(upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome to theCUBE's special showcase with Unstoppable Domains. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE here in Palo Alto, California. And Matt Gould who's the founder and CEO of Unstoppable Domains. Matt, great to come on. Congratulations on the success of your company, Unstoppable Domains. Thanks for kicking off this showcase. >> Well, thank you, happy to be here. >> So first of all, love the story you've got going on here. Love the approach, very innovative, but you're also on the big Web3 wave, which we know that leads into, metaverse unlimited new ways, people are consuming information, content, applications are being built differently. This is a major wave and it's happening. Some people are trying to squint through the hype versus reality, but you don't have to be a rocket science to realize that it's a cultural shift and a technical shift going on with Web3. So this is kind of what's happening in the market. So give us your take. What's your reaction? You're in the middle of it. You're on this wave. >> Yeah, well, I would say it's a torrent of change that got unleashed just over a decade ago with Bitcoin coming out and giving people the ability to have digital items that they could actually own themselves online. And this is a new thing. And people coming, especially from my generation of millennials, they spend their time online in these digital spaces and they've wanted to be able to own these items and you see it from, you know Gaming and Fortnite and Skins and Warcraft and all these other places. But this is really being enabled by this new crypto technology to just extend to a whole lot more applications, from money, which everyone's familiar with, to NFT projects like Board Apes or CryptoBucks. >> You know, I was listening to your podcast. You guys got a great pod. I think you're on 117 episodes now and growing. You guys do a deep dive, so people watching check out the Unstoppable Podcast. But on the last podcast, Matt, you mentioned some of the older generations like me, I grew up with IP addresses and before the web, they called it information super highway. It wasn't even called the web yet, but IP was generated by the United States Department of Commerce and R&D, that became the internet, the internet became the web. Back then it was just get some web pages up and find what you're looking for. Very analog compared to what's now today, now you mentioned gaming. You mentioned how people are changing. Can you talk about your view of this cultural shift? And we've been talking about the queue for many, many years now, but it's at actually happening now where the expectation of the audience and the users and the people consuming and communicating and bonding in groups, whether it's gaming or communities are expecting new behaviors, new applications, and it's a forcing function. This shift is having now, what's your reaction to that? What's your explanation? >> Yeah, well, I think it just goes back to the shift of people's where are they spending their time? And if you look today, most people spend 50% plus of their time in front of a screen. And that's just a tremendous amount of effort. But if you look at how much of their assets are digital, it's like less than 1% of their portfolio would be some sort of digital asset compared to literally 50% of every day sitting in front of a screen. And simultaneously what's happening is these new technologies are emerging around cryptocurrencies, blockchain systems, ways for you to track digital ownership of things, and then kind of bring that into your different applications. So one of the big things that's happening with Web3 is this concept of data portability, meaning that I can own something on one application and then I could potentially take that with me to several other applications across the internet. And so this is like the emerging digital property rights that are happening right now as we transition from a model in Web2, where you are on a hosted service like Facebook, it's a walled garden, they own and control everything. You are the product, they're mining you for data and they're just selling ads, right? To a system where it's much more open. You can go into these worlds and experiences. You can take things with you and you can leave with them. And most people are doing this with cryptocurrency. Maybe you earn an end-game currency, you can leave and take that to a different game, and you can spend it somewhere else. So the user is now enable to bring their data to the party. Whereas before now, you couldn't really do that. And that data includes their money or that includes their digital items. And so I think that's the big shift that we're seeing and that changes a lot in how applications serve up to users. It's going to change their user experiences for instance. >> I think the script has flipped and you're right on. I agree with you. I think you guys are smart to see it. And I think everyone who's on this wave will see it. Let's get into that because this is happening. People are saying, "I'm done with being mined "and being manipulated by the big Facebook "and the LinkedIns of the world who are using the user." Now, the contract was a free product and you gave up your data, but then it got too far. Now people want to be in charge of their data. They want to broker their data. They want to collect their digital exhaust, maybe collect some things in a game, or maybe do some commerce in an application or marketplace. So these are the new use cases. How does a digital identity architecture work with Unstoppable? How would you guys enabling that? Can you take us through the vision of where you guys came on this because it's unique, you had an NFT and kind of the domain name concept coming together, can you explain? >> Yeah, so we think we approach the problem for if we're going to rebuild the way that people interact online, what are kind of the first primitives that they're going to need in order to make that possible? And we thought that one of the things that you have on every network, like when you log on Twitter, you have a Twitter handle, when you log on Instagram, you have an Instagram handle. It's your name, right? You have that name that's on those applications. And right now what happens is if users get kicked off the platform, they lose a 100% of their followers, right? And they also, in some cases, they can't even directly contact their followers on some of these platforms. There's no way for them to retain this social network. So you have all these influencers, who are today's small businesses, who build up these large, you know profitable, small businesses online, being key opinion leaders to their demographic. And then they could be deplatformed, or they're unable to take this data and move to another platform if that platform raises their fees. You've seen several platforms increase their take rates. You have 10, 20, 30, 40%, and they're getting locked in and they're getting squeezed, right? So we just said, "You know what, "the first thing you're going to want to own "that this is going to be your piece of digital property "is going to be your name across these applications." If you look at every computing network in the history of computing networks, they end up with a naming system. And when we looked back at DNS, you know which came out in the 90s, it was just a way for people to find these webpages much easier instead of mapping these IP addresses. And then we said to ourselves, "What's going to happen in the future?" Is just like everyone has an email address that they use in their Web2 world in order to identify themselves as they log into all these applications. They're going to have an NFT domain in the Web3 world in order to authenticate and bring their data with them across these applications. So we saw a direct correlation there between DNS and what we're doing with NFT domain name systems. And the bigger breakthrough here is that NFT domain systems all of these NFT assets that live on a blockchain. They are owned by users. They're built on these open systems so that multiple applications could read data off of them and that makes them portable. So we were looking for an infrastructure play like a picks and shovels play for the emerging Web3 metaverse. And we thought that names were just something that if we wanted a future to happen, where all 3.5 billion people with cell phones are sending crypto and digital assets back and forth, they're going to need to have a name to make this a lot easier instead of these long IP addresses or hex addresses in the case of crypto. >> Yeah, and also people have multiple wallets too. It's not like there's all kinds of wallet, variations, name verification, you see the link tree is everywhere. You know, that's essentially just an app. I mean, doesn't really do anything. I mean, so you're seeing people trying to figure it out. I got a github handle. I got a LinkedIn handle. I mean, what do you do with it? >> Yeah, and then specific to crypto, there was a very hair on fire use case for people who buy their first Bitcoin. And for those in the audience who haven't done this yet, when you go in and you go into an app and you buy your first Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever cryptocurrency, and then the first time you try to send it, there's this field where you want to send it and it's this very long hex address. And it looks like an IP address from the 1980s, right? And it's like a bank number and no one's going to use that to send money back and forth to each other. And so just like domain names and the D apps system replace IP addresses, NFT domains on blockchain systems replace hex addresses for sending and receiving cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever. And that's its first use case is it really plugs in there. So when you want to send money to someone, you can just instead of sending money to a large hex address that you have to copy and paste, you could have an error, or you could send it to the wrong place, it's pretty scary. You could send it to johnfurrier.nft. And so we thought that you're just not going to get global adoption without better UX, same thing it worked with .com domains. And this is the same thing for Bitcoin and other crypto. >> It's interesting, look at the Web2 or trend one to two, Web1 went to two, it was all about use, ease of use, right? And making things simpler, clutter, more pages can't find things that was search, that was Google. Since then, has there actually been an advancement? >> Hmm. >> Facebook certainly is not an advancement, they're hoarding all the data. So I think we're broken between that step of a free search to all the resources in the world, to which by the way, they're mining a lot of data too, with the Toolbar and Chrome. But now where's that Web3 crossover? So take us through your vision on digital identity on Web2, Google searching, Facebook's broken, democracy's broken, users aren't in charge to Web3? >> Got it. Well, we can start at Web1. So the way that I think about it is if you go to Web1, it was very simple, just text web pages. So it was just a way for someone to like put up a billboard and here's a piece of information and here's some things that you could read about it, right? And then what happened with Web2, was you started having applications being built that had backend infrastructure to provide services. So if you think about Web2, these are all websites or web portals that have services attached to them, whether that's a social network service or a search engine or whatever. And then as we move to Web3, the new thing that's happening here, is the user is coming onto that experience and they're able to connect in their wallet or their Web3 identity to that app and they can bring their data to the party. So it's kind of like Web1, you just have a static web page, Web2, you have a static webpage with a service, like a server back here, and then Web3, the user can come in and bring their database with them in order to have much better app experiences. So how does that change things? Well, for one, that means that you want data to be portable across apps. So we touched on gaming earlier and maybe if I have an in-game item for one game that I'm playing for a certain company, I can take it across two or three different games. It also impacts money. Money is just digital information. So now I can connect to a bunch of different apps and I can just use cryptocurrency to make those payments across those things instead of having to use a credit card. But then another thing that happens is I can bring unlimited amount of additional information about myself when I plug in my wallet. And as an example, when I plug into Google search, for instance, they could take a look at my wallet that I've connected and they could pull information about me that I enable that I share with them. And this means that I'm going to get a much more personalized experience on these websites and I'm also going to have much more control over my data. There's a lot of people out there right now who are worried about data privacy, especially in places like Europe. And one of the ways to solve that is simply to not store the data and instead have the user bring it with them. >> You know, I've always thought about this and always debated it with Dave a lot and my co-host, does top down governance privacy laws outweigh the organic bottoms up innovation? So what you're getting at here is, "Hey, if you can actually have that solved "(laughing) before it even starts." It was almost as if those services were built for the problem of Web2. >> Yes. >> Not three. >> Right. >> What's your reaction to that? >> I think that is right on the money. And if you look at it as a security, like if I put my security researcher hat on, I think the biggest problem we have with security and privacy on the web today is that we have these large organizations that are collecting so much data on us and they just become these honeypots and there have been huge breaches. Like Equifax, you know a few years back is a big one and this all your credit card data got leaked, right? And all your credit information got leaked. And we just have this model where these big companies silo your data, they create a giant database, which is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, to be attack. And then someone eventually is going to hack that in order to pull that information. Well, if instead, and you can look at this at Web3. So for those in the audience who have used, a Web3 application, one of these D app, to trade cryptocurrencies or something, you'll know that when you go there, you actually connect your wall. So when you're working with these web, you connect, you bring your information with you and you connect it. That means that the app has none of that stored, right? So these apps that people are using for crypto trading cryptocurrency on apps or whatever, they have no stored information. So if someone hacks one of these defi exchanges, for instance, there's nothing to steal. And that's because the only time the information is being accessed is when the user is actively using the site. And so as someone who cares about security and privacy, I go, "Wow, that's a much better or data model." And that gives so much more control of user 'cause the user just permissions access to the data only during the time period in which they're interacting with the application. And so I think you're right and like we are very excited to be building these tools, right? Because I see it like if you look at Europe, they basically pass GDPR and then all the companies are going, "We can't comply with that." They keep postponing it or like changing it a little bit and trying to make