>>live from Las Vegas. It's the Cube covering Splunk dot com. 19. Brought to You by spunk >>Hey, welcome back, everyone. We're live here in Las Vegas for Splunk dot com. I'm John Ferrier with Q two great guests. Tim would Bury, director of state and local affairs for Splunk and Charlie Crocker, CEO Zone Haven. Very innovative. Start up doing some incredible things with Splunk Ventures Financing Summerlee Financing around Really check for good guys. Welcome. Thank you, Charlie. First, explain what you guys are doing real quick because I think this is a great example of what I've been seeing now for two years now. But now, in the past year, renaissance of entrepreneurial activity around mission driven tech for good, where entrepreneurs are using the cloud and sass models and platforms like Splunk to stand up Mission Value Commission >>value. I like the term. Explain what you're doing. So simply put, we're building in evacuation planning and support to. So right now, there are more stronger fires happening. Over the last five years, we've had more than half of California's most destructive wildfires happened just in the last five years. So it's it's mission critical that we figure this out. Now the's fires air. So big goal is really just to get people out of harm's way. And that's a difficult job to figure out at three in the morning with a map on the hood of a pickup truck. So we're building Zillah ways for fire. There's no ways for five ways has got public safety >>people no ways. But the thing is, is that yesterday I was watching on TV and Pacific Palisades, California air drop of water on the canyon, right before house, and I see the people running right. You like running for their lives. There was a serious business. Exactly. You guys are trying to provide system >>we're trying to do. What we've built are a set of zones, the ability for the Fire Department, law enforcement and, oh yes, to work on customizing hyper local evacuation plans, hyperlocal down to the neighborhood level and then we're scaling that statewide. So how do you make sure that this fire department on these three law enforcement groups are coordinated before and how do they have the conversation with community before the event happens? If we can save five minutes at the time, the event happens, we're going to save lives. >>So this is really about making efficiency around the first responders on the scene from leveraging data which maps or their >>maps, data dynamic data, telemetry, data where the fire's gonna go simulations for how the fire could potentially grow. Who needs to get out of harm's way first. What's that gonna do to the traffic and Road Network? Talk >>about the original story. Then we get to this plug involvement, the origination stories you're sitting around. You're talking to friends in the business. >>So we have colleagues and friends that are in the business and many of them, you know, from the Silicon Valley these guys are innovative leaders in in fire on. They've got a lot of really good ideas on how to make their jobs better. >>They >>don't have a tech team, they don't have a tech arms. So we literally said, Look, we'll come in and we'll make work what your vision is, and that started to expand on. Now we started to move from these smaller jurisdictions. Too much larger >>jurisdictions. Data is driving the future. That's a tagline I'm reading. I've seen the new branding by the way, the new brains very strong, by the way. Love it, Thank you. So this is a good example of data driven value constituency fire professionals. That's all they think about is how to make people save put, get in harm's way to try to solve the fires. They don't have tech teams. You don't have a data center they don't have, like with boot up a consulting. To come into a waterfall of a meeting by that sign is just, Yeah, you can't just do that. They can't stand up. How did you guys get involved in this? It's data driven, obviously. What's the story? >>Way, Say, dated everything. We really mean it. It's really you know, it's a personal story for me. I am on the government affairs team here. It's flowing, so I manage relationships with governors and mayors, and these are the issues that they care about right When the city's burning down, the mayor cares about that. The governor, This is you know, one of the governor in California's major initiatives is trying to find solutions on wildfires. I met Charlie, my hometown. Orinda, California Aren't Fire Chief in that town was one of sort of the outside advisers working with Charlie on this idea. And we're and I met him at a house party where the fire chief was telling me to trim my trees back and shrubs back. And then I was at a conference three days later that same fire chief, Dave Liniger. I was on a panel with folks from a super computer lab and NASA and M i t was like, you know, my fire chiefs, Still the smartest guy in that panel. I gotta meet this guy. A few weeks later, we were literally in the field doing these concepts with sensors and data. Super savvy folks. Some of the other folks from Cal Fire there. Dr. Cox was with us today. Here on. You know, we've just been collaborating the whole time and seeing you know that that Splunk and really put some fire power power behind these guys and we see like, Look, they've got the trust of these customers and we need to make sure this idea happens. It's a great idea, and it's gonna save lives. >>It's crazy way did a test burn where we run a small burn on a day where we're very confident it won't grow. Put the sensors out right next to a school in Arena. It was his kid's school. >>Yeah, I have a kindergartner that goes to that school, so >>it's slightly personal for you. I could >>be I could be said that this is just me protecting my own. But it is something that I think will save lives around the world. >>First of all, this, there is huge human safety issues on both sides. The ire safety put in harm's way. Those professionals go out all day long, putting their lives