talking, well no we can't get out of a SAP Labs conversation without talking mobile and Fiori and all of the great stuff that's happening on just taking advantage of the deep data. Data's the biggest accessor, and mobile and giving that data to mobile, let's talk a little bit about the itch. What's the story between Nutanix, SAP, when it comes to stuff that CIOs care about today and that's Fiori. >> Yeah, so a great question. So if we look at Satyam presented yesterday in terms of our direction around IoT and looking at the edge as a very critical component of the entire operating system, enterprise called operating system model. One of the key things that we are spending a lot of time on is understanding the use cases for verticals and understanding okay when you look at a specific vertical, let's say it's oil and gas, or energy, or manufacturing, right? All of those verticals have a unique perspective on what IoT means to them. So IoT is a good buzzword and a good catchword, but when it comes to use cases and verticals, there's a very specific nomenclature on what they mean by IoT for them, right? So spending a lot of steam and Nutanix making a lot of time in deciphering what IoT means for customers, defining what use cases mean for that vertical and then working with SAP in determining okay, what does Leonardo mean for them because Leonardo is again, is a platform. Within the verticals, we're working with SAP and okay within the Leonardo platform, within the vertical, how do we define what our value prop within the IoT landscape is when it comes to the edge? And so you can see more coming from us, but we truly understand the importance of data like you said, and the creation of data at the edge, and the importance of analyzing the data, maybe in the Cloud. And that transformation of where the edge of data's created and where it needs to be analyzed, that journey is very complex. And if we can make that journey simple, then SAP customers win, SAP application, deployment wins, and we're able to therefore mitigate some of the complexity that comes with making that journey simple. >> You know I might add to that is again, what Pai said is spot on, but if you look at it from a manufacturing point of view, moving to the edge, customers are confronted with the reality of the networking complexity and they're either going to take the processing and move it to the problem or bring the problem to the processing. And so to do that takes hard work. And servers, and so there's a whole new genre of high-performance gateways and hardware that's emerging on the market from players like Fujitsu and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and Dell, what have you. And you end up having a plethora of these devices at every well head, on every AMI, AMR meter-reading infrastructure in the utility system or in every single plant floor. So how do you take that level of innovation that's happening now at the plant floor and make it part, not only of your operational system, but of your IT and your data center so you could manage it with all the ilities that IT people do. And I think Nutanix and SAP are working to solve that problem. And our Leonardo platform is what we have to drive that edge and with Nutanix it's a very manageable environment. >> Great well, Joe and Pai, really appreciate the update on where you are today, where some of the direction are, we're going to the future. Getting towards the end of two days of live coverage here at Nutanix .NEXT 2018. For Keith Townsend, I'm Stu Miniman. Thanks for watching the Cube. >> Thank you. (upbeat music)

(lively music) >> Announcer: It's the CUBE, covering SAPPHIRE NOW 2017, brought to you by SAP cloud platform and HANA Enterprise Cloud. >> Welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with the CUBE with our ongoing coverage of SAP SAPPHIRE 2017 down in Orlando. Really exciting day today, day two, 'cause we got to see Hasso Plattner. Got up and gave his keynote. Joined by George Gilbert. George, great to see you. I know you've known Hasso for years and years and years. Impressions of the kfeynote. God, there is so much stuff that we can dig into. I'm looking forward to it. >> Hasso almost never disappoints, 'cause he's just got %a richness of history and of vision that goes all the way back to the beginning. He was probably the technical visionary from the very beginning. He was the guy who took them from the first super integrated mainframe ERP package all the way to the client server age with R3, and now beyond into sort of in-memory, cloud ready, and with machine learning and iOT baked in. >> But he really speaks like a developer. You can really tell that he likes the technology, he understands the technology, he's kind of a no-BS guy. Some of the Q&A afterwards, people were trying to trip him up and challenge him on stuff. And he would either say, "I don't know," or, "I don't believe that," or, "Here's our impression." Really you could tell he's a humble guy, smart guy, and really has a grasp of what the heck is going on here. Let's jump into it. So many themes we could talk about. But the one that started out early in the conversation was, he literally said, "We need to get as quickly "to the cloud as possible." This is coming from a guy who built the company based on on prem ERP heavy lifting. And even he said today, 2017, "We need to get to the cloud as quickly as possible." >> I think there are a few things going on behind there, when you unpack it. One is, they did start building for the cloud in the early 2000's. It was meant to be a product for the mid-market. In fact, actually its first objective wasn't to be cloud-ready. The first objective was to be highly configurable so that you could bend it to the needs of many customers without customizing it, because typically with the customizations, it made it very difficult to upgrade. In making it configurable first and cloud-read second, they kind of accomplished neither. But they learned a lot. So they started on this next version, which was, okay, we're going to take an in-memory database which we're building