(bright music) >> Hello everyone and welcome back to AWS re:Invent, here in wonderful Las Vegas, Nevada. We're theCUBE. I am Savannah Peterson. Joined with my co-host, Dave Vellante. Day four, you look great. Your voice has come back somehow. >> Yeah, a little bit. I don't know how. I took last night off. You guys, I know, were out partying all night, but - >> I don't know what you're talking about. (Dave laughing) >> Well, you were celebrating John's birthday. John Furrier's birthday today. >> Yes, happy birthday John! >> He's on his way to England. >> Yeah. >> To attend his nephew's wedding. Awesome family. And so good luck, John. I hope you feel better, he's got a little cold. >> I know, good luck to the newlyweds. I love this. I know we're both really excited for our next guest, so I'm going to bring out, Lena Smart from MongoDB. Thank you so much for being here. >> Thank you for having me. >> How's the show going for you? >> Good. It's been a long week. And I just, not much voice left, so. >> We'll be gentle on you. >> I'll give you what's left of it. >> All right, we'll take that. >> Okay. >> You had a fireside chat, at the show? >> Lena: I did. >> Can you tell us a little bit about that? >> So we were talking about the Rise, The developer is a platform. In this massive theater. I thought it would be like an intimate, you know, fireside chat. I keep believing them when they say to me come and do these talks, it'll be intimate. And you turn up and there's a stage and a theater and it's like, oh my god. But it was really interesting. It was well attended. Got some really good questions at the end as well. Lots of follow up, which was interesting. And it was really just about, you know, how we've brought together this developer platform that's got our integrated services. It's just what developers want, it gives them time to innovate and disrupt, rather than worry about the minutia of management. >> Savannah: Do the cool stuff. >> Exactly. >> Yeah, so you know Lena, it's funny that you're saying that oh wow, the lights came on and it was this big thing. When when we were at re:Inforced, Lena was on stage and it was so funny, Lena, you were self deprecating like making jokes about the audience. >> Savannah: (indistinct) >> It was hilarious. And so, but it was really endearing to the audience and so we were like - >> Lena: It was terrifying. >> You got huge props for that, I'll tell you. >> Absolutely terrifying. Because they told me I wouldn't see anyone. Because we did the rehearsal the day before, and they were like, it's just going to be like - >> Sometimes it just looks like blackness out there. >> Yeah, yeah. It wasn't, they lied. I could see eyeballs. It was terrifying. >> Would you rather know that going in though? Or is it better to be, is ignorance bliss in that moment? >> Ignorance is bliss. >> Yeah, yeah yeah. >> Good call Savannah, right? Yeah, just go. >> The older I get, the more I'm just, I'm on the ignorance is bliss train. I just, I don't need to know anything that's going to hurt my soul. >> Exactly. >> One of the things that you mentioned, and this has actually been a really frequent theme here on the show this week, is you said that this has been a transformative year for developers. >> Lena: Yeah. >> What did you mean by that? >> So I think developers are starting to come to the fore, if you like, the fore. And I'm not in any way being deprecating about developers 'cause I love them. >> Savannah: I think everyone here does. >> I was married to one, I live with one now. It's like, they follow me everywhere. They don't. But, I think they, this is my opinion obviously but I think that we're seeing more and more the value that developers bring to the table. They're not just code geeks anymore. They're not just code monkeys, you know, churning out lines and lines of code. Some of the most interesting discussions I've had this week have been with developers. And that's why I'm so pleased that our developer data platform is going to give these folks back time, so that they can go and innovate. And do super interesting things and do the next big thing. It was interesting, I was talking to Mary, our comms person earlier and she had said that Dave I guess, my boss, was on your show - >> Dave: Yeah, he was over here last night. >> Yeah. And he was saying that two thirds of the companies that had been mentioned so far, within the whole gamut of this conference use MongoDB. And so take that, extrapolate that, of all the developers >> Wow. >> who are there. I know, isn't that awesome? >> That's awesome. Congrats on that, that's like - >> Did I hear that right now? >> I know, I just had that moment. >> I know she just told me, I'm like, really? That's - >> That's so cool. >> 'Cause the first thing I thought of was then, oh my god, how many developers are we reaching then? 'Cause they're the ones. I mean, it's kind of interesting. So my job has kind of grown from, over the years, being the security geek in the back room that nobody talks to, to avoiding me in the lift, to I've got a seat at the table now. We meet with the board. And I think that I can see that that's where the developer mindset is moving towards. It's like, give us the right tools and we'll change your world. >> And let the human capital go back to doing the fun stuff and not just the maintenance stuff. >> And, but then you say that, you can't have everything automated. I get that automation is also the buzzword of the week. And I get that, trust me. Someone has to write the code to do the automation. >> Savannah: Right. >> So, so yeah, definitely give these people back time, so that they can work on ML, AI, choose your buzzword. You know, by giving people things like queriable encryption for example, you're going to free up a whole bunch of head space. They don't have to worry about their data being, you know harvested from memory or harvested while at rest or in motion. And it's like, okay, I don't have to worry about that now, let me go do something fun. >> How about the role of the developer as it relates to SecOps, right? They're being asked to do a lot. You and I talked about this at re:Inforce. You seem to have a pretty good handle on it. Like a lot of companies I think are struggling with it. I mean, the other thing you said said to me is you don't have a lack of talent at Mongo, right? 