(upbeat music) >> Hello, and welcome to this Cube conversation. I'm Dave Nicholson, and this is part of our continuing coverage of Google Cloud Next 2021. We have a very interesting subject to discuss. I have two special guests from Google to join me in a conversation about the financial services space. I'm joined by Yolande Piazza, vice president of financial services sales for Google Cloud and Zac Mauf, managing director for global financial services solutions for Google Cloud. Yolande and Zac, welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you for having us. Looking forward to it. >> Well it's great to have you here. You know, financial services is really an interesting area when you talk about cloud because I'm sure you both remember a time, not that long ago, when we could ask a financial services organization, what their plans for cloud or what their cloud strategy was, and they would give a one word answer and that answer was, never. (laughing) So Zac, let's start out with you, what has changed? Are you and Yolande going to tell us that in fact, financial services organizations are leveraging cloud now? >> Yeah, it's a very exciting time to be in the cloud space, in financial services, because you're exactly right David. People are starting to make the transition to cloud in a real way. And a lot has gone into that, as you know, it's a highly regulated space and so there were a lot of legitimate reasons around getting kind of the regulatory frameworks in place and making sure that the risk and compliance pieces were addressed. But then there was also, as you know, technology is a major backbone for financial services. And so there's also this question of, how do we transition? And a lot of work and time has gone into moving workloads, thinking about like, what is the sort of the right migration strategy for you to get from the current situation to a more cloud native world. And to your point, we're really early, we're really early, but we're very excited and we've been investing heavily on our side to get those foundational pieces in place. But we also realized that we have to think about what are the business cases, that we want to build on top of cloud. It's not just a kind of IT modernization, which is a big part of the story, but the other part of the story is once you get all of this, technology onto the cloud platform, there are things that you can do that you couldn't do in on-prem situations. And a lot of that for us is around the data, AI and ML space. And we really see that being the way to really unlock huge amounts of value. Both of them require massive amounts of compute and breaking down all of these silos that have really developed over time within financial institutions. And really moving to the cloud is the way to unlock a lot of that. So we're really excited about a lot of those use cases that are starting to come to life now. >> Yeah. So I want to dig a little deeper on some of that Zac, but before we do, Yolande make this real for us. Give me some examples of actual real-life financial services organizations and what they're doing with Google Cloud now. >> Yeah, absolutely. And I think we're really proud to be able to announce, a number of new partnerships across the industry. You think about Wells Fargo, you think about Scotia Bank, you think about what we're doing with HSBC. They really are starting to bring to life and recognized that it's not just internally, you have to look at that transformation to cloud, it's really, how do you use this platform to help you go on the journey with your customers? I think a move to a multi-cloud common approach for our customers and our clients, is exactly what we need to be focused on. And the other- >> Hold on, hold on, Yolande. I'm sorry. Did the Google person just say multi-cloud? Because multi- cloud doesn't sound like, only Google Cloud to me. Can you- >> No, and I think Wells, absolutely, and I think Wells announced it's taking a multi-cloud approach to its digital infrastructure strategy, leveraging both Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. And the reason being is they've openly communicated that a locked in and preparatory systems, isn't the way to go for them. They want that open flexibility. They want the ability to be able to move workloads across the different industries. And I think it's well known that this aligns completely with our principles and at Google we've always said that we support open multi and hybrid cloud strategies because we believe our customers should be able to run what they want, where they want it. And that was exactly the philosophy that that Wells took. So, and if you look at what they were trying to do is they're looking to be able to serve their customers in a different way. I think that it's true now that customers are looking for personalized services, instant gratification, the ability to interact, where they want and when they want. So we're walking with the Wells teams to really bring to life through AI, our complex AI and data solutions to really enable them to move at speed and serve their customers in a rapidly changing world. >> So Yolande, part of the move to cloud includes the fact that we're all human beings and perception can become reality. Issues like security, which are always at the forefront of someone's mind in financial services space, there is the perception, and then there is the reality. Walk us through today where perception is in the financial services space. And then Zac, I'm going to go back to you to tell us what's the reality. And is there a disconnect? Because often technology in this space has been ahead of people's comfort level for rational reasons. So Yolande, can you talk about from a perception perspective where people are. >> So I have to tell you, we are having conversations with both the incumbents and traditional organizations, as well as, the uprising, the fintechs, and the neobanks around how does technology really unlock and unleash a new business model. So we're talking about things like how does technology and help them grow that organization. How does it take out costs in that organization? How do you use all cloud platform to think about managing risks, whether that's operational, whether it's reputational, industry or regulatory type risk? And then how do we enable our partners and our customers to be able to move at speed? So all of those conversations are now on the table. And I think a big shift from when Zac and I both were sitting on the other side of the table in those financial services industries is a recognition that this couldn't and shouldn't be done alone, that it's going to require a partnership, it's going to require, really shifting to put technology at the forefront. And I think when you talk about perception, I would say a couple of years ago, I think it was more of a perception that they were really technology companies. And I think now we're really starting to see the shifts that these are technology companies serving their customers in a banking environment. >> So Zac, can you give us some- Yeah. Yeah. Zac, can you give us some examples of how that plays out from a solutions perspective? What are some of the things that you and Yolande are having conversations with these folks in? >> Yeah. - I mean, absolutely. I think there's three major trends that we're seeing, where I think we can bring the power of sort of the Google ecosystem to really change business models and change how things are done. The first is really this massive change that's been happening for like over 10 years now, but it's really this change in customers, expecting financial institutions to meet them where they are. And that started with information being delivered to them through mobile devices and online banking. And then it went to payments, and now it's going into lending and it's going into insurance. But it changes the way that financial services companies need to operate because now they need to figure out how to deliver everything digitally, embedded into the experience that their customers are having in all of these digital ecosystems. So there's lot that we're doing in that space. The second is really around modernizing the technology environment. There is still a massive amount of paper in these organizations. Most of it has been transferred to digital paper, but the workflows and the processes that are still needing to be streamlined. And there's a lot that we can do with our AI model and technology to be able to basically take unstructured data and create structured data. Thank Google Photos, you can now search for your photo library and find, pictures of you on bridges. The same thing we can now do with documents and routine interactions with chat bot. People are expecting 24/7 service. And a lot of people want to be able to interact through chat versus through voice. And the final part of this that we're seeing a lot of use cases in is in the kind of risk and regulatory space. Coming out of the financial crisis, there was this need to massively upgrade everybody's data capabilities and control and risk environments, because so much it was very manual, and a lot of the data to do a lot of the risk and control work was kind of glued together. So everybody went off and built data lakes and figured out that that was actually a really difficult challenge and they quickly became data swamps. And so really how do you unlock the value of those things? Those three use cases, and there's lots of things underneath those, are areas that we're working with customers on. And it's, like you said, it's really exciting because the perception has changed. The perception has changed that now cloud is the sort of future, and everybody is kind of now realized they have to figure out how to engage. And I think a lot of the partnership things that Yolande was talking about is absolutely true. They're looking for a strategic relationship versus a vendor relationship, and those are really exciting changes for us. >> So I just imagined a scenario where a Dave, Zac, and Yolande are at the cloud pub talking after hours over a few pints, and Dave says, "Wow, you know, 75%, 80% of IT is still on-premises." And Yolande looks at me and says, "On-premises? We're dealing with on-paper still." Such as the life of a financial services expert in this space. So Yolande, what would you consider sort of the final frontier or at least the next frontier in cloud meets financial services? What are the challenges that we have yet to overcome? I just mentioned, the large amount of stuff that's still on premises, the friction associated with legacy applications and infrastructure. That's one whole thing. But is there one thing that in a calendar year, 2022, if you guys could solve this for the financial services industry, what would it be? And if I'm putting you on the spot, so be it. >> No, no. I'm not going to hold it to just one thing. I think the shift, I think the shift to personalization and how does the power of, you know, AI and machine learning really start to change and get into way more predictive technologies. As I mentioned, customers want to be a segmentation of one. They don't want to be forced fit into the traditional banking ecosystems. There's a reason that customers have on average 14 different financial services apps on their phones. Yep. Less than three to 5% of their screen time is actually spent on them. It's because something is missing in that environment. There's a reason that you could go to any social media site and in no time at all, be able to pull up over 200 different communities of people trying to find out financial services information in layman's terms that is relevant to them. So the ability and where we're really doubling down is on this personalization. Being way more predictive, understanding where a customer is on their journey and being able to meet them at that point, whether that's the bright offers, whether that's recognizing, to Zac's point, that they've come in on one channel but they now want to switch to another channel. And how do they not have to start again every time? So these are some of the basics things, so we really doubled down on how do we start to solve in those areas. I think also the shift, I think in many cases, especially in the risk space, it's been very much what I would call, a people process technology approach, start to imagine what happens if you turn that around and think about how technology can help you be more predictive internally in your business and create better outcomes. So I think there's so many areas of opportunities, and what's really exciting is we're not restricted, we're having conversations that are titled, the art of the possible, or the future of, or help us come in and reinvent. So I think you're going to see a lot of shift probably in the next 12 to 18 months, I would say, and the capabilities and the ability to service the customer differently and meet them on their journey. >> Well, it sounds like the life of a cloud financial services person is much more pleasurable than back when it consisted of primarily running into brick walls constantly. This conversation five or 10 years ago would have been more like, please trust us, please. Just give us a shot. >> I think Zac and I both reminisce that we couldn't have joined at a more exciting time. It's the locker or whatever you want to call it, but it is a completely different world and the conversations are fun and refreshing, and you can really start to see how we have the ability to partner to change the landscape, across all of the different financial services industries. And I think that's what keeps Zac and I going every day. >> And you said earlier that you alluded to the idea that you used to be on the other side of the table, in other words, in the financial services industry on the customer side. So you pick the right time to come across. >> Without a doubt, without a doubt. Yes. >> Well, with that, I want to thank both of you for joining me today. This is really fascinating. Financial services is something that touches all of us individually in our daily lives. It's something that everyone can relate to at some level. And it also represents, that tip of the spear, the cutting edge of cloud. So very interesting. Thank you both again, pleasure to meet you both. Next time, hopefully it will be in-person and we can compare our steps that we've taken during the conference. With that I'll sign off. This has been a fantastic Cube conversation, part of our continuing coverage of Google Cloud Next 2021. I'm Dave Nicholson, Thanks again for joining us. >> Thank you. (upbeat music)

(bright upbeat music) >> Welcome to theCUBE. Welcome to this CUBE Conversation. I'm Dave Nicholson and with me today, I have Jen Bennett, technical director out of the office of the CTO at Google. Jen, welcome to theCUBE. How are you? >> I'm doing great, Dave. Thanks for having me. >> It's great to have you here. Now, some estimates have 1% of global electrical production. So all of the electricity produced globally, 1% of that is being used currently for the category we call ICT or Information Communications Technology. By 2030, the estimate is that if that goes unchecked, unmeasured, unmitigated, we could be at between 8% and 20% consumption of all of the electricity generated globally, at that point. The question I have for you to start this off is, is that sustainable and if not, what are you and the folks at Google thinking about in this area? >> Yeah Dave, that is a great question. And I think one that's top of mind for many of us in the industry, and there's unfortunately not a simple answer, but for sure, I think that sustainability has been something that's been a core value of ours from the very beginning at Google. And we've really focused on the impact that we have throughout, you know, our computation on climate and on other aspects of the environment. And so I think this is something that's a really important topic that we need to discuss. And so, you know, I want to give you a little bit of a history from a Google perspective. You know, in 2007, we were the first major company to become carbon neutral. So today, you hear a lot about companies talking about carbon neutrality and how important that is to reach, you know, some of these targets that we've been talking about from the Paris Climate Agreement, et cetera. In 2017, you know, as we were looking at this target of how do we become more carbon free, we became the first company, first major company to match a hundred percent of our electricity use associated with our computation that you talked about earlier with renewable energy. So this was a really big push for us. So with the question around, is it sustainable, has to kind of go back to, well, where does the energy come from and how is it generated? And renewable energy is one of those big pieces of the puzzle here. And so we invested very heavily in what was called Power Purchase Agreements. This is, you know, creating the mechanisms, the financial instruments to, you know, enable energy companies to transition from maybe things that are less carbon friendly to more renewable energy. So that was a big emphasis that we put on that first decade of climate action. Since then, and you may be familiar that in 2020, we announced probably our most ambitious goal yet, which is to operate on carbon free 24 by seven. So one of the things that you'll appreciate is that renewable energy, the sun doesn't shine 24/7, wind doesn't blow 24/7. And so we need more to become carbon free, 24/7 around the clock. We need storage techniques. We need a lot of other potential, you know, technologies that are evolving. And so we're very committed to investing in making sure that we advance those technologies just like we did with renewable energy. And so this is a really ambitious goal. We don't know how to get there yet. And that's why we often referred to is as a moonshot. >> Yeah, so yeah, that is a moonshot. And it's interesting because it sounds like you've decided to use a metric that is more difficult than the metric you could use, which is aggregate neutrality. You mentioned the sun doesn't shine 24 hours a day. Well, of course it does somewhere on the planet, but not on an individual facility. So if you're... If you're measuring carbon neutral at a certain physical location, that's a higher bar. So you talk about storage with batteries and things like that. So it's admirable that you're not taking the sort of easy way out, and looking at it just from an aggregate perspective. >> Yeah. And I guess I would say, you know, I think it's a journey. So you referred to it as sort of easy way out. And, I know, I certainly... I think this is one of the challenges is that oftentimes, action... Climate action can seem overwhelming and we have to find ways to advance and to get to impact. And so I think, you for us and our journey, you know, we started with how can we best make the use of the energy that we have. And so we applied machine learning in our data centers to optimize the energy utilization so that we could really bring down, you know, or optimize how we used energy in the first place. Of course the most renewable energy is the energy you don't use. But then I think the next point was where do we go next and how do we continue to advance to a place where we do get to a carbon free future, at least for us with our energy use as well. And I think, just as importantly, the next step is, "And how do we enable others?" And that's where we're at today. And so, you know, we've made some really exciting announcements and we're hoping that that's just the start of many more to come. >> Well, let's talk about that. So how do you enable others on this journey? >> Yeah, it's great. So when we talked a little bit about carbon free and that idea of energy in 24 x 7, one of the things that we started to focus on was how do we look at energy on an hourly basis, not on an annual basis or on a monthly basis. And so, as we started to pull the, you know, gather that data instrument up, we realized that this information is extremely valuable to our customers as well, who leverage our cloud platform. And so one of the big announcements that we made as part of our suite of sustainability offerings is really... It's called carbon footprint. And it's really providing that information to customers that use our cloud technology to give them a sense of where, how carbon friendly, the energy that they're using. Of course, we are carbon neutral and so effectively the neutrality is zero. But for those who really want to make sure that they're selecting locations where there's clean energy, making sure that their digital infrastructure is running as efficiently as possible. This new tool carbon footprint will give them the opportunity to see that just like you might see on your billing, you know, how much you spend, how much carbon emission there is associated with that as well. So that's one of our big announcements and we've worked very closely with customers like HSBC and Twitter and Salesforce as we've developed that capability so that we know that it helps meet their needs as well. >> So right now the part of your carbon footprint that is managed by this capability would be say GCP consumption or the Google part of a organization's footprint. Any plans in the future to integrate other data sources into a centralized capability? >> Yeah. So I think we have a lot of other exciting news we shared as well. You know, we recognize that our customer's digital footprint is a growing part of their business. As we've seen, sort of the pandemic has accelerated this shift to digital, and we want to make sure that we're bringing the most climate friendly cloud platform, to enable that. But a lot of our customers also have other parts of their business that aren't digital. And so being able to bring sustainability offerings to them, to help them with data, as you mentioned, but also with other tooling is really important. And so the other exciting announcement that we made is that, we are bringing Google Earth Engine to Google Cloud for our customers and Google Earth Engine has been around for over a decade used by, climate researchers, NGOs, It's really a trusted platform for earth observation. And so we're really excited to bring this to our Google Cloud customers as a mechanism, to look at the impacts of climate on their business, as well as see how their business is impacting the environment. And so this is an amazing platform that we're really excited and have partnered very closely with customers like Unilever, to leverage this platform in their business. >> So what are some practical examples of data sources that come out of the Google Earth platform and how they integrate from a sustainability perspective? What are some insights that organizations can gain by leveraging this? >> Super question. So, within Earth Engine, there is, over 50 petabytes of data and over 700 curated data sets. It's the world's largest for earth observation. Things like satellite imagery to look at land cover and deforestation for example, soil moisture, water, and availability of water in flood zones. There's just a... It's a really rich catalog and has been, you know, really curated over a matter of time. It brings also not just historical data, but is constantly refreshed. And so for someone who wants to look at changes over a period of time, it's really the perfect platform for that. And so for example, with Unilever, we have been looking at deforestation and the association with their supply chain because of course, many companies like Unilever have committed to a zero deforestation, And pit land conversion as part of their commitments to climate action. And so this is a really powerful capability. It's sort been kept within the research community and the NGOs for such a long time, that we're really excited to start to now evolve that into applications where we can make a real difference. I think this is part of our mission is to say, "How do we extend our reach in our climate action to not only the billions of users that use our platform, but also our customers who also reach many, many users through their products." So we're really excited about that opportunity. >> So imagine five, 10 years in the future. How does this play out? Give us a view into the enterprise of the future and the kind of information they're going to have at their fingertips. You gave a great example of deforestation within a supply chain, and we're not talking software supply chain here, we're physical supply chains, >> Physical supply chain, yeah. >> If think about a modern enterprise having hundreds or thousands of connections with other enterprises when you're trying to understand what the impact is that you're having on the earth, you have to take all of those things into account. So, can you kind of walk us through a scenario of what that might look like in the not too distant future, the kinds of things they'll have access to? >> You know, I wish I had that, the vision of five to 10 years from now, but if I look at what has evolved even over the last few years, you know, we've been... As consumers, we have so much information at our fingertips, that's both a blessing and a curse in many ways. And I think our job as technology providers is to make sure that the technology that we bring enhances the ability to make decisions quickly and that's... And effectively. And I think that's really what the power of these tools is enabling. So if I look into the future and I look at a little bit of the past and say, you know, "How do we navigate?" We often navigate no longer by paper maps. We navigate by using digital maps. And that same capability is what I'm talking about with some of this geospatial capability is being able to see that information in a way that's very meaningful, very powerful, but also helps you make decisions right now. And so I think that capability is going to be really critical and it's going to bring the complexity of information in a way that I believe is going to help us make better decisions. So today, if we take that... if we continue to take that example that we talked about, you know, often we talk about a lot of decision-making in terms of, you know, pricing, I think in the future, you're going to start to see the complexity of decision making, you know, sort of, you know, becomes more complex, but with the capability and the tools and some of the AI capabilities, we're going to be able to make that very tangible for people so that the decision making is fairly straightforward, but enables us to take into consideration the complexity of the ecosystem. Really excited about the future. I also believe that the future involves a lot more collaboration than maybe we see today, because I think one of the challenges with climate change is, we need to come to an agreed, you know, a shared truth, a shared sense of truth. And that really means we have to break down some of these silos we've created, you know, whether it be in business, whether it be in collaboration with the ecosystem but we're going to start to see a lot more collaboration around data. >> Yeah. Well, Those other things, those other costs that are sometimes hidden and hard to fair it through, in economics terms we refer to those as externalities and may have always been a challenge, how do you account for those real costs of your activity? Jen, I have to say that your passion for this comes through, despite the technology dividing us, it must be a delight working in an environment where you have the support of your organization. And you've got a clear mission that you can wake up every day and pursue that. Talk a little bit about that from a personal perspective. >> Yeah, I wake up every day, well, wake up, I think about this all the time, and I'm reminded of it, everything that I do, you know, whether it be turning off the lights, whether it be running the water too long. I mean, we're now experiencing droughts like we never have you know, historically. And so I think all these things impact us on a personal level. It's really... I feel so fortunate to be able to be thinking about this, to be able to take on something that really is one of the most pressing issues of our time. But I will say I'm also truly inspired by the customers I get to work with and their passion for the same topic. And I really feel like we've crossed this point of really moving to action. So it's no longer just about debating, you know, the science, if you will, we've really started to move into and what action can we take? And I think that is really what is going to both help move the technology and the ability to leverage technology and push us to continue to develop solutions that help make those actions real. But I also am very inspired by the fact that we have these large commitments across organizations to really make change. And I think this is what we all need. >> Well, Jen, thanks for joining us today in this CUBE Conversation and sharing some of the insights that you have along with Google and your customers. We appreciate the work that you do, it's critically important. With that, this is Dave Nicholson. Thanks for joining us for this CUBE Conversation. Until next time, see you then. (bright upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome to the CUBE Conversation. I'm Lisa Martin. I'm talking next with Sanzio Bassini, the Head of High Performance Computing at Cineca, at DELL technologies customer. Sanzio, welcome to the CUBE. >> Thank you, it's a pleasure, it's a pleasure. >> Likewise, nice to see you. So tell us a little bit about Cineca. This is a large computing center, but a very large Italian nonprofit consortium. Tell us about it. >> Yes, Cineca been founded 50 years ago, from the university systems in Italy. For a statutory mission, which is to support, the scientific discovery, and the industry innovations, using the High Performance Computing and the correlated methodologies like a, Artificial Intelligence, which is one of the, you see the more, in a, in a adopted in those days, but together with the big data processing and and simulation. Yes, we are a consortium, which means that this is a private not-for-profit organizations. Currently, our member of the consortium, almost all the universities in Italy and also all the national agencies for those selected structures. Uh. The main quarter of Cineca is in Bologna, which is in the heart Nation, with the bunch of presence in Milan, in Rome and in Naples, so we are a consultation organization. >> And I also read that you were, are the top 10 out of the top 500 of the world's fastest super computers. That's a pretty big accomplishment. >> Yes. That is a part of our institutional missions, the last 10 to 15 years we have been to say, frequent flyers in the top 10. There been at least two, three systems that have been ranked at the top 10. Apart, the.., whatever would be the meaning of such an advance market, there's a lot of its criticalities. We are well aware. The idea is that we're enabling the scientific discovery, by means of providing the most advanced systems and the co-designing, the most advanced HPC systems to promote and support the, what is the, excellence in science. And that being part of European high-performance computing IT system. That is the case. >> Excellent. Now, talk to me about some of the challenges that Cineca is trying to solve in particular, the Human Brain Project. Talk to us a little bit about that and how you're leveraging high-performance computing to accelerate scientific discovery. >> Um, The Human Brain Project is one of the flagship project that has been co-founded by the European commission and that the participating member states. Is not as another situations that are undertaking, it's definitely a joint collaboration between members states and the European commission. There are two different right now, flagships together with another, that is in progress, which is that the quantum of flagship, the first two flagship abroad that that has been lost. The commission for operation with the participating states has been one on the digraph vein on which also we are participating in directly together with the CNR, is the national business counselor. And the second for which we are core partners of the HPC that is, the Human Brain Project. That, that is a big flagship, one million offer, of newer investment, co-founded by the participating states and that the European commission. The project it's going to set up, in what to do be the, third strategic grant agreement that they will go over the next three years, the good, the complete that the, the whole process. Then we see what is going to happen at Africa. We thought that their would be some others progress offer these big projects. It's project that would combine both the technology issues, like the designing the off high-performance computing systems that meet the requirements of the community and the big challenge, scientific challenges correlated to the physiological functions of the human brain center, including the different farm show survey to do with the behavior of the human brain. A from the pathological point of view, from the physiological point of view, that better understand the could be the way for, for a facing that. Let's say the pathology, some of those are very much correlated with respect to aging, and that it would impact the, the health, the public health systems. Some other that are correlating with what would be the support for the physiological knowledge of the, of the human brains. And finally that they, let me say, technological transfer stuff that represented the knowing off at the physiological, behavior of the human brain. Just to use a sort of metaphor to have happen from the point of view of there computational performance, the human brain is a, a, a, more than Exoscale systems, but with a energy consumption, which is very low, we are talking about some hundreds of Watts. So some hundreds of watts of energy, would provide a an extreme and computational performance. So if would could organized the technology of the high-performance computing in terms of interconnections now we're morphing the computing systems and exploitations of that kind of technologies, in I build a system that it might provide the computational power that would represent a tremendous and tremendous step ahead, in order to facing the big challenges of our base, like energies, personalized medicine, try not to change food for all those kinds of big socioeconomic challenges that we are facing. >> Yes I was reading that besides, sorry Sanzio I was reading that besides the Human Brain Project, there are other projects going on, such as that you mentioned, I'd like to understand how Cineca is working with Dell technologies. You have to translate, as you've mentioned a minute ago, the scientific requirements for discovery into high-performance computing requirements. Talk to me about how you've been doing that with partners like Dell technologies. >> Yes, in particularly in our computing architectures, we had the need to address the capability to facing the data processing involved with backed off the Human Brain Project and general speaking that is backed off the science vendor, that would combine the capability also to provide the cloud access to the system. So by main soft containers technologies and the capability also, to address what would be the creation of a Federation. So Piper problems with people proceeded in a new world. So at the end that the requirements and the terms of reference of the would matter will decline and the terms of a system that would be capable to manage, let's say, in a holistic approach, the data processing, the cloud computing services and the opportunity before for being integrated that in a Federation of HSBC system in Europe's, and with this backed off, that kind of thing, we manage a competitive dialogue procurement processor, I think I the sentence would share together with the different potential technology providers, what would be the visuals and those are the constraints (inaudible) and those other kinds of constraints like, I don't want to say, I mean, environmental kind of constraints and uh, sharing with this back of the technology provider what would it be the vision for this solution, in a very, let's say hard, the competitive dialogue, and at the end, results in a sort of, I don't want to say Darwinian processes, okay. So I mean, the survivors in terms of the different technology providers being Dell that shown the characteristics of the solution that it will be more, let's say compliant. And at the same time are flexible with respect of the combinations of very different constraints and requirements that has been the, the process that has been the outcomes of such a process. >> I like that you mentioned that Darwinian survival of the fittest and that Dell technologies has been, it sounds like a pretty flexible partner because you've got so many different needs and scientific needs to meet for different researchers. Talk to me about how you mentioned that this is a multi-national effort. How does Cineca serve and work with teams not only in Italy, but in other countries and from other institutes? >> Definitely the volume commitment that together with the, European member states is that by means of scientific merits and the peer review process, roughly speaking the arc of the production capacity, would be shared at the European level. That it's a commitment that, that there's been, that there's been a shared of that together with France, Germany, Spain, and, and with the London. So, I mean, our, half of our production capacity, it's a share of that at the European level, where also of course the Italian scientist can apply in the participates, but in a sort of offer emulations and the advanced competition for addressing what it would be the excellence in science. The remaining 50% of our production capacity is for, for the national community and, somehow to prepare and support the Italian community to be competitive on the worldwide scenario on the European and international scenario, uh that setting up would lead also to the agreement at the international level, with respect of some of the options that, that are promoted the progress in a US and in Japan also. So from this point of view, that mean that in some cases also the, access that it would come from researchers the best collaborations and the sharing options with the US researchers their or Japanese researchers in an open space. >> Open space for, it sounds like the Human Brain Project, which the HPC is powering, which has been around since 2013 is really facilitating global collaboration. Talk to me about some of the results that the high-performance computing environment has helped the Human Brain Project to achieve so far. >> The main outcomes that it will be consolidated in the next phase that will be need the by rural SPC that is the Jared undertaking um entities, that has been created for consolidating and for progressing the high-performance computing ecosystem in Europe. It represented by the Federations of high-performance computing systems at European level, there is a, a, an option that, that has been encapsulated and the elaborated inside the human brain flagship project which is called the FEHIPCSE that stand for Federation of a High-Performance Computing System in Europe. That uh provide the open service based on the two concepts on one, one is the sharing of the Heidi at a European level, so it means that the, the high demand of the users or researchers more properly. It's unique and Universal at the European level. That didn't mean better the same, we see identity management, education management with the open, and the access to the Cineca system, to the SARS system in France, to the unique system in, uh Germany to the, Diocese system in a Switzerland, to the Morocco System in a Spain. That is the part related to what will be the federated, the ID management, the others, et cetera, related to what will be the Federation off the data access. So from the point of view, again, the scientific community, mostly the community of Human Brain Project, but that will be open at other domains and other community, make sure that data in a seamless mode after European language, from the technological point of view, or let's say from the infrastructure point of view, very strong up, from the scientific point of view, uh what they think they may not, will be the most of the options is being supported by Cineca has to do with the two specific target. One is the elaboration of the data that are provided by the lands. The laws are a laboratory facility in that Florence. That is one of the four parts, and from the bottom view of the provisions of the data that is for the scattering, the, the data that would come from the mouse brains, that are use for, for (inaudible) And then the second part is for the Mayor scale studies of the cortex of the of the human brain, and that got add-on by a couple of groups that are believing that action from a European level their group of the National Researcher Counsel the CNR, that are the two main outcome on which we are in some out reference high-performance computing facilities for supporting that kind of research. Then their is in some situations they combinations of the performance a, capability of the Federation systems for addressing what will be the simulations of the overall human brain would take a lot of performance challenge simulation with bacteria that they would happen combining that they SPC facility as at European level. >> Right! So I was reading there's a case study by the way, on Cynic that Dell technologies has published. And some of the results you talked about, those that the HPC is facilitating research and results on epilepsy, spinal cord injury, brain prostheses for the blind, as well as new insights into autism. So incredibly important work that you're doing here for the Human Brain Project. One last question Sanzio, for you, what advice would you give to your peers who might be in similar situations that need to, to build and deploy and maintain high-performance computing environments? Where should they start? >> (coughs laughs) I think that at, at a certain point, that specific know how would became sort of a know how that is been, I mean, accumulated and then by some facilities and institutions around the world. There are the, the federal labs in US, the main nation model centers in Europe, the big facilities in Japan. And of course the, the big university facilities in China that are becoming, how do you say, evident and our progressively occupied increasing the space, that to say that that is somehow it, that, that, that the, those institutions would continues collaborate and sharing that there are periods I would expect off what to do, be the top level systems. Then there is a continuous sharing of uh knowledge, the experience best practices with respect off, let's say the technologies transfers towards productions and services and boosterism. Where the situation is big parenta, in the sense that, their are focused what it would be, uh the integration of the high-performance computing technology into their production workflow. And from the point of view, there is the sharing of the experience in order to provide the, a sort of, let's say, spreads and amplifications of the opportunity for supporting innovation. That is part of are solution means, in a Italy but it also, eh, er sort of um, see objective, that is addressed by the European options er supported by the European commission. I think that that sort of (inaudible) supply that in US, the, that will be coming there, sort of you see the max practice for the technology transfer to support the innovation. >> Excellent, that sharing and that knowledge transfer and collaboration. It seems to be absolutely fundamental and the environment that you've built, facilitates that. Sanzio thank you so much for sharing with us, what Cineca is doing and the great research that's going on there, and across a lot of disciplines, we appreciate you joining the program today. Thank you. >> Thank you, it's been a pleasure, thank you very much for the opportunity. >> Likewise, for Sanzio Bassini. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching this cube conversation. (calming music)

>>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel and AWS. >>Welcome back to the cubes live coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 I'm Lisa Martin and I have with me a cube alumni back, please. Welcome Scott Mullins, the worldwide financial services business development leader at AWS. Scott. Welcome back. Great to have you joining us, >>Lisa. It's great to be back on the cube and to be visiting with you today from virtual re-invent 2020. >>Yes. Reinventing reinvent. The last show that I got to host in-person for the cube was reinvent last year. And here we have this three week virtual event that started last week. So lots more even going on. I think I even saw a hundred thousand or so registered, so massive event, lots of news. So walk us through some of the highlights that have been announced at reinvent this year and some of the things that you're seeing the most interest from customers in. >>Well, I think one of the big highlights is 500,000 registrants that are reinvented 50,000 attendees last year to reinvent or 50,000 or so to 500,000 re registered for the event. So that's, that's, that's worth talking about in its own. Right. But I think, you know, one of the things, and you mentioned this, you know, more re-invent three weeks, uh, this year, as opposed to the four days that we normally spend in Las Vegas together, physically, when you do, when you do it digitally, you have the ability to actually include more things and more leaders talking about things. And so when we think about the announcements that are having impacts, uh, with financial services customers specifically I'd point to a couple of things and, you know, they're obviously gonna mention Andy's keynote, but there's going to be some things that you might go wait a minute. >>I didn't even see that announcement. Uh, and then maybe I could point you and the viewers to some other, other, um, keynotes or some other sessions that were announced. So obviously I think, uh, first and foremost in Andy's keynote, uh, hybrid, uh, was something that was a very, uh, big focus for him and I for a very long time, we've had the messaging of the right tool for the right job when it comes to any of your services. I think you could alter that today to say it's the right tool for the right job at the right time and in the right place. That makes sense for you and especially for financial institutions. Um, you could look at the announcements around containers, the announcements around Amazon EKS, distro, Amazon EKS, anywhere, and then also Amazon ECS anywhere, which allows our customers to actually, uh, put AWS container technology anywhere they would like to put it. >>You could look also at the additions of the one you and two you form factors to outposts. So no longer do you have to do the, the, the large for you, uh, foreign factor for outposts, smaller outposts for smaller spaces, uh, that particular will play well in the financial service industry. You may not have necessarily as much room for a full cabinet. You could also look from the hybrid perspective in the announcement we made, um, around red hat OpenShift on AWS, all of are giving customers the ability to choose how they actually want to deploy, um, and pursue a hybrid. I'd also point to some announcements we made around management and governance in the financial services, industry governance, uh, is a very important topic. Uh, we announced the management and government lens for the AWS well architected, um, uh, program, uh, that is focused on breath practices for evolving governance for the cloud. >>It has recommended combination of AWS services integrations with our partner network and vetted reference architectures and guidance for addressing regulatory obligations as well. I'd also point to some things we made around audits. I was specifically in Steve Smith's, um, session today, he talked about AWS audit manager. That's a new tool for continually assessing areas and environments for controls or risk compliance. That includes prebuilt compliance frameworks for things like PCI DSS and GDPR, uh, two things that are very important in the financial services industry and last, but certainly not least I'd point to the announcement around the AWS audit Academy. This is training for auditors to actually be able to audit clouds from an agnostic perspective. Any cloud, not specifically AWS that's tree, uh, digital training to do that. And then also an instructor led course specifically on how to audit AWS. So some very key announcements, both from the standpoint of services, uh, as well as additional layers of helping customers in the financial services industry in regulated industries actually use our services. >>So typical, re-invent typical in a lot of news, a lot of announcements, the 500,000 Mark in terms of registering. I hadn't heard that. That's amazing. Let's talk that this has been an Andy. Jassy had an exclusive with John furrier just a couple of weeks ago before. I think it was last week, actually. And we've been talking about this acceleration of digital business transformation because of COVID we've been talking about it, the entire pandemic on the virtual cube, talking about how companies it's really about right now, surviving and thriving to be able to go forward and companies that haven't accelerated are probably in some trouble. Talk to me about how AWS has been working with your financial services customers to help them pivot and move to the cloud faster, really to not just help them survive now, but thrive in the long-term. >>Yeah. Immediately when COVID hit and it hit at different times in different, in different parts of the world. Immediately when COVID hit, we saw the conversation that we were having turning from, Hey, what's my digital strategy to immediately, what are my digital capabilities? And what that really means is what do I have the ability to do tomorrow? Because tomorrow is going to really matter. I don't have necessarily the time to plan for the next several quarters or the next several years, what can I do tomorrow to, um, really, uh, support my, my own workforce and support my own customers and the obligations I have as a financial institution. The first thing we saw people do was to try and make sure that those who financial services work can work. You can look at the adoption of Amazon workspaces, as well as our, uh, Amazon connect, uh, call centers as a service. >>As two examples there at the RBL bank in India was able to move to Amazon workspaces in just 10 days to enable its teams to actually work remotely from home. When they couldn't come into the office, you can look at Barclays. Barclays is actually a presenter at re-invent this year. They'll have a session on how they use Amazon connect, which again is our call center as a service offering to enable 25,000 contacts and our agents to work from home when they can no longer work out of the, out of their traditional contact center. The second thing we saw a financial institutions joining was making sure that customer engagements could still be meaningful when digital was the only option, um, specifically here in the U S you could look at the work that each of us did with FinTech companies like biz two X or fins Zack, or BlueVine Stripe and cabbage in support of the care act in the U S you might remember that the cares act, um, hasn't provisions for funding for small businesses. >>This small business administration had a program called the paycheck protection program, and those organizations were active in providing funding, uh, to small businesses. Uh, through that program. I'll give you an example of cabbage cabbage had previously not been an SBA lender, um, but they were able to, in two weeks build a fully automated system for small businesses to access PPP funding using Amazon text track, to extract information from documentation that those folks submitted to get alone. That reduced approval times from multiple days to about a median of four hours to actually get approval, to get funding through the PPP program. And then just four months cabbage became the second largest PPP lender. They lent over $7 billion in funding, which was twice the amount of funding that they went last year in 2019 loans. So we were happy to support organizations like cabbage and those other FinTech companies, as they help small businesses in the U S get access to funding, uh, during this critical time. >>And as we know, as you said, critical time, but really life or death for a lot of businesses. And as we continue to go through these ways, but it's interesting that you talked about that the speed of facilitation that during such unprecedented times, AWS and this massive machine was able to continue moving at full speed ahead and helping those customers to pivot. You talked about the cloud connect. I had a conversation with a guest on the queue last week about that. And, and I now think about if I have to call in a contact center and that person might be from home. So, you know, we're fortunate that the cloud computing technology and people like you and AWS, or are able to power that because it's, it's literally essential, which is probably one of the words of the year, but being able to keep the machinery going and innovate at the same time has been, make or break for a lot of businesses. >>Absolutely. And you, you look at, you know, kind of one of the last year is that I'll point to is, um, financial institutions. Uh, anti-virus, we're were very much focused on making sure that that cannot fail, that they scaled. And so you can look at the work we did with, uh, with the, with FINRA FINRA is the primary capital markets regulator here in the U S and on a daily basis frame or processes about 400 billion market events on every night to do surveillance on our markets, that when COVID hit, we had unprecedented volume and volatility in the market. And FINRA was, was, um, looking at processing, uh, anywhere from two to three times, their normal daily market volumes that's anywhere from 800 billion market events to 1.2 trillion a night. And if you look at how they were able to scale, they're actually able to scale up compute resources in AWS. We're on a nightly basis. They're able to automatically turn on and off up to a hundred thousand compute nodes in a single day. That automatic ability to scale is, is the power you're talking about. Being able to actually turn things up when you needed it and turn things down when you, when you don't need it based on the volumes. >>Well, and that's going to be something key going forward. As we know that there will be one thing I think that I always say we can count on right now is uncertainty and continued uncertainty, but we've also seen I'm calling them COVID catalysts. You know, the, what you talked about with cabbage, for example, and how that business pivoted quickly, because of the power of cloud computing and emerging technologies, what are some of the things that you think as we go into 2021 in the financial services arena, what are some of the big tech trends that you think were maybe born during COVID that are going to be critical going forward? >>Well, you know, you, you, you had Melanie Frank from capital one on cube a couple of days ago, and she was talking about, you know, their shift to cloud and what that's really enabled, and it, and she kind of sums it up nicely. She says, look, we want to give our customers experience that are real time, and that are intelligent. And you just can't do that with legacy technology. That's sitting in, you know, kind of a legacy data center. And so I think that's going to be kind of the, the, the all encompassing statement for what's happening in the financial services industry. As I mentioned, you know, organizations overnight said, okay, wait a minute, let's take that strategy. And then let's put it aside. Let's talk about capabilities. What can we do? And I think, you know, necessity is the mother of invention. Um, and when you're faced with limitations and challenges, like we all have been faced with around the world and not just in the financial services industry, it, it breeds, um, invention and the, and the desire and the need to actually meet those challenges head on, in very engineered of ways. >>And I think you're going to see more invention and specifically more invention from the established players in the financial services industry. Cloud use is not just experimental on the edges anymore. You're going to see more organizations coming out of COVID. Um, having had those experiences where they actually stood up a context center and scaled it. And, and just a matter of a few days to, to thousands of agents, you're going to find, um, organizations saying, wait a minute, we, we can do remote work. We could, we have access to things like Amazon workspaces. So I think you're, you're gonna, you're going to see that, uh, be a, be a trend. I think you're also gonna see, um, w what Lori beer said in the keynote with Andy, you know, she, she made a very, very astute statement, and I don't know if people caught it, cause it's kind of neat in the middle of her conversation. >>She said, look, we're trying to infuse analytics into everything that we do at JP Morgan. I think you're going to see more and more financial institutions looking to do that, to actually leverage the power of analytics, to power everything we do as a financial institution. So I think those, those are a couple of things that you're going to see. Um, and then, you know, looking, uh, you know, kind of around the corner, I think you're going to continue to see more re-invention within the industry. And what I mean by that is you've seen many financial institutions over the last week, uh, with, uh, re-invent making announcements, you saw bank and we towel saying, Hey, look, we are completely transforming ourselves with AWS. Uh, just a few weeks before we even saw standard charter, the same thing HSBC said, the same thing, global payments earlier in the year said the same thing. And you're going to see more and more organizations coming out and talking about these strategic decisions to reinvent everything that they do to make the financial systems of the world work. And so we're really pleased to be partnering with those organizations to make those transformations possible. We're seeing a lot of invention within the industry, and we're very pleased to be a part of the reinvention of the financial systems around the world. >>It's interesting to hear that you, you see, even the JP Morgan, some of those legacy, big houses are going to be really pivoting. They have to, to be competitive and to be able to utilize analytics, to deliver those real-time services. Because as we all know, as consumers, our patients is wearing thin these days, but I agree with you. I think there's a lot of opportunity there that innovation is exciting and there will have to be reinvention of entire industries, but I think there's a lot of silver linings there. Scott. I wish we had more time, cause I know we could keep talking, but thank you for sharing your insights on this reinvented reinvent this year. >>I appreciate it. Thank you, Lisa. It's always a pleasure to be on the cube. >>Chris Scott Mullins, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes coverage of AWS reinvent 2020.