it easier to comply with. But honestly we just need to switch the data models. So the companies aren't even taking the data and then they're going to be in a much better spot. >> And GDPR is again a nightmare. I think it's the wrong approach. I always said it was screwed up because most companies don't even know where stuff is stored and nevermind how they delete someone's entry in a database. They don't even know what they're collecting. Some at some level they become so complicated. So right on the money there good, good call out. There question for you. Is this then? Okay, so do you decouple the wallet from the ID or are they together and is it going to be a universal wallet? Do you guys see yourselves as universal domains? Take me through the thinking around how you're looking at the wallet and the actual identity of the user, which obviously is important on the identity side, wallet is that just universal or is that going to be coming together? >> Well, I think so. The way that we kind of think about it is that wallets are where people have their financial interactions online. And then identity is much more about, it's kind of like being your passport. So it's like your driver's license for the internet. So these are two kind of separate products we see longer term and actually work together. So, if you have a domain name, it actually is easier to make deposits into your wallet because it's easier to remember to send money to mattgloud.crypto. And that way it's easier for me to receive payments or whatever. And then inside my wallet, I'm going to be doing defi trades or whatever. And that doesn't really have an interaction with names necessarily in order to do those transactions. But then if I want to sign into a website or something, I could connect that with my NFT domain. And I do think that these two things are kind of separate. I think we're going to... Still early, so figuring out exactly how the industry is going to shake out over like a five to 10 year time horizon and maybe a little bit more difficult and we could see some other emerging... What you would consider like cornerstones of the crypto ecosystem. But I do think identity and reputation is one of those. And I also think that your financial applications of defi are going to be another. So those are the two areas where I see it. And just a note on this, when you have a wallet that usually has multiple cryptocurrency addresses, so you're going to have like 50 cryptocurrency addresses in a wallet. You're going to want to have one domain name that links back to all those, because you're just not going to remember those 50 different addresses. So that's how I think that they collaborate and we collaborate with several large wallets as well, like blockchain.com and another 30 plus of these to make it easier for sending out and receiving cryptocurrency. >> So the wallet basically is a D app, the way you look at it, the integrated. >> Yeah. >> Whatever you want, just integrate in. How do I log into decentralized application with my NFT domain name? Because this becomes okay. I got to love the idea, love my identity. I'm an my own NFT. I mean, how this video's going to be an NFT soon. We get on board with the program here, but how do I log into my app? I'm going to have a D app and I got my domain name. Do I have to submit is there benchmarking? Is there approval process? Is there APIs and SDK kind of thinking around it? How are you thinking about dealing with the apps? >> Yeah, so all of the above. And what we're trying to do here is build like an SSO solution, but it's consumer based. So what we've done is adapted some SSO protocols that other people have used, the standard ones, in order to connect that back to an NFT domain in this case. And that way you GET the best of both worlds. So you can use these authorization protocols for data permissioning that are, you know, standard Web2 APIs, but then the permissioning system is actually based on the user-controlled NFT. So they're assigning it that with their private public key pair in order to make those updates. So that allows you to connect into both of these systems. We think that that's how technology typically impacts the world is it's not like you have something that just replaces something overnight. You have an integration of these technologies over time. And we really see these Web3 components and net two domains integrating nicely into regular apps. So as an example in the future, when you log in right now, you see Google off, Facebook off, or you can type in an email address, you could see NFT, Unstoppable Domains or NFT authorization. And you can SSO in to that website. When you go to a website like an e-commerce website, you could share information about yourself, 'cause you've connected your wallet now. So you could say, "Yes, I am a unique individual. "I do live in New York and I just bought a new house." And then when you permission all that information about yourself to that application, you can serve up a new user experience for you. And we think it's going to be very interesting for doing rewards and discounts online for e-commerce specifically in the future because that opens up a whole new market. 'Cause they can ask you questions about yourself and you can deliver that information directly to the app. >> I really think that the gaming market has totally nailed the future use case, which is in game currency, in game end engagement, in game data. And now bringing that to kind of a horizontally scalable like surface areas is huge, right? So, you know, I think that's a huge success on the concept. The question I have to ask you is you getting any pushback from, ICANN, the International Corporation of Naming and Numbers, they got dot everything now.club, 'cause the clubhouse, they got dot, party.live. I mean the real domain name people are over here, Web2, you guys are coming out with the Web3. Where is that connect for people who are not following along the Web3 trend? How do you rationalize the domain angle here? >> Yeah, well, so I would say that NFT domains are what domains on DNS were always meant to be 30 plus years ago. And they just didn't have blockchain systems back in the nineties when they were building these things. So there's no way to make them for individuals. So what happened was for DNS, it actually ended up being business. So if you look at DNS names, there's about 350 million registrations. They're basically all small business. And it's like, 20 to 50 million small businesses who own the majority of these.com or these regular DNS domain names. And that's their focus. NFT domains, because all of a sudden you have the wallet, you have them in your wallet and your crypto wallet, they're actually for individuals. So that market, instead of being for small businesses is actually end users. So instead of being for 20 to 50 million small businesses, we're talking about being useful for three to four billion people who have an internet connection. And so we actually think that the market size for NFT domains is somewhere 50 to a hundred X, the market size for traditional domain names. And then the use cases are going to be much more for individuals on a day to day basis. So it's like people are going to want you on a use them for receiving cryptocurrency or receiving dollars or payments or USCC coin, where they're going to want to use them as identifiers on social networks, where they're going to want to use them for SSO. And they're not going to want to use them as much for things like websites, which is what Web2 is. And if I'm being perfectly honest, if I'm looking out 10 years from now, I think that these traditional domain name systems are going to want to work with and adopt this new NFT technology, 'cause they're going to want to have these features for the domain names. So like in short, I think NFT domain names are domain names with superpowers. This is the next generation of naming systems. And naming systems were always meant to be identity networks. >> Yeah, they hit a glass ceiling. I mean they just can't, they're not built for that. And having people, having their own names, is essentially what decentralization is all about. 'Cause we, what is a company? It's a collection of humans that aren't working in one place, they're decentralized. So then you decentralize the identity and everything's been changed. So completely love it. I think you guys are onto something really huge here. You pretty much laid out what's next for Web3, but you guys are in this state of growth. You've seen people signing up for names. That's great. What are the best practices? What are the steps are people taking? What's the common use case for folks who are putting this to work right now for you guys? Why do you see, what's the progression? >> Yeah, so the thing that we want to solve for people most immediately, is we want to make it easier for sending and receiving crypto payments. And I know that sounds like a niche market, but there's over 200 million people right now who have some form of cryptocurrency, right? And 99.9% of them are still sending crypto using these really long hex addresses. And that market is growing at 60 to 100% year over year. So first we need to get crypto into everybody's pocket and that's going to happen over the next three to five years. Let's call it, if it doubles every year for the next five years, we'll be there. And then we want to make it easier for all those people to send crypto back and forth. And I will admit I'm a big fan of these stable coins and these like... I would say utility focused tokens that are coming out just to make it easier for transferring money from here to Turkey and back or whatever. And that's the really the first step for NFT domain names. But what happens is when you have an NFT domain and that's what you're using to receive payments, and then you realize, oh, I can also use this to log into my favorite apps. It starts building that identity piece. And so we're also building products and services to make it more like your identity. And we think that it's going to build up over time. So instead of like doing an identity network top down where you're like a government or corporation, you say, oh, you have to have ID, here's your password, you have to have it. We're going to do it, bottoms up. We're going to give everyone on the planet and up to you domain name, it's going to give them some utility to make it easier to send, receive cryptocurrency. And we're going to say, "Hey, do you want to verify your Twitter profile?" Yes. Okay, great. You just attach that back. Hey, you want to verify your Reddit? Yes, Instagram? Yes, TikTok, yes. You want to verify your driver's license? Okay, yeah, we can attach that back. And then what happens is you end up building up organically digital identifiers for people using these blockchain naming systems. And once they have that, they're going to just... They're going to be able to share that information and that's going to lead to better experiences online for both commerce, but also just better user experiences in general. >> Every company when they web came along first, everyone pro proved the web once. Oh, it's terrible. A bad idea. Oh, it's so, unreliable, so slow. Hard to find things. Web2, everyone bought a domain name for their company, but then as they added webpages, these premalinks became so long, the webpage address fully qualified, permalink string, they bought keywords. And then that's another layer on top. So you started to see that evolution in the web. Now it's kind of hit ceiling. Here, everyone gets their NFT, they start doing more things. Then it becomes much more of a use case where it's more usable, not just for one thing. So we saw that movie before, so it's like a permalink, permanent. >> Yeah. >> Excellent. >> Yes indeed. I mean, if we're lucky it will be a decentralized bottoms up global identity that appreciates user privacy and allows people to opt in. And that's what we want to build. >> And the gas prices thing that's always come out always an objection here that, I mean, blockchain's perfect for this 'cause it's, imitable, it's written on the chain. All good, totally secure. What about the efficiency? How do you see that evolving real quick? >> Well, so a couple comments on efficiency. First of all, we picked domains as first product to market. 'Cause you need to take a look and see if the technology is capable of handling what you're trying to do and for domain names, you're not updating that every day. So like, if you look at traditional domain names, you only update it a couple times per year. So, the usage for that to set this up and configure it, most people set it up and configure it and then they only have a few changes per year. First of all, the overall you, it's not like a game. >> An IO problem. >> Right, right, right. So that part's good. So we picked a good place to start for going to market. And then the second piece is like, you're really just asking, are computer systems going to get more efficient over time? And if you know, the history of that has always been yes. And I remember the 90s, I had a modem and it was 14 kilobits and then it was 28 and then 56 and then 100. And now I have a hundred megabits up and down. And I look at blockchain systems and I don't know if anyone has a law for this yet, but throughput of blockchains is going up over time and there's going to be continued improvements over this over the next decade. We need them. We're going to use all of it. And you just need to make sure you're planning a business makes sense for the current environment. Just as an example, if you would try to launch Netflix for online streaming in 1990, you would've had a bad time because no one had bandwidth. So yeah, some applications are going to be wait to be a little bit later on in the cycle, but I actually think identity is perfectly fine to go ahead and get off the ground now. >> Yeah, the motivated parties for innovations here, I mean a point cast failed miserably that was like, they tried to stream video over T1 lines, but back in the days, nothing. So again, we've seen those speeds, double, triple in homes right now. Matt, congratulations, great stuff. Final, TikTok moment here. How would you summarize in a short clip, the difference between digital identity and Web2 and Web3. >> In Web2, you don't get to own your own online presidence, and in Web3 you do get to own it. So I think if you were going to simplify it, really Web3 is about ownership and we're excited to give everyone on the planet a chance to own their name and choose when and where and how they want to share information about themselves. >> So now users are in charge. >> Exactly, you got it. >> They're not the product anymore. If you got to be the product you might as well monetize the product, and that's the data. Real quick thoughts just to close out the roll of data and all this, your view. >> We haven't enabled users to own their data online since the beginning of the internet. And we're now starting to do that. It's going to have profound changes for how every application on the planet interacts with their users. >> Awesome stuff, Matt, take a minute to give a plug for the company. How many employees you got? What are you guys looking for for hiring, fundraising? Give a quick commercial for what's going on Unstoppable Domains. >> Yeah, so if you haven't already, check us out at unstoppabledomains.com, we're also on Twitter at Unstoppable web. And we have a wonderful podcast as well that you should check out if you haven't already. And we are just crossed a hundred people. We're growing, three to five hundred percent year over year. We're basically hiring every position across the company right now. So if you're interested in getting into Web3, even if you're coming from a traditional to background, please reach out. We love teaching people about this new world and how you can be a part of it. >> And you're a virtual company. You have a little headquarters or is it all virtual? What's the situation there? >> Yeah, I actually just assumed we are 100% remote and asynchronous and we're currently in five countries across the planet in mostly concentrated in the US and the EU areas. >> I heard a rumor too. Maybe you can confirm or admit or deny this rumor. I heard a rumor that you have mandatory vacation policy. >> This is true. And that's because we are a team of people who like to get things done. But we also know that recovery is an important part of any organization. So if you push too hard, we want to remind people we're on a marathon, right? This is not a sprint. And so we want people to be with us long term, and we do think that this is a 10 year move. And so yeah, do force people. We'll unplug you at the end of the year, if you- >> That's what I was going to ask you. So what's the consequence of, I don't take vacation. >> Yeah, we literally unplug you. (both laughing) >> You won't be able to get into slack. Right, and that's (indistinct). >> Well, when people start having their avatars be their bought and you don't even know what you're unplugging at some point, that's where you guys come in with the NFT saying that that's not the real person, it's not the real human. >> Yeah, exactly. We'll be able to check. >> NFT is great innovation, great use case, Matt congratulations. Thanks for coming on and sharing the story to kick off this showcase with theCUBE. Thanks for sharing all that great insight. Appreciate it. >> Yeah, John had a wonderful time. >> All right, this is theCUBE Unstoppable Domains showcasing. We've got 10 great pieces of content we're dropping all today. Check them out. Stay with us for more coverage. