>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Splunk.conf19, brought to you by Splunk. >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here inside for Splunk.conf, their 10th-year conference. We've been here seven years. I'm John Furrier, the host. Our next guest is Sherrie Caltagirone, founder and executive director of the Global Emancipation Network, a cutting-edge company and organization connecting different groups together to fight that battle combating human trafficking with the power of data analytics. We're in a digital world. Sherrie, thanks for coming in. >> Thank you so much for having me. >> So love your mission. This is really close to my heart in terms of what you're doing because with digital technologies, there's a unification theme here at Splunk, unifying data sets, you hear on the keynotes. You guys got a shout-out on the keynote, congratulations. >> Sherrie: We did, thank you. >> So unifying data can help fight cybersecurity, fight the bad guys, but also there's other areas where unification comes in. This is what you're doing. Take a minute to explain the Global Emancipation Network. >> Yeah, thank you. So what we do is we are a data analytics and intelligence nonprofit, dedicated to countering all forms of human trafficking, whether it's labor trafficking, sex trafficking, or any of the sub types, men, women, and children all over the world. So when you think about that, what that really means is that we interact with thousands of stakeholders across law enforcement, governments, nonprofits, academia, and then private sector as well. And all of those essentially act as data silos for human trafficking data. And when you think about that as trafficking as a data problem or you tackle it as a data problem, what that really means is that you have to have a technology and data-led solution in order to solve the problem. So that's really our mission here is to bring together all of those stakeholders, give them easy access to tools that can help improve their counter posture. >> And where are you guys based and how big is the organization? What's the status? Give a quick plug for where you guys are at and what the current focus is. >> Yeah, perfect, so I am based in San Luis Obispo, California. We have just started a brand new trafficking investigations hub out at Cal Poly there. They're a fantastic organization whose motto is learn by doing, and so we are taking the trafficking problem and the tangential other issues, so like we mentioned, cyber crime, wildlife trafficking, drugs trafficking, all of this sort of has a criminal convergence around it and applying technology, and particularly Splunk, to that. >> Yeah, and I just want to make a note 'cause I think it's important to mention. Cal Poly's doing some cutting-edge work. Alison Robinson, Bill Britton, who runs the program over there, they got a great organization. They're doing a lot of data-oriented from media analysis, data, big focus there. Cal Poly quite a big organization. >> They are, and they're doing some wonderful things. AWS just started an innovation hub called the DX Hub there that we are a part of, really trying to tackle these really meaty problems here that are very data-centric and technology-centric. And Cal Poly's the best place to do that. >> Great, let's get into some of the details. One of the things around the news, obviously seeing Mark Zuckerberg doing the tour, Capitol Hill, DC, Georgetown, free speech, data. Facebook has been kind of blamed for breaking democracy. At the same time, it's a platform. They don't consider themselves as an editorial outlet. My personal opinion, they are, but they hide behind that platform. So bad things have happened, good things can happen. So you're seeing technology kind of being pigeonholed as bad. Tech for bad, there's also a tech for good. Pat Gelsinger, the CEO of VMware, publicly said technology's neutral. We humans can shape it. So you guys are looking at it from shaping it for good. How are you doing it? What are some of the things that are going on technically from a business standpoint that is shaping and unifying the data? >> Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely certain that technology has facilitated human trafficking and other ills throughout the world. It's a way that people bring their product, in this case, sadly, human beings, to the market to reach buyers, right? And technology absolutely facilitates that. But, as you mentioned, we can use that against them. So actually here at Conf we are bringing together for a first time the partnership that we did with Splunk for Good, Accenture, and Global Emancipation Network to help automatically classify and score risky businesses, content, ads, and individuals there to help not only with mitigating risk and liability for the private sector, whether it's social media giants or if it's transportation, hospitality, you name it, but also help ease the burden of content moderators. And that's the other side of it. So when you live in this space day in and day out, you really exact a mental toll here. It's really damaging to the individual who sits and reads this material and views photos over and over again. So using technology is a way to automate some of those investigations, and the identification of that content could be helpful in a variety of ways. >> In a way, it's a whole other adversary formula to try to identify. One of the things that Splunk, as we've been here at Splunk Conference, they've been about data from day one. A lot of data and then grew from there, and they have this platform. It's a data problem, and so one of the things that we're seeing here is diverse data, getting at more data makes AI smarter, makes things smarter. But that's hard. Diverse data might be in different data sets or silos, different groups. Sharing data's important, so getting that diverse data, how difficult is it for you guys? Because the bad guys can hide. They're hiding in from Craigslist to social platforms. You name it, they're everywhere. How do you get the data? What's the cutting-edge ingestion? Where are the shadows? Where are the blind spots? How do you guys look at that? Because it's only getting bigger. >> Absolutely, so we do it through a variety of different ways. We absolutely see gathering and aggregating and machining data the most central thing to what we do at Global Emancipation Network. So we have a coalition, really, of organizations that we host their scrapers and crawlers on and we run it through our ingestion pipeline. And we are partnered with Microsoft and AWS to store that data, but everything goes through Splunk as well. So what is that data, really? It's data on the open web, it's on the deep web. We have partners as well who look at the dark web, too, so Recorded Future, who's here at Conf, DeepL as well. So there's lots of different things on that. Now, honestly, the data that's available on the internet is easy for us to get to. It's easy enough to create a scraper and crawler, to even create an authenticated scraper behind a paywall, right? The harder thing is those privately held data sets that are in all of those silos that are in a million different data formats with all kinds of different fields and whatnot. So that is where it's a little bit more of a manual lift. We're always looking at new technologies to machine PDFs and that sort of thing as well. >> One of the things that I love about this business we're on, the wave we're on, we're in a digital media business, is that we're in pursuit of the truth. Trust, truth is a big part of what we do. We talk to people, get the data. You guys are doing something really compelling. You're classifying evil. Okay, this is a topic of your talk track here. Classifying evil, combating human trafficking with the power of data analytics. This is actually super important. Could you share why, for people that aren't following inside the ropes of this problem, why is it such a big problem to classify evil? Why isn't it so easy to do? What's the big story? What should people know about this challenge? >> Yeah, well, human trafficking is actually the second-most profitable crime in the world. It's the fastest-growing crime. So our best estimates are that there's somewhere between 20 million and 45 million people currently enslaved around the world. That's a population the size of Spain. That's nothing that an individual, or even a small army of investigators can handle. And when you think about the content that each of those produce or the traffickers are producing in order to advertise the services of those, it's way beyond the ability of any one organization or even, like I said, an army of them, to manage. And so what we need to do then is to be able to find the signal in the noise here. And there is a lot of noise. Even if you're looking at sex trafficking, particularly, there's consensual sex work or there's other things that are a little bit more in that arena, but we want to find that that is actually engaging in human trafficking. The talk that you mentioned that we're doing is actually a fantastic use case. This is what we did with Splunk for Good and Accenture. We were actually looking at doing a deep dive into the illicit massage industry in the US, and there are likely over 10,000 illicit massage businesses in the US. And those businesses, massages and spas, that are actually just a front for being a brothel, essentially. And it generates $2 billion a year. We're talking about a major industry here, and in that is a very large component of human trafficking. There's a very clear pipeline between Korea, China, down to New York and then being placed there. So what we ended up needing to do then, and again, we were going across data silos here, looking at state-owned data, whether it was license applications, arrest filings, legal cases, that sort of thing, down into the textual advertisements, so doing NLP work with weighted lexicons and really assigning a risk score to individual massage businesses to massage therapist business owners and then, again, to that content. So looking, again, how can we create a classifier to identify evil? >> It's interesting, I think about when you're talking about this is a business. This is a business model, this business continuity. There's a supply chain. This is a bona fide, underground, or overt business process. >> Yeah, absolutely, and you're right on that too that it is actually overt because at this point, traffickers actually operate with impunity for the most part. So actually framing it that way, as a market economy, whether it's shadowy and a little bit more in the black market or completely out in the open, it really helps us frame our identification, how we can manage disruptions, who need to be the stakeholders at the table for us in order to have a wider impact rather than just whack-a-mole. >> I was just talking with Sonia, one of our producers, around inclusiveness and this is so obviously a human passion issue. Why don't we just solve it? I mean, why doesn't someone like the elite class or world organization, just Davos, and people just say they're staring at this problem. Why don't they just say, "Hey, this is evil. "Let's just get rid of it." What's the-- >> Well, we're working on it, John, but the good thing is, and you're absolutely right, that there are a number of organizations who are actually working on it. So not just us, there's some other amazing nonprofits. But the tech sector's actually starting to come to the