'Cause you're Mongo. But a lot of companies do. But a lot of the developers, you know we were just talking about this earlier with Capgemini, the developer metrics or the application development team's metrics might not be aligned with the CSO's metrics. How, what are you seeing there? What, how do you deal with it within Mongo? What do you advise your customers? >> So in terms of internal, I work very closely with our development group. So I work with Tara Hernandez, who's our new VP of developer productivity. And she and her team are very much interested in making developers more productive. That's her job. And so we get together because sometimes security can definitely be seen as a blocker. You know, funnily enough, I actually had a Slack that I had to respond to three seconds before I come on here. And it was like, help, we need some help getting this application through procurement, because blah, blah, blah. And it's weird the kind of change, the shift in mindset. Whereas before they might have gone to procurement or HR or someone to ask for this. Now they're coming to the CSO. 'Cause they know if I say yes, it'll go through. >> Talk about social engineering. >> Exactly. >> You were talking about - >> But turn it around though. If I say no, you know, I don't like to say no. I prefer to be the CSO that says yes, but. And so that's what we've done. We've definitely got that culture of ask, we'll tell you the risks, and then you can go away and be innovative and do what you need to do. And we basically do the same with our customers. Here's what you can do. Our application is secure out of the box. Here's how we can help you make it even more, you know, streamlined or bespoke to what you need. >> So mobile was a big inflection point, you know, I dunno, it seems like forever ago. >> 2007. >> 2007. Yeah, iPhone came out in 2007. >> You remember your first iPhone? >> Dave: Yeah. >> Yeah? Same. >> Yeah. It was pretty awesome, actually. >> Yeah, I do too. >> Yeah, I was on the train to Boston going up to see some friends at MIT on the consortium that I worked with. And I had, it was the wee one, 'member? But you thought it was massive. >> Oh, it felt - >> It felt big. And I remember I was sitting on the train to Boston it was like the Estella and there was these people, these two women sitting beside me. And they were all like glam, like you and unlike me. >> Dave: That's awesome. >> And they, you could see them like nudging each other. And I'm being like, I'm just sitting like this. >> You're chilling. >> Like please look at my phone, come on just look at it. Ask me about it. And eventually I'm like - >> You're baiting them. >> nonchalantly laid it on the table. And you know, I'm like, and they're like, is that an iPhone? And I'm like, yeah, you want to see it? >> I thought you'd never ask. >> I know. And I really played with it. And I showed them all the cool stuff, and they're like, oh we're going to buy iPhones. And so I should have probably worked for Apple, but I didn't. >> I was going to say, where was your referral kickback on that? Especially - >> It was a little like Tesla, right? When you first, we first saw Tesla, it was Ray Wong, you know, Ray? From Pasadena? >> It really was a moment and going from the Blackberry keyboard to that - >> He's like want to see my car? And I'm like oh yeah sure, what's the big deal? >> Yeah, then you see it and you're like, ooh. >> Yeah, that really was such a pivotal moment. >> Anyway, so we lost a track, 2007. >> Yeah, what were we talking about? 2007 mobile. >> Mobile. >> Key inflection point, is where you got us here. Thank you. >> I gotchu Dave, I gotchu. >> Bring us back here. My mind needs help right now. Day four. Okay, so - >> We're all getting here on day four, we're - >> I'm socially engineering you to end this, so I can go to bed and die quietly. That's what me and Mary are, we're counting down the minutes. >> Holy. >> That's so sick. >> You're breaking my heart right now. I love it. I'm with you, sis, I'm with you. >> So I dunno where I was, really where I was going with this, but, okay, there's - >> 2007. Three things happened. >> Another inflection point. Okay yeah, tell us what happened. But no, tell us that, but then - >> AWS, clones, 2006. >> Well 2006, 2007. Right, okay. >> 2007, the iPhone, the world blew up. So you've already got this platform ready to take all this data. >> Dave: Right. >> You've got this little slab of gorgeousness called the iPhone, ready to give you all that data. And then MongoDB pops up, it's like, woo-hoo. But what we could offer was, I mean back then was awesome, but it was, we knew that we would have to iterate and grow and grow and grow. So that was kind of the three things that came together in 2007. >> Yeah, and then Cloud came in big time, and now you've got this platform. So what's the next inflection point do you think? >> Oh... >> Good question, Dave. >> Don't even ask me that. >> I mean, is it Edge? Is it IOT? Is there another disruptor out there? >> I think it's going to be artificial intelligence. >> Dave: Is it AI? >> I mean I don't know enough about it to talk about it, to any level, so don't ask me any questions about it. >> This is like one of those ignorance is bliss moments. It feels right. >> Yeah. >> Well, does it scare you, from a security perspective? Or? >> Great question, Dave. >> Yeah, it scares me more from a humanity standpoint. Like - >> More than social scared you? 'Cause social was so benign when it started. >> Oh it was - >> You're like, oh - I remember, >> It was like a yearbook. I was on the Estella and we were - >> Shout out to Amtrak there. >> I was with, we were starting basically a wikibond, it was an open source. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Kind of, you know, technology community. And we saw these and we were like enamored of Facebook. And there were these two young kids on the train, and we were at 'em, we were picking the brain. Do you like Facebook? "I love Facebook." They're like "oh, Facebook's unbelievable." Now, kids today, "I hate Facebook," right? So, but social at the beginning it was kind of, like I say, benign and now everybody's like - >> Savannah: We didn't know what we were getting into. >> Right. >> I know. >> Exactly. >> Can you imagine if you could have seen into the future 20 years ago? Well first of all, we'd have all bought Facebook and Apple stock. >> Savannah: Right. >> And Tesla stock. But apart from, but yeah apart from that. >> Okay, so what about Quantum? Does that scare you at all? >> I think the only thing that scares me about Quantum is we have all this security in place today. And I'm not an expert in Quantum, but we have all this security in place that's securing what we have today. And my worry is, in 10 years, is it still going to be secure? 