from the ground up, 'cause Oracle wasn't building it at the time, and then we're going to build SAP ERP from scratch on top of this new database, 'cause database was so high performance that they didn't have to sepyarate analytics from transactions the way traditionally you do, you had to do in all applications. So they could simplify the app. Then, in simplifying it, they could make it easier to run in the cloud. And now, just like Oracle, just like Microsoft, they now build cloud first and on-prem second, because by building it cloud first, it sort of simplifies the assumptions that you have to make. >> Right, and he talked quite a bit about so much effort now is around integration connectors, to get stuff in and out of this thing. And that's a big focus, he said. It's not that we're ignoring it, it's just a big, hard, hairy problem that we're attacking. >> Yeah, and this is interesting and there's a lot of history behind this. Oracle, in the 90s, up until about the late 90s, their greatest success was in their industry-specific applications, where they took different modules from different vendors and stitched them together. That was how they built, like, a special solution for a consumer package goods company. But it turned out that that wasn't really workable because the different modules for the different vendors6 upgraded at different rates. So there was no way coherently to integrate them and tie them together. And SAP had said that all along. They were, like, this wasn't going to work. Fast forward to the last five-plus years, SAP started buying products from a bunch of different vendors, Ariba, SuccessFactors, Concur, Hybris. So you're, like, "Aren't they doing the same thing "Oracle did 10 year, 15 years before?" But no, and this is what Hasso was talking about today, which was, once those apps are in the cloud, you only have to build the integration points once. It's not like when it's on every customer's data center, you have to build integrations that work for every version that every customer has. So I think that's what he was talking about. You put it all in the cloud, you integrate it once. >> Another thing that he talked, he really, he spoke in tweets. (mumbles) goes to buy Twitter feed, I was basically, like, bang, bang, bang as he was talking. He talked about databases, and databases in the cloud. Nobody cares, right? It's a classic theme we hear over and over. "We presume it works. "We just want it to work." You know, it should just work. Nobody really cares what the underlying database is. >> But he was, in those cases, referring to these purchased apps, Concur, SuccessFactors, Ariba, Hybris. He was, like, "Some of them work on SQLServer, "some of 'em work on Oracle. "But you know what? "Until we get around to upgrading them to HANA, "it doesn't matter because you, the customer, "don't know that." If they were on prem and you had to support all those different databases, it might be a different story. But he's, like, "We'd rather give you the functionality "that's baked into them now "and get around to upgrading the databases later." >> Another thing that came up, and he actually reference the conversation with Michael Dell from yesterday's keynote, about the evolution of compute horsepower. You know, you had CPUs and CPUs kind of topped out. Then you had multicore CPUs. Now we have GPUs that he said you can put 10s or 100s of 1,000s on the board at one time. Basically he's smart guy, he's down the road a few steps from delivering today's product, saying that, you know, we're basically living in a era of unlimited free compute and kind of asymptotically approaching. But that's where we are. And how does that really change the way that we look now at new application development. I thought that was a pretty interesting thing. >> And sort of big advances in software architecture come from when you have a big change in the relative cost of compute memory, network storage. So as you were saying, cost of compute is approaching zero. But the same time, the cost of memory relative to storage is coming way down. So not only do you have these really beefy clusters with lots of compute, but you also have lots of memory. He was talking about something like putting 16 terabytes of memory in a server and putting 64 servers in a cluster, and all of a sudden, I can't do that math, being that I was a humanities major, but all of a sudden, you're talking about huge databases where you can crunch through this stuff very, very fast because it's all, you have lots of processors running in parallel and you have lots of memory. >> It's pretty interesting. He made an interesting statement. He used a sailor reference. He said, "You know, we are through the big waves "and now we're in the smooth water," and really saying that all this heavy lifting and now that this cloud architecture is here and we have this phenomenal compute and store technology, that he can kind of take a breath and really refresh a look out into the future as to, how do we build modern apps that have intelligence with basically unlimited resources, and how does that change the way that we go forward? I thought that was an interesting point of view, especially 'cause he has been at it for decades. >> You know, I think he was probably looking back to some of the arrows he had in his back from having done an in-memory database essentially before anyone else did for mission critical apps. I think when he's saying we're out of the choppy water and into the smooth water, because we now have the hardware that lets us run essentially these very resource-intensive databases and the apps on 'em, so that we no longer have to worry, are we overtaxing the infrastructure? Is it too expensive to outfit the hardware for a customer? So his, when he talks about rethinking the apps, he, like, "We don't have to have separate analytical systems "from the transaction systems. "And not only that. "We can simplify because we don't have to have" what he's calling aggregates. In other words, we don't have to, we don't, let's say, take an order and all the line items in an