(gentle music) >> From the cube studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a Cube conversation. >> With Snowflake's, enormously successful IPO, it's clear that data warehousing in the cloud has come of age and a few companies know more about data and analytics than Google. Hi, I'm Paul Gillen. This is a cube conversation. And today we're going to talk about data warehousing and data analytics in the cloud. Google BigQuery, of course, is a popular, fully managed server less data warehouse that enables rapid SQL queries and interactive analysis of massive data sets. This summer, Google previewed BigQuery Omni, which essentially brings the capabilities of BigQuery to additional platforms including Amazon web services and soon Microsoft Azure. It's all part of Google's multicloud strategy. No one knows more about this strategy than Debanjan Saha, General Manager and Vice President of engineering for data analytics and Google cloud. And he joins me today. Debanjan, thanks so much for joining me. >> Paul, nice to meet you and thank you for having me today. >> So it's clear the data warehousing is now part of many enterprise data strategies. How has the rise of cloud change the way organizations are using data science in your view? >> Well, I mean, you know, the cloud definitely is a big enabler of data warehousing and data science, as you mentioned. I mean, it has enabled things that people couldn't do on-prem, for example, if you think about data science, the key ingredient of data science, before you can start anything is access to data and you need massive amount of data in order to build the right model that you want to use. And this was a big problem on-prem because people are always thinking about what data to keep, what to discard. That's not an issue in cloud. You can keep as much of data as you want, and that has been a big boon for data science. And it's not only your data, you can also have access to other data your, for example, your partner's data, public data sets and many other things that people have access to right? That's number one, number two of course, it's a very compute intensive operation and you know, large enterprises of course can afford them build a large data center and bring in lots of tens of thousands of CPU codes, GPU codes, TPU codes whatever have you, but it is difficult especially for smaller enterprises to have access to that amount of computing power which is very very important for data science. Cloud makes it easy. I mean, you know, it has in many ways democratize the use of data science and not only the big enterprises everyone can take advantage of the power of the computing power that various different cloud vendors make it available on their platform. And the third, not to overlook that, cloud also makes it available to customers and users, lots of various different data science platform, for example, Google's own TensorFlow and you have many other platforms Spark being one example of that, right? Both a cloud native platform as well as open source platforms, which is very very useful for people using data science and managed to open source, Spark also makes it very very affordable. And all of these things have contributed to massive boon in data science in the cloud and from my perspective. >> Now, of course we've seen over the last seven months a rush to the cloud triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. How has that played out in the analytics field? Do you see any longterm changes to, to the landscape? The way customers are using analytics as a result of what's happened these last seven months? >> You know, I think as you know about kind of a digitization of our business is happening over a long period of time, right? And people are using AIML analytics in increasing numbers. What I've seen because of COVID-19 that trend has accelerated both in terms of people moving to cloud, and in terms of they're using advanced analytics and AIML and they have to do that, right? Pretty much every business is kind of leaning heavily on their data infrastructure in order to gain insight of what's coming next. A lot of the models that people are used to, is no longer valid things are changing very very rapidly right? So in order to survive and thrive people have to lean on data, lean on analytics to figure out what's coming around the corner. And that trend in my view is only going to accelerate. It's not going to go the other way round. >> One of the problems with cloud databases, We often hear complaints about is that there's so many of them. Do you see any resolution to that proliferation? >> Well, you know, I do think a one size does not fit all right. So it is important to have choice. It's important to have specialization. And that's why you see a lot of cloud databases. I don't think the number of cloud databases is going to go down. What I do expect to happen. People are going to use interoperable data formats. They are going to use open API so that it's very, very portable as people want to move from one database to another. The way I think the convergence is going to come is two ways, One, you know, a lot of databases, for example, use Federation. If you look at BigQuery, for example, you can start with BigQuery, but with BigQuery, you can have also access to data in other databases, not only in GCP or Google cloud but also in AWS with BigQuery Omni, for example, right? So that provides a layer of Federation, which kind of create convergence with respect, to weighing various different data assets people may have. I have also seen with, for example, with Looker, you know creation of enterprise wide data models and data API is gives people a platform so that they can build their custom data app and data solutions on top up and even from data API. Those I believe are going to be the points of convergence. I think data is probably going to be in different databases because different databases do different things well, that does not mean people wouldn't have access to all their data through one API or one set of models. >> Well, since we're on the subject of BigQuery. Now this summer, you introduced BigQuery Omni which is a database data warehouse, essentially a version of BigQuery that can query data in other cloud platforms, what, what is the strategy there? And what is the customer reaction been so far? >> Well, I mean, you know as you probably have seen talking to customers more than 80% of the customers that we talk to use multiple clouds and that trend is probably not going to change. I mean, it happens for various different reasons sometime because of compliance sometimes because they want to have different tools and different platform sometime because of M and a, we are a big believer of multi-cloud strategy and that's what we are trying to do with BigQuery Omni. We do realize people have choices. Customers will have their data in various different places and we will take our analytics wherever the data is. So customers won't have to worry about moving data from one place to another., and that's what we are trying to do with BigQuery Omni you know, going to see, you know for example, with Anthos, we have created a platform over which you can build this video as different data stacks and applications, which spans multiple clouds. I believe we are going to see more of that. And BigQuery Omni is just the beginning. >> And how have your customers reacted to that announcement. >> Oh deep! They reacted very, very positively. This is the first time they have a major cloud vendor offering a fully managed server less data warehouse platform on multiple clouds. And as I mentioned, I mean we have many customers who have some of their data assets for example, in GCP, they really love BigQuery. And they also have for example, applications running on AWS and Azure. And today the only option they have is to essentially shuttle their data between various different clouds in order to gain insight across the collective pool of data sets that they have, with BigQuery, Omni, they all tended to do that. They can keep their data wherever it is. They can still join across that data and get insights irrespective of which cloud their data is. >> You recently wrote on Forbes about the shortage of data scientists and the need to make data analytics more accessible to the average business user. What is Google doing in that respect? >> So we strongly, I mean, you know one of our goals is to make the data and insight from data available to everybody in the business right? That is the way you can democratize the use of analytics and AIML. And you know, one way to do that is to teach everybody R or Python or some specific tools but that's going to take a long time. So our approach is make the power of data analytics and AI AML available to our users, no matter what tools they're comfortable with. So for example, if you look at a B Q ML BigQuery ML, we have made it possible for our users who like SQL very much to use the power of ML without having to learn anything else or without having to move their data anywhere else. We have a lot of business users for example, who prefer X prefer spreadsheets and, you know, we've connected sheets. We have made the spreadsheet interface available on top of BigQuery, and they can use the power of BigQuery without having to learn anything else. Better yet we recently launched a BigQuery Q and A. And what Q and A allows you to do is to use natural language on top of big query data, right? So the goal, I mean, if you can do that that I think is the Nevada where people, anyone for example, somebody working in a call center talking to a customer can use a simple query to figure out what's going on with the bill, for example, right? And we believe that if we can democratize the use of data, insight and analytics that not only going to accelerate the digital transformation of the businesses, it's also going to grow consumption. And that's good for both the users, as well as business. >> Now you bought Looker last year, what would you say is different about the way Google is coming out the data analytics market from the way other cloud vendors are doing it. >> So Looker is a great addition to already strong portfolio of products that we have but you know, a lot of people think about Looker as a business intelligence platform. It's actually much more than that. What is unique about Looker is the semantic model that Looker can build on top of data assets, govern semantic model Looker can build on top of data assets, which may be in BigQuery maybe in cloud SQL maybe, you know, in other cloud for example, in Redshift or SQL data warehouse. And once you have the data model, you can create a data API and essentially an ID or integrated development environment on top of which you can build your custom workflows. You can build your custom dashboard you can build your custom data application. And that is, I think, where we are moving. I don't think people want the old dashboards anymore. They want their data experience to be immersive within the workflow and within the context in which they are using the data. And that's where I see Lot of customers are now using the power of Looker and BigQuery and other platform that we have and building this custom data apps. And what again, like BigQuery, Looker is also multi-platform it supports multiple data warehouses and databases and that kind of aligns very well with our philosophy of having an open platform that is multicloud as well as hybrid. >> Certainly, with Anthos and with BigQuery Omni, you demonstrated your commitment on P cloud, but not all cloud vendors have an interest in being multicloud. Do you see any, any change that standoff and are you really in a position to influence it? >> Absolutely. I think more than us it's a customer who is going to influence that, right? And almost every customer I talk to, they don't want to be in a walled garden. They want to be an open platform where they have the choice they have the flexibility and I believe these customers are going to push essentially the adoption of platforms, which are open and multicloud. And, you know, I believe over time the successful platforms have to be open platform. And the closed platform if you look at history has never been very successful, right? And you know, I sincerely think that we are on the right path and we are on the side of customers in this philosophy. >> Final question. What's your most important priority right now? >> You know, I wake up everyday thinking about how can you make our customer successful? And the best way to make our customer successful is to make sure that they can get business outcome out of the data that they have. And that's what we are trying to do. We want to accelerate time to value to data, you know, so that people can keep their data in a governed way. They can gain insight by using the tools that we can provide them. A lot of them, we have used internally for many years and those tools are now available to our customers. We also believe we need to democratize the use of analytics and AIML. And that's why we are trying to give customers tools where they don't have to learn a lot of new things and new skills in order to use them. And if we can do them successfully I think we are going to help our customers get more value out of their data and create businesses which can use that value. I'll give you a couple of quick examples. I mean, for example, if you look at Home Depot, they use our platform to improve the predictability of the inventory by two X. If you look at, for example HSBC, they have been able to use our platform to detect financial fraud 10 X faster. If you look at, for example Juan Perez, who's the CIO of UPS, they have used our AIML and analytics to do better logistics and route planning. And they have been able to save 10 million gallons of fuel every year which amounts to 400 million in cost savings. Those are the kind of business outcome we would like to drive with the power of our platform. >> Powerful stuff, democratize data multicloud data in any cloud who can argue with that. Debanjan Saha, General Manager and Vice President of engineering for data analytics at Google cloud. Thanks so much for joining me today. >> Paul, thank you thank you for inviting me. >> I'm Paul Gillen. This has been a cube conversation. >> Debanjan: Thank you. (soft music)

>>Data is at the heart of transformation and the change. Every company needs to succeed, but it takes more than new technology. It's about teams, talent and cultural change. Empowering everyone on the front lines to make decisions all at the speed of digital. The transformation starts with you. It's time to lead the way it's time for thought leaders. >>Welcome to thought leaders, a digital event brought to you by ThoughtSpot. My name is Dave Volante. The purpose of this day is to bring industry leaders and experts together to really try and understand the important issues around digital transformation. We have an amazing lineup of speakers and our goal is to provide you with some best practices that you can bring back and apply to your organization. Look, data is plentiful, but insights are not. ThoughtSpot is disrupting analytics by using search and machine intelligence to simplify data analysis and really empower anyone with fast access to relevant data. But in the last 150 days, we've had more questions than answers. Creating an organization that puts data and insights at their core requires not only modern technology, but leadership, a mindset and a culture that people often refer to as data-driven. What does that mean? How can we equip our teams with data and fast access to quality information that can turn insights into action. >>And today we're going to hear from experienced leaders who are transforming their organizations with data insights and creating digital first cultures. But before we introduce our speakers, I'm joined today by two of my cohosts from ThoughtSpot first chief data strategy officer, the ThoughtSpot is Cindy Hausen. Cindy is an analytics and BI expert with 20 plus years experience and the author of successful business intelligence unlock the value of BI and big data. Cindy was previously the lead analyst at Gartner for the data and analytics magic quadrant. And early last year, she joined ThoughtSpot to help CDOs and their teams understand how best to leverage analytics and AI for digital transformation. Cindy. Great to see you welcome to the show. Thank you, Dave. Nice to join you virtually. Now our second cohost and friend of the cube is ThoughtSpot CEO, sedition air. Hello. Sudheesh how are you doing today? I am validating. It's good to talk to you again. That's great to see you. Thanks so much for being here now Sateesh please share with us why this discussion is so important to your customers and of course, to our audience and what they're going to learn today. >>Thanks, Dave. >>I wish you were there to introduce me into every room that I walk into because you have such an amazing way of doing it. It makes me feel also good. Um, look, since we have all been, you know, cooped up in our homes, I know that the vendors like us, we have amped up know sort of effort to reach out to you with invites for events like this. So we are getting very more invites for events like this than ever before. So when we started planning for this, we had three clear goals that we wanted to accomplish. And our first one that when you finish this and walk away, we want to make sure that you don't feel like it was a waste of time. We want to make sure that we value your time. Then this is going to be used. Number two, we want to put you in touch with industry leaders and thought leaders, generally good people that you want to hang around with long after this event is over. >>And number three, has we planned through this? You know, we are living through these difficult times. You want an event to be this event, to be more of an uplifting and inspiring event. Now, the challenge is how do you do that with the team being change agents? Because teens can, as much as we romanticize it, it is not one of those uplifting things that everyone wants to do, or like through the VA. I think of it changes sort of like if you've ever done bungee jumping and it's like standing on the edges waiting to make that one more step, uh, you know, all you have to do is take that one step and gravity will do the rest, but that is the hardest step to take change requires a lot of courage. And when we are talking about data and analytics, which is already like such a hard topic, not necessarily an uplifting and positive conversation, most businesses, it is somewhat scary. >>Change becomes all the more difficult, ultimately change requires courage, courage. To first of all, challenge the status quo. People sometimes are afraid to challenge the status quo because they are thinking that, you know, maybe I don't have the power to make the change that the company needs. Sometimes they feel like I don't have the skills. Sometimes they've may feel that I'm, I'm probably not the right person to do it. Or sometimes the lack of courage manifest itself as the inability to sort of break the silos that are formed within the organizations, when it comes to data and insights that you talked about, you know, that are people in the company who are going to have the data because they know how to manage the data, how to inquire and extract. They know how to speak data. They have the skills to do that, but they are not the group of people who have sort of the knowledge, the experience of the business to ask the right questions off the data. >>So there is the silo of people with the answers, and there is a silo of people with the questions. And there is gap. This sort of silos are standing in the way of making that necessary change that we all know the business needs. And the last change to sort of bring an external force. Sometimes it could be a tool. It could be a platform, it could be a person, it could be a process, but sometimes no matter how big the company is or how small the company is, you may need to bring some external stimuli to start the domino of the positive changes that are necessarily the group of people that we are brought in. The four people, including Cindy, that you will hear from today are really good at practically telling you how to make that step, how to step off that edge, how to trust the rope, that you will be safe. And you're going to have fun. You will have that exhilarating feeling of jumping for a bungee jump. >>So we're going to take a hard pivot now and go from football to Ternopil Chernobyl. What went wrong? 1986, as the reactors were melting down, they had the data to say, this is going to be catastrophic. And yet the culture said, no, we're perfect. Hide it. Don't dare tell anyone which meant they went ahead and had celebrations in Kiev. Even though that increased the exposure, the additional thousands, getting cancer and 20,000 years before the ground around there and even be inhabited again, this is how powerful and detrimental a negative culture, a culture that is unable to confront the brutal facts that hides data. This is what we have to contend with. And this is why I want you to focus on having fostering a data driven culture. I don't want you to be a laggard. I want you to be a leader in using data to drive your digital transformation. >>So I'll talk about culture and technology. Isn't really two sides of the same coin, real world impacts. And then some best practices you can use to disrupt and innovate your culture. Now, oftentimes I would talk about culture and I talk about technology. And recently a CDO said to me, you know, Cindy, I actually think this is two sides of the same coin. One reflects the other. What do you think? Let me walk you through this. So let's take a laggard. What does the technology look like? Is it based on 1990s BI and reporting largely parameterized reports on premises, data, warehouses, or not even that operational reports at best one enterprise, nice data warehouse, very slow moving and collaboration is only email. What does that culture tell you? Maybe there's a lack of leadership to change, to do the hard work that Sudheesh referred to, or is there also a culture of fear, afraid of failure, resistance to change complacency. >>And sometimes that complacency it's not because people are lazy. It's because they've been so beaten down every time a new idea is presented. It's like, no we're measured on least cost to serve. So politics and distrust, whether it's between business and it or individual stakeholders is the norm. So data is hoarded. Let's contrast that with a leader, a data and analytics leader, what is their technology look like? Augmented analytics search and AI driven insights, not on premises, but in the cloud and maybe multiple clouds. And the data is not in one place, but it's in a data Lake and in a data warehouse, a logical data warehouse, the collaboration is being a newer methods, whether it's Slack or teams allowing for that real time decisioning or investigating a particular data point. So what is the culture in the leaders? It's transparent and trust. There is a trust that data will not be used to punish that there is an ability to confront the bad news. >>It's innovation, valuing innovation in pursuit of the company goals, whether it's the best fan experience and player safety in the NFL or best serving your customers. It's innovative and collaborative. None of this. Oh, well, I didn't invent that. I'm not going to look at that. There's still proud of that ownership, but it's collaborating to get to a better place faster. And people feel empowered to present new ideas, fail fast, and they're energized knowing that they're using the best technology and innovating at the pace that business requires. So data is democratized and double monetized, not just for people, how are users or analysts, but really at the of impact what we like to call the new decision makers or really the front line workers. So Harvard business review partnered with us to develop this study to say, just how important is this? We've been working at BI and analytics as an industry for more than 20 years. >>Why is it not at the front lines? Whether it's a doctor, a nurse, a coach, a supply chain manager, a warehouse manager, a financial services advisor, 87% said they would be more successful if frontline workers were empowered with data driven insights, but they recognize they need new technology to be able to do that. It's not about learning hard tools. The sad reality only 20% of organizations are actually doing this. These are the data driven leaders. So this is the culture and technology. How did we get here? It's because state of the art keeps changing. So the first generation BI and analytics platforms were deployed on premises on small datasets, really just taking data out of ERP systems that were also on premises. And state-of-the-art was maybe getting a management report, an operational report over time, visual based data discovery vendors disrupted these traditional BI vendors, empowering now analysts to create visualizations with the flexibility on a desktop, sometimes larger data sometimes coming from a data warehouse, the current state of the art though, Gartner calls it augmented analytics at ThoughtSpot, we call it search and AI driven analytics. >>And this was pioneered for large scale data sets, whether it's on premises or leveraging the cloud data warehouses. And I think this is an important point. Oftentimes you, the data and analytics leaders will look at these two components separately, but you have to look at the BI and analytics tier in lockstep with your data architectures to really get to the granular insights and to leverage the capabilities of AI. Now, if you've never seen ThoughtSpot, I'll just show you what this looks like. Instead of somebody's hard coding of report, it's typing in search keywords and very robust keywords contains rank top bottom, getting to a visual visualization that then can be pinned to an existing Pinboard that might also contain insights generated by an AI engine. So it's easy enough for that new decision maker, the business user, the non analyst to create themselves modernizing the data and analytics portfolio is hard because the pace of change has accelerated. >>You use to be able to create an investment place. A bet for maybe 10 years, a few years ago, that time horizon was five years now, it's maybe three years and the time to maturity has also accelerated. So you have these different components, the search and AI tier the data science, tier data preparation and virtualization. But I would also say equally important is the cloud data warehouse and pay attention to how well these analytics tools can unlock the value in these cloud data warehouses. So thoughts about was the first to market with search and AI driven insights, competitors have followed suit, but be careful if you look at products like power BI or SAP analytics cloud, they might demo well, but do they let you get to all the data without moving it in products like snowflake, Amazon Redshift, or, or Azure synapse or Google big query, they do not. >>They re require you to move it into a smaller in memory engine. So it's important how well these new products inter operate the pace of change. It's acceleration Gartner recently predicted that by 2022, 65% of analytical queries will be generated using search or NLP or even AI. And that is roughly three times the prediction they had just a couple years ago. So let's talk about the real world impact of culture. And if you read any of my books or used any of the maturity models out there, whether the Gardner it score that I worked on, or the data warehousing Institute also has the maturity model. We talk about these five pillars to really become data driven. As Michelle spoke about it's focusing on the business outcomes, leveraging all the data, including new data sources, it's the talent, the people, the technology, and also the processes. >>And often when I would talk about the people in the talent, I would lump the culture as part of that. But in the last year, as I've traveled the world and done these digital events for thought leaders, you have told me now culture is absolutely so important. And so we've pulled it out as a separate pillar. And in fact, in polls that we've done in these events, look at how much more important culture is as a barrier to becoming data driven. It's three times as important as any of these other pillars. That's how critical it is. And let's take an example of where you can have great data, but if you don't have the right culture, there's devastating impacts. And I will say, I have been a loyal customer of Wells Fargo for more than 20 years. But look at what happened in the face of negative news with data, it said, Hey, we're not doing good cross selling customers do not have both a checking account and a credit card and a savings account and a mortgage. >>They opened fake accounts, basing billions in fines, change in leadership that even the CEO attributed to a toxic sales culture, and they're trying to fix this. But even recently there's been additional employee backlash saying the culture has not changed. Let's contrast that with some positive examples, Medtronic, a worldwide company in 150 countries around the world. They may not be a household name to you, but if you have a loved one or yourself, you have a pacemaker spinal implant diabetes, you know, this brand and at the start of COVID when they knew their business would be slowing down, because hospitals would only be able to take care of COVID patients. They took the bold move of making their IP for ventilators publicly available. That is the power of a positive culture or Verizon, a major telecom organization looking at late payments of their customers. And even though the us federal government said, well, you can't turn them off. >>He said, we'll extend that even beyond the mandated guidelines and facing a slow down in the business because of the tough economy, he said, you know what? We will spend the time upskilling our people, giving them the time to learn more about the future of work, the skills and data and analytics for 20,000 of their employees, rather than furloughing them. That is the power of a positive culture. So how can you transform your culture to the best in class? I'll give you three suggestions, bring in a change agent, identify the relevance, or I like to call it with them and organize for collaboration. So the CDO, whatever your title is, chief analytics, officer chief, digital officer, you are the most important change agent. And this is where you will hear that. Oftentimes a change agent has to come from outside the organization. So this is where, for example, in Europe, you have the CDO of just eat a takeout food delivery organization coming from the airline industry or in Australia, national Australian bank, taking a CDO within the same sector from TD bank going to NAB. >>So these change agents come in disrupt. It's a hard job. As one of you said to me, it often feels like Sisyphus. I make one step forward and I get knocked down again. I get pushed back. It is not for the faint of heart, but it's the most important part of your job. The other thing I'll talk about is with them, what is in it for me? And this is really about understanding the motivation, the relevance that data has for everyone on the frontline, as well as those analysts, as well as the executives. So if we're talking about players in the NFL, they want to perform better and they want to stay safe. That is why data matters to them. If we're talking about financial services, this may be a wealth management advisor, okay. We could say commissions, but it's really helping people have their dreams come true, whether it's putting their children through college or being able to retire without having to work multiple jobs still into your seventies or eighties for the teachers, teachers, you ask them about data. They'll say we don't, we don't need that. I care about the student. So if you can use data to help a student perform better, that is with them. And sometimes we spend so much time talking the technology, we forget, what is the value we're trying to deliver with this? And we forget the impact on the people that it does require change. In fact, the Harvard business review study found that 44% said lack of change. Management is the biggest barrier to leveraging both new technology, but also being empowered to act on those data driven insights. >>The third point organize for collaboration. This does require diversity of thought, but also bringing the technology, the data and the business people together. Now there's not a single one size fits all model for data and analytics. At one point in time, even having a BICC a BI competency center was considered state of the art. Now for the biggest impact, what I recommend is that you have a federated model centralized for economies of scale. That could be the common data, but then in bed, these evangelists, these analysts of the future within every business unit, every functional domain. And as you see this top bar, all models are possible, but the hybrid model has the most impact the most leaders. So as we look ahead to the months ahead to the year ahead and exciting time, because data is helping organizations better navigate a tough economy, lock in the customer loyalty. And I look forward to seeing how you foster that culture. That's collaborative with empathy and bring the best of technology, leveraging the cloud, all your data. So thank you for joining us at thought leaders. And next I'm pleased to introduce our first change agent, Tom Masa, Pharaoh, chief data officer of Western union. And before joining Western union, Tom made his Mark at HSBC and JP Morgan chase spearheading digital innovation in technology, operations, risk compliance, and retail banking. Tom, thank you so much for joining us today. >>Very happy to be here and, uh, looking forward to, uh, to talking to all of you today. So as we look to move organizations to a data-driven, uh, capability into the future, there is a lot that needs to be done on the data side, but also how did it connect and enable different business teams and technology teams into the future. As we look across, uh, our data ecosystems and our platforms and how we modernize that to the cloud in the future, it all needs to basically work together, right? To really be able to drive an organization from a data standpoint into the future. That includes being able to have the right information with the right quality of data at the right time to drive informed business decisions, to drive the business forward. As part of that, we actually have partnered with ThoughtSpot to actually bring in the technology to help us drive that as part of that partnership. >>And it's how we've looked to integrate it into our overall business as a whole we've looked at how do we make sure that our, that our business and our professional lives right, are enabled in the same ways as our personal lives. So for example, in your personal lives, when you want to go and find something out, what do you do? You go on to google.com or you go on to being, you gone to Yahoo and you search for what you want search to find an answer ThoughtSpot for us, it's the same thing, but in the business world. So using ThoughtSpot and other AI capability is it's allowed us to actually enable our overall business teams in our company to actually have our information at our fingertips. So rather than having to go and talk to someone or an engineer to go pull information or pull data, we actually can have the end users or the business executives, right. >>Search for what they need, what they want at the exact time that action needed to go and drive the business forward. This is truly one of those transformational things that we've put in place on top of that, we are on the journey to modernize our larger ecosystem as a whole. That includes modernizing our underlying data warehouses, our technology or our Elequil environments. And as we move that we've actually picked to our cloud providers going to AWS and GCP. We've also adopted snowflake to really drive into organize our information and our data then drive these new solutions and capabilities forward. So the portion of us though, is culture. So how do we engage with the business teams and bring the, the, the it teams together to really hit the drive, these holistic end to end solution, the capabilities to really support the actual business into the future. >>That's one of the keys here, as we look to modernize and to really enhance our organizations to become data driven. This is the key. If you can really start to provide answers to business questions before they're even being asked and to predict based upon different economic trends or different trends in your business, what does this is maybe be made and actually provide those answers to the business teams before they're even asking for it, that is really becoming a data driven organization. And as part of that, it's really then enables the business to act quickly and take advantage of opportunities as they come in based upon industries, based upon markets, as upon products, solutions or partnerships into the future. These are really some of the keys that, uh, that become crucial as you move forward, right, uh, into this, uh, into this new age, especially with COVID with COVID now taking place across the world, right? >>Many of these markets, many of these digital transformations are celebrating and are changing rapidly to accommodate and to support customers. And these, these very difficult times as part of that, you need to make sure you have the right underlying foundation ecosystems and solutions to really drive those, those capabilities. And those solutions forward as we go through this journey, uh, boasted both of my career, but also each of your careers into the future, right? It also needs to evolve, right? Technology has changed so drastically in the last 10 years, and that change has only a celebrating. So as part of that, you have to make sure that you stay up to speed up to date with new technology changes both on the platform standpoint tools, but also what our customers want, what our customers need and how do we then surface them with our information, with our data, with our platform, with our products and our services to meet those needs and to really support and service those customers into the future. >>This is all around becoming a more data driven organization, such as how do you use your data to support the current business lines, but how do you actually use your information, your data, to actually better support your customers and to support your business there's important, your employees, your operations teams, and so forth, and really creating that full integration in that ecosystem is really when he talked to get large dividends from his investments into the future. But that being said, uh, I hope you enjoyed the segment on how to become and how to drive a data driven organization. And I'm looking forward to talking to you again soon. Thank you, >>Tom. That was great. Thanks so much. Now I'm going to have to brag on you for a second as a change agent. You've come in this rusted. And how long have you been at Western union? >>Uh, well in nine months. So just, uh, just started this year, but, uh, there'd be some great opportunities and great changes and we were a lot more to go, but we're really driving things forward in partnership with our business teams and our colleagues to support those customers going forward. >>Tom, thank you so much. That was wonderful. And now I'm excited to introduce you to Gustavo Canton, a change agent that I've had the pleasure of working with meeting in Europe, and he is a serial change agent most recently, Schneider electric, but even going back to Sam's clubs. Gustavo. Welcome. >>So hi everyone. My name is Gustavo Canton and thank you so much, Cindy, for the intro, as you mentioned, doing transformations is a high effort, high reward situation. I have empowerment transformations and I have less many transformations. And what I can tell you is that it's really hard to predict the future, but if you have a North star and you know where you're going, the one thing that I want you to take away from this discussion today is that you need to be bold to evolve. And so in today I'm going to be talking about culture and data, and I'm going to break this down in four areas. How do we get started barriers or opportunities as I see it, the value of AI, and also, how do you communicate, especially now in the workforce of today with so many different generations, you need to make sure that you are communicating in ways that are nontraditional sometimes. >>And so how do we get started? So I think the answer to that is you have to start for you yourself as a leader and stay tuned. And by that, I mean, you need to understand not only what is happening in your function or your field, but you have to be very into what is happening, society, socioeconomically speaking, wellbeing. You know, the common example is a great example. And for me personally, it's an opportunity because the number one core value that I have is wellbeing. I believe that for human potential, for customers and communities to grow wellbeing should be at the center of every decision. And as somebody mentioned is great to be, you know, stay in tune and have the skillset and the Koresh. But for me personally, to be honest, to have this courage is not about Nadina afraid. You're always afraid when you're making big changes in your swimming upstream. >>But what gives me the courage is the empathy part. Like I think empathy is a huge component because every time I go into an organization or a function, I try to listen very attentively to the needs of the business and what the leaders are trying to do. What I do it thinking about the mission of how do I make change for the bigger, eh, you know, workforce? So the bigger, good, despite the fact that this might have a perhaps implication. So my own self interest in my career, right? Because you have to have that courage sometimes to make choices that are not well seeing politically speaking, what are the right thing to do and you have to push through it. So the bottom line for me is that I don't think they're transforming fast enough. And the reality is I speak with a lot of leaders and we have seen stories in the past. >>And what they show is that if you look at the four main barriers that are basically keeping us behind budget, inability to add cultural issues, politics, and lack of alignment, those are the top four. But the interesting thing is that as Cindy has mentioned, these topic about culture is sexually gaining, gaining more and more traction. And in 2018, there was a story from HBR and he wants about 45%. I believe today it's about 55%, 60% of respondents say that this is the main area that we need to focus on. So again, for all those leaders and all the executives who understand and are aware that we need to transform, commit to the transformation in set us state, eh, deadline to say, Hey, in two years, we're going to make this happen. Why do we need to do, to empower and enable this change engines to make it happen? >>You need to make the tough choices. And so to me, when I speak about being bold is about making the right choices now. So I'll give you examples of some of the roadblocks that I went through. As I think the transformations most recently, as Cindy mentioned in Schneider, there are three main areas, legacy mindset. And what that means is that we've been doing this in a specific way for a long time. And here is how having successful while working the past is not going to work. Now, the opportunity there is that there is a lot of leaders who have a digital mindset and their up and coming leaders that are perhaps not yet fully developed. We need to mentor those leaders and take bets on some of these talents, including young talent. We cannot be thinking in the past and just wait for people, you know, three to five years for them to develop because the world is going to in a, in a way that is super fast, the second area, and this is specifically to implementation of AI is very interesting to me because just the example that I have with ThoughtSpot, right? >>We went on implementation and a lot of the way the it team function. So the leaders