okay we're back here live in las vegas for ibm's information on demand exclusive coverage by SiliconANGLE this is a cube our flagship program we go out to the events extract to see with knows i'm john for either found or so looking angle we have two guests here today tom morris row and janine grosso classes across the cube acquisition IBM you guys closed the your company the now factory just recently big deal social service providers mobile need to talk much about mobile we talk about big data analytics yesterday all the insights today it's kind of social business but we've been commenting about what's under the hood cloud and mobiles obviously one of them tom how did how did you guys get to the point where you guys were acquired by my IBM because you you're in the mobile area mainly specialized and that's a hot area yeah consumers asia society yeah just a little bit about what what it is we do first so i guess we're we're experts in understanding users experience on when they use their mobile devices on the services so we're able to understand the ones and zeros flown up and down the wire and translate that into a customer's experience and and we get insights and those customers and that information then we can use across the business the mobile business in the marketing side of the house and the technical side of the house and the care side of the house so you're you're an entrepreneur you've been found you found the company in 2007 shared the folks what was the breakout moment for you guys I mean what product what market trend really catapulted you're offering well we started I guess you know you don't have to go back very far in telecoms when you know mobile dear sir wasn't very sophisticated back in 2006 2007 you had if you remember GPRS and all you could get if you were lucky with the weather and it came in text form you know you know it was before any of these smartphones stay there it seems a long long time ago so back then we started working with mobile operations had no ability at all even if it was working or not working so was the very idea came out and blackberries out there but the iphone really kind of it was really going to say wow yeah that's when everything changed smarter than the other person in sport mode at that time people were still wondering you know was you know was there enough value in this in this mobile data so we started in the early days helping operators understand whether the disservice was working on us din with the introductions of the smartphone and the explosion of new applications and services we we got into the whole area of of looking deeper into that understanding what the experience of the customers were what their what their what are the services work on enough from a technology perspective and and also working with a customer with our customers which is the mobile operators to understand you know what better services that can provide so talk about the big data angle here because obviously you know each other side of house in large enterprises big data is in in the data center people are using data to measure all kinds of activity within the data center the physical plant if you will of a company you know service providers if their customers they have to be aggressive with big data they have all kinds of revenue driving concerns hey what's preference of my customer to operational efficiencies can you go a little bit into detail and some of the things that they do you guys can you talk about face well well maybe I'll start with why right so obviously big data and analytics is you know one of our four strategic focus items at the at the corporate level right so again who more than a telco has a big data problem right with just an explosion of data how do they capitalize on it how do they monetize it how do they find ways to get savings within the organization so we took a we took a deep look into telco to say where would it make sense to invest that would really complement what we already offer with big data and our analytics portfolio and it kind of came to us the now factory came to us through a client who got exposed to their technology and it you know we just had our vision was so aligned that it just made sense to obviously kind of take that next step and take them off the market taken off the market marry them and you know choir so what does the driver obviously talk about some of the dynamic cuz you do you've been involved in M&A in business development the service provider market obviously relevant the old days was subscribers subscriber growth that's it now welcome to the internet with iphones and the smart phones you have revenue threats from sources of the competitive nature at the edge to growth just physical growth on the operations side what was what do you guys look at an IBM what's your what's your solution what do you guys sell to the providers these case and what are their top concerns well i think all of the concerns that you named basically right it's how can they differentiate themselves from their competitors right and how can they keep subscribers how can they keep their clients happy because if they keep their clients happy and limit the number of calls that they're going to let's say put in because of quality issues then obviously they'll be able to retain them so the subscriber experience i think is key you know definitely one of the you know kind of big angles that the csps are trying to do because of the competitive nature of this business so i think i've seen that there so that there is their normal business and that's in terms of their current business which is the money they're making from their subscribers and the services they are providing currently and they need to optimize those businesses and then most in most the world and especially in the developed world that there's a lot of focus in that area so how do you deliver those services at more and more efficiently but then at the same time they need to look to the future and they say well you know you know how do we fit into the new ecosystem and we would work with service providers and given them better insights as to how that has changed in over the use cases did you see both of you pumped into with these guys well this is the i guess there's a number of different ways they're trying to generate new revenue so I'm and to be to be honest and some of these are very early stages and there's some other stuff that they're they would try to do in terms of provide Dean alternatives to say if I look and say what's app for example which is a free text message I mean they