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>>Hello, and welcome to the cubes. Special showcase with unstoppable domains. I'm John furrier, your host of the cube here in Palo Alto, California and Matt Gould, who is the founder and CEO of unstoppable domains. Matt, great to come on. Congratulations on the success of your company on stumbled domains. Thanks for kicking off this showcase. >>Thank you. Happy to be here. So >>Love, first of all, love the story you got going on here. Love the approach, very innovative, but you're also on the big web three wave, which we know where that leads into. Metaverse unlimited new ways. People are consuming information, content applications are being built differently. This is a major wave and it's happening. Some people are trying to squint through the hype versus reality, but you don't have to be a rocket science to realize that it's a cultural shift and a technical shift going on with web three. So this is kind of the what's happening in the market. So give us your take. What's your reaction? You're in the middle of it. You're on this wave. >>Yeah. Well, I would say it's a torrent of change and the get unleashed just over a decade ago with Bitcoin coming out and giving people the ability to have a digital items that they could actually own themselves online. And this is a new thing. And people coming, especially from my generation of millennials, they spend their time online in these digital spaces and they've wanted to be able to own these items. Do you see it from, you know, gaming and Fortnite and skins and Warcraft and all these other places, but this is really being enabled by this new crypto technology to just extend a whole lot more, uh, applications for money, which everyone's familiar with, uh, to, uh, NFT projects, uh, like boarding school. >>You know, I was listening to your podcast. You guys got a great pot. I think you're on a 117 episodes now and growing, you guys do a deep dive. So people watching check out the unstoppable podcast, but in the last podcast, man, you mentioned, you know, some of the older generations like me, I grew up with IP addresses and before the web, they called it information super highway. It wasn't even called the web yet. Um, but IP was, was generated by the United States department of commerce and R and D that became the internet. The internet became the web back then it was just get some webpages up and find what you're looking for. Right. Very analog compared to what's. Now, today, now you mentioned gaming, you mentioned, uh, how people are changing. Can you talk about your view of this cultural shift? And we've been talking about in the queue for many, many years now, but it's actually happening now where the expectation of the audience and the users and the people consuming and communicating and bonding and groups, whether it's gaming or communities are expecting new behaviors, new applications, and it's a forcing function. >>This shift is having now, what's your reaction to that? What's your explanation? >>Yeah, well, I think, uh, it just goes back to the shift of peoples, where are they spending their time? And if you look today, most people spend 50% plus of their time in front of a screen. And that's just a tremendous amount of effort. But if you look at how much, how much of assets are digital, it's like less than 1% of their portfolio would be some sort of digital asset, uh, compared to, you know, literally 50% of every day sitting in front of a screen and simultaneously what's happening is these new technologies are emerging around, uh, cryptocurrencies, blockchain systems, uh, ways for you to track the digital ownership of things, and then kind of bring that into, uh, your different applications. So one of the big things that's happening with web three is this concept of data portability, meaning that I can own something on one application. >>And I could potentially take that with me to several other applications across the internet. And so this is like the emerging digital property rights that are happening right now. As we transitioned from a model in web to where you're on a hosted service, like Facebook, it's a walled garden, they own and control everything. You are the product, you know, they're mining you for data and they're just selling ads, right? So to assist them where it's much more open, you can go into these worlds and experiences. You can take things with you, uh, and you can, you can leave with them. And most people are doing this with cryptocurrency. Maybe you earn an in-game currency, you can leave and take that to a different game and you can spend it somewhere else. Uh, so the user is now enabled to bring their data to the party. Whereas before now you couldn't really do that. And that data includes their money or that includes their digital items. And so I think that's the big shift that we're seeing and that changes a lot and how applications, uh, serve up to user. So it's going to change their user experiences. For instance, >>The flip, the script has flipped and you're right on. I agree with you. I think you guys are smart to see it. And I think everyone who's on this wave will see it. Let's get into that because this is happening. People are saying I'm done with being mined and being manipulated by the big Facebooks and the LinkedIns of the world who were using the user. Now, the contract was a free product and you gave it your data, but then it got too far. Now people want to be in charge of their data. They want to broker their data. They want to collect their digital exhaust, maybe collect some things in a game, or maybe do some commerce in an application or a marketplace. So these are the new use cases. How does the digital identity architecture work with unstoppable? How are you guys enabling that? Could you take us through the vision of where you guys came on this because it's unique in an NFT and kind of the domain name concept coming together? Can you explain? >>Yeah. So, uh, we think we approach the problem for if we're going to rebuild the way that people interact online, uh, what are kind of the first primitives that they're going to need in order to make that possible? And we thought that one of the things that you have on every network, like when you log on Twitter, you have a Twitter handle. When you log on, uh, you know, Instagram, you have an Instagram handle, it's your name, right? You have that name that's that's on those applications. And right now what happens is if users get kicked off the platform, they lose a hundred percent of their followers, right? And theirs. And they also, in some cases, they can't even directly contact their followers on some of these platforms. There's no way for them to retain this social network. So you have all these influencers who are, today's small businesses who build up these large, you know, profitable, small businesses online, uh, you know, being key opinion leaders to their demographic. >>Uh, and then they could be D platform, or they're unable to take this data and move to another platform. If that platform raised their fees, you've seen several platforms, increase their take rates. You have 10, 20, 30, 40%, and they're getting locked in and they're getting squeezed. Right. Uh, so we just said, you know what, the first thing you're going to want to own that this is going to be your piece of digital property. It's going to be your name across these applications. And if you look at every computer network in the history of computing networks, the end up with a naming system, and when we've looked back at DDA desk, which came out in the nineties, uh, it was just a way for people to find these webpages much easier, you know, instead of mapping these IP addresses. Uh, and then we said to ourselves, you know, uh, what's going to happen in the future is just like everyone has an email address that they use in their web two world in order to, uh, identify themselves as they log into all these applications. >>They're going to have an NFT domain in the web three world in order to authenticate and, and, uh, bring their data with them across these applications. So we saw a direct correlation there between DNS and what we're doing with NFT domain name systems. Um, and the bigger breakthrough here is at NMT domain systems or these NFT assets that live on a blockchain. They are owned by users to build on these open systems so that multiple applications could read data off of them. And that makes them portable. So we were looking for an infrastructure play like a picks and shovels play for the emerging web three metaverse. Uh, and we thought that names were just something that if we wanted a future to happen, where all 3.5 billion people, you know, with cell phones are sending crypto and digital assets back and forth, they're gonna need to have a name to make this a lot easier instead of, you know, these long IP addresses or a hex addresses in the case of Porto. >>So people have multiple wallets too. It's not like there's all kinds of wallet, variations, name, verification, you see link trees everywhere. You know, that's essentially just an app and it doesn't really do anything. I mean, so you're seeing people kind of trying to figure it out. I mean, you've got to get up, Angela got a LinkedIn handle. I mean, what do you do with it? >>Yeah. And, and then specific to crypto, there was a very hair on fire use case for people who buy their first Bitcoin. And for those in the audience who haven't done this yet, when you go in and you go into an app, you buy your first Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever cryptocurrency. And then the first time you try to send it, there's this, there's this field where you want to send it. And it's this very long text address. And it looks like an IP address from the 1980s, right? And it's, it's like a bank number and no one's going to use that to send money back and forth to each other. And so just like domain names and the DNS system replace IP addresses in Ft domains, uh, on blockchain systems, replace hex addresses for sending and receiving, you know, cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever. And that's its first use case is it really plugs in there. So when you want to send money to someone, you can just, instead of sending money to a large hex address that you have to copy and paste, you can have an error or you can send it to the wrong place. It's pretty scary. You could send it to John furrier dot, uh, NFT. And uh, so we thought that you're just not going to get global adoption without better UX, same thing. It worked with the.com domains. And this is the same thing for the coin and other >>Crypto. It's interesting to look at the web two or trend one to two web one went to two. It was all about user ease of use, right? And making things simpler. Clutter, you have more pages. You can't find things that was search that was Google since then. Has there actually been an advancement? Facebook certainly is not an advancement. They're hoarding all the data. So I think we're broken between that step of, you know, a free search to all the resources in the world, to which, by the way, they're mining a lot of data too, with the toolbar and Chrome. But now where's that web three crossover. So take us through your vision on digital identity on web to Google searching, Facebook's broken democracy is broken users. Aren't in charge to web three. >>Got it. Well, we can start at web one. So the way that I think about it is if you go to web one, it was very simple, just text web pages. So it was just a way for someone to like put up a billboard and here's a piece of information and here's some things that you could read about it. Right. Uh, and then what happened with web two was you started having applications being built that had backend infrastructure to provide services. So if you think about web two, these are all, you know, these are websites or web portals that have services attached to them, whether that's a social network service or search engine or whatever. And then as we moved to web three, the new thing that's happening here is the user is coming on to that experience. And they're able to connect in their wallet or their web three identity, uh, to that app and they can bring their data to the party. >>So it's kind of like web one, you just have a static web page whip, two, you have a static web page with a service, like a server back here. And then with three, the user can come in and bring their database with them, uh, in order to have much better app experiences. So how does that change things? Well, for one, that means that the, you want data to be portable across apps. So we've touched on gaming earlier and maybe if I have an end game item for one, a game that I'm playing for a certain company, I can take it across two or three different games. Uh, it also impacts money. Money is just digital information. So now I can connect to a bunch of different apps and I can just use cryptocurrency to make those payments across those things instead of having to use a credit card. >>Uh, but then another thing that happens is I can bring in from, you know, an unlimited amount of additional information about myself. When I plug in my wallet, uh, as an example, when I plug in to Google search, for instance, they could take a look at my wallet that I've connected and they could pull information about me that I enabled that I share with them. And this means that I'm going to get a much more personalized experience on these websites. And I'm also going to have much more control over my data. There's a lot of people out there right now who are worried about data privacy, especially in places like Europe. And one of the ways to solve that is simply to not store the data and instead have the user bring it with them. >>I always thought about this and I always debated it with David laundry. My cohost does top down governance, privacy