at risk to save human, the other human beings. And so that's critical. But if you look at California, this other impact cost impact rolling blackouts because they can't instrument the lines properly just because of the red red flag warnings off wind. I mean, I could be disrupted businesses, disruptive safety. So so PG and e's not doing us any favors either. Sound so easy. Just fix it. >>It sounds easy, but I think with be Jeannie, it's interesting way do need to prevent wildfires and really any way that we can. But like you said, if we could bring more data to the problem maybe we can have the blackouts be smaller. You know, they don't have to be a CZ big. >>There's certainly no lack of motivation to find solutions to this issue. There are lives on the line. There's billions of dollars on the line that these types of solutions own haven a part of part of what is going to fix it. But there are many very large stake holders that need these solutions very quickly. >>Well, you know the doers out there making it happen of the people in the front lines on the people they're trying to protect our cities, our citizens on this sounds like a great example of tech for good, where you guys are doing an entrepreneurial efforts with people who need it. There's a business, miles, not free non profit. You're gonna get paid. It's a business model behind. >>There is a business bottle behind it, and I think the value proposition is only beginning to be understood, right? There were so many missions in so many different ways. Wildfires are massive. You can come at him from satellite, come at him from on the ground. We're working with the people on the ground who need to get people out of harm's way. We're focusing on making their jobs easier, so they're safer and they get people out >>more quickly. You guys in the tech business, we always talking. We go. These events were re platforming our business. A digital transformation. You know all the buzz, right? Right. This is actually an acute example of what I would call re platforming life because you're taking a really life example. Fire California Fire forest There, out in the trees trimming thing is all real life. This isn't like, you know, some digital website. >>We certainly I mean, I've been in the data business for more more time than I can remember, and we've got the tools, tools, like Splunk tools. Like Amazon Web service is we've got the data. There's satellites all over. We've got smart people in machine learning way. Need to start applying that to do good, right? It exists. We do not need to go invent new technology right now in order to solve this problem, >>Charlie, really inspired by your position and your your posture. I want you to spend more time talking about that feature because you're an entrepreneur. You're not just detect for good social justice Warrior, You're an experienced data entrepreneur, applying it to a social good project. It's not like I'm gonna change the world, you actually doing it. There's a path for other entrepreneurs to make money to do good things fast. Talk about the journey because with cloud computing, it's not like a 10 year horizon. There's a path for immediate benefit. I >>mean the pat. So I mean in terms of creating a profitable venture. We're a young company way feel like we have a good, good direction way feel like there is a market for this way. Also feel like there's public private partnerships Here is well, I think that we can take the same solutions that we have here and apply them to campuses. You could apply it to, you know, a biotech campus, a university campus. You could apply it to a military base, right? There's insurance could be involved in this because insurance risk people are losing insurance in their homes as well. So you know, there's a lot of different angles that we can take for this exact same. Say >>that what's the expression dated to everything. Yet this is an example of taking data on applying it to some use case. >>A very specific cool evacuation neighborhood evacuation and really building the community fabric so that people take care of each other and can get out together. Where are the vulnerable populations in that zone? Who's gonna go respond to those If if the fire department can't come in, right, How are we gonna get those people out? >>I love the vision. You guys were also for putting some cash in their spunk. Ventures. Congratulations. Talk about the product. Where you guys at using Splunk. You putting data sensors out there, You leveraging existing data. Both take us through some of the nuts and bolts of what's going on the >>price. So part of it is building out some data sets. So there are some data sets that don't exist. But the government and the counties and the private sector have built out a huge corpus of data around where the buildings are, where the people are, where the cell phones are, where the traffic is. So we're able to leverage that information as we have it today. Technology. We're using the Amazon stack. It's easy for us to spin up databases. It's easy for us to build out and expand, as as we grow online with Splunk were able to have a place for all this real time data toe land. And for us to be able to build a P I's to pull it out very >>simply having a conversation with Teresa Carlson, who runs Amazon Web sites. Public sector variety of these things of projects are popping up. Check for good. That's for profit. It helps people and the whole idea of time to value with cloud and flunks. Platform of leveraging diverse data making Data Realtor whether it's real time, time, serious data or using a fabric surge or accelerated processing capabilities is that you can get the value quicker. So if you got an idea for you to wait two years of just e whether it was it a hit or not, you can illiterate now. So this idea of the start of agile startup is now being applied to these public sadly like things. So it's everything >>you spot on, and you know the unique element of Splunk with some of these data