would look at the kind of usage of that within their subscriber base look at which kind of tariff groups would be taken that open which wouldn't be and may be competing against that by offering more free text to those type of tariff groups so they you know so they can with the in with the right information optimize their their business models so that they can compete more effectively with some of these new social medias and new changes in things there they're also at the same time as there's cannibalization to their revenue right there that's some cannibalization but there's also new opportunities for them in new revenue streams which many of them are looking at as well she talked about the the service providers that you talked to in the acquisition you did the due diligence you did the purchase then you got to do the integration just take us through what was that like I mean and the strategy and do people get brought in is it full integration do they get to work autonomously to get brought into the fold immediately what's the strategy how do you guys do your integrations well there's there's no one acquisition alike so they're all very different in this case it's not a playbook like EMC has a specific playbook they're like okay we'll bring them in will let them run it for a while see how thank you can some rope and see if they hang themselves and some do it on case by case you're saying yeah I mean we do we do have some area like back office is very structured right so we obviously fold accounting finance legal you know contracts all of that does get folded into kind of that the the broader IBM in the case of how we go to market the offerings that we create in some cases to your Europe earlier point you know it could be a tuck and fold where maybe you're just acquiring the technology I'm in this case we yes we have an industry team that focuses on telco and selling to the csps in an overall platform view but what really drew us to the now factory was you know their industry expertise the fact that the products that they are actually offering to their clients are software versus of Lee customized set of services right and therefore software was a synergy aspect absolutely i mean with software you can scale right so obviously software was a big drive the fact that they had a fully integrated stack that's what clients want they don't want to buy capabilities they want to they want to buy value and by use case and so that too i think was a big differentiator from the now factory and other and other vendors in this space tom how was the how was the process for you was it painful hey what can I see the back office integration that I've got some serious machinery back this you have I mean bridge is great great foundation I think they have a great machine it's big the monster and keep it small yeah but I mean the outcome you asked what the outcome was I mean the outcome is I mean we still as the nail Factory an IBM company I mean we still have revenue targets to make in margin targets to make so things haven't changed that much now we have a much bigger support obviously in reach into customers than we had before and then we also have the added benefit now have been able to use technology which has been developed by IBM over many years which is very scalable which gives us which means we can instead of build on that we can focus on the differentiating stuff which makes a real difference to their clients yes even more resources we can give them the depth and the breadth that big that it's hard to do first in alone it was a great big plantation called the world I am which is still an image reach and custom and it can be overkill by the way it works both way cuts both ways yeah well that's the balance of the M&A and you brought up that the interesting I always kind of joke about the back office but the IBM does some good acquisitions but the key is the leverage right so like the interesting people worry about acquisitions is you know the founders come in they get integrated into culture that's not there as they feel handcuffed and and so that's always a concern or four founders mean how do you feel what the hell you guys giving them enough room to be creative but yet all that leverage as at the philosophy so far that's how I say yeah that's what I've seen so far I mean one of the things that I feel lose culturally I think it wasn't as different as what I'm i may stop drinking it yeah yeah it seemed to be okay I'm enjoying workers so way it hasn't hasn't been a huge hasn't been a huge change absolutely i mean that was one of the things that for a small company they had such a defined culture and a set of practices that they followed and it's just so rare that you actually see that in a in a small company janeshia what's next for you the integration is done now what do you do with my next deal you stay with them I'm actually staying with them so the integration is not done so we closed last week closed a deal yes so we'll have 48 months and we'll obviously incorporate what we believe we should write and integrate again back office and then obviously continue to help them build out their offerings and you know even see it through your like project managing the kind of the keeping the ball moving yeah yeah so I will stay on it for at least a year if not to and you know ensure that again the now factory preserve what we what we obviously bought from a technology perspective but also integrate it with other big data products and that was the other great thing about them some companies you know there has there's a lot of kind of rewrite that has to be done but the technology was so compatible with our big data platform already so there's me a lot of natural synergies with that he's that big data platform was it most synergistic within your mind and it's pretty big yes well actually I mean if you think about the core you have netezza right or pure data for analytics and so there's there's a lot of great things that we think we're going to do there and then streams which is a InfoSphere streams which is a product that actually was built within IBM over the last 5 10 years there's great opportunity there to take that technology which really does mediation for telcos and incorporate it into their offering yes dreams is really relevant mean the tease is a track record speaks for itself but you look at real time you bring in streaming this kind of it's pretty interesting yeah I think that's a this great opportunities there I mean a lot of the value-add in this area's is been able to close the loop so were you where