table as well, whether it's Splunk, it's Microsoft, it's AWS, it's Intel, IBM, Accenture. People are really waking up to how damaging this actually is, the impact that it has on GDP, the way that we're particularly needing to protect vulnerable populations, LGBTQ youth, children in foster care, indigenous populations, refugees, conflict zones. So you're absolutely right. I think, given the right tools and technology, and the awareness that needs to happen on the global stage, we will be able to significantly shrink this problem. >> It's classic arbitrage. If I'm a bad guy, you take advantage of the systematic problems of what's in place, so the current situation. Sounds like siloed groups somewhat funded, not mega-funded. This group over here, disconnect between communications. So you guys are, from what I could tell, pulling everyone together to kind of create a control plane of data to share information to kind of get a more holistic view of everything. >> Yeah, that's exactly it. Trying to do it at scale, at that. So I mentioned that at first we were looking at the illicit massage sector. We're moving over to the social media to look again at the recruitment side and content. And the financial sector is really the common thread that runs through all of it. So being able to identify, taking it back to a general use case here from cyber security, just indicators as well, indicators of compromise, but in our case, these are just words and lexicons, dollar values, things like that, down to behavioral analytics and patterns of behavior, whether people are moving, operating as call centers, network-like behavior, things that are really indicative of trafficking. And making sure that all of those silos understand that, are sharing the data they can, that's not overly sensitive, and making sure that we work together. >> Sherrie, you mentioned AWS. Teresa Carlson, I know she's super passionate about this. She's a leader. Cal Poly, we mentioned that. Splunk, you mentioned, how is Splunk involved? Are they the core technology behind this? Are they powering the-- >> They are, yeah, Splunk was actually with us from day one. We sat at a meeting, actually, at Microsoft and we were really just white boarding. What does this look like? How can we bring Splunk to bear on this problem? And so Splunk for Good, we're part of their pledge, the $10 million pledge over 10 years, and it's been amazing. So after we ingest all of our data, no matter what the data source is, whatever it looks like, and we deal with the ugliest and most unstructured data ever, and Splunk is really the only tool that we looked at that was able to deal with that. So everything goes through Splunk. From there, we're doing a series of external API calls that can really help us enrich that data, add correlations, whether it's spatial data, network analysis, cryptocurrency analysis, public records look-ups, a variety of things. But Splunk is at the heart. >> So I got to ask you, honestly, as this new architecture comes into play for attacking this big problem that you guys are doing, as someone who's not involved in that area, I get wow, spooked out by that. I'm like, "Wow, this is really bad." How can people help? What can people do either in their daily lives, whether it's how they handle their data, observations, donations, involvement? How do people get involved? What do you guys see as some areas that could be collaborating with? What do you guys need? How do people get involved? >> Yeah, one that's big for me is I would love to be able to sit in an interview like this, or go about my daily life, and know that what I am wearing or the things that I'm interacting with, my phone, my computer, weren't built from the hands of slave labor. And at this point, I really can't. So one thing that everybody can do is demand of the people that they are purchasing from that they're doing so in a socially viable and responsible way. So looking at supply chain management as well, and auditing specifically for human trafficking. We have sort of the certified, fair-trade certified organic seals. We need something like that for human trafficking. And that's something that we, the people, can demand. >> I think you're on the right track with that. I see a big business model wave where consumer purchasing power can be shifted to people who make the investments in those areas. So I think it's a big opportunity. It's kind of a new e-commerce, data-driven, social-impact-oriented economy. >> Yep, and you can see more and more, investment firms are becoming more interested in making socially responsible investments. And we just heard Splunk announce their $100 million social innovation fund as well. And I'm sure that human trafficking is going to be part of that awareness. >> Well, I'll tell you one of the things that's inspirational to me personally is that you're starting to see power and money come into helping these causes. My friend, Scott Tierney, just started a venture capital firm called Valo Ventures in Palo Alto. And they're for-profit, social impact investors. So they see a business model shift where people are getting behind these new things. I think your work is awesome, thank you. >> Yeah, thank you so much, I appreciate it. >> Thanks for coming on. Congratulations on the shout-out on the keynote. Appreciate it. The Global Emancipation Network, check them out. They're in San Luis Obispo, California. Get involved. This is theCUBE with bringing you the signal from the noise here at .conf. I'm John Furrier, back with more after this short break. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE, covering .conf2017. Brought to you by Splunk. >> Welcome back. Here on theCUBE, we continue our coverage of .conf2017, Splunk's get together here with some 7,000 plus attendees, 65 countries, we're right on the showfloor. A lot of buzz happening down here and it's all good. Along with Dave Vellante, I'm John Walls. We are live, as I said, in our nation's capital, and we're joined by a guest who represents her organization that is a member of the Splunk4Good program. We're going to explain that in just a little bit, but Sherrie Caltagirone is the founder and executive director of the Global Emancipation Network, and Sherry, thanks for being with us. We appreciate your time. >> Thanks so much for having me on, John. >> So your organization has to do with countering and combating global trafficking, human trafficking. >> That's right. >> We think about sex trafficking, labor trafficking, but you're a participant in the Splunk4Good program, which is their ten year pledge to support organizations such as yours to the tune of up to $100 million over that ten years to all kinds of organizations. So first off, let's just talk about that process, how you got involved, and then we want to get into how you're actually using this data that you're mining right now for your work. So first off, how'd you get involved with Splunk? >> Absolutely. It was really organic in that it's a really small community. There are a lot of people in the tech space who I found really want to use their skills for good, and they're very happy to make connections between people. We had a mutual friend actually introduce me to Monzy Merza, who's the head of security here at Splunk, and he said, "I'm really passionate about trafficking, I want to help "fight trafficking, let me connect you with Corey Marshall "at Splunk4Good." The rest is really history, and I have to tell you, yes, they have pledged up to $100 million to help, and in products and services, but what's more is they really individually care about our projects and that they are helping me build things, I call them up all the time and say, "Hey let's brainstorm an idea, "let's solve a problem, "let's figure out how we can do this together, and they really are, they're part of my family. They're part of GEN and Global Emancipation Network. >> That's outstanding. The size of the problem struck me today at the keynote when we talked about, first off, the various forms of trafficking that are going on; you said up to two dozen different subsets of trafficking, and then the size and the scale of 25 to 40-some million people around the globe are suffering. >> Yeah. >> Because of trafficking conditions. That puts it all in a really different perspective. >> You're right. Those weren't even numbers that we can really fathom what that means, can we? We don't know what 20 million looks like, and you're right, there's such a wide discrepancy between the numbers. 20 million, 46 million, maybe somewhere in between, and that is exactly part of the problem that we have is that there is no reliable data. Everyone silos their individual parts of the data that they have for trafficking, all the the different stakeholders. That's government, NGOs, law enforcement, academia, it's all kinds. It runs the gamut, really, and so it's really difficult to figure out exactly what the truth is. There's no reliable, repeatable way to count trafficking, so right now it's mostly anecdotal. It's NGOs reporting up to governments that say, "We've impacted this many victims," or, "We've encountered so-and-so who said that the "trafficking ring that they escaped from had 20 other people "in it," things like that, so it's really just an estimate, and it's the best that we have right now, but with a datalet approach, hopefully we'll get closer to a real accurate number. >> So talk more about the problem and the root of the problem, how it's manifesting itself, and we'll get into sort of what we can do about it. >> Yeah. It's really interesting in that a lot of the things that cause poverty are the same things that cause trafficking. It really is, you know, people become very vulnerable if they don't have a solid source of income or employment, things like that, so they are more willing to do whatever's necessary in order to do that, so it's easy to be lured into a situation where you can be exploited, for example, the refugee crisis right now that's happening across Europe and the Middle East is a major player for trafficking. It's a situation completely ripe for this, so people who are refugees who perhaps are willing to be smuggled out of the country, illegally, of course, but then at that point they are in the mercy and the hands of the people who smuggled them and it's very easy for them to become trafficked. Things like poverty, other ways that you're marginalized, the LGBTQ community is particularly vulnerable, homeless population, a lot of the same issues that you see in other problems come up, creates a situation of vulnerability to be exploited, and that's all trafficking really is: the exploitation of one individual through force, coercion, fraud, position of authority, to benefit another person. >> These individuals are essentially what, enslaved? >> Yeah. It's modern day slavery. There's lots of different forms, as you mentioned. There's labor trafficking, and that's several different forms; it can be that you're in a brick factory, or maybe you're forced into a fishing boat for years and years. Usually they take away your passport if you are from another country. There's usually some threats. They know where your family lives. If you go tell anyone or you run away, they're going to kill your family, those sorts of things. It is, it's modern day slavery, but on a much, much bigger scale, so it's no longer legal, but it still happens. >> How does data help solve the problem? You, as an executive director, what kind of data, when