look at technology, they look at it from the prison of the prior auth success criteria for the traditional BIS. And that's not going to work again, your opportunity here is that you need to really find what success look like. In my case, I want the user experience of our workforce to be the same as this experience you have at home is a very simple concept. And so we need to think about how do we gain that user experience with this augmented analytics tools and then work backwards to have the right talent processes and technology to enable that. And finally, and obviously with, with COVID a lot of pressuring organizations and companies to do more with less. And the solution that most leaders I see are taking is to just minimize costs sometimes and cut budget. >>We have to do the opposite. We have to actually invest some growth areas, but do it by business question. Don't do it by function. If you actually invest. And these kind of solutions, if you actually invest on developing your talent, your leadership to see more digitally, if you actually invest on fixing your data platform, it's not just an incremental cost. It's actually this investment is going to offset all those hidden costs and inefficiencies that you have on your system, because people are doing a lot of work in working very hard, but it's not efficiency, and it's not working in the way that you might want to work. So there is a lot of opportunity there. And you just to put into some perspective, there have been some studies in the past about, you know, how do we kind of measure the impact of data? And obviously this is going to vary by your organization. >>Maturity is going to be a lot of factors. I've been in companies who have very clean, good data to work with. And I've been with companies that we have to start basically from scratch. So it all depends on your maturity level, but in this study, what I think is interesting is they try to put a tagline or attack price to what is the cost of incomplete data. So in this case, it's about 10 times as much to complete a unit of work. When you have data that is flawed as opposed to have imperfect data. So let me put that just in perspective, just as an example, right? Imagine you are trying to do something and you have to do a hundred things in a project, and each time you do something, it's going to cost you a dollar. So if you have perfect data, the total cost of that project might be a hundred dollars. >>But now let's say you have 80% perfect data and 20% flow data by using this assumption that Florida is 10 times as costly as perfect data. Your total costs now becomes $280 as opposed to a hundred dollars. This just for you to really think about as a CIO CTO, CSRO CEO, are we really paying attention and really close in the gaps that we have on our data infrastructure. If we don't do that, it's hard sometimes to see this snowball effect or to measure the overall impact. But as you can tell, the price tag goes up very, very quickly. So now, if I were to say, how do I communicate this? Or how do I break through some of these challenges or some of these various, right. I think the key is I am in analytics. I know statistics obviously, and, and, and love modeling and, you know, data and optimization theory and all that stuff. >>That's what I came to analytics. But now as a leader and as a change agent, I need to speak about value. And in this case, for example, for Schneider, there was this tagline coffee of your energy. So the number one thing that they were asking from the analytics team was actually efficiency, which to me was very interesting. But once I understood that I understood what kind of language to use, how to connect it to the overall strategy and basically how to bring in the right leaders, because you need to focus on the leaders that you're going to make the most progress. You know, again, low effort, high value. You need to make sure you centralize all the data as you can. You need to bring in some kind of augmented analytics solution. And finally you need to make it super simple for the, you know, in this case, I was working with the HR teams and other areas, so they can have access to one portal. >>They don't have to be confused and looking for 10 different places to find information. I think if you can actually have those four foundational pillars, obviously under the guise of having a data driven culture, that's where you can actually make the impact. So in our case, it was about three years total transformation, but it was two years for this component of augmented analytics. It took about two years to talk to, you know, it, get leadership support, find the budgeting, you know, get everybody on board, make sure the success criteria was correct. And we call this initiative, the people analytics, I pulled up, it was actually launched in July of this year. And we were very excited and the audience was very excited to do this. In this case, we did our pilot in North America for many, many manufacturers. But one thing that is really important is as you bring along your audience on this, you know, you're going from Excel, you know, in some cases or Tablo to other tools like, you know, you need to really explain them. >>What is the difference in how these two can truly replace some of the spreadsheets or some of the views that you might have on these other kinds of tools? Again, Tableau, I think it's a really good tool. There are other many tools that you might have in your toolkit. But in my case, personally, I feel that you need to have one portal going back to Cindy's point. I really truly enable the end user. And I feel that this is the right solution for us, right? And I will show you some of the findings that we had in the pilot in the last two months. So this was a huge victory, and I will tell you why, because it took a lot of effort for us to get to the station. Like I said, it's been years for us to kind of lay the foundation, get the leadership in shape the culture so people can understand why you truly need to invest, but I meant analytics. >>And so what I'm showing here is an example of how do we use basically to capture in video the qualitative findings that we had, plus the quantitative insights that we have. So in this case, our preliminary results based on our ambition for three main metrics, our safe user experience and adoption. So for our safe or a mission was to have 10 hours per week per employee save on average user experience or ambition was 4.5 and adoption, 80% in just two months, two months and a half of the pilot, we were able to achieve five hours per week per employee savings. I used to experience for 4.3 out of five and adoption of 60%, really, really amazing work. But again, it takes a lot of collaboration for us to get to the stage from it, legal communications, obviously the operations teams and the users in HR safety and other areas that might be, eh, basically stakeholders in this whole process. >>So just to summarize this kind of effort takes a lot of energy. You hire a change agent, you need to have the courage to make this decision and understand that. I feel that in this day and age, with all this disruption happening, we don't have a choice. We have to take the risk, right? And in this case, I feel a lot of satisfaction in how we were able to gain all these very souls for this organization. And that gave me the confidence to know that the work has been done and we are now in a different stage for the organization. And so for me, it says to say, thank you for everybody who has believed, obviously in our vision, everybody wants to believe in, you know, the word that we were trying to do and to make the life for, you know, workforce or customers that in community better, as you can tell, there is a lot of effort. >>There is a lot of collaboration that is needed to do something like this. In the end, I feel very satisfied. We, the accomplishments of this transformation, and I just, I just want to tell for you, if you are going right now in a moment that you feel that you have to swim upstream, you know, what would mentors, where we, people in this industry that can help you out and guide you on this kind of a transformation is not easy to do is high effort bodies, well worth it. And with that said, I hope you are well. And it's been a pleasure talking to you. Take care. Thank you, Gustavo. That was amazing. All right, let's go to the panel. >>I think we can all agree how valuable it is to hear from practitioners. And I want to thank the panel for sharing their knowledge with the community. And one common challenge that I heard you all talk about was bringing your leadership and your teams along on the journey with you. We talk about this all the time, and it is critical to have support from the top. Why? Because it directs the middle and then it enables bottoms up innovation effects from the cultural transformation that you guys all talked about. It seems like another common theme we heard is that you all prioritize database decision making in your organizations and you combine two of your most valuable assets to do that and create leverage employees on the front lines. And of course the data, as you rightly pointed out, Tom, the pandemic has accelerated the need for really leaning into this. You know, the old saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. We'll COVID is broken everything. And it's great to hear from our experts, you know, how to move forward. So let's get right into, so Gustavo, let's start with you. If, if I'm an aspiring change agent and let's say I'm a, I'm a budding data leader. What do I need to start doing? What habits do I need to create for long lasting success? >>I think curiosity is very important. You need to be, like I say, in tune to what is happening, not only in your specific field, like I have a passion for analytics, I can do this for 50 years plus, but I think you need to understand wellbeing other areas across not only a specific business, as you know, I come from, you know, Sam's club, Walmart, retail, I mean energy management technology. So you have to try to push yourself and basically go out of your comfort zone. I mean, if you are staying in your comfort zone and you want to use lean continuous improvement, that's just going to take you so far. What you have to do is, and that's what I try to do is I try to go into areas, different certain transformations that make me, you know, stretch and develop as a leader. That's what I'm looking to do. So I can help to inform the functions organizations and do the change management decision of mindset as required for these kinds of efforts. A thank you for that, that is inspiring. And, and Sydney, you love data. And the data's pretty clear that diversity is a good business, but I wonder if you can add your perspective to this conversation. >>Yeah. So Michelle has a new fan here because she has found her voice. I'm still working on finding mine. And it's interesting because I was raised by my dad, a single dad. So he did teach me how to work in a predominantly male environment, but why I think diversity matters more now than ever before. And this is by gender, by race, by age, by just different ways of working in thinking is because as we automate things with AI, if we do not have diverse teams looking at the data and the models and how they're applied, we risk having bias at scale. So this is why I think I don't care what type of minority you are finding your voice, having a seat at the table and just believing in the impact of your work has never been more important. And as Michelle said more possible, >>Great perspectives. Thank you, Tom. I want to go to you. I mean, I feel like everybody in our businesses in some way, shape or form become a COVID expert, but what's been the impact of the pandemic on your organization's digital transformation plans. We've seen a massive growth actually in a digital business over the last 12 months, really, uh, even in celebration, right? Once, once COBIT hit, uh, we really saw that, uh, that, uh, in the 200 countries and territories that we operate in today and service our customers. And today that, uh, been a huge need, right? To send money, to support family, to support, uh, friends and loved ones across the world. And as part of that, uh, we, you know, we we're, we are, uh, very, uh, honored to get to support those customers that we across all the centers today. But as part of that acceleration, we need to make sure that we had the right architecture and the right platforms to basically scale, right, to basically support and provide the right kind of security for our customers going forward. >>So as part of that, uh, we, we did do some, uh, some the pivots and we did, uh, a solo rate, some of our plans on digital to help support that overall growth coming in there to support our customers going forward, because there were these times during this pandemic, right? This is the most important time. And we need to support those, those that we love and those that we care about and doing that it's one of those ways is actually by sending money to them, support them financially. And that's where, uh, really our part that our services come into play that, you know, we really support those families. So it was really a, a, a, a, a great opportunity for us to really support and really bring some of our products to the next level and supporting our business going forward. Awesome. Thank you. Now, I want to come back to Gustavo, Tom. I'd love for you to chime in too. Did you guys ever think like you were, you were pushing the envelope too much in, in doing things with, with data or the technology that was just maybe too bold, maybe you felt like at some point it was, it was, it was failing or you're pushing your people too hard. Can you share that experience and how you got through it? >>Yeah, the way I look at it is, you know, again, whenever I go to an organization, I ask the question, Hey, how fast you would like to conform. And, you know, based on the agreements on the leadership and the vision that we want to take place, I take decisions. And I collaborate in a specific way now, in the case of COVID, for example, right? It forces us to remove silos and collaborate in a faster way. So to me, it was an opportunity to actually integrate with other areas and drive decisions faster, but make no mistake about it. When you are doing a transformation, you are obviously trying to do things faster than sometimes people are comfortable doing, and you need to be okay with that. Sometimes you need to be okay with tension, or you need to be okay, you know, the varying points or making repetitive business cases onto people, connect with the decision because you understand, and you are seeing that, Hey, the CEO is making a one two year, you know, efficiency goal. >>The only way for us to really do more with less is for us to continue this path. We cannot just stay with the status quo. We need to find a way to accelerate it's information. That's the way, how, how about Utah? We were talking earlier was sedation Cindy, about that bungee jumping moment. What can you share? Yeah. You know, I think you hit upon, uh, right now, the pace of change will be the slowest pace that you see for the rest of your career. So as part of that, right, that's what I tell my team. This is that you need to be, need to feel comfortable being uncomfortable. I mean, that we have to be able to basically, uh, scale, right, expand and support that the ever changing needs in the marketplace and industry and our customers today, and that pace of change that's happening. >>Right. And what customers are asking for and the competition in the marketplace, it's only going to accelerate. So as part of that, you know, as you look at what, uh, how you're operating today and your current business model, right. Things are only going to get faster. So you have to plan into align and to drive the actual transformation so that you can scale even faster in the future. So as part of that is what we're putting in place here, right. Is how do we create that underlying framework and foundation that allows the organization to basically continue to scale and evolve into the future? Yeah, we're definitely out of our comfort zones, but we're getting comfortable with it. So, Cindy, last question, you've worked with hundreds of organizations, and I got to believe that, you know, some of the advice you gave when you were at Gartner, which is pre COVID, maybe sometimes clients didn't always act on it. You know, they're not on my watch for whatever variety of reasons, but it's being forced on them now. But knowing what you know now that you know, we're all in this isolation economy, how would you say that advice has changed? Has it changed? What's your number one action and recommendation today? >>Yeah. Well, first off, Tom just freaked me out. What do you mean? This is the slowest ever even six months ago. I was saying the pace of change in data and analytics is frenetic. So, but I think you're right, Tom, the business and the technology together is forcing this change. Now, um, Dave, to answer your question, I would say the one bit of advice, maybe I was a little more, um, very aware of the power and politics and how to bring people along in a way that they are comfortable. And now I think it's, you know, what? You can't get comfortable. In fact, we know that the organizations that were already in the cloud have been able to respond and pivot faster. So if you really want to survive as, as Tom and Gustavo said, get used to being uncomfortable, the power and politics are gonna happen. Break the rules, get used to that and be bold. Do not, do not be afraid to tell somebody they're wrong and they're not moving fast enough. I do think you have to do that with empathy, as Michelle said, and Gustavo, I think that's one of the key words today besides the bungee jumping. So I want to know where's the dish gonna go on to junk >>Guys. Fantastic discussion, really, thanks again, to all the panelists and the guests. It was really a pleasure speaking with you today. Really virtually all of the leaders that I've spoken to in the cube program. Recently, they tell me that the pandemic is accelerating so many things, whether it's new ways to work, we heard about new security models and obviously the need for cloud. I mean, all of these things are driving true enterprise wide digital transformation, not just as I said before, lip service is sometimes we minimize the importance and the challenge of building culture and in making this transformation possible. But when it's done, right, the right culture is going to deliver tournament, tremendous results. Know what does that mean? Getting it right? Everybody's trying to get it right. My biggest takeaway today is it means making data part of the DNA of your organization. >>And that means making it accessible to the people in your organization that are empowered to make decisions, decisions that can drive you revenue, cut costs, speed, access to critical care, whatever the mission is of your organization. Data can create insights and informed decisions that drive value. Okay. Let's bring back Sudheesh and wrap things up. So these please bring us home. Thank you. Thank you, Dave. Thank you. The cube team, and thanks. Thanks goes to all of our customers and partners who joined us and thanks to all of you for spending the time with us. I want to do three quick things and then close it off. The first thing is I want to summarize the key takeaways that I had from all four of our distinguished speakers. First, Michelle, I was simply put it. She said it really well. That is be brave and drive. >>Don't go for a drive along. That is such an important point. Often times, you know that I think that you have to make the positive change that you want to see happen when you wait for someone else to do it, not just, why not you? Why don't you be the one making that change happen? That's the thing that I picked up from Michelle's talk, Cindy talked about finding the importance of finding your voice, taking that chair, whether it's available or not, and making sure that your ideas, your voices are heard, and if it requires some force and apply that force, make sure your ideas are we start with talking about the importance of building consensus, not going at things all alone, sometimes building the importance of building the Koran. And that is critical because if you want the changes to last, you want to make sure that the organization is fully behind it, Tom, instead of a single take away. >>What I was inspired by is the fact that a company that is 170 years old, 170 years sold 200 companies, 200 countries they're operating in and they were able to make the change that is necessary through this difficult time. So in a matter of months, if they could do it, anyone could. The second thing I want to do is to leave you with a takeaway that is I would like you to go to topspot.com/nfl because our team has made an app for NFL on snowflake. I think you will find this interesting now that you are inspired and excited because of Michelle stock. And the last thing is these go to topspot.com/beyond our global user conferences happening in this December, we would love to have you join us. It's again, virtual, you can join from anywhere. We are expecting anywhere from five to 10,000 people, and we would love to have you join and see what we've been up to since last year, we, we have a lot of amazing things in store for you, our customers, our partners, our collaborators, they will be coming and sharing. You'll be sharing things that you have been working to release something that will come out next year. And also some of the crazy ideas or engineers. All of those things will be available for you at hotspot beyond. Thank you. Thank you so much.

>> Voice Over: Data is at the heart of transformation, and the change every company needs to succeed. But it takes more than new technology. It's about teams, talent and cultural change. Empowering everyone on the front lines to make decisions, all at the speed of digital. The transformation starts with you, it's time to lead the way, it's time for thought leaders. (soft upbeat music) >> Welcome to Thought.Leaders a digital event brought to you by ThoughtSpot, my name is Dave Vellante. The purpose of this day is to bring industry leaders and experts together to really try and understand the important issues around digital transformation. We have an amazing lineup of speakers, and our goal is to provide you with some best practices that you can bring back and apply to your organization. Look, data is plentiful, but insights are not, ThoughtSpot is disrupting analytics, by using search and machine intelligence to simplify data analysis and really empower anyone with fast access to relevant data. But in the last 150 days, we've had more questions than answers. Creating an organization that puts data and insights at their core, requires not only modern technology but leadership, a mindset and a culture, that people often refer to as data-driven. What does that mean? How can we equip our teams with data and fast access to quality information that can turn insights into action? And today we're going to hear from experienced leaders who are transforming their organizations with data, insights, and creating digital first cultures. But before we introduce our speakers, I'm joined today by two of my co-hosts from ThoughtSpot. First, chief data strategy officer of the ThoughtSpot is Cindi Howson, Cindi is an analytics and BI expert with 20 plus years experience, and the author of Successful Business Intelligence: Unlock the Value of BI & Big Data. Cindi was previously the lead analyst at Gartner for the data and analytics Magic Quadrant. In early last year, she joined ThoughtSpot to help CEOs and their teams understand how best to leverage analytics and AI for digital transformation. Cindi great to see you, welcome to the show. >> Thank you Dave, nice to join you virtually. >> Now our second cohost and friend of theCUBE is ThoughtSpot CEO Sudheesh Nair Hello Sudheesh, how are you doing today? >> I'm well, good to talk to you again. >> That's great to see you, thanks so much for being here. Now Sudheesh, please share with us why this discussion is so important to your customers and of course to our audience, and what they're going to learn today. (upbeat music) >> Thanks Dave, I wish you were there to introduce me into every room that I walk into because you have such an amazing way of doing it. It makes me feel also good. Look, since we have all been you know, cooped up in our homes, I know that the vendors like us, we have amped up our sort of effort to reach out to you with, invites for events like this. So we are getting very more invites for events like this than ever before. So when we started planning for this, we had three clear goals that we wanted to accomplish. And our first one, that when you finish this and walk away, we want to make sure that you don't feel like it was a waste of time, we want to make sure that we value your time, then this is going to be used. Number two, we want to put you in touch with industry leaders and thought leaders, generally good people, that you want to hang around with long after this event is over. And number three, as we plan through this, you know we are living through these difficult times we want this event to be more of an uplifting and inspiring event too. Now, the challenge is how do you do that with the team being change agents, because teens and as much as we romanticize it, it is not one of those uplifting things that everyone wants to do or likes to do. The way I think of it, changes sort of like, if you've ever done bungee jumping, and it's like standing on the edges, waiting to make that one more step you know, all you have to do is take that one step and gravity will do the rest, but that is the hardest step today. Change requires a lot of courage, and when we are talking about data and analytics, which is already like such a hard topic not necessarily an uplifting and positive conversation most businesses, it is somewhat scary, change becomes all the more difficult. Ultimately change requires courage, courage to first of all, challenge the status quo. People sometimes are afraid to challenge the status quo because they are thinking that you know, maybe I don't have the power to make the change that the company needs, sometimes they feel like I don't have the skills, sometimes they may feel that I'm probably not the right person to do it. Or sometimes the lack of courage manifest itself as the inability to sort of break the silos that are formed within the organizations when it comes to data and insights that you talked about. You know, that are people in the company who are going to have the data because they know how to manage the data, how to inquire and extract, they know how to speak data, they have the skills to do that. But they are not the group of people who have sort of the knowledge, the experience of the business to ask the right questions off the data. So there is the silo of people with the answers, and there is a silo of people with the questions, and there is gap, this sort of silos are standing in the way of making that necessary change that we all know the business needs. And the last change to sort of bring an external force sometimes. It could be a tool, it could be a platform, it could be a person, it could be a process but sometimes no matter how big the company is or how small the company is you may need to bring some external stimuli to start the domino of the positive changes that are necessary. The group of people that we are brought in, the four people, including Cindi that you will hear from today are really good at practically telling you how to make that step, how to step off that edge, how to dress the rope, that you will be safe and you're going to have fun, you will have that exhilarating feeling of jumping for a bungee jump, all four of them are exceptional, but my owner is to introduce Michelle. And she's our first speaker, Michelle I am very happy after watching our presentation and reading your bio that there are no country vital worldwide competition for cool parents, because she will beat all of us. Because when her children were small, they were probably into Harry Potter and Disney and she was managing a business and leading change there. And then as her kids grew up and got to that age where they like football and NFL, guess what? She's the CIO of NFL, what a cool mom. I am extremely excited to see what she's going to talk about. I've seen this slides, a bunch of amazing pictures, I'm looking to see the context behind it, I'm very thrilled to make that client so far, Michelle, I'm looking forward to her talk next. Welcome Michelle, it's over to you. (soft upbeat music) >> I'm delighted to be with you all today to talk about thought leadership. And I'm so excited that you asked me to join you because today I get to be a quarterback. I always wanted to be one, and I thought this is about as close as I'm ever going to get. So I want to talk to you about quarterbacking our digital revolution using insights data, and of course as you said, leadership. First a little bit about myself, a little background as I said, I always wanted to play football, and this is something that I wanted to do since I was a child, but when I grew up, girls didn't get to play football. I'm so happy that that's changing and girls are now doing all kinds of things that they didn't get to do before. Just this past weekend on an NFL field, we had a female coach on two sidelines, and a female official on the field. I'm a lifelong fan and student of the game of football, I grew up in the South, you can tell from the accent and in the South is like a religion and you pick sides. I chose Auburn University working in the Athletic Department, so I'm testament to you can start the journey can be long it took me many, many years to make it into professional sports. I graduated in 1987 and my little brother, well, not actually not so little, he played offensive line for the Alabama Crimson Tide. And for those of you who know SEC football you know, this is a really big rivalry. And when you choose sides, your family is divided, so it's kind of fun for me to always tell the story that my dad knew his kid would make it to the NFL he just bet on the wrong one. My career has been about bringing people together for memorable moments at some of America's most iconic brands. Delivering memories and amazing experiences that delight from Universal Studios, Disney to my current position as CIO of the NFL. In this job I'm very privileged to have the opportunity to work with the team, that gets to bring America's game to millions of people around the world. Often I'm asked to talk about how to create amazing experiences for fans, guests, or customers. But today I really wanted to focus on something different and talk to you about being behind the scenes and backstage. Because behind every event every game, every awesome moment is execution, precise repeatable execution. And most of my career has been behind the scenes, doing just that, assembling teams to execute these plans, and the key way that companies operate at these exceptional levels, is making good decisions, the right decisions at the right time and based upon data, so that you can translate the data into intelligence and be a data-driven culture. Using data and intelligence is an important way that world-class companies do differentiate themselves. And it's the lifeblood of collaboration and innovation. Teams that are working on delivering these kinds of world-class experiences are often seeking out and leveraging next generation technologies and finding new ways to work. I've been fortunate to work across three decades of emerging experiences, which each required emerging technologies to execute. A little bit first about Disney, in the 90s I was at Disney, leading a project called destination Disney, which it's a data project, it was a data project, but it was CRM before CRM was even cool. And then certainly before anything like a data-driven culture was ever brought up. But way back then we were creating a digital backbone that enabled many technologies for the things that you see today, like the magic band, just these magical express. My career at Disney began in finance, but Disney was very good about rotating you around, and it was during one of these rotations that I became very passionate about data. I kind of became a pain in the butt to the IT team, asking for data more and more data. And I learned that all of that valuable data was locked up in our systems, all of our point of sales systems, our reservation systems, our operation systems, and so I became a shadow IT person in marketing, ultimately leading to moving into IT, and I haven't looked back since. In the early 2000s I was at Universal Studios Theme Park as their CIO, preparing for and launching the wizarding world of Harry Potter. Bringing one of history's most memorable characters to life required many new technologies and a lot of data. Our data and technologies were embedded into the rides and attractions. I mean, how do you really think a wand selects you at a wine shop. As today at the NFL, I am constantly challenged to do leading edge technologies using things like sensors, AI, machine learning, and all new communication strategies, and using data to drive everything from player performance, contracts to where we build new stadiums and hold events. With this year being the most challenging, yet rewarding year in my career at the NFL. In the middle of a global pandemic, the way we are executing on our season is leveraging data from contract tracing devices joined with testing data. Talk about data, actually enabling your business without it we wouldn't be having a season right now. I'm also on the board of directors of two public companies, where data and collaboration are paramount. First RingCentral, it's a cloud based unified communications platform, and collaboration with video message and phone, all in one solution in the cloud. And Quotient Technologies, whose product is actually data. The tagline at quotient is the result in knowing. I think that's really important, because not all of us are data companies, where your product is actually data. But we should operate more like your product is data. I'd also like to talk to you about four areas of things to think about, as thought leaders in your companies. First just hit on it is change, how to be a champion and a driver of change. Second, how to use data to drive performance for your company, and measure performance of your company. Third, how companies now require intense collaboration to operate, and finally, how much of this is accomplished through solid data-driven decisions. First let's hit on change. I mean, it's evident today more than ever, that we are in an environment of extreme change. I mean, we've all been at this for years and as technologists we've known it, believed it, lived it, and thankfully for the most part knock on wood we were prepared for it. But this year everyone's cheese was moved, all the people in the back rooms, IT, data architects and others, were suddenly called to the forefront. Because a global pandemic has turned out to be the thing that is driving intense change in how people work and analyze their business. On March 13th, we closed our office at the NFL in the middle of preparing for one of our biggest events, our kickoff event, the 2020 Draft. We went from planning, a large event in Las Vegas under the bright lights red carpet stage to smaller events in club facilities. And then ultimately to one where everyone coaches, GMs, prospects and even our commissioner were at home in their basements. And we only had a few weeks to figure it out. I found myself for the first time being in the live broadcast event space, talking about bungee dress jumping, this is really what it felt like. It was one in which no one felt comfortable, because it had not been done before. But leading through this, I stepped up, but it was very scary, it was certainly very risky but it ended up being Oh, so rewarding when we did it. And as a result of this, some things will change forever. Second, managing performance. I mean, data should inform how you're doing and how to get your company to perform at this level, highest level. As an example, the NFL has always measured performance obviously, and it is one of the purest examples of how performance directly impacts outcome. I mean, you can see performance on the field, you can see points being scored and stats, and you immediately know that impact, those with the best stats, usually win the games. The NFL has always recorded stats, since the beginning of time, here at the NFL a little this year as our 100 and first year and athletes ultimate success as a player has also always been greatly impacted by his stats. But what has changed for us, is both how much more we can measure, and the immediacy with which it can be measured. And I'm sure in your business, it's the same, the amount of data you must have has got to have quadrupled recently and how fast you need it and how quickly you need to analyze it, is so important. And it's very important to break the silos between the keys to the data and the use of the data. Our next generation stats platform is taking data to a next level, it's powered by Amazon Web Services, and we gathered this data real time from sensors that are on players' bodies. We gather it in real time, analyze it, display it online and on broadcast, and of course it's used to prepare week to week in addition to what is a normal coaching plan would be. We can now analyze, visualize, route patterns speed, matchups, et cetera, so much faster than ever before. We're continuing to roll out sensors too, that we'll gather more and more information about player's performance as it relates to their health and safety. The third trend is really I think it's a big part of what we're feeling today and that is intense collaboration. And just for sort of historical purposes it's important to think about for those of you that are IT professionals and developers, you know more than 10 years ago, agile practices began sweeping companies or small teams would work together rapidly in a very flexible, adaptive and innovative way, and it proved to be transformational. However today, of course, that is no longer just small teams the next big wave of change, and we've seen it through this pandemic is that it's the whole enterprise that must collaborate and be agile. If I look back on my career when I was at Disney, we owned everything 100%, we made a decision, we implemented it, we were a collaborative culture but it was much easier to push change because you own the whole decision. If there was buy in from the top down, you got the people from the bottom up to do it, and you executed. At Universal, we were a joint venture, our attractions and entertainment was licensed, our hotels were owned and managed by other third parties. So influence and collaboration and how to share across companies became very important. And now here I am at the NFL and even the bigger ecosystem. We have 32 clubs that are all separate businesses 31 different stadiums that are owned by a variety of people. We have licensees, we have sponsors, we have broadcast partners. So it seems that as my career has evolved centralized control has gotten less and less and has been replaced by intense collaboration not only within your own company, but across companies. The ability to work in a collaborative way across businesses and even other companies that has been a big key to my success in my career. I believe this whole vertical integration and big top down decision making is going by the wayside in favor of ecosystems that require cooperation, yet competition to coexist. I mean the NFL is a great example of what we call coopertition, which is cooperation and competition. When in competition with each other, but we cooperate to make the company the best it can be. And at the heart of these items really are data-driven decisions and culture. Data on its own isn't good enough, you must be able to turn it to insights, partnerships between technology teams who usually hold the keys to the raw data, and business units who have the knowledge to build the right decision models is key. If you're not already involved in this linkage, you should be, data mining isn't new for sure. The availability of data is quadrupling and it's everywhere. How do you know what to even look at? How do you know where to begin? How do you know what questions to ask? It's by using the tools that are available for visualization and analytics and knitting together strategies of the company. So it begins with first of all making sure you do understand the strategy of the company. So in closing, just to wrap up a bit, many of you joined today looking for thought leadership on how to be a change agent, a change champion, and how to lead through transformation. Some final thoughts are be brave, and drive, don't do the ride along program, it's very important to drive, driving can be high risk but it's also high reward. Embracing the uncertainty of what will happen, is how you become brave, get more and more comfortable with uncertainty be calm and let data be your map on your journey, thanks. >> Michelle, thank you so much. So you and I share a love of data, and a love of football. You said you want to be the quarterback, I'm more an old wine person. (Michelle laughing) >> Well, then I can do my job without you. >> Great, and I'm getting the feeling now you know, Sudheesh is talking about bungee jumping. My boat is when we're past this pandemic, we both take them to the Delaware Water Gap and we do the cliff jumping. >> That sounds good, I'll watch. >> You'll watch, okay, so Michelle, you have so many stakeholders when you're trying to prioritize the different voices, you have the players, you have the owners you have the league, as you mentioned to the broadcasters your, your partners here and football mamas like myself. How do you prioritize when there's so many different stakeholders that you need to satisfy? I think balancing across stakeholders starts with aligning on a mission. And if you spend a lot of time understanding where everyone's coming from, and you can find the common thread ties them all together you sort of do get them to naturally prioritize their work, and I think that's very important. So for us at the NFL, and even at Disney, it was our core values and our core purpose is so well known, and when anything challenges that we're able to sort of lay that out. But as a change agent, you have to be very empathetic, and I would say empathy is probably your strongest skill if you're a change agent. And that means listening to every single stakeholder even when they're yelling at you, even when they're telling you your technology doesn't work and you know that it's user error, or even when someone is just emotional about what's happening to them and that they're not comfortable with it. So I think being empathetic and having a mission and understanding it, is sort of how I prioritize and balance. >> Yeah, empathy, a very popular word this year. I can imagine those coaches and owners yelling. So I thank you for your metership here. So Michelle, I look forward to discussing this more with our other customers and disruptors joining us in a little bit. (soft upbeat music) >> So we're going to take a hard pivot now and go from football to Chernobyl, Chernobyl, what went wrong? 