sources way don't necessarily know which ones are gonna be the right ones. We're talking about satellite data, sensor data. Some of this on. Part of it is we're building an outdoor smoke alarm, right? No one's ever done that before. So, you know, with court nature of Splunk technology being able to easily, you know, try to see if that is the right data source is critical, giving people the man with two go try to make this happen. >>You guys are a great example of zone haven, Charlie, You and your team of what I call a reconfiguration of the value creation of startups. You don't need to have full stack develop. You got half the stack and Amazon domain expertise in the inertial properties flipped around from being software on this intellectual mode to domain specific intellectual property. You took the idea of firefighters and you're implementing their idea into your domain expertise using scale and data to create a viable, busy >>other thing. I want to throw in there, though, and this is something that people often forget a big part of our investments going to be in user experience. This thing needs to be usable by the masses. It cannot be a complicated solution. >>You X is the new software data is the new code, but anyone can start a company if they have an innovative idea. You don't have to have a unique algorithm that could be a use case to solve a problem. >>If you have a very Calgary them, you can put it on Splunk Platform or Amazons platform and scale it. >>This is going to change, I think, the economic landscape of what I call tech for good now. But it's entrepreneurship redefined. You guys are great working example of that. Congratulations on the vision. Thank you to you and your team. Thanks for coming on the Q. Thanks for sharing. It's great to be here. It's a great example of what's going on with data for everything. Of course, this acute were cute for everything. We go to all the events of smart people and get the data and share that with you here in Las Vegas for dot com. 10 years of conference our seventh year, I'm John Ferrier. We'll be back with more coverage after this short break

>> From the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering AT&T Spark. Now here's Jeff Frick. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at San Francisco, at the historic Palace of Fine Arts, it's a beautiful spot, it's redone, they moved Exploratorium out a couple years ago, so now it's in a really nice event space, and we're here for the AT&T Spark Event, and the conversation's all around 5G. But we're excited to have our first guest, and he's working on something that's a little bit tangential to 5G-related, but not absolutely connected, but really important work, it's Chris Sambar, he is the SVP of FirstNet at AT&T, Chris, great to see you. >> Thanks Jeff, great to be here, I appreciate it. >> Yeah, so you had a nice Keynote Presentation, talking about FirstNet. So for people I've missed, that aren't familiar, what is AT&T FirstNet? >> Sure, I'll give a quick background. As I was mentioning up there, tomorrow is the 17-year Anniversary of 9/11. So 17 years ago tomorrow, a big problem in New York City. Lots of first responders descended on the area. All of them were trying to communicate with each other, they were trying to use their radios, which they're you know, typically what you see a first responder using, the wireless networks in the area. Unfortunately challenges, it wasn't working. They were having trouble communicating with each other, their existing wireless networks were getting congested, and so the 9/11 Commission came out with a report years later, and they said we need a dedicated communications network, just for First Responders. So they spun all this up and they said, we're going to dedicate some Spectrum, 20 megahertz of D-Class Spectrum, which is really prime Spectrum. Seven billion dollars and we're going to set up this Federal entity, called the FirstNet Authority, and they're going to create a Public Safety Network across America. So FirstNet Authority spent a few years figuring out how to do it, and they landed on what we have today, which was a Public/Private Partnership, between AT&T, and Public Safety throughout America, and we're building them a terrific network across the country. It is literally a separate network so when I, I think of wireless in America, I think of four main commercial carriers, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint. This is the 5th carrier, this is Public Safety's Wireless Network just for them. >> So when you say an extra network, so it's a completely separate, obviously you're leveraging infrastructure, like towers and power and those types of things. But it's a completely separate network, than the existing four that you mentioned. >> Yeah, so if you walk into our data centers throughout the country, you're going to see separate hardware, physical infrastructure that is just for FirstNet, that's the core network just for this network. On the RAN, the Radio Access Network, we've got antennas that have Band 14 on them, that's Public Safety's Band, dedicated just for them when they need it. So yeah, it's literally a physically separate network. The SIM card that goes into a FirstNet device, is a different SIM card than our commercial users would use, because it's separate. >> So one of the really interesting things about 5G, and kind of the evolution of wireless is, is taking some of the load that has been taken by like WiFi, and other options for fast, always on connectivity. I would assume radio, and I don't know that much about radio frequencies that have been around forever with communications in, in First Responders. Is the vision that the 5G will eventually take over that type of communication as well? >> Yeah, absolutely. If you look at the evolution of First Responder, and Public Safety Communications, for many years now they've used radios. Relatively small, narrow Spectrum bands for Narrow Band Voice, right, just voice