you set the North Star for the organization from a data perspective, what did that look like, and how is it coming into play? >> Well, one of the benefits that we have as an organization that's countering trafficking is that we are able to turn the tables on traffickers. They are using the internet in much the way that other private enterprises are. They know that that's how they move their product, which in this case is sadly human beings. They advertise for victims online. They recruit people online. They're using social media apps and things like Facebook and Kick and Whatsapp and whatnot. Then they are advertising openly for the people that they have recruited into trafficking, and then they are trying to sell their services, so for example, everyone knows about Backpage. There's hundreds of websites like that. It runs the gamut. They're recruiting people through false job advertisements, so we find where those sites are through lots of human intelligence and we're talking to lots of people all the time, and we gather those, and we try to look for patterns to identify who are the victims, who are the traffickers, what can we do about it? The data, to get back to your original question, is really what is going to inform policy to have a real change. >> So you can, in terms of I guess the forensics that you're doing, or whatever you're doing with that data, you're looking at not only the websites, but also the communications that are being spawned by those sites and looking to where those networks are branching off to? >> Yeah. That's one of the things that we really like to try to do. Instead of getting a low-level person, we like to try to build up an entire network so we can take down an entire ring instead of just the low fish. We do, we extract all the data from the website that we can to pull out names, email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, things like that, and then begin to make correlations; where else have we seen those phone numbers and those addresses on these other websites that we're collecting from, or did this person make a mistake, which we love to exploit mistakes with traffickers, and are they using the same user handle on their personal Flickr page, so then we can begin to get an attribution. >> John: That happens? >> Absolutely. >> It does, yeah. >> Sherrie: Without giving away all my secrets, exactly. >> Yeah, I don't to, don't give away the store, here. How much, then, are you looking internationally as opposed to domestically, then? >> We collect right now from 22 different countries, I think 77 individual cities, so a lot of these websites are usually very jurisdictionally specific, so, you know, like Craigslist; you go into Washington state and click on Seattle, something like that. We harvest from the main trafficking points that we can. We're collecting in six different languages right now. A lot of the data that we have right now is from the U.S. because that's the easier way to start is the low-hanging fish. >> What does your partner ecosystem look like? It comprises law enforcement, local agencies, federal agencies, presumably, NGOs. Will you describe that? >> Yeah. We do, we partner with attorneys general, we partner with law enforcement, those are the sort of operational partners we look for when we have built out intelligence. Who do we give it to now, because data is useless unless we do something with it, right? So we we build out these target packages and intelligence and give it to people who can do something with it, so those are really easy people to do something with. >> How hard is that, because you've got different jurisdictions and different policies, and it's got to be like herding cats to get guys working with you. >> It is, and it's actually something that they're begging for, and so, it's a good tool that they can use to deconflict with each other, 'cause they are running different trafficking-related operations all the time, and jurisdictions, they overlap in many cases, especially when you're talking about moving people, and they're going from one state to another state, so you have several jurisdictions and you need to deconflict your programs. >> Okay, so they're very receptive to you guys coming to them with they data. >> They are; they really want help, and they're strapped for resources. These are for the most part, not technically savvy people, and this is one of the good things about our nonprofit is that it is a staff of people who are very tech-savvy and who are very patient in explaining it and making it easy and usable and consumable by our customers. >> So if I'm an NGO out there, I'm a non-profit out there, and I'm very interested in having this kind of service, what would you say to them about what they can pursue, what kind of relationship you have with Splunk and the value they're providing, and what your experience has been so far. >> It's been wonderful. I've been over at the Splunk4Good booth all day helping out and it's been wonderful to see not only just the non-profits who have come up and said, "Hey, I run a church, "I'm trying to start a homeless shelter for drug-addicted "individuals, how can you help me," and it's wonderful when you start to see the light bulbs go off between the non-profit sector and the tech sector, between the philanthropic organizations like Splunk4Good, the non-profits, and then, we can't forget the third major important part here, which is, those are the tech volunteers, these are the people who are here at the conference and who are Splunk employees and whatnot and teaching them that they can use their skills for good in the non-profit sector. >> Has cryptocurrency, where people can conduct anonymous transactions, made your job a lot more difficult? >> No, it hasn't, and there's been a lot of research that has gone into block chain analysis, so for example, Backpage, all the adds are purchased with Bitcoin, and so there's been a wonderful amount of research then, trying to time the post to when the Bitcoin was purchased, and when the transactions happen, so they've done that, and it's really successful. There are a couple of other companies who do just that, like Chainalysis, that we partner with. >> You can use data to deanonymize? >> That's correct. It's not as anonymous as people think it is. >> Love it. >> Yeah, exactly. We love to exploit those little things like that. A lot of the websites, they put their wallets out there, and then we use that. >> Dave: You're like reverse hackers. >> That's right. It's interesting that you say that, because a lot of our volunteers actually are, they're hacker hunters. They're threat and intel analysts and whatnot, and so, they've learned that they can apply the exact same methods and techniques into our field, so it's brilliant to see the ways in which they do that. >> Dave: That's a judo move on the bad guys. >> Exactly. How long does this go on for you? Is this a year-to-year that you renew, or is it a multi-year commitment, how does that work? >> It's a year-to-year that we renew our pledge, but they're in it for the long haul with us, so they know that they're not getting rid of me and nor do they want me to, which is wonderful. It's so good, because they help, they sit at the table with me, always brainstorming, so it's year-to-year technically, but I know that we're in it together for the long haul. >> How about fundraising? A big part of your job is, you know. >> Of course it is. >> Fundraising. You spend a lot of time there. Maybe talk about that a little bit. >> Yeah, absolutely. Some of our goals right now, for example, is we're really looking to hire a full-time developer, we want a full-time intelligence analyst, so we're always looking to raise donations, so you could donate on our website. >> John: Which is? >> Which is globalemancipation.ngo. Globalemancipation.ngo. We're also always looking for people who are willing to help donate their time and their skills and whatnot. We have a couple of fundraising goals right now. We're always looking for that. We receive a lot of product donations from companies all over the world, mostly from the tech sector. We're really blessed in that we aren't spending a lot of money on that, but we do need to hire a couple of people so that's our next big goal. >> I should have asked you this off the top. Among your titles, executive director and founder, what was the founder part? What motivated you to get involved in this, because it's, I mean, there are a lot of opportunities to do non-profit work, but this one found you, or you found it. >> That's right. It's a happy circumstance. I've always done anti-human trafficking, since my college days, actually. I started volunteering, or I started to intern at the Protection Project at Johns Hopkins University, which was a legislative-based program, so it was really fantastic, traveling the world, helping countries draft legislation on trafficking, but I really wanted to get closer and begin to measure my impact, so that's when I started thinking about data anyways, to be able to put our thumb, is what we're doing. Working. How are we going to be able to measure success and what does that look like? Then I started volunteering for a rescue operations organization; the sort of knock down the doors, go rescue people group, and so, I really liked having the closer impact and being able to feel like hey, I can do something about this problem that I know is terrible and that's why it spread. A lot of the people I worked with, including my husband, come from the cyberthreat intelligence world, so I feel like those ideas and values have been steeped in me, slowly and surely, over the last decade, so that just ages myself a little bit maybe, but yes, so those ideas have been percolating over time, so it just kind of happened that way. >> Well, you want to feel young, hang around with us. (laughing) I should speak for myself, John, I'm sorry. >> No, no, you're right on, believe me. I was nodding my head right there with you. >> Can you comment on the media coverage? Is it adequate in your view? Does there need to be more? >> On trafficking itself? You know, it's really good that it's starting to come into the forefront a lot more. I'm hearing about it. Five years ago, most of the time, if I told people that there are still people in slavery, it didn't end with the Civil War, they would stand at me slackjawed. There have been a few big media pushes. There's been some films, like Taken, Liam Neeson's film, so that's always the image I use, and that's just one type of trafficking, but I'm hearing more and more. Ashton Kutcher runs a foundation called Thorn that's really fantastic and they do a similar mission to what I do. He has been able to raise the spotlight a lot. Currently there's a debate on the floor of the Senate right now, too, talking about section 230 of the CDA, which is sort of centered around the Backpage debate anyway. Where do we draw the line between the freedom of speech on the internet, with ESPs in particular, but being able to still catch bad guys exactly. The Backpage sort of founder idea. It's really hot and present in the news right now. I would love to see the media start to ask questions, drill down into the data, to be able to ask and answer those real questions, so we're hoping that Global Emancipation Network will do that for the media and for policy makers around the world. >> Well it is extraordinary work being done by an extraordinary person. It's a privilege to have you on with us, here