laws outweigh the organic bottoms up innovation. So what you're getting at here is, Hey, if you can actually have that solved before it even starts, it was almost as if those services were built for the problem of web two. Yes, not three. Write your reaction to that. >>I think that is, uh, right on the money. And, uh, if you look at it as a security, like if I put my security researcher hat on, I think the biggest problem we have with security and privacy on the web today is that we have these large organizations that are collecting so much data on us and they just become these honeypots. And there have been huge, uh, breaches like Equifax, you know, a few years back is a big one and just all your credit card data got leaked, right? And all your, uh, credit information got leaked. And we just have this model where these big companies silo your data. They create a giant database, which is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, if not, billions, to be attacked. And then someone eventually is going to hack that in order to pull that information. Well, if instead, and you can look at this at web three. >>So for those of the audience who have used the web three application, one of these depths, um, you know, trade cryptocurrencies or something, you'll know that when you go there, you actually connect to your wall. So when you're working with these web, you connect, you, you know, you bring your information with you and you connect it. That means that the app has none of that storage, right? So these apps that people are using for crypto trading cryptocurrency on depths or whatever, they have no stored information. So if someone hacks one of these DFI exchanges, for instance, uh, there's nothing to steal. And that's because the only time the information is being accessed is when the users actively using the site. And so as someone who cares about security and privacy, I go, wow, that's a much better data model. And that give so much more control of user because the user just permissions access to the data only during the time period in which they're interacting with the application. Um, and so I think you're right. And like, we are very excited to be building these tools, right? Because I see, like, if you look at Europe, they basically pass GDPR. And then all the companies are going, we can't comply with that and they keep postponing it or like changing a little bit and trying to make it easier to comply with. But honestly we just need to switch the data models. So the companies aren't even taking the data and then they're gonna be in a much better spot. >>The GDPR is again, a nightmare. I think it's the wrong approach. Oh, I said it was screwed up because most companies don't even know where stuff is stored. Nevermind how they delete someone's entering a database. They don't even know what they're collecting. Some at some level it becomes so complicated. So right on the money are good. Good call out there. Question for you. Is this then? Okay. So do you decouple the wallet from the ID or are they together? Uh, and is it going to be a universal wallet? Do you guys see yourselves as universal domains? Take me through the thinking around how you're looking at the wallet and the actual identity of the user, which obviously is super important on the identity side while it, is that just universal or is that going to be coming together? >>Well, I think so. The way that we kind of think about it is that wallets are where people have their financial interactions online. Right. And then identity is much more about, it's kind of like being your passport. So it's like your driver's license for the internet. So these are two kind of separate products we see longer term, uh, and they actually work together. So, you know, like if you have a domain name, it actually is easier to make deposits into your wallet because it's easier to remember to send money to, you know, method, rules dot crypto. And that way it's easier for me to receive payments or whatever. And then inside my wallet, I'm going to be doing defy trades or whatever. And doesn't really have an interaction with names necessarily in order to do those transactions. But then if I want to, uh, you know, sign into a website or something, I could connect that with my NFT domain. >>And I do think that these two things are kind of separate. I think there's, we're gonna still early. So figuring out exactly how the industry is gonna shake out over like a five to 10 year time horizon. And it may be a little bit more difficult and we could see some other emerging, uh, what you would consider like cornerstones of the crypto ecosystem. But I do think identity and reputation is one of those. Uh, and I also think that your financial applications of defy are going to be another. So those are the two areas where I see it. Um, and just to, you know, a note on this, when you have a wallet, it usually has multiple cryptocurrency address. So you're going to have like 50 cryptocurrency addresses in a wallet. Uh, you're going to want to have one domain name that links back to all those, because you're just not going to remember those 50 different addresses. So that's how I think that they collaborate. And we collaborate with several large wallets as well, uh, like blockchain.com, uh, and you know, another 30 plus of these, uh, to make it easier for sending out and receiving cryptocurrency. >>So the wallet, basically as a D app, the way you look at it, you integrate whatever you want, just integrate in. How do I log into decentralized applications with my NFT domain name? Because this becomes okay, I got to love the idea, love my identity. I'm in my own NFT. I mean, hell, this video is going to be an NFT. Soon. We get on board with the program here. Uh, but I do, I log into my app, I'm going to have a D app and I got my domain name. Do I have to submit, is there benchmarking, is there approval process? Is there API APIs and a SDK kind of thinking around it? How do you thinking about dealing with the apps? >>Yeah, so all of the above and what we're trying to, what we're trying to do here is build like an SSO solution. Uh, but that it's consumer based. So, uh, what we've done is adapted some SSL protocols that other people have used the standard ones, uh, in order to connect that back to an NFT domain in this case. And that way you keep the best of both worlds. So you can use these authorization protocols for data permissioning that are standard web to API APIs. Uh, but then the permissioning system is actually based on the user controlled in FTE. So they're assigning that with their private public key pair order to make those updates. Um, so that, that allows you to connect into both of these systems. Uh, we think that that's how technology typically impacts the world is it's not like you have something that just replaces something overnight. >>You have an integration of these technologies over time. Uh, and we really see these three components in MTU domains integrating nicely into regular apps. So as an example in the future, when you log in right now, you see Google or Facebook, or you can type in an email address, you can see not ensemble domains or NFT, uh, authorization, and you can SSO in with that, to that website. When you go to a website like an e-commerce website, you could share information about yourself because you've connected your wallet now. So you could say, yes, I am a unique individual. I do live in New York, uh, and I just bought a new house. Right. And then when you permission all that information about yourself to that application, you can serve up a new user experience for you. Um, and we think it's going to be very interesting for doing rewards and discounts, um, online for e-commerce specifically, uh, in the future, because that opens up a whole new market because they can ask you questions about yourself and you can deliver that information. >>Yeah. I really think that the gaming market has totally nailed the future use case, which is in game currency in game to engagement in game data. And now bringing that, so kind of a horizontally scalable, like surface areas is huge, right? So, you know, I think you're, that's huge success on the concept. The question I have to ask you is, um, you getting any pushback from ICANN, the international corporates have name and numbers. They got dot everything now.club, cause the clubhouse, they got dot, you know, party.live. I mean, so the real domain name people are over here, web too. You guys are coming out with the web three where's that connect for people who are not following along the web three trend. How do they, how do you rationalize the, the domain angle here? >>Yeah, well, uh, so I would say that NFTE domains or what domains on DNS were always meant to be 30 plus years ago and they just didn't have blockchain systems back in the nineties when they were building these things. So there's no way to make them for individuals. So what happened was for DNS, it actually ended up being the business. So if you look at DNS names, there's about 350 million registrations. They're basically all small business. And it's like, you know, 20 to 50 million small businesses, uh, who, uh, own the majority of these, uh, these.com or these regular DNS domain names. And that's their focus NFTE domains because all of a sudden you have the, uh, the Walton, if you have them in your wallet and your crypto wallet, they're actually for individuals. So that market, instead of being for small businesses is actually end-users. So, and instead of being for, you know, 20 to 50 million small businesses, we're talking about being useful for three to 4 billion people who have an internet connection. >>Uh, and so we actually think that the market size we're in a few domains and somewhere 50 to 100 X, the market size for traditional domain names. And then the use cases are going to be much more for, uh, individuals on a day-to-day basis. So it's like people are gonna want you on to use them for receiving cryptocurrency versus receiving dollars or payments or USCC point where they're going to want to use them as identifiers on social networks, where they're going to want to use them for SSO. Uh, and they're not gonna want to use them as much for things like websites, which is what web is. And if I'm being perfectly honest, if I'm looking out 10 years from now, I think that these traditional domain name systems are gonna want to work with and adopt this new NFC technology. Cause they're going to want to have these features for the domain next. So like in short, I think NMT domain names or domain names with superpowers, this is the next generation of, uh, naming systems and naming systems were always meant to be identity networks. >>Yeah. They hit a car, they hit a glass ceiling. I mean, they just can't, they're not built for that. Right. So I mean, and, and having people, having their own names is essentially what decentralization is all about. Cause what does a company, it's a collection of humans that aren't working in one place they're decentralized. So, and then you decentralize the identity and everything's can been changed so completely love it. I think you guys are onto something really huge here. Um, you pretty much laid out what's next for web three, but you guys are in this state of, of growth. You've seen people signing up for names. That's great. What are the, what are the, um, best practices? What are the steps are people taking? What's the common, uh, use case for folks we're putting this to work right now for you guys? Why do you see what's the progression? >>Yeah. So the, the thing that we want to solve for people most immediately is, uh, we want to make it easier for sending and receiving crypto payments. And I, and I know that sounds like a niche market, but there's over 200 million people right now who have some form of cryptocurrency, right? And 99.9% of them are still sending crypto using these really long hex addresses. And that market is growing at 60 to a hundred percent year over year. So, uh, first we need to get crypto into everybody's pocket and that's going to happen over the next three to five years. Let's call it if it doubles every year for the next five years, we'll be there. Uh, and then we want to make it easier for all those people to sit encrypted back and forth. And I, and I will admit I'm a big fan of these stable coins and these like, you know, I would say utility focused, uh, tokens that are coming out just to make it easier for, you know, transferring money from here to Turkey and back or whatever. >>Uh, and that's the really the first step freight FTE domain names. But what happens is when you have an NFTE domain and that's what you're using to receive payments, um, and then you realize, oh, I can also use this to log into my favorite apps. It starts building that identity piece. And so we're also building products and services to make it more like your identity. And we think that it's going to build up over time. So instead of like doing an identity network, top-down where you're like a government or a corporation say, oh, you have to have ID. Here's your password. You have to have it. We're going to do a bottoms up. We're going to give everyone on the planet, NFTE domain name, it's going to give them to the utility to make it easier to send, receive cryptocurrency. They're going to say, Hey, do you want to verify your Twitter profile? Yes. Okay, great. You test that back. Hey, you want to verify your Reddit? Yes. Instagram. Yes. Tik TOK. Yes. You want to verify your driver's license? Okay. Yeah, we can attach that back. Uh, and then what happens is you end up building up organically, uh, digital identifiers for people using these blockchain, uh, naming systems. And once they have that, they're gonna just, they're going to be able to share that information. Uh, and that's gonna lead to better experiences online for, uh, both commerce, but also just better user experiences. >>You know, every company when they web came along, first of all, everyone, poo-pooed the web ones. That was terrible, bad idea. Oh. And so unreliable. So slow, hard to find things. Web two, everyone bought a domain name for their company, but then as they added webpages, these permalinks became so long. The web page address fully qualified, you know, permalink string, they bought keywords. And then that's another layer on top. So you started to see that evolution in the web. Now it's kind of hit a ceiling here. Everyone gets their NFT. They, they started doing more things. Then it becomes much more of a use case where it's more usable, not just for one thing. Um, so we saw that movie before, so it's like a permalink permanent. Yeah. >>Yes. I mean, if we're lucky, it will be a decentralized bottoms up global identity, uh, that appreciates user privacy and allows people to opt in. And that's what we want to build. >>And the gas prices thing that's always coming. That's always an objection here that, I mean, blockchain is perfect for this because it's immutable, it's written on the chain. All good, totally secure. What about the efficiency? How do you see that evolving real quick? >>Well, so a couple of comments on efficiency. Uh, first of all, we picked domains as a first product to market because, you know, as you need to take a look and see if the technology is capable of handling what you're trying to do, uh, and for domain names, you're not updating that every day. Right? So like, if you look at traditional domain names, you only update it a couple of times per year. So, so the usage for that to set this up and configure it, you know, most people set up and configure it and then it'll have a few changes for years. First of all, the overall it's not like a game problem. Right, right, right. So, so that, that part's