order, and then pre-aggregate all the orders. It's, like, we do that on the fly. And that simplifies things a lot. Then, not only that. Because we have all this memory, we can do, like, machine learning very inexpensively. >> A whole another chapter in his keynote was about modern software design. A lot of really interesting things, especially in the context of SAP, which was a big, monolithic application, hard to learn, hard to understand, hard to manage. I remember a start, that were were (mumbles) using is a core V to C commerce engine. And to add 16 colors of shirts times 10 neck sizes and 10 sleeve sizes was just a nightmare. You're not going to have some merchant that works at Macy's to put that into the system. But he talked about intelligent design, which is pretty interesting. We're hearing that more and more in a lot of work done over at Stanford, intelligent design. He's talking about no manuals. He's, like, "If I can't figure it out, "I need to understand." He talked about intelligent applications that continue to learn as the applications get more data. And specifically, the fact that machines don't get bored testing 100s or 1,000s or even millions of scenarios and grinding through those things to get the intelligence to start to learn about what's going on. So a very different kind of an application, both development, delivery approach, than what we think of historically as R3. >> Yeah, like the design thinking was, they have this new UI called Fiori. I mean, if you go back 10, 15 years, let's say, when they started, 15 years, when they started trying to put browser-based user interfaces on what was a client server system, they had 10s and 10s of 1,000s of forms-based screens. They had to convert them one by one to work in a browser. I think what he's saying now is, they can mock up these prototypes in a simple tool and they can essentially recreate the UI. It's not going to be the exact same forms, but they can recreate the UI to the entire system so that it's much more accessible. On the machine learning front, he was talking about one example was, like, matching up invoices that you going to have to pay. So that you going to train the system with all these invoices. It learns how to essentially do the OCR, recognize the text. And it gets smarter to the point where it can do 95% of it without-- >> Human interaction. >> Yeah, human inter-. >> You know, it's interesting, we were at Service Now last week, as well. And they are using AI to do relatively mundane tasks that people don't want to do, that machines are good at, things like categorization and assignment and things that are relatively straightforward processes but very time-consuming and again, if you can get to a 70% solution, 80% solution, 90% solution, to free people up to do other things on the stuff that's relatively routine. Right, if the invoice matches the anticipated bill in the system, pay it. Does somebody really have to look at it? So I thought that was really interesting. Something I want to dig in with you, he talked a lot about data, where the data lives, data gravity. He even said that he fought against data warehousing in the 90s and lost. A lot of real passionate conversation about where is data and how should apps interact with data, and he's really against this data replication and a data lake and moving this stuff all around, but having it kind of central. Want to just get your thoughts on that history. What do you think he means now, and where's that going? >> It's a great question. There's a lot of history behind that. Not everyone would remember, but there was an article in Fortune Magazine in the late 90s, where it described him getting up in a small conference of software CEOs, enterprise software CEOs, and he said basically, "We're going to grind you into dust, "because everything comes in our system integrated. "And if you leave it up to the customer "to try and stitch all this stuff together, "it's going to be a nightmare." And that was back when everyone was thinking, "One company can't do it all." And the reality was, that was the point in time where we really had given go past go, collect $200, to every best-of-breed little software vendor. It did prove out over the next decade that the fewer integration points there were, that it meant much lower cost of ownership for the customer. Not only lower cost of ownership, but better business process integration, 'cause you had the (mumbles) integration. I bring this up because, well, actually, I was there when he said it. (laughs) But I bring it up because he's essentially saying the same thing now, which is, "We'll put all the machine learning technology, "the building blocks, in SAP. "If you need any contextual data, "bring it into our system. "You don't want to take our data out "and put it into all these other machine learning programs "'cause there's security issues, "there's, again, the breakdown "in the business process integration." He did acknowledge that with data warehouses, if you have 100s of other sources, yes, you may need a external data warehouse. But I think that he's going to find with machine learning the greatest value with the data that you use in machine learning is when you're always adding richer and richer contextual data. That contextual data means you're getting it from other sources. I don't think he's going to win this battle in terms of keeping most of it within SAP. >> It kind of bring up this other intersection that he talked about. In now delivering SAP as a cloud application, he said, "Now we have to learn how to run our application, "not our customers," a very different way of looking at the world. The other thing that piggybacks off of what you just said is, we've seen this trend towards configuration, not customization. It used to be probably, back in the days, if you had the big SI's, they loved customization, 'cause it's a huge project, multi-years. I used to talk to one of our center partners, like, "How do you manage a multi-year SAP project "when most the people that started it "probably aren't even there the day you finish