(soft music) >> Announcer: TheCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies. Creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music) >> Welcome back to Spain, everybody. We're here at the Fira in MWC23. Is just an amazing day. This place is packed. They said 80,000 people. I think it might even be a few more walk-ins. I'm Dave Vellante, Lisa Martin is here, David Nicholson. But right now we have the Analyst Hot Takes with three friends of theCUBE. Chris Lewis is back again with me in the co-host seat. Zeus Kerravala, analyst extraordinaire. Great to see you, Z. and Sarbjeet SJ Johal. Good to see you again, theCUBE contributor. And that's my new name for him. He says that is his nickname. Guys, thanks for coming back on. We got the all male panel, sorry, but it is what it is. So Z, is this the first time you've been on it at MWC. Take aways from the show, Hot Takes. What are you seeing? Same wine, new bottle? >> In a lot of ways, yeah. I mean, I was talking to somebody this earlier that if you had come from like MWC five years ago to this year, a lot of the themes are the same. Telco transformation, cloud. I mean, 5G is a little new. Sustainability is certainly a newer theme here. But I think it highlights just the difficulty I think the telcos have in making this transformation. And I think, in some ways, I've been unfair to them in some degree 'cause I've picked on them in the past for not moving fast enough. These are, you know, I think these kind of big transformations almost take like a perfect storm of things that come together to happen, right? And so, in the past, we had technologies that maybe might have lowered opex, but they're hard to deploy. They're vertically integrated. We didn't have the software stacks. But it appears today that between the cloudification of, you know, going to cloud native, the software stacks, the APIs, the ecosystems, I think we're actually in a position to see this industry finally move forward. >> Yeah, and Chris, I mean, you have served this industry for a long time. And you know, when you, when you do that, you get briefed as an analyst, you actually realize, wow, there's a lot of really smart people here, and they're actually, they have challenges, they're working through it. So Zeus was saying he's been tough on the industry. You know, what do you think about how the telcos have evolved in the last five years? >> I think they've changed enormously. I think the problem we have is we're always looking for the great change, the big step change, and there is no big step change in a way. What telcos deliver to us as individuals, businesses, society, the connectivity piece, that's changed. We get better and better and more reliable connectivity. We're shunting a load more capacity through. What I think has really changed is their attitude to their suppliers, their attitude to their partners, and their attitude to the ecosystem in which they play. Understanding that connectivity is not the end game. Connectivity is part of the emerging end game where it will include storage, compute, connect, and analytics and everything else. So I think the realization that they are not playing their own game anymore, it's a much more open game. And some things they will continue to do, some things they'll stop doing. We've seen them withdraw from moving into adjacent markets as much as we used to see. So a lot of them in the past went off to try and do movies, media, and a lot went way way into business IT stuff. They've mainly pulled back from that, and they're focusing on, and let's face it, it's not just a 5G show. The fixed environment is unbelievably important. We saw that during the pandemic. Having that fixed broadband connection using wifi, combining with cellular. We love it. But the problem as an industry is that the users often don't even know the connectivity's there. They only know when it doesn't work, right? >> If it's not media and it's not business services, what is it? >> Well, in my view, it will be enabling third parties to deliver the services that will include media, that will include business services. So embedding the connectivity all the way into the application that gets delivered or embedding it so the quality mechanism deliver the gaming much more accurately or, I'm not a gamer, so I can't comment on that. But no, the video quality if you want to have a high quality video will come through better. >> And those cohorts will pay for that value? >> Somebody will pay somewhere along the line. >> Seems fuzzy to me. >> Me too. >> I do think it's use case dependent. Like you look at all the work Verizon did at the Super Bowl this year, that's a perfect case where they could have upsold. >> Explain that. I'm not familiar with it. >> So Verizon provided all the 5G in the Super Bowl. They provided a lot of, they provided private connectivity for the coaches to talk to the sidelines. And that's a mission critical application, right? In the NFL, if one side can't talk, the other side gets shut down. You can't communicate with the quarterback or the coaches. There's a lot of risk at that. So, but you know, there's a case there, though, I think where they could have even made that fan facing. Right? And if you're paying 2000 bucks to go to a game, would you pay 50 bucks more to have a higher tier of bandwidth so you can post things on social? People that go there, they want people to know they were there. >> Every football game you go to, you can't use your cell. >> Analyst: Yeah, I know, right? >> All right, let's talk about developers because we saw the eight APIs come out. I think ISVs are going to be a big part of this. But it's like Dee Arthur said. Hey, eight's better than zero, I guess. Okay, so, but so the innovation is going to come from ISVs and developers, but what are your hot takes from this show and now day two, we're a day and a half in, almost two days in. >> Yeah, yeah. There's a thing that we have talked, I mentioned many times is skills gravity, right? Skills have gravity, and also, to outcompete, you have to also educate. That's another theme actually of my talks is, or my research is that to puts your technology out there to the practitioners, you have to educate them. And that's the only way to democratize your technology. What telcos have been doing is they have been stuck to the proprietary software and proprietary hardware for too long, from Nokia's of the world and other vendors like that. So now with the open sourcing of some of the components and a few others, right? And they're open source space and antenna, you know? Antennas are becoming software now. So with the invent of these things, which is open source, it helps us democratize that to the other sort of skirts of the practitioners, if you will. And that will bring in more applications first into the IOT space, and then maybe into the core sort of California, if you will. >> So what does a telco developer look like? I mean, all the blockchain developers and crypto developers are moving into generative AI, right? So maybe those worlds come together. >> You'd like to think though that the developers would understand everything's network centric today. So you'd like to think they'd understand that how the network responds, you know, you'd take a simple app like Zoom or something. If it notices the bandwidth changes, it should knock down the resolution. If it goes up it, then you can add different features and things and you can make apps a lot smarter that way. >> Well, G2 was saying today that they did a deal with Mercedes, you know this probably better than I do, where they're going to embed WebEx in the car. And if you're driving, it'll shut off the camera. >> Of course. >> I'm like, okay. >> I'll give you a better example though. >> But that's my point. Like, isn't there more that we can do? >> You noticed down on the SKT stand the little helicopter. That's a vertical lift helicopter. So it's an electric vertical lift helicopter. Just think of that for a second. And then think of the connectivity to control that, to securely control that. And then I was recently at an event with Zeus actually where we saw an air traffic control system where there was no people manning the tower. It was managed by someone remotely with all the cameras around them. So managing all of those different elements, we call it IOT, but actually it's way more than what we thought of as IOT. All those components connecting, communicating securely and safely. 'Cause I don't want that helicopter to come down on my head, do you? (men laugh) >> Especially if you're in there. (men laugh) >> Okay, so you mentioned sustainability. Everybody's talking about power. I don't know if you guys have a lot of experience around TCO, but I'm trying to get to, well, is this just because energy costs are so high, and then when the energy becomes cheap again, nobody's going to pay any attention to it? Or is this the real deal? >> So one of the issues around the, if we want to experience all that connectivity locally or that helicopter wants to have that connectivity, we have to ultimately build denser, more reliable networks. So there's a CapEx, we're going to put more base stations in place. We need more fiber in the ground to support them. Therefore, the energy consumption will go up. So we need to be more efficient in the use of energy. Simple as that. >> How much of the operating expense is energy? Like what percent of it? Is it 10%? Is it 20%? Is it, does anybody know? >> It depends who you ask and it depends on the- >> I can't get an answer to that. I mean, in the enterprise- >> Analyst: The data centers? >> Yeah, the data centers. >> We have the numbers. I think 10 to 15%. >> It's 10 to 12%, something like that. Is it much higher? >> I've got feeling it's 30%. >> Okay, so if it's 30%, that's pretty good. >> I do think we have to get better at understanding how to measure too. You know, like I was talking with John Davidson at Sysco about this that every rev of silicon they come out with uses more power, but it's a lot more dense. So at the surface, you go, well, that's using a lot more power. But you can consolidate 10 switches down to two switches. >> Well, Intel was on early and talking about how they can intelligently control the cores. >> But it's based off workload, right? That's the thing. So what are you running over it? You know, and so, I don't think our industry measures that very well. I think we look at things kind of boxed by box versus look at total consumption. >> Well, somebody else in theCUBE was saying they go full throttle. That the networks just say just full throttle everything. And that obviously has to change from the power consumption standpoint. >> Obviously sustainability and sensory or sensors from IOT side, they go hand in hand. Just simple examples like, you know, lights in the restrooms, like in public areas. Somebody goes in there and just only then turns. The same concept is being applied to servers and compute and storage and every aspects and to networks as well. >> Cell tower. >> Yeah. >> Cut 'em off, right? >> Like the serverless telco? (crosstalk) >> Cell towers. >> Well, no, I'm saying, right, but like serverless, you're not paying for the compute when you're not using it, you know? >> It is serverless from the economics point of view. Yes, it's like that, you know? It goes to the lowest level almost like sleep on our laptops, sleep level when you need more power, more compute. >> I mean, some of that stuff's been in networking equipment for a long time, it just never really got turned on. >> I want to ask you about private networks. You wrote a piece, Athenet was acquired by HPE right after Dell announced a relationship with Athenet, which was kind of, that was kind of funny. And so a good move, good judo move by by HP. I asked Dell about it, and they said, look, we're open. They said the right things. We'll see, but I think it's up to HP. >> Well, and the network inside Dell is. >> Yeah, okay, so. Okay, cool. So, but you said something in that article you wrote on Silicon Angle that a lot of people feel like P5G is going to basically replace wireless or cannibalize wireless. You said you didn't agree with that. Explain why? >> Analyst: Wifi. >> Wifi, sorry, I said wireless. >> No, that's, I mean that's ridiculous. Pat Gelsinger said that in his last VMware, which I thought was completely irresponsible. >> That it was going to cannibalize? >> Cannibalize wifi globally is what he said, right? Now he had Verizon on stage with him, so. >> Analyst: Wifi's too inexpensive and flexible. >> Wifi's cheap- >> Analyst: It's going to embed really well. Embedded in that. >> It's reached near ubiquity. It's unlicensed. So a lot of businesses don't want to manage their own spectrum, right? And it's great for this, right? >> Analyst: It does the job. >> For casual connectivity. >> Not today. >> Well, it does for the most part. Right now- >> For the most part. But never at these events. >> If it's engineered correctly, it will. Right? Where you need private 5G is when reliability is an absolute must. So, Chris, you and I visited the Port of Rotterdam, right? So they're putting 5G, private 5G there, but there's metal containers everywhere, right? And that's going to disrupt it. And so there are certain use cases where it makes sense. >> I've been in your basement, and you got some pretty intense equipment in there. You have private 5G in there. >> But for carpeted offices, it does not make sense to bring private. The economics don't make any sense. And you know, it runs hot. >> So where's it going to be used? Give us some examples of where we should be looking for. >> The early ones are obviously in mining, and you say in ports, in airports. It broadens cities because you've got so many moving parts in there, and always think about it, very expensive moving parts. The cranes in the port are normally expensive piece of kits. You're moving that, all that logistics around. So managing that over a distance where the wifi won't work over the distance. And in mining, we're going to see enormous expensive trucks moving around trying to- >> I think a great new use case though, so the Cleveland Browns actually the first NFL team to use it for facial recognition to enter the stadium. So instead of having to even pull your phone out, it says, hey Dave Vellante. You've got four tickets, can we check you all in? And you just walk through. You could apply that to airports. You could do put that in a hotel. You could walk up and check in. >> Analyst: Retail. >> Yeah, retail. And so I think video, realtime video analytics, I think it's a perfect use case for that. >> But you don't need 5G to do that. You could do that through another mechanism, couldn't you? >> You could do wire depending on how mobile you want to do it. Like in a stadium, you're pulling those things in and out all the time. You're moving 'em around and things, so. >> Yeah, but you're coming in at a static point. >> I'll take the contrary view here. >> See, we can't even agree on that. (men laugh) >> Yeah, I love it. Let's go. >> I believe the reliability of connection is very important, right? And the moving parts. What are the moving parts in wifi? We have the NIC card, you know, the wifi card in these suckers, right? In a machine, you know? They're bigger in size, and the radios for 5G are smaller in size. So neutralization is important part of the whole sort of progress to future, right? >> I think 5G costs as well. Yes, cost as well. But cost, we know that it goes down with time, right? We're already talking about 60, and the 5G stuff will be good. >> Actually, sorry, so one of the big boom areas at the moment is 4G LTE because the component price has come down so much, so it is affordable, you can afford to bring it all together. People don't, because we're still on 5G, if 5G standalone everywhere, you're not going to get a consistent service. So those components are unbelievably important. The skillsets of the people doing integration to bring them all together, unbelievably important. And the business case within the business. So I was talking to one of the heads of one of the big retail outlets in the UK, and I said, when are you going to do 5G in the stores? He said, well, why would I tear out all the wifi? I've got perfectly functioning wifi. >> Yeah, that's true. It's already there. But I think the technology which disappears in front of you, that's the best technology. Like you don't worry about it. You don't think it's there. Wifi, we think we think about that like it's there. >> And I do think wifi 5G switching's got to get easier too. Like for most users, you don't know which is better. You don't even know how to test it. And to your point, it does need to be invisible where the user doesn't need to think about it, right? >> Invisible. See, we came back to invisible. We talked about that yesterday. Telecom should be invisible. >> And it should be, you know? You don't want to be thinking about telecom, but at the same time, telecoms want to be more visible. They want to be visible like Netflix, don't they? I still don't see the path. It's fuzzy to me the path of how they're not going to repeat what happened with the over the top providers if they're invisible. >> Well, if you think about what telcos delivers to consumers, to businesses, then extending that connectivity into your home to help you support secure and extend your connection into Zeus's basement, whatever it is. Obviously that's- >> His