(upbeat techno music) >> From Mountain View California, it's the Cube covering the 15th Annual Grow Awards. Brought to you by ACG SV. >> Hi, Lisa Martin with the Cube on the ground at the Computer History Museum for the 15th annual ACG SV Awards. And in Mountain View California excited to welcome to the Cube for the first time, John Hennessy, the chairman of Alphabet and the co-founder of the Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program at Stanford. JOHN, it's truly a pleasure to have you on the Cube today. >> Well delighted to be here, Lisa. >> So I was doing some research on you. And I see Marc Andreessen has called you the godfather of Silicon Valley. >> Marc very generous (loughs) >> so I thought I was pretty cool I'm going to sit down with the godfather tonight. (loughs) >> I have not done that yet. So you are keynoting the 15th Annual ACG SV Awards tonight. Talk to us a little bit about the takeaways that the audience is going to hear from you tonight. >> Well, they're going to hear some things about leadership the importance of leadership, obviously the importance of innovation. We're in the middle of Silicon Valley innovation is a big thing. And the role that technology plays in our lives and how we should be thinking about that, and how do we ensure the technology is something that serves the public good. >> Definitely. So there's about I think over 230 attendees expected tonight over 100 sea levels, the ACG SV Is has been it's it's much more than a networking organization. there's a lot of opportunities for collaboration for community. Tell me a little bit about your experience with that from a collaboration standpoint? >> Well, I think collaboration is a critical ingredient. I mean, for so many years, you look at the collaboration is gone. Just take between between the universities, my own Stanford and Silicon Valley and how that collaboration has developed over time and lead the founding of great companies, but also collaboration within the valley. This is the place to be a technology person in the whole world it's the best place partly because of this collaboration, and this innovative spirit that really is a core part of what we are as a place. >> I agree. The innovative spirit is one of the things that I enjoy, about not only being in technology, but also living in Silicon Valley. You can't go to a Starbucks without hearing a conversation or many conversations about new startups or cloud technology. So the innovative spirit is pervasive here. And it's also one that I find in an in an environment like ASG SV. You just hear a lot of inspiring stories and I was doing some research on them in the last 18 months. Five CEO positions have been seated and materialized through ACG SV. Number of venture deals initiated several board positions. So a lot of opportunity in this group here tonight. >> Right, well I think that's important because so much of the leadership has got to come by recruiting new young people. And with the increase in concerned about diversity and our leadership core and our boards, I think building that network out and trying to stretch it a little bit from the from perhaps the old boys network of an earlier time in the Valley is absolutely crucial. >> Couldn't agree more. So let's now talk a little bit about the Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program at Stanford. Tell us a little bit about it. When was it founded? >> So we are we are in our very first year, actually, this year, our first year of scholars, we founded it in 2016. The motivation was, I think, an increasing gap we perceived in terms of the need for great leadership and what was available. And it was in government. It was in the nonprofit world, it was in the for profit world. So I being a lifelong educator said, What can we do about this? Let's try to recruit and develop a core of younger people who show that they're committed to the greater good and who are excellent, who are innovative, who are creative, and prepare them for leadership roles in the future. >> So you're looking for are these undergraduate students? >> They are graduate students, so they've completed their undergraduate, it's a little hard to tell when somebody's coming out of high school, what their civic commitment is, what their ability to lead is. But coming out of coming out of undergraduate experience, and often a few years of work experience, we can tell a lot more about whether somebody has the potential to be a future leader. >> So you said, found it just in 2016. And one of the things I saw that was very interesting is projecting in the next 50 years, there's going to be 5000 Knight-Hennessy scholars at various stages of their careers and government organizations, NGOs, as you mentioned, so looking out 50 years you have a strong vision there, but really expect this organization to be able to make a lasting impact. >> That's what our goal is lasting impact over decades, because people who go into leadership positions often take a decade or two to rise to that position. But that's what our investment is our investment is in the in the future. And when I went to Phil Knight who's my co-founder and donor, might lead donor to the program, he was enthusiastic. His view was that we had a we had a major gap in leadership. And we needed to begin training, we need to do multiple things. We need to do things like we're doing tonight. But we also need to think about that next younger generation is up and coming. >> Some terms of inspiring the next generation of innovative diversity thinkers. Talk to me about some of the things that this program is aimed at, in addition to just, you know, some of the knowledge about leadership, but really helping them understand this diverse nature in which we now all find ourselves living. >> So one of the things we do is we try to bring in leaders from all different walks of life to meet and have a conversation with our scholars. This morning, we had the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in town, Michelle Bachelet, and she sat down and talked about how she thought about her role as addressing human rights, how to move things forward in very complex situations we face around the world with collapse of many governments and many human rights violations. And how do you how do you make that forward progress with a difficult problem? So that kind of exposure to leaders who are grappling with really difficult problems is a critical part of our program. >> And they're really seeing and experiencing real world situations? >> Absolutely. They're seeing them up close as they're really occurring. They see the challenges we had, we had Governor Brown and just before he went out of office here in California, to talk about criminal justice reform a major issue in California and around the country. And how do we make progress on that on that particular challenge? >> So you mentioned a couple of other leaders who the students I've had the opportunity to learn from and engage with, but you yourself are quite the established leader. You went to Stanford as a professor in 1977. You are a President Emeritus you were president of Stanford from 2000 to 2016. So these students also get the opportunity to learn from all that you have experienced as it as a professor of Computer Science, as well as in one of your current roles as chairman of Alphabet. Talk to us a little bit about just the massive changes that you have seen, not just in Silicon Valley, but in technology and innovation over the last 40 plus years. >> Well, it is simply amazing. When I arrived at Stanford, there was no internet. The ARPANET was in its young days, email was something that a bunch of engineers and scientists use to communicate, nobody else did. I still remember going and seeing the first demonstration of what would become Yahoo. Well, while David Filo and Jerry Yang had it set up in their office. And the thing that immediately convinced me Lisa was they showed me that their favorite Pizza Parlor would now allow orders to go online. And when I saw that I said, the World Wide Web is not just about a bunch of scientists and engineers exchanging information. It's going to change our lives and it did. And we've seen wave after wave that with Google and Facebook, social media rise. And now the rise of AI I mean this this is a transformative technology as big as anything I think we've ever seen. In terms of its potential impact. >> It is AI is so transformative. I was I was in Hawaii recently on vacation and Barracuda Networks was actually advertising about AI in Hawaii and I thought that's interesting that the people that are coming to to Hawaii on vacation, presumably, people have you know, many generations who now have AI as a common household word may not understand the massive implications and opportunities that it provides. But it is becoming pervasive at every event we're at at the Cube and there's a lot of opportunity there. It's it's a very exciting subject. Last question for you. You mentioned that this that the Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program is really aimed towards graduate students. What is your advice to those BB stem kids in high school right now who are watching this saying, oh, John, what, what? How do you advise me to be able to eventually get into a program like this? >> Well, I think it begins by really finding your passion, finding something you're really dedicated to pushing yourself challenging yourself, showing that you can do great things with it. And then thinking about the bigger role you want to have with technology. In the after all, technology is not an end in itself. It's a tool to make human lives better and that's the sort of person we're looking for in the knight-Hennessy Scholars Program, >> Best advice you've ever gotten. >> Best advice ever gotten is remember that leadership is about service to the people in the institution you lead. >> It's fantastic not about about yourself but really about service to those. >> About service to others >> JOHN, it's been a pleasure having you on the Cube tonight we wish you the best of luck in your keynote at the 15th annual ACG SV Awards and we thank you for your time. >> Thank you, Lisa. I've enjoyed it. Lisa Martin, you're watching the Cube on the ground. Thanks for watching. (upbeat tech music)

(upbeat music) >> From Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE covering the 15th annual GROW! Awards. Brought to you by ACG SV. >> Hey, Lisa Martin with theCUBE on the ground at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, for the 15th annual ACG SV GROW! Awards. Can you hear the energy and all the innovation happening behind me? Well, I'm here with one of the board members of ACG SV, Ashley Tarver, big data evangelist for Cloudera. Ashley, thank you so much for joining me on theCUBE tonight. >> My pleasure, I'm glad to be here. >> Lot of collaboration going on behind us, right? >> It's a great networking event. >> It is. >> 'Cause so many people have showed up. >> There's over 230 people. >> Oh, easily. >> Expected tonight, over 100 of those are C-levels. Before we get into your association with ACG SV, talk to us a little bit about what's going on at Cloudera, just the Hortonworks acquisition was just completed, the merger, a couple months ago, what's going on there? >> It's very exciting. As most people might know, we just did a major collaboration merger with a company called Hortonworks. And the two companies together, we're about twice the size as we were before and for the industry and for our customers, it's been really exciting because we've been able to really create what we call the enterprise data cloud that really enables our customers to bring all their data together into one single platform and we call it an edge-to-AI solution. We're really one of the only companies right now in the world who have the ability to do that in a comprehensive manner and we can do it on the premise, we can do it in the cloud, a hybrid cloud environment, so it gives you the ultimate flexibility and the merger has allowed us to really accomplish that for our customers. >> As we and every company that's succeeding today is living in this hybrid, multi-cloud environment where the edge is proliferating, the security perimeters are morphing dramatically, companies need to be able to transform digitally in a secure way, but also enable access to data from decades ago. >> Yeah, most anybody's who's listening to the media will hear IoT is really the big play and the ability to capture all that data from multiple in-points, edge devices, and bring it all into a single data repository is a major challenge. So, having the ability to do that in a. You can do it now with the way we're doing it, the way your company wants to do it. So if you're already in the cloud, you can stay there, if you wanted to keep it on the premise. So there's a lot of options that we now bring to the table. So hopefully, it becomes a little easier for our customers. >> So when you're talking with customers that maybe have a lot of workloads, enterprise workloads, maybe legacy still on prem, and you're talking to them in your role as the big data evangelist, where does the topic of AI come up? I mean, are you talking to them about here is a massive opportunity for you to actually leverage AI, you got to go to the cloud to do it? >> Absolutely. I mean, AI is kind of a marketing term that you hear a lot about. For us, it's really about machine learning and machine learning is taking large sets of data and putting logic on top of it and so you can tease out valuable insights that you might not otherwise get. So the ability to then apply that in an AI environment becomes extremely important and the ability to do that across a large data set is what's really complicated. But if you're a real data scientist, you want to have as much data as you can so your models can run more accurately. And as soon as you can do that, you'll have the ability to really improve your models, extract better insights out of the data you do own, and provide more value to your own company and your own customers. >> Absolutely, it's a fascinating topic, but since we're low on time here, we are at the 15th annual GROW! Awards. ACG SV recognizing Arista Networks for the Outstanding Growth Award and Adesto Technologies for the Emerging Growth Award. You've been involved as a board member of ACG SV for about a year now. What makes this organization worthy of your time? >> Well, it's really exciting 'cause in Silicon Valley, it's unique 'cause it's all about collaboration. The innovation that we create out of this location of the globe is through networking with our peers and ACG opens up that window, provides a door that allows you to meet with your peers, your competitors, your friends, and as a result, you can create insights and capabilities about your own company and technology directions that's really helpful. So, it's the networking, they also put on excellent C-circle events, which is really good because if your company is looking at growing as a startup, you might be able to get some valuable insights from peers who know how to do HR, merger acquisitions, finance. And so, the ability to do networking like at an event like this, the ability to come in and learn how to do business processes more effectively, it all plays a really important role at ACG. >> Well Ashley, thank you so much for carving out some time to join us on theCUBE tonight. >> My pleasure, thanks for having me. >> I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