good. We picked a good place to start for going to market. And then the second piece is like, you're really just asking our computer, system's going to get more efficient over time. >>And if you know, the history of that has always been yes. Uh, and you know, I remember the nineties, I had a modem and it was, you know, whatever, 14 kilobits and then it was 28 and then 56, then 100. And now I have a hundred megabits up and down. Uh, and I look at blockchain systems and I don't know if anyone has a law for this yet, but throughput of blockchains is going up over time. And you know, there's, there's going to be continued improvements over this over the next decade. We need them. We're going to use all of it. Uh, and you just need to make sure you're planning a business makes sense for the current environment. Just as an example, if you had tried to launch Netflix for online streaming in 1990, you would have had a bad time because no one had bandwidth. So yeah. Some applications are going to wait to be a little bit later on in the cycle, but I actually think identity is perfectly fine to go ahead and get off the ground now. >>Yeah. The motivated parties for innovations here, I mean, a point cast failed miserably that was like the, they try to stream video over T1 lines, but back in the days, nothing. So again, we've seen those speeds double, triple on homes right now, Matt. Congratulations. Great stuff. Final tick, tock moment here. How would you summarize short in a short clip? The difference between digital identity in web two and web three, >>Uh, in, in web too, you don't get to own your own online presidents and in web three, you do get to own it. So I think if you were gonna simplify it really web three is about ownership and we're excited to give everyone on the planet a chance to own their name and choose when and where and how they want to share information about themselves. >>So now users are in charge. >>Exactly. >>They're not the product anymore. Going to be the product might as well monetize the product. And that's the data. Um, real quick thoughts just to close out the role of data in all this, your view. >>We haven't enabled users to own their data online since the beginning of the internet. And we're now starting to do that. It's going to have profound changes for how every application on the planet interacts with >>Awesome stuff, man, I take a minute to give a plug for the company. How many employees you got? What do you guys looking for for hiring, um, fundraising, give a quick, a quick commercial for what's going on, on unstoppable domains. Yeah. >>So if you haven't already check us out@ensembledomains.com, we're also on Twitter at unstoppable web, and we have a wonderful podcast as well that you should check out if you haven't already. And, uh, we are just crossed a hundred people. We've, we're growing, you know, three to five, a hundred percent year over year. Uh, we're basically hiring every position across the company right now. So if you're interested in getting into web three, even if you're coming from a traditional web two background, please reach out. Uh, we love teaching people about this new world and how you can be a part of it. >>And you're a virtual company. Do you have a little headquarters or is it all virtual? What's the situation there? >>Yeah, I actually just assumed we were a hundred percent remote and asynchronous and we're currently in five countries across the planet. Uh, mostly concentrated in the U S and EU areas, >>Rumor to maybe you can confirm or admit or deny this rumor. I heard a rumor that you have mandatory vacation policy. >>Uh, this is true. Uh, and that's because we are a team of people who like to get things done. And, but we also know that recovery is an important part of any organizations. So if you push too hard, uh, we want to remind people we're on a marathon, right? This is not a sprint. Uh, and so we want people to be with us term. Uh, we do think that this is a ten-year move. And so yeah. Do force people. We'll unplug you at the end of the year, if you have >>To ask me, so what's the consequence of, I don't think vacation. >>Yeah. We literally unplug it. You won't be able to get it. You won't be able to get into slack. Right. And that's a, that's how we regulate. >>Well, when people start having their avatars be their bot and you don't even know what you're unplugging at some point, that's where you guys come in with the NFD saying that that's not the real person. It's not the real human And FTS. Great innovation, great use case, Matt. Congratulations. Thanks for coming on and sharing the story to kick off this showcase with the cube. Thanks for sharing all that great insight. Appreciate it. >>John had a wonderful time. All right. Just the >>Cube unstoppable domains showcasing. We got great 10 great pieces of content we're dropping all today. Check them out. Stay with us for more coverage on John furrier with cube. Thanks for watching.

>>Mm. >>Amdocs is a leader in providing software and services to some key industries, like telecommunications, media and financial services. In our next session, >>we >>welcome Cedric Jay Gould, who is the head of technical product at Amdocs. And we'll learn about Amdocs modernisation journey and how it added value for their end customers. Cedric. Welcome. >>Welcome. Good. >>Thank you. So describe your modern application, your portfolio, and you know what you're delivering for customers. >>So home dogs is B s s S s players who we are providing a food digital suite for customers. Uh, our customers are communication service providers, which are have to deploy a full digital sweets customer experience. Um, we're for the full os BSS, BSS tax. So, actually, Amdocs is one of the leader in this kind of digital transformation. >>So of course you talk about this as and BS. I mean, you're talking about some really hardened, uh, stacks, right? Uh, telco industry. Uh, say what you want about it, but, boy, the phone works when you dial it. So So you've got this sort of a decades old, you know, platform that you guys have been evolving over the over the years. described this modernisation journey and and the role that couch base played. What value does this offer This modernisation offer to your organisation. And where does Couch based fit? >>Yeah, exactly the same. So that so. Basically what, uh, all solution is You know, it's a broad for you of a large number of components which have to deal with funds, uh, experience of the user and from and then dealing all the, uh, activation of the services in the network in order to deliver a solution, Uh, your services, like mobile services or communication services to, uh, Susan users. So we have a full suites, which, uh, was previously based on, you know, on technology is based on the oracle with web logic and things like that. And what we did is that we do a modernisation of, uh, this something, like, six years ago. A bit more than six years ago. We start to modernisation and transformation of our product into a creative solution. Collaborative solutions. So, uh, and when we did that, we start with Coach base as a partner, uh, to provide the nominative database. So we are actually delivery. We have a guarantee of more than 8000 people developing this product. It's a product which is used by more than 300 customers. Uh, so So it's it's real product that needs to be very flexible. That needs to address many kind of use cases from, uh, Telco or customers, which RCs PS usually till 0 to 1 telco. So we what we wanted to build is a food creative solution that can work on any cloud, then can can skill very, very easily and can address multiple use cases. Okay, And that's why, Coach Base, when we selected Coach Basit, it matched a lot of requirements and criteria as we had. And when we decided to modernise our product, we decided to work with >>you. So you had a lot of experience and and legacy with Oracle and Web logic. I'm curious just to follow up. Why didn't you stay with Oracle? You mentioned? Gotta run any cloud. You gotta be flexible. But could you could you double click on what Couch based delivered from a requirement standpoint, that was such a good fit? >>Well, there's there's a good fit with technology that such as, uh, coach basis. First it's a noise school detonates, right? So it's in terms of performance for some of the youth case that we have. It's very important to have, you know, technology which are are done and optimised for the noise secure use cases. That's the first thing. The second thing as I mentioned the scalability, the fact that you can, almost indefinitely infinitely you can increase the size of your cluster. You can have more, uh, servers and and and And this will skill, you know, very rapidly. And also what we're very interesting to have from coach bases the ability to have something which can be replicated across multiple sites. So with visual technology from coach base, which enable to build, you know, very modern architecture with deployment on multiple agents to have disaster recovery, active, active sites, you know, things like that which are very becoming like the main requirement for more customers now. >>Okay, so I'm presuming there were parts of your application portfolio that you weren't gonna touch and throw away that you had to collect or connect the new with the old. That's always, you know, you know, a challenge. I'm wondering what advice you give to an organisation. That's kind of investing in a similar path, trying to deliver the best digital experiences to customers. You know what? What would you say are the modernisation you gotta have must have, whether it's architecture, internal culture, what are some of those items? >>So so that yes, you're right. I think the integration with the legacy systems is actually, you know, very, very important topic in all domain in the domain. But we we made a very, uh, will see drastic choice or brave choice choice. When, uh, 60 years from now, when we decided to reformat to re platforms are completely or portfolio. Okay, So we we changed more than 95% of our portfolio and 95% of the portfolio today, Arklow native. Which means that they can be deployed on any cloud that actually, they are fully scalable and and and still, we did this transformation. Now, when we do the digital transformation of the, uh, customer system, then we need to integrate with legacy systems, and we need to help our customers to migrate from the legacy systems to creative solutions and doing so, it's important to have in the database domain. It's very important to have a solution which is very flexible in terms of, uh, what kind of data I can manage. And I can, as I said, skill easily, for sure. But also, it's sexual. Okay, Because when you are moving the data from a legacy system or record based or whatever to, uh, another type of, uh, database, you want to be sure that you are you can do it securely, and you're you're not, uh, compromising in any sense, Uh, in terms of security scalability, uh, etcetera. Right. So So, um, in this case, I mean, I will say And then in this opportunities journey, uh, this was very, very, very, very important component in, uh, you know, in our strategy, for all the reasons I mentioned right, it's very coordinative. It's scalable, It's secure. Uh, it's another product, uh, grade. So? So that's that's why it really is. So there's there's a chest back to you. >>You know, this notion that 90 per you really re platform 90% of your portfolio and made a cloud native. That's that's a It's a brave move because a lot of companies do that that I've talked to. They will build an abstraction layer and microservices and make that piece cloud native and then have that kind of overlay. You decided not to do that. Why is that? Was that for performance reasons? You were worried about just bringing along technical debt. I mean, that really must have been an interesting discussion internally in your company. >>Yeah, it's true. I mean, the main motivation, the main driver was business flexibility. Because now we live in a world where our customers, what they need is to be able to test the new feature quickly. And they need to be able to scale the system in a matter of hours. Okay, so we are not in a domain anymore. Where you you when you have to upgrade something, you need to take a few days. It needs to be done in a very, very quickly. And the only way to achieve those, uh, requirements business requirements is to be creative. It's to build microservices and to really realise one of those per cent of, uh, micro services architecture because this is the only way you will have the business flexibility. You will be able to have a resilient architecture. Uh, you know, you can, uh you can deploy this with full high availability across multiple zones, multiple regions and feeling that so, uh, any modern architecture today that that is competing with us, Actually, a micro services based architecture. There is no other way to achieve, uh to to to meet the requirement of the market today, and especially when five g is coming, things will become much more complex. Will become much more, uh, distributed. Uh, you cannot work anymore with the model it architecture. And again, I think the database is nowhere different. Needs to follow the same kind of architecture needs to follow the same principles. So that's that's why am I mean another another point about Yeah, >>So if I If I summarised, it sounds like your top three requirements would be flexibility, which you're getting from the cloud native and microservices piece the scale and the security. Is that right? That I get that right? The three top >>That's right. And the resilience as well. I mean the fact that now you know, with micro services architecture, if one of the system is done, he knows how to self to restart it himself. Right itself. Sorry. So So that's this kind of architecture that we built. It's an architecture which can be resilient in a sense that it can sense itself, and it can ensure full availability. And if something is going down, is not working properly, then on some kind of mechanisms will happen in order to go back to a stable state. >>Yeah. So you've got that automation in there. So you don't doesn't require the labour that it might have 10 years ago. So you're obviously embracing cloud native microservices. So you're on that jury. I'm curious. What are you doing with that? You're you're freeing up. You guys used to bring in lab coats and dig in and figure out what's wrong or restart the system. Where are you in your journey, and how are you? Sort of reallocating those resources. And where do you see that going? >>Yeah, Okay, so that's that's a very good point. Because actually, we when we build this new system, which is unable to do, you know, to self heal himself, right? Uh, actually, the question was more about how we can improve the system, even know how we can be sure that, uh, you know, issues that we we any issues which we are we are facing will not happen again. Well, not actual again. Okay. And this is a, uh, principle. Okay, Practise that we have now people are walking on automation. They're building automation around all these recovery procedures about, uh, fixing. So they're not actually digging into the application now anymore into the system, they learn how the system is walking and buildings all the right automation task to ensure that the system is constantly, constantly resilient. Alright, so that's the necessary practises organisation is now built around. You know, this kind of this approach developed computer develops being fully a geologically having sa reorganisation SRE oriented organisation. And, uh and that's the only way you know you can reach very high, uh, in terms of availability. >>So the big problem that your traditional telco