on theCUBE. We thank you, not only for the time, but for the work you're doing, and good luck with that. >> Thank you very much for having me on. I really appreciate it. >> You bet. That's the Global Emancipation Network. Globalemancipation.ngo right? Fundraising, always helpful. Back with more here on theCUBE in Washington D.C., right after this. (electronic beats)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering Splunk .conf19. Brought to you by Splunk. Okay, welcome back, everyone. This is day three live CUBE coverage here in Las Vegas for Splunk's .conf. Its 10 years anniversary of their big customer event. I'm John Furrier, theCUBE. This is our seventh year covering, riding the wave with Splunk. From scrappy startup, to going public company, massive growth, now a market leader continuing to innovate. We're here with the CEO, Doug Merritt of Splunk. Thanks for joining me, good to see you. >> Thank you for being here, thanks for having me. >> John: How ya feelin'? (laughs) >> Exhausted and energized simultaneously. (laughs) it was a fun week. >> You know, every year when we have the event we discuss Splunk's success and the loyalty of the customer base, the innovation, you guys are providing the value, you got a lot of happy customers, and you got a great ecosystem and partner network growing. You're now growing even further, every year it just gets better. This year has been a lot of big highlights, new branding, so you got that next level thing goin' on, new platform, tweaks, bringing this cohesive thing. What's your highlights this year? I mean, what's the big, there's so much goin' on, what's your highlights? >> So where you started is always my highlight of the show, is being able to spend time with customers. I have never been at a company where I feel so fortunate to have the passion and the dedication and the enthusiasm and the gratitude of customers as we have here. And so that, I tell everyone at Splunk this is similar to a holiday function for a kid for me where the energy keeps me going all year long, so that always is number one, and then around the customers, what we've been doing with the technology architecture, the platform, and the depth and breadth of what we've been working on honestly for four plus years. It really, I think, has come together in a unique way at this show. >> Last year you had a lot of announcements that were intentional announcements, it's coming. They're coming now, they're here, they're shipping. >> They're here, they're here. >> What is some of the feedback you're hearing because a lot of it has a theme where, you know, we kind of pointed this out a couple of years ago, it's like a security show now, but it's not a security show, but there's a lot of security in there. What are some of the key things that have come out of the oven that people should know about that are being delivered here? >> So the core of what we're trying to communicate with Data-to-Everything is that you need a very multifaceted data platform to be able to handle the huge variety of data that we're all dealing with, and Splunk has been known and been very successful at being able to index data, messy, non-structured data, and make sense of it even though it's not structured in the index, and that's been, still is incredibly valuable. But we started almost four years ago on a journey of adding in stream processing before the data gets anywhere, to our index or anywhere else, it's moving all around the world, how do you actually find that data and then begin to take advantage of it in-flight? And we announced that the beta of Data Stream Processor last year, but it went production this year, four years of development, a ton of patents, a 40 plus person, 50 plus person, development team behind that, a lot of hard engineering, and really elegant interface to get that there. And then on the other end, to complement the index, data is landing all over the place, not just in our index, and we're very aware that different structures exist for different needs. A data warehouse has different properties than a relational database which has different properties than a NoSQL column store in-memory database, and data is going to only continue to be more dispersed. So again, four plus years ago we started on what now is Data Fabric Search which we pre-announced in beta format last year. That went production at this show, but the ability to address a distributed Splunk landscape, but more importantly we demoed the integration with HTFS and S3 landscapes as the proof point of we've built a connector framework, so that this really cannot just be a incredibly high-speed, high-cardinality search processing engine, but it really is a federated search engine as well. So now we can operate on data in the stream when it's in motion. We obviously still have all the great properties of the Splunk index, and I was really excited about Splunk 8.0 and all the features in that, and we can go get data wherever it lives across a distributed Splunk environment, but increasingly across the more and more distributed data environment. >> So this is a data platform. This is absolutely a data platform, so that's very clear. So the success of platforms, in the enterprise at least, not just small and medium-sized businesses, you can have a tool and kind of look like a platform, there's some apps out there that I would point to and say, "Hey, that looks like a tool, it's really not a platform." You guys are a platform. But the success of a platform are two things, ecosystem and apps, because if you're in a platform that's enabling value, you got to have those. Talk about how you see the ecosystem success and the app success. Is that happening in your view? >> It is happening. We have over 2,000 apps on our Splunkbase framework which is where any of our customers can go and download the application to help draw value of a Palo Alto firewall, or ensure integration with a ServiceNow trouble ticketing system, and thousands of other examples that exist. And that has grown from less than 300 apps, when I first got here six years ago, to over 2,000 today. But that is still the earliest inning, for earliest pitch and your earliest inning journey. Why are there 20,000, 200,000, two million apps out there? A piece of it is we have had to up the game on how you interface with the platform, and for us that means through a stable set of services, well-mannered, well-articulated, consistently maintained services, and that's been a huge push with the core Splunk index, but it's also a big amount of work that we've been doing on everything from the separation between Phantom runbooks and playbooks with the underlying orchestration automation, it's a key component of our Stream Processor, you know, what transformations are you doing, what enrichments are you doing? That has to live separate than the underlying technology, the Kafka transport mechanism, or Kinesis, or whatever happens in the future. So that investment to make sure we got a effective and stable set of services has been key, but then you complement that with the amazing set of partners that are out here, and making sure they're educated and enabled on how to take advantage of the platform, and then feather in things like the Splunk Ventures announcement, the Innovation Fund and Social Impact Fund, to further double down on, hey, we are here to help in every way. We're going to help with enablement, we're going to help with sell-through and marketing, and we'll help with investment. >> Yeah, I think this is smart, and I think one of the things I'll point out is that feedback we heard from customers in conversations we had here on theCUBE and the hallway is, there's a lot of great feedback on the automation, the machine learning toolkit, which is a good tell sign of the engagement level of how they're dealing with data, and this kind of speaks to data as a value... The value creation from data seems to be the theme. It's not just data for data's sake, I mean, managing data is all hard stuff, but value from the data. You mentioned the Ventures, you got a lot of tech for good stuff goin' on. You're investing in companies where they're standing up data-driven companies to solve world problems, you got other things, so you guys are adjusting. In the middle innings of the data game, platform update, business model changes. Talk about some of the consumption changes, now you got Splunk Cloud, what's goin' on on (laughs) how you charge, how are customers consuming, what moves did you guys make there and what's the result? >> Yeah, it's a great intro on data is awesome, but we all have data to get to decisions first and actions second. Without an action there is no point in gathering data, and so many companies have been working their tails off to digitize their landscapes. Why, well you want a more flexible landscape, but why the flexibility? Because there's so much data being generated that if you can get effective decisions and then actions, that landscape can adapt very, very rapidly, which goes back to machine learning and eventual AI-type opportunities. So that is absolutely, squarely where we've been focused, is translating that data into value and into actual outcomes, which is why our orchestration automation piece was so important. One of the gating factors that we felt has existed is for the Splunk index, and it's only for the Splunk index, the pricing mechanism has been data volume, and that's a little bit contrary to the promise, which is you don't know where the value is going to be within data, and whether it's a gigabyte or whether it's a petabyte, why shouldn't you be able to put whatever data you want in to experiment? And so we came out with some updates in pricing a month and change ago that we were reiterating at the show and will continue to drive on a, hopefully, very aggressive and clear marketing and communications framework, that for people that have adjusted to the data volume metric, we're trying to make that much simpler. There's now a limited set of bands, or tiers, from 100 gigs to unlimited, so that you really get visibility on, all right, I think that I want to play with five terabytes, I know what that band looks like and it's very liberal. So that if you wind up with six and a half terabytes you won't be penalized, and then there's a complimentary metric which I think is ultimately going to be the more long-lived metric for our infrastructurally-bound products, which is virtual CPU or virtual core. And when I think about our index, stream processing, federated search, the execution of automation, all those are basically a factor of how much infrastructure you're going to throw at the problem, whether it's CPU or whether it's storage or network. So I can see a day when Splunk Enterprise and the index, and everything else at that lower level, or at that infrastructure layer, are all just a series of virtual CPUs or virtual cores. But I think both, we're offering choice, we really are customer-centric, and whether you want a more liberal data volume or whether you want to switch to an infrastructure, we're there and our job is to help you understand the value translation on both of those because all that matters is turning it into action and into doing. >> It's interesting, in the news yesterday quantum supremacy was announced. Google claims it, IBM's debating it, but quantum computing just points to the trend that more compute's coming. So this is going to be a good thing for data. You mentioned the pricing thing, this brings up a topic we've been hearing all week on theCUBE is, diverse data's actually great for machine learning, great for AI. So bringing in diverse data gives you more aperture into data, and that actually helps. With the diversity comes confusion and this is where the pricing seems to hit. You're trying to create, if I get this right, pricing that matches the needs of the diverse use of data. Is that kind of how you guys are thinkin' about it? >> Meets the needs of diverse data, and also provides a lot of clarity for people on when you get to a certain threshold that we stop charging you altogether, right? Once you get above 10s of terabytes to 100 terabytes, just put as much data in as you want. The foundation of Splunk, going back to the first data, is we're the only technology that still exists on the index side that takes raw, non-formatted data, doesn't force you to cleanse or scrub it in any way, and then takes all that raw data and actually provides value through the way that we interact with the data with our query language. And that design architecture, I've said it for five, six years now, is completely unique in the industry. Everybody else thinks that you've got to get to the data you want to operate on, and then put it somewhere, and the way that life works is much more organic and emergent. You've got chaos happening, and then how do you find patterns and value out of that chaos? Well, that chaos winds up being pretty voluminous. So how do we help more organizations? Some of the leading organizations are at five to 10 petabytes of data per day going through the index. How do we help everybody get there? 