'Cause we're still going to be using that data in some way, shape, or form. And my question is to the quantum geniuses out there, what do we do in 10 years like to retrofit the stuff? >> Dave: Like a Y2K moment? >> Kind of. Although I think Y2K is coming in 2038, isn't it? When the Linux date flips. I'll be off the grid by then, I'll be living in Scotland. >> Somebody else's problem. >> Somebody else's problem. I'll be with the sheep in Glasgow, in Scotland. >> Y2K was a boondoggle for tech, right? >> What a farce. I mean, that whole - >> I worked in the power industry in Y2K. That was a nightmare. >> Dave: Oh I bet. >> Savannah: Oh my God. >> Yeah, 'cause we just assumed that the world was going to stop and there been no power, and we had nuclear power plants. And it's like holy moly. Yeah. >> More than moly. >> I was going to say, you did a good job holding that other word in. >> I think I was going to, in case my mom hears this. >> I grew up near Diablo Canyon in, in California. So you were, I mean we were legitimately worried that that exactly was going to happen. And what about the waste? And yeah it was chaos. We've covered a lot. >> Well, what does worry you? Like, it is culture? Is it - >> Why are you trying to freak her out? >> No, no, because it's a CSO, trying to get inside the CSO's head. >> You don't think I have enough to worry about? You want to keep piling on? >> Well if it's not Quantum, you know? Maybe it's spiders or like - >> Oh but I like spiders, well spiders are okay. I don't like bridges, that's my biggest fear. Bridges. >> Seriously? >> And I had to drive over the Tappan Zee bridge, which is one of the longest, for 17 years, every day, twice. The last time I drove over it, I was crying my heart out, and happy as anything. >> Stay out of Oakland. >> I've never driven over it since. Stay out of where? >> Stay out of Oakland. >> I'm staying out of anywhere that's got lots of water. 'Cause it'll have bridges. >> Savannah: Well it's good we're here in the desert. >> Exactly. So what scares me? Bridges, there you go. >> Yeah, right. What? >> Well wait a minute. So if I'm bridging technology, is that the scary stuff? >> Oh God, that was not - >> Was it really bad? >> It was really bad. >> Wow. Wow, the puns. >> There's a lot of seems in those bridges. >> It is lit on theCUBE A floor, we are all struggling. I'm curious because I've seen, your team is all over the place here on the show, of course. Your booth has been packed the whole time. >> Lena: Yes. >> The fingerprint. Talk to me about your shirt. >> So, this was designed by my team in house. It is the most wanted swag in the company, because only my security people wear it. So, we make it like, yeah, you could maybe have one, if this turns out well. >> I feel like we're on the right track. >> Dave: If it turns out well. >> Yeah, I just love it. It's so, it's just brilliant. I mean, it's the leaf, it's a fingerprint. It's just brilliant. >> That's why I wanted to call it out. You know, you see a lot of shirts, a lot of swag shirts. Some are really unfortunately sad, or not funny, >> They are. >> or they're just trying too hard. Now there's like, with this one, I thought oh I bet that's clever. >> Lena: It is very cool. Yes, I love it. >> I saw a good one yesterday. >> Yeah? >> We fix shit, 'member? >> Oh yeah, yeah. >> That was pretty good. >> I like when they're >> That's a pretty good one. >> just straightforward, like that, yeah yeah. >> But the only thing with this is when you're say in front of a green screen, you look as though you've got no tummy. >> A portal through your body. >> And so, when we did our first - >> That's a really good point, actually. >> Yeah, it's like the black hole to nothingless. And I'm like wow, that's my soul. >> I was just going to say, I don't want to see my soul like that. I don't want to know. >> But we had to do like, it was just when the pandemic first started, so we had to do our big presentation live announcement from home. And so they shipped us all this camera equipment for home and thank God my partner knows how that works, so he set it all up. And then he had me test with a green screen, and he's like, you have no tummy. I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? He's like, come and see. It's like this, I dunno what it was. So I had to actually go upstairs and felt tip with a magic marker and make it black. >> Wow. >> So that was why I did for two hours on a Friday, yeah. >> Couldn't think of another alternative, huh? >> Well no, 'cause I'm myopic when it comes to marketing and I knew I had to keep the tshirt on, and I just did that. >> Yeah. >> In hindsight, yes I could have worn an "I Fix Shit" tshirt, but I don't think my husband would've been very happy. I secure shit? >> There you go, yeah. >> There you go. >> Over to you, Savannah. >> I was going to say, I got acquainted, I don't know if I can say this, but I'm going to say it 'cause we're here right now. I got acquainted with theCUBE, wearing a shirt that said "Unfuck Kubernetes," 'cause it was a marketing campaign that I was running for one of my clients at Kim Con last year. >> That's so good. >> Yeah, so - >> Oh my God. I'll give you one of these if you get me one of those. >> I can, we can do a swapskee. We can absolutely. >> We need a few edits on this film, on the file. >> Lena: Okay, this is nothing - >> We're fallin' off the wheel. Okay, on that note, I'm going to bring us to our challenge that we discussed, before we got started on this really diverse discussion that we have had in the last 15 minutes. We've covered everything from felt tip markers to nuclear power plants. >> To the darkness of my soul. >> To the darkness of all of our souls. >> All of our souls, yes. >> Which is perhaps a little too accurate, especially at this stage in the conference. You've obviously seen a lot Lena, and you've been rockin' it, I know John was in your suite up here, at at at the Venetian. What's your 30 second hot take? Most important story, coming out of the show or for you all at Mongo this year? >> Genuinely, it was when I learned that two-thirds of the customers that had been mentioned, here, are MongoDB customers. And that just exploded in my head. 