customers have is the amount of data that they're servicing going through the roof and the cost per bit is sinking like that. And you have all the over the top providers coming in creating these customer experiences with modern applications and they've owned the customer data. You mentioned five g. So I'm interested in what the future of modern apps looks like for Amdocs and your customers because five G gives your traditional telco customers the ability if they can have these flexible systems that you're providing to now have better relationships with customers and actually kind of reclaim, you know, some of that that value that they've lost to a lot of competitors, your thoughts on the future. >>So first, you know, technically speaking, we we we will have two challenges. One is about data, and other one is about distribution of the work. Okay, because when we are speaking about five g, we're speaking about the age. We're speaking about the fact that an application may be located very closely to the network because it needs to be to to achieve, you know, to to deliver a very short latency, and, uh and this application can move. Okay, so you you you you will have to be able to distribute completely your your solutions. Okay. And that's why we are working closely with, uh, club providers at the US as you Google and because we we need to be sure that the applications of the systems that we are building will be able to distribute the application as close as possible to the end users. Okay, so that's that's one of the key challenges. Which means that the application is to be very possible and he'd be very scalable, and then it needs to be able to move very quickly from one place to another. That's really what is what What, what? What is happening now and what will become, uh, with five G? The other challenge is behind the communication of all these components is really the data, because now we will capture more and more that are coming from the different systems. And I'm not speaking only about the consequence the customer that are who they are, what they what they like and what they want to do, etcetera. And speaking also about, uh, monitoring that of the systems. Okay, so we will generate a lot of information and this this information needs to be traded very quickly, needs to be stored in very large data lake, and we need to have extraction and manipulation of the data very, very quickly to to give the right information to the applications. Um, in this case, okay, it's very important to have application to have databases that can as I said, skill very quickly. But also we'll be able to have very ideal city note, you know, sense that they with a certain amount of memory or sentiment of storage, you can store a lot of data. And this is where we are always, you know, checking what is the best technologies. And so far, not coach bases, technologies that we're using for for stalking, storing all the data. Because because it's it's a ratio in terms of, uh, performance on the number of data you can store, Uh is very high. Okay, so that's that's another challenge that we're addressing. Of course, God is not the only solution, but it's another another one. >>Excellent. Okay, we're gonna leave it there. Cedric, Thanks so much. A great storey and really appreciate your insights. >>You're welcome. Thank you very much. >>Okay, that's it for today. I hope you've enjoyed the application. Modernisation summit made possible by Couch Base. We shared some fresh survey data and got the perspectives of three expert analysts. We got an outstanding roadmap from Ravi Meyer. Um, who's the CEO of Couch base? And of course, we got the customer angle from Cedric. So look, Maybe you're an organisation going through a modernisation initiative. And if you're thinking about what the future of applications looks like cheque out couch. Based on the road this summer, the application modernisation summit is hitting the road traversing North America and Europe. Find out where they will be where they will be near you by visiting couch based dot com slash roadshow. Ravi is gonna be there along with other thought leaders and peers who will be sharing learnings and best practises on how to modernise now and for the future. And you'll get a chance to interact with some of those piers, something that everyone I know is looking forward to. This is Day Volonte. Thanks for joining us today. And thanks for watching the Cube. Mhm. Yeah. Mm, yeah.

(electronic music) >> Narrator: Live, from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE! Covering ServiceNOW Knowledge17. Brought to you by ServiceNOW. >> Welcome back to Orlando, everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host Jeff Frick, Link Alander is here as the Chief Information Officer at Lone Star College. Cubealom, Link, great to see you again. >> Good seeing you again too. >> Another ServiceNOW Knowledge, although, not like the other ones, I mean, things changing, we're in a different venue, we got a new leader, new topics, is it old wine, same wine new bottle, or is it all sort of new stuff? What's going on in your world? >> Well you know, it's early on in the conference to see what the changes are, and it was kind of interesting as the change transformed, I didn't make his 100 day visits, 100 customers, he had an event in Houston, I was actually out of town at the time, so I was really looking forward to going to that event. But when you think about it, you know, Frank took it to a certain level, and now, we're looking at a total different change and transformation again, to where, what is next? And when you start talking about the A.I., the predictive analytics, proactive vs. reactive, and those types of shifts, that's really what we have to have. So, yeah, it is a change. It's a significant change, and you know I liked earlier in the segment, I was listening to him and talking about the fact that, you know, where are your trusted partners at, where do you invest and where will you align your strategy to, and that makes a big difference for us. >> So from a customer standpoint, it's sounds like you're embracing that change, I mean, you know, Wall Street's been a little reticent, I mean obviously they're happy with ServiceNOW and the stock's up, but I thought Jim Cramer was going to cry when Frank Slootman told him he was leaving. And some of the analysts yesterday said, "Oh, the stock will be at 102 if Frank were still here." and so, that's fine, you know, whatever. The stock market's going to do what it does. But from a customer perspective, you seem pretty comfortable with the changes. >> You know, it's really interesting, 'cause Frank and I had a relationship that went back to Data Domain. So I'd worked with Frank in different roles and different times, so when I first heard it, I was kind of like, what's going to happen? Immediately I started looking at what happened with Pat, and I talked to a bunch of my friends at ServiceNOW, and they're like, "Oh, no, "this was probably the smoothest transition ever." You know, it's like, "Yeah I'm leaving, "and guess what, here's my successor." So it was a different approach that you don't see often in technology companies. And you think about technology right now, how disruptive everything is. I mean, what do you take the split of HP, you take EMC and Dell, and all these other shifts that are happening in the technology, everything's shaking up. This is not really shaking up, this is just a new direction, and where ServiceNOW wants to head in the future. >> You know, that's interesting. You're right, I mean, transitions in big tech are not really ever this, apparently it was pretty smooth. I mean look at EMC, for example. I mean they couldn't find a successor. I mean it was, "Well, it's not Gelsinger, "well, it's not Gould, I don't really know." So Michael Dell had to come in, a pretty good successor, I guess. So that's maybe, I dunno, maybe a testament to Frank, maybe it's the culture of ServiceNOW, but from a customer standpoint again, you're seeing huge opportunities, you mentioned machine learning. What are you doing with those types of things, and how are you applying them? >> Well, we see these are the newer opportunities. So, from the IT service management and the enterprise service management has taken us to a new direction. And when you look at the customer service platform and what can we do differently and how can we help our customers out, and I have a 100,000 students out there that are expecting good support and need to navigate educational systems, which, it doesn't matter, we're just not easy to navigate. It's not like going out shopping. We have our own challenges that are out there. So, you know as we look at the next generation we're looking at how much more automation can I put into play so that the technicians and the practitioners can actually focus on the real challenges that are out there. Because a lot of times they are dealing with small issues that, they bog them down, and they don't get to focus on the bigger direction. So that's what we see on that side. You know, predictive analytics and A.I. in education have been a big item. We've been doing predictive analytics with students trying to figure out, you know, what's their likelihood of success, and how can we intervene to help a student out. And so when you look at things in that different direction, now all of a sudden you apply it in the IT space, which machine learning, it's a lot easier than understanding human behavior. >> So talk a little more about that. I mean, I remember when we were in college, you know, the professors that would look around and bunch of you aren't going to make it. >> Now we have a dashboard that shows that, by the way. (chuckles) >> Now you've got the data. >> Red. >> So, okay, so you've had years of data you've been collecting, what kind of things can you do proactively to help students? >> Well some of the interesting things for us, so you know, in our industry, from the community college perspective we're very dynamic. We can address change in the industry, needs of the community, so we're able to introduce programs and activities very quickly. Now when it comes down to students, you're sitting here looking at them going, okay, why are we losing these students? Why are students leaving us early? Why are they not completing? And, it was really interesting when we ran the data out, and we started seeing that it was our high achievers that were leaving us early. So actually our chancellor at the time really thought about this a lot, and looked at some different pieces of the data, and boosted our honors college, which then improved our retention of these 3.3, 3.4 GPA students. On the other spectrum we were all thinking, okay, well we need to focus on, where's that other student at, how do we save that student? And they've always had those interventions. So now they're enhanced. Now you have the opportunity for a dean or a chair to say, okay if I reach this one little group of students, maybe I can make a difference in their lives and their careers. So they're able to look at the data, look at the data sets, and then actually just reach out and touch 'em. And see what they can make a difference of. >> I wonder if we can talk a little bit about some of the practical things about ServiceNOW generally and IT service management, when we first, our first Knowledge was in 2013 and Jeff and I were talking in our open, when we talked to customers about, well, did you adopt a single CMDB? Have you adopted aggressively a service catalog? A lot of times the answer was, "Well, kind of." But it kind of gets political, we have our own little silo, but not across the organization. That seems to have changed. What was your experience in that regard, and how about, can you share with us what you're seeing with your peers with regard to those two items and then we can talk a little bit further. >> Okay, sure, you know, from the start we actually went all in. We're long term customer, late 2009, 2010, we adopted ServiceNOW, and we immediately looked at it as IT service management. How do we transform the way we do business and what do we do? So the service catalog was very basic at first, now our service catalog is pretty amazing. Our knowledge bases were primitive, now customer service, they can address their items. So that made a significant enhancement but really what it brought forward is our enterprise service management. So for example, while I was waiting here, I was actually approving a legal certification for a contract I have going across in ServiceNOW. So it's really handy, I'm sitting in a conference, and I have a legal matter to deal with, and a couple clicks and I'm taken care of. The same goes now for our HR side. So HR adopted in two years ago now, and you're seeing that workflow, all the power of the workflow coming in to help employees out. We've got a long way to go to get to that, whatever you want to consider utopia of service management is, but we're far along that journey. And we're just constantly looking for new ways to improve that. From the peers' perspective it's also very interesting, so I talk to, I deal with a lot of our peers, especially in the state of Texas, but then also nationally in different groups, and their movements are a little slower in the process because of that decentralization where from our perspective we're 100% centralized, so it's a lot easier to implement and not have those verticals to knock down. And they're knocking IT verticals down, they're not knocking other verticals down. So, it's a little more challenging, but I've seen some pretty impressive successes. Even in those areas where they have different verticals of IT across their organization, they've done a phenomenal job about bringing them into the fold and trying to consolidate those services and show those services better to the customer. The consumerization part is the harder part. It's trying to deliver services now like consumer IT but still maintaining that enterprise level. And that's probably the biggest challenges we're facing right now, is trying to create that consumer look and feel. >> Is that a UX challenge that ServiceNOW needs to address, or is that something that you guys have control over? >> Well, actually they've done a great job, as far as changing the dynamics of how things are working, so they've done a great job there, it's more on our perspective of using a customer-centric approach and looking at how does our customer view these services, what happens, how do they engage those services? It's very similar when we're dealing with students and we're trying to understand how they use our systems. Well they have their own way, we know how they're supposed to be used, but they have their own way they use the system. And so it's looking for that customer-centric approach, it's trying to understand their behaviors and work from those directions. >> And how much of that do you do with good old-fashioned sitting down and watching people interact with the application? I mean, that was a great thing that LinkedIn, or excuse me, Intuit used to always do with their early QuickBook days, right, a lot of just sit down and watch people interact with the application versus using machine learning and using kind of more aggregated data with your, like you said your huge client set to start to figure out how they're actually engaging with the application. >> It's really a combination of both, it really is. I mean, one of the things is, doesn't matter what the machine can tell us, they can give us a pattern and a history, but we don't understand the why sometimes. Why, what did we do? We saw that recently as we were reviewing some of our registration processes. And we were watching it because we use another product that monitors