>> From Mountain View California, it's theCUBE covering the 15th Annual Grow! Awards. Brought to you by ACG SV. >> Hi, Lisa Martin on the ground with theCUBE at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California for the 15th Annual ACG SV Grow! Awards. This is a event with nearly 300 attendees, about 100 plus C-levels, and I'm excited to welcome to theCUBE for the first time, Hannah Kain, the CEO of Alom. Hannah, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. >> And here you are, and I are, in the lobby where there is a lot of innovation and collaboration going on right here, so thank you for joining me in this energetic time at the event. >> Oh, I absolutely love it. You can feel the energy of Silicon Valley here. >> Yeah, you're right, you can. So tell me about, you are the CEO and founder of Alom. Tell me about your company, what you guys do, what makes you different. >> So, we do supply chain excellence. We execute and plant supply chains for very large corporations out of 19 locations globally. We are headquartered right here in Silicon Valley. Using technology to help our customers be agile and get the products to the right place exactly when their customers need it, and protect their brand, do their risk management that makes sure they do everything right in the supply chain. It's super exciting, and no other place is technology used better than in the supply chain. >> So, you founded Alom in the 90s. You have seen a tremendous amount of technology innovation. I mean, things change faster than we can even keep track sometimes. Tell me a little bit about what has been a facilitator of you as the CEO being headquartered in Silicon Valley, and being able to take advantage of technology to grow and scale your business. >> I think back in the 90s, nobody really realized the potential of technology in supply chain. I mean, supply chain wasn't even a word. And so, I always thought that supply chain could be done much differently than it was done in the old days, and that technology would be the big facilitator of it. So right now, we have much more visibility in supply chain. We can see where products are, et cetera, but we've also increased the complexity of the supply chains, driven down the cost of products, but also at the same point of time, driven up the complexity with components being shipped all over the world and assembled in one place and distributed to another place. So, there's a lot of complexity that only technology can resolve. So, being in Silicon Valley, which is the first place of technology, is just fantastic when you're in supply chain. It really leverages innovation that's taking place. >> And you can, like we said when we started, you can feel the energy of the innovation going on here. I read on your LinkedIn profile that you are passionate about excellence, technology, collaboration, and community. The last two, collaboration and community, really underscore the association for corporate growth in Silicon Valley. Tell me about your involvement in ACG SV and what makes this event worthy of your time. >> So, I do believe in collaboration. I think collaboration is a core value in Silicon Valley. I believe that collaborative companies and collaborative people are going to win in the marketplace and also have more fun while doing it, creating much more value. And so, in ACG Silicon Valley, there's just a lot of collaboration, lots of different points of view, but also a lot of very focused, dedicated business people. And so, we get together and get ideas from each other, but also send business to and from each other, and use each other as resources. And I also believe, apart from collaboration, being resourceful is a real winner. You need to be resourceful and be able to make things happen and figure out a way to navigate new landscapes. And that's what having these great contacts in ACG and other associations in Silicon Valley really do for me. >> So last question, Hannah, for you as a female CEO, a leader in technology, what advice would you give to the subsequent generations of women in technology who aspire to be leaders like yourself? >> I think they should be leaders like themselves, not like me, but like themselves. I think you need to be authentic. Bring your own strength to every situation, and I think that's what I really wish for the new generation. That many of the women have paved the way such that the new generation can really be themselves and contribute. And I'd say, focus on what you can contribute and what you can do for the greater community and for business as such. >> I love that advice, Hannah. Authenticity is such a value. Well, thank you so much for spending some time here with us in this energetic 15th Annual Grow! Awards. We appreciate your time. >> Absolutely my pleasure. Thank you. >> You're watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin, thanks for your time. >> [Upbeat Tech Music]

>> From Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE covering the 15th annual Grow Awards. Brought to you by ACG SV. >> Hey, Lisa Martin, on the ground with theCUBE at the 15th annual ACG SV Grow Awards, Association for Corporate Growth Silicon Valley, is what that stands for. Can you hear the energy and the innovation going on back here? It's amazing tonight. I'm very pleased to welcome to theCUBE, one of tonight's winners from Arista Technologies Kenneth Duda, the CTO, SVP of software engineering, and one of the founders of Arista Technologies. Kenneth, thank you so much and congratulations! >> Thank you so much, we're honored by the award. >> Well, it's been amazing. Outstanding Growth Award winner, congratulations. I was just looking at some of the recent earnings from Arista, nice Q4 earnings from FY-18. >> Thank you. >> Above the guidance, stock price rising this year. Last month Goldman Sachs added Arista to its conviction buy list. You guys are on nice trajectory, tell me about that. >> Well, it's just been a fantastic journey, you just don't get this many chances to participate in something like Arista from the ground up. Our growth has been driven in no small part thanks to the incredible growth of cloud computing. Cloud computing is changing the world and the cloud data centers need a different kind of network infrastructure. They need something that scales, meet their needs, and is customizable to integrate with all of their management systems, automation, and we've been able to provide that and be part of that journey, it's been incredibly gratifying. >> So you specifically talk with customers a lot, I was reading about one of your recent big wins in Canada, CBC Radio Canada facility in Montreal, but talk to me about what's some of the things now that you're hearing from customers especially those customers who are still in the process of transforming and transitioning workloads to the cloud. What are some of the things that surprise you about where customers are in any industry in this journey. >> Right, well, so I spend most of my time talking to the enterprise customers because there are so many of them and what we've learned there is a couple of things. One is they are very impacted by cloud. Cloud's a big deal, they're moving somewhere closer to the cloud, they're also building their own internal environments in a more cloud-like fashion and, as such, benefit from Arista's approach. But the most interesting thing I've learned is that neither of those is the most important thing. The most important thing is the network has got to work and it might sound strange, but networking gear isn't always reliable and what we've been able to achieve through our architectural approach and through our focus on automated testing has enabled us to produce a higher quality product which has been a major attractor of the enterprise customer. So you need to cover all those bases to succeed in this business. >> You're right, that network is absolutely essential. When anything goes down, whether it's a Facebook outage, it's world news. Tell me, what is the Arista advantage? >> The key advantage is the quality of our products. It's the fact that we have built an architecture that is more resilient to software and hardware errors. It's the way we test. We've made a tremendous investment in automated testing, so that our product has gone through hundreds of thousands of tests before it ever sees a customer. But actually the most important element behind quality, is the culture of your company, what do you believe? What's important to you? What gets you up in the morning? What are you thinking about and talking about to your employees? What's the most important thing, is it profitability? Is it making a deal, is it hitting a schedule? Or is it making sure the network works? We are 100% focused on that and it's been really gratifying to see the impact that's had. >> So last question, and thank you for speaking over the drum noise going on behind us, by the way, to get people into the auditorium. In terms of culture and the impact, what do you think this award means to your peers, your teams at Arista? >> Oh, it's just such an affirmation of the journey we've come through so far and the journey we still have ahead of us. We're very grateful for the award. >> So, I see so much momentum coming into 2019. What are some of the exciting things we can expect from Arista this year that you might be able to share with us? >> I think we're seeing a real transition from network designers focusing on the control plane of their network first to focusing on the management of the network first because management is actually the key to smooth operations. Our cloud vision product addresses that need. We're really excited about that transformation. >> Well, Kenneth, again, congratulations to Arista and yourself and your teams on the Outstanding Growth Award from ACG SV. We also thank you for spending some time with us on theCUBE. >> Thank you very much, it was my pleasure. >> I'm Lisa Martin and you're watching theCUBE. (energetic music)

>> (Announcer) From Mountain View, California it's the Cube. Covering the 15th Annual Grow! Awards. Brought to you by ACG SV. >> I'm Lisa Martin with the Cube, on the ground at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California for the 15th Annual Grow! Awards for the Association of Corporate Growth Silicon Valley, ACG SV. That's a mouthful. I'm here with one of the ACG SV board members, Zac Mutrux, the District Sales Manager at Insperity. Hey, Zack, it's great to have you on the Cube. >> Thank you so much, Lisa, I'm pleased to be here. >> So before we talk about what you're doing here at the 15th Annual Grow! Awards, tell our audience about Insperity. I was reading, I love taglines. >> Yes. >> And I see on your homepage, Insperity is obsessed with delivery HR mastery. Wow. >> Oh yeah. >> Obsessed and mastery. Those two words just jumped out. Tell us a little bit about what you guys do. >> Impressive, isn't it? Well, we actually just adjusted our tagline to HR that makes a difference. And that's really what it's all about. We feel like companies that are growing, if they're going to make it from good to the best, it has everything to do with the people. Attracting the best people and keeping them, developing them over time, and that's exactly what we do with our clients. >> So Insperity has been in business since 1986, and if I think of today's modern workforce, highly mobile, distributed, there's the whole on-demand industry. You guys have seen a tremendous amount of change that now can be massively influenced, and your customers can, using technology. Give me a little bit of that historical perspective on Insperity's inception and today's workforce, and how you're helping them attract and retain the best talent. >> Oh, absolutely. Well, when the company started it was in a maybe a 200 square foot room with one telephone between the two co-founders. There's no such thing as email. So, absolutely, there's been immense technological changes and there continues to be. I think that's one of the things that has been responsible for Insperity's success is its adoption of technology. Today we are as much a technology company as we are an employee benefits company, or an HR consulting company. It's really about creating a positive experience for the employees. That's part of being a competitive employer. >> Well it has to be a positive experience, right? For your customers. Because acquiring great talent is one thing, retaining them is another. And I want to kind of pivot off the retention there for a second. As the District Sales Manager, I was asking you before we went live, tell me maybe one of your favorite stories, and you said, "Wow". One of the great things, you guys are coming off great growth and FY18 revenue growth. One of the great things that Insperity has been really successful at is customer retention. And that's hard. You're proud of this. Tell us about that statistic that you mentioned, and how it is that Insperity is evolving and innovating over the last few decades to keep that retention number as phenomenal as it is. >> Well, Insperity's been named one of the most admired corporations in the country, actually, five years in a row by Fortune magazine. And that's the kind of press that you can't buy. One of the accolades that I'm most proud of is that in the past year our own employees named us one of the top 100 companies to work for in the United States. Which is, I think, the proof that we really know what we're doing with our clients. Because there are a lot of different companies out there, various competitors, and almost none of them are on that list. So, it's living our values and expressing through our service team, our extraordinary service team, that, I think, keeps our clients coming back to us year after year. About 85% renew. That's been consistent. A high level of client retention for the past three years. Even more extraordinary is that we've been growing both top line and bottom line revenue at the same time. So there's just a testament to our leadership, to our co-founder and CEO, Paul Sarvadi, and to the best of team-- >> But it sounds like it's a lot of symbiotic relationships between the internal retention at Insperity that is maybe leading through to your customers seeing, hey, there's not a high turnover here. These people are doing, they love what they're doing. They're working for a good company. So there's probably a lot of symbiotic behaviors. >> Well, that's exactly right. I think you really hit the nail of the head. It's about culture. It's a culture that starts from the top with leadership, and it filters down throughout the organization. And we're not looking to do business with every single company. We're looking to do business with the companies that believe the things that we believe. That is, companies that have high levels of commitment, trust, communication. They do better financially then companies that don't have those things. >> And along those lines, mentioning just before we wrap here, we are at the 15th Annual ACG SV Awards tonight, where they're honoring two award winners. The Outstanding Growth Award winner is Arista Networks. And the Emerging Growth winner is Adesto Technologies. I'm excited to talk to them later. But I wanted to get a little bit of perspective on you've been involved as a board member of ACSG since last year. Tell me a little bit about what makes ACG SV worthy of your time. >> Oh, absolutely. That's a great question. It's just an extraordinary community, I think, of the top leaders in Silicon Valley come together. The monthly Key Notes add a lot of value. It's an intimate setting and there's real conversations that are taking place on topics that are relevant to today's professionals. So for me to be able to engage and hopefully add some value as a board member is privilege. >> And you can hear probably a lot of those conversations going on right behind Zac and me tonight. Zac, it's been a pleasure to have you on the Cube. Thank you so much for giving us some of your time. >> Oh, right, thank you, Lisa. >> For the Cube, I'm Lisa Martin on the ground. Thanks for watching. (pop electronic music)