'Cause now I'm thinking of all the numbers and the metrics and how we can use that. And I just think it's amazing, so. >> Yeah, congratulations on that. That's awesome. >> Yeah, I thought it was amazing. >> And it makes sense actually, 'cause Mongo so easy to use. We were talking about Tengen. >> We knew you when, I feel that's our like, we - >> Yeah, but it's true. And so, Mongo was just really easy to use. And people are like, ah, it doesn't scale. It's like, turns out it actually does scale. >> Lena: Turns out, it scales pretty well. >> Well Lena, without question, this is my favorite conversation of the show so far. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you very much for having me. >> Dave: Great to see you. >> It's always a pleasure. >> Dave: Thanks Lena. >> Thank you. >> And thank you all, tuning in live, for tolerating wherever we take these conversations. >> Dave: Whatever that was. >> I bet you weren't ready for this one, folks. We're at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas, Nevada. With Dave Vellante, I'm Savannah Peterson. You're washing theCUBE, the leader for high tech coverage.

>> Narrator: Live from Nice, France, it's theCUBE, covering .NEXT Conference 2017 Europe, brought to you by Nutanix. Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman, and you're watching theCUBE SiliconeANGLE Media's independent live broadcast of Nutanix .NEXT here in Nice, France. Happy to have join with me a first-time guest, John McAdam, who is the former CEO of F5 and an independent board member for a number of companies including F5, Tableau, and Nutanix. The show that we're at. So John, thanks so much for joining us. No, thank you, thanks for having me. All right, so let's start, just for people who aren't familiar, I said, you know, you were CEO of F5 for quite a few years, just give us a little bit about your background in business and what brings you here. I graduated from Glasgow University, you probably can tell from the accent, I'm Scottish. >> Stu: Yes. I moved over to the States when I joined a company called Sequent in 1994, and I became president of Sequent in 1995, and I've actually been in the States since then, up until I retired in April this year. So I spent 11 years at Sequent, president and chief operating officer, big server company is what we did at the time. Mainly selling Oracle type databases running on the servers. We were purchased, we were acquired by IBM in '99. I stayed with IBM for a year. I was running the AIX business globally for IBM, and then I was headhunted by F5 Networks, and I joined them in 2000, just as the .com bust was about to happen, and we'll talk about that later maybe. And I was the CEO at F5 for 17 years, and during the last few years I joined the board of Tableau, as you mentioned, and a company called Apptio as well based in Seattle, and of course Nutanix. Yeah, so a lot of our audience are everything from CIOs to people that someday might want to be a CIO, but very much kind of a blend of business and technology, can you tell people, some people are like, I don't understand how somebody becomes an independent board member. You're not the former CEO of that company or you're not one of the people... What does it mean to be an independent board member? You know, it's an interesting story because the independent board members at F5 actually kept encouraging me to join the board, and I kept saying, no I don't need to do that, I'm really busy, focused on the company. And also I've been a board member since 1995 as an executive, as a board member of Sequent and a board member of F5, so why would I want to join a board. And then eventually, I actually got approached, first of all by Tableau, the CEO of Tableau at the time, and seemed a very interesting conversation. So I decided to join the board. It was pre-IPO. And I thought I could add some value there, in terms of growing the company, etc. So I went along to the first board meeting and I went to the second, and I came back to the F5 board and I said, I apologize. I should have done this earlier. I didn't appreciate how much I would realize and learn being at the other side of the table as an independent board member. Because remember, you're turning up once every three months or two months. You don't know the day-to-day what's going on, but you have a very different perspective. And I wish I had done it earlier, but really it's all about trying to give consultancy, support, advice, obviously there's governance things you do as well. And I've really enjoyed being on the boards and especially Nutanix. Okay, your career, you know we've had, I think since about the time you joined F5, there was the .com crash, there was the downturn in '07/'08, so you've seen some boom times, you've seen some down times. What do you take away for those and how do you help advise the companies that you're working with? You're absolutely right. It's been an interesting experience. When I joined, as I mentioned earlier, it was a .com about to crash happening, and the big issue for F5 was it was actually 90% .com business, so the revenue collapsed completely, the stock price dropped, from today's price, from $21 to $1.50. We've run out of cash in certain areas. We ended up selling off 10% of the company to actually Nokia, they took ownership. So it was very much a survival phase. And in that phase you really have to, you need to make quick decisions. There's no time for the coaching that you would normally do. It's not as inspirational. But once you're out of it, once you get the P and L, you know, the profit and loss, and the balance sheet in good shape. Then we moved into, I would call, the stability phase, and the deal there was that we really were building a new architecture of product. We knew it was going to take a couple years. So that's all about making sure that you're in a good environment, you're going to deliver the goods from a market perspective, and we did that. I remember this well, in September 2004, we announced a new version, a new architecture, boom, we jumped into the growth (mumbles). Fifty percent growth, not quite as much as Nutanix today, but 50, 55, 40%. That's different, that's an inspirational world, you know, where you're really trying to inspire the company, it's all about hiring, and it's fun. How much do companies, when you advise them, worry about kind of what's happening to them versus what's happening locally and globally from an economics standpoint? I talked to Dheeraj many times kind of leading up to the IPO, and it was like, well, we have no