communications. It really doesn't do data, maybe a little bit, but really not much. Now they're going to expand to this Spectrum, the D-Class, the D-Block Spectrum, excuse me, which is 700 megahertz, it's a low-band Spectrum, that'll provide them with Dedicated Spectrum, and then the next step, as you say, is 5G, so take the load off as Public Safety comes into the, the new Public Safety Communications space, that they've really been wanting for years and years, they'll start to utilize 5G as well on our network. >> So where are you on the development of FirstNet, where are you on the rollout, what's the sequence of events? >> The first thing we did, the award was last year in March 2017. The first thing we did was we built out the core network. When I talked about all that physical infrastructure, that basically took a year to build out, and it was pretty extensive, and about a half a billion dollars so, that was the first thing we did, that completed earlier this year. >> Was that nationwide or major metro cities or how-- >> Nationwide, everywhere in the country. >> Nationwide, okay. >> So now what we're doing is, we are putting the Spectrum that we were given, or I should say we were leased for 25 years, we're putting that Spectrum up across our towers all over the country so, that will take five years, it's a five-year build-out, tens of thousands of towers across America, will get this Public Safety Spectrum, for Public Safety, and for their use. >> Right. Will you target by GEO, by Metro area, I mean, how's it going to actually happen? That's a huge global rollout, five years is a long time. How you kind of prioritize, how are you really going to market with this? >> The Band 14 Spectrum is being rolled out in the major, the major dense areas across the country. I will tell you that by the end of the rollout, five years from now, 99% of the population of America, will have Band 14 Spectrum, so the vast majority of the population. Other areas where we don't roll it out, rural areas for example, all of the features that Public Safety wants, we call them (mumbles) and priority, which is the features to allow them to always have access to the network whenever they need it. Those features will be on our regular commercial Spectrum. So if Band 14 isn't there, the network will function exactly as if it were there for them. >> Right. Then how do you roll it out to the agencies, all the First Responders, the Fire, the Police, the EMTs, et cetera? How do they start to take advantage of this opportunity? >> Sure, so we started that earlier this year. We really started in a March-April timeframe in earnest, signing up agencies, and the uptake's been phenomenal. It's over 2500 Public Safety Agencies across America, over 150,00, and that number grows by thousands every week. That's actually a pretty old number but, they are signing up in droves. In fact, one of the problems we were having initially is, handling the volume of First Responders that wanted to sign up, and the reason is they're seeing that, whether it's a fire out in Oregon, and they need connectivity in the middle of nowhere, in a forest where there's no wireless connectivity at all, we'll bring a vehicle out there, put up an antenna and provide them connectivity. Whether it's a Fourth of July show, or a parade, or an active shooter, wherever large groups of people, combined together and the network gets congested, they're seeing that wow, my device works no matter what. I can always send a text message, I can send a video, it just works. Where it didn't work before. So they love it, and they're really, they're really signing up in droves, it's great. >> It's really interesting because it's, it's interesting that this was triggered, as part of the post 9/11 activity to make things better, and make things safer. But there was a lot of buzz, especially out here in the West with, with First Responders in the news, who were running out of band width. As you said, the Firefighters, the fire's been burning out here, it seems like forever, and really nobody thinking about those, or obviously they're probably roaming on their traditional data plan, and they're probably out there, for weeks and weeks at a time, that wasn't part of their allocation, when they figured out what plan they should be. So the timing is pretty significant, and there's clearly a big demand for this. >> Absolutely. So that example that you sight is a really good one. Two weeks ago, there was a lot in the news about a fire agency in the West, that said they were throttled by their carrier. It was a commercial carrier, and commercial carriers have terms and conditions, that sometimes they need to throttle usage, if you get to a certain level. That's how commercial networks work. >> Right, right. >> FirstNet was built with not only different technology, hardware, software, but with different terms and conditions. Because we understand that, when a First Responder responds to your house, we don't want that to be the minute in time, when their network, their plan got maxed out, and now they're getting throttled. >> Right. >> So we don't have any throttling on the FirstNet Network. So it's not only the hardware, software, technical aspects of the network, but the terms and conditions are different. It's what you would expect that a First Responder would have and want on their device, and that's what we're providing for them. >> Right, and the other cool thing that you mentioned is, we see it all the time, we go to a lot of conferences. A lot of people probably experience it at, at big events right, is that still today, WiFi and traditional LTE, has hard times in super-dense environments, where there's just tons and tons and tons of bodies I imagine, absorbing all that signal, as much as anything else, so to have a separate Spectrum in those type of environments which are usually chaotic when you got First Responders, or some of these mass events that you outlined, is a pretty important feature, to not get just