>> From Mountainview, California, it's The Cube, covering the 15th annual Grow! Awards. Brought to you by ACG SV. >> Hi, Lisa Martin on the ground with The Cube at the 15th annual ACG SV Grow! Awards. At the Computer History Museum in Mountainview, can you hear the buzz of 230 plus attendees behind me? I'm very pleased to welcome one of the ACG SV board members Dr. Shampa Banerjee, technology executive, and chief product officer at Eros Digital. Shampa, thank you so much for giving us some of your time this evening. >> Thank you, it's a pleasure. >> So lots of great, innovative, and inspiring conversations, no doubt, going on behind us. >> I'm trying to listen to it. >> Yeah, so talk to us a little bit about Eros Digital, who you are, what you do. >> So Eros International is the largest studio in India. It produces or distributes around 60 to 70 percent of the films made in India, Bollywood films. So I run the streaming platform, the Netflix for Bollywood, that's what I call it. >> The Netflix for Bollywood, I love it. Now, tell us more about that. >> So, you know, it's a streaming platform, a lot of the titles are from what we produce. A lot of the titles we lease from other production houses, and that is the entire technology platform, and then how do you get to the, we connect the consumers, rather, to the entertainment, right? So we like to help them discover, we help them indulge in the whole experience, and then as they keep coming to us more and more, we personalize the experience for them, so that's really what we give them. >> You know, personalization is so key. We expect it right in our lives, and whatever it is that we're doing, we're engaging with an Amazon or a Netflix or at Eros for example, we kind of now expect that. We're sort of demanding consumers, right? We expect them to know what I want, just what I want, don't give me any things that I don't want, so is that one of the things that you've seen, maybe surprising in your career, is this increasing demand for personalization? >> Absolutely, because, you know, there's so much content out there, so much information, and unless there's a filtering mechanism that makes sense for you, people don't want to, you know, it's very hard for them, so they want you to do the work for them. It's entertainment, right? So absolutely. Everyone kind of expects it. It's not said. It's not explicit, but that's the expectation. >> And obviously, with the goal of delighting and retaining those customers, you as the chief product officer have to listen and react to that. >> I spent, I'll tell you a short story. I spent once a month going through all the customers' comments in different platforms, right? And one of the stories I read was this 17-year-old French gal in Paris, she loves watching Bollywood because she was suffering from leukemia and after she gets a treatment, she comes home, she wants to watch something that makes her happy, and we had some issues with that subtitles, and she was having a problem watching our movies and she begged "Please bring them back". And I ran out of my office, went to my team, and I said, "Guys, this is who we wake up for every day. We give her joy, we give her pleasure." So to me, that's how listening to the customers to me is primary, to me they are my biggest stakeholder, and I've told the CEO and founder that, look at the end of the day, I leave and argue with you if it doesn't serve my customers. That's what I believe, listening to the customers, listening to them, understanding, of course, we do a lot of data collection and we look at what we are doing and the patterns, and based on that we make modifications, we test different things to see what makes sense, what's working, and what's not working, because people don't always tell you, and even if you ask them, they're shy to tell you. But then you can see what they're doing, and that's an indicator. >> Well that makes you feel really good, seeing and hearing and feeling the impact that you're making, and speaking of impact, you have been, in the last minute or so that we have, you've been on the board of ACG SV for about the last five years. We're here tonight to honor Arista as the Outstanding Growth Award winner and (mumbles) Technology as the Emerging Growth winner, but really quickly, what makes ACG SV worth your time? >> So ACG honestly is a fantastic organization and you know, living in the Bay Area, there are many organizations, there are many events that are always going on, you know. ACG has been a place where I've seen it's a very, very, very, very diverse organization, of course I still wish there were more females, you know, but it's a very diverse organization, people of all ages, people from different walks of life, from different kinds of companies, you know, and people are very, very collaborative and help each other to do business. I've become personal friends with many of them, but the main thing is, you know, you come here, if you're new to the Valley especially, whether as a company or as an individual, this is one of the best places to come to because it's not too large, it's not too small, it has the right number of people, and it helps you quickly on board. They'll introduce you to people, introduce you to events, they give you what you need to kind of get started. So to me it's like, when I joined, I joined before I was on the board, almost, I don't know, seven or eight years ago, and I've seen this whole thing transform and it's just an excellent, supportive, the people are very open-minded, great ideas, and it's just an excellent organization, love it. So it's worth my time, you know, to take the extra hours, and I would love to see it get even bigger and more diverse and more interesting. >> Well it sounds like, I love how you kind of described ACG SV as being that Goldilocks type of organization, not too big, not too small, just right, but we thank you so much. I wish we had more time to talk, as a female in technology, but we'll have to have you back at the studio on The Cube! >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you so much for your time. For The Cube, I am Lisa Martin. Thanks for watching. (music)

>> from Mountain View, California It's the Cube covering the fifteenth annual Grow Awards. Brought to you by A C. G S V. >> Hi, Lisa Martin on the ground with the Cube at the Computer History Museum for the fifteenth annual TGS Grow Awards. Can you hear the collaboration of the innovation going on behind me? Very excited to welcome to the Cube, one of tonight's award winners from a Jaso Technologies, Norby, Jericho B and the President and CEO of Modesto. Congratulations on the Emerging Growth Award that adjuster has been honored with tonight. >> Thank you very much. We're very honored to be here. So you've been at >> the helm of a desert for a long time. I'd like our audience to hear a little bit from you about whom destiny is what you do. What makes you different. >> Perfect. So we are at a technology company on our products are used primarily in Internet of things, applications across many, many segments. Most off our businesses within the industrial segment on our customers use our products to actually build a Iot solutions for their end markets. Our products include semiconductor chips that are used at the edge of Coyote EJ gateway devices that connects the local networks to the more broad networks on. Basically, we enable our customers to take data from the physical world and send it up into the clouds >> to you guys. Our have had a great great trajectory, obviously being recognized by the emerging growth winner from a C. G S B. Tell me a little bit about it was looking at some information from you guys and on twenty eighteen, You guys did a great job of executing on your strategic initiatives to really make twenty eighteen a transformative year couple of acquisitions to us about the last year, in particular in the group that you have seen the momento and you're bringing into twenty nineteen. >> Correct? Correct. So we started. We enter twenty eighteen as a provider up application specific memory devices for I ot however, we realize that for our customers to take true benefit off the technologies we provide, we need to be a more holistic supplier of solutions. So as a result, we went through a whole process off looking at other technologies that can complement what we have in a very similar way, with strategic focus in the markets that we were focused, and as a result, we made two acquisitions in past summer that ended up its expanding our market opportunity, broadening our reach within existing customer and significantly expanding our offering portfolio to foreign markets. >> Negroes have a really strong position with tear one customers in the industrial sector. You mentioned that expecting Don't be a little bit more than about your leadership here in what makes these large industrial cheer. One players say Augusto is for us, >> right? So before I asked her that let me talk a little bit about the difference between industrial I ot and Consumer >> Riley's Yes, >> So if you think about consumer, I ot, it's what grabs headlines. It's the fitness trackers, the latest home smart thermostats, and the smartwatch is on so forth. The's are new markets. Volumes are girl very fast, but if next year and new shiny object is created, it's easy for the consumers to replace. They basically buy the new one. Repent replaced the old. One interesting thing about industrial I ot is that industrial I ot has this fragmented legacy systems that today run in their businesses. So if you look at the building we're in Today there is a fired and safety system that runs there's H Vac system that runs the business. There's a security systems, and this could have been installed here decades ago. There are billions of connected things in that industrial network today, but the data is unable to go up into the cloud. Where come cloud providers? Aye, aye. Providers can actually take the data on provide benefits to the business owners. We understand the language of industrial I ot very well because off our roots in that space. And we also understand this universe very well because of our roots being in Silicon Valley. So for industrial customers to benefit from this transformation, it's very important to be able to understand the OT world operational technology world of old days on the IT world that we're very familiar with. So with addition off these acquisitions that we've done this summer very well, positions with the building blocks that way can put together on offer differentiated solutions to our customers? >> Well, no, but it's been a pleasure having you on the queue. But the fifteenth annual acey GSP grow words. Congratulations to adjust of your whole team for the emerging growth award. And we look forward to seeing what happens this year in the space with you. Thank >> you. Thank you very much. Thank you. >> Lisa. Martin, you're watching the Cube. Thanks for watching.

Jeffrey Kier with the Qbert Computer History Museum in Mountain View California for the 14th annual association of corporate growth Silicon Valley grow Awards we've been here for a couple years now and it's a big event 300 people coming in to talk about really an ecosystem that helping other companies grow always great to be on the cube [Music] essentially what we are is an organization that's dedicated towards providing networking opportunities educational opportunities programming for c-level executives and other senior level executives at companies to help them develop their career and also grow their businesses tonight it's about tech as a force for good and I'm gonna talk about what I call the four superpowers today mobile unlimited reach cloud unlimited scale ai unlimited intelligence and IOT bridging from the digital to the physical world and how those four superpowers are reinforcing each other today very sophisticated population I mean it's just wonderful living in this seventy some people our biggest thing that we see is just the whole better together message that all of the resources from the strategically line businesses all working together to support the customers technology is evolving at a remarkable speed you know that's being driven largely by the availability of increased processing power less and less expensive faster and faster digital transformation IT transformation security transformation and work force transformation those are the big things for us this year it's great to be able to have a computer that really understands how to generate meaningful realistic text it's our opportunity to improve the quality of lives for every human on the planet as a result of those superpowers and really how it's our responsibility as a tech community to shape those superpowers for good there are issues created operationally day to day that we have to sort of always be on the watch for like you know readiness distance or these technologies it's the two sides of the same point always you can use it for good or you can use it for bad and unfortunately the bads within the news more than the good but there's so many exciting things going on in medicine health care oh yeah agriculture energy that the opportunities are almost endless not just the first world problems those of us here in the Silicon Valley see every day but really open our eyes to what's happening in other parts of the globe the need for water clean water water filtration clean air having access to information education so these are some things that are you know really personally dear to me in the last 50 years we've taken the extreme poverty rate from over 40 percent to less than 10 percent on the planet we've increased the length of life by almost 20 years these are stunning things and largely the result of the technological breakthroughs that we're doing that's the beauty of this right that's all of these things actually create opportunities you just have to stick with it and look at solutions and there's no shortage of really talented creative people to go address these opportunities and it's so fun to be involved in it right now the scale that we're able to now conduct business to be able to develop software to reach customers and truly write to change people's lives there are in many ways the technology halves and the technology have not absolutely and a lot of it is not just about making the product but then taking the product you've made and then implementing it in various use cases that really make a change from about in the world as I say today is the fastest day of tech evolution of your life it's also the slowest day of tech devolution of the rest of your life the rest of your life I'm Jeff Rick you're watching the cube from the a cts-v Awards thanks for watching [Music]

>> Narrator: From the Computer Museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE, covering ACG Silicon Valley Grow Awards. Brought to you by ACG Silicon Valley. (electronic music) >> Welcome back, everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the ACGSV, it's a mouthful. Association of Corporate Growth Silicon Valley Awards, the 14th annual. We've been coming here for about three years. We're really excited to have tonight's keynote speaker on, many time CUBE alum, Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware. Pat, great to see you. >> Great to be here, Jeff, thank you so much. It's always great to be on theCUBE, and so many good friends from theCUBE and great interviews. I really enjoy you guys, thank you. >> We're excited for VMworld later this year, we've got Dell Technology World coming up next week, so... >> Just working on my keynote this morning, so almost ready to go, so. >> But you're going to keynote tonight, so what's your keynote tonight on? >> Well, tonight, it's about tech as a force for good. And I'm going to talk about what I call the four superpowers today. You know in the past, we thought of superpower, like, USSR and the USA. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> Today I believe superpowers are far more powerful, and they're technology superpowers. And the four I talk about are mobile, unlimited reach, cloud, unlimited scale, A.I., unlimited intelligence, an IOT bridging from the digital to the physical world, and how those four superpowers are reinforcing each other today, and literally it's our opportunity to improve the quality of lives for every human on the planet as a result of those superpowers. And really how it's our responsibility as a tech community to shape those superpowers for good. >> It's so good to talk about the "for good" because there's so much bad in the news lately about some of the stuff that's going on, and you know, it's two sides of the same coin always. You can use it for good or you can use it for bad. And unfortunately, the bad has been in the news more than the good, but there's so many exciting things going on in medicine, healthcare, agriculture, energy. The opportunities are almost endless. >> Yeah, it really is, and as I say, technology is neutral. It can be used for good or bad. The Gutenberg Press. The Bible or Playboy, it works for both, and it really is our responsibility as a society, and I'll say even more so today as tech leaders, to be that force shaping those technological superpowers for good. You know, one of the statistics offside of my keynote, is in the last fifty years, we've taken the extreme poverty rate from over forty percent, to less than ten percent on the planet. It's stunning that we've lifted two and a half billion people out of extreme poverty. Healthcare reach, we've increased the length of life by almost twenty years on the planet, over the last fifty years. I mean, these are stunning things, and largely the result of the technological breakthroughs that we're doing, and as I say, today is the fastest day of tech evolution of your life. It's also the slowest day of tech evolution of the rest of your life. >> Of the rest of your life, pretty interesting. And with 5G coming just around the corner, kind of thinking of a world of infinite bandwidth, infinite compute, infinite store. How do you start to design applications and distribution when you can have all that power? And as you said, with cloud really at your disposal. You don't have to build it all yourself, you leverage companies like you guys to put it in place and I as an entrepreneur don't have to build all that stuff anymore. >> That's right, this really is impressive that way, 'cause today we've crossed over half the population of the planet has a persistent connection to the internet over some form of mobile or PC device. Half the population, you can now reach over the internet. I mean, it's just stunning that way. >> Jeff: Yeah. >> You can rent the world's largest super computer for a few thousand bucks. The scale that we're able to now conduct business to be able to develop software to reach customers, and truly to change people's lives. >> Right. You do a lot of work. I follow you on Twitter and you're out in the community, you do a lot of stuff with your faith and outside of work to help people. You see the power that you can bring to this technology. What are some of the inspiring stories that get you up everyday, when you do some of this stuff outside of your day job? >> It really is exciting and one of the charities that my wife and I are very involved in is called Missions of Hope International. They work in the slums of Nairobi primarily, and we help to start schools there that literally today have over fifteen thousand kids in the schools that we helped start. Over the summer, I'm climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, in July, as a fundraise to build the next girls high school for those schools. As the girls get younger, they get pulled back into tribalism. For five camels, they get married off at young ages, and keeping them in school so that they can really advance and become proper members of society versus drug into tribalism, so that's one of my summer projects is doing that. Particularly in Kenya, we've been thrilled, things like M-Pesa, and we work with a company called Node Africa, to deliver farming and agricultural services. You know, the most basic things that give people market access, give people cropped information, and literally are lifting people out of poverty in the country of Kenya today. >> That's great work and like I said, follow Pat on Twitter. You're pretty active on there doing good work. >> Thank you. >> We look forward to your keynote tonight and we'll see you next week in Las Vegas. >> Look forward to it. Thank you so much, Jeff. >> Alright, he's Pat Gelsinger, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE from the ACGSV Awards. Thanks for watching. (electronic music)