control over kind of the global economical pieces, so we're building for the long term, and we will just eventually have to be like, okay, we'll go out in the public market. You know, you can't, just like buying and selling stocks, you can't necessarily time it. So, how does that impact, you know, kind of balance some of those things? I mean the best example is 2008, 2009, where we had the financial crisis, and, as I mentioned, we were very much in growth phase in 2004, '05, '06, '07. Interesting enough, as we were moving into 2008, the timing wasn't great because we were doing a product transition, and then along came the financial crisis, and it was pretty mind boggling, And the end of 2008, December 2008, customers stopped buying. And at first we thought oh my God, is this just us? And then of course, pretty soon moving into January 2009 you realize it's not you. So we didn't ignore it, to be honest, we didn't ignore it. But what we did do was we kept hiring. We cut back a little bit on the hiring, and in fact, I wish we hadn't have done that. I wish we would have completely ignored it, and of course this is me now looking back, so I can say that. The reason I'm saying I wish we had ignored it and kept growing was six months after, moving into the second half of 2009, not only did we see our business starting to grow again, but it accelerated because a demand had built up during that time. So bottom line is I don't think you can ignore global issues going on. You certainly can't ignore big global issues like 2008, but you still have to focus on what you know as your business, especially if you know you've got a good market, you know there's a demand, and just see yourself through it. Yeah, you mentioned one of the companies you joined was pre-IPO from an advisor standpoint. Have you been a Nutanix advisor just before the IPO (mumbles)? I have, I've actually had the unique experience of being on Tableau pre-IPO, Nutanix pre-IPO, and also Apptio, all pre-IPO. So I've watched the three of them going through the IPO process. So of course, Dheeraj tries to say, look, you know, I'm not going to let Wall Street kind of dictate anything, but, you know, it has to be a little bit different when you've got kind of the financial people looking at things from the outside, always trying to second guess strategy and the like. How do you give advice through that? Yeah, my advice on this, and it is somewhat different, to say it's not different wouldn't be completely correct, however, you can't let Wall Street run your business, you can't, especially if you've got conviction in terms of what you're doing. The one area where you do need to be a bit careful is that, the thing I've always said when I was CEO of F5 was our business was all about, when I was asked, do you think you could be acquired? The answer has always been from me the following: We're focused on the business, we're focused on growing a company. When you do that you become more strategic and attractive to other companies. But as long as you keep growing, your market cap keeps high, and you keep going. Right. If your market cap drops as well as the stock price there is always a danger that you could become an acquisition target. So you can't ignore it completely. But frankly, both of those messages are win-wins for investors. Absolutely, what can you say about Nutanix? You know, a year after an IPO, 2800 employees, pushing globally, you know, this show's doubled in attendance from last year. Without getting into closed-doors things, what's your take on (mumbles). Yeah, and as an independent director, I have to be more generic, but clearly, fast-growing company in a great market, a leader in the hyperconvergent market. I love their concept of simplicity, invisible infrastructure. I think that's a place that customers want to be right now, so I think they're in really good position. What in the market is interesting you these days? I look across kind of the companies you work with, you know, data is becoming more and more valuable. I spent many years working for a large storage company, used to be it wasn't really about the data, it was about the storing, and now, data from the big data companies, everything else, it's about how do I leverage and get information out, you know, we're hearing Nutanix play into that message. Yeah, and really it's the three main areas, data, you know data in particular, the Cloud, I'm not going to give you anything new here, and security. They're the three hot topics today. And the three of those are twisted in a knot are they not? They're all linked together. We just interviewed a gentleman from a bank, and he said basically, all of our budget gets put on security these days. Yeah, I mean, what concerns you, is it kind of the geopolitical, the hackers and ransomware, security? I think back early in my career, security always got lip service as being important, but today, it absolutely comes to the front of mind and you know most companies I talk to are concern would probably be understating it as to kind of the state of security. No absolutely, I mean, it's touching everybody now, boards, independent board members, it's high up on the list of discussion topics at board meetings. You know, every company is vulnerable, and if you're a technology company that's got customer data and you're in the security business as well, you really have to make sure that you're well protected. How often is security a board-level discussion these days? Most board members, most board discussions, and certainly in the audit committee, it's almost every one now. What has to happen there? Making sure that it's being looked at properly by the executives, that they take it seriously, there's enough investment, making sure that all the tools are in place if there is an attack, all of the above. Do you touch on GDPR at all? I'm curious if that comes up in your conversations. No I haven't been involved in that. I know there's a breakout session on it today, but I've not been involved in that. It just reminds me of a similar thing is that people have said, you need to make sure you're doing your due diligence and doing as much as you can, which feels like the same for security, because nobody's going to say, yes, I'm 100% secure because there's no such thing anymore. There's no such thing and there's so many different attacks, and frankly, most companies have got security solutions from so many different vendors, even sometimes from your competitor. All