completely wiped out by everybody else happening to be there at the same time. >> Exactly. I'll give you two quick examples, that'll illustrate what you just said. The first one is, on the Fourth of July, in downtown Washington D.C. You can imagine that show. It's an awesome show, but there are hundreds of thousands of people that gather around that Washington Monument, to watch the show. And the expectation is at the peak of the show, when all those people are there, you're not really going to be sending text messages, or calling people, the network's probably just not going to work very well. That's, we've all gotten used to that. >> Right, right. >> This year, I had First Responders, who were there during the event, sending me videos of the fireworks going off. Something that never would've been possible before, and them saying oh my gosh. The actually works the way it's supposed to work, we can use our phones. Then the second example, which is a really sad example. There was a recent school shooting down in Florida. You had Sheriffs, Local Police, Ambulances. You even had some Federal Authorities that showed up. They couldn't communicate with each other, because they were on different radio networks. Imagine if they had that capability of FirstNet, where they could communicate with each other, and the network worked, even though there were thousands of people that were gathering around that scene, to see what was going on. So that's the capability we're bringing to Public Safety, and it's really good for all of us. >> Do you see that this is kind of the, the aggregator of the multi-disparate systems that exist now, as you mentioned in, in your Keynote, and again there's different agencies, they've got different frequencies, they've got Police, Fire, Ambulance, Federal Agencies, that now potentially this, as just kind of a unified First Responder network, becomes the defacto way, that I can get in touch with anyone regardless of of where they come from, or who they're associated with? >> That is exactly the vision of FirstNet. In major cities across America, Police, Fire, Emergency Medical typically, are on three different radio networks, and it's very difficult for them to communicate with each other. They may have a shared frequency or two between them, but it's very challenging for them. Our goal is to sign all of them up, put them on one LTE network, the FirstNet Network, customized for them, so they can all communicate with each other, regardless of how much congestion is on the network. So that's the vision of FirstNet. >> Then that's even before you get into the 5G impacts, which will be the data impacts, whereas I think again, you showed in some of your examples, the enhanced amount of data that they can bring to bear, on solving a problem, whether it's a layout of a building for the Fire Department or drone footage from up above. We talked to Menlo Park Fire, they're using drones more and more to give eyes over the fire to the guys down on the ground. So there's a lot of really interesting applications that you can get more better data, to drive more better applications through that network, to help these guys do their job. >> Yeah, you've got it, the smart city's cameras, don't you want that to be able to stream over the network, and give it to First Responders, so they know what they're going to encounter, when they show up to the scene of whatever issue's going on in the city, of course you do, and you need a really reliable, stable network to provide that on. >> Well Chris, this is not only an interesting work, but very noble, and an important work, so appreciate all of the efforts that you're putting in, and thanks for stopping by. >> I appreciate it Jeff, it's been great talking with you. >> Alright, he's Chris, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're in San Francisco at the Palace of Fine Arts, at AT&T Spark. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (bright music)

>> Hey. Welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here, with The Cube. We're in Denver, Colorado at the Airworks show, put on by DJI, and who knew that we would fly, like a thousand miles to see the keynote speaker, guest speakers, the Menlo Park Fire Department, real close to us in Palo Alto, So, we're excited to have them here, and, also, to learn about the practical applications of drone technology for public safety. So, we're joined by Michael Ralston, he runs the Crisis Response and Innovation in Technology Practice Initiative at Menlo Park Fires. So, Michael, great to see you. >> Thank you. Thanks for having me here, Jeff. >> Absolutely. You're obviously here on the invitation of DJI so you guys must be doing some pretty interesting things. Not only with drones, but really looking at a broader technology suite of things that you guys can bring to bare, to save lives and put out fires. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. We're excited to be here, and the thing about DJI is that we've been working with them for years. We've been getting into the whole concept of using drones and using technology in crisis response. And so, it's all coming together right at the right time. We're excited about the announcements that are going on here because it really represents a culmination of what we've been trying to do. >> Right. But still, you're a real customer, and I thought it was interesting. The first part of the story was you guys decided to get drones and use them, you got one, and then it sat on the shelf for two years. Right? I mean, it's just not as easy, and then I think the other really important message that came out of your talk was, you kept kind of stumbling on to all these new requirements. Insurance, training, certifications. So, it wasn't easy, but that was years ago. And now, you guys are really leading the charge in using this technology. >> There is many, many people in the country who are all uncovering this Van Gogh at the same time. And so, what we really try to