1986, as the reactors were melting down they had the data to say, this is going to be catastrophic and yet the culture said, "No, we're perfect, hide it. Don't dare tell anyone," which meant they went ahead and had celebrations in Kiev. Even though that increased the exposure the additional thousands getting cancer, and 20,000 years before the ground around there and even be inhabited again, This is how powerful and detrimental a negative culture, a culture that is unable to confront the brutal facts that hides data. This is what we have to contend with, and this is why I want you to focus on having fostering a data-driven culture. I don't want you to be a laggard, I want you to be a leader in using data to drive your digital transformation. So I'll talk about culture and technology, isn't really two sides of the same coin, real-world impacts and then some best practices you can use to disrupt and innovate your culture. Now, oftentimes I would talk about culture and I talk about technology, and recently a CDO said to me, "You know Cindi, I actually think this is two sides of the same coin. One reflects the other, what do you think?" Let me walk you through this, so let's take a laggard. What is the technology look like? Is it based on 1990s BI and reporting largely parameterized reports on-premises data warehouses, or not even that operational reports, at best one enterprise data warehouse very slow moving and collaboration is only email. What does that culture tell you? Maybe there's a lack of leadership to change, to do the hard work that Sudheesh referred to. Or is there also a culture of fear, afraid of failure, resistance to change complacency and sometimes that complacency it's not because people are lazy, it's because they've been so beaten down every time a new idea is presented. It's like, no we're measured on least cost to serve. So politics and distrust, whether it's between business and IT or individual stakeholders is the norm. So data is hoarded, let's contrast that with a leader, a data and analytics leader, what is their technology look like? Augmented analytics, search and AI-driven insights not on-premises, but in the cloud and maybe multiple clouds. And the data is not in one place, but it's in a data lake, and in a data warehouse, a logical data warehouse. The collaboration is being a newer methods whether it's Slack or teams allowing for that real time decisioning or investigating a particular data point. So what is the culture in the leaders? It's transparent and trust, there is a trust that data will not be used to punish, that there is an ability to confront the bad news. It's innovation, valuing innovation in pursuit of the company goals, whether it's the best fan experience and player safety in the NFL or best serving your customers. It's innovative and collaborative. There's none of this, oh, well, I didn't invent that, I'm not going to look at that. There's still pride of ownership, but it's collaborating to get to a better place faster. And people feel empowered to present new ideas to fail fast, and they're energized, knowing that they're using the best technology and innovating at the pace that business requires. So data is democratized and democratized, not just for power users or analysts, but really at the point of impact what we like to call the new decision makers. Or really the frontline workers. So Harvard business review partnered with us to develop this study to say, just how important is this? They've been working at BI and analytics as an industry for more than 20 years. Why is it not at the front lines? Whether it's a doctor, a nurse, a coach, a supply chain manager a warehouse manager, a financial services advisor. 87% said they would be more successful if frontline workers were empowered with data-driven insights, but they recognize they need new technology to be able to do that. It's not about learning hard tools, the sad reality only 20% of organizations are actually doing this, these are the data-driven leaders. So this is the culture and technology, how did we get here? It's because state of the art keeps changing. So the first generation BI and analytics platforms were deployed on-premises, on small datasets really just taking data out of ERP systems that were also on-premises, and state of the art was maybe getting a management report, an operational report. Over time visual based data discovery vendors, disrupted these traditional BI vendors, empowering now analysts to create visualizations with the flexibility on a desktop, sometimes larger data sometimes coming from a data warehouse, the current state of the art though, Gartner calls it augmented analytics, at ThoughtSpot, we call it search and AI-driven analytics. And this was pioneered for large scale data sets, whether it's on-premises or leveraging the cloud data warehouses, and I think this is an important point. Oftentimes you, the data and analytics leaders, will look at these two components separately, but you have to look at the BI and analytics tier in lockstep with your data architectures to really get to the granular insights, and to leverage the capabilities of AI. Now, if you've never seen ThoughtSpot I'll just show you what this looks like, instead of somebody's hard coding a report, it's typing in search keywords and very robust keywords contains rank, top, bottom getting to a visualization that then can be pinned to an existing Pinboard that might also contain insights generated by an AI engine. So it's easy enough for that new decision maker, the business user, the non analyst to create themselves. Modernizing the data and analytics portfolio is hard, because the pace of change has accelerated. You used to be able to create an investment, place a bet for maybe 10 years. A few years ago, that time horizon was five years, now it's maybe three years, and the time to maturity has also accelerated. So you have these different components the search and AI tier, the data science tier, data preparation and virtualization. But I would also say equally important is the cloud data warehouse. And pay attention to how well these analytics tools can unlock the value in these cloud data warehouses. So ThoughtSpot was the first to market with search and AI-driven insights. Competitors have followed suit, but be careful if you look at products like Power BI or SAP Analytics Cloud, they might demo well, but do they let you get to all the data without moving it in products like Snowflake, Amazon Redshift or Azure Synapse or Google BigQuery, they do not. They require you to move it into a smaller in memory engine. So it's important how well these new products inter operate. The pace of change, it's acceleration, Gartner recently predicted that by 2022, 65% of analytical queries will be generated using search or NLP or even AI, and that is roughly three times the prediction they had just a couple years ago. So let's talk about the real world impact of culture. And if you've read any of my books or used any of the maturity models out there whether the Gartner IT score that I worked on, or the data warehousing institute also has a maturity model. We talk about these five pillars to really become data-driven, as Michelle spoke about, it's focusing on the business outcomes, leveraging all the data, including new data sources. It's the talent, the people, the technology, and also the processes, and often when I would talk about the people in the talent, I would lump the culture as part of that. But in the last year, as I've traveled the world and done these digital events for thought leaders you have told me now culture is absolutely so important. And so we've pulled it out as a separate pillar, and in fact, in polls that we've done in these events, look at how much more important culture is, as a barrier to becoming data-driven. It's three times as important as any of these other pillars. That's how critical it is, and let's take an example of where you can have great data but if you don't have the right culture there's devastating impacts. And I will say, I have been a loyal customer of Wells Fargo for more than 20 years, but look at what happened in the face of negative news with data, that said, "Hey, we're not doing good cross selling, customers do not have both a checking account and a credit card and a savings account and a mortgage." They opened fake accounts, facing billions in fines, change in leadership, that even the CEO attributed to a toxic sales culture, and they're trying to fix this. But even recently there's been additional employee backlash saying that culture has not changed. Let's contrast that with some positive examples, Medtronic a worldwide company in 150 countries around the world, they may not be a household name to you, but if you have a loved one or yourself, you have a pacemaker, spinal implant, diabetes you know, this brand. And at the start of COVID when they knew their business would be slowing down, because hospitals would only be able to take care of COVID patients, they took the bold move of making their IP for ventilators publicly available, that is the power of a positive culture. Or Verizon, a major telecom organization, looking at late payments of their customers, and even though the US federal government said "Well, you can't turn them off." They said, "We'll extend that even beyond the mandated guidelines," and facing a slow down in the business because of the tough economy, he said, "You know what? We will spend the time upskilling our people giving them the time to learn more about the future of work, the skills and data and analytics," for 20,000 of their employees, rather than furloughing them. That is the power of a positive culture. So how can you transform your culture to the best in class? I'll give you three suggestions, bring in a change agent identify the relevance, or I like to call it WIIFM, and organize for collaboration. So the CDO whatever your title is, chief analytics officer chief digital officer, you are the most important change agent. And this is where you will hear, that oftentimes a change agent has to come from outside the organization. So this is where, for example in Europe, you have the CDO of Just Eat takeout food delivery organization, coming from the airline industry or in Australia, National Australian Bank, taking a CDO within the same sector from TD Bank going to NAB. So these change agents come in disrupt, it's a hard job. As one of you said to me, it often feels like Sisyphus, I make one step forward and I get knocked down again, I get pushed back. It is not for the faint of heart, but it's the most important part of your job. The other thing I'll talk about is WIIFM, what is in it for me? And this is really about understanding the motivation, the relevance that data has for everyone on the frontline as well as those analysts, as well as the executives. So if we're talking about players in the NFL they want to perform better, and they want to stay safe. That is why data matters to them. If we're talking about financial services this may be a wealth management advisor, okay, we could say commissions, but it's really helping people have their dreams come true whether it's putting their children through college, or being able to retire without having to work multiple jobs still into your 70s or 80s. For the teachers, teachers, you asked them about data, they'll say, "We don't need that, I care about the student." So if you can use data to help a student perform better that is WIIFM. And sometimes we spend so much time talking the technology, we forget what is the value we're trying to deliver with it. And we forget the impact on the people that it does require change. In fact, the Harvard Business Review Study, found that 44% said lack of change management is the biggest barrier to leveraging both new technology but also being empowered to act on those data-driven insights. The third point, organize for collaboration. This does require diversity of thought, but also bringing the technology, the data and the business people together. Now there's not a single one size fits all model for data and analytics. At one point in time, even having a BICC, a BI Competency Center was considered state of the art. Now for the biggest impact, what I recommend is that you have a federated model, centralized for economies of scale, that could be the common data, but then in bed, these evangelists, these analysts of the future, within every business unit, every functional domain, and as you see this top bar, all models are possible but the hybrid model has the most impact, the most leaders. So as we look ahead to the months ahead, to the year ahead, an exciting time, because data is helping organizations better navigate a tough economy lock in the customer loyalty, and I look forward to seeing how you foster that culture that's collaborative with empathy and bring the best of technology, leveraging the cloud, all your data. So thank you for joining us at thought leaders, and next I'm pleased to introduce our first change agent Thomas Mazzaferro, chief data officer of Western Union, and before joining Western Union, Tom made his mark at HSBC and JP Morgan Chase spearheading digital innovation in technology operations, risk compliance, and retail banking. Tom, thank you so much for joining us today. (soft upbeat music) >> Very happy to be here and looking forward to talking to all of you today. So as we look to move organizations to a data-driven capability into the future, there is a lot that needs to be done on the data side, but also how does data connect and enable, different business teams and technology teams into the future. As we look across our data ecosystems and our platforms and how we modernize that to the cloud in the future, it all needs to basically work together, right? To really be able to drive over the shift from a data standpoint, into the future. That includes being able to have the right information with the right quality of data at the right time to drive informed business decisions, to drive the business forward. As part of that, we actually have partnered with ThoughtSpot to actually bring in the technology to help us drive that, as part of that partnership, and it's how we've looked to integrated into our overall business as a whole. We've looked at how do we make sure that our business and our professional lives, right? Are enabled in the same ways as our personal lives. So for example, in your personal lives, when you want to go and find something out, what do you do? You go on to google.com or you go on to Bing, or go to Yahoo and you search for what you want, search to find an answer. ThoughtSpot for us as the same thing, but in the business world. So using ThoughtSpot and other AI capability is allowed us to actually enable our overall business teams in our company, to actually have our information at our fingertips. So rather than having to go and talk to someone or an engineer to go pull information or pull data, we actually can have the end users or the business executives, right? Search for what they need, what they want, at the exact time that action needed, to go and drive the business forward. This is truly one of those transformational things that we've put in place. On top of that, we are on the journey to modernize our larger ecosystem as a whole. That includes modernizing our underlying data warehouses, our technology or our (indistinct) environments, and as we move that we've actually picked to our cloud providers going to AWS and GCP. We've also adopted Snowflake to really drive into organize our information and our data, then drive these new solutions and capabilities forward. So big portion of us though is culture, so how do we engage with the business teams and bring the IT teams together to really drive these holistic end to end solutions and capabilities, to really support the actual business into the future. That's one of the keys here, as we look to modernize and to really enhance our organizations to become data-driven, this is the key. If you can really start to provide answers to business questions before they're even being asked, and to predict based upon different economic trends or different trends in your business, what does is be made and actually provide those answers to the business teams before they're even asking for it. That is really becoming a data-driven organization. And as part of that, it's really then enables the business to act quickly and take advantage of opportunities as they come in based upon industries, based upon markets, based upon products, solutions, or partnerships into the future. These are really some of the keys that become crucial as you move forward right into this new age, especially with COVID, with COVID now taking place across the world, right? Many of these markets, many of these digital transformations are celebrating, and are changing rapidly to accommodate and to support customers in these very difficult times. As part of that, you need to make sure you have the right underlying foundation, ecosystems and solutions to really drive those capabilities, and those solutions forward. As we go through this journey, both of my career but also each of your careers into the future, right? It also needs to evolve, right? Technology has changed so drastically in the last 10 years, and that change is only a celebrating. So as part of that, you have to make sure that you stay up to speed, up to date with new technology changes both on the platform standpoint, tools, but also what our customers want, what do our customers need, and how do we then surface them with our information, with our data, with our platform, with our products and our services, to meet those needs and to really support and service those customers into the future. This is all around becoming a more data-driven organization such as how do you use your data to support the current business lines. But how do you actually use your information your data, to actually better support your customers better support your business, better support your employees, your operations teams and so forth, and really creating that full integration in that ecosystem is really when you start to get large dividends from these investments into the future. With that being said I hope you enjoyed the segment on how to become and how to drive a data-driven organization, and looking forward to talking to you again soon, thank you. >> Tom, that was great, thanks so much. Now I'm going to have to brag on you for a second, as a change agent you've come in disrupted, and how long have you been at Western Union? >> Only nine months, I just started this year, but there'd be some great opportunities and big changes, and we have a lot more to go, but we're really driving things forward in partnership with our business teams, and our colleagues to support those customers forward. >> Tom, thank you so much that was wonderful. And now I'm excited to introduce you to Gustavo Canton, a change agent that I've had the pleasure of working with meeting in Europe, and he is a serial change agent. Most recently with Schneider Electric, but even going back to Sam's Club, Gustavo welcome. (soft upbeat music) >> So hi everyone my name is Gustavo Canton and thank you so much Cindi for the intro. As you mentioned, doing transformations is a you know, high effort, high reward situation. I have empowerment in transformation and I have led many transformations. And what I can tell you is that it's really hard to predict the future, but if you have a North Star and you know where you're going, the one thing that I want you to take away from this discussion today, is that you need to be bold to evolve. And so in today, I'm going to be talking about culture and data, and I'm going to break this down in four areas. How do we get started barriers or opportunities as I see it, the value of AI, and also how do you communicate, especially now in the workforce of today with so many different generations, you need to make sure that you are communicating in ways that are nontraditional sometimes. And so how do we get started? So I think the answer to that is, you have to start for you, yourself as a leader and stay tuned. And by that, I mean you need to understand not only what is happening in your function or your field, but you have to be very into what is happening in society, socioeconomically speaking, wellbeing, you know, the common example is a great example. And for me personally, it's an opportunity because the number one core value that I have is wellbeing. I believe that for human potential, for customers and communities to grow, wellbeing should be at the center of every decision. And as somebody mentioned, it's great to be you know, stay in tune and have the skillset and the courage. But for me personally, to be honest to have this courage is not about not being afraid. You're always afraid when you're making big changes and your swimming upstream. But what gives me the courage is the empathy part, like I think empathy is a huge component because every time I go into an organization or a function, I try to listen very attentively to the needs of the business, and what the leaders are trying to do, what I do it thinking about the mission of how do I make change for the bigger, you know workforce so the bigger good, despite the fact that this might have a perhaps implication, so my own self interest in my career, right? Because you have to have that courage sometimes to make choices, that are not well seeing politically speaking what are the right thing to do, and you have to push through it. So the bottom line for me is that, I don't think they're transforming fast enough. And the reality is I speak with a lot of leaders and we have seen stories in the past, and what they show is that if you look at the four main barriers, that are basically keeping us behind budget, inability to add, cultural issues, politics, and lack of alignment, those are the top four. But the interesting thing is that as Cindi has mentioned, this topic about culture is actually gaining more and more traction, and in 2018, there was a story from HBR and it was for about 45%. I believe today, it's about 55%, 60% of respondents say that this is the main area that we need to focus on. So again, for all those leaders and all the executives who understand, and are aware that we need to transform, commit to the transformation and set us deadline to say, "Hey, in two years, we're going to make this happen, what do we need to do to empower and enable these search engines to make it happen?" You need to make the tough choices. And so to me, when I speak about being bold is about making the right choices now. So I'll give you samples of some of the roadblocks that I went through, as I think the intro information most recently as Cindi mentioned in Schneider. There are three main areas, legacy mindset, and what that means is that we've been doing this in a specific way for a long time, and here is how we have been successful. We're working the past is not going to work now, the opportunity there is that there is a lot of leaders who have a digital mindset, and their up and coming leaders that are perhaps not yet fully developed. We need to mentor those leaders and take bets on some of these talents, including young talent. We cannot be thinking in the past and just wait for people you know, three to five years for them to develop, because the world is going to in a way that is super fast. The second area and this is specifically to implementation of AI is very interesting to me, because just example that I have with ThoughtSpot, right? We went to an implementation and a lot of the way the IT team functions, so the leaders look at technology, they look at it from the prism of the prior or success criteria for the traditional BIs, and that's not going to work. Again, your opportunity here is that you need to really find what success look like, in my case, I want the user experience of our workforce to be the same as your experience you have at home. It's a very simple concept, and so we need to think about how do we gain that user experience with this augmented analytics tools, and then work backwards to have the right talent, processes and technology to enable that. And finally, and obviously with COVID a lot of pressure in organizations and companies to do more with less, and the solution that most leaders I see are taking is to just minimize cost sometimes and cut budget. We have to do the opposite, we have to actually invest some growth areas, but do it by business question. Don't do it by function, if you actually invest in these kind of solutions, if you actually invest on developing your talent, your leadership, to see more digitally, if you actually invest on fixing your data platform is not just an incremental cost, it's actually this investment is going to offset all those hidden costs and inefficiencies that you have on your system, because people are doing a lot of work in working very hard but it's not efficiency, and it's not working in the way that you might want to work. So there is a lot of opportunity there, and you just to put it into some perspective, there have been some studies in the past about you know, how do we kind of measure the impact of data? And obviously this is going to vary by organization, maturity there's going to be a lot of factors. I've been in companies who have very clean, good data to work with, and I think with companies that we have to start basically from scratch. So it all depends on your maturity level, but in this study what I think is interesting is, they try to put a tagline or attack price to what is a cost of incomplete data. So in this case, it's about 10 times as much to complete a unit of work, when you have data that is flawed as opposed to have imperfect data. So let me put that just in perspective, just as an example, right? Imagine you are trying to do something and you have to do 100 things in a project, and each time you do something it's going to cost you a dollar. So if you have perfect data, the total cost of that project might be a $100. But now let's say you have any percent perfect data and 20% flow data, by using this assumption that flow data is 10 times as costly as perfect data, your total costs now becomes $280 as opposed to $100, this just for you to really think about as a CIO, CTO, you know CSRO, CEO, are we really paying attention and really closing the gaps that we have on our infrastructure? If we don't do that, it's hard sometimes to see the snowball effect or to measure the overall impact, but as you can tell, the price tag goes up very, very quickly. So now, if I were to say, how do I communicate this? Or how do I break through some of these challenges or some of these barriers, right? I think the key is I am in analytics, I know statistics obviously, and love modeling and you know, data and optimization theory and all that stuff, that's what I can do analytics, but now as a leader and as a change agent, I need to speak about value, and in this case, for example for Schneider, there was this tagline coffee of your energy. So the number one thing that they were asking from the analytics team was actually efficiency, which to me was very interesting. But once I understood that I understood what kind of language to use, how to connect it to the overall strategy and basically how to bring in the right leaders, because you need to, you know, focus on the leaders that you're going to make the most progress. You know, again, low effort, high value, you need to make sure you centralize all the data as you can, you need to bring in some kind of augmented analytics, you know, solution, and finally you need to make it super simple for the you know, in this case, I was working with the HR teams and other areas, so they can have access to one portal. They don't have to be confused and looking for 10 different places to find information. I think if you can actually have those four foundational pillars, obviously under the guise of having a data-driven culture, that's when you can actually make the impact. So in our case, it was about three years total transformation but it was two years for this component of augmented analytics. It took about two years to talk to, you know, IT, get leadership support, find the budgeting, you know, get everybody on board, make sure the success criteria was correct. And we call this initiative, the people analytics, I pulled up, it was actually launched in July of this year. And we were very excited and the audience was very excited to do this. In this case, we did our pilot in North America for many, many manufacturers, but one thing that is really important is as you bring along your audience on this, you know, you're going from Excel, you know in some cases or Tableau to other tools like you know, ThoughtSpot, you need to really explain them, what is the difference, and how these two can truly replace some of the spreadsheets or some of the views that you might have on these other kind of tools. Again, Tableau, I think it's a really good tool, there are other many tools that you might have in your toolkit. But in my case, personally I feel that you need to have one portal going back to seeing these points that really truly enable the end user. And I feel that this is the right solution for us, right? And I will show you some of the findings that we had in the pilot in the last two months. So this was a huge victory, and I will tell you why, because it took a lot of effort for us to get to these stations. Like I said it's been years for us to kind of lay the foundation, get the leadership and chasing culture, so people can understand why you truly need to invest what I meant analytics. And so what I'm showing here is an example of how do we use basically, you know a tool to capturing video, the qualitative findings that we had, plus the quantitative insights that we have. So in this case, our preliminary results based on our ambition for three main metrics, hours saved, user experience and adoption. So for hours saved, our ambition was to have 10 hours per week per employee save on average, user experience or ambition was 4.5 and adoption 80%. In just two months, two months and a half of the pilot we were able to achieve five hours, per week per employee savings. I used to experience for 4.3 out of five, and adoption of 60%. Really, really amazing work. But again, it takes a lot of collaboration for us to get to the stage from IT, legal, communications obviously the operations things and the users, in HR safety and other areas that might be basically stakeholders in this whole process. So just to summarize this kind of effort takes a lot of energy, you are a change agent, you need to have a courage to make these decision and understand that, I feel that in this day and age with all this disruption happening, we don't have a choice. We have to take the risk, right? And in this case, I feel a lot of satisfaction in how we were able to gain all these very souls for this organization, and that gave me the confidence to know that the work has been done, and we are now in a different stage for the organization. And so for me it safe to say, thank you for everybody who has believed obviously in our vision, everybody who has believed in, you know, the word that we were trying to do and to make the life for, you know workforce or customers that are in community better. As you can tell, there is a lot of effort, there is a lot of collaboration that is needed to do something like this. In the end, I feel very satisfied with the accomplishments of this transformation, and I just want to tell for you, if you are going right now in a moment that you feel that you have to swim upstream you know, what would mentors what people in this industry that can help you out and guide you on this kind of a transformation is not easy to do is high effort but is well worth it. And with that said, I hope you are well and it's been a pleasure talking to you, talk to you soon, take care. >> Thank you Gustavo, that was amazing. All right, let's go to the panel. (soft upbeat music) >> I think we can all agree how valuable it is to hear from practitioners, and I want to thank the panel for sharing their knowledge with the community, and one common challenge that I heard you all talk about was bringing your leadership and your teams along on the journey with you. We talk about this all the time, and it is critical to have support from the top, why? Because it directs the middle, and then it enables bottoms up innovation effects from the cultural transformation that you guys all talked about. It seems like another common theme we heard, is that you all prioritize database decision making in your organizations, and you combine two of your most valuable assets to do that, and create leverage, employees on the front lines, and of course the data. That was rightly pointed out, Tom, the pandemic has accelerated the need for really leaning into this. You know, the old saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, well COVID's broken everything. And it's great to hear from our experts, you know, how to move forward, so let's get right into it. So Gustavo let's start with you if I'm an aspiring change agent, and let's say I'm a budding data leader. What do I need to start doing? What habits do I need to create for long lasting success? >> I think curiosity is very important. You need to be, like I say, in tune to what is happening not only in your specific field, like I have a passion for analytics, I can do this for 50 years plus, but I think you need to understand wellbeing other areas across not only a specific business as you know, I come from, you know, Sam's Club Walmart retail, I mean energy management technology. So you have to try to push yourself and basically go out of your comfort zone. I mean, if you are staying in your comfort zone and you want to use lean continuous improvement that's just going to take you so far. What you have to do is and that's what I tried to do is I try to go into areas, businesses and transformations that make me, you know stretch and develop as a leader. That's what I'm looking to do, so I can help transform the functions organizations, and do these change management and decisions mindset as required for these kinds of efforts. >> Thank you for that is inspiring and Cindi, you love data, and the data is pretty clear that diversity is a good business, but I wonder if you can add your perspectives to this conversation. >> Yeah, so Michelle has a new fan here because she has found her voice, I'm still working on finding mine. And it's interesting because I was raised by my dad, a single dad, so he did teach me how to work in a predominantly male environment. But why I think diversity matters more now than ever before, and this is by gender, by race, by age, by just different ways of working and thinking is because as we automate things with AI, if we do not have diverse teams looking at the data and the models, and how they're applied, we risk having bias at scale. So this is why I think I don't care what type of minority, you are finding your voice, having a seat at the table and just believing in the impact of your work has never been more important. And as Michelle said more possible >> Great perspectives thank you, Tom, I want to go to you. I mean, I feel like everybody in our businesses in some way, shape or form become a COVID expert but what's been the impact of the pandemic on your organization's digital transformation plans? >> We've seen a massive growth actually you know, in a digital business over the last 12 months really, even in celebration, right? Once COVID hit, we really saw that in the 200 countries and territories that we operate in today and service our customers and today, that there's been a huge need, right? To send money, to support family, to support friends and loved ones across the world. And as part of that, you know, we are very honored to support those customers that we across all the centers today. But as part of that celebration, we need to make sure that we had the right architecture and the right platforms to basically scale, right? To basically support and provide the right kind of security for our customers going forward. So as part of that, we did do some pivots and we did celebrate some of our plans on digital to help support that overall growth coming in, and to support our customers going forward. Because there were these times during this pandemic, right? This is the most important time, and we need to support those that we love and those that we care about. And in doing that, it's one of those ways is actually by sending money to them, support them financially. And that's where really are part of that our services come into play that, you know, I really support those families. So it was really a great opportunity for us to really support and really bring some of our products to this level, and supporting our business going forward. >> Awesome, thank you. Now I want to come back to Gustavo, Tom, I'd love for you to chime in too. Did you guys ever think like you were pushing the envelope too much and doing things with data or the technology that was just maybe too bold, maybe you felt like at some point it was failing, or you pushing your people too hard, can you share that experience and how you got through it? >> Yeah, the way I look at it is, you know, again, whenever I go to an organization I ask the question, Hey, how fast you would like to conform?" And, you know, based on the agreements on the leadership and the vision that we want to take place, I take decisions and I collaborate in a specific way. Now, in the case of COVID, for example, right? It forces us to remove silos and collaborate in a faster way, so to me it was an opportunity to actually integrate with other areas and drive decisions faster. But make no mistake about it, when you are doing a transformation, you are obviously trying to do things faster than sometimes people are comfortable doing and you need to be okay with that. Sometimes you need to be okay with tension, or you need to be okay, you know debating points or making repetitive business cases onto people connect with the decision because you understand, and you are seeing that, hey, the CEO is making a one, two year, you know, efficiency goal, the only way for us to really do more with less is for us to continue this path. We cannot just stay with the status quo, we need to find a way to accelerate transformation... >> How about you Tom, we were talking earlier was Sudheesh had said about that bungee jumping moment, what can you share? >> Yeah you know, I think you hit upon it. Right now, the pace of change will be the slowest pace that you see for the rest of your career. So as part of that, right? That's what I tell my team is that you need to feel comfortable being uncomfortable. I mean, that we have to be able to basically scale, right? Expand and support that the ever changing needs the marketplace and industry and our customers today and that pace of change that's happening, right? And what customers are asking for, and the competition the marketplace, it's only going to accelerate. So as part of that, you know, as we look at what how you're operating today in your current business model, right? Things are only going to get faster. So you have to plan into align, to drive the actual transformation, so that you can scale even faster into the future. So as part of that, so we're putting in place here, right? Is how do we create that underlying framework and foundation that allows the organization to basically continue to scale and evolve into the future? >> We're definitely out of our comfort zones, but we're getting comfortable with it. So, Cindi, last question, you've worked with hundreds of organizations, and I got to believe that you know, some of the advice you gave when you were at Gartner, which is pre COVID, maybe sometimes clients didn't always act on it. You know, they're not on my watch for whatever variety of reasons, but it's being forced on them now, but knowing what you know now that you know, we're all in this isolation economy how would you say that advice has changed, has it changed? What's your number one action and recommendation today? >> Yeah well, first off, Tom just freaked me out. What do you mean this is the slowest ever? Even six months ago, I was saying the pace of change in data and analytics is frenetic. So, but I think you're right, Tom, the business and the technology together is forcing this change. Now, Dave, to answer your question, I would say the one bit of advice, maybe I was a little more, very aware of the power in politics and how to bring people along in a way that they are comfortable, and now I think it's, you know what? You can't get comfortable. In fact, we know that the organizations that were already in the cloud, have been able to respond and pivot faster. So if you really want to survive as Tom and Gustavo said, get used to being uncomfortable, the power and politics are going to happen. Break the rules, get used to that and be bold. Do not be afraid to tell somebody they're wrong and they're not moving fast enough. I do think you have to do that with empathy as Michelle said, and Gustavo, I think that's one of the key words today besides the bungee jumping. So I want to know where's Sudheesh going to go on bungee jumping? (all chuckling) >> That's fantastic discussion really. Thanks again to all the panelists and the guests, it was really a pleasure speaking with you today. Really virtually all of the leaders that I've spoken to in theCUBE program recently, they tell me that the pandemic is accelerating so many things, whether it's new ways to work, we heard about new security models and obviously the need for cloud. I mean, all of these things are driving true enterprise wide digital transformation, not just as I said before lip service. And sometimes we minimize the importance and the challenge of building culture and in making this transformation possible. But when it's done right, the right culture is going to deliver tremendous results. Yeah, what does that mean getting it right? Everybody's trying to get it right. My biggest takeaway today, is it means making data part of the DNA of your organization. And that means making it accessible to the people in your organization that are empowered to make decisions that can drive you revenue, cut costs, speed, access to critical care, whatever the mission is of your organization. Data can create insights and informed decisions that drive value. Okay, let's bring back Sudheesh and wrap things up. Sudheesh please bring us home. >> Thank you, thank you Dave, thank you theCUBE team, and thanks goes to all of our customers and partners who joined us, and thanks to all of you for spending the time with us. I want to do three quick things and then close it off. The first thing is I want to summarize the key takeaways that I had from all four of our distinguished speakers. First, Michelle, I was simply put it, she said it really well, that is be brave and drive. Don't go for a drive along, that is such an important point. Often times, you know that I think that you have to do to make the positive change that you want to see happen. But you wait for someone else to do it, why not you? Why don't you be the one making that change happen? That's the thing that I picked up from Michelle's talk. Cindi talked about finding the importance of finding your voice, taking that chair, whether it's available or not and making sure that your ideas, your voices are heard and if it requires some force then apply that force, make sure your ideas are good. Gustavo talked about the importance of building consensus, not going at things all alone sometimes building the importance of building the courtroom. And that is critical because if you want the changes to last, you want to make sure that the organization is fully behind it. Tom instead of a single take away, what I was inspired by is the fact that a company that is 170 years old, 170 years old, 200 companies and 200 countries they're operating in, and they were able to make the change that is necessary through this difficult time. So in a matter of months, if they could do it, anyone could. The second thing I want to do is to leave you with a takeaway that is I would like you to go to thoughtspot.com/nfl because our team has made an app for NFL on Snowflake. I think you will find this interesting now that you are inspired and excited because of Michelle's talk. And the last thing is, please go to thoughtspot.com/beyond, our global user conferences happening in this December, we would love to have you join us. It's again, virtual, you can join from anywhere, we are expecting anywhere from five to 10,000 people, and we would love to have you join and see what we would have been up to since the last year. We have a lot of amazing things in store for you, our customers, our partners, our collaborators, they will be coming and sharing, you'll be sharing things that you have been working to release something that will come out next year. And also some of the crazy ideas for engineers I've been cooking up. All of those things will be available for you at ThoughtSpot Beyond, thank you, thank you so much.