right, so the last thing I have to say is I don't think we've ever done theCUBE in Scotland, and it's a beautiful country, so we've got to figure out how to do some small event there. I'll help you. (laugh) All right, John, I want to give you the final word, your take, you come, why do you attend? Obviously you're an independent board, you probably have some meetings, talk to us about a show like this, what brings you. Yeah, and this is the first one I've attended. I've actually attended one similar with Tableau and similar with Apptio as well. It's good for an independent board member to see some of the presentations, how the executives and management are talking to customers, so it's actually good to get more of a feel for the business. All right, well John McAdam, appreciate you bringing a different perspective to our programming. We always want to help give a taste of what's happening at these shows out to our audience. So thank you so much for joining us. I'm Stu Miniman, and you're watching theCUBE.

>> Live from Mid Town Manhattan. It's the Cube, covering BIGDATA New York City 2017. Brought to you by, SiliconANGLE Media and it's ecosystems sponsors. >> Hey welcome back everyone live here in New York City for the Cube special presentation of BIGDATA NYC. Here all week with the Cube in conjunction with Strata Data even happening around the corner. I'm John Furrier the host. James Kobielus, our next two guests Doctor Mark Ramsey, chief data officer and senior vice president of R&D at GSK, Glasgow Pharma company. And Bruno as he's the CMO at Fscale, both Cube alumni. Welcome back. >> Thank for having us. >> So Bruno I want to start with you because I think that Doctor Mark has some great use cases I want to dig into and go deep on with Jim. But Fscale, give us the update of the company. You guys doing well, what's happening? How's the, you have the vision of this data layer we talked a couple years ago. It's working so tell us, give us the update. >> A lot of things have happened since we talked last. I think you might have seen some of the news in terms of growth. Ten X growth since we started and mainly driven around the customer use cases. That's why I'm excited to hear from Mark and share his stories with the rest of the audience here. We have a presentation at Strata tomorrow with Vivens. It's a great IOT use case as well. So what we're seeing is the industry is changing in terms of how it's spying the idea platforms. In the past, people would buy idea platforms vertically. They'd buy the visualization, they'd buy the sementic and buy the best of great integration. We're now live in a world where there's a multitude of BI tools. And the data platforms are not standardized either. And so what we're kind of riding as a trend is this idea of the need for the universal semantic layer. This idea that you can have a universal set of semantics. In a dictionary or ontology. that can be shared across all types of business users and business use cases. Or across any data. That's really the trend that's driving our growth. And you'll see it today at this show with the used cases and the customers. And of course some of the announcements that we're doing. We're announcing a new offer with cloud there and tableau. And so we're really excited about again how they in space and the partner ecosystems embracing our solutions. >> And you guys really have a Switzerland kind of strategy. You're going to play neutral, play nicely with everybody. Because you're in a different, your abstraction layer is really more on the data. >> That's right. The whole value proposition is that you don't want to move your data. And you don't want to move your users away from the tools that they already know but you do want them to be able to take advantage of the data that you store. And this concept of virtualized layer and you're universal semantic layer that enables the use case to happen faster. Is a big value proposition to all of them. >> Doctor Mark Ramsey, I want to get your quick thoughts on this. I'm obviously your customer so. I mean you're not bias, you ponder pressure everyday. Competitive noise out there is high in this area and you're a chief data officer. You run R&D so you got that 20 miles stare into the future. You've got experience running data at a wide scale. I mean there's a lot of other potential solutions out there. What made it attractive for you? >> Well it feels a need that we have around really that virtualization. So we can leave the data in the format that it is on the platform. And then allow the users to use like Bruno was mentioning. Use a number of standardized tools to access that information. And it also gives us an ability to learn how folks are consuming the data. So they will use a variety of tools, they'll interact with the data. At scale gives us a great capability to really look under the cover, see how they're using the data. And if we need to physicalize some of that to make easier access in the long term. It gives us that... >> It's really an agility model kind to data. You're kind of agile. >> Yeah its kind of a way to make, you know so if you're using a dash boarding tool it allows you to interact with the data. And then as you see how folks are actually consuming the information. Then you can physicalize it and make that readily available. So it is, it gives you that agile cycles to go through. >> In your use of the solution, what have you seen in terms of usage patterns. What are your users using at scale for? Have you been surprised by how they're using it? And where do you plan to go in terms of the use cases you're addressing going forward with this technology? >> This technology allows us to give the users the ability to query the data. So for example we use standardized ontologies in several of the areas. And standardized ontologies are great because the data is in one format. However that's not necessarily how the business would like to look at the data and so it gives us an ability to make the data appear like the way the users would like to consume the information. And then we understand which parts of the model they're actually flexing and then we can make the decision to physicalize that. Cause again it's a great technology but virtualization there is a cost. Because the machines have to create the illusion of the data being a certain way. If you know it's something that's going to be used day in and day out then you can move it to a physicalized version. >> Is there a