>> Narrator: From the computer museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE. Covering ACG Silicon Valley Grow Awards brought to you by ACG Silicon Valley. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE, we're in Mountain View, California at the ACGSV awards, the grow awards, 14th annual. We've been coming for a couple of years, about 300 people celebrating, really, there's a lot of networking, it's an interesting organization. Check it out, we're excited to have our next guest, he's Nick O'Keefe, partner of Arnold and Porter. Nick, great to see you. >> Likewise, great seeing you, great to talk to you. >> So we were talking a little bit off camera, you came to Silicon Valley in 2000, and were saying you seen a lot of changes in those 18 years. >> Yeah it's phenomenal, it's epitomized by the great gathering that we have here today. As I was saying earlier, when I came, I worked in Silicon Alley. Silicon Valley was sort of a bigger version of Silicon Alley and it's just kept growing. You know, the practice between East Coast and West Coast is converged. I mean, there's some of the biggest most successful companies in the world are based here now, and some of the biggest deals. It's just incredible in a short period of time how that's happened. As I was saying earlier, you know, one of the things that really opened my mind, opened my eyes to how successful Silicon Valley is, is I opened up the Middle East offices to another law firm right around the time of the Great Recession. And it's seems like every country is trying to emulate Silicon Valley. We advised on how they can replicate it, what kind of laws they'd have to put in place, what kind of ecosystem they'd have to build. And there's just something really unique here that's really difficult to emulate in different countries-- >> Right because it's all industries. Right, all industries tend to aggregate and congregate around a usually a specific location, or one or two. You think of financial services in New York and London. Because you get the people, and those people leave and start new companies. You have the schools that drive people in their associates. It's tough, it's tough to replicate a whole ecosystem if you don't have all those components, and then, as it gels for a awhile, I think the barriers to entry become even higher. So, you get different versions of it, but really not the same. >> Yeah that's right, I mean, we have all the ingredients here, we have the great educational institutions, you know, Berkeley, Stanford. You have the financial institutions or the venture money. Very sophisticated population, it's just wonderful living here. Just so many smart people around, you can't just lift them up and put them somewhere else, they all have ties in the community. It's just very tough. What's interesting about financial services you mentioned, typically that's a New York-based practice, but with Fintech, you're seeing some of that migrate over here. Cryptocurrencies, a lot of that technology is being developed here, and that's really a convergence of financial services and tech, and Silicon Valley is the hub of that. >> Yeah, I really think that Stanford and Cal don't get enough credit. And Santa Clara and some of the other schools, but those two particularly, because they attract really great talent. They come, their weather's great, they've got a culture of innovation, they've got very nice connections with the local business community, so people don't leave. So you got this constant influx of smart people, and they stay, where a lot of other places, even great academic institutions don't necessarily have the business climate, the weather climate, or kind of the ecosystem to keep their brightest, it's there locally. So I think that's just a huge driver. >> Yeah absolutely, I completely agree. And there's, even if they don't stay, they still maintain their ties here. You know, people all over the world come to study here, as you're indicating. You know, I'm doing a deal currently with some Chinese people who did graduate research locally, and they formed a very successful start-up in China, where currently, we're doing a deal with. And the fact that Stanford, they couldn't be where they were if they hadn't gone through Stanford, and they develop ties with the region, and with the companies in the regions, so they're very much, sort of a diaspora of Silicon Valley, the way they've operated it. >> Right, what is your take on China? 'Cause to me, China's the big competitor. That's the one, I think, where there's the potential because they got a huge internal market, they're really good at fast following, and you look at Alibaba Cloud, and some of the big, big players over there. I think that's really where the biggest threat to the current US incumbents is going to come. >> It's very interesting, it's sort of two, two faceted. On the one hand, obviously, a huge population, and as the country develops, I mean, ultimately within the fairly near future, the Gross National Product is expected to overtake the US. But you have sort of a different culture, and they have the same challenges as everyone else does, this sort of replicating Silicon Valley, I don't think they'll ever take Silicon Valley, you know, take the crown away from them. And I think, what I'm seeing now in a couple of deals is, so the current administration is obviously trying to defend the US trade position, but it's having deleterious effects in that it's preventing Silicon Valley companies from growing and from doing deals. You know, a lot of the Chinese funds they're lucky to invest in the US, where there's currently some regulations that are expected to be proposed next month that could inhibit Chinese investment in the US. Now that's not good for Silicon Valley, so the attempt is to, sort of, protect the US economy, but, you know, I can see certain effects that are happening that are not helpful. It's interesting, there's sort of a symbiotic relationship between development here in the US, and development in other countries, and it's difficult to fight it 'cause you're going to have weird effects. You know, I think the US, it's just a unique country. You know, I think it'll always be unique, and I personally, I don't have a fear that China is going to somehow usurp the position the US occupies, or India, or other huge country, I'm just very polished on Silicon Valley, and the US generally. >> Yeah it is amazing 'cause I've been here a little longer than you, and it just, it just keeps reinventing, right? It's just wave after wave after wave, it was originally silicon and microprocessors, and then it's software, and then it's IOT. And now, you see all the automotive people have innovation centers here. So wave after wave after wave, just continues to come, and then we're going to have, you know, 5G, and it's this whole move to asymptomatically approaching zero cost of store, compute, and networking, and infinite, basically, amounts of those on tap. It really opens up a huge opportunity. >> It really does, yeah, and it's, a lot of it's going to come from here. >> Alright Nick, well thanks for taking a few minutes of your time, and stopping by. >> You bet, my pleasure. >> Alright he's Nick O'Keefe, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE, from the ACGSV awards, Grow Awards in Mountain View, California. Thanks for watching. (digital music)

(electronic music) >> Announcer: From the Computer Museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE covering ACG Silicon Valley GROW! Awards. Brought to you by ACG Silicon Valley. >> Welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, for the 14th Annual Association of Corporate Growth Silicon Valley GROW! Awards. We've been here for a couple of years now, and it's a big event, 300 people coming in to talk about an ecosystem of helping other companies grow. And we're excited to have the new CEO, Drue Freeman. Drew, great to meet you. >> Thanks Jeff, pleasure to be here. >> So you've been here two months, I think. What attracted you to the opportunity? >> It's kind of an exciting organization, actually. I've been working with ACG Silicon Valley for a little while now doing some programming with them around autonomous driving and the connected car. And I got to know my predecessor, Sally Pera, through that and through the course of discussions-- She's a wonderful salesperson, she kind of sucked me into the role and here I am. >> Jeff Frick: What is the mission, for people that aren't familiar with ACG? >> Essentially what we are is an organization that's dedicated towards providing networking opportunities, education opportunities, programming for C-Level executives, and other senior-level executives at companies to help them develop their career and also grow their businesses. >> Like you said, Sally's been at it for 13 years, she's stepping out of the role, which opened up the opportunity for you. What's your charter now, as you take the baton from Sally? Fresh enthusiasm, fresh energy, fresh face. What are you excited about? >> Of course, it sounds silly, but to take things to the next level, whatever that means, to try to identify a vision for the organization, going forward. Maybe find some new areas to develop content around. Attract some sponsors in the technology domain, and bring content that will maybe continue the Thought Leadership area. We are recognized as a Thought Leadership within the community here in Silicon Valley, and also within the greater ACG community. But we want to really kind of notch that up a little bit. We're bringing in some university sponsorship now and really looking at some of the leading edge areas that Silicon Valley is on the tip of the spear of, essentially, globally, for innovation. We want to make sure that we're putting that content out really to our community. >> Right. And this is the GROW! Awards, this is an awards banquet, a celebration tonight, but you guys do a number of different types of events throughout the year. What are some of the formats of the different ways that people can get involved? >> The one that most people are aware of is our keynote panels because those are open to a larger audience. Typically we get about 100 people there at these events. We bring in a panel of experts and we have a discussion on some topic that's quite current at the moment. But we also have a Public Board Circle, where people who are on public boards of publicly traded companies will have a discussion within that smaller group of people about relevant topics. We have a C-Suite Circle, where C-Level executives come together. We bring in outside experts that will come in and talk about things like economic trends or whatever the current issues are, and then they have a robust discussion around that topic. We have an MNA Circle. We also have an accelerator environment, where we have younger companies, sometimes start-ups, sometimes mid-market companies, where we bring in some experts that kind of help them pop the hood and look at what some of the strategic issues are that they might be facing, et cetera. >> Okay, so that's all great, but let's talk about the stuff I know you're passionate about and is so fun right now, that's autonomous vehicles. It's a really crazy time in the industry. You've got changes in the players. You've got changes in the propulsion. You've got changes in the ownership structure. You've got so many changes happening in the autonomous vehicle space and all the ecosystem around it. I'd just love to get your impressions. You've been playing in that space for a long time, in the automotive space, but to see the changes really accelerate driven in a large part, obviously, by Tesla and Elon Musk. And we're here at the Computer History Museum. They've got that great little display over there with the Google cars. Which they now weigh more and they have to keep changing them out because it went from the little bug-looking thing, now they're driving the vans. I'd love to get your impressions as to the speed, some surprises, not surprises, as we see this autonomous vehicle trend coming down the pipe. >> Technology is evolving at a remarkable speed. That's being driven largely by the availability of increased processing power. You need to address the data bandwidth power, as well. You've got to move a lot of different data around the car to address this technology. And that's really pushing the envelope of what cars can do. The industry itself still needs to make sure they can bring that to the market in a way that the market will accept. That people in Main Street, USA, or Main Street, Europe, or Main Street, Asia are going to be comfortable driving in. Car ownership is going to change a little bit, especially in urban areas. People may not choose to buy a car in the urban areas. They might choose to do carsharing. But in the Midwest, I think car ownership is still going to be a key element, and it's not clear yet how ready people are to have a self-driving car as part of their own ownership. The technology, while we can demonstrate it works, still needs to be demonstrated that it works in a way that makes people feel comfortable. And so, I think there's still a lot of innovation to be done in the software, in the AI, the machine learning, that makes people feel comfortable with that. And there's a lot of great companies working on that. I'm amazed every day at the companies developing not only the sensors and things that enable the perception of the vehicle to improve, but also the AI around that. But honestly, I think the roll-out in-- Making it available to you and I on the street it's going to be a lot slower than I think a lot of us have been thinking about for a while. >> Yeah. The trust issue is so interesting to me. 'Cause on one hand, people do have to have some trust and we've talked to Phantom Auto and some other companies that are trying to kind of insert a person back in at some point in time to help with that trust. On the other hand, you have people driving the Teslas especially, or at least that's the ones we hear the most about, that's a level two assist that people are treating like a level five fully autonomous vehicle. And unfortunately, there's been some fatalities and they're not level five vehicles. So it's really two opposite extremes, that we see people and their interaction with these things. They want it to be fully autonomous today, and it's not but people are treating them that way. It's weird. >> Yeah, and I think that's one of the risks, right? I think level three is one area where I really think you probably will not see a lot of. I think level four, where you can basically have fully autonomous but in a geo-fenced area, will I think be the first area that really takes off. So on campuses, in maybe urban areas that are fenced off from other vehicles. I think you will see that develop first. I don't think mixed-mode traffic where you have a lot of vehicles where they're fully autonomous but you're going to expect the driver to be paying attention all the time and willing to take over the vehicle at any minute. I don't think that works. The human brain doesn't work that way. >> No, it doesn't work. It's funny, we were at a Ford event, and it was a press event so they had the sample driver guy ready to go, and they had a guy sitting in the right seat with a laptop, checking things out. And this poor guy in the left seat, he had his hands half an inch from the wheel on both side, just completely alert and ready to go. You couldn't do this for more than fifteen minutes or twenty minutes. It was the worst of all worlds for this poor guy. It is going to be interesting, that intermediate phase, and it's going to be complicated, but it's clearly coming at an incredible rate of speed. >> Right. Exactly. And then you also have to manage-- How do you manage the traffic when you have mixed mode, when you have human-driven vehicles combined with autonomous vehicles? How do the autonomous vehicles react to the human-driven vehicles and how do the humans react to autonomous-driven vehicles? And we haven't really figured that out yet. >> Right, and then there's all the other law of unintended consequences with, what do you do with the parking structures? I think curb management is an interesting thing that's really been highlighted lately in San Francisco with all the electric scooters that are now littering the sidewalks, which nobody ever really thought about when they rolled out hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of these scooters all over San Fransisco. Good opportunities and crazy times ahead. >> And that's the beauty of this, right? All of these things actually create opportunities, you just have to stick with it and look at solutions, and there's no shortage of really talented, creative people to go address these opportunities. And it is so fun to be involved in it right now. >> Alright, Drue, well congrats on your new position, and we look forward to watching ACGSV evolve. >> Thank you very much. >> Alright, he's Drue Freeman and I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from the 14th Annual GROW! Awards. Thanks for watching. (upbeat electronic music)