it?" But he had a specific quote I wanted to call out now, what you just said, is that he said, "Only our customers have the data, "the desire, and the domain knowledge "to make the most out of it." So it's a really interesting recognition that yes, you want customers to have this configuration option. But we keep hearing more and more, it's config, not-- >> Both: Customization. >> For upgrades and all these other things, which now when you go to a cloud-based application, that becomes significant. You don't want customizations, 'cause that's just complicates everything. >> You can't. I don't know if he said this today. I guess he must have said it today. But basically, when you're in the cloud, I forgot the terminology for the different instances. But when you're in, like, the SAP cloud, you can only configure. There's essentially a set of greater constraints on you. When you go to the other end of the spectrum, let's say you run it in your own data center, you can customize it. But when you're running it, essentially sharing the infrastructure, you're constrained. You're much more constrained. And they build it for that environment first. >> Right. But at the same time, they've got the data. Again, this has come up with other SAS companies that we've talked to, is hopefully, their out of the box business process covers 90% of the basics. I think there's been a realization on the business analyst side that we think we're special, but really most of the time, order to cash is order to cash. So if you got to tweak your own internal process to match best-of-breed, do it. You're much better off than trying to shape that computing system to fill your little corner cases. >> It's funny that you mention that, because what happened in the 90s was that by far the biggest influencers in the purchase decision and the overall lifecycle of the app were the big system integrators. They could typically collect $10 in implementation and change management fees for every dollar of license that went to the software vendors. So they had a huge incentive to tell the customer, "Well, you really should customize this "around your particular needs," because they made all the money off that. >> Right, right. Another huge theme. Again, it was such a great keynote. We watch a lot of keynotes, and I have a very high bar for what I consider a great keynote. This was a great keynote by a smart guy who knows his stuff and got history. But another theme was just really about AI. He talked a little bit, which I thought was great. Nobody talks about the fact that airplanes have been flying themselves for a very long time. So it is coming. I think he even said, maybe this is the age of AI. But there always have to be some humans involved. It's not a complete hand-over of control. But it is coming, and it's coming very, very quickly. >> I actually thought that they were a little further behind than might expected, considering that it's been years now that people in software have seen this coming. But they have in the dozens of applications or functions right now that are machine learning enabled. But if you look out at their roadmap, where they get to predictive accounting, customer behavior segmentation, profile completeness for in sales, solution recommenders, model training infrastructure for the base software foundation, they have a pretty rich roadmap. But I guess I would have thought it'd be a little farther along. But then Oracle isn't really any farther along. (mumbles) has done some work for HR. For whatever reason, I think that enterprise application vendors, I think they found this challenging for two reasons. On the technical side, machine learning is very different from the traditional analytics they did, which was really essentially OLAP, you know, business intelligence. This requires the data scientists and the white lab coats and instead of backward-looking business intelligence this forward-looking predictive analytics. The other thing is, I think you sell this stuff differently, which is, when it was business intelligence, you're basically selling reporting on what happened to department heads or function leaders, whereas when you're selling predictive capabilities, it's a little more transformative and you're not selling efficiency, which is what these applications have always, that's been their value preposition. You're selling transformational outcomes, which is a different sort of selling motion. >> It's funny, I heard a funny quote the other day. We used to look backwards for the sample of the data. (laughs thinly) Now we're in real time with-- >> Both: All the data. >> Very different situation-- >> And forward-looking. >> And forward-looking as well, with the predictive. >> That's a great quote, yeah. >> Again, he touched on so many things. But one of the things he brought up is Tesla. He actually said he has two Teslas, or he has a second Tesla. And there was question and answer afterwards really about the Tesla, not as the technology platform. And he poked fun at Germans. He said Germans have problems with simplicity. He referenced, I presume, a Mercedes or a Porsche, you know, the perfectly ergonomically placed buttons and switches. He goes, "You sit in a Tesla "and it just all comes up on the touch screen. "And if you want to do an update overnight, "they update your software, "and now you have the newer version of the car," versus the Mercedes, where it takes 'em three years to redesign the buttons and switches. I thought that was interesting. Then one of the Q&A people said, "But what about the buying experience? "If you (mumbles) ever bought a Tesla, "it's a very different experience "than buying a car." How does that really apply to selling software? It was pretty interesting. He said we're not there yet. But he has clearly grasped on, it's a new world and it's a new way to interact with the customers, kind of like his no manuals comment, that Tesla is defining a new way to buy a car, experience a car, upgrade a car. >> Operate it. >> At the same time, he got the crazy mode, fanatical mode, like, ludicrous mode, so that he