'Cause you don't know the nugget across that petabyte or 10 petabyte set is going to be the key to solving a critical issue, so let's make it easy for you to put that data in to find those nuggets, but then once you know what the pattern is, now you're in a different world, now you're in the structured data world of metrics, or KPIs, or events, or multidimensional data that is much more curated, and by nature that's going to be more fine-grained. There's not as much volume there as there is in the raw data. >> Doug, I notice also at the event here there's a focus on verticals. Can you comment on the strategy there, is that by design? Is there a vertical focus? >> It's definitely by design. >> Share some insight into that. >> So we launched with an IT operations focus, we wound up progressing over the years to a security operations focus, and then our doubling down with Omnition, SignalFx, VictorOps, and now Streamlio is a new acquisition on the DevOps and next gen app dev buying centers. As a company and how we go to market and what we are doing with our own solutions, we stay incredibly focused on those three very technical buying centers, but we've also seen that data is data. So the data you're bringing in to solve a security problem can be used to solve a manufacturing problem, or a logistics and supply chain problem, or a customer sentiment analysis problem, and so how do you make use of that data across those different buying centers? We've set up a verticals group to seed, continue to seed, the opportunity within those different verticals. >> And that's compatible with the horizontally scalable Splunk platform. That's kind of why that exists, right? >> That the overall platform that was in every keynote, starting with mine, is completely agnostic and horizontal. The solutions on top, the security operations, ITOps, and DevOps, are very specific to those users but they're using the horizontal platform, and then you wind up walking into the Accenture booth and seeing how they've taken similar data that the SecOps teams gathered to actually provide insight on effective rail transport for DB cargo, or effective cell tower triangulation and capacity for a major Australian cell company, or effective manufacturing and logistics supply chain optimization for a manufacturer and all their different retail distribution centers. >> Awesome, you know, I know you've talked with Jeff Frick in the past, and Stu Miniman and Dave Vellante about user experience, I know that's something that's near and dear to your heart. You guys, it has been rumored, there's going to be some user experience work done on the onboarding for your Splunk Cloud and making it easier to get in to this new Splunk platform. What can we expect on the user experience side? (laughs) >> So, for any of you out there that want to try, we've got Splunk Investigate, that's one of the first applications on top of the fully decomposed, services layered, stateless Splunk Cloud. Mission Control actually is a complementary other, those are the first two apps on top of that new framework. And the UI and experience that is in Splunk Investigate I think is a good example of both the ease of coming to and using the product. There's a very liberal amount of data you get for free just to experiment with Splunk Investigate, but then the onboarding experience of data is I think very elegant. The UI is, I love the UI, it's a Jupyter-style workbook-type interface, but if you think about what do investigators need, investigators need both some bread crumbs on where to start and how to end, but then they also need the ability to bring in anybody that's necessary so that you can actually swarm and attack a problem very efficiently. And so when you go back and look at, why did we buy VictorOps? Well, it wasn't because we think that the IT alerting space is a massive space we're going to own, it's because collaboration is incredibly important to swarm incidents of any type, whether they're security incidents or manufacturing incidents. So the facilities at VictorOps gave, on allowing distributed teams and virtual teams to very quickly get to resolution. You're going to find those baked into all products like Mission Control 'cause it's one of the key facilities of, that Tim talked about in his keynote, of indulgent design, mobility, high collaboration, 'cause luckily people still matter, and while ML is helping all of us be more productive it isn't taking away the need for us, but how do you get us to cooperate effectively? And so our cloud-based apps, I encourage any of you out there, go try Splunk Investigate, it's a beautiful product and I think you'll be blown away by it. >> Great success on the product side, and then great success on the customer side, you got great, loyal customers. But I got to ask you about the next level Splunk. As you look at this event, what jumps out at me is the cohesiveness of the story around the platform and the apps, ecosystem's great, but the new branding, Data-to-Everything. It's not product-specific 'cause you have product leadership. This is a whole next level Splunk. What is the next level Splunk vision? >> And I love the pink and orange, in bold colors. So when I've thought about what are the issues that are some of the blockers to Splunk eventually fulfilling the destiny that we could have, the number one is awareness. Who the heck is Splunk? People have very high variance of their understanding of Splunk. Log aggregation, security tool, IT tool, and what we've seen over and over is it is much more this data platform, and certainly with the announcements, it's becoming more of this data fabric or platform that can be used for anything. So how do we bring awareness to Splunk? Well, let's help create a category, and it's not up to us to create the category, it's up to all of you to create the category, but Data-to-Everything in our minds represents the power of data, and while we will continue internally to focus on those technical buying centers, everything is solvable with data. So we're trying to really reinforce the importance of data and the capabilities that something like Splunk brings. Cloud becomes a really important message to that because that makes it, execution to that, 'cause it makes it so much easier for people to immediately try something and get value, but on-prem will always be important as well 'cause data has gravity, data has risk, data has cost to move. And there are so many use cases where you would just never push data to the cloud, and it's not because we don't love cloud. If you have a factory that's producing 100 terabytes an hour in a area where you've got poor bandwidth, there's no option for a cloud connect there of high scale, so you better be able to process, make sense of, and act on that data locally. >> And you guys are great in the cloud too, on-premise, but final word, I want to get your thoughts to end this segment, I know you got to run, thanks for your time, and congratulations on all your success. Data for good. There's a lot of tech for bad kind of narratives goin' on, but there's a real resurgence of tech for good. A lot of people, entrepreneurs, for-profit, for-nonprofit, are doing ventures for good. Data is a real theme. Data for good is something that you have, that's part of the Data-to-Everything. Talk about the data for good real quick. >> Yeah, we were really excited about what we've done with Splunk4Good as our nonprofit focused entity. The Splunk Pledge which is a classic 1-1-1 approach to make sure that we're able to help organizations that need the help do something meaningful within their world, and then the Splunk Social Impact Fund which is trying to put our money where our mouth is to ensure that if funding and scarcity of funds is an issue of getting to effective outcomes, that we can be there to support. At this show we've featured three awesome charities, Conservation International, NetHope, and the Global Emancipation Network, that are all trying to tackle really thorny problems with different, in different ways, different problems in different ways, but data winds up being at the heart of one of the ways to unlock what they're trying to get done. We're really excited and proud that we're able to actually make meaningful donations to all three of those, but it is a constant theme within Splunk, and I think something that all of us, from the tech community and non-tech community are going to have to help evangelize, is with every invention and with every thing that occurs in the world there is the power to take it and make a less noble execution of it, you know, there's always potential harmful activities, and then there's the power to actually drive good, and data is one of those. >> Awesome. >> Data can be used as a weapon, it can be used negatively, but it also needs to be liberated so that it can be used positively. While we're all kind of concerned about our own privacy and really, really personal data, we're not going to get to the type of healthcare and genetic, massive shifts in changes and benefits without having a way to begin to share some of this data. So putting controls around data is going to be important, putting people in the middle of the process to decide what happens to their data, and some consequences around misuse of data is going to be important. But continuing to keep a mindset of all good happens as we become more liberal, globalization is good, free flow of good-- >> The value is in the data. >> Free flow of people, free flow of data ultimately is very good. >> Doug, thank you so much for spending the time to come on theCUBE, and again congratulations on great culture. Also is worth noting, just to give you a plug here, because it's, I think, very valuable, one of the best places to work for women in tech. You guys recently got some recognition on that. That is a huge accomplishment, congratulations. >> Thank you, thank you, we had a great diversity track here which is really important as well. But we love partnering with you guys, thank you for spending an entire week with us and for helping to continue to evangelize and help people understand what the power of technology and data can do for them. >> Hey, video is data, and we're bringin' that data to you here on theCUBE, and of course, CUBE cloud coming soon. I'm John Furrier here live at Splunk .conf with Doug Merritt the CEO. We'll be back with more coverage after this short break. (futuristic music)