awesome setup down there. >> And then in the business environment, there's a big change going on from the old NPLS networks, the old rigid structures of networks to SD1 where the control point is moved outside, which can be under control of the telco, could be under the control of a third party integrator. So there's a lot changing. I think we obsess about the relative role of the telco. The demand is phenomenal for connectivity. So address that, fulfill that. And if they do that, then they'll start to build trust in other areas. >> But don't you think they're going to address that and fulfill that? I mean, they're good at it. That's their wheelhouse. >> And it's a 1.6 trillion market, right? So it's not to be sniffed at. That's fixed on mobile together, obviously. But no, it's a big market. And do we keep changing? As long as the service is good, we don't move away from it. >> So back to the APIs, the eight APIs, right? >> I mean- >> Eight APIs is a joke actually almost. I think they released it too early. The release release on the main stage, you know? Like, what? What is this, right? But of course they will grow into hundreds and thousands of APIs. But they have to spend a lot of time and effort in that sort of context. >> I'd actually like to see the GSMA work with like AWS and Microsoft and VMware and software companies and create some standardization across their APIs. >> Yeah. >> I spoke to them yes- >> We're trying to reinvent them. >> Is that not what they're doing? >> No, they said we are not in the business of a defining standards. And they used a different term, not standard. I mean, seriously. I was like, are you kidding me? >> Let's face it, there aren't just eight APIs out there. There's so many of them. The TM forum's been defining when it's open data architecture. You know, the telcos themselves are defining them. The standards we talked about too earlier with Danielle. There's a lot of APIs out there, but the consistency of APIs, so we can bring them together, to bring all the different services together that will support us in our different lives is really important. I think telcos will do it, it's in their interest to do it. >> All right, guys, we got to wrap. Let's go around the horn here, starting with Chris, Zeus, and then Sarbjeet, just bring us home. Number one hot take from Mobile World Congress MWC23 day two. >> My favorite hot take is the willingness of all the participants who have been traditional telco players who looked inwardly at the industry looking outside for help for partnerships, and to build an ecosystem, a more open ecosystem, which will address our requirements. >> Zeus? >> Yeah, I was going to talk about ecosystem. I think for the first time ever, when I've met with the telcos here, I think they're actually, I don't think they know how to get there yet, but they're at least aware of the fact that they need to understand how to build a big ecosystem around them. So if you think back like 50 years ago, IBM and compute was the center of everything in your company, and then the ecosystem surrounded it. I think today with digital transformation being network centric, the telcos actually have the opportunity to be that center of excellence, and then build an ecosystem around them. I think the SIs are actually in a really interesting place to help them do that 'cause they understand everything top to bottom that I, you know, pre pandemic, I'm not sure the telcos were really understand. I think they understand it today, I'm just not sure they know how to get there. . >> Sarbjeet? >> I've seen the lot of RN demos and testing companies and I'm amazed by it. Everything is turning into software, almost everything. The parts which are not turned into software. I mean every, they will soon. But everybody says that we need the hardware to run something, right? But that hardware, in my view, is getting miniaturized, and it's becoming smaller and smaller. The antennas are becoming smaller. The equipment is getting smaller. That means the cost on the physicality of the assets is going down. But the cost on the software side will go up for telcos in future. And telco is a messy business. Not everybody can do it. So only few will survive, I believe. So that's what- >> Software defined telco. So I'm on a mission. I'm looking for the monetization path. And what I haven't seen yet is, you know, you want to follow the money, follow the data, I say. So next two days, I'm going to be looking for that data play, that potential, the way in which this industry is going to break down the data silos I think there's potential goldmine there, but I haven't figured out yet. >> That's a subject for another day. >> Guys, thanks so much for coming on. You guys are extraordinary partners of theCUBE friends, and great analysts and congratulations and thank you for all you do. Really appreciate it. >> Analyst: Thank you. >> Thanks a lot. >> All right, this is a wrap on day two MWC 23. Go to siliconangle.com for all the news. Where Rob Hope and team are just covering all the news. John Furrier is in the Palo Alto studio. We're rocking all that news, taking all that news and putting it on video. Go to theCUBE.net, you'll see everything on demand. Thanks for watching. This is a wrap on day two. We'll see you tomorrow. (soft music)

(soft techno music) >> Good evening. Welcome back to the Kube. Live in Los Angeles. We are at KubeCon Cloud Native Con 2021. Lisa Martin with Dave Nicholson, rounding out our day. We're going to introduce you to a new company, a new company that's new to us. I should say, log DNA. Peter Choi joins us the VP of product. Peter, welcome to the program. >> Thanks for having me. >> (Lisa) Talk to us about log DNA. Who are you guys? What do you do? >> So, you know, log DNA is a log medicine platform. Traditionally, we've been focused on, you know, offering log analysis, log management capabilities to dev ops teams. So your classic kind of troubleshooting, debugging, getting into your systems. More recently, maybe in like the last year or so we've been focused on a lot of control functionality around log medicine. So what I mean by that is a lot of people typically think of kind of the analysis or the dashboards, but with the pandemic, we noticed that you see this kind of surge of data because all of the services are being used, but you also see a downward pressure on cost, right? Because all of a sudden you don't want to be spending two X on those digital experiences. So we've been focused really on kind of tamping down kind of controls on the volume of log data coming in and making sure that they have a higher kind of signal and noise ratio. And then, you know, I'll talk about it a little bit, but we've really been honing in on how can we take those capabilities and kind of form them more in a pipeline. So log management, dev ops, you know, focusing on log data, but moving forward really focused on that flow of data. >> (Dave) So, when you talk about the flow of data and logs that are being read, make this a little more real, bring it up, bring it up just to level in terms of data, from what? >> Yeah. >> What kind of logs? What things are generating logs? What's the relevant information that's being. Kept track of? >> Yeah, I mean, so from our perspective, we're actually agnostic to data source. So we have an assist log integration. We have kind of basic API's. We have, you know, agents for any sort of operating system. Funny enough people actually use those agents to install, log DNA on robots, right? And so we have a customer they're, you know, one of the largest E-commerce platforms on, in the, in the world and they have a warehouse robots division and they installed the agent on every single one of those robots. They're, you know, they're running like arm 64 processors and they will send the log data directly to us. Right? So to us, it's no different. A robot is no different from a server is no different from an application is no different from a router. We take in all that data. Traditionally though, to answer your question, I guess, in the simplest way, mostly applications, servers, firewalls, all the traditional stuff you'd expect kind of going into a log platform. >> So you mentioned a big name customer. I've got a guess as to who that is. I won't, I won't say, but talk to us about the observability pipeline. What is that? What are the benefits in it for customers? >> (Peter) Sure. So, like if we zoom out again, you know, you think about logs traditionally. I think a lot of folks say, okay, we'll ingest the logs. We'll analyze them. What we noticed is that there's a lot of value in the step before that. So I think in the earlier days it was really novel to say, Hey, we're going to get logs and we're going to put it into a system. We're going to analyze it. We're going to centralize. Right. And that had its merits. But I think over time it got a little chaotic. And so you saw a lot of the vendors over the last three years consolidating and doing more of a single pane of glass, all the pillars of observability and whatnot. But then the downside of that is you're seeing a lot of the teams that are using that then saying being constrained by single vendor for all the ways that you can access that data. So we decided that the control point being on the analysis side on, on the very far right side was constricting. So we said, okay, let's move the control point up into a pipeline where the logs are coming to a single point of ingress. And then what we'll do is we will offer views, but also allow you to stream into other systems. So we'll allow you to stream into like a SIM or a data warehouse or something, something like that. Right? So, and you know, we're still trying to like nail down the messaging. I'm sure our marketing person's going to roast me after this. But the simplest way to think of observability pipeline is it's the step before the analysis part, that kind of ingest processes and routes the data. >> (Dave) Yeah. This is the Kube, by the way, neither one of us is a weather reporter. (laughing) So, so the technical stuff is good with us. >> Yes. It is. What are, and talk to us about some of the key features and capabilities and maybe anything that's newly announced are going to be announced. >> Yeah. For sure. So what we recently announced early access on is our streaming capabilities. So it's something that we built in conjunction with IBM and with a couple of, you know, large major institutions that we were working with on the IBM cloud. And basically we realized as we were ingesting a log data, some of those consumers wanted to access subsets of that data and other systems such as Q radar or, you know, a security product. So we ended up taking, we filtered down a subset of that data and we stream it out into those systems. And so we're taking those capabilities and then bringing it into our direct product, you know, whatever you access via logging.com. That is what's essentially going to be the seed for the kind of observability pipeline moving forward. So when you start thinking about it, all of this stuff that I mentioned, where we say, we're focusing on control, like allowing you to exclude logs, allowing you to transform logs, you take those processing capabilities, you take the streaming capabilities, you put them together and all of a sudden that's the pipeline, right? So that's the biggest focus for us now. And then we also have supporting features such as, you know, control API's. We have index rate alerting so that you can get notified if you see aberrations in the amount of flow of data. We have things like variable retention. So when a certain subset of logs come in, if you want it store it for seven days or 30 days, you can go ahead and do that because we know that a large block of logs is going to have many different use cases and many different associated values, right? >> So let's pretend for a moment that a user, somebody who has spent their money on log DNA is putting together a Yelp review and they've given you five stars. >> Yup. >> What do they say about log DNA? Why did they give you that five star rating? >> Yeah. Absolutely. I think, you know, the most common one and it's funny it's Yelp because we actually religiously mine, our G2 crowd reviews. (all laughing) And so the thing that we hear most often is, it's ease of use, right? A lot of these tools. I mean, I'm sure, you know, you're talking to founders and product leaders every day with developers. Like the, the bar, the baseline is so low, you know, a lot of, a lot of organizations where like, we'll give them the, you know, their coders, they'll figure it out. We'll just give them docs and they'll figure it out. But we, we went a little bit extra in terms of like, how can we smooth that experience so that when you go to your computer and you type in QTPL, blah, blah, blah, two lines, and all of a sudden all your logs are shipping from your cluster to log DNA. So that's the constant theme for us in all of our views is, Hey, I showed up, I signed up and within 30 minutes I had everything going that I needed to get. >> (Lisa) So fast time to value. >> Yes. >> Which is critical these days. >> Absolutely. >> Talk to me. So here we are at, at KubeCon, the CNCF community is huge. I think I, the number I saw yesterday was 138,000 contributors. Lots of activity, because we're in person, which is great. We can have those hallway networking conversations that we haven't been able to have in a year and a half. What are some of the things that you guys have heard at the booth in terms of being able to engage with the community again? >> You know, the thing that we've heard most often is just like having a finger on the pulse. It's so hard to do that because you know, when we're all at our computers, we just go from zoom to zoom. And so it, it like, unless it punches you in the face, you're not aware of it. Right. But when you come here, you look around, you go, you can start to identify trends, you hear the conversations in the hallway, you see the sessions. It's just that, that sense of, it's almost like a Phantom limb that, that sense of community and being kind of connected. I think that's the thing that we've heard most often that people are excited. And, you know, I think a lot of us are just kind of treating this like a dry run. Like we're kind of easing our way back in. And so it, you know, it felt good to be back. >> Well, they've done a great job here, right? I mean, you have to show your proof of vaccination. They're doing temperature checks, or you can show your clear health pass. So they're making it. We were talking to the executive director of CNCF earlier today and you're making it, it's not rocket science. We have enough data to know that this can be done carefully and safely. >> (David) Don't forget the wristbands. >> That's right. And, and did you see the wristbands? >> (Peter) Oh yeah. >> Yeah, yeah that's great. >> Yep, it is great. >> I was, I was on the fence by the way. I was like, I was a green or yellow, depending on the person. >> (both) Yeah. >> Yeah. But giving, giving everybody the opportunity to socialize again and to have those, those conversations that you just can't have by zoom, because you have somebody you've seen someone and it jogs your memory and also the control of do I want to shake someone's hand or do I not. They've done a great job. And I think hopefully this is a good test in the water for others, other organizations to learn. This can be done safely because of the community. You can't replicate that on video. >> (Peter) Absolutely. And I'll tell you this one for us, this is our, this is our event. This is the event for us every single year. We, we it's the only event we care about at the end of the day. So. >> What are some of the things that you've seen in the last year, in terms of where, we were talking a lot about the, the adoption of Kubernetes, kind of, where is it in its maturation state, but we've seen so much acceleration and digital transformation in the last 18 months for every industry businesses rapidly pivoting multiple times to try to, to survive one and then figure out a new way to thrive in this, this new I'll call it the new. Now I'll borrow that from a friend at Citrix, the new now, not the new normal, the new now, what are some of the things that you've seen in the last year and a half from, from your customer base in terms of what have they been coming to you saying help? >> (Peter) You know, I think going back to the earlier point about time to value, that's the thing that a lot. So a lot of our customers are, you know, very big Kubernetes, you know, they're, they're big consumers of Kubernetes. I would say, you know, for me, when I do the, we do our, our QBRs with our top customers, I would say 80% of them are huge Kubernetes shops. Right. And the biggest bottleneck for them actually is onboarding new engineers because a lot of the, and you know, we have a customer, we have better mortgage. We have, IBM, we have Rappi is a customer of ours. They're like Latin American version of Instacart. They double their engineering base and you, you know, like 18 in 18 months. And so that's, you know, I think it was maybe from 1500 to 3000 developers or so, so their thing is like, we need to get people on board as soon as possible. We need to get them in these tools, getting access to, to, to their longs, to whatever they need. And so that's been the biggest thing that we've heard over and over again is A, how can we