(speaks in foreign language) >> Narrator: Data is at the heart of transformation and the change every company needs to succeed, but it takes more than new technology. It's about teams, talent, and cultural change. Empowering everyone on the front lines to make decisions, all at the speed of digital. The transformation starts with you. It's time to lead the way, it's time for thought leaders. >> Welcome to Thought Leaders, a digital event brought to you by ThoughtSpot. My name is Dave Vellante. The purpose of this day is to bring industry leaders and experts together to really try and understand the important issues around digital transformation. We have an amazing lineup of speakers and our goal is to provide you with some best practices that you can bring back and apply to your organization. Look, data is plentiful, but insights are not. ThoughtSpot is disrupting analytics by using search and machine intelligence to simplify data analysis, and really empower anyone with fast access to relevant data. But in the last 150 days, we've had more questions than answers. Creating an organization that puts data and insights at their core, requires not only modern technology, but leadership, a mindset and a culture that people often refer to as data-driven. What does that mean? How can we equip our teams with data and fast access to quality information that can turn insights into action. And today, we're going to hear from experienced leaders, who are transforming their organizations with data, insights and creating digital-first cultures. But before we introduce our speakers, I'm joined today by two of my co-hosts from ThoughtSpot. First, Chief Data Strategy Officer for ThoughtSpot is Cindi Hausen. Cindi is an analytics and BI expert with 20 plus years experience and the author of Successful Business Intelligence Unlock The Value of BI and Big Data. Cindi was previously the lead analyst at Gartner for the data and analytics magic quadrant. And early last year, she joined ThoughtSpot to help CDOs and their teams understand how best to leverage analytics and AI for digital transformation. Cindi, great to see you, welcome to the show. >> Thank you, Dave. Nice to join you virtually. >> Now our second cohost and friend of theCUBE is ThoughtSpot CEO Sudheesh Nair. Hello Sudheesh, how are you doing today? >> I am well Dave, it's good to talk to you again. >> It's great to see you. Thanks so much for being here. Now Sudheesh, please share with us why this discussion is so important to your customers and of course, to our audience and what they're going to learn today? (gentle music) >> Thanks, Dave, I wish you were there to introduce me into every room that I walk into because you have such an amazing way of doing it. It makes me feel also good. Look, since we have all been cooped up in our homes, I know that the vendors like us, we have amped up our, you know, sort of effort to reach out to you with invites for events like this. So we are getting way more invites for events like this than ever before. So when we started planning for this, we had three clear goals that we wanted to accomplish. And our first one that when you finish this and walk away, we want to make sure that you don't feel like it was a waste of time. We want to make sure that we value your time, and this is going to be useful. Number two, we want to put you in touch with industry leaders and thought leaders, and generally good people that you want to hang around with long after this event is over. And number three, as we plan through this, you know, we are living through these difficult times, we want an event to be, this event to be more of an uplifting and inspiring event too. Now, the challenge is, how do you do that with the team being change agents? Because change and as much as we romanticize it, it is not one of those uplifting things that everyone wants to do or likes to do. The way I think of it, change is sort of like, if you've ever done bungee jumping. You know, it's like standing on the edges, waiting to make that one more step. You know, all you have to do is take that one step and gravity will do the rest, but that is the hardest step to take. Change requires a lot of courage and when we are talking about data and analytics, which is already like such a hard topic, not necessarily an uplifting and positive conversation, in most businesses it is somewhat scary. Change becomes all the more difficult. Ultimately change requires courage. Courage to to, first of all, challenge the status quo. People sometimes are afraid to challenge the status quo because they are thinking that, "You know, maybe I don't have the power to make the change that the company needs. Sometimes I feel like I don't have the skills." Sometimes they may feel that, I'm probably not the right person to do it. Or sometimes the lack of courage manifest itself as the inability to sort of break the silos that are formed within the organizations, when it comes to data and insights that you talked about. You know, there are people in the company, who are going to hog the data because they know how to manage the data, how to inquire and extract. They know how to speak data, they have the skills to do that, but they are not the group of people who have sort of the knowledge, the experience of the business to ask the right questions off the data. So there is this silo of people with the answers and there is a silo of people with the questions, and there is gap. These sort of silos are standing in the way of making that necessary change that we all I know the business needs, and the last change to sort of bring an external force sometimes. It could be a tool, it could be a platform, it could be a person, it could be a process, but sometimes no matter how big the company is or how small the company is. You may need to bring some external stimuli to start that domino of the positive changes that are necessary. The group of people that we have brought in, the four people, including Cindi, that you will hear from today are really good at practically telling you how to make that step, how to step off that edge, how to trust the rope that you will be safe and you're going to have fun. You will have that exhilarating feeling of jumping for a bungee jump. All four of them are exceptional, but my honor is to introduce Michelle and she's our first speaker. Michelle, I am very happy after watching her presentation and reading her bio, that there are no country vital worldwide competition for cool patents, because she will beat all of us because when her children were small, you know, they were probably into Harry Potter and Disney and she was managing a business and leading change there. And then as her kids grew up and got to that age, where they like football and NFL, guess what? She's the CIO of NFL. What a cool mom. I am extremely excited to see what she's going to talk about. I've seen the slides with a bunch of amazing pictures, I'm looking to see the context behind it. I'm very thrilled to make the acquaintance of Michelle. I'm looking forward to her talk next. Welcome Michelle. It's over to you. (gentle music) >> I'm delighted to be with you all today to talk about thought leadership. And I'm so excited that you asked me to join you because today I get to be a quarterback. I always wanted to be one. This is about as close as I'm ever going to get. So, I want to talk to you about quarterbacking our digital revolution using insights, data and of course, as you said, leadership. First, a little bit about myself, a little background. As I said, I always wanted to play football and this is something that I wanted to do since I was a child but when I grew up, girls didn't get to play football. I'm so happy that that's changing and girls are now doing all kinds of things that they didn't get to do before. Just this past weekend on an NFL field, we had a female coach on two sidelines and a female official on the field. I'm a lifelong fan and student of the game of football. I grew up in the South. You can tell from the accent and in the South football is like a religion and you pick sides. I chose Auburn University working in the athletic department, so I'm testament. Till you can start, a journey can be long. It took me many, many years to make it into professional sports. I graduated in 1987 and my little brother, well not actually not so little, he played offensive line for the Alabama Crimson Tide. And for those of you who know SEC football, you know this is a really big rivalry, and when you choose sides your family is divided. So it's kind of fun for me to always tell the story that my dad knew his kid would make it to the NFL, he just bet on the wrong one. My career has been about bringing people together for memorable moments at some of America's most iconic brands, delivering memories and amazing experiences that delight. From Universal Studios, Disney, to my current position as CIO of the NFL. In this job, I'm very privileged to have the opportunity to work with a team that gets to bring America's game to millions of people around the world. Often, I'm asked to talk about how to create amazing experiences for fans, guests or customers. But today, I really wanted to focus on something different and talk to you about being behind the scenes and backstage. Because behind every event, every game, every awesome moment, is execution. Precise, repeatable execution and most of my career has been behind the scenes doing just that. Assembling teams to execute these plans and the key way that companies operate at these exceptional levels is making good decisions, the right decisions, at the right time and based upon data. So that you can translate the data into intelligence and be a data-driven culture. Using data and intelligence is an important way that world-class companies do differentiate themselves, and it's the lifeblood of collaboration and innovation. Teams that are working on delivering these kind of world class experiences are often seeking out and leveraging next generation technologies and finding new ways to work. I've been fortunate to work across three decades of emerging experiences, which each required emerging technologies to execute. A little bit first about Disney. In '90s I was at Disney leading a project called Destination Disney, which it's a data project. It was a data project, but it was CRM before CRM was even cool and then certainly before anything like a data-driven culture was ever brought up. But way back then we were creating a digital backbone that enabled many technologies for the things that you see today. Like the MagicBand, Disney's Magical Express. My career at Disney began in finance, but Disney was very good about rotating you around. And it was during one of these rotations that I became very passionate about data. I kind of became a pain in the butt to the IT team asking for data, more and more data. And I learned that all of that valuable data was locked up in our systems. All of our point of sales systems, our reservation systems, our operation systems. And so I became a shadow IT person in marketing, ultimately, leading to moving into IT and I haven't looked back since. In the early 2000s, I was at Universal Studio's theme park as their CIO preparing for and launching the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Bringing one of history's most memorable characters to life required many new technologies and a lot of data. Our data and technologies were embedded into the rides and attractions. I mean, how do you really think a wand selects you at a wand shop. As today at the NFL, I am constantly challenged to do leading edge technologies, using things like sensors, AI, machine learning and all new communication strategies, and using data to drive everything, from player performance, contracts, to where we build new stadiums and hold events. With this year being the most challenging, yet rewarding year in my career at the NFL. In the middle of a global pandemic, the way we are executing on our season is leveraging data from contact tracing devices joined with testing data. Talk about data actually enabling your business. Without it we wouldn't be having a season right now. I'm also on the board of directors of two public companies, where data and collaboration are paramount. First, RingCentral, it's a cloud based unified communications platform and collaboration with video message and phone, all-in-one solution in the cloud and Quotient Technologies, whose product is actually data. The tagline at Quotient is The Result in Knowing. I think that's really important because not all of us are data companies, where your product is actually data, but we should operate more like your product is data. I'd also like to talk to you about four areas of things to think about as thought leaders in your companies. First, just hit on it, is change. how to be a champion and a driver of change. Second, how to use data to drive performance for your company and measure performance of your company. Third, how companies now require intense collaboration to operate and finally, how much of this is accomplished through solid data-driven decisions. First, let's hit on change. I mean, it's evident today more than ever, that we are in an environment of extreme change. I mean, we've all been at this for years and as technologists we've known it, believed it, lived it. And thankfully, for the most part, knock on wood, we were prepared for it. But this year everyone's cheese was moved. All the people in the back rooms, IT, data architects and others were suddenly called to the forefront because a global pandemic has turned out to be the thing that is driving intense change in how people work and analyze their business. On March 13th, we closed our office at the NFL in the middle of preparing for one of our biggest events, our kickoff event, The 2020 Draft. We went from planning a large event in Las Vegas under the bright lights, red carpet stage, to smaller events in club facilities. And then ultimately, to one where everyone coaches, GMs, prospects and even our commissioner were at home in their basements and we only had a few weeks to figure it out. I found myself for the first time, being in the live broadcast event space. Talking about bungee jumping, this is really what it felt like. It was one in which no one felt comfortable because it had not been done before. But leading through this, I stepped up, but it was very scary, it was certainly very risky, but it ended up being also rewarding when we did it. And as a result of this, some things will change forever. Second, managing performance. I mean, data should inform how you're doing and how to get your company to perform at its level, highest level. As an example, the NFL has always measured performance, obviously, and it is one of the purest examples of how performance directly impacts outcome. I mean, you can see performance on the field, you can see points being scored and stats, and you immediately know that impact. Those with the best stats usually win the games. The NFL has always recorded stats. Since the beginning of time here at the NFL a little... This year is our 101st year and athlete's ultimate success as a player has also always been greatly impacted by his stats. But what has changed for us is both how much more we can measure and the immediacy with which it can be measured and I'm sure in your business it's the same. The amount of data you must have has got to have quadrupled recently. And how fast do you need it and how quickly you need to analyze it is so important. And it's very important to break the silos between the keys to the data and the use of the data. Our next generation stats platform is taking data to the next level. It's powered by Amazon Web Services and we gather this data, real-time from sensors that are on players' bodies. We gather it in real time, analyze it, display it online and on broadcast. And of course, it's used to prepare week to week in addition to what is a normal coaching plan would be. We can now analyze, visualize, route patterns, speed, match-ups, et cetera, so much faster than ever before. We're continuing to roll out sensors too, that will gather more and more information about a player's performance as it relates to their health and safety. The third trend is really, I think it's a big part of what we're feeling today and that is intense collaboration. And just for sort of historical purposes, it's important to think about, for those of you that are IT professionals and developers, you know, more than 10 years ago agile practices began sweeping companies. Where small teams would work together rapidly in a very flexible, adaptive and innovative way and it proved to be transformational. However today, of course that is no longer just small teams, the next big wave of change and we've seen it through this pandemic, is that it's the whole enterprise that must collaborate and be agile. If I look back on my career, when I was at Disney, we owned everything 100%. We made a decision, we implemented it. We were a collaborative culture but it was much easier to push change because you own the whole decision. If there was buy-in from the top down, you got the people from the bottom up to do it and you executed. At Universal, we were a joint venture. Our attractions and entertainment was licensed. Our hotels were owned and managed by other third parties, so influence and collaboration, and how to share across companies became very important. And now here I am at the NFL an even the bigger ecosystem. We have 32 clubs that are all separate businesses, 31 different stadiums that are owned by a variety of people. We have licensees, we have sponsors, we have broadcast partners. So it seems that as my career has evolved, centralized control has gotten less and less and has been replaced by intense collaboration, not only within your own company but across companies. The ability to work in a collaborative way across businesses and even other companies, that has been a big key to my success in my career. I believe this whole vertical integration and big top-down decision-making is going by the wayside in favor of ecosystems that require cooperation, yet competition to co-exist. I mean, the NFL is a great example of what we call co-oppetition, which is cooperation and competition. We're in competition with each other, but we cooperate to make the company the best it can be. And at the heart of these items really are data-driven decisions and culture. Data on its own isn't good enough. You must be able to turn it to insights. Partnerships between technology teams who usually hold the keys to the raw data and business units, who have the knowledge to build the right decision models is key. If you're not already involved in this linkage, you should be, data mining isn't new for sure. The availability of data is quadrupling and it's everywhere. How do you know what to even look at? How do you know where to begin? How do you know what questions to ask? It's by using the tools that are available for visualization and analytics and knitting together strategies of the company. So it begins with, first of all, making sure you do understand the strategy of the company. So in closing, just to wrap up a bit, many of you joined today, looking for thought leadership on how to be a change agent, a change champion, and how to lead through transformation. Some final thoughts are be brave and drive. Don't do the ride along program, it's very important to drive. Driving can be high risk, but it's also high reward. Embracing the uncertainty of what will happen is how you become brave. Get more and more comfortable with uncertainty, be calm and let data be your map on your journey. Thanks. >> Michelle, thank you so much. So you and I share a love of data and a love of football. You said you want to be the quarterback. I'm more an a line person. >> Well, then I can't do my job without you. >> Great and I'm getting the feeling now, you know, Sudheesh is talking about bungee jumping. My vote is when we're past this pandemic, we both take him to the Delaware Water Gap and we do the cliff jumping. >> Oh that sounds good, I'll watch your watch. >> Yeah, you'll watch, okay. So Michelle, you have so many stakeholders, when you're trying to prioritize the different voices you have the players, you have the owners, you have the league, as you mentioned, the broadcasters, your partners here and football mamas like myself. How do you prioritize when there are so many different stakeholders that you need to satisfy? >> I think balancing across stakeholders starts with aligning on a mission and if you spend a lot of time understanding where everyone's coming from, and you can find the common thread that ties them all together. You sort of do get them to naturally prioritize their work and I think that's very important. So for us at the NFL and even at Disney, it was our core values and our core purpose is so well known and when anything challenges that, we're able to sort of lay that out. But as a change agent, you have to be very empathetic, and I would say empathy is probably your strongest skill if you're a change agent and that means listening to every single stakeholder. Even when they're yelling at you, even when they're telling you your technology doesn't work and you know that it's user error, or even when someone is just emotional about what's happening to them and that they're not comfortable with it. So I think being empathetic, and having a mission, and understanding it is sort of how I prioritize and balance. >> Yeah, empathy, a very popular word this year. I can imagine those coaches and owners yelling, so thank you for your leadership here. So Michelle, I look forward to discussing this more with our other customers and disruptors joining us in a little bit. >> (gentle music) So we're going to take a hard pivot now and go from football to Chernobyl. Chernobyl, what went wrong? 1986, as the reactors were melting down, they had the data to say, "This is going to be catastrophic," and yet the culture said, "No, we're perfect, hide it. Don't dare tell anyone." Which meant they went ahead and had celebrations in Kiev. Even though that increased the exposure, additional thousands getting cancer and 20,000 years before the ground around there can even be inhabited again. This is how powerful and detrimental a negative culture, a culture that is unable to confront the brutal facts that hides data. This is what we have to contend with and this is why I want you to focus on having, fostering a data-driven culture. I don't want you to be a laggard. I want you to be a leader in using data to drive your digital transformation. So I'll talk about culture and technology, is it really two sides of the same coin? Real-world impacts and then some best practices you can use to disrupt and innovate your culture. Now, oftentimes I would talk about culture and I talk about technology. And recently a CDO said to me, "You know, Cindi, I actually think this is two sides of the same coin, one reflects the other." What do you think? Let me walk you through this. So let's take a laggard. What does the technology look like? Is it based on 1990s BI and reporting, largely parametrized reports, on-premises data warehouses, or not even that operational reports. At best one enterprise data warehouse, very slow moving and collaboration is only email. What does that culture tell you? Maybe there's a lack of leadership to change, to do the hard work that Sudheesh referred to, or is there also a culture of fear, afraid of failure, resistance to change, complacency. And sometimes that complacency, it's not because people are lazy. It's because they've been so beaten down every time a new idea is presented. It's like, "No, we're measured on least to serve." So politics and distrust, whether it's between business and IT or individual stakeholders is the norm, so data is hoarded. Let's contrast that with the leader, a data and analytics leader, what does their technology look like? Augmented analytics, search and AI driven insights, not on-premises but in the cloud and maybe multiple clouds. And the data is not in one place but it's in a data lake and in a data warehouse, a logical data warehouse. The collaboration is via newer methods, whether it's Slack or Teams, allowing for that real-time decisioning or investigating a particular data point. So what is the culture in the leaders? It's transparent and trust. There is a trust that data will not be used to punish, that there is an ability to confront the bad news. It's innovation, valuing innovation in pursuit of the company goals. Whether it's the best fan experience and player safety in the NFL or best serving your customers, it's innovative and collaborative. There's none of this, "Oh, well, I didn't invent that. I'm not going to look at that." There's still pride of ownership, but it's collaborating to get to a better place faster. And people feel empowered to present new ideas, to fail fast and they're energized knowing that they're using the best technology and innovating at the pace that business requires. So data is democratized and democratized, not just for power users or analysts, but really at the point of impact, what we like to call the new decision-makers or really the frontline workers. So Harvard Business Review partnered with us to develop this study to say, "Just how important is this? We've been working at BI and analytics as an industry for more than 20 years, why is it not at the front lines? Whether it's a doctor, a nurse, a coach, a supply chain manager, a warehouse manager, a financial services advisor." 87% said they would be more successful if frontline workers were empowered with data-driven insights, but they recognize they need new technology to be able to do that. It's not about learning hard tools. The sad reality only 20% of organizations are actually doing this. These are the data-driven leaders. So this is the culture and technology, how did we get here? It's because state-of-the-art keeps changing. So the first generation BI and analytics platforms were deployed on-premises, on small datasets, really just taking data out of ERP systems that were also on-premises and state-of-the-art was maybe getting a management report, an operational report. Over time, visual based data discovery vendors disrupted these traditional BI vendors, empowering now analysts to create visualizations with the flexibility on a desktop, sometimes larger data, sometimes coming from a data warehouse. The current state-of-the-art though, Gartner calls it augmented analytics. At ThoughtSpot, we call it search and AI driven analytics, and this was pioneered for large scale data sets, whether it's on-premises or leveraging the cloud data warehouses. And I think this is an important point, oftentimes you, the data and analytics leaders, will look at these two components separately. But you have to look at the BI and analytics tier in lock-step with your data architectures to really get to the granular insights and to leverage the capabilities of AI. Now, if you've never seen ThoughtSpot, I'll just show you what this looks like. Instead of somebody hard coding a report, it's typing in search keywords and very robust keywords contains rank, top, bottom, getting to a visual visualization that then can be pinned to an existing pin board that might also contain insights generated by an AI engine. So it's easy enough for that new decision maker, the business user, the non-analyst to create themselves. Modernizing the data and analytics portfolio is hard because the pace of change has accelerated. You used to be able to create an investment, place a bet for maybe 10 years. A few years ago, that time horizon was five years. Now, it's maybe three years and the time to maturity has also accelerated. So you have these different components, the search and AI tier, the data science tier, data preparation and virtualization but I would also say, equally important is the cloud data warehouse. And pay attention to how well these analytics tools can unlock the value in these cloud data warehouses. So ThoughtSpot was the first to market with search and AI driven insights. Competitors have followed suit, but be careful, if you look at products like Power BI or SAP analytics cloud, they might demo well, but do they let you get to all the data without moving it in products like Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, or Azure Synapse, or Google BigQuery, they do not. They require you to move it into a smaller in-memory engine. So it's important how well these new products inter-operate. The pace of change, its acceleration, Gartner recently predicted that by 2022, 65% of analytical queries will be generated using search or NLP or even AI and that is roughly three times the prediction they had just a couple of years ago. So let's talk about the real world impact of culture and if you've read any of my books or used any of the maturity models out there, whether the Gartner IT Score that I worked on or the Data Warehousing Institute also has a maturity model. We talk about these five pillars to really become data-driven. As Michelle spoke about, it's focusing on the business outcomes, leveraging all the data, including new data sources, it's the talent, the people, the technology and also the processes. And often when I would talk about the people in the talent, I would lump the culture as part of that. But in the last year, as I've traveled the world and done these digital events for thought leaders. You have told me now culture is absolutely so important, and so we've pulled it out as a separate pillar. And in fact, in polls that we've done in these events, look at how much more important culture is as a barrier to becoming data-driven. It's three times as important as any of these other pillars. That's how critical it is. And let's take an example of where you can have great data, but if you don't have the right culture, there's devastating impacts. And I will say I have been a loyal customer of Wells Fargo for more than 20 years, but look at what happened in the face of negative news with data. It said, "Hey, we're not doing good cross-selling, customers do not have both a checking account and a credit card and a savings account and a mortgage." They opened fake accounts facing billions in fines, change in leadership that even the CEO attributed to a toxic sales culture and they're trying to fix this, but even recently there's been additional employee backlash saying the culture has not changed. Let's contrast that with some positive examples. Medtronic, a worldwide company in 150 countries around the world. They may not be a household name to you, but if you have a loved one or yourself, you have a pacemaker, spinal implant, diabetes, you know this brand. And at the start of COVID when they knew their business would be slowing down, because hospitals would only be able to take care of COVID patients. They took the bold move of making their IP for ventilators publicly available. That is the power of a positive culture. Or Verizon, a major telecom organization looking at late payments of their customers and even though the U.S. Federal Government said, "Well, you can't turn them off." They said, "We'll extend that even beyond the mandated guidelines," and facing a slow down in the business because of the tough economy, They said, "You know what? We will spend the time upskilling our people, giving them the time to learn more about the future of work, the skills and data and analytics for 20,000 of their employees rather than furloughing them. That is the power of a positive culture. So how can you transform your culture to the best in class? I'll give you three suggestions. Bring in a change agent, identify the relevance or I like to call it WIIFM and organize for collaboration. So the CDO, whatever your title is, Chief Analytics Officer, Chief Digital Officer, you are the most important change agent. And this is where you will hear that oftentimes a change agent has to come from outside the organization. So this is where, for example, in Europe you have the CDO of Just Eat, a takeout food delivery organization coming from the airline industry or in Australia, National Australian Bank taking a CDO within the same sector from TD Bank going to NAB. So these change agents come in, disrupt. It's a hard job. As one of you said to me, it often feels like. I make one step forward and I get knocked down again, I get pushed back. It is not for the faint of heart, but it's the most important part of your job. The other thing I'll talk about is WIIFM What's In It For Me? And this is really about understanding the motivation, the relevance that data has for everyone on the frontline, as well as those analysts, as well as the executives. So, if we're talking about players in the NFL, they want to perform better and they want to stay safe. That is why data matters to them. If we're talking about financial services, this may be a wealth management advisor. Okay, we could say commissions, but it's really helping people have their dreams come true, whether it's putting their children through college or being able to retire without having to work multiple jobs still into your 70s or 80s. For the teachers, teachers you ask them about data. They'll say, "We don't need that, I care about the student." So if you can use data to help a student perform better, that is WIIFM and sometimes we spend so much time talking the technology, we forget, what is the value we're trying to deliver with this? And we forget the impact on the people that it does require change. In fact, the Harvard Business Review study found that 44% said lack of change management is the biggest barrier to leveraging both new technology, but also being empowered to act on those data-driven insights. The third point, organize for collaboration. This does require diversity of thought, but also bringing the technology, the data and the business people together. Now there's not a single one size fits all model for data and analytics. At one point in time, even having a BICC, a BI competency center was considered state of the art. Now for the biggest impact, what I recommend is that you have a federated model centralized for economies of scale. That could be the common data, but then embed these evangelists, these analysts of the future within every business unit, every functional domain. And as you see this top bar, all models are possible, but the hybrid model has the most impact, the most leaders. So as we look ahead to the months ahead, to the year ahead, an exciting time because data is helping organizations better navigate a tough economy, lock in the customer loyalty and I look forward to seeing how you foster that culture that's collaborative with empathy and bring the best of technology, leveraging the cloud, all your data. So thank you for joining us at Thought Leaders. And next, I'm pleased to introduce our first change agent, Tom Mazzaferro Chief Data Officer of Western Union and before joining Western Union, Tom made his Mark at HSBC and JP Morgan Chase spearheading digital innovation in technology, operations, risk compliance and retail banking. Tom, thank you so much for joining us today. (gentle music) >> Very happy to be here and looking forward to talking to all of you today. So as we look to move organizations to a data-driven capability into the future, there is a lot that needs to be done on the data side, but also how does data connect and enable different business teams and the technology teams into the future? As we look across our data ecosystems and our platforms, and how we modernize that to the cloud in the future, it all needs to basically work together, right? To really be able to drive an organization from a data standpoint, into the future. That includes being able to have the right information with the right quality of data, at the right time to drive informed business decisions, to drive the business forward. As part of that, we actually have partnered with ThoughtSpot to actually bring in the technology to help us drive that. As part of that partnership and it's how we've looked to integrate it into our overall business as a whole. We've looked at, how do we make sure that our business and our professional lives, right? Are enabled in the same ways as our personal lives. So for example, in your personal lives, when you want to go and find something out, what do you do? You go onto google.com or you go onto Bing or you go onto Yahoo and you search for what you want, search to find an answer. ThoughtSpot for us is the same thing, but in the business world. So using ThoughtSpot and other AI capability is it's allowed us to actually enable our overall business teams in our company to actually have our information at our fingertips. So rather than having to go and talk to someone, or an engineer to go pull information or pull data. We actually can have the end users or the business executives, right. Search for what they need, what they want, at the exact time that they actually need it, to go and drive the business forward. This is truly one of those transformational things that we've put in place. On top of that, we are on a journey to modernize our larger ecosystem as a whole. That includes modernizing our underlying data warehouses, our technology, our... The local environments and as we move that, we've actually picked two of our cloud providers going to AWS and to GCP. We've also adopted Snowflake to really drive and to organize our information and our data, then drive these new solutions and capabilities forward. So a big portion of it though is culture. So how do we engage with the business teams and bring the IT teams together, to really help to drive these holistic end-to-end solutions and capabilities, to really support the actual business into the future. That's one of the keys here, as we look to modernize and to really enhance our organizations to become data-driven. This is the key. If you can really start to provide answers to business questions before they're even being asked and to predict based upon different economic trends or different trends in your business, what decisions need to be made and actually provide those answers to the business teams before they're even asking for it. That is really becoming a data-driven organization and as part of that, it really then enables the business to act quickly and take advantage of opportunities as they come in based upon industries, based upon markets, based upon products, solutions or partnerships into the future. These are really some of the keys that become crucial as you move forward, right, into this new age, Especially with COVID. With COVID now taking place across the world, right? Many of these markets, many of these digital transformations are celebrating and are changing rapidly to accommodate and to support customers in these very difficult times. As part of that, you need to make sure you have the right underlying foundation, ecosystems and solutions to really drive those capabilities and those solutions forward. As we go through this journey, both in my career but also each of your careers into the future, right? It also needs to evolve, right? Technology has changed so drastically in the last 10 years, and that change is only accelerating. So as part of that, you have to make sure that you stay up to speed, up to date with new technology changes, both on the platform standpoint, tools, but also what do our customers want, what do our customers need and how do we then service them with our information, with our data, with our platform, and with our products and our services to meet those needs and to really support and service those customers into the future. This is all around becoming a more data-driven organization, such as how do you use your data to support your current business lines, but how do you actually use your information and your data to actually better support your customers, better support your business, better support your employees, your operations teams and so forth. And really creating that full integration in that ecosystem is really when you start to get large dividends from these investments into the future. With that being said, I hope you enjoyed the segment on how to become and how to drive a data-driven organization, and looking forward to talking to you again soon. Thank you. >> Tom, that was great. Thanks so much and now going to have to drag on you for a second. As a change agent you've come in, disrupted and how long have you been at Western Union? >> Only nine months, so just started this year, but there have been some great opportunities to integrate changes and we have a lot more to go, but we're really driving things forward in partnership with our business teams and our colleagues to support those customers going forward. >> Tom, thank you so much. That was wonderful. And now, I'm excited to introduce you to Gustavo Canton, a change agent that I've had the pleasure of working with meeting in Europe and he is a serial change agent. Most recently with Schneider Electric but even going back to Sam's Clubs. Gustavo, welcome. (gentle music) >> So, hey everyone, my name is Gustavo Canton and thank you so much, Cindi, for the intro. As you mentioned, doing transformations is, you know, a high reward situation. I have been part of many transformations and I have led many transformations. And, what I can tell you is that it's really hard to predict the future, but if you have a North Star and you know where you're going, the one thing that I want you to take away from this discussion today is that you need to be bold to evolve. And so, in today, I'm going to be talking about culture and data, and I'm going to break this down in four areas. How do we get started, barriers or opportunities as I see it, the value of AI and also, how you communicate. Especially now in the workforce of today with so many different generations, you need to make sure that you are communicating in ways that are non-traditional sometimes. And so, how do we get started? So, I think the answer to that is you have to start for you yourself as a leader and stay tuned. And by that, I mean, you need to understand, not only what is happening in your function or your field, but you have to be very in tune what is happening in society socioeconomically speaking, wellbeing. You know, the common example is a great example and for me personally, it's an opportunity because the number one core value that I have is wellbeing. I believe that for human potential for customers and communities to grow, wellbeing should be at the center of every decision. And as somebody mentioned, it's great to be, you know, stay in tune and have the skillset and the courage. But for me personally, to be honest, to have this courage is not about not being afraid. You're always afraid when you're making big changes and you're swimming upstream, but what gives me the courage is the empathy part. Like I think empathy is a huge component because every time I go into an organization or a function, I try to listen very attentively to the needs of the business and what the leaders are trying to do. But I do it thinking about the mission of, how do I make change for the bigger workforce or the bigger good despite the fact that this might have perhaps implication for my own self interest in my career. Right? Because you have to have that courage sometimes to make choices that are not well seen, politically speaking, but are the right thing to do and you have to push through it. So the bottom line for me is that, I don't think we're they're transforming fast enough. And the reality is, I speak with a lot of leaders and we have seen stories in the past and what they show is that, if you look at the four main barriers that are basically keeping us behind budget, inability to act, cultural issues, politics and lack of alignment, those are the top four. But the interesting thing is that as Cindi has mentioned, these topic about culture is actually gaining more and more traction. And in 2018, there was a story from HBR and it was about 45%. I believe today, it's about 55%, 60% of respondents say that this is the main area that we need to focus on. So again, for all those leaders and all the executives who understand and are aware that we need to transform, commit to the transformation and set a deadline to say, "Hey, in two years we're going to make this happen. What do we need to do, to empower and enable these change agents to make it happen? You need to make the tough choices. And so to me, when I speak about being bold is about making the right choices now. So, I'll give you examples of some of the roadblocks that I went through as I've been doing transformations, most recently, as Cindi mentioned in Schneider. There are three main areas, legacy mindset and what that means is that, we've been doing this in a specific way for a long time and here is how we have been successful. What worked in the past is not going to work now. The opportunity there is that there is a lot of leaders, who have a digital mindset and they're up and coming leaders that are perhaps not yet fully developed. We need to mentor those leaders and take bets on some of these talents, including young talent. We cannot be thinking in the past and just wait for people, you know, three to five years for them to develop because the world is going in a way that is super-fast. The second area and this is specifically to implementation of AI. It's very interesting to me because just the example that I have with ThoughtSpot, right? We went on implementation and a lot of the way the IT team functions or the leaders look at technology, they look at it from the prism of the prior or success criteria for the traditional BIs, and that's not going to work. Again, the opportunity here is that you need to redefine what success look like. In my case, I want the user experience of our workforce to be the same user experience you have at home. It's a very simple concept and so we need to think about, how do we gain that user experience with these augmented analytics tools and then work backwards to have the right talent, processes, and technology to enable that. And finally and obviously with COVID, a lot of pressure in organizations and companies to do more with less. And the solution that most leaders I see are taking is to just minimize costs sometimes and cut budget. We have to do the opposite. We have to actually invest on growth areas, but do it by business question. Don't do it by function. If you actually invest in these kind of solutions, if you actually invest on developing your talent and your leadership to see more digitally, if you actually invest on fixing your data platform, it's not just an incremental cost. It's actually this investment is going to offset all those hidden costs and inefficiencies that you have on your system, because people are doing a lot of work and working very hard but it's not efficient and it's not working in the way that you might want to work. So there is a lot of opportunity there and just to put in terms of perspective, there have been some studies in the past about, you know, how do we kind of measure the impact of data? And obviously, this is going to vary by organization maturity, there's going to be a lot of factors. I've been in companies who have very clean, good data to work with and I've been with companies that we have to start basically from scratch. So it all depends on your maturity level. But in this study, what I think is interesting is they try to put a tagline or a tag price to what is the cost of incomplete data. So in this case, it's about 10 times as much to complete a unit of work when you have data that is flawed as opposed to having perfect data. So let me put that just in perspective, just as an example, right? Imagine you are trying to do something and you have to do 100 things in a project, and each time you do something, it's going to cost you a dollar. So if you have perfect data, the total cost of that project might be $100. But now let's say you have 80% perfect data and 20% flawed data. By using this assumption that flawed data is 10 times as costly as perfect data, your total costs now becomes $280 as opposed to $100. This just for you to really think about as a CIO, CTO, you know CHRO, CEO, "Are we really paying attention and really closing the gaps that we have on our data infrastructure?" If we don't do that, it's hard sometimes to see the snowball effect or to measure the overall impact, but as you can tell, the price tag goes up very, very quickly. So now, if I were to say, how do I communicate this or how do I break through some of these challenges or some of these barriers, right? I think the key is, I am in analytics, I know statistics obviously and love modeling, and, you know, data and optimization theory, and all that stuff. That's what I came to analytics, but now as a leader and as a change agent, I need to speak about value and in this case, for example, for Schneider. There was this tagline, make the most of your energy. So the number one thing that they were asking from the analytics team was actually efficiency, which to me was very interesting. But once I understood that, I understood what kind of language to use, how to connect it to the overall strategy and basically, how to bring in the right leaders because you need to, you know, focus on the leaders that you're going to make the most progress, you know. Again, low effort, high value. You need to make sure you centralize all the data as you can, you need to bring in some kind of augmented analytics, you know, solution. And finally, you need to make it super-simple for the, you know, in this case, I was working with the HR teams and other areas, so they can have access to one portal. They don't have to be confused and looking for 10 different places to find information. I think if you can actually have those four foundational pillars, obviously under the guise of having a data-driven culture, that's when you can actually make the impact. So in our case, it was about three years total transformation, but it was two years for this component of augmented analytics. It took about two years to talk to, you know, IT, get leadership support, find the budgeting, you know, get everybody on board, make sure the success criteria was correct. And we call this initiative, the people analytics portal. It was actually launched in July of this year and we were very excited and the audience was very excited to do this. In this case, we did our pilot in North America for many, many, many factors but one thing that is really important is as you bring along your audience on this, you know. You're going from Excel, you know, in some cases or Tableu to other tools like, you know, ThoughtSpot. You need to really explain them what is the difference and how this tool can truly replace some of the spreadsheets or some of the views that you might have on these other kinds of tools. Again, Tableau, I think it's a really good tool. There are other many tools that you might have in your toolkit but in my case, personally, I feel that you need to have one portal. Going back to Cindi's points, that really truly enable the end user. And I feel that this is the right solution for us, right? And I will show you some of the findings that we had in the pilot in the last two months. So this was a huge victory and I will tell you why, because it took a lot of effort for us to get to this stage and like I said, it's been years for us to kind of lay the foundation, get the leadership, initiating culture so people can understand, why you truly need to invest on augmented analytics. And so, what I'm showing here is an example of how do we use basically, you know, a tool to capturing video, the qualitative findings that we had, plus the quantitative insights that we have. So in this case, our preliminary results based on our ambition for three main metrics. Hours saved, user experience and adoption. So for hours saved, our ambition was to have 10 hours per week for employee to save on average. User experience, our ambition was 4.5 and adoption 80%. In just two months, two months and a half of the pilot, we were able to achieve five hours per week per employee savings, a user experience for 4.3 out of five and adoption of 60%. Really, really amazing work. But again, it takes a lot of collaboration for us to get to the stage from IT, legal, communications, obviously the operations things and the users. In HR safety and other areas that might be basically stakeholders in this whole process. So just to summarize, this kind of effort takes a lot of energy. You are a change agent, you need to have courage to make this decision and understand that, I feel that in this day and age with all this disruption happening, we don't have a choice. We have to take the risk, right? And in this case, I feel a lot of satisfaction in how we were able to gain all these great resource for this organization and that give me the confident to know that the work has been done and we are now in a different stage for the organization. And so for me, it's just to say, thank you for everybody who has belief, obviously in our vision, everybody who has belief in, you know, the work that we were trying to do and to make the life of our, you know, workforce or customers and community better. As you can tell, there is a lot of effort, there is a lot of collaboration that is needed to do something like this. In the end, I feel very satisfied with the accomplishments of this transformation and I just want to tell for you, if you are going right now in a moment that you feel that you have to swim upstream, you know, work with mentors, work with people in the industry that can help you out and guide you on this kind of transformation. It's not easy to do, it's high effort, but it's well worth it. And with that said, I hope you are well and it's been a pleasure talking to you. Talk to you soon. Take care. >> Thank you, Gustavo. That was amazing. All right, let's go to the panel. (light music) Now I think we can all agree how valuable it is to hear from practitioners and I want to thank the panel for sharing their knowledge with the community. Now one common challenge that I heard you all talk about was bringing your leadership and your teams along on the journey with you. We talk about this all the time and it is critical to have support from the top. Why? Because it directs the middle and then it enables bottoms up innovation effects from the cultural transformation that you guys all talked about. It seems like another common theme we heard is that you all prioritize database decision making in your organizations. And you combine two of your most valuable assets to do that and create leverage, employees on the front lines, and of course the data. Now as as you rightly pointed out, Tom, the pandemic has accelerated the need for really leaning into this. You know, the old saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, well COVID has broken everything and it's great to hear from our experts, you know, how to move forward, so let's get right into it. So Gustavo, let's start with you. If I'm an aspiring change agent and let's say I'm a budding data leader, what do I need to start doing? What habits do I need to create for long-lasting success? >> I think curiosity is very important. You need to be, like I said, in tune to what is happening, not only in your specific field, like I have a passion for analytics, I've been doing it for 50 years plus, but I think you need to understand wellbeing of the areas across not only a specific business. As you know, I come from, you know, Sam's Club, Walmart retail. I've been in energy management, technology. So you have to try to push yourself and basically go out of your comfort zone. I mean, if you are staying in your comfort zone and you want to just continuous improvement, that's just going to take you so far. What you have to do is, and that's what I try to do, is I try to go into areas, businesses and transformations, that make me, you know, stretch and develop as a leader. That's what I'm looking to do, so I can help transform the functions, organizations, and do the change management, the essential mindset that's required for this kind of effort. >> Well, thank you for that. That is inspiring and Cindi you love data and the data is pretty clear that diversity is a good business, but I wonder if you can, you know, add your perspectives to this conversation? >> Yeah, so Michelle has a new fan here because she has found her voice. I'm still working on finding mine and it's interesting because I was raised by my dad, a single dad, so he did teach me how to work in a predominantly male environment, but why I think diversity matters more now than ever before and this is by gender, by race, by age, by just different ways of working and thinking, is because as we automate things with AI, if we do not have diverse teams looking at the data, and the models, and how they're applied, we risk having bias at scale. So this is why I think I don't care what type of minority you are, finding your voice, having a seat at the table and just believing in the impact of your work has never been more important and as Michelle said, more possible. >> Great perspectives, thank you. Tom, I want to go to you. So, I mean, I feel like everybody in our businesses is in some way, shape, or form become a COVID expert, but what's been the impact of the pandemic on your organization's digital transformation plans? >> We've seen a massive growth, actually, in our digital business over the last 12 months really, even acceleration, right, once COVID hit. We really saw that in the 200 countries and territories that we operate in today and service our customers in today, that there's been a huge need, right, to send money to support family, to support friends, and to support loved ones across the world. And as part of that we are very honored to be able to support those customers that, across all the centers today, but as part of the acceleration, we need to make sure that we have the right architecture and the right platforms to basically scale, right? To basically support and provide the right kind of security for our customers going forward. So as part of that, we did do some pivots and we did accelerate some of our plans on digital to help support that overall growth coming in and to support our customers going forward, because during these times, during this pandemic, right, this is the most important time and we need to support those that we love and those that we care about. And doing that some of those ways is actually by sending money to them, support them financially. And that's where really our products and our services come into play that, you know, and really support those families. So, it was really a great opportunity for us to really support and really bring some of our products to the next level and supporting our business going forward. >> Awesome, thank you. Now, I want to come back to Gustavo. Tom, I'd love for you to chime in too. Did you guys ever think like you were pushing the envelope too much in doing things with data or the technology that it was just maybe too bold, maybe you felt like at some point it was failing, or you're pushing your people too hard? Can you share that experience and how you got through it? >> Yeah, the way I look at it is, you know, again, whenever I go to an organization, I ask the question, "Hey, how fast you would like to conform?" And, you know, based on the agreements on the leadership and the vision that we want to take place, I take decisions and I collaborate in a specific way. Now, in the case of COVID, for example, right, it forces us to remove silos and collaborate in a faster way. So to me, it was an opportunity to actually integrate with other areas and drive decisions faster, but make no mistake about it, when you are doing a transformation, you are obviously trying to do things faster than sometimes people are comfortable doing, and you need to be okay with that. Sometimes you need to be okay with tension or you need to be okay, you know, debating points or making repetitive business cases until people connect with the decision because you understand and you are seeing that, "Hey, the CEO is making a one, two year, you know, efficiency goal. The only way for us to really do more with less is for us to continue this path. We can not just stay with the status quo, we need to find a way to accelerate the transformation." That's the way I see it. >> How about Utah, we were talking earlier with Sudheesh and Cindi about that bungee jumping moment. What can you share? >> Yeah, you know, I think you hit upon it. Right now, the pace of change will be the slowest pace that you see for the rest of your career. So as part of that, right, this is what I tell my team, is that you need to be, you need to feel comfortable being uncomfortable. Meaning that we have to be able to basically scale, right? Expand and support the ever changing needs in the marketplace and industry and our customers today, and that pace of change that's happening, right? And what customers are asking for and the competition in the marketplace, it's only going to accelerate. So as part of that, you know, as you look at how you're operating today in your current business model, right? Things are only going to get faster. So you have to plan and to align and to drive the actual transformation, so that you can scale even faster into the future. So it's part of that, that's what we're putting in place here, right? It's how do we create that underlying framework and foundation that allows the organization to basically continue to scale and evolve into the future? >> Yeah, we're definitely out of our comfort zones, but we're getting comfortable with it. So Cindi, last question, you've worked with hundreds of organizations and I got to believe that, you know, some of the advice you gave when you were at Gartner, which was pre-COVID, maybe sometimes clients didn't always act on it. You know, not my watch or for whatever, variety of reasons, but it's being forced on them now. But knowing what you know now that, you know, we're all in this isolation economy, how would you say that advice has changed? Has it changed? What's your number one action and recommendation today? >> Yeah, well first off, Tom, just freaked me out. What do you mean, this is the slowest ever? Even six months ago I was saying the pace of change in data and analytics is frenetic. So, but I think you're right, Tom, the business and the technology together is forcing this change. Now, Dave, to answer your question, I would say the one bit of advice, maybe I was a little more very aware of the power in politics and how to bring people along in a way that they are comfortable and now I think it's, you know what, you can't get comfortable. In fact, we know that the organizations that were already in the cloud have been able to respond and pivot faster. So, if you really want to survive, as Tom and Gustavo said, get used to being uncomfortable. The power and politics are going to happen, break the rules, get used to that and be bold. Do not be afraid to tell somebody they're wrong and they're not moving fast enough. I do think you have to do that with empathy, as Michelle said and Gustavo, I think that's one of the key words today besides the bungee jumping. So I want to know where Sudheesh is going to go bungee jumping. (all chuckling) >> Guys, fantastic discussion, really. Thanks again to all the panelists and the guests, it was really a pleasure speaking with you today. Really, virtually all of the leaders that I've spoken to in theCUBE program recently, they tell me that the pandemic is accelerating so many things. Whether it's new ways to work, we heard about new security models and obviously the need for cloud. I mean, all of these things are driving true enterprise-wide digital transformation, not just as I said before, lip service. You know, sometimes we minimize the importance and the challenge of building culture and in making this transformation possible. But when it's done right, the right culture is going to deliver tournament results. You know, what does that mean? Getting it right. Everybody's trying to get it right. My biggest takeaway today is it means making data part of the DNA of your organization. And that means making it accessible to the people in your organization that are empowered to make decisions, decisions that can drive new revenue, cut costs, speed access to critical care, whatever the mission is of your organization, data can create insights and informed decisions that drive value. Okay, let's bring back Sudheesh and wrap things up. Sudheesh, please bring us home. >> Thank you, thank you, Dave. Thank you, theCUBE team, and thanks goes to all of our customers and partners who joined us, and thanks to all of you for spending the time with us. I want to do three quick things and then close it off. The first thing is I want to summarize the key takeaways that I heard from all four of our distinguished speakers. First, Michelle, I will simply put it, she said it really well. That is be brave and drive, don't go for a drive alone. That is such an important point. Often times, you know the right thing that you have to do to make the positive change that you want to see happen, but you wait for someone else to do it, not just, why not you? Why don't you be the one making that change happen? That's the thing that I picked up from Michelle's talk. Cindi talked about finding, the importance of finding your voice. Taking that chair, whether it's available or not, and making sure that your ideas, your voice is heard and if it requires some force, then apply that force. Make sure your ideas are heard. Gustavo talked about the importance of building consensus, not going at things all alone sometimes. The importance of building the quorum, and that is critical because if you want the changes to last, you want to make sure that the organization is fully behind it. Tom, instead of a single takeaway, what I was inspired by is the fact that a company that is 170 years old, 170 years old, 200 companies and 200 countries they're operating in and they were able to make the change that is necessary through this difficult time in a matter of months. If they could do it, anyone could. The second thing I want to do is to leave you with a takeaway, that is I would like you to go to ThoughtSpot.com/nfl because our team has made an app for NFL on Snowflake. I think you will find this interesting now that you are inspired and excited because of Michelle's talk. And the last thing is, please go to ThoughtSpot.com/beyond. Our global user conference is happening in this December. We would love to have you join us, it's, again, virtual, you can join from anywhere. We are expecting anywhere from five to 10,000 people and we would love to have you join and see what we've been up to since last year. We have a lot of amazing things in store for you, our customers, our partners, our collaborators, they will be coming and sharing. We'll be sharing things that we have been working to release, something that will come out next year. And also some of the crazy ideas our engineers have been cooking up. All of those things will be available for you at ThoughtSpot Beyond. Thank you, thank you so much.