>>live from Las Vegas. It's the Cube covering Splunk dot com. 19. Brought to You by spunk. >>Hey, welcome back. Everyone's live Cube coverage in Las Vegas. That's plunks dot com. 2019 thistles their annual customer conference, where they unleash all the new technologies, announce all the new things. Everyone's here. It's the 10th anniversary of Splunk dot com cubes. Seventh year we've been covering slung been quite the journey from scrappy, startup going public growth phase. Now market leader on Outside has to come to success from the products and the engineering. And, of course, the people in the field that that served customers. And we're here with Susan St Leger, who's the president of worldwide field operations. Thanks for coming back to see you. >>Thank you, John. It's exciting to be here. >>So in the keynote, bringing data to every outcome is really the theme. Um, you seem to got a spring to your step here. You excited this year? What an amazing successful show because you got a platform. But the proof is out there. You got that ecosystem. You got people building APS on top of it. It's kind of all coming together this year, >>It sure is experience. It's it's it's just it's a huge leap forward, and I think so. Much of it is a vision of data to everything. And if you think about it, we talk about. We want to bring data to every question, every problem in every action. And the biggest thing you're going to see that you did see in the show is it's no longer just about the Splunk index. We're going to help you get you get value out of data wherever it lives. >>You had some big news on acquisition front Signal FX. Big chunk of change for that company. Private hot category. Observe ability, which really taste is out. That next 20 mile stare in the marketplace, which is cloud native. >>That's a >>cloud Service is, which comes together in the platform with logging coming together. >>Yeah, so exciting Way looked hard at that entire market, and signal FX was definitely the right answer. They operated a scale similar to us. They know how to how to operate it that scale, and so they're gonna be able to serve our customers well. And our view of the world is it's going to be hybrid for a very long time. But they serve that new cloud native world better than anybody else. It's It's when you do monitoring the cloud native world. It's really interesting to think about it. It's all made up of Micro service is right. So thousands of Micro Service's hundreds, thousands of Micro Service's and so in traditional monitoring, it's always you're tryingto monitor things you know could go wrong. In a microt service landscape, you don't know everything that could possibly go wrong. And so it's a level of complexity that's just very different. And so it's all about instrument ing, so that when something does go wrong, you can solve it. >>You guys have a very loyal based customer base, and that's again testament success. But the product has changed, and the value problems is emerging even further with data. That's a big theme. Data to everywhere, everything and security has come up on the radar a few years ago, here, the show. But this almost is a full blown security show at this point, because security center of everything you can't ignore it's become a centerpiece of everything data, the access to the diversity, How is that impacting the field because you're not. I mean, I guess you're a security company enabler and solve security problems. Date is a big part of it. Sure, I was at shaping your operations, >>So I think the thing to understand is correct. We're not just a security company, but we are number one in the security Magic quadrant. We're number one in both I. D. C and Gardner, and so that's important. But what happens is all the data the equal act for security can also be used for all these other use cases. So, generally speaking, whatever you're collecting for security is also valuable for I t operations, and it's also valuable for many other use cases. So I'll give you an example. Dominoes, which is a great customer of ours. They're gone 65% of their orders now come in digitally, okay? And so they monitor the entire intend customer experience. But they monitor it not only from a nightie operations perspective. That same data that they used righty operations also tells them you know what's being ordered, what special orders are being made and they use that data for promotions based upon volume and traffic and timing. they actually create promotion. So now you're talking about the same data that he collected for security night operations you can actually use for promotions, which is marketing is >>not a lot of operating leverage in data. You're getting out this. The old model was is a database. Make a queer. You get a report. Little time problem there. But now you have. Well, that other date is over there in another database. Who runs that data? So the world has certainly changes now, data needs to be addressable. This seems to be a big theme here on undercurrent. I know data to everywhere is kind of global theme, but don't diverse data feeds a I cracked and address ability allows for application access. >>Correct. So we look at the entire data landscape and say, we want to help you get data value out of your data wherever it lives. And it's right now, we've changed to the point where we are operating on data in motion, which is with data stream processor, which is hugely beneficial. You mentioned you know, a I m l way actually do something so unique from an ML perspective because we're actually doing the ml on the live streaming so, so much more valuable than doing it in batch mode. And so the ability to create those ML models by working on live data is super powerful. >>Good announcement. So you guys had the data processor. You have the search fabric, >>data fabric search, >>real time and acceleration our themes there. I want to get your thoughts on your new pricing options. Yes. Why now? What's that mean for customers? >>So if we want to bring data to everything, we have to allow them to actually get all the data right? So we needed to give them more flexible models and more alternative models. So for some people and just motto is very comfortable. But what they want it was more flexibility. So if you look at our new traunch pricing are predictable pricing, there's a couple of things that we've done with it. Number one is from 125 gig all the way up to unlimited. We'll show your predictable pricing so you don't have to guess. Well, if I move from 20 terabytes 2 50 what's that gonna cost me? We're gonna tell you, and you're gonna know and so That's one. The second thing is you don't have to land on the exact ingest. So before, if you bought a terabyte, you got a terabyte. Right now there's a traunch from 1 to 2 terabytes. There's a trunk from 2 to 5 terabytes. And so it gives the customers flexibility so that they don't have to worry about it coming back to buy more right away. >>So that's kind of cloud by as you go variable pricing. Exactly. I want your thoughts on some of the sales motions and position and you guys have out in the field. Visa VI. The industry has seen a lot of success and say Observe ability. For instance, Southern to Rick and Kartik About this. Yes, you guys are an enterprise software cloud and on premises provider you Enterprise sales motion. >>Yes, >>there's a lot of other competition up there that sells for the SNB. They're like tools. What's the difference between an offering that might look like Splunk but may be targeting the SNB? Small means business and one that needs to be full blown enterprise. >>Yeah, so I think the first and foremost most of the offerings that we see land in S and B. They have scale issues over time, I and so what we look at it and say is and they're mostly point products, right? So you can you can clutter up your environment with a bunch of point products, doing all these different things and try and stitch them together. Or you can go with this fun clock for him. So which allows you thio perform all of the same operations, whether B I t Security or Data Analytics in general. But it really isn't. It's about having the platform. >>You guys, what reduced the steps it takes to implement our What's the value? I guess. Here's Here's the thing. What's the pitch? So I'm on Enterprise. I'm like, Okay, I kept Dad. I got a lot of potential things going on platform. I need to make my data work for me any day to be everywhere. I au g Enterprise Cloud. What's the Splunk pitch? >>So our pitches were bringing dated everything, and first and foremost it's important. Understand why? Because we believe at the heart of every problem is a data problem. And we're not just talking t and security. As you know, you saw so many examples. I think you talk to his own haven earlier this week. Right? Wildfires is a data problem New York Presbyterian is using using us for opioid crisis. Right? That's a data problem. So everything's a data problem. What you want is a platform that can operate against that data and remove the barriers between data and action. And that's really what we're focused on. >>He mentions own haven that was part of Splunk Ventures Fund. You have a social impact fund? Yes, what's the motivation line that is just for social good? Is there a business reason behind it or both? >>What's this? So we actually have to social focuses. One is long for good, and that is non profit. What we announced this, what we announced a couple weeks ago that we reiterated yesterday was the spunk, social impact funds, a splint venture social impact fund, and this is to invest in for profit companies using data for social good. And the whole reason is that we look at it and so we say we're a platform. If you're a platform, you want to build out the ecosystem, right? And so the Splunk Innovation Fund splint Ventures Innovation Fund is to invest in new technology focused on that that brings value out of data. And on the other side, it's the spunk. Social impact. Thio get data companies that are taking data and creating such a >>Splunk for good as Splunk employees or a separate nonprofit. And >>it's not a separate nonprofit entity, but it is what we what we invest in. Okay. >>Oh, investing in >>investing in non for profit. Exactly like when we talked about the Global Emancipation Network right, which uses Splunk to fight human trafficking. That's on the nonprofit side. >>So take me through. This is a really hot area we've been covering for good because all roads I want now is for bad. Mark Zuckerberg's testifying from the Congress this morning kind of weird to watch that, actually, but there's a lot of good use cases. Tech tech can be shaped for good. A lot of companies are starting and getting off the ground for good things, but they're kind of like SMB, but they want the Splunk benefit. How do they engage with spunk if I'm gonna do ah social impact thing say cube for good? I got