hire? And then B when we hire them, how do we onboard them as quickly as possible, so that they're ramped up and they're adding value. >> How do you help with that onboarding, making it faster, seamless so that they can get value faster? >> So for us, you know, we really lean in on our, our customer success teams. So they do, you know, they do trainings, they do best practices. Basically. We kind of think of ourselves given how much Kubernetes contradiction we have, we think of ourselves as cross pollinators. So a lot of the times we'll go into those decks and we'll try to learn just as much as we're trying to try to teach. And then we'll go and repeat that process through every single set of our customers. So a lot of the patterns that we'll see are, well, you know, what kinds of tools are you using for orchestration? What kind of tools are you using for deployment? How are you thinking about X, Y, and Z? And then, you know, even our own SRE teams will kind of get into the mix and, you know, provide tips and feedback. >> (Lisa) Customer centricity is key. We've heard that a lot today. We hear that from a lot of companies. It's one thing to hear it. It's another thing to see it. And it sounds like the Yelp review that you would have given, or, or what you're hearing through G2 crowd. I mean, that voice of the customer is valid. That's, that's the only validation. I think that really matters because analysts are paid. >> Yeah. >> But hearing that validation through the voice of the customer consistently lets you know, we're going in the right direction here. >> Absolutely. >> I think it's, it's interesting that ease of use comes up. You wonder if those are only anonymous reviews, you don't necessarily associate open source community with cutting edge, you know, we're the people on the pirate ship. >> (Peter) Yeah. And so when, when, when people start to finally admit, you know, some ease of use would be nice. I think that's an indication of maturity at a certain point. It's saying, okay, not everyone is going to come in and sit behind a keyboard and program things in machine language. Every time we want to do some simple tasks, let's automate, let's get some ease of use into this. >> And I'll tell you in the early days it drove me and our, our CEO talker. It drove us nuts that people would say easiest to be like, that's so shallow. It doesn't mean anything. Well, you know, all of that. However, but to your point, if we don't meet the use case, if we don't have the power behind it, the ease of use is abstracting away. It's like an iceberg, right. It's abstracting away a lot. So we can't even have the ease of use conversation unless we're able to meet the use case. So, so what we've been doing is digging into that more, be like, okay, ease of use, but what were you trying to do? What, what is it that we enabled? Because ease of use, if it's a very shallow set of use cases is not as valid as ease of use for petabytes of data for an organization like IBM. Right? >> That's a great, I'm glad that you dug into that because ease of use is one of those things that you'll see it in marketing materials, but to your point, you want to know what does this actually mean? What are we delivering? >> Right. >> And now, you know what you're delivering with Peter, thank you for sharing with us about logged in and what you guys are doing, how you're helping your community of customers and hearing the voice of the customer through G2 and others. Good work. >> Thank you. And by the way, I'll be remiss if I, if I don't say this, if you're interested in learning more about some of the stuff that we're working on, just go to logging in dot com. We've got, I think we've got a banner for the early access programs that I mentioned earlier. So, you know, at the end of the day, to your point about customer centricity, everything we prioritize is based on our customers, what they need, what they tell us about. And so, you know, whatever engagement that we get from the people at the show and prospects, like that's how we drive a roadmap. >> (Lisa) Yup. That's why we're all here. Log dna.com. Peter, thank you for joining Dave and me today. We appreciate it. >> Thanks for having me. >> Our pleasure for Dave Nicholson. I'm Lisa Martin signing off from Los Angeles today. The Kubes coverage of KubeCon clouding of con 21 continues tomorrow. We'll see then. (soft techno music)

from the cube studios in palo alto in boston bringing you data-driven insights from the cube and etr this is breaking analysis with dave vellante the pandemic not only accelerated the shift to digital but also highlighted a rush of cyber criminal sophistication collaboration and chaotic responses by virtually every major company in the planet the solar winds hack exposed supply chain weaknesses and so-called island hopping techniques that are exceedingly difficult to detect moreover the will and aggressiveness of well-organized cyber criminals has elevated to the point where incident responses are now met with counterattacks designed to both punish and extract money from victims via ransomware and other criminal activities the only upshot is the cyber security market remains one of the most enduring and attractive investment sectors for those that can figure out where the market is headed and which firms are best positioned to capitalize hello everyone and welcome to this week's wikibon cube insights powered by etr in this breaking analysis we'll provide our quarterly update of the security industry and share new survey data from etr and thecube community that will help you navigate through the maze of corporate cyber warfare we'll also share our thoughts on the game of 3d chest that octa ceo todd mckinnon is playing against the market now we all know this market is complicated fragmented and fast moving and this next chart says it all it's an interactive graphic from optiv a denver colorado based si that's focused on cyber security they've done some really excellent research and put together this awesome taxonomy and mapped vendor names therein and this helps users navigate the complex security landscape and there are over a dozen major sectors high-level sectors within the security taxonomy in nearly 60 sub-sectors from monitoring vulnerability assessment identity asset management firewalls automation cloud data center sim threat detection and intelligent endpoint network and so on and so on and so on but this is a terrific resource and can help you understand where players fit and help you connect the dots in the space now let's talk about what's going on in the market the dynamics in this crazy mess of a landscape are really confusing sometimes now since the beginning of cyber time we've talked about the increasing sophistication of the adversary and the back and forth escalation between good and evil and unfortunately this trend is unlikely to stop here's some data from carbon black's annual modern bank heist report this is the fourth and of course now vmware's brand highlights the carbon black study since the acquisition and it catalyzed the creation of vmware's cloud security division destructive malware attacks according to the recent study are up 118 percent from last year now one major takeaway from the report is that hackers aren't just conducting wire fraud they are 57 of the bank surveyed saw an increase in wire fraud but the cyber criminals are also targeting non-public information such as future trading strategies this allows the bad guys to front run large block trades and profit it's become very lucrative practice now the prevalence of so-called island hopping is up 38 from already elevated levels this is where a virus enters a company's supply chain via a partner and then often connects with other stealthy malware downstream these techniques are more common where the malware will actually self-form with other infected parts of the supply chain and create actions with different signatures designed to identify and exfiltrate valuable information it's a really complex problem of major concern is that 63 of banking respondents in the study reported that responses to incidents were then met with retaliation designed to intimidate or initiate ransomware attacks to extract a final pound of flesh from the victim notably the study found that 75 percent of csos reported to the cio which many feel is not the right regime the study called for a rethinking of the right cyber regime where the cso has increased responsibility in a direct reporting line to the ceo or perhaps the co with greater exposure to boards of directors so many thanks to vmware and tom kellerman specifically for sharing this information with us this past week great work by your team now some of the themes that we've been talking about for several quarters are shown in the lower half of the chart cloud of course is the big driver thanks to work from home and the pandemic to pandemic and the interesting corollary of course is we see a rapid rethinking of endpoint and identity access management and the concept of zero trust in a recent esg survey two-thirds of respondents said that their use of cloud computing necessitated a change in how they approach identity access management now as shown in the chart from optiv the market remains highly fragmented and m a is of course way up now based on our research it looks like transaction volume has increased more than 40 percent just in the last five months so let's dig into the m a the merger and acquisition trends for just a moment we took a five month snapshot and we were able to count about 80 deals that were completed in that time frame those transactions represented more than 20 billion dollars in value some of the larger ones are highlighted here the biggest of course being the toma bravo taking proof point private for a 12 plus billion dollar price tag the stock went from the low 130s and is trading in the low 170s based on 176 dollar per share offer so there's your arbitrage folks go for it perhaps the more interesting acquisition was auth 0 by octa for 6.5 billion which we're going to talk about more in a moment there's more private equity action we saw as insight bought armis and iot security play and cisco shelled out 730 million dollars for imi mobile which is more of an adjacency to cyber but it's going to go under cisco's security and applications business run by g2 patel but these are just the tip of the iceberg some of the themes that we see connecting the dots of these acquisitions are first sis like accenture atos and wipro are making moves in cyber to go local they're buying secops expertise as i say locally in places like france germany netherlands canada and australia that last mile that belly-to-belly intimate service israel israeli-based startups chalked up five acquired companies in the space over the last five months also financial services firms are getting into the act with goldman and mastercard making moves to own its own part of the stack themselves to combat things like fraud and identity theft and then finally numerous moves to expand markets octa with zero crowdstrike buying a log management company palo alto picking up devops expertise rapid seven shoring up its kubernetes chops tenable expanding beyond insights and going after identity interesting fortinet filling gaps in a multi-cloud offering sale point extending to governance risk and compliance grc zscaler picked up an israeli firm to fill gaps in access control and then vmware buying mesh 7 to secure modern app development and distribution services so tons and tons of activity here okay so let's look at some of the etr data to put the cyber market in context etr uses the concept of market share it's one of the key metrics which is a measure of pervasiveness in the data set so for each sector it calculates the number of respondents for that sector divided by the total to get a sense for how prominent the sector is within the cio and i.t buyer communities okay this chart shows the full etr sector taxonomy with security highlighted across three survey periods april last year january this year in april this year now you wouldn't expect big moves in market share over time so it's relatively stable by sector but the big takeaway comes from observing which sectors are most prominent so you see that red line that dotted line imposed at the sixty percent level you can see there are only six sectors above that line and cyber security is one of them okay so we know that security is important in a large market but this puts it in the context of the other sectors however we know from previous breaking analysis episodes that despite the importance of cyber and the urgency catalyzed by the pandemic budgets unfortunately are not unlimited and spending is bounded it's not an open checkbook for csos as shown in this chart this is a two-dimensional graphic showing market share in the horizontal axis or pervasiveness and net score in the vertical axis net score is etr's measurement of spending velocity and we've superimposed a red line at 40 percent because anything over 40 percent we consider extremely elevated we've filtered and limited the number of sectors to simplify the graphic and you can see in the sectors that we've highlighted only the big four four are above that forty percent line ai containers rpa and cloud they exceed that sort of forty percent magic water line information security you can see that is highlighted and it's respectable but it competes for budget with other important sectors so this of course creates challenges for organization because not only are they strapped for talent as we've reported they like everyone else in it face ongoing budget pressures research firm cybersecurity ventures estimates that in 2021 6 trillion dollars worldwide will be lost on cyber crime conversely research firm canalis pegs security spending somewhere around 60 billion dollars annually idc has it higher around 100 billion so either way we're talking about spending between one to one point six percent annually of how much the bad guys are taking out that's peanuts really when you consider the consequences so let's double click into the cyber landscape a bit and further look at some of the companies here's that same x y graphic with the company's etr captures from respondents in the cyber security sector that's what's shown on the chart here now the usefulness of the red lines is 20 percent on the horizontal indicates the largest presence in the survey and the magic 40 percent line that we talked about earlier shows those firms with the most elevated momentum only microsoft and palo alto exceed both high water marks of course splunk and cisco are prominent horizontally and there are numerous companies to the left of the 20 percent line and many above that 40 percent high water mark on the vertical axis now in the bottom left quadrant that includes many of the legacy names that have been around for a long time and there are dozens of companies that show spending momentum on their platforms i.e above single digits so that picture is like the first one we showed you very very crowded space but so let's filter it a bit and only include companies in the etr survey that had at least a hundred responses so an n of a hundred or greater so it's a little easy to read but still it's kind of crowded when you think about it okay so same graphic and we've superimposed the data that determined the plot position over in the bottom right there so it's net score and shared n including only companies with more than 100 n so what does this data tell us about the market well microsoft is dominant as always it seems in all dimensions but let's focus on that red line for a moment some of the names that we've highlighted over the past two years show very well here first i want to talk about palo alto networks pre-covet as you might recall we highlighted the valuation divergence between palo alto and fortinet and we said fortinet was executing better on its cloud strategy and palo alto was at the time struggling with the transition especially with its go to market and its sales force compensation and really refreshing its portfolio but we told you that we were bullish on palo alto networks at the time because of its track record and the fact that cios consistently told us that they saw palo alto as a thought leader in the space that they wanted to work with they said that palo alto was the gold standard the best especially larger company cisos so that gave us confidence that palo alto a very well-run company was going to get its act together and perform better and palo alto has just done just that as we expected they've done very well and they've been rapidly moving customers to the next generation of platforms and we're very impressed by the company's execution and the stock has generally reflected that now some other names that hit our radar and the etr data a couple of years ago continue to perform well crowdstrike z-scaler sales sail point and cloudflare a cloudflare just reported and beat earnings but was off the stock fell on headwinds for tech overall the big rotation but the company is doing very well and they're growing rapidly and they have momentum as you can see from the etr data and we put that double star around proof point to highlight that it was worthy of fetching 12 and a half billion dollars from private equity firm so nice exit there supporting the continued control consolidation trend that we've predicted in cyber security now let's turn our attention to octa and