do, and try to bring across in our program is that it's not all about us and we're not necessarily the leaders. We may be one of the ones who are leading the charge, but what we've discovered over the years, over the years in our term, right? Which is really months. Is that that initial foundation stage, getting the drone and having it sitting there, we discovered quite a bit. We discovered that you have to do this first. Oh, wait. You got to do this first, you got to do this. And once we got to that point, where we had the right regulatory and political, community support, then we got into this growth stage. This is an exciting time. It was a transition point where now we're starting to ... Things are moving faster, we're starting to learn. We got out of middle school, we're now in high school. But that growth phase, that was... As exciting as it was, we started doing more and more missions. Use whichever cliche you want. "Two steps forward, one step back," whatever. We discovered that there's an ecosystem out there. This ecosystem is bigger than we are, and involves all kinds of other critical elements that have to be put in place and have to be developed, have to get deep. Things that are beyond our expertise, things such as logistics, such as training or support, or other regulatory elements. All those things, and technology, obviously. As we learned about this ecosystem, we started to realize that that's what's going to make all this work. It's not just us, we're like a start-up company. We're like a technology start-up company, within the fire district. But we realized, like any start-up company, that market has to be made. And so, we've spent a lot of time, a lot of effort putting together things, bringing people together, saying... People listen to us, we're the fire department. It's kind of fun to hangout with us, or we like to think so, but... >> It is (laughs). >> But, what that means is we say, "Hey, why don't we get everybody together, and let's have a conversation together." And, it's that symbiosis. It's that synergy, energy coming together, that new links, new networks are formed, and people start to realize, "Oh wow. You're doing that? We're doing that, too. Let's work together." And, we just stand by and go, "This is awesome," because it gets us to where we want to be, which is saving lives, obviously. >> It's interesting because you showed a symposium that you put on at Slack, again not only the ecosystem to enable you, but then you guys took a real active role then in passing that knowledge on to other departments and other institutions. Wondering if you can explain a little bit, how did that come together? How well was it received? And is that now part of an ongoing thing that you guys are going to continue to support. >> Well, brief answer. Absolutely, it's an ongoing thing. It's an ongoing thing beyond just drones, so we're calling it Technology Symposium. Meaning, we started to realize that there's all kinds of inventive technology. My program, Crisis Response, Innovation, and Technology is how do we go and leverage... make use of all the things we can put into the fire service to help us do what we do. Now, specifically to your question, this symposium. We had all these folks there together, and it was great. It was very well received and a lot of people came up to us afterwards saying, "I'm so glad you did this." And, it was because everyone thought it should be done. We are blessed by the fact of where we are, or geographically speaking. And, by the fact that when we do knock on people's doors they tend to answer, they're excited to go and participate. So, we're good at hosting a party. But we were hosting a party, that's what it was. We contributed what we knew, which was, "Hey, we're trying to climb this mountain, and we took this path." But there's lots of other people who have just as important programs, and they've learned a lot of other things we haven't learned because they took this path. Let's get them all together, and the only way we can get to the mountain top together is to share that information. >> Give us some specific examples of things that you guys do with drones that you could not do before that have been some of the really... Like, "Wow," "A-ha" moments when you deploy these things. >> How much time do you go? >> Give me your top couple, we've got time. You're the fire department, we got time. Nothing's burning, they are running drones back there. You could probably hear them in the background. >> There's quite a bit. The first place that I would start is we are the fire department and we do regular fire department things. We put out fires, we go to auto accidents, we go to medical things. All those things that we do can come up with a use case for a drone because when you think about it, as Chief Calvert mentioned earlier on in our presentation, our fire district, like any other fire department around the country, around the world, we protect life, we protect property, we protect the environment, right? Well, but when you think about, "What can a drone do?" "What can technology do, in general?" It can do three main things, right? And, these are critical things to us. One, is provide more safety. One, is provide better situational awareness, two. And three is, of course, better response time. Well, response time, situational awareness, and safety, that applies to medical calls, applies to car accidents, applies to fire. A more specific example is, you have a fire, and, conceptually, we live... I don't know what the traffic is like where-- >> I live right by you, in Palo Alto. So, it's not good (laughs). >> Picture yourself needing the fire department to get there, you call 911 and there's traffic. Now, lights and sirens are going to let people know, but you can't go anywhere if you're in a traffic jam. We face the same challenge. What if a drone could go straight over head, line of sight, and get there. Now, in some cases, that's life saving stuff. Bring an AED. An AED is