all this Tech. How do I engage punk? I wanted, but I don't know what to do. Have access to tools? How do I buy or engage with Splunk? >>Yes, start parties. Fund managers is making sure it's not just money, right? It's money, its access to talent. It's access to our product. And it's, you know, help with actually thinking through what they're trying to achieve, so it really is the entire focus. It's not just about the tech, Thea. Other thing I would say is you saw that we put out a Splunk investigate, and you also saw us talking about spunk, business slow and mission control. Those air now all built on a native SAS platform. And so the ability for our ecosystem now to go build on a native son platform is going to be incredibly powerful. >>So you expect more accelerated opportunities that all right, what's your favorite customer success stories? I know it's hard to pick your favorites, like picking a favorite child may be filled with the categories. Most ambitious class clown class favorite me. What's the ones you would call a really strong, >>so hit on a couple of my lover Domino story and the other one that I love, that I touched on. But I want to expand on because I think it's an amazing story. Is New York Presbyterian on using the Yes See you sprung for traditional security for private patient privacy. They also use it for medical devices. But here's the thing they use it for to help the opioid crisis. And you're like, How is opioid crisis a data problem? What they do is they actually correlate all the data that so doctors are prescribing the opioids who they're prescribing them to a number of prescriptions being building their pharmacy and then the inventory of opioids. Because they actually have sensors on all the cabinets where they get the opioids, they correlate all the data, and they make sure that if they understand if opioids being stolen from the hospital, because what people don't understand is that the opioid a lot of big part of the opioid crisis starts with hospitals to say of such a big volume of opioids. And so that, to me, is just I guess I love it because it's a great customer success story. But it's also again, it's so much fun doing good problem. >>A lot of deaths. I gotta ask you around your favorite moments here dot com, and you're a lot of conversations in your customer conversations this year. Let's do a little Splunk of the Cube right now can take the patterns, all the data, your meetings. What's the top patterns that are emerging? What are some of the top conversation themes that just keep popping up with customer? Specifically, >>I think the biggest thing is that they have seen more innovation unleash this year than they have ever seen in one year from Splunk. The other thing is that we've gone far outside of our traditional spunk index right and that the portfolio has grown so much and that we're allowing them to operate and get value out of the data wherever it lives. So data in motion and then you saw in data fabric search. We'll let you query not only the Splunk indices, but also H D. F s and s three buckets and more buckets to come. So more sinks if you will. So, really, what we're trying to do is say, we're just going to be your date a platform to help you get value >>Susan, you're a great leader and slung. Congratulations on your success again. They continue to grow every year. Splunk defies the critics. Now you're a market leader. Culture is a big part of this. What is your plans this year To take it to the next level? You're president of field worldwide, field operations, global business landscape. What are some of your goals and objectives on culture >>and the culture? So thank you, Jon. First of all, for your comments and were so committed to our culture, I think you know, as you grow so quickly, it takes a real effort to stay focused on culture way, have an incredible diversity and inclusion program. Onda We do way. It's a business imperative for us. Every single leader has diversity, diversity, inclusion, focuses and targets. And so I think that's a huge part of our culture. And the reason I say that, John, I don't know if you've ever heard about a 1,000,000 data points. Did anybody ever way Always talk about, you know in different different settings will share a couple of our 1,000,000 data points. What we want to make sure is a culture is that way. >>We >>have our employees showing up with their authentic self and because you do your best work when you can show up is your authentic self. And so we have people share a handful of their 1,000,000 data points at all different times throughout the year to get to know each other as individuals, as human beings and really understand what matters to each other. And I love that 1,000,000 data points culture, and I got that. We truly live it. And again it's It's about authenticity. And so I think that's what makes us incredibly special. >>And inclusion helps that trust >>fund elaboration, yes, and also just add to that. We're very proud of the fact that we made the fortune list this year for best places to work for women. So it shows that our focus, you know, we started. We started revealing our metrics just about two years ago, and we've had significant improvement way. Believe that what you focus on what you measure is what you improve. So we started measuring and improving it, and this year we made the list for a fortune that's called walking. It is Congratulations. Thank you. We're very excited about >>awesome on global expansion. I'm assuming is on the radar. Well, >>always, especially at this point. We're ready to double down and some of the tier one mark. It's a lovely for sure >>wasn't saying. Legend. President of worldwide field operations here inside the Cube. Where day to slung dot com 10th anniversary of their customer conference Our seventh year covering Splunk Amazing Ride They continue to ride the big wave. Thats a Q bring you all the data on insights here. I'm John Ferrier. Thanks for watching.

(techno music) >> Announcer: Live, from Washington, D.C., it's the Cube. Covering .conf2017 brought to you by Splunk. >> Well, welcome inside the Walter Washington Convention Center here. We're at Splunk .conf2017, Washington, D.C. the nation's capital rolling out its red carpet. For Splunk, first time ever the show's been here and certainly I know from the 7000 plus who are here, so far it's a big thumbs up. John Walls and Dave Velante, and we're joined as well by Brian Goldfarb, who is the Chief Marketing officer of Splunk. And Brian, good to see you this morning sir. >> Great to be here, thanks for having me. >> Yeah, I just, Dave and I were talking about the vibe here, it's always so positive right? Anytime you're around a Splunk event. But coming here, Washington, you've got great attendance I mean your take so far on what you're feeling and what you're seeing. >> It's been unbelievable, we're so blessed with customers and users that really love our products. And helping each other and bringing them all together creates an environment that's unlike anything I've ever seen in my entire career, and I've been in this industry for a long time, I've done a lot of shows. There's an electricity, the information sharing, the conversation, and you kind of see it everywhere you go. >> Well I mean you've, came from the biggest of all shows, right? With Sales Force but, whole different vibe here, I mean really intimate. I was saying off camera this is our seventh year with the Cube. And we were following Splunk, pre IPO. >> Brian: Right. >> Now you're a you know, 1.2 plus billion dollar company, so you have to change in a lot of ways, but you're trying to keep that culture of intimacy. How do you do that as a CMO and as an organization? >> I mean ultimately that's the biggest challenge, is when you grow from a show that's 500 people to a show that's over 7000, how do you keep the roots that, about what makes it great? And intimacy is exactly the right word. How do you capture that, how do you make that real? And for us, there's a couple things. You know, one is just information sharing. It's intimate when people are talking to other people about the great use cases and things they've done with our products. Because Splunk lets you do anything, and so, when customer A says, "Oh I used to, I do it this way." And customer B sees that, it's incredible and you see that through the sessions, we talked about this before. Like so much user generated content. The second thing is all these cool kind of off the beaten paths activities. We have a thing called Boss of the Sock, and Boss of the Knock, which are curated games effectively. Big massive multi-player games, where everyone gets in the room, it started yesterday evening at 7:30 pm, it wrapped just after midnight, and you walked in, and people were glued to their screens trying to win, it's capture the flag style. It was unbelievable. And things like that help us keep it intimate. >> Well there's a lot- there's a culture of fun too, I was saying, we were talking about in the open. You know the t-shirts, take the SH out of IT, (chuckles) Me-trics, getting rid of me-trics. I mean really a lot of fun going on people dropping ping-pong balls in the one that they like the best. >> Brian: Yeah! >> So you've maintained that flavor, which is fantastic. So, what do you see as sort of the next wave of Splunk? I mean, what should we as an audience be thinking about and watching for Splunk? >> I mean for me this is the best conf ever. This is our eighth one, it's the biggest one, it's the best one. We've been able to land so many great partners. We have 71 partners here, telling there stories. We have all the different customer sessions, we just completed the keynote, which I think was absolutely fantastic, the office space parody was I think, bring-the-house-down funny. And I think that's the beginning of the future, how do we take, all the wonderful things that we see our customers doing and bring them to light, and bring them to life, in more inspirational and more personal ways? I'll give you one really great example, we talked about GEN, the Global Emancipation Network. And they're working to help, you know, help human trafficking and human slavery as much as they possibly can, which is a very large problem, and we were able to work with them and help them through our Splunk for good efforts, to give them access to software, which has contributed to the work that they're doing. And we're just honored to have been a part of that, and they're here on site and they told their story in the keynote. And I can, there's example after example after example of the good we're doing for the world, in addition to the work we're doing for companies. And I think that's where we're moving forward. How do you keep those things in lock step so you're actually contributing to the betterment of our global society. At the same time making our user's lives better. >> You know I think, an example at least that really struck me when I was listening to the keynotes, we talked about the Boss of the Sock event, you talk about your community, and the spirit you're trying to create, and continue to perpetuate, was that, the winning team was thrown together right at the last minute. And these were people from different parts, different communities, different sectors if you will. And yet they bound together, they came up with a game plan, they win and so now you've created like a sub-culture as part of the greater community, but that seems to be kind of the embodiment of