auth zero this is where it gets interesting and is a clever play for octa we think and we want to drill into it a bit octa is acquiring auth zero for big money why well we think todd mckinnon octa ceo wants to run the table on identity and then continue to expand his tam he has to do that to justify his lofty valuation so octa's ascendancy around identity and single sign sign-on is notable the fragmented pictures that we've shown you they scream out for simplification and trust and that's what octa brings but it competes with some major players most notably microsoft with active directory so look of course microsoft is going to dominate in its massive customer base but the rest of the market that's like jump ball it's wide open and we think mckinnon saw the opportunity to go dominate that sector now octa comes at this from an enterprise perspective bringing top-down trust to the equation and throwing a big blanket over all the discrete sas platforms and unifying employee access octa's timing was perfect it was founded in 2009 just as the massive sasification trend was happening around crm and hr and service management and cloud etc but the one thing that octa didn't have that auth 0 does is serious developer chops while octa was crushing it with its enterprise sales strategy auth 0 was laser focused on developers and building a bottoms up approach to identity by acquiring auth0 octa can dominate both sides of the barbell and then capture the fat middle so yes it's a pricey acquisition but in our view it's a great move by mckinnon now i don't know mckinnon personally but last week i spoke to arun shrestha who's the ceo of security specialist beyond id they're a platinum services partner of octa and there a zero trust expert he worked for octa for a number of years and shared with me a bit about mckinnon's style and think big approach arun said something that caught my attention he said firewalls used to be the perimeter now people are and while that's self-serving to octa and probably beyond id it's true people apps and data are the new perimeter and they're not in one location and that's the point now unfortunately i had lined up an interview with dia jolly who was the chief product officer at octa in a cube alum for this past week knowing that we were running this segment in this episode but she unfortunately fell ill the day of our interview and had to cancel but i want to follow up with her and understand how she's thinking about connecting the dots with auth 0 with devs and enterprises and really test our thesis there this is a really interesting chess match that's going on let's look a little deeper into that identity space this chart here shows some of the major identity players it has some of the leaders in the identity market and there's a breakdown of etr's net score now net score comprises five elements the lime green is we're adding the platform new the forest green is we're spending six percent or more relative to last year the gray is flat send plus or minus flat spend plus or minus five percent the pinkish is spending less and the bright red is where exiting the platform retiring now you subtract the red from the green and that gets you the result for net score which you can see superimposed on the right hand chart at the bottom that first column there the far column is shared in which informs and indicates the number of responses and is a proxy for presence in the market oh look at the top two players in terms of spending momentum now sales sale point is right there but auth 0 combined with octa's distribution channel will extend octa's lead significantly in our view and then there's microsoft now just a caveat this includes all of microsoft's security offerings not just identity but it's there for context and cyber arc as well includes its acquisition of adaptive but also other parts of cyberarks portfolio so you can see some of the other names that are there many of which you'll find in the gartner magic quadrant for identity and as we said we really like this move by octa it combines positive market forces with lead offerings from very well-run companies that have winning dna and passionate people now to further emphasize emphasize what what's happening here take a look at this this chart shows etr data for octa within sale point and cyber arc accounts out of the 230 cyber and sale point customers in the data set there are 81 octa accounts that's a 35 overlap and the good news for octa is that within that base of sale point in cyber arc accounts octa is shown by the net score line that green line has a very elevated spending and momentum and the kicker is if you read the fine print in the right hand column etr correctly points out that while sailpoint and cyberarc have long been partners with octa at the recent octane 21 event octa's big customer event the company announced that it was expanding into privileged access management pam and identity governance hello and welcome to coopetition in the 2020s now our current thinking is that this bodes very well for octa and cyberark and sailpoint well they're going to have to make some counter moves to fend off the onslaught that is coming now let's wrap up with what has become a tradition in our quarterly security updates looking at those two dimensions of net score and market share we're going to see which companies crack the top 10 for both measures within the etr data set we do this every quarter so here on the left we have the top 20 sorted by net score or spending momentum and on the right we sort by shared n so again top 20 which informs shared end and forms the market share metric or presence in the data set that red horizontal lines those two lines on each separate the top 10 from the remaining 10 within those top 20. in our method what we do is we assign four stars to those companies that crack the top ten for both metrics so again you see microsoft palo alto networks octa crowdstrike and fortinet fortinet by the way didn't make it last quarter they've kind of been in and out and on the bubble but you know this company is very strong and doing quite well only the other four did last quarter there was same four last quarter and we give two stars to those companies that make it in both categories within the top 20 but didn't make the top 10. so cisco splunk which has been steadily decelerating from a spending momentum standpoint and z-scaler which is just on the cusp you know we really like z-scaler and the company has great momentum but that's the methodology it is what it is now you can see we kept carbon black on the rightmost chart it's like kind of cut off it's number 21 only because they're just outside looking in on netscore you see them there they're just below on on netscore number 11. and vmware's presence in the market we think that carbon black is really worth paying attention to okay so we're going to close with some summary and final thoughts last quarter we did a deeper dive on the solar winds hack and we think the ramifications are significant it has set the stage for a new era of escalation and adversary sophistication now major change we see is a heightened awareness that when you find intruders you'd better think very carefully about your next moves when someone breaks into your house if the dog barks or if you come down with a baseball bat or other weapon you might think the intruder is going to flee but if the criminal badly wants what you have in your house and it's valuable enough you might find yourself in a bloody knife fight or worse what's happening is intruders come to your company via island hopping or inside or subterfuge or whatever method and they'll live off the land stealthily using your own tools against you so they can you can't find them so easily so instead of injecting new tools in that send off an alert they just use what you already have there that's what's called living off the land they'll steal sensitive data for example positive covid test results when that was really really sensitive obviously still is or other medical data and when you retaliate they will double extort you they'll encrypt your data and hold it for ransom and at the same time threaten to release the sensitive information to crushing your brand in the process so your response must be as stealthy as their intrusion as you marshal your resources and devise an attack plan you face serious headwinds not only is this a complicated situation there's your ongoing and acute talent shortage that you tell us about all the time many companies are mired in technical debt that's an additional challenge and then you've got to balance the running of the business while actually affecting a digital transformation that's very very difficult and it's risky because the more digital you become the more exposed you are so this idea of zero trust people used to call it a buzzword it's now a mandate along with automation because you just can't throw labor at the problem this is all good news for investors as cyber remains a market that's ripe for valuation increases and m a activity especially if you know where to look hopefully we've helped you squint through the maze a little bit okay that's it for now thanks to the community for your comments and insights remember i publish each week on wikibon.com and siliconangle.com these episodes they're all available as podcasts all you do is search breaking analysis podcast put in the headphones listen when you're in your car out for your walk or run and you can always connect on twitter at divalante or email me at david.valante at siliconangle.com i appreciate the comments on linkedin and in clubhouse please follow me so you're notified when we start a room and riff on these topics and others and don't forget to check out etr.plus for all the survey data this is dave vellante for the cube insights powered by etr be well and we'll see you next time [Music] you

>> Announcer: From the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, it's theCUBE. Covering Coupa Inspire 2019. Brought to you by Coupa. >> Welcome to theCUBE. Lisa Martin on the ground at Coupa Inspire '19 from the Vegas. I'm very pleased to welcome not Bono, not Sting, it's Chandar, the CMO of Coupa. Chandar, welcome to theCUBE. >> Lisa, thank you, it's great to be here today. >> This is a really cool event. Procurement is sexy. >> It is sexy. >> It can be so incredibly transformative to any organization. I loved how the last two days, what you guys have done is a great job of articulating Coupa's value in procurement, invoicing, payments, expense, through the voices of your customers and I think there's no better brand value that you can get. >> Sure, absolutely. >> Tell us a little bit about your role as the CMO of Coupa and marketing in a fast-growing company with a product that people might go, "I haven't heard of that, what is that again?" >> Yeah, it's a good question. I think if I look at it, my role is at Coupa, especially, for Coupa, what's interesting about it, as you said, is that every company makes money, every company spends money. So, invariably, Coupa can be used across a set of different companies. One from the Golden State Warriors to Procter & Gamble to the Lukemia & Lymphoma Society. Across the board. And then, from our perspective, holistically, we're looking at business, but managed from different aspects of spend. You said procurement was in expenses. So, my role is to build a marketing engine to get the flywheel effect of first you drive awareness. All marketing starts with awareness and you said people haven't heard of it. And so, to first to drive awareness in a very thoughtful way to the right contextual community we want to go after. And, two, drive acquisition, we'll drive close synergies between sales and marketing to ultimately drive pipeline and win rates and ultimately deals. And then, very importantly in today's world, is to drive the advocacy and get your most passionate customers to evangelize about the brand, so that you create the flywheel effect of awareness, acquisition, and advocacy. And, that's really what my role today is. >> And, I love how I read an article where you call that the stairway to marketing heaven. So, I thought, I wonder if you're a guitar guy, but you're right. It's how to drive awareness, but in a meaningful, thoughtful way. Especially today, with all all the technology, we wake up with it, right? Our phone is our alarm clock. We are bombarded by ads. If we're on Instagram, following our favorite celebrities or whatnot and it's scary when they have the right context, but it has to be thoughtful. We need to know our audience. So, you describe this stairway to marketing heaven, as you just mentioned, it's awareness, it's acquisition, which is key. But, I feel like a lot of companies don't forget the advocacy part, but they don't invest enough in it because that's the best salesperson for your technology, is the people that are using it successfully, right? >> Totally. Yeah, so, in fact, there was a study about a couple of years which looked at how balanced the boat is in terms of spending in presale versus post-sale. And, it's interesting that 87% of B2B marketing spend was presale. In other words, only 13% of people were investing in retention marketing, adoption mastery, customer marketing, and this is what advocacy marketing. And, in today's world, that doesn't work because you got to balance the boat because, to your point, you're getting in a peer-bond world where your existing customers are your best sellers. And, prospects who have all the buying power today are looking to your existing customers to guide them in their purchasing decisions. So, as an organization, if you balance the boat, then you're going to get the flywheel effect going for you in terms of driving the right advocacy across all channels. Just not your own channel if you earn channels to ultimately drive that acquisition going. >> Do you think that's actually more valuable? 'Cause it's one thing to have on your .com site, your social media sites, all these great things about your technologies, etc., coming from customers or from product experts, from influencers. Talk about the value. As technology advances so much and we are influenced by so many other channels, the value of the earned channel and that peer-to-peer relationship. >> Yeah, I think, as I say, that every mom says her baby is good-looking. But, in software, not every baby is really good-looking. Which means, if you take that analogy and extend it, if you're coming to your own channel, invariably, you're going to see some great customer videos about your product, you're going to see some great endorsements and testimonials, you're going to see some great quotes about your product. The reality, there's no bad news about your product on your own website, on your own channel. But, the reality is there are some, some people who might have different opinions. If you go to Glassdoor, no company gets a five on Glassdoor. And, if you take the same thing and extend it to earned channels for advocacy, folks like G2 Crowd, TrustRadius, and B2B, for example, are becoming more relevant today than before because two things. One is 85% of our customers' journey is self-directed. >> Lisa: That much? >> That much and Forrester has anywhere from 60 to 80, but reality is whether you're buying a car or you're buying Coupa. Today, a customer is discovering more journeys. And, in that process, they are looking to more of these earned channels as validation of which ones to go after than just your own channels. So, that's why we got to balance the boat and distribute our advocacy spend dollars across both your own channels and your earned channels. And, that's really important for you and the flywheel will pay off for you over time from that perspective. >> It will and that seems like a lot of the things that Suzy Irwin was talking about to the audience earlier. That's common sense. Why is it that you see these marketing budgets that are so heavily weighted towards just getting awareness, getting customers acquired, and then not thinking about retention marketing account based marketing. >> I'll tell you why. I think any smart CMO will conceptually agree with you. Nobody's going to say, of course, this is not important for me to get advocacy. The challenge comes in in terms of how that marketing department is measured. What gets measured gets funding at the end of the day. >> Lisa: That's a good point. >> And, reality is a lot of these B2B companies are still measuring marketing based on, what's the pipeline you're driving and what's at the top of the funnel metrics that you're driving? In reality, that's a little bit of a skewed thing because then if that's what you're being measured at the board level, at the executive level, then guess what? All your funding is going to go towards that. But, really, the true measurement of marketing, one, is about, yes, you have to get pipeline. You have to influence win rates at the bottom of the funnel and that's where product marketing comes in. But, as importantly, you have to look at the number of brand advocates you create and lifetime value of a customer. >> Yes, CLV, yes. >> And, that's really, really, customer lifetime value is so important because in a SaaS business, ultimately, the Mufasa metric, I'm a Lion King fan. The Mufasa metric is really lifetime value because if a customer stays longer with you, pays you more, and is shouting from the rooftop, then, invariably, that SaaS business is doing