customer experience on the registration cycle. And we were watching something strange and we couldn't figure out why they were going in a certain direction. We looked at it, we didn't see it, but the students did, and there was actually a navigation on that page that sent them in a different direction, it was never meant to be there to do. It was for certain situations, not all situations. So you have to take a combination. You need the data from the machine, the machines can tell you all kinds of patterns on what's happening, but you do need that human part. That's also where IT, when you start talking about the C-Suite and having those discussions, that's where IT always failed, you know, we always talk ones and zeroes, everybody else is trying to have a conversation. So now all of a sudden it's about having that conversation. How can we talk about, here are the challenges, here's what you see, here's what you'd like to do, and how do we address that and move forward with it? So that makes a difference. >> It's just funny, the impact of again, a registration, what feels from the outside like a very mundane process, and yet, it impacts every single person that you guys do business with. It's their direct connection into your much bigger process, and education and professors, and the resources of the school. >> It's everything. >> It's everything. And that, from the outside looking in, someone might think, "Oh, registration, you know, "it's simple, we've got that defined. "We've been doing that for years." But it's not at all. >> And it has to change and it has to adapt quickly. So we're going through a process now where we're really re-evaluating the entire cycle because higher education, we already throw all these other things out at you, you know, what's a bursar, do you know what a bursar is? (Dave and Jeff laugh) How do you understand that? One of you take care of this problem. And then you deal with federal government changes, the state, you throw all those complexities in there, and now we're going through a process where we're, we've already started through some of the initial prospecting parts, but how do we simplify it even further? How do we knock down those barriers, or at least make it easier transitioning. We've done a lot of great stuff in the past. And we use a combination of things to get there, it's not just one set of tools that solves a problem. It's a bit of everything. >> And then the, sort of, post, coming out of Y2K, there was a lot of discussion, and then when the market crashed, there was a lot of discussion about IT value. You know, Nick Carr wrote the thing, Does IT Matter, et cetera, et cetera. What's the value discussion like today? I'm particularly interested as somebody who's implemented ServiceNOW, with the single CMDB, and the service catalog that's evolved. What is the value discussion that you have with your so-called line of business folks at the college? >> Well, the key to it is that we always act as an enabler. You know, we're there to support them and help them walk through the business process changes, look at things from different directions. They don't come to us and say, we want this tool, they come to say, this is my business problem. Now help us figure out how to solve that. That's where the IT value comes in. Yes, I have a bunch of very experienced practitioners. We're constantly understanding what trends and changes are happening. But what's the right tool for that problem? And by doing it this way, one, we're understanding the business problems we're trying to solve, but it also gives us a, it improves our agility, which you've heard me talk about probably a dozen times about this agility because that's what it is. Old IT was locked step stuck, and you were always there. Now when you start talking about agility and the ability to address business needs quickly, but yet still keep that same trajectory. I have legacy systems, I have to have those. But what can I put on the top of that, items like platforms as a service, what can I address things differently on? Probably one of the better ones recently we had a faculty recruiting team going out and they wanted, all of a sudden they were like doing Excel spreadsheet, okay, I'm interested in teaching for you in the future, I'm taking this and they're doing an Excel spreadsheet, and we sat down with them and I was in one of their big meetings and I'm like, okay, would you like to do that on an iPad? >> Dave: There's a better way. >> There's an easier way to skin this cat. So we actually turned around, we built a nice app, and ServiceNOW just to collect, hey, I'm taking classes at this university, I'm interested in teaching for Lone Star in the future, I'm in Mathematics, now that same group can turn around and send out a notification every time we're hiring that says, oh hey, we're hiring right now, we're hiring Math professors, so if you're interested, come on and join us. >> So you're observing how the business is approaching solving problems and identifying areas where you can use, for example, in this case, ServiceNOW, to dramatically improve their experience, is that fair? >> I mean, that's the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is, what is the problem, let us work on the tool, and then make sure we align things directly. 'Cause that's the harder part. I feel I failed my job if they come into me and say, "You know what, I want you to buy this, "because this is going to solve my problem." Well what's your problem? >> Well, what's interesting is, you know, you've been in IT a long time, and I've observed a lot of interactions between business and IT, when the business people try to tell IT people how to do it, it never works. But what you're saying is, you have enough visibility on the business and understanding of how technology can able, you can actually tell the business people, "Hey, there's a better way." >> That's the perfect way to approach it is, what is the best way we can do this for you. Whether that is in our legacy ERP, and I mean ours is not really a legacy, but in our ERP, or do I put this in the ServiceNOW platform, or do I put it in another platform? And how do we address that problem quickly and easily? >> How about another question, I always like to pick your brain, 'cause you know this stuff so well. How about custom mods? We've probably talked about this before a little bit, but you sort of have a philosophy of trying to avoid them at all costs? >> Absolutely. >> And you've succeeded at that? >> Ah yes, yeah. On the ERP side, we're still less than 10% customized on that platform, and you know, we've held that line. Because we can address the business problems, there's ways to address it without doing all these massive customizations. Sometimes it's just about really understanding the true business process. It's walking back to the old days of understanding what the process is, and then how does the technology adapt to that process. There's things that you can switch on and switch off that is not a custom mod, so your upgrades will process faster. Then there's other times when, like you said, we come in and we could have gone with that recruiting team, we could have gone and put it in our ERP, but we're like, well why? We're just picking up context, we're looking for these things. We need something quick and agile. So ServiceNOW was the perfect jump for it. A quick app. >> And are they coming to you earlier and earlier in the process? Do they get it, that you are an enabler of problem-solving, not necessarily and implementer of what I think I need? >> Absolutely. I mean, and the team we have is phenomenal, so, you know every once in a while, they're like, "Hey, we need this." Well, do you really need that or what do you need? And then we start that conversation. But it comes down to, it's not just myself. And I think that's really the key for any IT leader, is it's about the whole team's perspective. It's not going in with a technology solution as much as it is trying to understand the business problem first. Work through the technology solution. Find out what adapts and what will meet their needs. >> So single CMDB, adopt service catalog, avoid custom mods, anything else you'd tell folks that are just getting started with ServiceNOW? >> I mean, always be proactive. You're always out there trying to have that discussion with people to understand that you're there to help them and there to move it forward, it's just engage in that conversation. And that's the hard part, sometimes IT people don't want to jump into that conversation. What about that business side? I'm lucky, I have a passion for higher ed. This is why I've stayed in higher ed. To me, I get the reward this week when I get back from Orlando, it's graduation time, and you get to see your success walk across the stage. And each one of those students, whether they're moving on to another degree, whether they're moving into the workforce, I mean, that's something that you get out of this that is so impressive when in my field. So the same goes for how you treat your customers. Your employees, or your students, it's about how they feel at the end of the day. Did I do my best to help them out? >> That's got to be really gratifying. You know, in this day of man versus machine, the answer is education, so Link congratulations, and thanks very much for coming back on theCUBE. I love the conversations, we always ask you anything we want, but it's good to see you again. >> Good seeing you. >> Good seeing you Link. >> Alright, keep right there everybody, we'll be right back with our next guest, this is theCUBE, we're live from Knowledge17, #Know17. We'll be right back. (electronic music)

the cube at emc world 2014 is brought to you by emc redefine b.c.e innovating the world's first converged infrastructure solution for private cloud computing brocade say goodbye to the status quo and hello to rokade okay welcome back everyone here live in las vegas for emc world 20 at 2040 i was going to say vmworld because you're a new CEO of vm role here I'm John for a bounder still hanging with Dave vellante my co-host he would Pat Gelsinger cube alumni friend of the cube it's our fifth season we opened up at emc world 2010 in Boston Pat was on the cube then set a great time ever since pad welcome back to the cube just got off the plane from Istanbul how do you feel I feel a little bit yet like that's been a long long day okay we'll get a lot of information out of you did so first time I ask you about the D SSD acquisition I'll see you you known Andy for a while what does that all mean for the industry software at the center of the value proposition is is the hardware and compute going to be this abundant resource that no one ever sees what's your take on all this well i think you know first I think of Andy is like the Rembrandt of hardware design right you know he's just done all the amazing system design work in the industry for many years he's been a friend for many years and just great great respect for him individually obviously d SSD is doing some great work you know I think it's going to prove to be a critical technology in the entire converged infrastructure space and clearly this high-performance flash capacity there's going to be a game changer for what you're able to do in the rack and obviously with bills participation from sa p they see it as a very very critical capability for in-memory environments and some of the data analytics that they want to do so i think this is a a bold move by emc i was a fully supportive of it and i think it's going to yield very very powerful hardware for software to take advantage they bring you in on a deal like that and consult with you is it is it it's about hey Pat we need your advice I saw the board meetings I sit in the M&A meetings and I'm an Oni and so for decades okay yeah so it wasn't just a cursory glance a little bit more than it's been in the works for a while so we've been fine we'll get more information we'll be digging for home sources I'll talk about cloud I've seen last time we're at vmworld we talked about the cloud I said hey is hybrid cloud really going to be the destination you like what are you talking about it's going to be the destination it is the hybrid cloud is the way here at ian's emc world you hear joe tucci up there even using the words AWS disruption amazon is clearly on the radar public cloud is still it is out there as a viable alternative and the words like reinvent which is the conference name for amazon redefine is this conference it's ok to have amazon out there but hybrids cloud is still the deal with containers and what not I mean has a hybrid cloud narrative change for you amplified straight narrow foot pedal to the metal ya know we are absolutely convinced hybrid is the answer and maybe start with a few facts I mean it's always good to ground ourselves in a little bit of data and today on premise is ninety two percent of IT spent so eight percent is in the cloud whereas sales pass so you sort of say wow great and predictions would say by 2020 it's seventy-five percent on-premise the twenty-five percent in the public cloud so you look at that and say boy you know even just from the spin perspective it's going to be hybrid and then you look at facts like security privacy governance s la's liability cost performance all of those things will keep people on premise so it's clearly a hybrid world right where it is the on and off premise and we've clearly seen that as we've laid out this positioning of hybrid the industry is following us we're seeing amazon talk about we're seeing Microsoft talk about or seeing google talk about it all the other big cloud players are saying yo yo VMware got it right hybrid is the answer it seems they all the territory is being claimed now it's like we almost seen in almost not bubble bursts are you seeing box pull there s one obviously their economic of buying customers isn't working so I see that the pullback for they're you're seeing some other companies get massive valuations that aren't publicly traded yeah there's really kind of know really market there and then other companies in the flash marker fusion-io by the memory kind of sub that wasted well below but the container technology so I got to ask you about some of the new stuff that you seeing one valuations and also the new containers we heard da cars pretty hot right now what do you make sense of the containers in particular well on the first of the valuations I mean clearly the Pease of these very high growth you know early stage not money-making companies were just out of control and I have comment on that before at the Wall Street Journal CIO event that they were just way out of range and it's good to see those coming into more reasonable ranges now and I think that will wash through the entire industry because there was this mini bubble of you know just crazy Pease you know and you know with respect to docker and some of the other container technologies that clearly is you know enthusiasm around some of the lightweight stateless mechanisms but what I'll point out is that there have been different container approaches over the last 30 years and the only one that has had sustained architectural influence and investment has been the vm and our effort is continuing to pound the overhead continue to add value security networking management you know all the things that we've been able to build around that's idea of the vm container and of course if people are really you know see lightweight containers is valuable but we'll stick a bunch of them in a vm i mean it's just another management model for a lightweight deployment of stateless apps so John I've been thinking about you know Joe's waves right and we think okay with this next wave that we're in what's