a defibrillator. >> Right. >> That's one way that you can actually make use of a drone to get life-saving stuff there faster. Or, what happens if someone calls 911, it's a car accident, because you're supposed to do that, but it's a minor accident. Well, it's safer for us to drive code two, what we call.. You know, to drive without lights and sirens, just to go there and check it out, but it's not an emergency. It's safer for the citizens, it's safer for us. Send a drone there, you see right away that this is a fender bender, off to the side of the road, go there to check it out, but don't go lights and sirens. It's safer for them, it's safer for us. Or, "Hey, this is a fire. It's getting bigger and bigger." Not just send one engine, but send the calvary. So, another example is situational awareness. If you're on scene somewhere, if you think about it... And, you know, for those of us who are parents out there, we know what it's like to run a zone defense on your kids. You're processing a lot of things at once. Well, the act of a battalion chief or incident commander on scene of a fire or of a large incident, it's chaos. There's a lot of stuff going through that person's mind. He or she has to remain focused on their mission, but also take in a lot of information. And they're constantly looking around, they're constantly moving. What if, they had eyes in the sky. What if, instead of them having to walk around the building to get a 360 view, they had a screen here, and you have a drone that's just circling. It would provide tremendous amount of information for them. That'd be a game changer. >> Yeah, and it really came up in the keynote, too, about having someone who's trained, looking at the picture, who knows what to look for. What are the key signs they want to check out. So, again, really invaluable service. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Yeah. Well, very exciting times, and congrats for being highlighted, and keep doing the great work that you do. >> Great. Thanks for having us. >> All right. He's Michael Ralston, I'm Jeff Rick. From Menlo Fire, I'm from The Cube. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time.

(camera shutters) >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Denver, Colorado at the DJI Airworks conference. It's their second conference, about 550, 600 people. Really interesting, all about commercial drones. Everybody knows DJI for the Maverick Pro and the Spark and all their consumer stuff. But there's a whole industrial play and commercial play, enterprise play... We're excited to be here, these are really fun kind of shows 'cause everybody's into it and we're excited. Our first guest, Yariv Geller, he is the CEO of vHive. Welcome. >> Hey. Great talking to you. >> Absolutely, so what is vHive all about? >> So, as you mentioned, there are a lot of commercial users, enterprises, who want to use drones. And while it's really fun flying a drone as a consumer, enterprises don't really care about the fun factor. It's all about making stuff scalable, and autonomous. Now, we're taking it to the next level, so not just using a single drone. Once we've computerized a system that can fly a drone autonomously, we're actually looking at a swarm or a fleet of drones that are flying in unison. So, a user can define a mission, and the system will manage multiple drones that are actually collaborating on the same mission. Getting the work done much faster, any scale. Stuff that organizations really look for in an ongoing basis. >> So you're here, you know it's a DJI event... It's a really interesting approach that they've taken to break this thing up. You know, people probably don't think there's a platform. There's the flight platform, there's the payload, and then they opened up the SDKs. Not only in the controller in the mobile app, but also inside the unit itself. So, clearly it's something you're taking advantage of. Putting your software energy in, using the SDKs and leveraging that to create kind of a new flight pattern, I would imagine, and a new inter-drone communication system. >> Right, I think this is a very smart move that DJI is doing, we've seen it before. Take Apple for example, a company that builds wonderful hardware. And they said the best efficient way for us to sell this hardware is to create a platform where people can create amazing applications. So, they've created the environment and the ecosystem to support their wonderful hardware. I think DJI is doing the same kind of approach, where they say we have cutting-edge hardware that nobody else has. We can take this hardware to a certain limit with our focus, and then we'd like to develop an ecosystem around our platforms that can actually make use in different industries and take the applications forward. >> Right, so a lot of industries' really being highlighted at this show. Construction, energy, residential... You just had the Menlo Park Fire Department, next door to my house at home, talking about using it in security. So, for your application, it's interesting. Before we turned on the cameras, you talked about the distinction between a fleet and a hive... >> Right. >> And a swarm, excuse me, a swarm. Which obviously you think of bees, right? A smart swarm of bees doing crazy things. So, what are the type of applications that your customers are using your solution for? >> Right, so what we help customers do on a typical application is to digitize the field. Is to bring the field into the organization. So, if I'm a company who has large-scale field operations and it cost me a lot to send out people to the field, and actually understand what's going on, and bring piece by piece information inwards, this new domain of drones enables us to capture the field and to bring the information so the entire organization can view it very effectively. Now, one of the limitations that the industry is seeing is there's this paradigm of a single person, a single drone, which is kind of limited in scale. So, typically