you see in where you see enough where you can make to somebody are to be able to do that in real time to give to I guess is the the now part of the now factory and to be able to to make it real so if you're walking past a shop which is enough for which you're interested in to be able to get a trigger straight away so there's a lot of great stuff I think that would be able to do with streams gone forward so I gotta ask you as an entrepreneur two questions one how's it feel to get bull you nervous to sell I mean was it like match made my IBM is a big machine battleship or eric i have to say i have to see from my purse i wasn't looking to sell it wasn't something that I was doing we set it up and you know we're gonna write so it wasn't I guess there is a lot of consolidation in the space were in at the moment and so it wasn't something we were looking to do if it was a different company that approaches I don't think we would have went down the same I think there's when I look at IBM and how it fits with where we wanted to go it was an obvious fish and I mean they're their strategy in in big days and insights and stuff like that it's very soon as i said the opportunity yeah so the next quote that's that good segue there my next question so startups are hungry you know Steve Jobs and stay hungry and you're always bootstrapping even hundred seventy people you're still you know fearful of oh my god I could run on money even though you probably loaded it's like okay always always bootstrapping you get to IBM it's like oh my god they have all these resources do you feel like if you know I'm just learning how are you eating more you go to the cafeteria for appetizer you guys hungry what ya mean what's your mindset now that you're in IBM I mean because you now have so much more at your disposal and so against it's an oasis III think it's AI think this great opportunities in terms of what we can we can invest in things now which we know would make a difference in the Americas that before we couldn't do resource watch ya resource why so we were always constrained by we would see opportunity and in the area work in this odds of opportunities no shortage of opportunities but often you just don't we didn't have the resources to go after those opportunities now I think with the resources we have it's very exciting the one thing actually that they had did differently that we observed is they really built their company around their technology so they built you they built use cases out and then build a sales team around that it doesn't always work that way so it's really kind of the perfect formula for us to come in give them the scale give them the sales resources the channel to to really drive that value to the client jeje how about the growth mobile growth I was leaving Smith's massive you got the entrepreneurs now other eyes get bigger because they have bigger opportunities I mean part of your job is kind of keep them reined in a little bit not overdrive red line there engine right so you gotta say we could meet if we can clone these guys mobile is growing so fast what are some of the numbers or can you share any anecdotal data around the mobile growth I mean the market you know if you look at kind of the segments and they cross a few different segments but the market is growing at at least fifteen percent within the you know customer care you know / analyst Mason so I think there's tremendous growth clearly we're going to take more than fifteen percent you know if all of the opportunities that we're seeing today you know come to fruition so I think I think it'll grow thin churn two more I Android devices are coming on board give hace iPhones crushing it you know that was it's it's funny because you know having just got into the space over the last you know six to nine months it's very dynamic that the telco industries it's um it's almost antiquated but also very advanced it's it's it's kind of it's all over the place and so that I think is is going to hopefully just you know take us places because of the value that we're going to be able to drive what's your forecast for the for the future in terms of not IBM but from your perspective getting in this deal getting in with the entrepreneurs who have been laying down great foundation knowing what you know at IBM what's the outlook for telcos in your mind what's the big sweeping change that most folks don't see out there that you might be able to share with them so I mean from a from an underlying perspective what you know the vision I think that even they have for themselves is to kind of get out of the siloed business right where they have kind of all of the different network assets and that they have to kind of pull together to actually get some sort of overarching view of the organization so I think you know being able to really sell them a platform across the entire enterprise to give them the insights that they're going to need to better manage their business Tom will give you the final word we've got run a break right here coming up for the folks of it to share them you know what to expect from you guys maybe talk to your your customers your future customers share with them kind of what's going to go on for you guys on your team inside IBM what's your what's your objective what are you going to do well first how many farty customers are all around the world in Europe US and asia and first thing is i mean there isn't going to be huge amount to change in terms of the value we deliver them and the one thing I can say is that in IBM now we're able to wake I mean one of the reasons our customers work with us is because we're innovative and we move very very fast with the industry I think now given the capability act we have with that in IBM we're able to even move faster with new propositions to our customers and to our new customers so I think within it's a very exciting time both for our customers annals at the moment I want the feedback we got from our customers who have been very very positive so far well congratulations on the acquisition it the ink is signed it's closed money's transferred all that stuff's happened now them now the hard work yeah absolutely right the entire dash against and for the folks that know what goes on it's really a lot of work and you got to get it right it's like a secret it's like a recipe to a you know it's nice sauce you want to make sure all the ingredients are in place for scale I'll see a hot mark congratulations so we're here live inside the cube exclusive coverage at IBM's information I've been this to cube right back