different about this way you've laid out a 50 billion dollar tam you just talked about how much of that the public clouds going to get I wonder if we could make an observation to get your feedback on it the economics of cloud they start to look so you've got software economics ninety percent gross margins hardware you know the economics at volume the marginal economics are talking about you know aren't as attractive but they're still good and then services is negative you know but diseconomies of scale if you will it seems like in the cloud that online cloud services are now taking shape the same way software is so at volume you're getting software like economics so the question is how does VMware and VMware you know cloud vcloud hybrid service get to that scale and that volume so that you can participate in that so first of all is it is it a reasonable premise to note and can you get to that scale and how do you get to that scale yeah and you know you'll see a little bit of my keynote tomorrow I'll talk about this a little bit more one is you know we're investing we're growing very rapidly as we expand the number of presences in the u.s. you know second we're very aggressively partnering and we announced their first partnership with savvis you'll see us announce other partnerships like that that we're going to leverage their capital as well right and who invests the most in capital of any industry in the room service providers all right they blow away everybody else so partnering with them the other view of that would be with vGHS is is that we also have our bspp program where you know i'll give some of the stats in the keynote tomorrow but we have an overwhelming right Brett for those vs PP partners that already has us very much at scale as one of the largest clouds not just what we do but through this broad range of partnerships that we form so overall you know we have a very powerful strategy when you add up all of those and given our business model of software and services you know it's very unique and combine that with these statistics I was giving you up on and off-premise and the private cloud you have 40 million VMs 500,000 customers you know we bring a lot to the table once all about a AirWatch so big acquisition the Federation helped a little bit o financing that's absurd yet right so talk about the importance of air watch you know where it fits into the end-user computing strategy and and what gives you excitement about air watch well you know I think one is in the whole end-user computing space you know two years ago people viewed it like VMware had a hobby you know hey we're selling these fear and a you know growing some of this yeah yeah well and you know hiring Sanjay rebuilding the leadership team investing in our end user computing sales force and now the air watch acquisition everybody realizes this ain't a hobby anymore we are taking the space very very seriously and really redefining the industry quite rapidly with the breadth of what we've done with horizon six plus the inorganic move with air watch you know we are here to win in this space and taking share substantially from Citrix and others in the category yo secondly and as part of the whole secular shift not just the cloud but it's the mobile cloud era so it's to redefine and deliver that PC experience but it's also uniquely right to enable the secure managed experience for all the mobile devices as well that's where AirWatch is clearly you know tearing up the track and you know we believe it's separating from the rest of the industry of players as that leader and really gives us the unrivaled portfolio of assets now I talked about the obviously the compute trend is moving to the data center you're seeing the commoditization now the data centers want to do the same way you talk about that publicly so with the software at the software-defined enterprises joe tucci calls we've called the sava define data center how does that change from your standpoint from a focus standpoint because you mentioned you got AirWatch is no longer a hobby you're building a you know business got a tam expansion strategy aggressively investing you have an ecosystem that you've kind of had from your hobby days now you're kind of nurturing it and expanding it what is the focus and from a software-defined perspective what is that focus specifically and how do you keep your troops marching to the cadence of that focus yeah we laid out our three areas for VMware over a year ago we said we're going to do three things software-defined data center virtualized the whole data center second do the hybrid cloud this on and off-premise and then go from the data center to the device pcs and mobile devices you know with what we've done we have all the pieces in place now the acquisitions are all in place the execution and that consistency that we've laid out now for almost a year and a half you know has really resonated both internally to my teams you know to our sales teams through our customers and our partners as well and they get it and you know that consistency has really gotten us more and more momentum we're seeing all of those limits you know really firing on all cylinders at this point so I saw the news that Gould is no longer involved kind of he was kind of cuz he's now the CEO of e mc2 you're the free captain of VMware and the Federation of the ship what is that like for you now and what are you tapping into the Federation what is pure VMware can you kind of square that off in terms of Aussie VMware what are you tap to the Federation what do you have available to you sure sure and you know with the Federation perspective you know we got a lot of benefit from I will say you know the layer that emc provides you know I call up Joe we have a shareholders meeting right yoyo cage oh yeah I'm okay good done shareholders really finish I mean yo some of those things are just elegant definitely right you know we can get things done by John date and at the same time yeah we're accountable to the street for all the financial metrics all the things that you want to be accountable to public shareholders for you know we also get the benefit like you saw an air watch your the cash position we're better aligning ourselves and global accounts were both of us our prep presence so we get the leverage of both sales teams the capacity that we have you're seeing some of the solutions work that we're doing be pivotal assets recently right you know moving things around to you know best position things for the different players as customers or seeing that you know to line those assets between it between us and also very very clearly saying okay you know here are the areas and i'll hit on this in my keynote tomorrow right this is how the vmware assets work with the emc assets and we're going to leverage each other as we go forward but as we say you know the Federation motto is strategically aligned right you know while remain you know loosely coupled so continuing to be able to go partner right with others in the industry to facilitate that flexible ecosystem I want to ask you about Silicon Valley right so obviously you have a great campus VMware means one of the most beautiful campuses in Silicon Valley well done it's fits into the hillside there my favorite areas but as you guys go global Silicon Valley's also going global and there's also kind of like a let's say bubble ish environment out there right now evaluation we just talked about control Silicon Valley's changing what's your take of the currents data Silicon Valley in terms of the innovation I know you're going to be talking with Stanford University and Mark injuries and coming up on a panel has it changed over the past few years and it does it still have that innovation and visit is it bringing it back Alan's of cycles change which you're taken so that well we're going to have a nice campus opening you know beautiful VMware a campus we're gonna have a little party yes I don't know this is the cube invited okay thanks i hope so yes so we're going to be the ribbon cutting ceremony ins and that's going to be great and mark is going to be there john hennessy my thesis advisor now the president of Stanford is going to be there Joe the board so we're gonna have a great event talking about that exact question right and really talking about the future of the valley unquestionably today it remains the hottest bed of innovation anywhere in the world but I think you always look at that and say you know where the recipe is still there as you look to the future and you know competition for labor is intense you know tax rates you know people move out of the valley because of justification and San Francisco big discussion yeah right you know toyota just moved to texas I mean there's always this you know you know do you still have that recipe right nowhere else has even close to the valley and that today race you that in your travels oh absolutely absolutely but every place in the world says I want to be like the valley right every place in the world is saying what do I need to do to create that same recipe you know whether that's bangalore or whether that's beijing or shenzhen right or whether that's a israel or you know many spots in the world well Silicon Valley export that knowledge and is that is that a good thing you know I don't think silicon but you know knowledge ideas right you know this is bubbling cauldron but there's something special about the valley that it's been able to maintain now for you know three decades and it doesn't look like it's coming to an end hey Chuck house is pretty excited about v san are you as excited oh very excited about these why what why you so excited what does it all mean well you know if you're a V admin right which you know is the heart of our customer base you say check find me local disk check provision local disk well I've just done storage right it's powerful it is you know amazingly simple and gives great performance and it redefines the hot edge right for you know via for virtual storage a new tier of storage so we're very excited about it certainly doesn't replace all of storage but it gives a new cheer a new capacity that for a virtual admin is just perfect is that new tier incremental I mean must replace some storage of sexually it's right you know I mean the good news is storage continues to grow right you know it's one of the right the areas of IT that just continues to grow as capacity grows an application demands take and I'm of course there's going to be some trade-offs to the some places and we do see lower capacity lower end of the market test dead some vb i use cases dr use cases where hey people might trade it off versus other all tournaments good news for you MC obviously they're mostly up market right is where their strength is but so we're very excited about be San and really see it as a critical new component of the vmware family and we stream i/o acquisition you made seems to be working out okay you happy about that yeah yeah nothing's been tons of time on extreme I oh these days but you made that that was all a lot of the acquisitions they did at the MC we're doing just fine hey you know and I cheer my team on back there when I meet it was like huh why did that would slip so that's not what the JC we were talking earlier the dream team is now kind of spread thin running their own little ships if you will in the Federation but back when 2010 we started doing the cube it was all kind of under one roof and we kind of said hey you got to get the meat on the bone we talked about in the queue hey the product portfolio is in transition you talk about some of the acquisitions looking back what are you most proud of for the team not just yourself but the group what you guys made some of those calls that might have been on the fence what was some of the highlights you look back and then where you are today well you think about some of the key decisions that we made and you know we did green pump that's now in the center of a pivotal now we did I salon that's performed extremely well we have done the data domain and clearly the whole back up space is performed very well we've also laid some of the seeds for the future right like extreme i/o like Viper were done when I was there so all these things you don't it's done well EMC gained significant share since I joined and they have the tools to really be positioned to help go through this next phase of the transition and obviously under David and his team's a leadership you know the industry remains in transition and that's still affecting EMC and they're having to you know carefully navigate that next phase and I think you've heard a lot from him today we love pulling the sound bites out I have a quote here 430 two days ago from you but I want to don't talk about that now but the quote we had on the cube you said is that if you don't get out from that next wave you'll be driftwood Joe Tucci said today if you don't take an offensive approach with this platform you're going to wither away so let's talk about that getting out in front that next wave in your mind share it the folks out there in your world words why at this point in time so important from an industry perspective you seen in movies before you've seen the massive inflection points you've seen Moore's Law at full tilt you know try to compare where we are today from irrelevance and making sense of the excitement and controversy opportunity yeah well we are as we would say as we're going that you know from client server to mobile cloud right this will be tectonic shifts and write the amount that's going to shift to cloud the amount that's going to shift away from PCs to mobile devices in the industry and all the vendors that have their value propositions tied to a hardware defined approach guess what yeah that's going to be a secular decline where people are going to be competing for a premise based the revenue that way into the mime ironmen that's going to be flat to down right and there's going to be no possibility of growth and you look at what's happened right you know consecutive quarters at IBM for instance boy you know they're feeling the pain right of this transition and the cloud transition it's barely underway right mobile is just scratching the surface yeah you know so these trends are just about to get started you know the analogy I'll give them my keynote tomorrow is 1989 and we're Digital Equipment Corporation and over the next seven years guess what right the entire business is going to shift that guessing always great to have you on the cube just any final parting words about what you're going to work on this week some things you're highlighting customer events us you keynote what do you expect to see here at emc world this week well you know I always see OEMC role is a great place and you know just feel incredibly embraced and our partners at emc and just happy that they give me the opportunity to address the audience here that's always a great joy and it is this period of extraordinary transition and everybody here right as the conference's has to redefine themselves on the other side of these tectonic shifts that are underway and EMC is you know doing that and there you know to all of their partners and customers saying here's what you need to do to go with us event in August right around the corner fat thank you inside of you when he finds one of my closest friends off we love talking with you and we'll see you at your event we're going to be actually attending the ribbon-cutting ceremony I was talking to the folks but getting the cube they're going back and forth but we'll get it done Pat Gessling you inside the cube the CEO VMware friend of the cube would love having you on be right back after this short break Pat glad to see you're like I could see it you