well. And, that's why you have to balance the boat in terms of post-advocacies, post-acquisition spend into advocacy, as much as you've done in pre-acquisition. >> When you came into Coupa a couple of years ago, have you been able to shift those budgets because you're able to demonstrate the value that that advocacy piece generates with the flywheel? >> Absolutely and I have a very progressive-thinking CEO who's partners with me on this too. So, we've been absolutely able to do that. In fact, what we're trying to do at the end of the day and most software companies, the real goal should be creating a tribe. In technology, you have to create a tribe to be a titan. And, it's just not about the capability, it's about the community. And, that's really what we're trying to do at Coupa is to create the tribal community feeling. So, if the community is bigger than the brand, it is about the community itself and learning, sharing, and growing with each other and being successful. And, we're just fostering that. So, from that perspective, if you look at this conference and the investment we're making here, some of the programs we're doing in terms of advocacy, what we call spend sellers, etc., is all about that community tribal feeling and go establish that. To use some inspiration from our consumer brands, if you really think about it, people don't buy what they want. People buy what they want to be. So, let me give you what I mean by that. What I want could be a bike. It could be any motorbike, but what I want to be could be part of a very special community and that's why Harley Davidson is successful. What I want could be any stationary bike today, but what I want to be is part of some cool community like Peloton. That's why Peloton is successful. So, similarly for us, what I want could be some spend management software, but what I want to be is part of this community, this cool club, and that's the feeling we're trying to create in the post-acquisition cycle. >> I love that you said that because you talked about that this morning and I loved how you had the word community on the slide and then broke that out into communication unity. And, one of the senses that I got yesterday when-- >> Chandar: Rob was talking about it. >> Yeah, when Rob kicked off everything is this is a very collaborative community. We think about that in terms in terms even like a developer community or something like that. But, Coupa is now managing $1.2 trillion of spend through the platform that every other business that's using Coupa gets to benefit from. It's customer-centric, it's supplier-centric, but it's about applying the right technologies, AI, machine learning, to all this data, so everybody benefits. >> That's right and one of the interesting aspects of community building is one aspect of community building is that Marc Benioff had a great, evangelistic marketing was a way of community building. He would come in and really evangelize and this is where we're going and you all need to come with us. When I was at Marketo, it was interesting. Community building was through more educational marketing and doing it through this, I'm going to educate you through though leadership. Another good way of community building is through product intelligence, which is community intelligence. So, collectively, the sum of all parts are smarter than the parts themselves. And, Rob has a great line, which says, "None of us is as smart as all of us." And, the fundamental community intelligence offering is based on this first principle. So, example, if I'm the community of Coupa customers, the next customer is smarter than the previous customer because the collective intelligence grew, which means I can then go benchmark it myself. I gave an example this morning of USO, the company that provides services to the United States troops. And, when Rick Quaintance at USO benchmarked himself using community intelligence, versus the rest of the community, he realizes that his invoice cycle times are seven times lower. So, that kind of intelligence is extremely beneficial and invaluable to companies. So, that's the value of the community, is providing the collective intelligence. Waze is a great consumer example. Those of us who use Waze for traffic know that it's all community driven and each one of us is smarter because we're collectively using it. It's the same concept in applying that to B2B software. >> So, as we see, you mentioned the over 80% of the buying decision is self-directed whether we're buying a car or Coupa software. Did Coupa foresee that in the last decade to see we're going to have to go to a more community-driven collaboration because the consumer of any thing, any product or service, is going to be so empowered 'cause that's a part of the Coupa foundation. >> It is. >> Lisa: Which, we don't see a lot in companies that are 10 plus years old. >> Yeah, and credit to Rob for his vision for this. It's because I think early part of the company, he wrote into the contracts that the company can benefit. Collectively, every company can benefit by being part of this community. And, the fact is data's aggregated, abstracted, there's no information that is sensitive, etc. But, the fact is we all can collectively benefit through it. That was a great vision of Rob and early people and that's benefited us because the benefit is really over scale and time. Now, your $1.2 trillion, it is really statistically significant in each different industry to get that intelligence. And, that is one of the other reasons we launched our business spend index. It's called spendindex.com. Where we can use the billions of dollars spent in the community to provide a leading indicator of economic growth based on current business spend sentiment. You think of ADP as this payroll, it's called ADP payroll thing that comes out and the gross domestic product report comes out. Those tend to be rear-view mirror lagging indicators. But, as we're using community-based intelligence to provide a windshield, a leading indicator of where the economy is going. So, there's so many different use cases. Benefiting based on spend you're doing as well as where the economy is going and all this is based on the intelligence. >> It's so powerful because, to your point, you're not looking behind. >> Chandar: It's the windshield. >> Exactly, able to be looking forward. So, with all the announcements and the great things that have come out with the AWS expansion, what you guys are doing with Coupa Pay. I was shocked to learn the percentages of businesses that are still writing paper checks. Or, the fact that a lot of companies have 10 plus banks that they're working with. There's still so much manual processes. You must just be, the future is so bright, you got to wear shades with Coupa. But, what excites you about what you guys have announced the last coupe of days and the feedback that you're hearing from your tribe? >> I think there's two kinds of things. One is continue to set the innovation agenda for the industry. And, really, you have to look at every customer on their unique journey of maturity and maturation, so we have a very thoughtful, what we call, maturity index, The business spend management index. Whereas, you are seeing some of these customers, for example, you mentioned, may be in the first stage of this maturity, where, for them, it's just getting automation and going from paper to paperless could be the first step. But, some other customers might say, "I've gotten there, "but I want to get the next level of sophistication "to orchestrate these business spend processes." So, what's exciting for us in the feedback is we're creating product capability across this maturation journey for our customers to make them successful at each of those places. And, Coupa Pay is one example of that. Whereas, some of the other pieces we talked about, we announced about some of the community offerings that we did also is on that. So, that's one exciting piece. The other exciting piece that customers tell us at this conference is, "Foster platforms for us "to engage with each other, learn from each other, "share from each other, and grow with each other." So, even stuff that Rob talked about, which is sourced together. This concept of customers coming together to drive a sourcing process and, again, the collective intelligence in the community, that, we're getting very, very positive feedback from that perspective. And, ultimately, Rob has a really good saying that, "It is not about customer satisfaction. "It is about customer success." That's a delineation there. A customer could be very satisfied with you, but they may not be necessarily successful. And, we say, it's not about satisfaction. It's about success. And, by creating this innovation cycle and then having a post-implementation process that's getting true value, that's truly how we drive customer success. >> And, something that I've heard over and over as I've talked to a number of your customers yesterday and today is how much they're feeling Coupa is listening. Their feedback is being incorporated. They're actually influencing the development of the technology and that was loud and clear the last two days. >> Yeah, I think there is, Rob talked about the number of features that are being influenced by the community and we have these-- >> 300 plus in the last 12 months. >> Yes, 300 plus in the last 12 months. And, there's this concept of two ears, one mouth. And, listen, learn, and innovate and that's the philosophy here. But, it's a right mix of listening to customers, learning from them, and getting the right input from them for driving innovation, as well as having strategic vision on where this market is going and having the right mix of those to provide the capability to customers. >> Wow, you're on a rocket ship. Chandar, it was great to have you on theCUBE. You'll have to come back. >> Yes, Lisa, absolutely, I'll come back and it was a pleasure being here. Awesome. >> Awesome, thank you so much. For Chandar, I'm Lisa Martin and you're watching theCUBE from Coupa Inspire '19. Thanks for watching. (techno music)

(upbeat violin music) >> Hello and welcome to Special CUBE conversations. I'm John Furrier here at theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto. I'm joined with Jeff Jonas who's the co-founder and CEO of a stealth start-up called Senzing. He won't talk about it. I try to wrestle him to the ground to get information launching later. You're in town. Thanks for swinging by. Former IBM fellow, CUBE alumni. Some great videos. Check out Jeff Jonas, search Jeff Jonas theCUBE on Google and check out the videos. We've got great conversations over the years. Last time we saw you at your IBM event, riffing on, you know, the context of data. You're written and recognized by National Geographic as one of the major, the innovator in data space, which is a big honor, congratulations. >> Thank you. >> I appreciate it. Couldn't happen to a better person. >> Lucky, lucky. >> So what's going on? Tell us about the new startup. >> You know, I had a great run at IBM. They were really good to me when they bought my company. They were good to me for 11 and a half years. I think it was the longest-standing founder from an acquired company that IBM ever had. Great run and then they were good to me on an exit. I proposed something last, in 2016 in June. I kind of like it was a red pill, blue pill Matrix kind of move. I went hey, I got some ideas, but it's time to go. I've got to get back to my entrepreneurial spirit. Blue pill, red pill and they were like yeah, but you're a fellow. Go to research and live happily ever after. >> You've made it, you're a fellow. Why would you do anything? Why would you be a lowly entrepreneur? >> And it truly is, of all the things I've done, that I'm like wow, that is crazy to happen in my life. That's actually the single highest. It's over a few other things. >> John: It's a big deal. >> It is a huge deal, so. >> But you're an entrepreneur. You're scratching the itch. So what happened with the blue pill, red pill? >> So one of the options was hey, I've been working on this thing here at IBM called G2. It was my next generation entity engine. Figures out who's who in your data, matches identities. We've been working on it for years, I think nine years and I just said, I'd like to go build a company around that and I'll give you a rev share. You'll make more money than if I stayed. They were like, oh that was a great idea. Let's have a partnership, let's do that. So August of 2016, I spun out the source code. >> John: Who was the main executive at that point? Was it -- >> It was Bob Picciano. >> Bob Picciano. >> Yeah. >> He's very entrepreneurial-friendly. >> Yeah and he had to get in alignment across a whole bunch of IBM to make this happen. Anyways, I was really fortunate and the partnership that I had with IBM even to this day is just extraordinary. >> So did they fund you as well? >> Fund, no. I funded it myself for the first five or six months. I took two, money from two private investors that I've known a long time. Really smart, strategic money. Very active in my business. >> John: And you know them. >> Yeah, I've known them for a long time. One of them was a customer of mine. One I sat on the board with. It was just great. >> So the inner circle, they're in the boat. You've got some good people that you know. >> Yeah. Some people are like how do you manage your investors and I'm like, we don't even talk like that. >> We hang out. >> Yeah, we hang out. They manage me. Like, I go to them and, help me. >> That's how it should be, right? >> It's different. >> You don't have VCs on your board? No, but that's the formula. That's what you want. Entrepreneurs these days get so star-struck on having investors, but it's hard work. You want to get people that you trust and you like. >> Yeah, I learned that in my first company. We had two rounds of venture capitals in my first company. I learned a bunch of things, but they were great investors. It was a great relationship. I learned about VC because I had my own money in four VC funds. I've been able to fund four, five companies, but with all of that in mind, I have a really clean cap table. But anyway, we went off to the races since, since August of 2015. >> John: So that's when you left IBM, last time we checked. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> And then I went into stealth mode. We've been collecting real customers. We've been iterating on the product. Our calling, if you will. You know, when I left IBM, I sat there with this thing called G2 and I'm like, this is the only thing that makes my team and I special is how to figure out in data, especially big data, who is the same as who across cultures, across languages and scripts and doing it where you don't need a data scientist. You don't need an expert to tune it and I did a survey of about 50 companies out there that are out there in the same business of selling entity resolution and almost all of them say call for a quote because it's all so hard and really, it's hard to find any software that's world class that's less than a quarter of a million and you're going to spend a million and so what we've been doing is working on making it so easy to consume that-- >> You're moving it down from a high ticket item, probably bolted on a ton of professional services to a much more turn key democratized-- >> Yeah, totally. You're absolutely right. Like we don't even have professional services. We're like download it, try it on a subscription license. You pay monthly, we send them the code so no data flows to us and when I, this is kind of funny and it's very private. Oh, I know I'm saying this on your cameras and all, but every team meeting, you know, our mission is smarter entity resolution for everyone everywhere and then I tell my team, what's going to make our company amazing is no one calls us. Everyone loves us and we've been really working on iterating on that. You know, any time somebody has any reason they have to call, that's not a moment of joy. >> You're launching when? This month, right? >> We are launching. >> 'cause there's nothing on the web. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. Senzing.com is on the web, but at right this split second, it's a holding site. There will be a better, the real site's coming out very, very soon like in the quarter of the next week. >> Total stealth dark mode. >> We're in really dark mode. Although we've been collecting, again, customers and great logos. IBM's a customer. They license G2 from us. >> And so they didn't put money in. >> No, they did not put money in. I put my own money in. >> I guess they bumped my company and then I put my money in so in some sense, you can say if you followed the money. >> Do they own any? >> No, they don't own any of the company. >> But there's a business partnership. >> Absolutely. >> Okay, got it. >> And it's an incredible relationship. We have all kinds of interesting things we're doing with IBM. It's almost as if I've not left. They just don't give me a paycheck anymore. >> Which is why they're like, that guy's a fellow. Why is he doing it? He's going to go start a company? Why would he do that? 