>> Data is at the heart of transformation and the change every company needs to succeed, but it takes more than new technology. It's about teams, talent and cultural change. Empowering everyone on the front lines to make decisions all at the speed of digital. The transformation starts with you. It's time to lead the way it's time for Thought leaders. >> Welcome to "Thought Leaders" a digital event brought to you by ThoughtSpot. My name is Dave Vellante. The purpose of this day is to bring industry leaders and experts together to really try and understand the important issues around digital transformation. We have an amazing lineup of speakers and our goal is to provide you with some best practices that you can bring back and apply to your organization. Look, data is plentiful, but insights are not. ThoughtSpot is disrupting analytics by using search and machine intelligence to simplify data analysis and really empower anyone with fast access to relevant data. But in the last 150 days, we've had more questions than answers. Creating an organization that puts data and insights at their core requires not only modern technology, but leadership, a mindset and a culture that people often refer to as data-driven. What does that mean? How can we equip our teams with data and fast access to quality information that can turn insights into action. And today we're going to hear from experienced leaders who are transforming their organizations with data, insights and creating digital first cultures. But before we introduce our speakers, I'm joined today by two of my co-hosts from ThoughtSpot first chief data strategy officer at the ThoughtSpot is Cindi Howson. Cindi is an analytics and BI expert with 20 plus years experience and the author of "Successful Business Intelligence "Unlock the Value of BI & Big Data." Cindi was previously the lead analyst at Gartner for the data and analytics magic quadrant. And early last year, she joined ThoughtSpot to help CDOs and their teams understand how best to leverage analytics and AI for digital transformation. Cindi, great to see you welcome to the show. >> Thank you, Dave. Nice to join you virtually. >> Now our second cohost and friend of the cube is ThoughtSpot CEO Sudheesh Nair Hello, Sudheesh how are you doing today? >> I'm well Dave, it's good to talk to you again. >> It's great to see you thanks so much for being here. Now Sudheesh please share with us why this discussion is so important to your customers and of course, to our audience and what they're going to learn today. (upbeat music) >> Thanks, Dave. I wish you were there to introduce me into every room and that I walk into because you have such an amazing way of doing it. Makes me feel all so good. Look, since we have all been cooped up in our homes, I know that the vendors like us, we have amped up our sort of effort to reach out to you with invites for events like this. So we are getting very more invites for events like this than ever before. So when we started planning for this, we had three clear goals that we wanted to accomplish. And our first one that when you finish this and walk away, we want to make sure that you don't feel like it was a waste of time. We want to make sure that we value your time and this is going to be useful. Number two, we want to put you in touch with industry leaders and thought leaders, generally good people that you want to hang around with long after this event is over. And number three, as we plan through this, we are living through these difficult times. We want an event to be this event, to be more of an uplifting and inspiring event too. Now, the challenge is how do you do that with the team being change agents because change and as much as we romanticize it, it is not one of those uplifting things that everyone wants to do, or like to do. The way I think of it sort of like a, if you've ever done bungee jumping and it's like standing on the edges waiting to make that one more step, all you have to do is take that one step and gravity will do the rest, but that is the hardest step to take. Change requires a lot of courage. And when we are talking about data and analytics, which is already like such a hard topic, not necessarily an uplifting and positive conversation in most businesses, it is somewhat scary. Change becomes all the more difficult. Ultimately change requires courage. Courage to first of all challenge the status quo. People sometimes are afraid to challenge the status quo because they are thinking that maybe I don't have the power to make the change that the company needs. Sometimes they feel like I don't have the skills. Sometimes they may feel that I'm probably not the right person do it. Or sometimes the lack of courage manifest itself as the inability to sort of break the silos that are formed within the organizations, when it comes to data and insights that you talked about. There are people in the company who are going to hog the data because they know how to manage the data, how to inquire and extract. They know how to speak data. They have the skills to do that. But they are not the group of people who have sort of the knowledge, the experience of the business to ask the right questions off the data. So there is the silo of people with the answers, and there is a silo of people with the questions. And there is gap. This sort of silos are standing in the way of making that necessary change that we all know the business needs. And the last change to sort of bring an external force sometimes. It could be a tool. It could be a platform, it could be a person, it could be a process, but sometimes no matter how big the company is or how small the company is, you may need to bring some external stimuli to start the domino of the positive changes that are necessary. The group of people that we are brought in, the four people, including Cindi, that you will hear from today are really good at practically telling you how to make that step, how to step off that edge, how to dress the rope, that you will be safe and you're going to have fun. You will have that exhilarating feeling of jumping, for a bungee jump. All four of them are exceptional, but my honor is to introduce Michelle and she's our first speaker. Michelle, I am very happy after watching her presentation and reading our bio, that there are no country vital worldwide competition for cool patterns, because she will beat all of us because when her children were small, they were probably into Harry Potter and Disney. She was managing a business and leading change there. And then as her kids grew up and got to that age where they like football and NFL, guess what? She's the CIO of NFL. What a cool mom? I am extremely excited to see what she's going to talk about. I've seen the slides, tons of amazing pictures. I'm looking to see the context behind it. I'm very thrilled to make the acquaintance of Michelle and looking forward to her talk next. Welcome Michelle, it's over to you. (upbeat music) >> I'm delighted to be with you all today to talk about thought leadership. And I'm so excited that you asked me to join you because today I get to be a quarterback. I always wanted to be one. And I thought this is about as close as I'm ever going to get. So I want to talk to you about quarterbacking, our digital revolution using insights data. And of course, as you said, leadership, first a little bit about myself, a little background, as I said, I always wanted to play football. And this is something that I wanted to do since I was a child. But when I grew up, girls didn't get to play football. I'm so happy that that's changing and girls are now doing all kinds of things that they didn't get to do before. Just this past weekend on an NFL field, we had a female coach on two sidelines and a female official on the field. I'm a lifelong fan and student of the game of football. I grew up in the South. You can tell from the accent. And in the South football is like a religion and you pick sides. I chose Auburn university working in the athletic department. So I'm Testament to you can start the journey can be long. It took me many, many years to make it into professional sports. I graduated in 1987 and my little brother, well, not actually not so little. He played offensive line for the Alabama Crimson Tide. And for those of you who know SCC football, you know this is a really big rivalry. And when you choose sides, your family is divided. So it's kind of fun for me to always tell the story that my dad knew his kid would make it to the NFL. He just bet on the wrong one. My career has been about bringing people together for memorable moments at some of America's most iconic brands, delivering memories and amazing experiences that delight from Universal Studios, Disney to my current position as CIO of the NFL. In this job I'm very privileged to have the opportunity to work with the team that gets to bring America's game to millions of people around the world. Often I'm asked to talk about how to create amazing experiences for fans, guests, or customers. But today I really wanted to focus on something different and talk to you about being behind the scenes and backstage because behind every event, every game, every awesome moment is execution, precise, repeatable execution. And most of my career has been behind the scenes doing just that assembling teams to execute these plans. And the key way that companies operate at these exceptional levels is making good decisions, the right decisions at the right time and based upon data so that you can translate the data into intelligence and be a data-driven culture. Using data and intelligence is an important way that world-class companies do differentiate themselves. And it's the lifeblood of collaboration and innovation. Teams that are working on delivering these kinds of world casts experiences are often seeking out and leveraging next-generation technologies and finding new ways to work. I've been fortunate to work across three decades of emerging experiences, which each required emerging technologies to execute a little bit first about Disney in the 90s, I was at Disney leading a project called destination Disney, which it's a data project. It was a data project, but it was CRM before CRM was even cool. And then certainly before anything like a data-driven culture was ever brought up, but way back then we were creating a digital backbone that enabled many technologies for the things that you see today, like the magic band, Disney's magical express. My career at Disney began in finance, but Disney was very good about rotating you around. And it was during one of these rotations that I became very passionate about data. I kind of became a pain in the butt to the IT team asking for data more and more data. And I learned that all of that valuable data was locked up in our systems. All of our point of sales systems, our reservation systems, our operation systems. And so I became a shadow IT person in marketing, ultimately leading to moving into IT. And I haven't looked back since. In the early two thousands, I was at universal studios theme park as their CIO preparing for and launching "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter" bringing one of history's most memorable characters to life required many new technologies and a lot of data. Our data and technologies were embedded into the rides and attractions. I mean, how do you really think a wan selects you at a wan shop. As today at the NFL? I am constantly challenged to do leading edge technologies, using things like sensors, AI, machine learning, and all new communication strategies and using data to drive everything from player performance, contracts, to where we build new stadiums and hold events with this year being the most challenging yet rewarding year in my career at the NFL. In the middle of a global pandemic, the way we are executing on our season is leveraging data from contract tracing devices joined with testing data, talk about data, actually enabling your business without it w wouldn't be having a season right now. I'm also on the board of directors of two public companies where data and collaboration are paramount. First RingCentral, it's a cloud based unified communications platform and collaboration with video message and phone all in one solution in the cloud and Quotient technologies whose product is actually data. The tagline at Quotient is the result in knowing I think that's really important because not all of us are data companies where your product is actually data, but we should operate more like your product is data. I'd also like to talk to you about four areas of things to think about as thought leaders in your companies. First just hit on it is change how to be a champion and a driver of change. Second, how do you use data to drive performance for your company and measure performance of your company? Third, how companies now require intense collaboration to operate. And finally, how much of this is accomplished through solid data driven decisions. First let's hit on change. I mean, it's evident today more than ever, that we are in an environment of extreme change. I mean, we've all been at this for years and as technologists we've known it, believed it, lived it and thankfully for the most part, knock on what we were prepared for it. But this year everyone's cheese was moved. All the people in the back rooms, IT, data architects and others were suddenly called to the forefront because a global pandemic has turned out to be the thing that is driving intense change in how people work and analyze their business. On March 13th, we closed our office at the NFL in the middle of preparing for one of our biggest events, our kickoff event, the 2020 draft. We went from planning a large event in Las Vegas under the bright lights, red carpet stage to smaller events in club facilities. And then ultimately to one where everyone coaches GM's prospects and even our commissioner were at home in their basements. And we only had a few weeks to figure it out. I found myself for the first time being in the live broadcast event space, talking about bungee jumping. This is really what it felt like. It was one in which no one felt comfortable because it had not been done before. But leading through this, I stepped up, but it was very scary. It was certainly very risky, but it ended up being all so rewarding when we did it. And as a result of this, some things will change forever. Second, managing performance. I mean, data should inform how you're doing and how to get your company to perform at it's level. Highest level. As an example, the NFL has always measured performance, obviously, and it is one of the purest examples of how performance directly impacts outcome. I mean, you can see performance on the field. You can see points being scored in stats, and you immediately know that impact those with the best stats usually when the games. The NFL has always recorded stats since the beginning of time here at the NFL a little this year is our 101 year and athletes ultimate success as a player has also always been greatly impacted by his stats. But what has changed for us is both how much more we can measure and the immediacy with which it can be measured. And I'm sure in your business it's the same. The amount of data you must have has got to have quadrupled and how fast you need it and how quickly you need to analyze it is so important. And it's very important to break the silos between the keys, to the data and the use of the data. Our next generation stats platform is taking data to a next level. It's powered by Amazon web services. And we gathered this data real-time from sensors that are on players' bodies. We gather it in real time, analyze it, display it online and on broadcast. And of course it's used to prepare week to week in addition to what is a normal coaching plan would be. We can now analyze, visualize route patterns, speed match-ups, et cetera. So much faster than ever before. We're continuing to roll out sensors too that will gather more and more information about a player's performance as it relates to their health and safety. The third trend is really, I think it's a big part of what we're feeling today and that is intense collaboration. And just for sort of historical purposes, it's important to think about for those of you that are IT professionals and developers, more than 10 years ago, agile practices began sweeping companies where small teams would work together rapidly in a very flexible, adaptive, and innovative way. And it proved to be transformational. However, today, of course, that is no longer just small teams, the next big wave of change. And we've seen it through this pandemic is that it's the whole enterprise that must collaborate and be agile. If I look back on my career, when I was at Disney, we owned everything 100%. We made a decision, we implemented it. We were a collaborative culture, but it was much easier to push change because you own the whole decision. If there was buy-in from the top down, you've got the people from the bottom up to do it and you executed. At Universal we were a joint venture. Our attractions and entertainment was licensed. Our hotels were owned and managed by other third parties. So influence and collaboration and how to share across companies became very important. And now here I am at the NFL and even the bigger ecosystem, we have 32 clubs that are all separate businesses. 31 different stadiums that are owned by a variety of people. We have licensees, we have sponsors, we have broadcast partners. So it seems that as my career has evolved, centralized control has gotten less and less and has been replaced by intense collaboration, not only within your own company, but across companies. The ability to work in a collaborative way across businesses and even other companies that has been a big key to my success in my career. I believe this whole vertical integration and big top-down decision-making is going by the wayside in favor of ecosystems that require cooperation yet competition to co-exist. I mean, the NFL is a great example of what we call co-op petition, which is cooperation and competition. We're in competition with each other, but we cooperate to make the company the best it can be. And at the heart of these items really are data driven decisions and culture. Data on its own isn't good enough. You must be able to turn it to insights. Partnerships between technology teams who usually hold the keys to the raw data and business units who have the knowledge to build the right decision models is key. If you're not already involved in this linkage, you should be. Data mining isn't new for sure. The availability of data is quadrupling and it's everywhere. How do you know what to even look at? How do you know where to begin? How do you know what questions to ask it's by using the tools that are available for visualization and analytics and knitting together strategies of the company. So it begins with first of all, making sure you do understand the strategy of the company. So in closing, just to wrap up a bit, many of you joined today, looking for thought leadership on how to be a change agent, a change champion, and how to lead through transformation. Some final thoughts are be brave and drive. Don't do the ride along program. It's very important to drive. Driving can be high risk, but it's also high reward. Embracing the uncertainty of what will happen is how you become brave. Get more and more comfortable with uncertainty, be calm and let data be your map on your journey. Thanks. >> Michelle, tank you so much. So you and I share a love of data and a love of football. You said you want to be the quarterback. I'm more an old line person. (Michelle and Cindi laughing) >> Well, then I can do my job without you. >> Great. And I'm getting the feeling now, Sudheesh is talking about bungee jumping. My vote is when we're past this pandemic, we both take them to the Delaware water gap and we do the cliff jumping. >> That sounds good, I'll watch. >> Yeah, you'll watch, okay. So Michelle, you have so many stakeholders when you're trying to prioritize the different voices. You have the players, you have the owners, you have the league, as you mentioned, the broadcasters, your partners here and football mamas like myself. How do you prioritize when there's so many different stakeholders that you need to satisfy? >> I think balancing across stakeholders starts with, aligning on a mission. And if you spend a lot of time understanding where everyone's coming from, and you can find the common thread that ties them all together, you sort of do get them to naturally prioritize their work. And I think that's very important. So for us, at the NFL and even at Disney, it was our core values and our core purpose, is so well known and when anything challenges that we're able to sort of lay that out. But as a change agent, you have to be very empathetic. And I would say empathy is probably your strongest skill if you're a change agent. And that means listening to every single stakeholder, even when they're yelling at you, even when they're telling you your technology doesn't work and you know that it's user error, or even when someone is just emotional about what's happening to them and that they're not comfortable with it. So I think being empathetic and having a mission and understanding it is sort of how I prioritize and balance. >> Yeah, empathy, a very popular word this year. I can imagine those coaches and owners yelling. So, thank you for your leadership here. So Michelle, I look forward to discussing this more with our other customers and disruptors joining us in a little bit. (upbeat music) So we're going to take a hard pivot now and go from football to Chernobyl. Chernobyl what went wrong? 1986, as the reactors were melting down, they had the data to say, this is going to be catastrophic. And yet the culture said, "no, we're perfect, hide it. "Don't dare tell anyone." Which meant they went ahead and had celebrations in Kiev. Even though that increased the exposure, the additional thousands getting cancer and 20,000 years before the ground around there can even be inhabited again, this is how powerful and detrimental a negative culture, a culture that is unable to confront the brutal facts that hides data. This is what we have to contend with. And this is why I want you to focus on having, fostering a data-driven culture. I don't want you to be a laggard. I want you to be a leader in using data to drive your digital transformation. So I'll talk about culture and technology. Is it really two sides of the same coin, real-world impacts and then some best practices you can use to and innovate your culture. Now, oftentimes I would talk about culture and I talk about technology. And recently a CDO said to me, "Cindi, I actually think this is two sides "of the same coin. "One reflects the other." What do you think? Let me walk you through this. So let's take a laggard. What does the technology look like? Is it based on 1990s BI and reporting largely parametrized reports, on premises data, warehouses, or not even that operational reports at best one enterprise data warehouse, very slow moving and collaboration is only email. What does that culture tell you? Maybe there's a lack of leadership to change, to do the hard work that Sudheesh referred to, or is there also a culture of fear, afraid of failure, resistance to change complacency. And sometimes that complacency it's not because people are lazy. It's because they've been so beaten down every time a new idea is presented. It's like, no we're measured on least cost to serve. So politics and distrust, whether it's between business and IT or individual stakeholders is the norm. So data is hoarded. Let's contrast that with a leader, a data and analytics leader, what is their technology look like? Augmented analytics search and AI driven insights, not on premises, but in the cloud and maybe multiple clouds. And the data is not in one place, but it's in a data Lake and in a data warehouse, a logical data warehouse. The collaboration is being a newer methods, whether it's Slack or teams allowing for that real time decisioning or investigating a particular data point. So what is the culture in the leaders? It's transparent and trust. There is a trust that data will not be used to punish that there is an ability to confront the bad news. It's innovation, valuing innovation in pursuit of the company goals, whether it's the best fan experience and player safety in the NFL or best serving your customers. It's innovative and collaborative. There's none of this. Oh, well, I didn't invent that. I'm not going to look at that. There's still pride of ownership, but it's collaborating to get to a better place faster. And people feel empowered to present new ideas to fail fast, and they're energized knowing that they're using the best technology and innovating at the pace that business requires. So data is democratized. And democratized, not just for power users or analysts, but really at the point of impact what we like to call the new decision-makers or really the frontline workers. So Harvard business review partnered with us to develop this study to say, just how important is this? We've been working at BI and analytics as an industry for more than 20 years. Why is it not at the front lines? Whether it's a doctor, a nurse, a coach, a supply chain manager, a warehouse manager, a financial services advisor. Everyone said that if our 87% said, they would be more successful if frontline workers were empowered with data driven insights, but they recognize they need new technology to be able to do that. It's not about learning hard tools. The sad reality, only 20% of organizations are actually doing this. These are the data-driven leaders. So this is the culture in technology. How did we get here? It's because state-of-the-art keeps changing. So the first-generation BI and analytics platforms were deployed on premises on small datasets, really just taking data out of ERP systems that were also on premises. And state-of-the-art was maybe getting a management report, an operational report. Over time visual-based data discovery vendors disrupted these traditional BI vendors, empowering now analysts to create visualizations with the flexibility on a desktop, sometimes larger data, sometimes coming from a data warehouse. The current state of the art though, Gartner calls it augmented analytics at ThoughtSpot, we call it search and AI driven analytics. And this was pioneered for large scale datasets, whether it's on premises or leveraging the cloud data warehouses. And I think this is an important point. Oftentimes you, the data and analytics leaders will look at these two components separately, but you have to look at the BI and analytics tier in lockstep with your data architectures to really get to the granular insights and to leverage the capabilities of AI. Now, if you've never seen ThoughtSpot, I'll just show you what this looks like. Instead of somebody hard coding, a report it's typing in search keywords and very robust keywords contains rank top bottom, getting to a visual visualization that then can be pinned to an existing Pin board that might also contain insights generated by an AI engine. So it's easy enough for that new decision maker, the business user, the non analyst to create themselves. Modernizing the data and analytics portfolio is hard because the pace of change has accelerated. You use to be able to create an investment place a bet for maybe 10 years, a few years ago, that time horizon was five years, now it's maybe three years and the time to maturity has also accelerated. So you have these different components, the search and AI tier, the data science tier, data preparation and virtualization. But I would also say equally important is the cloud data warehouse and pay attention to how well these analytics tools can unlock the value in these cloud data warehouses. So ThoughtSpot was the first to market with search and AI driven insights. Competitors have followed suit, but be careful if you look at products like power BI or SAP analytics cloud, they might demo well, but do they let you get to all the data without moving it in products like Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, or Azure synapse or Google big query, they do not. They require you to move it into a smaller in memory engine. So it's important how well these new products inter operate. the pace of change, its acceleration Gartner recently predicted that by 2022, 65% of analytical queries will be generated using search or NLP or even AI. And that is roughly three times the prediction they had just a couple years ago. So let's talk about the real world impact of culture. And if you read any of my books or used any of the maturity models out there, whether the Gartner IT score that I worked on, or the data warehousing Institute also has the money surety model. We talk about these five pillars to really become data-driven. As Michelle, I spoke about it's focusing on the business outcomes, leveraging all the data, including new data sources, it's the talent, the people, the technology, and also the processes. And often when I would talk about the people and the talent, I would lump the culture as part of that. But in the last year, as I've traveled the world and done these digital events for Thought leaders, you have told me now culture is absolutely so important. And so we've pulled it out as a separate pillar. And in fact, in polls that we've done in these events, look at how much more important culture is as a barrier to becoming data-driven it's three times as important as any of these other pillars. That's how critical it is. And let's take an example of where you can have great data, but if you don't have the right culture, there's devastating impacts. And I will say, I have been a loyal customer of Wells Fargo for more than 20 years. But look at what happened in the face of negative news with data, it said, "hey, we're not doing good cross selling, "customers do not have both a checking account "and a credit card and a savings account and a mortgage." They opened fake accounts facing billions in fines, change in leadership that even the CEO attributed to a toxic sales culture, and they're trying to fix this. But even recently there's been additional employee backlash saying the culture has not changed. Let's contrast that with some positive examples, Medtronic, a worldwide company in 150 countries around the world. They may not be a household name to you, but if you have a loved one or yourself, you have a pacemaker, spinal implant diabetes, you know this brand. And at the start of COVID when they knew their business would be slowing down, because hospitals would only be able to take care of COVID patients. They took the bold move of making their IP for ventilators publicly available. That is the power of a positive culture. Or Verizon, a major telecom organization looking at late payments of their customers. And even though the U.S federal government said, "well, you can't turn them off. They said, "we'll extend that even beyond "the mandated guidelines." And facing a slow down in the business because of the tough economy, they said, you know what? "We will spend the time up skilling our people, "giving them the time to learn more "about the future of work, the skills and data "and analytics," for 20,000 of their employees, rather than furloughing them. That is the power of a positive culture. So how can you transform your culture to the best in class? I'll give you three suggestions, bring in a change agent, identify the relevance, or I like to call it WIFM and organize for collaboration. So the CDO, whatever your title is, chief analytics officer, chief digital officer, you are the most important change agent. And this is where you will hear that oftentimes a change agent has to come from outside the organization. So this is where, for example, in Europe, you have the CDO of Just Eat a takeout food delivery organization coming from the airline industry or in Australia, National Australian bank, taking a CDO within the same sector from TD bank going to NAB. So these change agents come in disrupt. It's a hard job. As one of you said to me, it often feels like Sisyphus. I make one step forward and I get knocked down again. I get pushed back. It is not for the faint of heart, but it's the most important part of your job. The other thing I'll talk about is WIFM. What is in it for me? And this is really about understanding the motivation, the relevance that data has for everyone on the frontline, as well as those analysts, as well as the executives. So if we're talking about players in the NFL, they want to perform better and they want to stay safe. That is why data matters to them. If we're talking about financial services, this may be a wealth management advisor. Okay we could say commissions, but it's really helping people have their dreams come true, whether it's putting their children through college or being able to retire without having to work multiple jobs still into your 70s or 80s for the teachers, teachers, you ask them about data. They'll say we don't, we don't need that. I care about the student. So if you can use data to help a student perform better, that is WIFM. And sometimes we spend so much time talking the technology, we forget what is the value we're trying to deliver with it. And we forget the impact on the people that it does require change. In fact, the Harvard business review study found that 44% said lack of change management is the biggest barrier to leveraging both new technology, but also being empowered to act on those data-driven insights. The third point organize for collaboration. This does require diversity of thought, but also bringing the technology, the data and the business people together. Now there's not a single one size fits all model for data and analytics. At one point in time, even having a BICC, a BI competency center was considered state-of-the-art. Now for the biggest impact what I recommend is that you have a federated model centralized for economies of scale. That could be the common data, but then in bed, these evangelists, these analysts of the future within every business unit, every functional domain. And as you see this top bar, all models are possible, but the hybrid model has the most impact, the most leaders. So as we look ahead to the months ahead, to the year ahead an exciting time, because data is helping organizations better navigate a tough economy, lock in the customer loyalty. And I look forward to seeing how you foster that culture that's collaborative with empathy and bring the best of technology, leveraging the cloud, all your data. So thank you for joining us at Thought Leaders. And next I'm pleased to introduce our first change agent, Tom Mazzaferro chief data officer of Western union. And before joining Western union, Tom made his Mark at HSBC and JPMorgan Chase spearheading digital innovation in technology, operations, risk compliance, and retail banking. Tom, thank you so much for joining us today. (upbeat music) >> Very happy to be here and looking forward to talking to all of you today. So as we look to move organizations to a data-driven, capability into the future, there is a lot that needs to be done on the data side, but also how does data connect and enable different business teams and technology teams into the future. As you look across, our data ecosystems and our platforms and how we modernize that to the cloud in the future, it all needs to basically work together, right? To really be able to drive and over the shift from a data standpoint, into the future, that includes being able to have the right information with the right quality of data, at the right time to drive informed business decisions, to drive the business forward. As part of that, we actually have partnered with ThoughtSpot, to actually bring in the technology to help us drive that as part of that partnership. And it's how we've looked to integrate it into our overall business as a whole we've looked at how do we make sure that our business and our professional lives right, are enabled in the same ways as our personal lives. So for example, in your personal lives, when you want to go and find something out, what do you do? You go onto google.com or you go on to Bing we go onto Yahoo and you search for what you want search to find and answer. ThoughtSpot for us as the same thing, but in the business world. So using ThoughtSpot and other AI capability it's allowed us to actually, enable our overall business teams in our company to actually have our information at our fingertips. So rather than having to go and talk to someone or an engineer to go pull information or pull data, we actually can have the end-users or the business executives, right. Search for what they need, what they want at the exact time that action need it to go and drive the business forward. This is truly one of those transformational things that we've put in place. On top of that, we are on the journey to modernize our larger ecosystem as a whole. That includes modernizing our underlying data warehouses, our technology, or our Eloqua environments. And as we move that, we've actually picked two of our cloud providers going to AWS and GCP. We've also adopted Snowflake to really drive and to organize our information and our data then drive these new solutions and capabilities forward. So they portion of us though is culture. So how do we engage with the business teams and bring the IT teams together to really drive these holistic end to end solutions and capabilities to really support the actual business into the future? That's one of the keys here, as we look to modernize and to really enhance our organizations to become data-driven, this is the key. If you can really start to provide answers to business questions before they're even being asked and to predict based upon different economic trends or different trends in your business, what does this is maybe be made and actually provide those answers to the business teams before they're even asking for it, that is really becoming a data-driven organization. And as part of that, it's really then enables the business to act quickly and take advantage of opportunities as they come in based upon, industries based upon markets, based upon products, solutions, or partnerships into the future. These are really some of the keys that become crucial as you move forward, right, into this new age, especially with COVID. With COVID now taking place across the world, right? Many of these markets, many of these digital transformations are accelerating and are changing rapidly to accommodate and to support customers in these very difficult times, as part of that, you need to make sure you have the right underlying foundation ecosystems and solutions to really drive those capabilities and those solutions forward. As we go through this journey, both of my career, but also each of your careers into the future, right? It also needs to evolve, right? Technology has changed so drastically in the last 10 years, and that change is only accelerating. So as part of that, you have to make sure that you stay up to speed, up to date with new technology changes both on the platform standpoint tools, but also what do our customers want? What do our customers need and how do we then service them with our information, with our data, with our platform and with our products and our services to meet those needs and to really support and service those customers into the future. This is all around becoming a more data organization such as how do you use your data to support the current business lines, but how do you actually use your information, your data to actually put a better support your customers, better support your business, better support your employees, your operations teams, and so forth, and really creating that full integration in that ecosystem is really when you start to get large dividends from this investments into the future. But that being said, hope you enjoy the segment on how to become and how to drive it data driven organization. And, looking forward to talking to you again soon. Thank you. >> Tom that was great thanks so much. Now I'm going to have to brag on you for a second as a change agent you've come in disrupted and how long have you been at Western union? >> Only nine months, so just started this year, but, doing some great opportunities and great changes. And we have a lot more to go, but, we're really driving things forward in partnership with our business teams and our colleagues to support those customers going forward. >> Tom, thank you so much. That was wonderful. And now I'm excited to introduce you to Gustavo Canton, a change agent that I've had the pleasure of working with meeting in Europe, and he is a serial change agent, most recently with Schneider electric, but even going back to Sam's clubs, Gustavo welcome. (upbeat music) >> So, hey everyone, my name is Gustavo Canton and thank you so much, Cindi, for the intro, as you mentioned, doing transformations is high effort, high reward situation. I have empowered many transformations and I have led many transformations. And what I can tell you is that it's really hard to predict the future, but if you have a North star and where you're going, the one thing that I want you to take away from this discussion today is that you need to be bold to evolve. And so in today, I'm going to be talking about culture and data, and I'm going to break this down in four areas. How do we get started barriers or opportunities as I see it, the value of AI, and also, how do you communicate, especially now in the workforce of today with so many different generations, you need to make sure that you are communicating in ways that are non-traditional sometimes. And so how do we get started? So I think the answer to that is you have to start for you yourself as a leader and stay tuned. And by that, I mean, you need to understand not only what is happening in your function or your field, but you have to be varying into what is happening in society, socioeconomically speaking wellbeing. The common example is a great example. And for me personally, it's an opportunity because the one core value that I have is well-being, I believe that for human potential, for customers and communities to grow wellbeing should be at the center of every decision. And as somebody mentioned is great to be, stay in tune and have the skillset and the courage. But for me personally, to be honest, to have this courage is not about not being afraid. You're always afraid when you're making big changes when you're swimming upstream, but what gives me the courage is the empathy part. Like I think empathy is a huge component because every time I go into an organization or a function, I try to listen very attentively to the needs of the business and what the leaders are trying to do. What I do it thinking about the mission of how do I make change for the bigger, workforce? for the bigger good. Despite this fact that this might have a perhaps implication on my own self-interest in my career, right? Because you have to have that courage sometimes to make choices that I know we'll see in politically speaking, what are the right thing to do? And you have to push through it. And you have to push through it. So the bottom line for me is that I don't think they're transforming fast enough. And the reality is I speak with a lot of leaders and we have seen stories in the past. And what they show is that if you look at the four main barriers that are basically keeping us behind budget, inability to act cultural issues, politics, and lack of alignment, those are the top four. But the interesting thing is that as Cindi has mentioned, these topics culture is actually gaining, gaining more and more traction. And in 2018, there was a story from HBR and it was about 45%. I believe today it's about 55%, 60% of respondents say that this is the main area that we need to focus on. So again, for all those leaders and all the executives who understand and are aware that we need to transform, commit to the transformation and set a state, deadline to say, "hey, in two years, we're going to make this happen. "What do we need to do to empower and enable "this change engines to make it happen?" You need to make the tough choices. And so to me, when I speak about being bold is about making the right choices now. So I'll give you samples of some of the roadblocks that I went through as I think transformation most recently, as Cindi mentioned in Schneider. There are three main areas, legacy mindset. And what that means is that we've been doing this in a specific way for a long time and here is how we have been successful what was working the past is not going to work now. The opportunity there is that there is a lot of leaders who have a digital mindset and there're up and coming leaders that are not yet fully developed. We need to mentor those leaders and take bets on some of these talent, including young talent. We cannot be thinking in the past and just wait for people, three to five years for them to develop because the world is going