could stop and tell the Porsche guys that you're falling behind further every single day. So I thought, really interesting, bringing that kind of consumer play and kind of a cutting edge automotive example into what was historically pretty stodgy enterprise software space. >> You know, it's funny, I listened when you're saying that. That was almost like the day one objective from SalesForce, which was, we want an enterprise app like Sebol, but we want an eBay-like, or Yahoo-like experience. And that did change the experience for buying it and for operating it. I think that was almost 20 years ago, where that was Marc Benioff's objective and he's saying it's easier to do that for CRM, but it's now time to bring that to ERP. >> The other thing he brought in which I was happy, being a Bay Area resident, is the Sharks. Because he's a part owner of San Josey Sharks, obviously it's SAP Center now, also known as the Shark Tank. It used to be owned by another technology company. But he made just a funny thing. "I like hockey, so I should like SAP," and he was talking about the analysis of how often the logos come up on the telecast et cetera. But the thing that struck me is, he said the analysis is actually now faster than the game. Pretty interesting way to think about this data in flow, in that the analysis coming out of the game that feeds Vegas, it feeds all these stat lines, it feeds fantasy, it feeds all this stuff, it feeds the advertising purchase and the ROI on my logo, is it in the corner, is it on the ice, is it in the middle, is actually moving faster than the hockey game. And hockey is a pretty fast game. Very different world in which we live, even on the mar-tech side. >> That was an example of one of the machine learning-type apps, because I think in their case, they were using, I think, Google image recognition technology to parse out essentially all the logos and see what type of impact your brand made relative to your purchase. >> I mean, I could go on and on. I've so many notes. Again, I live tweeted a lot of it, you know, he's just such a humble guy. He's a smart guy. He comes at it with a technology background, but he said we're a little bit slower than we'd like, he talked about some things taking longer than he thought they would. But he also now sees around the corner, that we are very quickly going to be in this age of infinite compute, and we are already in an age of, no one's reading manuals. Just seemed very kind of customer-centric, we're no longer the super-smart Germans that, "We'll do it our way or the highway, "and you will adapt your process to us," but really customer-centric point of view, design thinking, talked about sharing their roadmap as far out in advance as possible. I think he specifically, when he got questioned on design thinking, he's, like, "You know, the studies show that a collaborative effort "yields better results. "It's no longer, 'We're the smartest guy in the room "'and we're going to do it this way "'and you're going to adapt.'" So really progressive. >> And he talked about, with Concur, he said their UI is so easy that you really don't need a manual. In fact, if you do, you failed. And I think what he's trying to say is, we're going to take that iterative prototyping capability agile development and extend it to the rest of the ERP family. With their Fiori UI and the tools that build those screens that it'll make that possible. >> You've handled CAP. We don't spend enough investment on design in UI, 'cause it is such an important piece of the puzzle. But George, we're running out of time here. I want to give you the last word. You've been paying attention to SAP for a very long time. Hasso's terrific, but then Hasso gets off the stage and he said, "I don't run the company any more. "I only make recommendations." As you look at SAP, and Bill McDermott was yesterday, are they changing? Are they just stuck in an innovator's dilemma because they just make so much money on their historical business? Or are they really changing? What's your take as they develop, where they are now, and what do you see going forward for SAP? >> Well it's a really good question. I would say, I look at the value of the business processes that they are either augmenting or automating. I hesitate to say automate because, as he said, you still want the pilot in the cockpit. >> Jeff: In proximity to take control. >> Right. And he was, like, "Look, when we do the invoice matching, "it's not like we're going to get 100% right. "We're going to get it," I think he was saying, like, in the labs right now it's, like, 94% right. So we're going to make you more productive, we're not going to eliminate that job. But when you're doing invoice matching, that's not a super high value business process. If you're doing something where you're predicting churn and making a next best offer to a customer, that's a higher value process. Or if you have a multi-touchpoint commerce solution where you can track the customer, whether it's mobile, whether he's coming via chat, whether he's in the store, and you're able to see his history or her history and what's most appropriate given their context at any one moment, that's higher value. And then it's super high value to be able to take that back upstream towards, "Okay, here's where the inventory is. "I have some in this store. "I can't fulfill that clothing item directly from the store, "but I can fulfill it from this one," or, "I have it in another warehouse," when you have that level of awareness and integration, that's high value. >> Yeah, but I want to push back a little bit on you, George, 'cause I do think the invoice ma-, if he can automatically match 94% of the invoices, that is tremendous value. I just think it's so creative when you apply this machine learning to tasks that feel relatively mundane. But if you're speeding your cash flow along, if you get 94% of your invoices done one day faster and you're a multimillion dollar business, what is the direct dollar impact on the bottom line, like, immediately? It's huge. And then you can iterate and move into other