>> Announcer: From the Computer Museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCube, covering ACG Silicon Valley GROW! Awards, brought to you by ACG Silicon Valley. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCube. We're at the ACG SV 14th Annual GROW! Awards. It's their big annual event, about 300 people here at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. We're excited to have one of the board members join us. She's Anita Ganti, SVP and Global Head of Product Engineering Services, for Wipro, and a board member, welcome. >> Thank you, thank you for having me here. >> So how long have you been involved in this organization? >> Not very long. It's just a little over a year. >> All right, and what attracted you to it? >> I actually got introduced by a friend. She connected me to the board of ACG, and I could see what the organization was doing in terms of bringing more growth, more energy here in the Silicon Valley, not that we don't have enough already, but I'm very passionate about it, and so I was really glad to be introduced and brought into the fold, so to speak. >> All right, good. So I'm going to set you up, I did a little research before we have you on, famous Jeffrey Hammerbacher quote, you probably know what I'm going to say, "The best minds of my generation are thinking about "how to make people click on ads, and it sucks." You're all about using tech for good, that's what you're passionate about. Not just using it to get people to click ads, but really doing some meaningful work around meaningful things. What are some of your favorite projects you're working on? >> I'll just clarify, right? It's that clicking on ads is a bad thing. I mean, people do need to buy, we need to get commerce going and all that. But with all the technology that we have access to, it seems such a shame that we are not paying attention to real world problems, larger world problems. I think global warming is something that's real. I'm in the camp that believes that it's very real. And there's a lot of harm that some aspects of technology have cost our planet. It's important to really look at not just the First World problems those of us here in the Silicon Valley see every day, but really open our eyes to what's happening in other parts of the globe. The need for water, clean water, water filtration, clean air, combating some of the changes that have been created as a consequence of global warming, having access to information, education. So these are some things that are really personally dear to me. >> Right, right. So we've done some stuff with the Western Digital. I know SAP is part of this work with the United Nations for some of their really big, global goals that they're addressing. A lot of them you talked about. Simple things: water, access to information, better food production. There's so much inefficiency in Ag that we see that people are applying technology to. So there is a real opportunity and we are seeing, I think, some movements into that area. >> Absolutely. And it doesn't always have to be done by the corporate arm that's focused on social issues. We can do that as engineers who are working just in our day-to-day lives. We could be looking for ways in which we apply things like IOT, Internet of Things, to providing services as a service to enable smart cities. Really look for avenues in which we look at technologies that are available to us every day and then just like people invest in social causes without really looking at it as philanthropy, look for for-profit avenues, avenues to enable technology but then keeping the impact to our planet in mind. >> You guys deal with a ton of customers, right? You're out on the leading edge, you're helping people implement technology. So are you seeing people add that in, as kind of a, you think of a public works project or a building project, there's always some carve out for art or other things to keep cities beautiful. Is there similar type of thing you're seeing for social good in some of these projects where there's some carve out, some allocation, to make sure that that base is being covered? >> No, what I want to say is you don't have to think of it as a carve out. You can make that as a part of your mission in what you do. So here in the Silicon Valley we are creating so much technology and all that technology has multiple applications. It's like both sides of the coin. And if we are making technology available for artificial intelligence machine learning, we're creating technology to do things like block chain authentication, distributed ledger, it's just about opening our minds a little bit and then taking those products, taking that technology to other markets. There are in many ways the technology-haves and the technology-have-nots. >> Absolutely. >> A lot of it is not just about making the product but then taking the product you made and then implementing it in various use cases that really make a change come about in the world. So that's something that I'm very passionate about. >> All right, Anita, well thank you for taking a few minutes to stop by and give us the update. And really excited for doing tech for good because we hear so much about the bad these days. So thanks for your time. >> Thank you. My pleasure. >> She's Anita Ganti. I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCube from the ACG SV Awards, Mountain View California. Thanks for watching.

>> Announcer: From the Computer Museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE covering ACG Silicon Valley GROW! Awards brought to you by ACG Silicon Valley. >> Welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the 14th Annual ACG SV GROW! Awards. There's about 300 people coming together. It's their once-a-year big event for the awards. They do about two events a month for the balance of the year. And we're really excited to have one of the speakers on. She's Dr. Karen Lojeski, the founder and CEO of Virtual Distance International. Karen, great to meet you. >> It's great to be here, Jeff. Thanks for having me. >> Absolutely, so virtual distance. What does virtual distance mean? >> Well, that's a long story but the short answer is virtual distance is actually a measure that I discovered that basically describes what's lost when the human being gets translated through our devices and it actually shows up as an emotional and social detachment that grows unconsciously when we are constantly talking through mediated communications. >> Jeff: Right. >> And when virtual distance is high, it has a very significant impact on things we care about as business leaders. But we can predict virtual distance, we can reduce it, we can manage it, and therefore we can improve performance while maximizing the technology but minimizing the impact it's having on human beings. >> So before we jump into that, so virtual distance can be really close physical distance, right? >> Karen: Yeah. >> I think I saw something >> Exactly >> in one of your research, doing some research where people are sending IMs and emails to somebody who's sitting right across the way. >> Yeah. >> So it's just so prolific because we're so used to communicating via these devices. >> That's right. I mean we see it all the time. You go out to restaurant to have dinner and you and I could be sitting just this close and both of us are doing this, there's virtual distance right at that table. >> Right. Right, or the kids not doing what what they're supposed to >> That's right. >> And you text them, "Hey, look up." You know? >> Yeah. >> "Let's pay attention." >> And then it's actually affecting how that child develops or how we feel about each other >> Right. >> but it's invisible. >> So, how do you measure it and what are some of the really key indicators that leaders should be looking for, measuring, keeping track of to try to minimize some of the negative impacts of this? >> Well, we measure through the Virtual Distance Index Assessment and our clients take that and then we generate analytics reports and we actually give them predictive solutions on how to reduce it so that they can impact performance in a positive way. >> So what are some of the examples? Some of these cases you can share that where it just went way one way >> Yeah. >> or way the other way? >> I'm glad you brought up, it can sort of be, virtual distance can be even as close as we are and also between people who are thousands and thousands of miles apart. And we've also seen virtual distance very low between people who sit oceans away and who've never met. For example, I had a large financial services company that actually had 90% of their employees clock in to the same location every day and we went in and measured virtual distance and we found that it had caused multimillion dollar losses in a strategic IT project even though the people on that project were literally as close together as you and I. So, we were able to show that. We knew exactly where it was coming from and we could prescribe solutions to reduce it which they did >> Right. >> And they saw immediate bumps in performance. >> So what are some of the things you can do because we're so addicted to these things? The stats of the number of times we touch them and look at them, it's mind-boggling actually. So what are some of the things you tell people to reduce that virtual distance? >> Well, I actually start by telling them that what they have to realize is that when they're talking to the screen, they're actually talking to themselves. And I know it sounds crazy but that's actually how we operate as human beings. >> Right, right. >> So just by becoming aware that that's what we're doing actually pulls people back and makes them stop and think, "Do I really know what this person means?" Because in essence what happens is we lose all the context we need as human beings to actually figure out what people really mean. So I work with leaders to bring that context back and constantly be explicitly referring to it because unconsciously it's all disappeared behind these virtual curtains. >> Right, and consciously we actually see evidence of it all the time. Email I think is one of the worst communication vehicles of all time. It's certainly convenient but so many times the nuance is not carried through. The intention or the degree of pissed-off-ness, I'll just use which is probably not a vocabulary word but that's okay. >> That's okay. >> It doesn't really come through either way over-positive or way over-negative depending on a whole bunch of factors when you read that or just bad choice of words. >> That's right. >> Or unintentional affect onto those words. >> That's right. >> It's not a great form of communication. >> Well, I would add to that that it actually is a good form of communication but in certain circumstances. So what Virtual Distance analytics, measurable, quantifiable things tell us is that email is great for things like, "Jeff, let's have lunch at 12 and meet "at the Computer History Museum." or, "Here's the file you wanted. "Please have a look and give me a call." It is actually a very good tool for things like that. But what we do all the time is we try to explain ourselves in email and that is not a good use of email because as you're saying, what happens is since we have no context we use our own context and that's not good because it's usually wrong. >> Usually wrong. >> And then we misinterpret everything and people think other people are just jerks or something when in fact it's really just virtual distance. >> Now what about Zoom and Webex and the virtual meeting rooms that are so prolific now as an alternative to the actual phone call? Do those things work from your point of view? Do they not work, are they a nice substitute and better than the alternative with all these distributed teams? What's your take on video conferencing? >> Yeah, so the first thing I would say is virtual distance is actually not about the technology, it's about the people, so we have to recenter ourselves on that notion. But things like Zoom and Webex and things can be helpful but only if they work properly when we need them. If they don't, one of the ways to reduce virtual distance in the operational sense is we need to have plan A, plan B, plan D, plan C if that technology goes down because the problem with it is it's not always reliable and you know, you've been on calls, right? >> Right. >> Where if there's a problem, it takes about 10 seconds maybe before you're off doing something else while someone is trying to fix it and that actually adds to virtual distance. >> Still one of my favorite YouTube videos, and very sad that it's still so relevant is the joke one about the Webex meeting or the virtual meeting, especially at the end where it's like, "Bob, you've been here the whole time?" >> Yeah (laughs). >> And it's still the same. It's so much wasted time trying to get the thing to work. So I want to wrap it up with what are the consequences from leadership skills? What should leaders be thinking about? It's the world we live in. We're still connected to these things. What are some of the concrete things that they can do to reduce the virtual distance and have better comms amongst their people? >> Yeah, so the first thing we have to do is to know, I've been collecting data on this for 14 years, more, and virtual distance is now everywhere. It's not a matter of geographic distance as we said in the beginning. First, they have to understand that they have to be managing it all the time. The second thing is that there are issues created operationally day to day that we have to always be on the watch for readiness instants or these technologies failing. But the big thing they have to understand is that they things that cause the most significant and negative impact to performance are the things about us as human beings that lie underneath the surface and that disappear behind virtual curtains. So what leaders need to do is make those explicit in everything they do and we have specific tactics on how to do that so that everybody can see each other in a deeper way because when virtual distance is high we get much lower trust by 90% and it's not just lower trust, it's distrust. >> Jeff: Right. >> So if we reduce virtual distance, we increase trust, we get better performance and it's immediately seen by executives all over the world. >> And trust is one of these foundational things. >> Absolutely. >> That if you don't have trust it just crushes everything. >> No, and without giving away what I'm about to go talk about tonight, I can tell you that we're at the point where we have so much data that statistically speaking, high virtual distance is the statistical equivalent of distrust. So if we lower virtual distance, we statistically get the equivalent of strong trust. >> All right, well if you want to see Karen speak, you got to go watch her key note or I think you've got books and all kinds of great, great research around this. >> Yeah, and they can visit us at virtualdistance.com and all kinds of good places. >> All right, she's Dr. Karen Lojeski, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from ACG SV. Thanks for watching. >> Karen: Thank you. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From the Computer Museum in Mountain View, California, it's the CUBE, covering ACG Silicon Valley Grow! Awards. Brought to you by ACG Silicon Valley. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with the CUBE, we're at the ACGSV, the 14th annual Grow! Awards, Mountain View California. They're just about ready to pull everybody into the keynotes and we are able to squeeze in one more interview. Excited to have Christian Kim, SVP of sales from Dell EMC. Christian, great to meet you. >> Thank you Jeff, good to be here. >> Absolutely, so you know, Dell, EMC merger took place about a year and a half of so ago, seems like it's doing really well, we'll have Michael on next week; we'll be at Dell Tech World in Vegas. >> Excellent. >> And so you're out on the front line, you're out in the sales role. How's it going out there? What's going on with the merger? How are customers digging it? How do you like having all those extra resources at your disposal? >> Well, I would say Jeff, it's a great question. The integration and the merger has gone exceptionally well, in my opinion in our first year. I think when you put the two big companies together like that, generally there's going to be a few bumps in the road but I would say the reception from our customer base has been very positive. I think the biggest thing that we see is, just the whole "better together" message, that all of the resources from the strategically aligned businesses like Dell, Dell EMC, Pivotal, Vmware, VirtuStream, RSA, and SecureWorks all working together to support the customers. >> Pretty amazing group of companies. We've just had Pat on a little while ago, you know, there was a lot of concern a couple years ago, 'what's going on with Vmware?'and they've really done a great job kind of turning that around, getting together with Amazon and that partnership RSA was last week, 45,000 people. Hot, hot hot in the security space and obviously Pivotal just did their IPO, right, last week. >> They did, yes. >> So you guys are in a good space, I mean, I remember when Michael first went private you could tell he was like a kid in a candy store, right, as he's talked about the '90-day shot clock' they didn't have to worry about it anymore. And so, you know, having an aggressive founder as the leader, I think really puts you guys in a great position. >> It does. When the founder's name's on the building, I think generally it sets a good tone for the culture and the objectives for all of the employees across Dell Technologies. >> And he's such a real guy, right? He tweets all the time, he's really out there and I always find it interesting that there's certain executives that like to tweet, that like to be social. Beth Comstock is another one that comes to mind. Pat tweets a little bit when he's really doing some of his philanthropic things, Michael does as well. And then you have other people that are scared of it, but Michael really wants to be part of the community, he tweeted out today his condolences around the crazy tragedy up in Toronto, so it's really nice to have a person running the organization. >> Yeah, he's a very active CEO and Chairman. Likes to be in front of customers, very involved with the employee base, I couldn't ask for anything more. >> Alright, so we're almost out of time, priorities for 2018, we're, hard to believe, a third of the way through, what are some of your priorities, what are you guys working on, what's top of mind? >> I'd say our priorities are certainly customer focused, focusing on business outcomes, the four areas that we really drive and work closely with our customers on are all about digital transformation, IT transformation, security transformation, and workforce transformation. Those are the big things for us this year. >> It's a good place to be. >> Thank you very much Sir. >> Well Christian, we've got to leave it there, they're shooing everybody into the keynote room so thanks for taking a minute. >> You got it. My pleasure. >> He's Christian Kim, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching the CUBE from the ACGSV Awards, Mountain View California. Thanks for watching. (techno music)