'cause you're an entrepreneur. That's why. Well, that's awesome. What are you working on at IBM with the G2 and I know you don't want to talk about the product and I respect that even though I try to dig at it. But what I really want to do 'cause you're going to launch in a couple weeks anyway. Let's get the aperture of what you're looking at. What market are you looking at? What problems out there, you mentioned entity is one piece. What's the key thing that you're looking at? >> You know, the key thing is that organizations have all of this data in all of these piles and they don't, they're having difficulty knowing about the same person at the same company. And I'll give you one of my favorite use cases that's, you know, G2's been in production already for many years, maybe my favorite deployment to date was deployed in 2012? Yeah, 2012, five years ago, six, for a company called ERIC. It's a non-profit. It's run by states. 22 states put their data in there on voter registration data, and it's used to improve the quality of election roles and it's got my privacy by design features baked into it and I'm just so damn proud of this thing. You know, the Democrats like it, the Republicans like it. I share the privacy community. >> No calls and everyone loves you. >> Yeah, no, that's the truth and this system, it's got a quarter of a billion records of about 100 million people and they have one person in IT that runs the entire IT department including G2. Like this is unheard of. So that's been in production for five years. But the range of companies that are having a challenge with who is who in their data is just everywhere. >> And give me an example of what that means. I'm trying to crop that, who is who like across multiple databases or? >> Yeah, I'll give you an example. See, in the voter registration system, you have somebody's registered in two different states, but it's the same person. You've got to get the data together to realize that somebody's registered in two states and that's because they moved. If you've ever moved between states, you may have forgotten to unregister. Most people do. >> Every person does. >> That's illegal. >> Like 1% would actually go through the motions. >> Lawbreaker. >> Tell the state I moved. >> Right. >> As far as the jury knows, I'm getting a new jersey. What's happening? >> Exactly, so you've got these two piles of data, but we combine it, you see that these two are the same and they're registered in both. So now they have to go back to somebody and say do you want to be registered to vote? But now I'll flip and give you an example of companies. There's a, one of our customers does supply chain risk. They take a vendor, some of the biggest global brands, and in their vendor list of all these customers across the world, there's duplicates in there, and then of course these companies reach the same manufacturers and there's duplicates across these lists but this is messy data. Then they scrape the web and look for toxic spills, child labor and other derogatory data about manufacturers in China, the Philippines, India and this is super messy and then they extract the data off the web, with just a crappy as you can see. We, they got our code on a Tuesday. They didn't call us until Thursday and when they called us Thursday they just said, and what they did was they combined all the data so they can go back to a global brand and say hey, this manufacturer is going to cause you risk to your reputation. So they're resolving who is who. >> You're untangling a lot of messy data. >> Yeah. >> And making it insightful. >> We get insights and we got a, this is an example. They got this offer on Tuesday without a call. We got a call on Thursday and said we canceled all of our internal work to try to mess with all this. We're just using your stuff, it's done. And the last we heard from them, they just went, the quality of your matching you're doing, without any tuning or training, it's a special kind of real-time machine learning that we invented, no training, no tuning and they went, the results it's getting are human-quality. >> So how, obviously you don't want to talk about price points, but it's affordable, it sounds like. It sounds like you're mission-driven on this thing so it's not like getting, you've already made some good dough as an entrepreneur. You're not afraid to make more money, but this is a mission-driven opportunity. >> So many organizations are struggling with this. We are going to make it affordable to the smallest companies and I can't quite tell you the price point. >> It's okay, we're at theCUBE. >> Think order of magnitude life in any other option. >> Can you take care of us? >> Oh, I could hook you up. >> We have duplicates all over the place. >> We'll give it to you and you'll get a towel set too. >> That would be great. Question for you. What's your take on crypto block chain because you mentioned, you know, your customer's a great part of anti-money laundering, big part of, you mentioned privacy baked into by design there. This is now a phenomenon. You looked at China with WeChat. They're making real names, real identities be part of that system. So more and more of this potential attention, public data's going to be out there. What's on your take on, you know, your customer and some of these trends that are involved in this? >> You know, on block chain, what it really is, it's calling, I mean I've seen a lot of people use the term block chain around that just ain't it. 'cause it's got a lot of buzz. >> Buzzword. >> But the reality is, it is a tamper-resistance ledger and I've been writing about immutable audit logs and tamper-resistance ledgers in my privacy by design work before block chain came out, which is really distributed form. The value of it to the kinds of work that we do is a tamper-resistance log allows you to connect it to software so that when say, somebody searches for something, you can record it in a tamper-resistance way and why do you want to do that? Well if you've created an index in some central data, you want to make sure it's not being abused. You want to make sure that the person who's searching is not searching out their neighbor or their daughter's new boyfriend. That would be an abuse, right? >> Yeah, yeah. >> Right. So a tamper-resistance auto log would be a great place to put that. That would be a natural thing to do with block chain. >> Awesome. So you got the launch coming. How are you doing and are you doing any of the marathons and triathlons? What are you doing? What's the latest? >> Since I was last on your show here, I became one of three people to do every Iron Man on the world, every Iron Man triathlon. There's one person in Canada. There's one person in Mexico and I'm representing America. >> You're the American representation. All triathlons. >> You know, if you go to the IronMan.com webpage, there's a list of races around the world and I'm one of three that can just look at every single race and say yes, yes, yes. >> Your favorite. >> Austria. >> Why? >> It's beautiful, it's a great course. It was well-run. I had a good time. >> Beautiful weather and people. >> And your worst? The one where you had your bike on a plane and you lost your luggage? >> Oh, I had no, I had a really really dark time this last year at the race in South Korea. And this is how bad it was. It's the only race where I walked across the finish and I sat in the bath tub. This is embarrassing, okay? I sat in this bath tub with the shower thing that you have to hand-hold over my head and I was trying to cry 'cause I was so defeated, but I was too dehydrated to even cry. The level of failure. >> It just knocked you down. >> When you can't even cry. >> Well you know you went from IBM Fellow to lowly entrepreneur, how's it feel? I mean you're back, rolling your sleeves up, getting down and dirty. Fun, having a blast? >> I really love being a benevolent dictator. >> John: How many people on the team? >> We're like about 16 if you count people that are full time or half time or better. I have a few people who are half time or better so yeah, about 16. >> Sounds like fun. >> Great fun. >> Great, Jeff Jonas. We'll be looking forward to your launch Senzing.com. S-E-N-Z-I-N-G.com. Former IBMer, great to see you and we'll keep you in touch. And where are you going to be headquartered out of? What's the location? >> Venice Beach, California, where I live. Although my team is scattered all over the country. We also are licensed in Singapore and we are hoping to launch Senzing Lab's RND activities out of Singapore. >> Alright, so we'll pop down to LA to check you out when you're up and running. Okay, Jeff Jonas stopping by theCUBE here on a great Thought Leader Thursday. I'm John Furrier. Every Thursday, we do the Thought Leader interviews with friends, colleagues, CUBE alumni and more. Always look up to great people. Have to be a thought leader, have to have original content and be an innovator. Thanks for watching. (upbeat violin music)

(upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We're having the Cube conversation in our Palo Alto studio. The conference season is taking a little bit of a break, so now we can do interviews in the studio which is a little bit more comfortable situation, and we're really excited to have first time guest Karen Steele. She's the GVP of corporate marketing at Marketo. Karen, welcome. >> Thank you, very happy to be here Jeff. >> Absolutely. So, you are talking about something that I've seen in the research coming up to this about engagement. And right, everybody talks about engagement. What is engagement? People are trying to measure engagement, >> Karen: Yep. >> But then it seems like so many people are still stuck though on the mass broadcasting kind of numbers. The want big numbers which is a very different number than engagement. So You guys are getting really into this. Obviously Marketo a leader in marketing innovation and marketing platform. Is this new? Is it renewed focus? I mean, how do you guys deal with this whole concept of engagement? >> Yeah, so thanks. It's a great opening question because we are passionate about engagement. And in fact, we believe that today, people, human beings want to be engaged with as opposed >> to marketed to. >> Right. >> So our CEO created a vision of this idea called The Engagement Economy. And the idea is that everybody and everyone is connected. Today with the digital transformation happening around us, you can touch people, touch customers anywhere and everywhere throughout their journey. You know, before they buy from you, during the sales process and post sale. So, it's all about creating experience and we think the way to do that is through engagement. >> But it's kind of interesting 'cuz the dichotomy is we're in this Google world, right? And the Google world is, you know, build great engineering, people will come. It's all about the data. It's cookies and where have you been and you know, recommendation engines. And more of this kind of, feels more machine-y And not necessarily engage-y, Which is more of a person to person than necessarily a machine to person. >> Karen: Correct. >> But yet, even the person to person is still supported by and enabled by a lot of this technology. So it's this inter, intertwining of both kind of a person to machine, or machine to person, >> excuse me. >> Yep. >> Versus really connecting with, whether it be the brand, Whether it be a person that represents >> the brand >> Right. >> So how, how do you see this kind of evolving and how can people not get too wrapped up >> in the machine-y part? >> Right. >> And actually build a relationship, another word instead of engagement, with their customers, or even take it another step, with their constituents, if you will? >> Yes. >> And their community, >> even more passionate. >> Yes. Yeah, so I think it's interesting you brought up the machine aspect, 'cuz there's sort of a positive and negative. So if you think about the space we're in, it's called Marketing Automation. And it does feel sort of process oriented and machine-like. But at the end of the day, marketing has always been about the human being and building that relationship. And technology has just simply helped facilitate that and do it through multiple channels like never before. But it still comes down to the marketer's primary role is to connect with, in a personalized way, in an authentic way and create a relationship. A relationship that's going to generate advocacy for the brand, that's going to ultimately generate revenue for their business. So it's really important that engagement is about the human being and it's about how you can create positive experience throughout the lifecycle of the journey. >> Right, it's interesting you say experiences too, 'cuz we've seen a huge shift in into customers wanting really more of an experience or an engagement that's potentially tied to a brand. But you look at great experience marketers like Red Bull, >> Yep. >> To pull one out. >> That you know, buying and drinking a Red Bull, the way they've positioned that in the marketplace is really being part of this really cool thing. It's visually stimulating, it's you know, a lot of >> adrenaline, >> Yes. >> and a lot of cool stuff. And then the other one I always think of is Harley Davidson. And the passion that that community has around that motorcycle. But it's so much more than driving that motorcycle, >> You know? >> Yep. >> It's the open road and it's all the accessories and stuff that they put. You know people brand it on their arm. >> A lot of people. >> Right. >> So, in terms of you know how, how does that translate with newer brands? How do you try to get that type of connection with your customers, hold it, and I think you've mentioned in some of the things I've looked up for the interview you know, really thinking about the lifetime value of the customer as opposed to a transactional relationship? >> Right. >> That's a one time shot. >> Yeah, I mean a lot of the examples you, you just gave are very experiential in terms of the physical aspects of seeing, and feeling, and touching a brand. But a lot of digital marketing is, is not physical. And so you're communicating with people through a lot of channels that that are bits and bytes, and they're not looking somebody in the eye. And so I think being in touch with your brand and the messages you want to deliver. Making sure they're relevant and they carry your brand promise forward, and they connect with what that person wants to hear at exactly the right times. So for us engagement is, is about being smart in terms of reaching the person. If I use a social, or excuse me, a mobile device and that's my preferred way of communicating with you, I want you to reach me through that device, and not try and get me through direct mail or an email campaign. I might not pay attention to any of those things. So having that intelligence about your customer, or your prospect, or your partner, or even your employee is going to give you a better option to engage with them and create that one to one while you're still marketing one to many. >> Right. >> In terms of >> the actual relationship. >> And the other challenge a marketer obviously has too, is, I don't know who said it, we do too many shows. But you know, when it's done well, when suggestive selling is done well and recommendation engines are working well, it's magical. >> Yep. >> Right? >> It's what I want, when I want and it's presented to me. >> Yep. >> If it's done poorly, >> it's creepy, right? >> Yep. >> I don't necessarily >> know that you want to know that that was, you know what I was looking at. And obviously the target example which now is way far in the rear view mirror. But you know just because you have all the data, doesn't mean you can use all the data. And the challenge and the nuance of knowing what to use, when and where. >> Right. >> Well now you have >> so much more, kind of ammunition in >> your quiver if you will. >> Yep. >> Is a whole different type of a challenge. >> Yeah I think it's, it's a good point, and I think you're right. You don't want it to feel like big brother and somebody's following or stalking you, that's the last thing you want. But I think paying attention to the response, paying attention to a personalized message, testing that message, seeing what comes back, and helping execute the next thing that you do. And so there's sort of a fine line, but I definitely think the marketers are using the analytics today and it's just getting smarter and smarter. And we're going to talk about adaptive coming up here, >> I hope? >> Right, right. >> And you know, the big buzz right now which is AI, you know, what does AI mean for engagement? And we have some ideas around that >> as well. >> Right. >> Okay, so you broke it down to >> the big threes >> Yep. >> of the engagement economy. So the art of story telling. >> Karen: Yep. >> Adaptive engagement, >> as you just mentioned. >> Yep. >> And then advocacy. >> Karen: Yep. >> Which you talked about earlier before. So let's, let's kind of touch base on each one of those >> things. >> Great. >> How do you define 'em? Why are they important? So start out with the story telling. >> Yeah so it comes back to what we've already been talking about, which is the one to one relationship. Understanding who you're talking to. Crafting a message that, that resonates. Having that message be front and central to what your brand value is. You know, we are more prone to buy from somebody if we value their brand. You might make choices and pay a price premium if you care about a brand or how a brand interacts with you. So crafting the art of story telling is the right message, making sure it resonates, understanding your audience, and