processes. I think what's termed a low value transaction is actually a lot higher value than people give it credit. It's just like again, another one we hear about all the time, automation of password reset. Some of these service desks, password reset, I heard a stat, and one of them was 70% of the calls are password reset. So if you could automate password reset, sounds kind of silly and mundane, oh my gosh, it's like 70% of your calls. It's humongous. >> I hear what you're saying. Let me give you another counter example, which was, I think he brought this up. I don't know if it was today or when Michael Dell spoke, which was that Dell's revolution wasn't that they were more efficient than doing what Compaq did. It's that they had a different business model, which was specifically, they got paid before they even procured or assembled the components. >> Or paid for them, right? >> George: Yes, yes. >> They had no inventory carry costs. >> In fact, that meant their working capital, their working capital needs were negative. In fact, the bigger they got, the more money they collected before they had to spend it. That's a different business model. That wasn't automating the invoice matching. That was, we have such good systems that we don't even have to pay for them and then assemble the stuff until after the customer gave us their credit card. >> Right, right, right. >> I think those are the things that new types of applications can make possible. >> Right. Well, we see it time and time again. It's all about scale, it's all about finding inefficiencies, and there's a lot more inefficiencies around than people give credit, as Uber showed with a lot of cars that sit in driveways and Amazon and the public clouds are showing with a lot of inefficient, not used utilization and private data centers. So the themes go on and on, and they're pretty universal. So, exciting keynote. Any last comment before we sign off for today? >> I guess we want to take a close look at Oracle next and see how their roadmap looks like in terms of applying these new technologies, iOT, machine learning, block chain. Because all of these can remake how you build a business. >> All right, that's George Gilbert from Wikibon. I'm Jeff Frick from the CUBE. We are covering ongoing coverage of SAP SAPPHIRE 2017. Thanks for watching, we'll be back with more after this short break. Thanks. (lively music)

>> Voiceover: Live from Orlando Florida it's TheCUBE covering SAPPHIRE NOW. Headlines sponsored by SAP-100 cloud the leader in platform as a service with support from Consulate the cloud internet company. Now here are your hosts John Furrier and Peter Mars. >> Peter: Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in Orlando Florida for SAP SAPPHIRE NOW SiliconANGLE Medias flexure program TheCUBE where we go out to events and extract the signal for the noise. I'm John Furrier the host and my co-host Peter Burris head of research in SiliconANGLE Media general manager of Wikibon Research. Want to give a shout-out to our sponsors without them we would not be here SAP100 Cloud platform, Consul Inc, Capgemini, EMC thanks for your support and we got 4 over 40 videos go to siliconANGLE at youtube.com/siliconangle for all the videos. Our next guest is Bronwyn Hastings who is the senior vice-president of Global Strategic Service Partners global channels all the top in integrations. Welcome to TheCUBE. >> Bronwyn: Thank you, thanks for having me here today. >> So it's great to have the boss come on we've had a lot of the folks from your group come in certainly a lot of your partners. We've had Capgemini, we've had Accenture, we've had a bunch of folks come through EY, I think Deloitte and anyway Infosys came on too Deloitte was really the only one and PwC were the only ones I didn't see here. Now we'll get to them later but the message is clear. They have to focus on innovation. >> Bronwyn: Yes. >> Otherwise they are going to get put out of business 'cause right behind them warming up in the sidelines in the ecosystem is their replacement potentially. This is an interesting dynamic you got going on here you growing your future in the ecosystem putting the system integrators I wouldn't say on notice but like hey get busy. Great system model being and they are responding what's your thoughts on some of the feedback you've heard? >> Thank you. This is a really interesting question because I think there are two things happening one is that customers are asking for the innovation and asking us and the partners what's the way forward? They are hearing all this talk about digital they want to know how did this become more relevant to their customers in a quick and more dynamic way. And they are asking both of us that question. The first thing that we do with our partners in this instance is we look at where are the innovation areas one that make them different? How do they get chosen to actually add value to their customers? And these partnerships that you've mentioned actually do it in different ways some of them represent themselves or talk to the customer through business transformations so they talk about what are you trying to achieve? Where is your future? You know the normal business conversation to find out how that innovation can happen and what do they need to be relevant to the customer? The other partners have a look at it and say how do I be part of this world that's changing but then bring quick value to the customer? How do I accelerate that value in quicker chance? And therefore the customer gets what they need in quicker time frames and then others say I'm going to look at this innovation and what's going to really set me apart as a specialist and that's where I'm going to go. So these partners right now are looking at where is their place in this and how do they transform themselves to actually bring value to the customer. And luckily for us we have a lot of those innovation areas that they can make those choices so they can choose >> John: They pick their swim lanes? >> Bronwyn: Swim lanes, focus areas. >> Differentiation. >> Differentiation all of