people will complain drone only has 20 minutes worth of battery. I can cover only so much, it takes me some time to do larger scale work. We're looking at this next phase. Of how do organizations actually cover more in less time, and more effectively. So, we work well with companies in infrastructure. wWich include civil engineering companies. So, not just construction where I focus on a building or a small area, but I want to look at an entire neighborhood, or a 15 mile stretch of road that's being constructed. We work with utility companies. So, we've done a lot of work with water utilities where they want to look at pipelines and infrastructure that they need to gauge over time. And they want to understand if there is an issue or a problem that they need to pay attention to. We work on infrastructure like cell towers and so on. Where instead of sending a person to climb up on a 200 feet tower with all the risk and safety issues associated and insurance costs. You can send a few drones to cover your infrastructure much more effectively. So, we're excelling in areas where scale is of importance, time is of importance, and costs. Which is everywhere pretty much. And I think one of the basic things that we say is very simple math. Throw a second drone into your mission, you cut time by half. You cut cost by half of being in the field. So, this scales up for organizations to do any kind of mission, any scale, any size, at half the time or less. >> Right, except you got to have the good software or else you start adding communication overhead and management overhead. So, it doesn't always equal one plus one makes two. Sometimes you have demission returns. But, just an opportunity for you. It's fascinating to me, this concept too, came up in the keynote earlier of taking physical data via the sensors on the drones. Whether that be photography or IR or... Lord knows what other kind of sensors you put on this. And really converting it into digital data that you can now almost treat as log data to feed into digital systems that we've been very familiar with in IT and manufacturing and other businesses. But now the drone becomes this interface between the physical world and the digital world in a space that's not necessarily wired. 'Cause it's new construction or it's a water pipeline. It's a really fascinating way to attack the problem and be able to apply analytic software, data-driven analytics to what was never... You couldn't do that before, right? >> Yeah, absolutely, and I think you're touching on a few points here that are important. First of all, in the end of the day, the drone is not the goal. The drones are the means, right? In the end of the day what companies are interested in is an acquiring data, processing data, and managing data. So that they can make smarter decisions in the end of the day. Manage projects and save cost and so on. So, drones are really enabling that. Another point that you touch upon, is drones generate a lot of data. So, every time we fly a mission for a customer, we're generating gigabytes and terabytes of information. And there needs to be a way to manage that effectively. Some of the organizations felt the pain, originally, by sending out drones and then piling up tons of information. And software solutions like ours generate the IT environment to manage all this data so that you're both able to drill down through it, link between it, and collaborate within your organization outside on that data. So, we're seeing, for example, companies in civil engineering, who both use the data internally for planning purposes. They use it to manage contractors in the field so that they can monitor what's going on from a bird's-eye view, and manage to compare between actual and planned activities. And they're also using it to manage upwards where they need to share information with whoever's investing in the project. They can show them actual progress, visual progress. Instead of sending them a written report, we're on track, check mark, and actually view progress over time. >> Right, right. So, as you look ahead to 2018, we're almost done with 2017. Is there any significant challenges, you know, that need to be overcome? Is it just people are afraid of 'em, is it privacy issues? Is it the software's still not up to snuff? Is it flight times and batteries? What are some of the, not giant challenges, but short-term challenges that the industry as a whole will be able to really address in 2018? >> So, first of all, the part of the industry that's our customers'... They're on this accelerating ramp up of adopting this new technology. So, we're seeing companies who have already identified drones as an excellent solution for them to acquire information from the field. We're seeing them starting to test out how they can use drones in making decisions that this is a good technology for them. And now they're experiencing some of the pains of how do you scale up. And I think, again this is a theme that we've heard today a lot. And this is probably the most immediate challenges. Moving from adoption to scaling up operations. So, I think we're going to see a lot of solutions that help organizations take drones to the next step. It's not just, yes we want the drone, yes we have a person or a group in our organization that's going to handle these. It's creating then their workflows and the infrastructure that lets them do this on a daily basis, in a repeated way. In a way that actually makes commercial sense, in terms of scale. And I think that's one of the key interesting challenges that we're going to see, as the industry grows from naissance to actual adoption. >> Right, well Yariv, thanks for taking a few minutes out of your time. Look forward to watching what happens at vHive, and a really exciting industry to be a part of. >> Thanks a lot, my pleasure. >> Alright, he's Yariv Geller, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from Airworks, in Denver, Colorado. Thanks for watching. (camera shutters)