your philosophy is no boundaries, no limits and let's see how big we can make our tribe, if you will. >> I think tribe is another great word, community. You know, it's a skill set, you want a language you can communicate with each other. You learn how to use Splunk, and all of the sudden you have a common language and a common bond. And team "Last Minute," which won Boss of the Knock, you can't beat, you cannot plan for those kinds of things. People came together with a common understanding of how to accomplish a task, formed instantaneous comradery, and then were able to solve difficult problems. And if you bridge that to a conversation about business, we're all trying to solve problems. Technology they say is hard, we all know it's the culture and the people that's the most difficult thing to do and if we can be something that provides technology that helps drive culture change and people change, that's critical in transformation, and that's one of the things, and I've only been at Splunk 10 months, that I've seen we can do with our customers and that's pretty incredible. >> That's a key part of your messaging, I wanted to make an observation, when we followed Splunk early on, during the ascendancy of the so called big data memes, Splunk never really talked about big data you just sort of did it. You know you solve problems. Now big data is sort of passe, actually you guys talk about big data, it's very interesting to me, I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit. >> You know, lots of people like to throw buzz words. Industry terminology, we try really hard to avoid really getting into it like digital transformation being one, no don't ever say that. Because it doesn't help anyone. Right, at the end of the day you have to find the problems that our customers have, build solutions to help them solve that, and it turns out when big data was the hype, that wasn't the problem that customers have. But with the explosion in data over the last decade that continues to grow, we are actually now seeing true big data style problems. And that's why in the keynote we talked about scale, and how today's scale and tomorrow's scale is just table stakes, because you have to continue to grow to meet that. And so as the machine data company, really trying to make sure people get value out of this machine data, and turn those, that data into answers and get the insights they need to take action, that's the future. And with big data, because it's no longer buzzy, there's new buzz words we can avoid. >> Dave: It just is. >> It just is, everyone has a ton of data. >> I think the point you're making about digital transformation is interesting. We do over a hundred of these a year and every, the vast majority of digital transformation with no meat on the bone. And to us, a digital business is, is one that leverages it's data. So when you think about the evolution of Splunk, it's all about leveraging data and we're seeing, do you envision a Splunk where Splunk actually becomes that development platform for applications which has been the nirvana of so-called big data for years, it appears that Splunk is becoming just that. >> I think that's part of our long-term strategy, in that, the beginning of that already exists. Splunk base has over 1200 apps that extend the Splunk platform already, and those apps do anything from make it easier to ingest data from different data sources, to visualize data through interesting dash boards, to customized searches. A great example, ransomware, we talked about it in the keynote, super hot topic in the industry. Something that's affecting the world at large and something we want to make sure we're helping people deal with, we launched a new product called Splunk Insights for Ransomware, which is just an app built on top of Splunk, that gives you better dash boarding, better searching and better licensing for customers to get in, pay per user, get started really fast and solve that particular problem. And we see that as really really critical, as we evolve our strategy to address these transformative types of things, and the application ecosystem that comes with them. >> We saw this in the demos, another buzz word of course machine learning, but we saw an application of machine learning to dramatically learning to simplify the number of events I have to look through as a security professional and map those to you know, actual problems that I can solve. Again, another application, practical application of Splunk at play. >> Meat on the bone, you said it. So at the end of the day, this is a user conference, and our users use the product every day, and if we're not giving them real value, they're going to let us know. We put tons of energy into that. >> How about the ecosystem, the message to the ecosystem. What is the message to those guys, what are the sort of swim lanes you guys will develop applications versus their opportunities? >> I think that's emerging, I think we're still learning how to work with our ecosystem. We're so blessed with an amazing ecosystem, a huge community of participants. We talked about the Splunk trust. This core group of 42 people, we inducted 14 new ones today who really embody everything that is so great about our company and our customers and what they do for their constituents. And they are helping us think through you know, where can you build, how do you build and who should build, and getting that real time feedback. And all the partners that are here right, are adding value. And that's our goal, create the platform so that we can solve everyone's machine data challenges at scale so they can provide better answers and ultimately more value to their company. >> So getting a little personal then, you mentioned first show, >> First show. >> You coming into this, so you inherit this seven year machine right? Growing, expanding and so your perspective coming into that, what have you brought, you think or you're seen as an outsider who's now an insider, and maybe leverage the culture that was being created to take us to where we are here this year here in D.C.? >> One of the main reasons I came to Splunk, was my extremely positive impression of the product, and the brand, and the customer community around it. My entire history, at Microsoft and Google, Cloud Platform and Sales Force, was predicated on customers who love the products. You can't create that, right, you earn that through amazing work, and amazing technology. And being able to walk in here at Splunk and already have that, was the gift that really got me excited. And so you talk about coming in, and what you already have I got handed the best thing ever. Hundreds of thousands, millions of users that are excited about our product. And so what I wanted to bring was not a lot of change in the culture, it's more how do you maintain that intimacy, how do you keep the what makes Splunk, Splunk and then do that on a grander scale? And I think if you look at .conf this year, this embodies the vision that I've had with my team and with the company on how to bring .conf, I'm sorry, bring Splunk to life in a massive way. And this is, you know you can see around us, all the activity going on, it's pretty amazing. >> How about the choice of the district? You know, love the venue, love being in D.C. always, of course east-coast guys, your backyard. >> John: It's a home game for me, yeah love that. >> Brian: I'm 20 minutes away, I love it. >> But so obviously a lot of government clients, they you know, don't go to Vegas or can't go to Vegas, it's a strong community here, very advanced. Talk about that choice. >> Yeah, very thoughtful choice. We do a lot of business with the federal government. We do a lot of business with state and local officials. We do a lot of business with education and universities. And so we thought coming to D.C. was the perfect place to really embrace the public sector in America. But also an amazing venue, weather's cooperated for the most part, all the things you would want. And what we've seen with the program, is we've had more public sector attendance which is great to be able to give them more skills. The work we do with veterans, we talked about giving free training to our service men and women. And veterans service men and women which is super important to us as a company, that was a big honor to be able to do it here in D.C. Kind of a no-brainer for us, and also seeing how the rest of the community has come, it's a lot of west-coast American folks, we have people from 65 countries from all over the world that have all descended here, and it's been really really incredible. So it's been really good for us, and as we think through next venues and future years, I think there's a lot really exciting things to come. But being in D.C. is an honor for the company, and it's been great to see the turnout. >> Hey my last question, several years ago Gartner came up with the stats, said CMO was going to spend more than the CIO on technology. I don't know if that ever came to fruition but it was an interesting prediction. As a CMO, somebody who's obviously using data, for marketing, at a data company, what's the state of that what's your philosophy around data, the intersection of data and marketing? >> Yeah, I've read those Gartner articles too. The Chief Marketing Technology Officer, and you know my background is deeply technical, I was an engineer by training. And our CIO Deckland and I have an incredibly tight relationship, and I actually think that's the future. Marketing is data, and that's the big change that's happening in the marketing landscape. There's old-school marketing, advertising and things like that, that make sense and maybe be to see kind of opportunities. But if you're in a business to business universe, working with larger enterprises and governments like we are at Splunk, there's a new age of marketing that's evolved over the last decade that is predicated with operational data, that helps you make better decisions, invest more, make more personalized engagements. This doesn't have to be throw a big thing and hope someone sees it. I can engage with you and you in a personal and intimate way which aligns incredibly well with our culture and who we want to be. And so I agree it doesn't matter how you calculate the dollars or the spend or the budget, but technology is an enormous driver of modern marketing, and being at a data company makes it incredibly easy. I Splunk everything, we have dash boards, you come by my office and we have a wall of TVs with Splunk dash boards showing our social status, and we're using LinkedIn Elevate, and we see what's coming out of sales force data on sales and pipeline, all the different things so we have this real time, operational dash board that Splunk is giving us from the business side. >> I love that answer, it's not an either or with marketing and IT it's an and. >> It has to be. You just put such a sharp point on that pencil right now as you said with metrics you have all the data you need, continued success, we with you all that. >> Brian: Thank you. >> Good job getting the plane off the ground here today, and happy landing for the rest of the week. >> Brian: Thank you so much, it's an honor to be here. Thank you for joining us for your seventh year, look forward to your eighth. >> Dale: Alright, thanks for having us. >> Absolutely, thanks Brian. Brian Goldfarb, the CMO at Splunk. We're back with more here on the Cube from Washington D.C. at .conf2017, right after this. (techno music)