>> Narrator: From the Computer Museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE. Covering AGC Silicon Valley GROW! Awards. Brought to you by ACG Silicon Valley. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. The program is just about to begin here at the ACGSV GROW! Awards, 14th Annual. We're excited to be here for our third year. 300 people are going to be giving out some hardware here shortly. But, before we do that we're excited to have Alex Wolf, all the way up from Santa Cruz. He's the dean of the Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz. Welcome, Alex. >> Thank you very much, it's great to be here. >> Absolutely. So, what do you think of this organization? How did you get involved? >> Well, it's been great for us. We've been drawn in by some great alumni who have been involved with the organization, and they're interested in helping Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz School of Engineering, and partnering with ACG is just a perfect way to do it. >> Excellent. So, I was doing a little homework, obviously, before you came on. I was looking through the curriculum of the school, the engineering school, and you've got CS and E, and all the normal stuff, but two things jumped out to me, biomolecular engineering and computational media. >> That's right. >> What are those disciplines? >> Well, let's start with biomolecular engineering. That's where we are doing a lot of work in health and life. Santa Cruz is famous for one particular thing that happened a number of years ago, which was the sequencing of the human genome. Now, Santa Cruz played a huge role in that. This was the place where we were able to assemble the human genome for the first time, and publish it on the web. >> What year was that? >> That was 2003. >> And back then it took massive amount of computer, massive amount of time. >> Lots of time, millions and millions of dollars. This was a project that was run by the government. Many partners and Santa Cruz researchers in School of Engineering were able to crack that nut and get this genome sequenced. >> And now we can do it-- Now, it's getting cheaper and cheaper, we've got researchers who've been working on that, we've spun out a bunch of companies that have worked on less and less expensive, faster and faster sequencing techniques. >> Really, with the goal to get to individualized medicine, right, to get to individualized treatment. >> That's right, personalized medicine, precision medicine, that's the goal. It's amazing what you can do if you know the genome history, if you can apply that to the drug treatments, it's fantastic. >> I think medical science is so interesting, because from whatever point you are, you look back 10 years and it looks like bloodletting. No matter what we do today, in 10 years from now, we're going to look back >> It's true at cancer treatment, like we give people poison until they almost die, >> That's right. >> that's the way we treat 'em? >> That's right, and the genome will tell you so much about that cancer treatment. We're doing other things too, in stem cell and nanopore technology, so there's just a wonderful set of technologies that people are inventing in the school. >> Great, now what about computational media? >> Computational media is a rather different thing. That is a concept where we're looking at how media can be generated through algorithms, and this has very interesting applications in the game industry, in journalism, in many parts of our interaction with humans. It's great to be able to have a computer that really understands how to generate meaningful, realistic text. >> What is the main benefit in some of the early research that you see, because we've seen some really simple versions of this out there, straight little app that kids play sports, you know, you finish the game, you hit the game over, and it generates a nice little article for you. >> Absolutely. You know, you mentioned personalization before. It's the same thing with computational media. You can get a game to be much more personalized to the player. It can understand that experience, understand the interests of the game player, and then tailor itself to that player. >> So, how much do you work with the psychology department in this world, because it's so much human factors, right? >> Absolutely. We have a great collaboration with psychology. That's really, really important. You know, the computational media department is actually going to be growing into Silicon Valley. You see Santa Cruz has recently opened a campus in Silicon Valley. >> Where? >> It's in Santa Clara, and we're right now hiring faculty into that campus. >> So, is it open then, or when will it be open? >> The facility is open. We held an ACG event there in January. We're going to be holding more of them there. It's a great location. >> Excellent. All right, well, maybe we'll have to come by and do a field trip >> Please do. when you get it all outfitted. >> Absolutely, absolutely. >> All right, well, unfortunately, we have to leave it there. They're going to pull everybody into the keynotes, but thanks taking a few minutes. >> I'm looking forward to it. Thank you very much. >> All right, he's Alex, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE from ACGSV, Mountain View, California. Thanks for watching. (techy music)

>> (Narrator) From the Computer Museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE. Covering ACG Silicon Valley GROW! Awards. Brought to you by ACG Silicon Valley. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the ACGSV 14th Annual GROW! Awards About 300 people. It's their annual event to give out a couple innovation awards. We're excited to be here, it's our 3rd year. And we're happy to have a board member on. He's Andy Armstrong, a partner at SingerLewark. Andy, great to see you. >> Hey, excited to be here. >> (Jeff) So you said you've been on the board for about a year. >> Yes. >> Why on the board? What is this organization about? Why are you excited to be part of it? >> So actually, this last year's been incredible for me with my affiliation with the group. So the board, I was able to join so I could co-sponsor and lead the young accelerator program with Jim Chapman. And what we do is, we take young start-up companies and work with them. We create a panel of experts that is about 5-6 experts and we sit down for two hour increments with these companies and really try to work out some of the issues that they might be beating their head against the wall. And we kind of help them try to jump over those hurdles that they're facing and take them to the next level. >> How old are they generally when they're in this process? In terms of number of employees or age or, how do you bucket it? >> Pretty young start up companies. I would say some are pre-revenue. Others, they might have 5 to 10 employees and they maybe have anywhere from pre-revenue to a million dollars worth of revenue, just kind of moving up the ladder so to speak. >> Right, and they don't have to be a client of your guys to participate. >> Absolutely not, no. Really we're looking for kind of open-minded executives that are really wanting to take advantage and tap in to some of the phenomenal executives that are part of ACG, as well as here in Silicon Valley. >> Right, and then you said your firm is also very involved in southern California. So there's a number of chapters of ACG. >> Absolutely. There's chapters of ACG throughout the country. The president of ACGLA for example is one of my partners down in my firm in LA. My marketing director runs one of the largest ACG conferences in the country, which is down in LA every September, so. >> Yeah, we're heavily involved as a firm in ACG. >> So we're pretty tech focused up here. Obviously, were in the Computer History Museum and I'm curious in southern California, what are some of the industries that you guys really help and leverage? >> You know, we work a lot with down there a lot of public companies. We do a lot of public company audits. We also work with what we call our family and entrepreneurially owned companies. So we like to say that's the life blood of SingerLewark, in terms of working with companies, again big or small, mom and pop, but that's really what the focus is down there. >> Right. So, biggest surprise in working with some of these entrepreneurs. It's always fun to work with people that are getting started, they're so enthusiastic. What are some of the kind of surprises as you've worked through some of those sessions with them? >> You know, maybe not surprises, but just the realization of, they're young. They're hitting their head against the wall just like you and I do sometimes. >> Right. >> And I think it's fun to get in to that environment in the accelerator because it's what I like to call a safe environment for them. It's not like they're coming in to pitch for an investment. They're coming in and kind of airing some dirty laundry and just kind of opening up and being honest with us. And that's where they get the most out of that program. >> Right and I would imagine they get quite a bit also from their peers in that environment as well. >> Um >> (Jeff) Maybe not. (laughter) >> Yeah, well in terms of the peers on our panel, absolutely. I don't know in terms of the peers, in terms of how much they're networking with their competitors so to speak. >> (Jeff) Right, right. >> It's phenomenal the experience that each one of these companies has. >> Competitions a big part of what drives us up here, for sure, so. You know, can be a partner in one area, you can be a competitor in the other, and you know, there's so many places and so much opportunity in a lot of the growth areas as well. So there's a lot of room to run. >> Yeah, absolutely. It's great. >> Well, Andy, I'll give you the last word. What are you looking forward to tonight? >> You know, it's fun just to get into a room full of top executives, very successful people here in the Bay Area. To get to kind of rub shoulders and meet and talk to them and just appreciate the success that ACG has had in working with these kind of people. >> Yeah, they bring in good ones for sure. Pat Gelsinger, will be keynoting tonight. He's been on theCUBE many times, really doing great things at VMware. So it should be a good evening. >> (Andy) It's really exciting. >> Alright, well, he's Andy Armstrong and I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from the 14th Annual ACGSV Awards. Thanks for watching. (tech music)