connecting it to the brand so you can make that >> emotional connection. >> Right, right. >> So how do you >> So, done, done well, >> you can do a very good job. >> Right, and it's always interesting to me, I always think, I watch sports on TV, right? I always think of the poor guy that just got assigned, I got to do a car commercial. Like, how many car commercials have been created up till now? And I got to think of a new one. >> Right. >> But, >> But you know, kind of traditional, kind of high end TV broadcast commercials are really story telling. I mean, some of them are fascinating what they can actually convey in a 30 second >> ad. >> Right. >> Or whether it's a Coke commercial and makes you cry at the end. So that, that, and that format has, has pretty well developed. But how are you seeing it translated into all these various digital formats and really short engagements, or it's a Snapchat, or it's (snaps fingers) you know a quick hit on Instagram, or it's a Facebook post. >> Karen: Yep. >> How are you seeing some of that story telling evolve into these different kind of communication mediums, if you will? >> Yep. >> And, and you >> you have so many that you have >> to >> Right. >> Jeff: to manage, right? A huge challenge. >> Yeah, and again, I think it's the authenticity as I said, but also the personalized nature of it. I want to deliver a message that matters to you. Where you want to receive that message. I might want to deliver something different to somebody else through an entirely different channel. So, but crafting the story, having the story be based on what you stand for as a brand, and the value for that customer, or whoever the message is, you're attempting to land it on >> Right. >> is still foundational and fundamental. And I think that a lot of the marketing, because technology's automated so much, we've lost a little bit of the art of the story. And really making the story connect back to you as a brand so you deliver the best message to your customer. >> Right. So that kind of feeds into your second one which you described as adaptive engagement. Which I presume is situational, contextual. >> Correct. >> That defines the how, the when, the where, the why. >> Yeah. Yeah, and I think in terms of our vision, so yes it is about delivering the right message, at the right time, to the right person to get the response you want. That's sort of the basics of adaptive and being able to do that very flexibly with technology. But when we think about adaptive and the next generation of it, we think about the impact that AI will have on engagement or marketing. So imagine a marketer today could say to their engagement platform, let's say the Marketo engagement platform, "I want to understand an outcome "and the best way to go about it. "I want to know how I can increase sales "in a particular region, in a particular quarter." And the engagement platform, based on that outcome that I want, will help determine what the right campaign is, what creative elements you put in that campaign based on the assets you've created, and importantly, who you target. And what is the audience? And think of almost just creating that outcome, having the platform deliver that whole experience when you push a button. And that entire campaign gets executed. >> Right, right. >> So that, I think is the future of adaptive. >> Because you'll be able to run you know, A/B test is probably not a very accurate description, >> right? >> Right. >> 'Cuz it's a multi, much more multivariate test that you can run and really >> start to optimize >> Right. >> for a much tighter group of attributes of your customer. >> Than >> Right. >> you ever could >> Yeah, and we >> in the past. >> Jeff: Or try to think of every kind of variable. >> And we do that today, but I think, I think now what we're saying is the marketer's going to truly be in the power seat where they can say not just, "Here's two ideas, test one against the other." It's basically, here's the outcome I want. >> Jeff: Right. >> Tell me exactly the best way to put that message out. What channel it should go through, who it should be delivered to, and run it. And so I think that's going to be the future of adaptive. >> Interesting. And then the third A, that you have, of engagement economy is advocacy. >> Heart and soul of any brand strategy. You know customers, loyal customers, are great customers and you want to create advocacy and relationships. I think when companies talk about advocacy, they talk about "I want a customer reference. "I want somebody who's going to approve a customer story "or a quote in a press release." We go far beyond that when we think about advocacy. We want customers that are going to partner with other customers and make the community around us better. >> And so, >> Right. >> they're speaking on behalf of our brand, Marketo, but they're also making our brand stronger and the relationships they're creating around Marketo. So we have a program called Purple Select, which has about 1200 customers, that every single day you know, we're putting challenges forward for them. We're offering them places to go, you know, generate conversations in community. And as a result they give stuff back to us. >> And they >> Right, right. >> make things available to us that otherwise wouldn't be. >> It's really kind of analogous to open source, right? The fact that you know >> all the smartest people >> Yep. >> in the world, don't happen to reside in your four walls. >> And >> Yep. >> you know, if you can use your product service offering platform, store, as a basis point for an engaged community to engage around, through, with. >> Correct. >> You know, >> you get you know, one plus one makes three, or ten for that, so huge. >> Absolutely. >> Huge kind of shift in, in thinking to really kind of open it up and to share and be collaborative and find out what other people >> are doing. >> And let, >> I think that's a great point. And let the advocates be your heroes. Let them advance their careers based on learning your technology, participating in your community and taking you know, their businesses forward in terms of success from a marketing standpoint. >> So I'm just curious in terms of the holy grail of measuring engagement. You know, kind of your thoughts on that. I mean there are obviously engagement measures out there. >> Karen: Right. >> How do you, you know, what are some of the things you look at to measure engagement. Or that you tell people they should look at to measure engagement. And how do you see engagement as a metric, as an actionable metric kind of evolving? Now that we have so many more potential touchpoints, >> datapoints, >> Right. >> other ways to measure. >> Yeah, so I think in the traditional marketing automation world, which we have played a big part in over the years, the true measurement has always been about pipeline. >> 'Cuz you're >> Right. >> you're doing campaigns to generate revenue for your business. I don't think that goes away, but it gets extended to across the entire lifecycle. So it's not just new customer acquisition. It's up-sell, it's cross-sell, it's renewals if you're in a softwares as service business. So it's lifetime value, not just revenue. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> It's advocacy, not just references. It's you know, peer to peer. There's this whole idea of voice of the customer. There're new companies out there like TrustRadius and G2 Crowd which provide platforms now for customers to do reviews on products and rank companies. And making that available to users gives everybody a voice in the process. >> So. >> Right. >> There's a whole bunch of new metrics, many of them are going to be, you know, very, very much around emotional connections back to your brand. And participation in the community. Today we have the marketing nation which is a 60,000 person community. The way I can cultivate content on that and grow people's roles in participating in that dialogue, is certainly an engagement measure for us. And it will lead to stronger sales, it will lead to stronger you know, preference in terms of our brand. It will lead to premium pricing if we want to do that in the future, et cetera. >> And then I wonder too, if you could just speak to the evolving role of marketing. Not only within the company, but specifically within IT spend, and business analytics spend, and really as a driver. >> Because before >> Yep. >> the analytics was really a service provider to the rest of the company >> and we gave you >> Yep. >> your quarterlies and your weekly sales reports and you know, that was kind of the role of IT. Now we're seeing IT as a business partner stepping in to say, "Here's all these cool technologies." But now marketing and the marketing automation which is way ahead of the automation >> Right. >> in a lot of >> the other places, is really driving that, and you've got measure, measurable results, and you can connect to all the different channels that are new that weren't there two years ago when you just had newspaper and >> Yep. >> and billboards and TVs. >> So you know, as that has evolved how have you seen, you know, marketing's role change in terms of kind of, power seat at the table, driving IT, investment decisions and those types of things? >> Obviously Marketo's >> Yep. >> were those decisions for a lot of companies. >> Yeah and it's a great conversation because there's been a lot of talk about the, the hybrid CMO, and what does that look like today? Because the CIO and the CMO now have to be in lockstep. In many cases now, the CMO's technology budget is looking as large as the CIO's technology budget. >> Right, right. >> And so. >> And then there's this other notion of if marketing owns the customer experience, or all things around customer engagement, are they not, in fact, the chief customer officer? And so, there's a whole bunch of things that I think are crossing lines. But I think it's great news for the marketer, because they need to be more customer centric, they need to be more data centric, and ultimately they sit in a really pivotal place in the organization to achieve many of those things. >> Right. And it's still interesting, and for all the soft things, I'll call it a soft thing, of engagement and lifetime value and some of these, some of these things that aren't necessarily tied to the bottom line at the end of the quarter, >> Right. >> every quarter. >> We still have to respond to that. And at the end of the day there has to be some, some ties, some connection, some demonstrated >> value of these efforts. >> Right. >> It can't just be for you know, apple pie and lemonade, I forget the expression. But anyway (laughs). So, 'cuz it still has to tie back to business, right? >> Absolutely. >> Still has to pay the bills, >> still has to get more sales. >> Absolutely. >> But what you're >> saying is, is it does. Engagement does translate into sales. >> Engagement translates to sales. Engagement translates to brand preference. Engagement translates to price premium. Engagement translates to advocacy. I mean, engagement is, it's such an active way to move the market forward that I think there's going to be a whole set of new metrics that combine sales enablement and sales processes as well because as marketing and sales partner, you know, from a sales engagement standpoint to go after named accounts, the ones that are most strategic to the business we're going to see a huge shift in terms of sales, sales engagement metrics as well. >> Just as you're saying that, I'm thinking of brands, right? And always the debate about the power of brand, and does brand still have power? And I think it does, but the market's really kind of bifurcated where either the brand is super powerful, or has zero power, you know, kind of depending on the product or the engagement. It sounds like really, engagement is probably the best way to make sure your brand can't be replaced by the old white label stuff that they used to have at the grocery store. >> Karen: Yeah. >> 'Cuz people got to be connected. >> Karen: Yep. >> Jeff: Not just a label. >> And they need to care about, people need to ultimately care about the relationship. Not the one thing. You know it used to be you dropped a direct mail, it was sort of an episode and you were never having a dialogue. Today, there's so many ways and so many channels to reach people, you have to have a consistent way to engage and a consistent way to look at, did I move the needle forward? Am I ultimately renewing that customer? Or generating more loyalty from that customer? Or you know, referenceability or advocacy. And so, engagement helps you do that through all the channels. >> It's interesting 'cuz the customer can engage with you, whether you, or communicate with you, whether you >> necessarily want it or not. >> That's right. >> And in new ways that were heretofore nonexistent. >> Karen: That's right. >> Fun stuff. >> Yeah. >> Great place to be. >> Well Karen, I loved >> Yeah. >> sitting down and talking about engagement. It's a thing we talk about here all the time. >> Great. >> It's really how we should measure success, it's how we know we're getting through and look forward to a follow up. I know you have some research coming out, and some books coming out, and Marketo's up to all kinds of stuff. So we will look for that in the not so distant future. >> Awesome. >> Alright. >> Thank you. >> We look forward to it. >> Absolutely, she's Karen >> Thanks a lot. >> Steele from Marketo, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching the Cube. Thanks for watching, we'll see ya next time. (upbeat music)

>>Live from the Mandalay convention center in Las Vegas, Nevada it's doc cube at IBM insight, 2014. Here are your hosts, John furrier and Dave Volante. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone. We are here. Live in Las Vegas for IBM impact. This is the cube special presentation at IBM insight inside the digital experience. IBM insight go. Social media lounge. Uh, the social media gurus are here. John furry with David. Um, that's playing off the joke. We're just sharing on Twitter, but seriously, we're here. If I didn't see this on the noise, my coast, Dave latte, next guest Marsha Cola year. Who's the managing director of impact ingenuity at Marsha Marsha. Yes, that's your Twitter handle is awesome. Welcome. Welcome back. Welcome back. >>Well, thanks. It's thrilled to be here. >>So we were just joking about Halloween and we're going to be a social media guru. It's a little bit of a meme going around the internet. I mean, there is no social media guru. I mean, you can't really be a guru with developing technology. You can be a practitioner. I mean, I mean, guru, what is a social media? What is a social media guru? This, >>This is where, because I offered that. I would answer any question you ask me, you can ask me those things. Sure. Well, I think that's the problem. I think that's why it'd be a fabulous Halloween costume. I'm going to think about doing that one too, because people seem to be know to these folks. So following them to the ends of the earth, because of something that they sit on, social media, I mean that, that's a kind of a scary concept, but Google glass >>As well. I mean, I mean, I'm not going to go there. Um, but let's talk, let's go in into that, that theme. I mean, honestly, you know, Jeff Jonas was just on he's awesome. We always get in the weeds. He's a fun character to talk to, but he's super smart as we're on this G2 thing, observation space, but we're all internet of things, right? I mean, it reminds me of that book is to read to my kids thing one and thing two, you know, we, all things we're all in another thing. So what do you see as that impact to, uh, this digital transformation where not only are the humans connected to the machines, the data that they're exhausting or sharing or streaming, but the machines are connected and collecting as well. How is that going to change? What's your view on all this? >>While I have been in the technology sector, most of my, uh, most of my life, uh, and I appreciate and enjoy the technology. I never lose sight of the fact that this is about the people it's about us actually working together of actually learning together, doing whatever the hell it is we're needing to do. So if all of my appliances are actually then taking care of the mundane, if my water softener system is actually getting the water put in and getting delivered on the right day, you know, all, all the better. If the, if the toaster is alerting me to some sort of news, I'm thrilled. I love the idea of the technology. Actually being able to take care of all that stuff that we never wanted to do in the first place, but the technology has been so lousy over the last couple of years, actually forever, uh, that we've had to do this stuff because the technology isn't doing it for us. >>Sure. I was a patient out in the customer space because that's, you know, that's more of the home example, but even business now seems to be early innings. I mean, people are kicking the tires. You know, we've talked to all the gurus coming up here who are the tech side, IBM and customers. And the reality is we're all pro data, which we all kind of see that obvious social data and, you know, big data analytics, certainly helpful, but this transformation people are now really changing how to operate, operationalize their business with it. It's a huge daunting task and it's scary. Um, some people are like, whoa, I