to in a way that is super fast. The second area, and this is specifically to implementation of AI is very interesting to me because just example that I have with ThoughtSpot, right, we went to implementation and a lot of the way is the IT team function of the leaders look at technology, they look at it from the prism of the prior all success criteria for the traditional Bi's. And that's not going to work. Again the opportunity here is that you need to really find what successful look like. In my case, I want the user experience of our workforce to be the same as user experience you have at home is a very simple concept. And so we need to think about how do we gain the user experience with this augmented analytics tools and then work backwards to have the right talent processes and technology to enable that. And finally, with COVID a lot of pressuring organizations, and companies to do more with less. And the solution that most leaders I see are taking is to just minimize costs, sometimes in cut budget, we have to do the opposite. We have to actually invest some growth areas, but do it by business question. Don't do it by function. If you actually invest in these kind of solutions, if you actually invest on developing your talent, your leadership to see more digitally, if you actually invest on fixing your data platform, it's not just an incremental cost. It's actually this investment is going to offset all those hidden costs and inefficiencies that you have on your system, because people are doing a lot of work and working very hard, but it's not efficiency, and it's not working in the way that you might want to work. So there is a lot of opportunity there. And you just to put into some perspective, there have studies in the past about, how do we kind of measure the impact of data. And obviously this is going to vary by your organization maturity, is going to, there's going to be a lot of factors. I've been in companies who have very clean, good data to work with. And I think with companies that we have to start basically from scratch. So it all depends on your maturity level, but in this study, what I think is interesting is they try to put attack line or attack price to what is the cost of incomplete data. So in this case, it's about 10 times as much to complete a unit of work when you have data that is flawed as opposed to have perfect data. So let me put that just in perspective, just as an example, right? Imagine you are trying to do something and you have to do 100 things in a project, and each time you do something, it's going to cost you a dollar. So if you have perfect data, the total cost of that project might be $100. But now let's say you have any percent perfect data and 20% flawed data by using this assumption that flawed data is 10 times as costly as perfect data. Your total costs now becomes $280 as opposed to $100. This is just for you to really think about as a CIO CTO, CHRO CEO, are we really paying attention and really closing the gaps that we have on our data infrastructure. If we don't do that, it's hard sometimes to see the snowball effect or to measure the overall impact. But as you can tell the price that goes up very, very quickly. So now, if I were to say, how do I communicate this? Or how do I break through some of these challenges or some of these various, right. I think the key is I am in analytics. I know statistics obviously, and love modeling and data and optimization theory and all that stuff. That's what I came to analytics. But now as a leader and as a change agent, I need to speak about value. And in this case, for example, for Schneider, there was this tagline called free up your energy. So the number one thing that they were asking from the analytics team was actually efficiency, which to me was very interesting. But once I understood that I understood what kind of language to use, how to connect it to the overall strategy and basically how to bring in the, the right leaders, because you need to focus on the leaders that you're going to make the most progress. Again, low effort, high value. You need to make sure you centralize all the data as you can. You need to bring in some kind of augmented analytics solution. And finally you need to make it super simple for the, in this case, I was working with the HR teams in other areas, so they can have access to one portal. They don't have to be confused in looking for 10 different places to find information. I think if you can actually have those four foundational pillars, obviously under the guise of having a data-driven culture, that's when you can actually make the impact. So in our case, it was about three years total transformation, but it was two years for this component of augmented analytics. It took about two years to talk to IT get leadership support, find the budgeting, get everybody on board, make sure the safe criteria was correct. And we call this initiative, the people analytics portal, it was actually launched in July of this year. And we were very excited and the audience was very excited to do this. In this case, we did our pilot in North America for many, many manufacturers. But one thing that is really important is as you bring along your audience on this, you're going from Excel, in some cases or Tableau to other tools like, ThoughtSpot, you need to really explain them what is the difference and how these tools can truly replace, some of the spreadsheets or some of the views that you might have on these other kind of tools. Again, Tableau, I think it's a really good tool. There are other many tools that you might have in your toolkit. But in my case, personally, I feel that you need to have one portal going back to Cindi's point. I really truly enable the end user. And I feel that this is the right solution for us, right? And I will show you some of the findings that we had in the pilot in the last two months. So this was a huge victory, and I will tell you why, because it took a lot of effort for us to get to the station. Like I said, it's been years for us to kind of lay the foundation, get the leadership, and shaping culture so people can understand why you truly need to invest on (indistinct) analytics. And so what I'm showing here is an example of how do we use basically, a tool to capture in video the qualitative findings that we had, plus the quantitative insights that we have. So in this case, our preliminary results based on our ambition for three main metrics, hours saved user experience and adoption. So for hours saved or a mission was to have 10 hours per week per employee save on average user experience, or ambition was 4.5. And adoption, 80%. In just two months, two months and a half of the pilot, we were able to achieve five hours per week per employee savings. Our user experience for 4.3 out of five and adoption of 60%. Really, really amazing work. But again, it takes a lot of collaboration for us to get to the stage from IT, legal, communications, obviously the operations teams and the users in HR safety and other areas that might be, basically stakeholders in this whole process. So just to summarize this kind of effort takes a lot of energy. You are a change agent. You need to have a courage to make the decision and understand that I feel that in this day and age, with all this disruption happening, we don't have a choice. We have to take the risk, right? And in this case, I feel a lot of satisfaction in how we were able to gain all these very source for this organization. And that gave me the confidence to know that the work has been done and we are now in a different stage for the organization. And so for me, it to say, thank you for everybody who has believed, obviously in our vision, everybody who has believe in the word that we were trying to do and to make the life of four workforce or customers or in community better. As you can tell, there is a lot of effort. There is a lot of collaboration that is needed to do something like this. In the end, I feel very satisfied. With the accomplishments of this transformation, and I just want to tell for you, if you are going right now in a moment that you feel that you have to swim upstream what would mentors, what would people in this industry that can help you out and guide you on this kind of a transformation is not easy to do is high effort, but is well worth it. And with that said, I hope you are well, and it's been a pleasure talking to you. Talk to you soon, take care. >> Thank you, Gustavo, that was amazing. All right, let's go to the panel. (air whooshing) >> Okay, now we're going to go into the panel and bring Cindi, Michelle, Tom, and Gustavo back and have an open discussion. And I think we can all agree how valuable it is to hear from practitioners. And I want to thank the panel for sharing their knowledge with the community. And one common challenge that I heard you all talk about was bringing your leadership and your teams along on the journey with you. We talk about this all the time, and it is critical to have support from the top. Why? Because it directs the middle and then it enables bottoms up innovation effects from the cultural transformation that you guys all talked about. It seems like another common theme we heard is that you all prioritize database decision-making in your organizations and you combine two of your most valuable assets to do that and create leverage, employees on the front lines. And of course the data. And as you rightly pointed out, Tom, the pandemic has accelerated the need for really leaning into this. The old saying, if it ain't broke don't fix it. Well COVID is broken everything. And it's great to hear from our experts, how to move forward. So let's get right into it. So Gustavo, let's start with you if I'm an aspiring change agent and let's say I'm a budding data leader. What do I need to start doing? What habits do I need to create for long lasting success? >> I think curiosity is very important. You need to be, like I say, in tune to what is happening, not only in your specific field, like I have a passion for analytics, I can do this for 50 years plus, but I think you need to understand wellbeing other areas across not only a specific business, as you know I come from, Sam's club Walmart, retail, I mean energy management technology. So you have to try to push yourself and basically go out of your comfort zone. I mean, if you are staying in your comfort zone and you want to use lean continuous improvement, that's just going to take you so far. What you have to do is, and that's what I try to do is I try to go into areas, businesses, and transformation that make me stretch and develop as a leader. That's what I'm looking to do so I can help transform the functions organizations and do the change management, change of mindset required for these kinds of efforts. >> Michelle, you're at the intersection of tech and sports and what a great combination, but they're both typically male oriented fields. I mean, we've talked a little bit about how that's changing, but two questions. Tell us how you found your voice and talk about why diversity matters so much more than ever now. >> No, I found my voice really as a young girl, and I think I had such amazing support from men in my life. And I think the support and sponsorship as well as sort of mentorship along the way, I've had amazing male mentors who have helped me understand that my voice is just as important as anyone else's. I mean, I have often heard, and I think it's been written about that a woman has to believe they'll 100% master topic before they'll talk about it where a man can feel much less mastery and go on and on. So I was that way as well. And I learned just by watching and being open, to have my voice. And honestly at times demand a seat at the table, which can be very uncomfortable. And you really do need those types of, support networks within an organization. And diversity of course is important and it has always been. But I think if anything, we're seeing in this country right now is that diversity among all types of categories is front and center. And we're realizing that we don't all think alike. We've always known this, but we're now talking about things that we never really talked about before. And we can't let this moment go unchecked and on, and not change how we operate. So having diverse voices within your company and in the field of tech and sports, I am often the first and only I'm was the first, CIO at the NFL, the first female senior executive. It was fun to be the first, but it's also, very challenging. And my responsibility is to just make sure that, I don't leave anyone behind and make sure that I leave it good for the next generation. >> Well, thank you for that. That is inspiring. And Cindi, you love data and the data's pretty clear that diversity is a good business, but I wonder if you can add your perspectives to this conversation? >> Yeah, so Michelle has a new fan here because she has found her voice. I'm still working on finding mine. And it's interesting because I was raised by my dad, a single dad. So he did teach me how to work in a predominantly male environment, but why I think diversity matters more now than ever before. And this is by gender, by race, by age, by just different ways of working in thinking is because as we automate things with AI, if we do not have diverse teams looking at the data and the models and how they're applied, we risk having bias at scale. So this is why I think I don't care what type of minority you are finding your voice, having a seat at the table and just believing in the impact of your work has never been more important. And as Michelle said more possible. >> Great perspectives, thank you. Tom I want to go to you. I mean, I feel like everybody in our businesses in some way, shape or form become a COVID expert, but what's been the impact of the pandemic on your organization's digital transformation plans? >> We've seen a massive growth actually in a digital business over the last, 12 months, really, even in celebration, right? Once COVID hit, we really saw that in the 200 countries and territories that we operate in today and service our customers, today, that there's been a huge need, right? To send money, to support family, to support, friends and support loved ones across the world. And as part of that we are very, honored to get to support those customers that we, across all the centers today. But as part of that acceleration we need to make sure that we had the right architecture and the right platforms to basically scale, right, to basically support and provide the right kind of security for our customers going forward. So as part of that, we did do some pivots and we did accelerate some of our plans on digital to help support that overall growth coming in and to support our customers going forward, because there were these times during this pandemic, right? This is the most important time. And we need to support those that we love and those that we care about and doing that it's one of those ways is actually by sending money to them, support them financially. And that's where, really our part of that our services come into play that we really support those families. So it was really a great opportunity for us to really support and really bring some of our products to this level and supporting our business going forward. >> Awesome, thank you. Now I want to come back to Gustavo, Tom I'd love for you to chime in too. Did you guys ever think like you were, you were pushing the envelope too much in doing things with data or the technology that was just maybe too bold, maybe you felt like at some point it was failing or you're pushing your people too hard. Can you share that experience and how you got through it? >> Yeah, the way I look at it is, again, whenever I go to an organization, I ask the question, hey, how fast you would like transform. And, based on the agreements from the leadership and the vision that we want to take place, I take decisions. And I collaborate in a specific way now, in the case of COVID, for example, right. It forces us to remove silos and collaborate in a faster way. So to me, it was an opportunity to actually integrate with other areas and drive decisions faster, but make no mistake about it. When you are doing a transformation, you are obviously trying to do things faster than sometimes people are comfortable doing, and you need to be okay with that. Sometimes you need to be okay with tension, or you need to be okay debating points or making repetitive business cases until people connect with the decision because you understand, and you are seeing that, "hey, the CEO is making a one two year, efficiency goal. "The only way for us to really do more with less "is for us to continue this path. "We cannot just stay with the status quo. "We need to find a way to accelerate the transformation." That's the way I see it. >> How about you Tom, we were talking earlier with Sudheesh and Cindi, about that bungee jumping moment. What could you share? >> Yeah, I think you hit upon it, right now, the pace of change with the slowest pace that you see for the rest of your career. So as part of that, right, that's what I tell my team is that you need to be, you need to feel comfortable being uncomfortable. I mean, that we have to be able to basically scale, right, expand and support that the ever-changing needs in the marketplace and industry our customers today, and that pace of change that's happening, right. And what customers are asking for and the competition in the marketplace, it's only going to accelerate. So as part of that, as you look at what, how you're operating today in your current business model, right. Things are only going to get faster. So you have to plan into a line into drive the agile transformation so that you can scale even faster in the future. So as part of that, that's what we're putting in place here, right, is how do we create that underlying framework and foundation that allows the organization to basically continue to scale and evolve into the future? >> Yeah, we're definitely out of our comfort zones, but we're getting comfortable with it. So, Cindi, last question, you've worked with hundreds of organizations, and I got to believe that, some of the advice you gave when you were at Gartner, which is pre COVID, maybe sometimes clients didn't always act on it. They're not on my watch for whatever variety of reasons, but it's being forced on them now. But knowing what you know now that we're all in this isolation economy, how would you say that advice has changed? Has it changed? What's your number one action and recommendation today? >> Yeah, well, first off, Tom just freaked me out. What do you mean? This is the slowest ever even six months ago I was saying the pace of change in data and analytics is frenetic. So, but I think you're right, Tom, the business and the technology together is forcing this change. Now, Dave, to answer your question, I would say the one bit of advice, maybe I was a little more, very aware of the power and politics and how to bring people along in a way that they are comfortable. And now I think it's, you know what you can't get comfortable. In fact, we know that the organizations that were already in the cloud have been able to respond and pivot faster. So if you really want to survive as Tom and Gustavo said, get used to being uncomfortable, the power and politics are going to happen. Break the rules, get used to that and be bold. Do not be afraid to tell somebody they're wrong and they're not moving fast enough. I do think you have to do that with empathy, as Michelle said, and Gustavo, I think that's one of the key words today besides the bungee jumping. So I want to know where's the dish going to go bungee jumping. >> Guys fantastic discussion, really. Thanks again to all the panelists and the guests. It was really a pleasure speaking with you today. Really virtually all of the leaders that I've spoken to in the Cube program. Recently, they tell me that the pandemic is accelerating so many things, whether it's new ways to work, we heard about new security models and obviously the need for cloud. I mean, all of these things are driving true enterprise wide digital transformation, not just, as I said before, lip service. Sometimes we minimize the importance and the challenge of building culture and in making this transformation possible. But when it's done, right, the right culture is going to deliver tremendous results. Yeah, what does that mean getting it right? Everybody's trying to get it right. My biggest takeaway today is it means making data part of the DNA of your organization. And that means making it accessible to the people in your organization that are empowered to make decisions, decisions that can drive new revenue, cut costs, speed access to critical care, whatever the mission is of your organization. Data can create insights and informed decisions that drive value. Okay. Let's bring back Sudheesh and wrap things up. Sudheesh, please bring us home. >> Thank you. Thank you, Dave. Thank you, the Cube team, and thank goes to all of our customers and partners who joined us and thanks to all of you for spending the time with us. I want to do three quick things and then close it off. The first thing is I want to summarize the key takeaways that I had from all four of our distinguished speakers. First, Michelle, I will simply put it. She said it really well. That is be brave and drive. Don't go for a drive along. That is such an important point. Oftentimes, you know that I think that you have to do to make the positive change that you want to see happen but you wait for someone else to do it, not just, why not you? Why don't you be the one making that change happen? That's the thing that I've picked up from Michelle's talk. Cindi talked about finding the importance of finding your voice. Taking that chair, whether it's available or not, and making sure that your ideas, your voices are heard, and if it requires some force, then apply that force. Make sure your ideas are heard. Gustavo talked about the importance of building consensus, not going at things all alone sometimes building the importance of building the quorum. And that is critical because if you want the changes to last, you want to make sure that the organization is fully behind it. Tom, instead of a single takeaway, what I was inspired by is the fact that a company that is 170 years old, 170 years old, 200 companies and 200 countries they're operating in. And they were able to make the change that is necessary through this difficult time. So in a matter of months, if they could do it, anyone could. The second thing I want to do is to leave you with a takeaway that is I would like you to go to topspot.com/nfl because our team has made an app for NFL on Snowflake. I think you will find this interesting now that you are inspired and excited because of Michelle's talk. And the last thing is please go to thoughtspot.com/beyond our global user conference is happening in this December. We would love to have you join us. It's again, virtual, you can join from anywhere. We are expecting anywhere from five to 10,000 people, and we would love to have you join and see what we've been up to since last year. We have a lot of amazing things in store for you, our customers, our partners, our collaborators, they will be coming and sharing. We'll be sharing things that we've have been working to release something that will come out next year. And also some of the crazy ideas our engineers have been cooking up. All of those things will be available for you at the Thought Spot Beyond. Thank you. Thank you so much.

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Everyone, welcome to this CUBE conversation. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, host of theCUBE here in our Palo Alto office for remote interviews during this time of COVID-19. We're here with the quarantine crew here in our studio. We've got a great guest here from Google, Will Grannis, managing director, head of the office of the CTO with Google Cloud. Thanks for coming on, Will. Appreciate you spending some time with me. >> Oh, John, it's great to be with you. And as you said, in these times, more important than ever to stay connected. >> Yeah, and I'm really glad you came on because a couple of things. One, congratulations to Google Cloud for the success you guys had. Saw a lot of big wins under your belt, both on the momentum side, on the business side, but also on the technical side. Meet is available now for folks. Anthos is doing very, very well. Partner ecosystem's developing. Got some nice use cases in vertical markets, so I want to get in and unpack with you. But really, the bigger story here is that the world has seen the future before it was ready for it. And that is the at-scale challenge that the COVID-19 has shown everyone. We're seeing the future has been pulled forward. We're living in a virtualized environment. It's funny to say that, virtualization (laughs). Server virtualization is a tech term, but that enabled a lot of things. We're living in a virtualized world now 'cause we have to, but this is going to set in motion a series of new realities that you guys have been experiencing and supporting for many, many years. But now as a provider of Google Cloud, you guys have to operate at scale, you have. And now the whole world realizes that scale is a big deal. And so you guys have had some successes. I want to get your thoughts on the this at scale problem that the world now realizes. I mean, everyone's at home. That's a disruption that was unforecasted. Whether it's under-provisioning VPNs in IT to a surface area for security, to just work and play. And activities are now confined, so people aren't convening anymore and it's a huge issue. What's your take on all this? >> Well, I mean, to your point just now, the fact that we can have this conversation and we can have it fluidly from our respective remote locations just goes to show you the power of information technology that underlies so many of the things that we do today. And for Google Cloud, this is not a new thing. And for Google, this is not a new thing. For Google Cloud, we had a mission of trying to help companies accelerate their transformation and enable them in these new digital environments. And so many companies that we've been working with, they've already been on the path to operating in environments that are digital, that are fluid. And when you think about the cloud, that's one of the great benefits of cloud, is that scalability in common with the business demand. And it also helps the scale situation without having to do the typical, "Oh wait, "you need to find the procurement people. "We need to find the server vendors. "We need to get the storage lined up." It really allows a much more fluid response to unexpected and unforecasted situations. Whether that's customer demand or in this case a global pandemic. >> Yeah, one of the things I want to get in with you on, you have explained what your job is there 'cause obviously Google's got a new CEO now for over a year. Thomas Kurian came from Oracle, knows the enterprise up and down. You had Diane Greene before that. Again, another enterprise leader. Google Cloud has essentially rebuilt itself from the original Google Cloud to be very enterprise centric. You guys have great momentum, and this is a world where cloud-native is going to be required. I mean, everyone now sees it. The tide has been pulled out, everything's exposed, all the gaps in business from a tech standpoint is kind of exposed. And so the smart managers and companies are looking at things and saying, "Double down on that. "Let's kill that. "We don't want to pay that supplier. "They're not core to our business." This is going to be a very rapid acceleration of what I call a vetting of the new set of players that are going to emerge because the folks who don't adapt to this new cloud-native reality, whether it's app workloads for banking to whatever are going to have to reinvent themselves now and reset and tweak to come out of this crisis. So it's going to be very cloud-native. This is a big deal. Can you share your reaction to that? >> Absolutely. And so as you pointed out, there are kind of two worlds that exist right now. Companies that are moving to become more digital and transform, and you mentioned the momentum in Google Cloud just over the last year, greater than 50% revenue growth. And in a greater than $10 billion run rate business and adding customers at a really quick clip, including just yesterday, Splunk, and along the way, Telecom Italia, Major League Baseball, Vodafone, Lowe's, Wayfair, Activision Blizzard. This transformation and this digitization is not just for a few or just for any one industry. It's happening across the board. And then you add that to the implementations that have been happening across Shopify and the Spotify and HSBC, which was a early customer of ours in the cloud and it already has a little bit of a headstart into this transformation. So you see these new companies coming in and seeing the value of digital transformation. And then these other companies that have kind of lit the path for others to consider. And Shopify is a really good example of how seeing drastic uptick in demand, they're able to respond and keep roughly half a million shops up and running during a period of time where many retailers are trying to figure out how to stay online or even get online. >> Well, what is your role at Google? Obviously, you're the managing director. Title is managing director, head of the office of the CTO. We've seen these roles before, head of the CTO, obviously a technical role. Is it partnering with the CEO on strategy? Is it you're tire kicking new things? Are you overseeing any strategic initiatives? What is your role? >> So a little bit of all of those things combined into one. So I spent the first couple of decades of my career on the other side of the fence in the non-tech community, both in the enterprise. But we were still building technology and we were still digitally minded. But not the way that people view technology in Silicon Valley. And so spending a couple of decades in that environment really gave me insights into how to take technology and apply them to a specific problem. And when I came to Google five years ago, selfishly, it was because I knew the potential of Google's technology having been on the other side. And I was really interested in forming a better bridge between Google's technology and people like me who were CTOs of public companies and really wanted to leverage that technology for problems that I was solving. Whether it was aerospace, public sector, manufacturing, what have you. And so it's been great. It's the role of a lifetime. I've been able to build the team that I wanted as an enterprise technologist for decades and the entire span of technologies at our disposal. And we do two things. One is we help our most strategic customers accelerate their path to cloud. And two, we create these signals by working with the top companies moving to the cloud and digitally transforming. We learned so much, John, about what we need to build as an organization. So it also helps balance out the Google driven innovation with our customer driven innovation. >> Yeah, and I can attest. I've been watching you guys from day one. Hired a lot of great enterprise people that I personally know. So you get in the enterprise chops and stuff and you've seen some progress. I have to ask you though, because first of all, big fan of Google at scale from knowing them from when they were just a little search engine to what they are now. There was an expression a few years ago I heard from enterprise customers. It goes along the lines like this. "I want to be like Google," because you guys had a great network, you had large scale. You had all these things that were like awesome. And then they realized, "Well, we can't be like Google. "We don't have SREs. "We don't have large scale data centers." So there was a little bit of a translation, and I want to say a little bit of a overplay of the Google hand, and you guys had since realized that it wasn't just people are going to bang at your doorstep and be adopting Google Cloud because there was a little bit of a cultural disconnect from wanting to be like Google, then leveraging Google in their business as they transform. So as you guys have moved from that, what's changed? They still want to be like Google in the sense you have great security, got a great network, and you've got that scale. Enterprises are a little bit slower to adopt that, which you're focused on now. What is the story there? Because I think that's kind of the theme that I'm hearing. Okay, Google now understands me. They know I'm not as fast as Google. They got super great people (laughs). We are training our people. We're retraining them. This is the transformation that they're going through. So you might be a little bit ahead of them certainly, but now they need to level up. How do you respond to that? >> Well, a lot of this is the transformation that Thomas has been enacting over the last year plus. And it comes in kind of three very operational or tactical pillars that I think of. First, we expanded our customer and we continue to expand our customer facing teams. Three times what they were before because we need to be there. We need to be in those situations. We need to hear from the customer. We need to learn more about the problems they're trying to solve. So we don't just take a theoretical principle and try to overlay it onto a problem. We actually get very visceral understanding of what they're trying to solve. But you have to be there to gain that empathy and that understanding. And so one is showing up, and that has been mobilizing a much larger engine of customer facing personnel from Google. Second, it's also been really important that we evolve our own. Just as Google brought SRE principles and principles of distributed systems and software design out to the world, we also had a little bit to learn about transitioning from typical customer support and moving to more customer experience. So you've seen that evolution under Thomas as well with cloud changing... Moving from talking about support to talking about customer experience, that white glove experience that our customers get and our partners get from the beginning of their journey with us all the way through. And then finally making sure that our product roadmap has the solutions that are relevant across key priority industries for us. Again, that only comes from being present from having a focus in those industries and then developing the solutions that progress those companies. This isn't about taking a principle and trying to apply it blindly. This is about adding that connection, that really deep connection to our customers and our partners and letting that connection manifest the things that we have to do as a product company to best support them over a long period of time. I mean, look at some of these deals we've been announcing. These are 10-year, five-year, multi-year strategic partnerships that go across the canvas of all of Google. And those are the really exciting scaled partnerships. But to your point, you can't just take SRE from Google and apply it to company X, but you can things like error budgets or how we think about the principles of SRE, and you can apply them over the course of developing technology, collaborating, innovating together. >> Yeah, and I think cloud-native is going to be a key thing. It's just my opinion, but I think one of those situations where the better mouse trap will win. If you're cloud-native and you have APIs and you have the kind of services, people will beat it to your doorstep. So I got to ask you, with Thomas Kurian on board, obviously, we've been following his career as well at Oracle. He knows what he's doing. Comes into Google, it's being built out. It's like a rocket ship at this point. What bet is he making and what bet are you guys making on behalf of your customers? If you had to boil it down to Google Cloud's big bet, what is the bet on the technology side? And what's the bet on the business side? >> Sure. Well, I've already mentioned... I've already hinted at the big strategy that Thomas has brought in. And that's, again, those three pillars. Making sure that we show up and that we're present by having a scaled customer facing organization. Again, making sure that we transition from a typical support mindset into more of a customer experience mindset and then making sure that those solutions are tailored and available for our priority industries. If I was to add more color to that, I think one of the most important changes that Thomas has personally been driving is he's been converting us to a partner-led business and a partner-led organization. And this means a lot of investments in large global systems integrators like Accenture and Deloitte. But this also means that... Like the Splunk announcement from yesterday, that isn't just a sell to. This is a partnership that goes deep across go-to market product and sell to. And then we also bring in very specific partners like Temenos in Europe for financial services or a CETA or a Rackspace for migrations. And as a result, already, we're seeing really incredible lifts. So for example, nearly 200% year over year increase in partner influenced revenue in Google Cloud and almost like a 13X year over year increase in new customers won by partners. That's the kind of engine that builds a real hyper-scale business. >> Interesting you mentioned Splunk. I want to get to that in a second, but I also noticed there was a deal with TELUS Group on eSIM subscriptions, which kind of leads me into the edge piece. There's a real edge component here with Google Cloud, and I think I had a conversation with Jennifer Lynn a few years ago, really digging into the built-in security and the value of the Google network. I mean, a lot of the scuttlebutt around the Valley and the industry is Google's got an amazing network. Software-defined networking is going to be a hot programmable area. So you got programmable networking and you got edge and edge security. These are killer areas that need innovation. Could you comment on what you guys are doing there and do you agree? Obviously, you have a killer network and you're leveraging it. Can you just give some insight into what's going on in those two areas? Network and then the edge. >> Yeah, I think what you're seeing is the manifestation of the progression of cloud generally. And what do I mean by that? It started out as like get everything to the data center. We kind of had this thought that maybe we could take all the workloads and we could get them to these centralized hubs and that we could redistribute out the results and drive the latency down over time so we can expand the portfolio of applications and services that would become relevant over time. And what we've seen over the last decade really in cloud is an evolution to more of a layered architecture. And that layered architecture includes kind of core data centers. It includes CDN capacity, points of presence, it includes edge. And just in that list of customers over the last year I mentioned, there were at least three or four telcos in there. And you've also probably heard and seen quite a bit of telco momentum coming from us in recent announcements. I think that's an indication that a lot of us are thinking about, how can we take technology like Anthos, for example, and how could we orchestrate workloads, create a common control plane, manage services across those three shells, if you will, of the architecture? And that's a very strategic and important area for us. And I think generally for the cloud industry, is expanding beyond the data center as the place where everything happens. And you can look at Google Fi, you can look at Stadia. You can look at examples within Google that go well beyond cloud as to how we think about new ways to leverage that kind of criteria. >> All right, so we saw some earnings come out on Amazon side as Google, both groups and Microsoft as well, all three clouds are crushing it on the cloud side. That's a tailwind, I get that. But as it continues, we're expecting post-COVID some redistribution of development dollars in projects. Whether it's IT going cloud-native or whatever new workloads. We are predicting a Cambrian explosion of new things from core to edge. And this is going to create some lifts. So I want to get your thoughts on you guys' strategy with go-to market, as well as your customers as they now have the ability to build workloads and apps with AI and data. There seems to be a trend towards the verticalization of whether it's sales and go-to market and/or specialism because you have horizontal scalability with cloud and you now have data that has distinct (chuckles) value in these verticals. So it's really seems to be... I won't say ratification, but in a way, that seems to be the norm. Whether you come into a market and you have specialization, but the data is there so apps can be more agile. Are you guys seeing that? And is that something that you guys are considering from an organization standpoint? And how do customers think about targeting vertical industries and their customers? >> Yeah, I bring this to... And where you started going there at the end of the question is exactly the way that we think about it as well. Which is we've moved from, "Here are storage offers for everybody, "and here's basic infrastructure for everybody." And now we've said, "How can we make sure "that we have solutions that are tailored "to the very specific problems that customers "are trying to solve?" And we're getting to the point now where performance and variety of technologies are available to be able to impose very specific solutions. And if you think about the substrate that has to be there, we mentioned you have to have some really great partners, and you have to have a roadmap that is focused on priority solution. So for example, at Google Cloud, we're very focused on six priority vertical areas. So retail, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing and industrials, healthcare life sciences, public sector. And as a result of being very focused in those areas, we can make more targeted investments and also align our entire go-to market system and our entire partner ecosystem... Excuse me, ecosystem around those bare specific priority areas. So for example, we work with CETA and HDA Healthcare very recently to develop and maintain a national response portal for COVID-19. And that's to help better inform communities and hospitals. We can use Looker to help with like a Commonwealth Care Alliance nonprofit and that helps monitor patient symptoms and risk factors. So we're using a very specific focus in healthcare and a partner ecosystem to develop very tailored solutions. You can also look at... I mentioned Shopify earlier. That's another great example of how in retail, they can use something like Google Meet, inherent reliability, scalability, security, to connect their employees during these interesting times. But then they can also use GCP, Google Cloud Platform to scale out. And as they come up with new apps and experiences for their shoppers, for their shops, they can rapidly deploy, to your point. And those solutions and how the database performs and how those tiers perform, that's a very tight-knit feedback loop with our engineering teams. >> Yeah, one of the things I'm seeing obviously with the virtualization of the COVID is that when the world gets back to normal, it'll be a hybrid. And it'll be a hybrid between reality, not physical and a hundred percent virtual, hybrid. And that's going to impact events too, media, to everything. Every vertical will be impacted. And I want to point out the Splunk deal and bring that back in because I want you to comment on the relevance of the Splunk deal in context to Splunk has a cloud. And they've got a great slogan, "Data for everywhere." "Data to everywhere," I think it is. But theCUBE, we have a cloud. Every company will have a cloud scale. At some level, we'll progress to having some sort of cloud because they have data. How are you guys powering those clouds? Because I think the Splunk deal is interesting. Their partner, their stock price was up out on the news of the deal. Nice bump there for Splunk, shout out to those guys. But they're a data company and now they're cross-platform. But they're not Google, but they have a cloud. So you know what I'm saying? So they need to play in all the clouds, but they need infrastructure (laughs), they need support. So how do you guys talk to that customer that says, "Hey, the next pandemic that comes, "the next crisis that's going to cause some "either social disruption or workflow disruption "or supply chain disruption. "I need to be agile. "I need to have full cloud scale. "And so I need to talk to Google." What do you say to them? What's the pitch? And does the Splunk deal mirror some of those capabilities? Or tie that together for us, the Splunk deal and how it relates to how to proof themselves for the future. Sorry. >> For