>>que presents on the ground. Wait. >>Hi. I'm Lisa Martin with the Cube, and we're on the ground at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley with the Association for Corporate Earth or a CG. Tonight is a CG 12th annual Growth Awards, and we're very fortunate to be joined by one of the longest sponsors of a CG Deloitte Gary Herbert from Delight. Welcome to the Cube. >>Thank you so much. >>So not only is a long time sponsor base did you get through the second biggest with the presumably a lot of options that Dylan has a sponsor and engage in communities like that. What next? A CG unique and warrant Deloitte sponsorship and active participation >>Delights been involved with a CG for over 10 years. And the reason is they collect a great group of senior leaders in Silicon Valley to talk about things that are really important. And a lot of great networks air here and make great things happen in the community. >>Excellent. And you can hear and feel the buzz of the innovation and the history of veterans in the room. We're here tonight to honor men who won the 2016 outstanding growth award, as well as Ambarella, who won the 2016 Emerging Growth Award in terms of the metrics used to select the winners, can you give us a little insight into what those metrics are and what this metrics and key criteria really mean for these types of award winners? >>One of the key metrics that we look at his revenue growth and Fitbit has had an incredible run over the last five years. But what's particularly amazing about Fitbit is they've been doing it very profitably, so it's really been a great testament to that. You can grow and grow in a profitable matter. >>And as we look at the next 2 to 3 years, in your perspective, what are some of the market drivers that you're going to see really influencing the fifth Mrs Your predictions there expect >>Fitbits and continue to be very successful. They've really done a great job from an execution perspective. They got great products and they define their brand. It's not just a just a tracker of steps. It is really a wellness brand. And that's why I think they're gonna continue to be successful. >>Same question for Amarillo in terms of emerging growth where some of the market drivers over the next two years, Amarilla will face. What are your >>predictions for them with Amber? I mean, since they're in the chip business, they they place themselves or have been very successful with getting successful with successful products, and that'll help their continued growth as well. Excellent. And >>what that said, Tell us what's next for Deloitte. >>Deloitte and we're diversified. Professional service is firm. I mean, people think of Deloitte as part of the Big Four, which is people think of audit Tax, I think people don't know is we're also actually were a consulting firm and an advisory firm. In fact, that makes up more than half of our revenues here. Look excellent. >>As we look forward to the future, we know tonight think that an emerald are in some great company with past winners. Lengthen Trulia Gopro What? Your predictions >>for the next class of candidates for 2017 grow awards. That's what's really exciting about this is you don't know who's successful. Companies are. If you told me three years ago is gonna be here today, I wouldn't have necessarily thought that. Um So what's exciting about this is you get to see what is next and who's who's being successful. And it really gets to celebrate the growth of those companies. Absolutely great closing to celebrate, not just the growth of these companies tonight fit, but an amber alert that we're here to celebrate, but >>also all of the >>leadership and expertise and sponsorship that we have here in Silicon Valley. Garrett, thank you so much for taking time to join us. It was a pleasure having you on the Cube. Thank you so much, Lisa. And with that said, Thank you for watching the Cube. I'm your host, Lisa Martin, and we'll see you next time.