specific threshold when you were looking at the metrics of usage. When you know that particular data, particular views need to be physicalized. What is that threshold or what are those criteria? >> I think it's, normally is a combination of the number of connections that you have. So the joins of the data across the number of repositories of data. And that balanced with the volume of data so if you're dealing with thousands of rows verses billions of rows then that can lead you to make that decision faster. There isn't a defined metric that says, well we have this number of rows and this many columns and this size that it really will lead you down that path. But the nice thing is you can experiment and so it does give you that ability to sort of prototype and see, are folks consuming the data before you evoke the energy to make it physical. >> You know federated, I use the word federated but semantic virtualization layers clearly have been around for quite sometime. A lot of solution providers offer them. A lot of customers have used them for disparate use cases. One of the wraps traditionally again estimating virtualization is that it's simply sort of a stop gap between chaos on the one end. You know where you have dozens upon dozens of databases with no unified roll up. That's a stop gap on the way to full centralization or migration to a big data hub. Did you see semantic virtualization as being sort of your target architecture for your operational BI and so forth? Or do you on some level is it simply like I said a stop gap or transitional approach on the way to some more centralized environment? >> I think you're talking about kind of two different scenarios here. One is in federated I would agree, when folks attempted to use that to bring disparate data sources together to make it look like it was consolidated. And they happen to be on different platforms, that was definitely a atop gap on a journey to really addressing the problem. Thing that's a little different here is we're talking about this running on a standardized platform. So it's not platformed disparate it's on the platform the data is being accessed on the platform. It really gives us that flexibility to allow the consumer of the data to have a variety of views of the data without actually physicalizing each of them. So I don' know that it's on a journey cause we're never going to get to where we're going to make the data look as so many different ways. But it's very different than you know ten, 15 years ago. When folks were trying to solve disparate data sources using federation. >> Would it be fair to characterize what you do as agile visualization of the data on a data lake platform? Is that what it's essentially about? >> Yeah that, it certainly enables that. In our particular case we use the data lake as the foundation and then we actually curate the data into standardized ontologies and then really, the consumer access layer is where we're applying virtualization. In the creation of the environment that we have we've integrated about a dozen different technologies. So one of the things we're focused on is trying to create an ecosystem. And at scale is one of the components of that. It gives us flexibility so that we don't have to physicalize. >> Well you'd have to stand up any costs. So you have the flexibility with at scale. I get this right? You get the data and people can play with it without actually provisioning. It's like okay save some cash, but then also you double down on winners that come in. >> Things that are a winner you check the box, you physicalize it. You provide that access. >> You get crowd sourcing benefits like going on in your. >> You know exactly. >> The curation you mentioned. So the curation goes on inside of at scale. Are you using a different tool or something you hand wrote in house to do that? Essentially it's a data governance and data cleansing. >> That is, we use technology called Tamer. That is a machine learning based data curation tool, that's one of our fundamental tools for curation. So one of the things in the life sciences industry is you tend to have several data sources that are slightly aligned. But they're actually different and so machine learning is an excellent application. >> Lets get into the portfolio. Obviously as a CTO you've got to build a holistic view. You have a tool chest of tools and a platform. How do you look at the big picture? On that scale if it's been beautifully makes a lot of sense. So good for those guys. But you know big picture is, you got to have a variety of things in your arsenal. How do you architect that tool shed or your platform? Is everything a hammer, everything's a nail. You've got all of them though. All the things to build. >> You bring up a great point cause unfortunately a lot of times. We'll use your analogy, it's like a tool shed. So you don't want 12 lawnmowers right? In your tool shed right? So one of the challenges is that a lot of the folks in this ecosystem. They start with one area of focus and then they try to grow into area of focuses. Which means that suddenly everybody's starts to be a lawnmower, cause they think that's... >> They start as a hammer and turn into a lawn mower. >> Right. >> How did that happen, that's called pivoting. >> You can mow your lawn with a hammer but. So it's really that portfolio of tools that all together get the job done. So certainly there's a data acquisition component, there's the curation component. There's visualization machines learning, there's the foundational layer of the environment. So all of those things, our approach has been to select. The kind of best in class tools around that and then work together and... Bruno and the team at scale have been part of this. We've actually had partner summits of how do we bring that ecosystem together. >> Is your stuff mostly on prime, obviously a lot of pharma IP there. So you guys have the game that poll patent thing which is well documented. You don't want to open up the kimono and start the cloth until it's releasing so. You obviously got to keep things confidential. Mix of cloud, on prime, is it 100 percent on prime? Is there some versing for the cloud? Is it a private cloud, how do you guys look at the cloud piece? >> Yeah majority of what we're doing is on prime. The profile for us is that we persist the data. So it's not. In some cases when we're doing some of the more advanced analytics we burst to the cloud for additional processors. But the model of