that to be part of the new conversation as well. >> Peter: But what are the duties of the platform strategy that you guys are putting forward? And the ease with which using things like the Apple partnership that you have of creating new great software is you've a lot of this partners buy competition and buying these different alternatives are going to be forced to really focus on the value and their distinction that they need to provide to customers. It's going to be very interesting over the next few years to see these companies that have historically for you know long-term lock-in like relationships have to themselves become real nimble and become really catalyst to thought leaders for renovation of the marketplace because so much of the enabling technology is going to make it more or easier and more likely of bringing success. Do you agree with that? >> I find your comments very interesting actually so where I agree totally is that but I'd a piece. We look at it as though people have competition here actually a number of these companies already have practices or developments or innovations using some of the technology components. We announced Apple, there is a Microsoft announcement all of these areas that you would not normally see all of a sudden we've made these announcements and now that we're with these partners same partners that we've worked with for a long time come to us and say well actually we've got an area that develops an iOS for Apple already because our customers needed us to do that. Then we come to another area and they say but you brought out a new user experience through Fiori so we've got those development tools. And now if you bring out something like your 100 Cloud platform which allows us to build extensibility and these three things together start to actually build even stronger innovation so it's actually had a magnifying effect >> John: Exactly. >> Even for us you know we. >> John: Because you've already had those practices that were not being tapped into so to speak. >> Bronwyn: Not tapped into not brought in and integrated in the same way. But now because we're doing co-development we are doing co-innovation or integration processes actually it strengthens their capability to use the innovation and make it something even more. For me you can hear my passion in this one >> John: I guess. >> For me the excitement in this is that people really now see ways of innovating further and customers see that as valuable because they're getting what they want out of these innovations as well. >> John: Well that you mentioned the co-innovation I want to talk about that. That seems to be an SAP playbook even going back to the seven years that you started covering SAPPHIRE there has always been geeky developer focus which is a good thing we like that. But now simplicity is the theme once you have results but co-development's been a big part of it we were talking with EY for instance and they have a co-development on a lab being put down in I think Atlanta area. They have Accenture's got a zillion data scientists so you start to see this they are romping up they are not just about delivery any more. >> Bronwyn: No. No. >> The old way was delivery back in the contract. >> Yeah. >> Where is the value in your mind for these partners? Is it the co-innovation? Is it the data science? All the above? Is there one thing that pops out at you that you see rising to the top in the terms of trending? >> I would say there are two or three things well to one is we've got a large install base and all of the move that we've got to the newer generations are the S4100 environments. These partners actually have strengths of their own which they have been known for. E&Y has their strength that they're known for in the market with or without us they have got a strength. What these things are allowing them to do is to take some of that shift into the newer technologies and their strength and then build extensible innovation. And what I mean by that is they can say okay I'm strong in finance so I'm going to choose a finance topic on the 100 club platform environment and I'm going to build my differentiation on that. >> John: Their domain expertise map right into it >> Their demand expertise right into it squarely into it really create a compelling thing for them creates the value for the customer and it really establishes this innovation so that would be one point. You come back to the data scientists then you take it a step further you've got your differentiation. Now where else can you excel in? Where else can you bring the things that would make fun ends completely different? Like the digital boardroom that you're seeing that is being created while it's through predictable analytics it's through data scientists type of things so they add in these other services now that still play to some of their core strengths. I'm finding that it's actually creating the next platform for their own differentiation and value and it can incorporate these insights into it. >> John: Yes as you're saying it brings the swim lanes concept the differentiation so I got to thaw up on that and because Peter brought the question earlier today about when you brought up the question around partners working together. >> Peter: Yeah. >> So this comes back down to a lot of (mumbles) >> Peter: By the way for anybody who is wondering thunder and rain opportunity is raining everywhere. >> John: The cloud is raining opportunities the thunder the clouds are moving over us it's an (mumbles) >> Peter: The cloud is here >> (mumbles) Okay so back to this point. I differentiate it here once it has been the greatest has been the greater but also on these bigger projects you might have to work with the other guy. >> Bronwyn: That's correct. >> So how is that playing out 'cause they have to share obviously data might be shared but how is that playing out for them where do you see that trend going obviously probably more of that not less of it. >> Bronwyn: Yeah so what I'm finding is people are also choosing the type of work they want to do and then leveraging the