(techno music) >> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its Ecosystem Partners. >> Welcome to Las Vegas everybody. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm here with Stu Miniman and this is the inaugural Dell Technologies World and Pat Gelsinger's here, he's the- >> Hey, great to be with you today, >> Dave: the CEO of VMware, awesome to see you, >> Oh, thank you. >> Our number one guest of all time, this is our ninth Dell/EMC World and your 900th CUBE interview, But it never gets old Pat. It's really a pleasure to see you. >> Oh it's always fun to be with you guys. Thank you for the chance to spend some time on theCUBE, you've come a long way. >> So, thank you for noticing! So, you were the first, and people are recognizing this, to really sort of call the boom in the data center. We certainly have seen it with cloud, and we saw a little bit with data and big data, and now digital transformation, but well over a year ago, you said, we have tailwinds, it just feels right, so good call. >> Yeah, hey thank you, and you know clearly like the IDCs, Gartners, you know, they began last year, 2% to 3% growth, I said no, I think it's at least 2x that, and we ended of the year almost 6% growth in IT, and everybody's raised their forecast, and I think they're still a little bit conservative, and I think in this period, where technology is becoming more pervasive in everything, every business is becoming a tech business, every area of every business is becoming influenced by tech, and as a result, hey I think we're going to see a long run of tech strength and every company in tech is going to benefit and those that are well-positioned are going to benefit in a big way. >> Yeah, you see, you called it, "tech is breaking out of tech" >> Yep, yep absolutely, right, you know, we're no longer that little IT thing stuck in the back corner making sure your mail runs, it's now everything. You know, back office has become front office, right. You know, every aspect of data becomes mission-critical for the business. As some have called it, you know, data is the new oil, right, in the future. And it really is thrilling to see some of our customers, and Michael had a few on stage this morning doing really pretty cool things. >> Well VMware is on fire. I mean, it's only 10% of Dell's revenue, but it's half, it generates half of its operating cash flow. Obviously we love the software business, of course. Talk about your business, the core is doing really well, you got NSX crankin', vSAN cranking, the cloud now, there's Clarity in cloud, give us the overview of your business and give us the update. >> Sure, and as I say, you know, there's three reasons we're doing well. You know, one is our strategy is resonating with customers, and you know, when you got strategic resonance with customers, you're not in the purchasing department, you're in the business units, the CIO's office. So strategy is resonating well, across what we do for private cloud, what we're doing for public cloud, what we're doing for end user and workforce transformation, our security strategy, every aspect is resonating. You know, second, we're executing well. And I'll say, you know, your good strategy, you're executing it well, and you know, clearly the Dell momentum has helped us. We're ahead of schedules on the synergies that we've laid out, and that's been a powerful accelerant. It was like we're doing well, you know, and you put some turbochargers on, whoa, you know this is going, and then finally as we said, it's a good market, right. And well-positioned tech companies are benefiting from that. So across our product families, you know, NSX, vSAN, and HCI, you know, our cloud management is really performing, the end user computing, you know, all of these seeing, you know 30, 50, 100 percent growth rates. You know, my overall cloud business, you know, VMware is growing in the teens you know, my cloud business is growing in the 30s, and way ahead of the growth rate of the business, so pretty much everything that we've laid out is firing on all cylinders. >> Pat, I think most people understand some of the products of VMware. I think it's, you know, 20 years now, since server virtualization laws You've, you know great momentum with NSX with vSAN, wonder if you could talk a little bit about the digital platform though, you know how does VMware look, you know, for the next five to 10 years, fit into the Vision 2030 like Michael was talking about. >> Yeah, yeah, you know very much, you know, as I say, you know, our objective is to be the essential, ubiquitous, digital infrastructure, right. Where you know, this idea, you know, essential. You know we run this mission critical stuff and increasingly we're seeing businesses put their crown jewels running on VMware. You know, 'cause we ran a lot of the stuff of the past, we'd run your SharePoints, your Outlooks, and so on, but now, they're putting core banking on us, you know, core transactional platform. They just say, you are essential, ubiquitous, our strategy is to move all the way to the edge, and the IOT use cases, into the core networks of our service provider partners, You know, to as I say, build these four clouds, the private cloud, the public cloud, the telco cloud, and the NF or the IOT cloud. All of those on a common infrastructure, that enables applications to build on and leverage all of the above. So you know, we're increasingly ubiquitous, digital infrastructure, meaning that they can build their applications from the past as well as in the future on us. And as we're partnering with Pivotal with our PKS strategy, reaching more to the developer, right, and delivering that infrastructure for the next-generation apps, and of course the dirty secret is, is that almost all of the cool new apps are some ugly combination of new and old. And if we can give a common operational security management and automation environment that transcends their cool new container, and function as a service, but combine it, in a consistent operational and security environment with today's infrastructure, oh, that's like the big easy button for IT. Got it, we could take you to the future, without giving up the past. >> We hear from our, you know, CXOs, in our community, in our audience, they really, they want to get digital right. So my question to you is, what kind of conversations are you having with executives around getting digital right? >> Uh-huh, yeah, and lots of those things are, you know, like just with a big media company, was with a huge Bank, on the phone with a big consumer goods product last week. You know these interactions occurring, you know like you say they want to get it right. And with it we're seeing the conversation shift, because a lot of it used to be, you know best of breed. Oh that looks good, and I'll stitch it together with this, and maybe I'll put it that, and a lot of their bandwidth was being put to putting the pieces together, and we're saying no, right. What you going to do is have robust infrastructure. Increasingly rely on fewer, more strategic vendors. It's my job to put it together, so you can take your investments and put them into the applications and services that really differentiate your business. And this is becoming a sea change in how we work with customers and say, okay, yeah I can't stitch all these pieces together, I can't have a hundred security vendors, I must rely on fewer vendors, in much more strategic ways. And in that, obviously we're benefiting from that enormously and they're expecting us to step up like never before, to be a partner with them, and it really is a thrilling time for us. >> So that simplifies all the complexity on there, and at least in concept. Who's leading this charge? Do you discern any patterns of the guys that are getting it right, versus the guys that are maybe struggling, or maybe complacent, specifically in terms of leadership? >> Yeah, and it's super, super interesting, because I find leaders in every industry, right? You know, you find leaders and laggards in those, I had one customer not a lot, long say, "Hey is that virtualization stuff, can I really rely on it?" It's like, ding dong, you know, you're now the trailing edge of technology, but for every one of those trailers, we're seeing those front end customers, and you saw some of them on stage this morning. Where they're just really going and saying, boy we are now ready to ante in, in a big way. We're seeing that in car companies. We're seeing that in financial services companies. We're seeing that in supply chain companies. And some of those are now really seeing these startups now putting pressure on their business for the first time, and they say no, we got to innovate in a very aggressive way. And for that, you know, the Dell Technologies family, you know all of us coming together, you know with our, each skills and focus areas, but together being able to present that holistic solution that says, that's right, we can lead you on digital transformation, we could change your infrastructure, we can build-in security, we could transform your workplace, we could take you to the multi-cloud future, we got it. >> Pat, there was one of the things that caught my ear, Allison Dew, when she was talking about the Dell Technology Institute, said that, together you're going to become a force for good. I know that's something that's near and dear to your heart, >> Pat: Yeah. >> So, maybe, you talked about the tech, and the security and everything, what about the Dell families as a force for good out there? >> Yeah, and I've described this era, and I've said there's four superpowers. You know, technology superpowers that are bigger than any of us, right. And the four I described, you know, mobile. The ability to reach anyone, over half the planet is now connected. Cloud, the ability to scale as never before. AI, the ability to bring intelligence to everything, and IOT, the ability to bridge to the physical world everywhere. And those four are really reinforcing each other, right? They're accelerating each other, as Michael said, you know, "Today, the fastest day of your life. "Today, the slowest day of the rest of your life, "for tech evolution." And we see them just causing and accelerating each to go, as I mentioned in my talk this week at the Grow Awards in Silicon Valley, in 1986 I was making the 486, a great AI chip, right. It's like, what? 31 years ago? And now it's a success because the superpowers are coming together. The compute is now big enough, the data is now volumous enough, that we can do things never possible before. But with that, technology is neutral. The Gutenberg printing press did the Bible, you know, Luther's Bible, it also prints Playboy. It sort of doesn't care. Technology is neutral. And it's our job as a tech industry to shape technology for good. You know that's our obligation, and increasingly we need to be involved in, and shaping, legislations, policies, laws, to enable tech to be that force for good. >> Pat, you mentioned kind of the speed of change in the industry. You're a public company with you know, a lot of employees, how does, internally, how do you keep up with the pace of change, keep inspiring people, get them working on the next thing? You know, Michael talked about going private was one of the things that would help him restructure and get ready for that, so maybe discuss that dynamic. >> Well, you know and for us, you know, as a software company living in Silicon Valley, we feel it every day, right. I'll tell ya' you know, we see these startups, that are hovering around our people, and our buildings, and they got ideas, you know, so we're synthesizing those ideas. We have our own research effort, our advanced product efforts, we're engaging, you know, and thousands of customer interactions per day. And ultimately, it's my job to create a culture that enables my 8,000 software engineers to go for it every single day, right. Where they are just, you know, they love what we do as a company, they love who we are as a company, our values. And then find ways that we enable our teams to, what I say, innovate in everything. Not just in R and D, but how we sell our products, how we support our customers, you know, how we enable these new use cases. We have to innovate in everything, if we're going to keep pace with this industry, and to some degree, I think it's almost in the water in Silicon Valley, right. You know yeah, you got some crazy master's student coming out of Stanford, and he thinks he's going to start up a company to displace me. It's like, what are you talking about? But we feel that every day, and as we bring those people into our environment, creating that culture that allows everybody to innovate in everything, >> So it's hard to argue that things aren't getting faster, that speed, but speed is an interesting question. When you think about blockchains, and AI, and natural language processing, just digital in general, there's a lot of complexity in terms of adopting those things. So speed versus adoption. What do you see in terms of adoption? >> Yeah, you know in a lot of these things like, you know, you look at a technology like NSX, cool, breakthrough, you know we're five years old now, almost on NSX, right? Since we did the Nicira acquisition as a starting point, 4 1/2 years on NSX, and some of these things need to be sedimented, as I describe it, into the infrastructure. Hardened, you know when you've really proven all of the edge cases. You know, those things don't move every day. >> Dave: Right right, fossilized, Furrier word, >> Yeah, you know there is, you know similarly with vSAN. Boy, these edge use cases, data recovery, pounding on the periphery of failure cases, disk drives, failure modes on flash drives, some of those things need to be sedimented, but as you think about those layers, always it's you know, how do you sediment? How do you standardize? And then expose them as APIs and services to the next layer. And every layer as you go up the stack gets faster and faster right, so as somebody would consume the software-defined data center, they need to be able to do that pretty fast. You know, how can I make, you know VM, we just released 6.7. Which reduced by an order of magnitude the time to launch a VM. You know, increase the, by 20x the amount of V-Center bandwidth, just so I can go faster. Not that I needed to go faster for VMs, I needed to go faster that I can put containers in VMs, and they need much higher speed of operation. So to me, it's this constant standardization, sedimenting, integrating, and then building more and more agile surfaces, as you go higher in the stack, that allows people to build applications where literally they're pushing updates, and seeing their CICD pipeline allow new code releases every day. I'm not changing NSX every day, but I am changing my container environment for that new app literally every day, and the whole stack needs to support that. >> Cloud partnerships, we talked last year at Vmworld, about the clarity that the AWS deal brought, of course you have an arrangement with IBM, you're doing stuff with Kubernetes, so, just talk about your posture with the big cloud players, and how that has affected your business, and where you see it going. >> Yeah, you know, clearly the cloud strategy, the AWS partnership, as I said, more than anything else, when we announced that, people moved their views of VMware. Oh, I get it, VMware isn't part of my private cloud, or part of my past, they're the bridge to the future. And that has been sort of a game-changing perspective where we can truly enable this hybrid cloud experience. Where I could take you and take your existing data centers, I can move them into a range of public cloud partners, AWS, IBM, you know, and be able to operate seamlessly in a truly hybrid way. Oh your data center's getting a little hot, let's move a few workloads out. Oh, it's getting a little bit cool, let's move some workloads back. We can truly do that now, in a seamless, hybrid multi-cloud way, and customers, as they see that, it's not only the most cost-efficient, right, it also allows them to deal with unique business requirements, geo-requirements that they might have, oh, in Europe I have to be on a GDPR cloud in Germany. Okay, we support, we have a right, you know here's our portfolio. Other cases, it's like, oh, I really want to do take advantage of those proprietary services that some of the cloud vendors are doing, you know. You know, maybe in fact that new AI service is something that I could differentiate my business on, but the bulk of my workload, I want to have it on this hybrid platform that truly does give them more freedom and choice over time, while still meeting unique compliance, legal, security, issues, as they've come to know and love from VMware over time. >> So to clarify, is it, are you seeing it as use-case-specific, or is it people wanting to bring that cloud experience on-prem, or is it both? >> It is truly both, because what you've seen, is many people, and if we were talking four years ago, you would've been asking me questions, "oh, you know I just talked to Fred, "and he says everything is going to the cloud" right. And people tried that student body right to the cloud of their existing apps, and it was like, oh crap, right? You know, it's hard to re-platform, to refactor those applications, and when I got there, I got the same app, right. You know, it's like, wow that was a lot of investment to not get much return, right. Now, they look at it and they say, "Oh boy, you know, "I can build some new apps in cool new ways" right, with these cloud native services. I can now have this agile private hybrid cloud environment, and I truly can operationalize across that in a flexible way. And sometimes we have customers that are bringing workloads out of native cloud, and saying, oh that's become too big in my operation role. You know I have different governance requirements. I'm going to bring that one back. Other cases are saying, "Oh, I didn't want to move it to the VMware cloud on Amazon", or you know, IBM, the migration service is really powerful. I want to get out of the data center. Other cases, they look at their cost of capital, and the size and scale they're operating, and says, "Hey, I'm going to keep 80% on-premise forever, "but I never want to be locked in, "that I can't take advantage of that, "should there be a new service." It really is all of the above. And VMware, and our Dell relationship, and our key cloud partners, now 4,100 cloud partners strong, it's really stepping into that, in a pretty unique and powerful way. >> And the key is that operational impact, as Pat is saying. >> So Pat, just one of the challenges we've heard from users we talked to is, if this was supposed to get simpler, virtualizing it, you know, I kept all my old applications. Going the cloud, there's more SKUs of compute in the public cloud than there are, if I was to buy from Dell.com. You know, in management, you know we're making steps, but you know it's heterogeneous, it's always add, nothing ever dies, how do we help customers through this? >> Yeah, and I do think they're, you know we're definitely hearing that from customers. And they're looking to us to make these things simpler. And I think we've now, you know, laid the templates for a truly simpler world. Right, in the security domain, intrinsic security. Build many of the base security capabilities into the platform. Automation, automate across these multiple cloud environments, so you don't care about it, we're taking care of it against your policies. Being able to do that, you know, and have an increasingly autonomous infrastructure that truly is responding and operationalizing those environments, without you having to put personnel and specific investments, right at that fundamental operations level, because it's too big, it's too fast, you can't respond at the pace the business requires. So I feel really good, we have some key innovations, you'll see us announcing. Now, we're going to talk at VMworld right? >> Dave: Oh absolutely. >> Okay, >> I will 100% be there, >> I have some cool announcements in this area, by VMworld as well, specifically, in some of these management automation, we see some of that applying, some new AIML techniques, to be able to help with some of those workload management and policy management areas. So, some really cool things going on to help these problems specifically. >> We've seen, oh we saw blog recently, about you guys working on some blockchain stuff. I know it's early days there, but it's exciting new technology. >> Yeah, and the blockchain stuff is what I'm really, really pretty excited about. We have some algorithmic breakthroughs that right now, you know, blockchain on a log scale basically scales at you know log or super log, right. Which meaning, it's problematic right. Is you get lots of nodes, right, you know the time to resolve those, gets to be exponentially expensive, to be able to resolve. We've come up with some algorithmic breakthroughs that drop that to near linear. And when people look at that, they sort of say, wow, I can make my blockchain environments much larger, much more distributed as a result, so as a result of some of that work we'll be increasingly making blockchain as a primitive. We're not trying to deal with the application level, you know for insurance, for financial, but we can increasingly deliver a primitive infrastructure along with vSphere in the VMware environment, that says yeah, we've taken care of that base issue. We've guaranteed it from a vendor you trusted, and you might remember there was a couple of breaches, of some of the blockchain implementations, so yeah, we hope to take care of some of those hard problems for customers and bring some, a good breakthrough engineering, from VMware to that problem. >> Well, it's great to see companies like VMware and you know enterprise plays, IBM obviously involved, into bringing some credibility to that space, which everybody says "Crypto, oh", they don't walk they run, but there's real potential in the technology. I want to ask you about a Silicon Valley question. >> Pat: Okay. >> Any chance I get, so if I broadly define Silicon Valley, Let's include, you know, Seattle. And we generally don't do that, but that's okay, but I'm going to. >> We'll take this, we'll take 'em in okay. >> it's technology industry, but technology industry seems to have this dual disruption agenda. We've always sort of seen, tech companies own this horizontal stack, you know, and go attack, and cloud, and big data, and disruption, but it seems like, with digital, you're seeing them attack new industries. Whether it's healthcare, or groceries, or media. What do you make of that? Can Silicon Valley, broadly defined, pull off this dual disruption agenda? >> You know I really believe it can, right. In that, I'm, you know, being part of it. I'm a huge optimist on it. I don't think it will be exclusive to Silicon Valley, right. You know, there's a tech community in Boston, that's a bit more focused on healthcare, right. Obviously, the cloud guys coming out of Seattle. You know, Austin, and you know, Texas has increasing, Research Triangle, when you go around the world, you see more places because, you know, in that sense, one of my favorite, you know, cartoons, is a picture of a dog at a terminal. I'm sure it was a Dell terminal, but you know, and the caption reads right, "On the internet, "they don't know you're a dog." Right, you know the point being, hey, when you're on the net, it doesn't matter where you are, right. And it enables innovation, whether that's Afghanistan, whether that's Bangladesh, whether that's Myanmar, you know any of those places, become equal on the net, and it does open up that domain of innovation. So I view it much more as tech is disrupting everything. And that's my theme of, "tech is breaking out of tech". Clearly the hub of that, is Silicon Valley. Right you know, that's the center where you know, every third door is a new startup, as you walk down the street. It really is an incredible experience. But increasingly, you know, that innovative disruptive spirit is breaking out of Silicon Valley, to you know, literally across the world. The Chinese think they might be the number one. You know, Europeans, oh sort of a renaissance in France, you know that we haven't seen for many years, and so on. And I do believe that it will continue to be technology, in this horizontal way you know, but increasingly, and I think you know, Amazon has led the way on this. We're seeing boy, we can disrupt entire industries you know, leveraging that. You know, Tesla in automotive, and Airbnbs. All of these are changing industries in fundamental ways, and I do not see that slowing down at all. You know, I'm thrilled to see like, you know, health care, right. Boy, I have not seen this amount of disruptive technology startups in healthcare, healthcare one of the lowest percentage of spend on IT. Can you imagine that? Right, you know at that level, and boy, we're starting to see that pick up. So industry by industry I think we're just getting started. >> And that's an industry that is really ripe for disruption. >> Pat: Oh my gosh. >> So Pat, we're going to hear about some of this, this afternoon at your keynote, I presume? Maybe show us a little leg there, and we'll wrap. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Dave: Alright, take it home. >> Hey, you know we're, today's keynote, obviously going to talk about the better together aspects, we'll update on vSAN and HCI and our strategy there, some of the cool things we're doing with Dell, and AirWatch Workspace ONE, and the client space. Yeah, we're going to talk about networking. I'm going to lay out our networking strategy, and we're going to give a teaser this afternoon of a broad set of networking announcements that we're doing this week. And hope to really lay out, what we think of, as the virtual cloud network of the future, and how the network is essential to that future. So, we're going to have a little bit of fun there, and you'll see me don the VR headset, right, and hey we're going to go into the virtual, virtual data center today, >> Virtualization inception. >> There we go. >> Well Pat, on a personal note, you've been a great friend of theCUBE, and we really appreciate that, and you've been an awesome guest, we saw you come from Intel with an amazing career, and we just see it going from there. So congratulations on all your personal success, your team success and continued. >> Love you guys, it's always great to be on theCUBE. You guys do a fabulous job, >> Dave: Thank you. >> For live tech coverage, and it really has been a lot of fun, and next year we're going to go party for your 10 year anniversary on theCUBE. >> Dave: That's right. Love it. >> Okay, cool, very good. >> Alright. >> Thank you, thanks so much. >> Good. Thanks. >> Alright, keep it right there everybody. We'll be back with our wall-to-wall coverage of Dell Technologies World. 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