don't want to do it. Or, Hey, I'm jumping in. I'm cool. Is there a cool factor? Is there a scared factor? What's your, what's your observation from mountain talking to everyone out in the, in the marketplace? >>Well, first I would, I'll totally bash the, the idea that this is only a consumer play or that it doesn't apply to businesses. Think of all the, uh, the mundane and ridiculous things we have to do at work because they're not being taken care of us. We aren't taken care of for us by our desks. If you want to look at that way or our computers, I loved hearing about the, the new, uh, uh, pairing of, uh Wayblazer and, you know, Watson and the idea of the travel being taken care of us, what we discover because of the data that we're putting off each and every moment is their systems around us all the time that actually know our preferences, know how we would be handling this, but yet they don't do anything about it. So the idea that we can actually move forward in that way should be just as applicable to our business. Uh, a manager should not have to actually be asking some of the questions that they're asking the HR department is need to be asking how you're doing. It's evident by all the things that you put out into the world. And by just actually attending to what's going on, we have a huge opportunity to get back all that time that we've been wasting all these years. I'm just a stupid >>And just to what's. So what's the bottleneck is a fear security, oh, we don't want privacy. Marcia will get offended. If we tweet her, she knows that we know that she tweeted that. I mean, that's, that's a concern. People have, it seems to be, is it? Yeah. Well, look, go back up, >>But why is it a concern? It's because the people who've been doing it early are doing it horribly. I mean, they're doing it in not respectful ways. There isn't actually a real thought about how would I be okay with this doing? And then those are we're. So ahead of the curve, maybe because of the guru status, some of these social media, maybe that maybe that's the reason, >>Just look at the government, they were big data gurus and they screwed up that that whole Snowden thing was all like, Hey, just ask us, we'll give you our email addresses. You can search my email, have a nice day. >>It's a very different message. It's a very different conversation. It's a very different question. It's a very different level of respect that we have from one person working with another. I'm actually talking with people as opposed to at them. And instead of just making assumptions of actually participating, I mean, the idea that engagement is goal just implies that we haven't been engaged all these years. We haven't been thinking we haven't been doing, I haven't met. I personally, haven't met a really dumb person. It, you know, and years, and yet everything I do at would imply that we're, we're too stupid to be able to really think and act and, and be thoughtful about it. >>So you're an influencer. Um, you're out here in the digital sphere and you are, you're hearing influencer. Um, I mean, whatever you define it. Well, it's, I guess if they say so, if you are a VIP influencer, we'll go with that. Um, >>Digging on your Twitter stream here. Fantastic. >>Working on it. So share this law, you know, we'd love, we'd love to hear your stories cause you last year you were awesome with the cube. We'd love, love JV. Give us the update. What's going on with, sorry. We started together Ted at IBM conference. You super busy. Um, what's going on share with the folks out there. Some of the things you've been even into what your what's working show some, you know, some stuff that didn't work, what's going on, what's happening? What are you, what are you doing? What are you worried? All right, >>John, if you're going to ask them, I'm telling you you're really, if you're really ready, Don Damian, probably a little after I saw you last time after I was visiting here that, uh, our world's falling apart. And if all of us actually don't get on that. If we don't actually start figuring out how to use the precious time we have the, the precious money we have, the, the roles we have in our organizations, the resources at our disposal, our brains for good, not evil. I'm not so sure about the world that my son is going to be inheriting for example. And, uh, I'm, I'm at a point in my life where I realize, I, I know a heck of a lot in the world. I have a lot of skills, everybody. I know. I look at these people around me having tremendous skills. And instead of us just sort of churning out the butter one more year, uh, we best, we best be thinking about what can I do given what I have of my time and my resources, my skills, or whatever that is and apply that to what I have influence over and be able to make as much difference. >>Are we talking about God's last offer here, the sustainable world, or what's actually on all? >>Oh, you're not at the time that the timing is perfect too. If you think about it, don't seriously. >>What are we talking about? The deterioration of our planet? We're talking about social condition. Yes, >>I, well, I mean, I can go on and >>On about money return. I can, I can entertain for hours. You just made. The comment >>I made is that no matter where we look, that that scientists have pointed out that we're past the point of no return with our climate. We, uh, we look at the, uh, at the deterioration of the planet around us. I happen to live in the woods and I mean, deep in the woods and you can, you can see the change of how much rain is coming down. That didn't, I mean, I, I'm not, my intent here is not to talk about all the, that the problems around us. We all actually feel them, even if we're not acknowledging them, what I see is the wasted opportunity of us, not actually, re-examining what we're choosing to do and figure out how, whatever it is we're capable of doing could actually be helping instead of bringing it up. So how should people, let's say, people want to know that's good, but I just wanted to frame it. So let's >>Take people want to, so let's say that resonates to somebody in the audience. What should they do? How should they start pick a passion? And they >>Have, um, I mean, I, my, my approach to all the change work I do and have been doing with corporations for the last 20 years is actually not additive. It's not asking the question. What more could I do? Because that's usually what keeps people from doing it. I asked the question, what's keeping me from doing what I've always known needed to be done. So in, in our communities, you know, my experience is everybody knows who it is that could use some assistance, not in a handout sort of way in a reaching out and caring way of asking of, of having a conversation, a participating, and to be able to step back and ask that question. What's keeping me from doing that. We know what needs to be done, but we're not doing it. So how can I say, oh, well, what's keeping me from doing it. I don't have time to do it. Okay. Well, what can I do to actually just get a little bit more time to do something that matters in the world? So that that's the most, very, >>Very basic level. It could be slowly be that it's, >>It's less Twitter. It could also be a re-evaluating how much time I'm spending at work on stuff that could be automated. I mean, going back to this whole conversation about automation, it is to ask those questions. What I can do. That's just about time. Um, >>I, yeah, that is one of the biggest objections I don't have time. Right? >>Yeah. So what I find is when I talk about, uh, global health actually, is that when we look at the idea of health, not as in just exercising more or just eating, right, we're talking about fiscal health, we're talking about, uh, creating a world that is just, uh, a healthier place. When I ask people those questions, most of them can say, well, yeah, this isn't, this is important to me, but I don't know what to do about it. So one is, as you absolutely said, is finding, finding those passions and be able to figure out what you're going to do. But more importantly, to ask yourself that question, when am I going to do this? If not now, I feel like I'm, I'm falling. Like I, uh, I'm Mike is falling out. Let me, let me get that. >>Well, we chit chat a lot of hair. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, okay. So we're talking about different ways to find time. >>Um, Dave, I mean, I think it's a great time. I mean, the passionate thing, passionate thing is where the keyword is contributing, right? So like, I think it's a good time because I have, we, I, we both Dave and I both have four kids. So we see the new generation in their minds all the time because we're driving around, but they're impressionable right now is the old expression is you can grab the play though, and you can shape it. You can act, we can actually, as leaders and mature experience, instant people that have some skills in computing, we can influence like stem. We can influence women in tech. We can influence computer science curriculums or get influenced modern society because the new generation is coming in and they're natives, they're adopting and they're thirsty for leadership, but I don't think that they're seeing it. So I think there's really a good time. You've seen the Kickstarter crowdsourcing stuff is really becoming a part of this new tribe. So I believe the gravity around making things happen is participation, collaboration and data. Data is knowledge, endorsement, social proof. These are concepts that are easily transferable. If you can just, if you just wake up and do it. So I think, you know, >>If you just wake up and do it everywhere about, so Y Y if you wake up every day, why aren't you doing it today? >>We have Craig brown on earlier, he's doing $25,000 investments for kids to start companies, you know, whether the inner city kids. And that's pretty cool. I mean, so, you know, this is, this is the democratization piece, but in a connected network, it's frictionless communication. I mean, hell Twitter, overthrew governments. So you can have solidarity, peaceful solidarity as well as other rev revolution. So I think that's a very doable thing versus just checking the Basel. I volunteer to do something. And I think that has been more of like a peace Corps. I helped people. >>Uh, and I'm personally, I asked this question of everybody that I asked her, actually asked two questions of everybody I work with now. Uh, one of them is what can you not do? What can you not, not do actually. So if you, if you think to yourself, if I look back on my life, if I look back on my life, what is it that I thought to myself, oh, I didn't have time for that. Or I couldn't do it. You we've all heard that, you know, what do you want on your tombstone? However, that works. But I find that everybody, I know, think it has a burning need to be doing something useful in their lives. It's not just mission driven. It absolutely. It's a purpose. It's a connecting with, with connecting with people who are helping to move the world forward. And I just stopped. And I said, even in a business context, I say, you know, now it's time. We're kind of out of time. Get on with it, >>Please. The clock is ticking. Well, Jeff Jones was talking about the asteroid thing to geospatial smart geeky conversation. But the key thing out of that was better focus of finite resources. And that really comes down to the fundamental better decision-making. I mean, we, my wife says, so our kids will make better decisions. I mean, that's a mother talking to the kids, but that's our life now. So like, if we can make better decisions, that ultimately is the big data opportunity from social change to play to business. >>And then the second question absolutely, absolutely agree. Everything you said. I, the next big question I asked is what are you doing to improve the world? Now? I would say 50% of the people I say, just give me this completely deer in the headlights. Look, what do you mean to save the world or to improve the world, to change world? However you want to frame that. But I haven't met anybody in years that isn't interested in truly contributing, leaving the world a better place than they came into. And that's no matter what their, their demographic makeup is. That's no matter the community they live in, no matter what they're doing, people have a fundamental desire to do better. And so I asked that of every business person, every corporation I work with. And that's one of the things I love about this whole idea of, you know, building a smarter planet that should tie to every single thing we do. And, and when we lose sight of that, we see that, no, I think >>This is a really great conversation to have because it's, it's something that's emerging. And, you know, again, there's some obvious examples, oh, pebble watch crowdfunding. But if you look at really impactful things like open source software, you are seeing the playbook. I mean, the playbook is, you know, people can participate at any level. So the, the fear of getting this kind of group going is that I'm too busy or, you know, you can, the contribution doesn't have to be game changing for an individual could be one small piece of the puzzle. It could be small contribution. Someone might do more heavy lifting than the other. That's an open source concept. We've seen that work huge. A lot of leverage, a lot of participation. Um, so I think that's something that I really haven't seen get applied to at a large scale. I mean, you see the protest in Hong Kong are interesting. That's an indicator. What does that mean? Right. So what's your take on all? What do you think needs to happen to get more people tied into these shared missions? >>It's a little little over there off >>The ranch. A little bit more honesty. More honesty. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not, not something that we talk about these sorts of events is that I I've gotten to the point where I do these large talks in front of thousands of people. And I ask everybody to turn to the person next to them and introduce themselves, honestly, like, why are you here? And why do you care? We've all gotten so wrapped up in the >>Who we are as well. And that's why I say, I love the idea of you being >>A social media guru for Halloween. It's just become, so it's so about the role that we've lost the connection with our humanity. And so I just, I asked people just to step back. So it's as simple. So yeah, I am all for the large initiatives. >>Yes. Self-aware is a really interesting concept. And that really what you're talking about here is, I mean, I make fun of myself. I put that out there. Probably gonna get some hate mail for that tweet, but no, it is what it is. I mean, I'm making fun of myself and us because we have to, because it's really not moving fast enough in the writer in my mind, at least I think, I mean, I think social media is a real, real game changer. I'm pro pro social media, but I mean, come on, if you can't make fun of yourself then, >>But what is social media do you mean? What is our untapped desire that why we're all participating in social media, where we've missed the opportunity for all these years to be human in everything that we're doing? Yeah. I mean, the idea that you can be, you know, wherever you are and be able to reach the people who have answers to be able to help you make better decisions is something that we've had that desire for a very long time. We've just been, not able to do that for so long that it's now it's time we get on >>With that. I would do the cube to Dave and I talk all the time. We want to broadcast out the data because I think people want to be part of something. And I think at the end of the day, it's human psychology is that being part of something makes psychology of the soul work better. It's like, okay, I want to be part of a group. I want to belong. It's a yearning, it's a tribe. Whatever that kind of collective group is, whether you know, the clown or the, or the guru or whatever, I think that's a people are yearning for that collectiveness of Griff groups. And I think the data gap is gravity. Like how do you a joke? It could be a serious conversation. It could be something provocative. I think content is a nice piece of gravity to kind of bring people together versus, you know, tweeting, Hey, look, how big I am. I got a zillion followers. >>Okay. So let's back up though. So content, so we can talk about the, the, the, the, the concept that has content. That's a lovely thing to do at a data conference, talking about the content it's about things we care about. That's what content is. So if we take that a step further and we actually extrapolate and say, how does this impact me? It's not because it's content it's because we're talking about topics that matter to each of us. And so the more we get back to that sort of conversation, the more we get back to that sort of point, I think we have a bigger opportunity to have conversations that matter and not be able to be. We are wasting our time doing the silly stuff. >>Okay. I'm getting the hook here, Marcia conversations that matter. That's really what it's all about. Changing the world. Thanks for calling the cube. Great to see you again. And, uh, we'll be right back after this short break live in Las Vegas date, you continues wall-to-wall coverage here, inside the cube, inside the digital experience in psycho with IBM social lounge. We right back after this short break,