ecosystem for the other types of work they want to do so people rather say you know I choose to do transformational type of things but if I am taking the lead on something I'm going to be able to partner with other partners in this ecosystem that complement me. I actually think it is complementing or if there is a specialist area they can bring someone else in so I actually think the complementary nature of things are getting stronger in some areas. Of course they still stand alone business that they do as well. Second thing I'd say is and I'll add this in because it's not only about the partnerships it's about how do we work with the partnerships and you would have heard some of our announcements around SAP S4 value assurance programs. And what that means is the customers are saying we want skin in the game from SAP too the partners are saying actually this is valuable to us too that you've got your stamp of approval on what's going on so we've created these service offerings that are module arised that partners can include and it's anything from just check my scope is right or the journey that we're going on and our transformation the mapping is correct through to more custom services and then it also including that in their offering as complementary so that customers feel comfortable with where they're going as well so that's all coming together as well. >> Peter: I want to clear out something around here because we are research's very strong sponsors we talk about the three Cs of digital transformation. Context. What are you going to do? >> Bronwyn: Yep. >> Community, who are you going to do it with? >> Bronwyn: With. Yep. >> Capabilities. How are you going to get the capabilities so that you do what you are going to do with who you are going to do it with better than everybody else every time? Does that resonate? >> Bronwyn: Absolutely! Absolutely! For me it's a content context all of those sorts of things. The customers are asking and you would have heard it around here. I want to be here how do I get there what's the time frame and who's capable of doing it actually? The partner community is really well enabled but they also know that this is a journey of new technology areas, shifts in the market. >> Peter: New processes. >> New processes so trying to simplify digital processes to really get the true value of digital so they want people to say we are in. And these are the ways that these things happen and you can solidify it together as well. >> John: And the keywords are that they are enabled. >> Enabled. >> That's there because the platform has to be enabling. >> Enabling. >> Otherwise it doesn't work. And then the tools and the tooling has to kind of got to be there. Is there a process out there and this is what we talked about Peter brought this up yesterday it was a really great observation. In old days look backwards known processes unknown technologies and then they evolve and you automate those processes you have known and now you have unknown processes developing with known technology. >> Yes. >> What are some of those new unknowns is IoT a good example? Or if you ask what other process is there? >> Peter: (mumbles) just unlimited things that we could be doing. >> Things that are like not fully like known that's going to happen but like you can't say that (mumbles) is a clear process for every customer it might be different. >> Bronwyn: I actually think the way that I would answer that and sort of look at that topic is as the transformation to digital is happening I'm almost seeing that all the customers are testing the processes. It's not like everything's a stable process any more they are saying what processes 'cause if you just replicate what was there before you're not getting any gain. You could have the most beautiful fore intent and all these processes remain the same and nothing's actually changed except the user experience. Or you can change all the processes but the user experience doesn't change so these two things are coming together and the process has to be re-looked at. >> Peter: But the customer is becoming part of that process story. >> Process. Absolutely. >> And that's the thing that's most unknown. >> Absolutely. >> And so how customers go about catalyzing those processes through those beautiful user experiences is really what we want to do when we think about engaging customers in a security way. >> Correct. And that's the way really the services piece comes back into play. It's really testing what do you still need or can we make this a much more streamlined simpler process that gives you all the benefits the cost benefits, the user experience which one of those do we want to do? I can say this is where the services that the partners really bring knowledge experience as well into the same equation. >> John: Bronwyn Hastings SVP at Global Services and the third part is final point I'll give you the final word on our wrap up here day three of SAPPHIRE. Take a minute to explain to the folks out there what's going on for SAP with respect to all these system integrators what's your plans, what's the focus, what's the dynamics. >> I think the three areas that we focus on within is digital transformation and the ability for us to bring digital to the customer. Why I take that approach first is this is a transformation time that the market's changing and the customers need that guidance into that process so one is digital transformation. And depending on all of that is that we are asking for the innovation that we've spoken a lot about here is innovating to the future not creating what's gone by not replicating but innovating the new digital world with us and part of that is simplification for the customers. Our work with the system integrators right now is focus on the customer, bring value and it's innovate together that's what we do. >> John: Well, thanks so much for your time and welcome to being a CUBE alumni. >> Thank you. >> Here on SiliconANGLE Media as a CUBE. We are live in Atlanta for day three three days of wall to wall coverage. Thanks for watching that you are watching theCUBE.