persisting the data means that it's much more economical to have on prime instance of what we're doing. But it is a combination, but the majority of what we're doing is on prime. >> So will you hold on Jim, one more question. I mean obviously everyone's knocking on your door. You know how to get in that account. They spend a lot of money. But you're pretty disciplined it sounds like you've got to a good view of you don't want people to come in and turn into someone that you don't want them to be. But you also run R&D so you got to have to understand the head room. How do you look at the head room of what you need down the road in terms of how you interface with the suppliers that knock on your door. Whether it's at scale currently working with you now. And then people just trying to get in there and sell you a hammer or a lawn mower. Whatever they have they're going to try, you know you're dealing with the vendor pressure. >> Right well a lot of that is around what problem we're trying to solve. And we drive all of that based on the use cases and the value to the business. I mean and so if we identify gaps that we need to address. Some of those are more specific to life sciences types of challenges where they're very specific types of tools that the population of partners is quite small. And other things. We're building an actual production, operational environment. We're not building a proof of concept, so security is extremely important. We're coberosa enabled end to end to out rest inflight. Which means it breaks some of the tools and so there's criteria of things that need to be in place in order to... >> So you got anything about scale big time? So not just putting a beach head together. But foundationally building out platform. Having the tools that fit general purpose and also specialty but scales a big thing right? >> And it's also we're addressing what we see is three different cohorts of consumers of the data. One is more in the guided analytics, the more traditional dashboards, reports. One is in more of computational notebooks, more of the scientific using R, Python, other languages. The third is more kind of almost at the bare middle level machine learning, tenser flow a number of tools that people directly interact. People don't necessarily fit nicely into those three cohorts so we're also seeing that, there's a blend. And that's something that we're also... >> There's a fourth cohort. >> Yeah well you know someone's using a computational notebook but they want to draw upon a dashboard graphic. And then they want to run a predefined tenser flow and pull all that together so. >> And what you just said, tied up the question I was going to ask. So it's perfect so. One of my core focuses is as a Wikibon analyst is on deep learning. On AI so in semantic data virtualization in a life sciences pharma context. You have undoubtedly a lot of image data, visual data. So in terms of curating that and enabling you know virtualized access to what extent are you using deep learning, tenser flow, convolutional neural networks to be able to surface up the visual patterns that can conceivably be searched using a variety of techniques. Is that a part of your overall implementation of at scale for your particular use cases currently? Or do you plan to go there in terms of like tenser flow? >> No I mean we're active, very active. In deep learning, artificial intelligence, machine learning. Again it depends on which problem you're trying to solve and so we again, there's a number of components that come together when you're looking at the image analytics. Verses using data to drive out certain decisions. But we're acting in all of those areas. Our ultimate goal is to transform the way that R&D is done within a pharmaceutical company. To accelerate the, right now it takes somewhere between five and 15 years to develop a new medicine. The goal is to really to do a lot more analytics to shorten that time significantly. Helps the patients, gets the medicines to market faster. >> That's your end game you've got to create an architecture that enables the data to add value. >> Right. >> The business. Doctor Mark Ramsey thanks so much for sharing the insight from your environment. Bruno you got something there to show us. What do you got there? He always brings a prop on. >> A few years ago I think I had a tattoo on my neck or something like this. But I'm happy that I brought this because you could see how big Mark's vision is. the reason why he's getting recognized by club they're on the data awards and so forth. Is because he's got a huge vision and it's a great opportunity for a lot of CTOs out there. I think the average CEO spent a 100 million dollars to deploy big data solutions over the last five years. But they're not able to consumer all the data they produce. I think in your case you consume about a 100 percent of the instructor data. And the average in this space is we're able to consume about one percent of the data. And this is essentially the analogy today that you're dealing with if you're on the enterprise. We'd spent a lot of time putting data in large systems and so forth. But the tool set that we give, that you did officers in their team is a cocktail straw lik this in order to drink out of it. >> That's a data lake actually. >> It's an actual lake. It's a Slurpee cup. Multiple Slurpees with the same straw. >> Who has the Hudson river water here? >> I can't answer that question I think I'd have to break a few things if I did. But the idea here is that it's not very satisfying. Enough the frustration business users and business units. When at scale's done is we built this, this is the straw you want. So I would kind of help CTOs contemplate this idea of the Slurpee and the cocktail straw. How much money are you spending here and how much money are you spending there. Because the speed at which you can get the insights to the business user. >> You got to get that straw you got to break it down so it's available everywhere. So I think that's a great innovation and it makes me thirsty. >> You know what, you can have it. >> Bruno thanks for coming from at scale. Doctor Mark Ramsey good to see you again great to have you come back. Again anytime love to have chief data officers on. Really a pioneering position, is the critical position in all organizations. It will be in the future and will continue being. Thanks for sharing your insights. It's the Cube, more live coverage after this short break. (tech music)