example, with the Splunk cloud deal, if you take a look at what Google is already really good at, data processing at scale, log analytics, and you take a look at what Splunk is doing with their events and security incident monitoring and the rest, it's a really great mashup because they see by platforming on Google Cloud, not only do they get highly performing infrastructure. But they also get the opportunity to leverage data tools, data analytics tools, machine learning and AI that can help them provide enhanced services. So not just about capacity going up and down through periods of demand, but also enhancing services and continuing to offer more value to their customers. And we see that as a really big trend. And this gets at something, John, a little bit bigger, which is kind of the two views of the world. And we talked about very tailored, focused solutions. Splunk is an example of taking a very methodical approach to a partnership, building a solution specifically with partners. And in this case, Splunk on the security event management side. But we're always going to provide our data processing platform, our infrastructure for companies across many different industries. And I think that addresses one part of the topic, which is, how do we make sure that in periods of demand rapidly changing, and this goes back to the foundational elements of infrastructure as a service and elasticity. We're going to provide a platform and infrastructure that can help companies move through periods of... It's hard to forecast, and/or demand may rise and fall in very interesting ways. But then there's going to be times where we... Because we're not necessarily a focused use case where it may just be generalized platform versus a focused solution. So for example, in the oil and gas industry, we don't develop custom AI, ML solutions that facilitate upstream extraction, for example. But what we do do is work with renewable energy companies to figure out how they might be able to leverage some of our AI machine learning algorithms from our own data centers to make their operations more efficient and to help those renewable energy companies learn from what we've learned building out what I consider to be a world leading renewable energy strategy and infrastructure. >> It's a classic enablement model where you're enabling your platform for your customers. Okay, so I've got to ask the question. I asked this to the Microsoft guys as well because Amazon has their own SaaS stuff. But really more of end to end. The better product's usually on the ecosystem side. You guys have some killer SaaS. G Suite, we're a customer. We use the G Suite really deeply. We also use some Bigtable as well. I want to build a cloud, we have a cloud, CUBE cloud. But you guys have Meet. So I want to build my product on Google Cloud. How do I know you're not going to compete with me? Do you guys have those conversations around the trade-off between the pure Google services, which provide great value for the areas where the ecosystem needs to develop those new areas that are going to be great markets, potentially huge markets that are out there. >> Well, this is the power of partnership. I mentioned earlier that one of the really big moves that Thomas has made has been developing a sense of partners. And it kind of blurs the line between traditional, what you would call a customer and what you would call a partner. And so having a really strong sense of which industries we're in, which we prioritize, plus having a really strong sense of where we want to add value and where our customers and partners want to add that value. That's the foundational, that's the beginning of that conversation that you just mentioned. And it's important that we have an ability to engage not just in a, "Here's the cloud infrastructure piece of the puzzle." But one of the things Thomas has also done and a key strategy of his has been to make sure that the Google Cloud relationship is also a way to access all amazing innovation happening across all of Google. And also help bring a strategic conversation in that includes multiple properties from across Google so that an HSBC and Google and have a conversation about how to move forward together that is comprehensive rather than having to wonder and have that uncertainty sit behind the projects that we're trying to get out and have high velocity on because they offer so much to retail bank, for example. >> Well, I've got a couple more questions and then I'll let you go. I know you got some other things going on. I really appreciate you taking the time, sharing this great insight and updates. As a builder, you've been on the other side of the table. Now you're at Google heading up the CTO. Also working with Thomas, understanding the go-to market across the board and the product mix. As you talk to customers and they're thinking... The good customers are thinking, "Hey, "I want to come out of this COVID on an upward trajectory "and I want to use this opportunity "to reset and realign for the future." What advice do you have for those enterprises? They could be small, medium-sized enterprises to the full large big guys. And obviously, cloud-native, we've talked some of that already, but what advice would you have for them as they start to really prioritize, as some things are now exposed? The collaboration, the tooling, the scale, all these things are out there. What have you seen and what advice would you give a CXO or CSO or a leader in the industry to think about and how they should come out of this thing, how they should plan, execute, and move forward? >> Well, I appreciate the question because this is the crux of most of my day job, which is interacting with the C-suite and boards of companies and partners around the world. And they're obviously very interested to learn or get a data point from someone at Google. And the advice generally goes in a couple of different directions. One, collaboration is part of the secret sauce that makes Google what it is. And I think you're seeing this right now across every industry, and whether you're a small, medium-sized business or you're a large company, the ability to connect people with each other to collaborate in very meaningful ways, to share information rapidly, to do it securely with high reliability, that's the foundation that enables all of the projects that you might choose to... Applications to build, services to enable, to actually succeed in production and over the long haul. Is that culture of innovation and collaboration. So absolutely number one is having a really strong sense of what they want to achieve from a cultural perspective and collaboration perspective and the people because that's the thing that fuels everything else. Second piece of advice, especially in these times where there's so much uncertainty, is where can you buy down uncertainty with...? You can learn without a high penalty. This is why cloud I think is really, really finding super scale. It was already on the rise, but what you're seeing now as you've laid back to me during this conversation, we're seeing the same thing, which is a high increase in demand of, "Let's get this implemented now. "How can we do this more? "This is clearly one way to move through uncertainty." And so look for those opportunities. I'll give you a really good example. Mainframes, (chuckles) one of the classic workloads of the on-premise enterprise. There are all sorts of potential magic solves for getting mainframes to the cloud and getting out of mainframes. But a practical consideration might be maybe you just front-end it with some Java. Or maybe you just get closer to other data centers within a certain amount of milliseconds that's required to have a performant workload. Maybe you start chunking at art and treat the workload a little bit differently rather than just one thing. But there are a lot of years and investments in our workload that might run on a mainframe. And that's a perfect example of how biting off too much might be a little bit dangerous, but there is a path to... So for example, we brought in a company called Cornerstone to help with those migrations. But we also have partnerships with data center providers and others globally plus our own built infrastructure to allow even a smaller step per se for more close proximity location of the workload. >> It's great. Everything kind of has a technical metaphor connection these days when you have a internet, digitally connected world. We're living in the notion of a digital business, was a research buzzword that's been kicked around for years. But I think now COVID-19, you're seeing the virtual or digital, it's really digital, but virtual reality, augmented reality is going to come fast too. Really get people to go, "Wow. "Virtualization of my business." So we've been kind of kicking around this term business virtualization just almost as a joke, but it's really more about, okay, this is about a new world, new opportunity to think about when we come out of this, we're going to still go back to our physical world. Now, the hybrid now kicks in. This kind of connects all aspects of business in every vertical. It's not like, "Hey, I'm targeting this industry." So there might be unique solutions in those industries, but now the world is virtualized. It's connected, it's a digital environment. These are huge concepts that I think has kind of been a lunatic fringe idea, but now it's brought mainstream. This is going to be a huge tailwind for you guys as well as developers and entrepreneurs and application software. This is going to be, we think, a big thing. What's your reaction to that? Based on your experience, what do you see happening? Do you agree with it? And do you have anything you might want to add to that? >> Maybe one kind of philosophical statement and then one more... I bruised my shins a lot in this world and maybe share some of the black and blue coloration. First from a philosophical standpoint, the greater the crisis, the more open-minded people become and the more creative people get. And so I'm really excited about the creativity that I'm seeing with all of the customers that I work with directly, plus our partners, Googlers. Everybody is rallying together to think about this world differently. So to your point, a shift in mindset, there are very few moments where you get this pronounced change and everyone is going through it all at the same time. So that creates an opportunity, a scenario where you're bold thinking new strategies, creativity. Bringing people in in new ways, collaborating in new ways and offer a lot of benefits. More practically speaking and from my experience, building technology for a couple decades, it has an interesting parallel to building tightly coupled, really large maybe monoliths versus microservices and the debate around, "Do we build small things "that can be reconfigured and built out by others "or built upon by others more easily? "Or do we create a golden path and a more understood development environment?" And I'm not here to answer the question of which one's better because that's still a raging debate. But I can tell you that the process of going through and taking a service or an application or a thing that we want to deliver to a customer, that one of our customers wants to deliver to their customer. And thinking about it so comprehensively that you're able to think about it in, what are its core functions? And then thinking methodically about how to enable those core functions. That's a real opportunity, and I think technology to your point is getting to the place where if you want to run across multiple clouds, this is the Anthos conversation were recently GA'ed. Global scale platform, multicloud platform, that's a pretty big moment in technology. And that opens up the aperture to think differently about architectures and that process of taking an application service and making it real. >> Well, I think you're right on the money. I think philosophically, it's a flashpoints opportunity. I think that's going to prove to be accelerating and to see people win faster and lose faster. You're going to to see that quickly happen. But to your point about the monolith versus service or decoupled based systems, I think we now live in a world where it's a systems view now. You can have a monolith combined with decoupled systems. That's distributed computing. I think this is the trend, it's a system. It's not one thing or the other. So I think the debate will continue just like VI versus Emacs (chuckles). We don't know, right? People are going to have the debate, but if you think about it as a system, the use case defines your architecture. That's the beautiful thing about the cloud. So great insight, I really appreciate it. And how's everything going over there at Google Cloud? You've got Meet that's available. How's your staff? What's it like inside the Googleplex and the Google Cloud team? Tell us what's going on over there. People still working, working remote? How's everyone doing? >> Well, as you can tell from my scenario here, my backdrop, yes, still part at work. And we take this as a huge responsibility. These moments as a huge responsibility because there are educators, loved ones, medical professionals, critical life services that run on services that Google provides. And so I can tell you we're humbled by the opportunity to provide the backbone and the platform and the people and the curiosity and the sincere desire to help. And I mentioned a couple of ways already just in this conversation where we've been able to leverage some of our investments technology to help form people that really gets at the root of who we are. So while we just like any other humans are going through a process of understanding our new reality, what really fires us up and what really charges us up is because this is a moment where what we do really well is very, very important for the world in every geo, in every vertical, in every use case, in every solution type. We're taking that responsibility very seriously. And at the same time, we're trying to make sure that all of our teams as well as all of the teams that we work with and our customers and partners are making it through the human moment, not just the technology moment. >> Well, congratulations and thanks for spending the time. Great insight, Will. Appreciate, Will Grannis, managing director, head of technology office of the CTO at Google Cloud. This certainly brings to the mainstream what we've been in the industry been into for a long time, which is DevOps, large scale, role of data and technology. Now we think it's going to be even more acute around societal benefits. And thank God we have all those services for the frontline workers. So thank you so much for all that effort and thanks for spending the time here in theCUBE Conversation. Appreciate it. >> Thanks for having me, John. >> Okay, I'm John Furrier here in Palo Alto studios for remote CUBE Conversation with Google Cloud, getting the update. Really looking at the future as it unfolds. We are going to see this moment in time as an opportunity to move to the next level, cloud-native and change not only the tech industry but society. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

from the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world this is a cube conversation run welcome to this cube conversation I'm John Fourier with the cube host the cube here in our Palo Alto office for remote interviews during this time of covin 19 we're here with the quarantine crew here in our studio we got a great guest here from Google we'll Grannis managing director head of the office of the CTO with Google cloud thanks for coming on we'll appreciate you you spend some time with me Oh John's great to be with you and as you said in these times more important than ever to stay connected yeah and I'm really glad you came on because a couple things one congratulations to Google cloud for the success you guys had so a lot of big wins under your belt both on the momentum side on the business side but also on the technical side meat is available now for folks anthos is doing very very well partner ecosystem is developing got some nice used cases in vertical marker so I want to get in and unpack with you but really the bigger story here is that the world has seen the future before was ready for it and that is the at scale challenge that the Cova 19 has shown everyone we're seeing you know the future has been pulled forward we're living in a virtualized environment it's funny to say that virtualization has a server virtualization is a tech term but that enabled a lot of things we're living in a virtualized world now because we have to but this is gonna set in motion a series of new realities that you guys have been experiencing and supporting for many many years but now as a provider of Google cloud you guys have to operate at scale you have and now the whole world realizes that scale is a big deal and so you guys have had some successes I want to get your thoughts on the this at scale problem that the world now realizes I mean everyone's at home that's a disruption that was unfortunate whether it's under provisioning VPNs NIT to a surface area for security to just work and play and activities are now confined so people aren't convening anymore and it's a huge issue what's your take on all this well I mean to your point just now the fact that we can have this conversation we can have it blue idli from our respective remote locations just goes to show you the power of information technology that underlies so many of the things that we say and for Google Cloud this is not a new thing and for Google this is not a new thing for Google cloud we add a mission of trying to help companies accelerate their transformation and enable them in these new digital environments and so many companies that we've been working with they've already been on the path to operating an environments that are digital that are fluid and you think about the cloud that's one of the great benefits loud is that scalability income with the business demand and it also helps the scale situation without having to you know do the typical what you need to find the procurement people we need to find server vendors we need to get the storage lined up it really allows a much more fluid response to unexpected and unfortunate situations whether that's customer demand or you know in this case the global endemic yeah one of the things I want to get in with you I want to get you have explained your job is there because I see Google's got a new CEO now for over a year Tom's Korean came from Oracle knows the enterprise up and down you had Diane Greene before that again another enterprise leader Google Cloud has essentially rebuilt itself from the original Google cloud to be very enterprise centric you guys have great momentum and and this is a world where cloud native is going to be required I mean everyone now sees it the the tide has been pulled out there everything's exposed all the gaps in business from a tech standpoint it's kind of exposed and so the smart managers and companies are looking at things and saying double down on that let's kill that we don't want to pay that supplier they're not core to our business this is going to be a very rapid acceleration of what I call a vetting of the new the new set of players that are going to emerge because the folks who don't adapt to this new cloud native reality whether it's app workloads for banking to whatever they're gonna have to have to reinvent themselves now and reset and tweek to come out of this crisis so it's gonna be very cloud native this is a big deal can you share your your reaction to that absolutely and so as you pointed out there are kind of two worlds that exist right now companies that are moving to become more digital and transform and you mentioned the momentum I mean in Google cloud just over the last year greater than 50 percent revenue growth and you know and I greater than 10 billion dollar run rate business and adding customers that are really quick flip you know including you know just yesterday slung and you know along the way Telecom Italia Major League Baseball Vodafone Lowe's Wayfarer Activision Blizzard's so this is not you this transformation and this digitization is not just for you know a few or just for any one industry it's happening across the board and then you add that to the implementations that have been happening across you know Shopify and the Spotify and HSBC which was a early customer of ours in the cloud and it you know already has a little bit of a head start of this transformation so you see these new companies coming in and seeing the value of digital transformation and then these other companies that have kind of lit the path for others to consider and you know Shopify is a really good example of how seeing you know drastic uptick in demand they're able to responding you know roughly half a million shops up and running you know during a period of time where many retailers are trying to figure out how to stay online or you can get online well what is your role at Google I see you're the managing director title is managing director ahead of the office of the CTO we've seen these roles before you know head of this CTO you're off see technical role is it partnering with the CEO on strategy is it you kick tire kicking new things are you overseeing any strategic initiatives what is what is your role so a little bit of all those things combined into one so I I spent the first couple decades of my career on the other side of the in the non-tech you know community no in the enterprise where we were still building technology and we were still you know digitally minded but not the way that people view technology in Silicon Valley and so you know spending a couple decades in that environment really gave me insights into how to take technology and apply them to a specific problem and when I came to Google five years ago yeah selfishly it was because I knew the potential of Google's technology having been on the other side and I was really interested in forming a better bridge between Google's technology and people like me who were CTOs of public companies and really wanted the leverage that technology for problems that I was solving whether it was aerospace public sector manufacturing what-have-you and so it's been great it's the it's the role of a lifetime I've been able to build the team that I wanted as an enterprise technologist for decades and the entire span of technologies at our disposal and we do two things one is we help our most strategic customers accelerate their path loud and 2 we create these signals by working with the top companies moving to the cloud and digitally transforming we learned so much John about what we need to build as an organization so it also helps balance out the Google driven innovation with our customer driven innovation yeah and I could I can attest that we didn't watching you guys from the from day one hired a lot of great enterprise people that I personally know so you getting the enterprise chops and staff and getting you seeing some progress I have to ask you though because I first of all a big fan of Google at the scale from knowing them from when they were just a little search engine to what they are now the there was an expression a few years ago I heard from enterprise customers it was goes along the lines like this I want to be like Google because you guys had a great network you had large-scale you've had all these things that were like awesome and then they realized what we can't be like Google we don't have that sorry we don't have large-scale data centers so there was a little bit of a translation and I want to say a little bit of a overplay of the Google hand and you guys had since realized that you didn't it wasn't just people gonna bang your doorstep and be adopting Google cloud because there was a little bit of a cultural disconnect from wanting to be like Google then leveraging Google in their business as they transform so as you guys have moved from that what's changed they still want to be like Google in the sense you have great security got a great network you got that scale and it prizes a little bit slower to adopt that which you're focused on now what is that the story there because I think that's kind of the theme that I'm hearing okay Google now understands me they know I'm not as fast as Google they got super great people we are training our people we're treating you know retrain them this is the transformation that they're going through so you might be a little bit ahead of them certainly but now they need to level up how do you respond to that well a lot of this is the transformation that Thomas has been enacting you know over the last year plus and it comes in kind of three very operation or technical pillars that I think the first we expanded our customer and we continue to expand our customer facing themes you know three times what they were before because we need to be there we need to be in those situations we need to hear from the customer mean to learn more about the problems they're trying to solve so we don't just take a theoretical principle and try to overlay it onto a problem we actually get very visceral understanding of what trying to solve but you have to be there the game that empathy and that understanding and so one is showing up and that you know has been mobilizing a much larger engine the customer facing out personnel from Google second it's also been really important that we evolve our own you know just as Google brought sre principles and principles of distributed systems and software design out for the world we also had a little bit to learn about transitioning from typical customer support and moving to more customer experience so you've seen you know that evolution under on this as well with cloud changing you know moving from talking about support to talking about customer experience that white glove experience that our customers get our partners get from the beginning of their journey with us all the way through and then finally making sure that our product roadmap has the solutions that are relevant across be priority industries for us and you know that's again that only comes from being present from having a focus in those industry and then developing the solutions that progress those companies so again not this isn't about taking you know a principle and trying to apply it blindly this is about adding that connection that really deep connections to our customers and our partners and letting that connection manifest the things that we have to do as a product company the best support them over a long period some of these deals we've been announcing these are 10-year five-year multi-year strategic partnerships they go across the campus of you know all of you and you know those are the really exciting scaled partnerships but you know to your point you can't just take SR re from Google and apply it to company X but you can take things like error budgets or how we think about the principles of sree and you can apply them over the course of developing technology collaborating innovating together yeah and I think cloud native is gonna be a key thing and yeah I think what it's just my opinion but I think one of those situations where the better mousetrap will win if your cloud native and you have api's and you have the kind of services that people will will know beaded to your doorstep so I have to ask you with Thomas Korean on board obviously we've been following his career as well at Oracle he knows what he's doing comes in to Google it's being built out it's like a rocket ship at this point what bet is he making and what bet are you guys making on behalf of your customers what's the if you have to boil it down to Google clouds big bet what is the bet on the technology side and what's the bet on the business side sure well I've already mentioned you know I've already Internet's you know the big strategy that Thomas is brought in and you know that is the that's again those three pillars making sure that we show up and that we're present by having a scaled customer facing organization and making sure that we transitioned from you know a typical support mindset into more of customer experience mindset and then making sure that those solutions are tailored and available for our priority industries if I was to add you know more color to that I think one of the most important changes that Thomas has personally been driving as he's been converting us to a partner LED is and a partner led organization and this means a lot of investments in large mobile systems integrators like Accenture and Deloitte but this also means that like the Splunk announcement from yesterday that isn't just the cell >> this is a partnership it goes deep across go-to-market product and self do and then we also bring in very specific partners like Temenos in Europe for financial services or a SATA or a rack space for migrations and as a result the already we're seeing really incredible lifts so for example nearly 200 percent year-over-year increase in partner influenced revenue Google cloud and almost like a 13 X year-over-year increase in new customers one-bite partners that's the kind of engine that builds a real hyper scale does it's just saying you mentioned Splunk I want to get that in a second but I also notice there was a deal with Dallas group on ECM subscriptions which kind of leads me into the edge piece there's a real edge component here with Google cloud and I think I'd Akashi edge with Jennifer Lynn a few years ago really digging into the built-in security and the value of the Google Network I mean a lot of the scuttlebutt around the valley and the industry is you know Google's got an amazing network store a software-defined networking is gonna be a hot program programmable area so you got programmable networking and you got edge and edge security these are killer areas that need innovation could you comment on what you guys are doing there and do you agree I'm out see with you have a killer Network and you're leveraging it what's the can you just give some insight into what's going on those those two areas network and then the edge yeah I think what you're seeing is the manifestation of an of the progression of cloud generally what do I mean by that you know started out as like get everything to the data center you know we kind of had this thought that maybe we could take all the workloads and we could get them to these centralized hubs and they could redistribute out the results and you know drive the latency down over time so we span the portfolio of applications and services that would be relevant over time and what we've seen over the last decade really in cloud is an evolution >> more of a layered architecture and that layered architecture includes you know poor data centers that includes CDN capacity points of presence that includes edge and just in that list of customers over the last year I there were at least three or four telcos in there and you've also probably heard and seen quite a bit of telco momentum coming from asks in recent announcements I think that's an indication that a lot of us are thinking about how can we pick big technology like anthos for example and how could we orchestrate workloads create a common control play and you know manage services across those three shells if you will of the architecture and that's a that's a very strategic and important area for us and I think generally for the cloud industry easy it was expanding beyond the data center as the place where everything happens and you can look at you know Google Phi you look at stadia you can look at examples within Google they go well beyond cloud as to how we think about new ways to leverage that kind of creature all right so we saw some earnings come out on Amazon side as Google both groups and Microsoft well all three clouds are crushing it on the cloud side that's a tailwind I get that but as it continues we're expecting post kovat some you know redistribution of development dollars and projects whether it's IT going cloud native or whatever new workloads we are predicting a Cambrian explosion of new things from core to edge and this is gonna create some lift so I want to get your thoughts on you guys strategy with go-to market as well as your customers as they now have the ability to build workloads and apps with ai and data there seems to be a trend towards the vertical ization of whether its sales and go to market and/or specialism because you have horizontal scalability with cloud and you now have data that has distinct value in these verticals so it really seems to be a I won't say ratification but in a way that seems to be the norm whether you come into a market you have specialization but the date is there so apps can be more agile do you are you guys seeing that and is that something that you guys are considering from from an organization standpoint and how do customers think about targeting vertical industries and their customers yeah I I bring this to and where you started going there at the end of the question is exactly the way that we think about it as well which is we've moved from you know here are storage offers for everybody and here's you know basic infrastructure everybody and now we've said how can we make sure that we have solutions that are tailored with very specific problems that customers are trying to solve and we're getting to the point now where your performance and variety of technologies are available to be able to compose very specific solutions and if you think about the substrate that has to be there you know we mentioned you have to have some really great partners and you have to have you know roadmap that is focused on priority solution area so for example at Google cloud you know we're very focused on six priority vertical areas so retail financial services health care manufacturing and industrials health care life sciences public sector and you know as a result of being very focused in those areas we can make more target investments and also align our entire go-to-market system and our entire partner ecosystem ecosystem around those beers specific priority areas so for example we worked with SATA and HDA Healthcare Rob very recently to develop and maintain a national response portal Berko vat19 and that's to help better inform communities and hospitals we can use looker to help with like a Commonwealth Care Alliance on nonprofit and that helps monitor patient system symptoms and risk factors so you know we're using you know a very specific focus in healthcare and a partner ecosystem - you know ferry tailored solutions you know you can also look at I mentioned Shopify earlier that's another great example of how in retail they can use something like Google meat inherent reliability scalability security to connect their employees during these interesting times but then they can also use GCP at Google cloud platform to scale out and as they come up with new apps and experiences for their shoppers for their shops they can rapidly deploy to your point and those you know those solutions and you know how the database performs and how those tiers perform you that's a very tight-knit feedback loop with our engineering teams yeah one of the things I'm seeing obviously with the virtualization of the kovat is that you know when the world gets back to normal it'll be hybrid and it'll be a hybrid between reality not physical and 100% virtual hybrid and that's going to impact events to media to everything every vertical will be impacted and I want to point out the Splunk team bring that back in because I want you to comment on the relevance of the Splunk to you and in context to Splunk has a cloud they got a great slogan data for every everywhere everywhere dated to everywhere I think it is but the cube we have a cloud every company will have a cloud scale at some level will progress to having some sort of cloud because they have data how are you guys powering those clouds because I think the Splunk deal is interesting their partner their stock price was up out on the news of the deal a nice bump their first Blunk shout out to those guys but they're a data company now they're cross-platform but they're not Google but they have a cloud so you know saying so they need to play in all the clouds but they need infrastructure they need support so how do you guys talk to that customer and that says hey the next pandemic that comes the next crisis that's going to cause some either social disruption or workflow disruption or work supply chain disruption I need to be agile I need have full cloud scale and so I need to talk to Google what do you say to them what's the pitch and as does a Splunk deal Samir some of those capabilities or tie that together for us the spunk deal and how it relates to sure for example proof themselves for the future sorry for example with the cloud deal you take a look at what Google is already really good at data processing at scale log analytics you take a look at what Splunk is doing you know with their events and security incident monitoring and the rest it a really great mashup because they see by platforming on Google cloud not only they get highly performant infrastructure but they also get the opportunity to leverage data tools data analytics tools machine learning and AI that can help them provide enhance services so not just about acity going up and down your periods of band but also enhancing services and continuing to offer more value to their customers and we see that you know it's a really big trend and you know this gets it something you know John a little bit bigger which is the two views of the world and we talked about very tailored focused solutions Splunk is an example of making a very methodical approach to a partnership developing a solution specifically you know with partners and you know in this case Splunk on the security event management side but we're always going to provide our data processing platform our infrastructure for companies across many different industries and I think that addresses one part of the topic which is you know how do we make sure that in periods of demand rapidly changing this deals back to the foundational elements of like AI infrastructure as a service and elasticity and we're gonna provide a platform infrastructure that can help companies move through periods of you know it's hard to forecast and/or demand may rise and fall you know in very interesting ways but then there's going to be funds where you know we we because they're not a necessarily a focused use case where it may just be generalized platform versus a focused solution so for example like in the oil and gas industry we don't develop custom AI ml solutions the facility upstream extraction for example but what we do do is work with renewable energy companies to figure out how they might be able to leverage some of our AI machine learning algorithms from our own data centers to make their operations more efficient and to help those renewable energy companies learn from what we've learned building out the but I consider to be a world leading renewable energy strategy and so classic and able mint model where you're enabling your platform for your customers okay so I got to ask the question I asked this to the Microsoft guys as well because Amazon you know has their own sass stuff but but really more of an tend the better products usually on the ecosystem side you guys have some killer sass cheap tree-sweet where customer if we use the g sqweep really deeply we also use some BigTable as well I want to build a cloud we have a cloud cube cloud but you guys have meat so I want to build my product on Google cloud how do I know you're not going to compete with me do you guys have those conversations around the trade-off between you know the pure Google services which provide great value for the areas where the ecosystem needs to develop those new areas that are gonna be great markets potentially huge markets that are out there well this is the power of partnership I mentioned earlier that one of the really big moves that Thomas is made has been developing a sense of partners and it kind of blurs the line between traditional what you would call a customer what you would call a partner and so having a really strong sense of which industries were in which we prioritize Plus having a really strong sense of where we want to add value and where you know our customers and partners want to add that value that's that's the foundational that's the beginning of that conversation that you just mentioned it's important that we have an ability to engage not just in a you know here's the cloud infrastructure piece of the puzzle but one of the things Thomas has also done in the East rata jia is has been to make sure that you know the Google cloud relationship is also a way to access all amazing innovation happening across all of Google and also help bring a strategic conversation in that includes multiple properties from across Google so that an HSBC and Google and have a conversation about how to move forward together that is comprehensive rather than you know having to wonder and have that uncertainty sit behind the projects that we're trying to get out and have high velocity on because they offer so much to retail bank for example well I got a couple more questions and then I'll let you go I know you got some other things going I really appreciate you digging the time sharing this great insight and updates as a builder you've been on the other side of the table now you're at Google heading up the CTO I was working with Thomas understanding them go to market across the board and the product mix as you talk to customers and they're thinking the good customers are thinking hey you know I want to come out of this Cove in on an upward trajectory and I want to use this opportunity to reset and realign for the future what advice do you have for those enterprises there could be small medium sized enterprises to the full large big guys and obviously cloud native we talked some of that already but what advice would you have for them as they start to really prioritize as some things are now exposed the collaboration the tooling the scale all these things are out there what have you seen and what advice would you give a CX o or C so or leader in the industry to think about and how they should come out of this thing how they should plan execute and move forward well I appreciate the question because this is the crux of most of my day job which is interacting with the c-suite and boards of you know companies and partners around the world and they're obviously very interested to learn or you know get a data point from someone at Google and the the advice generally goes in a couple of different directions out one collaboration is part of the secret sauce that makes Google what it is and I think you're seeing this right now across every industry and it you know whether you're a small medium-sized business or you're a large company if the ability to connect people with each other to collaborate in very meaningful ways to share information rapidly to do it securely with high reliability that that's the foundation that enables all of the projects that you might choose to you know applications to build services to enable actually succeed in production and over the long haul is that culture of innovation and collaboration so absolutely number one is you're having a really strong sense of what they want to achieve from a cultural perspective a collaboration perspective and the and the people because that's the thing that fuels everything else second piece of the you know advice especially in these times where there's so much uncertainty is where can you buy down uncertainty with vets that aren't you know that art you can you can learn without a high penalty and this is a this is why cloud I think is really really you know finding you know super scale it was our it was already on the rise but what you're seeing now and you know as you've linked back to me during this conversation we're seeing the same thing which is a high increase in demand of let's get this implemented now how can we do this more this is you know clearly one way to move through uncertainty and so look for those opportunities I'll give you a really good example mainframes one of the classic workloads of the you know on-premise enterprise and you know there's all sorts of there are all sorts of potential magic solves for getting mainframes to the cloud and getting out of mainframes but a practical consideration might be maybe you just front-end it with some Java or maybe you just get closer to other data centers within a certain amount of milliseconds that's required to have performant workload maybe you start chunking at a part and treat the workload a little bit differently rather than you know just one thing but there are a lot of years and investments in a workload that might run on a mainframe and that's a perfect example of out you know biting off too much it might be a little bit dangerous but there is a path to and so for example like we brought in a company called cornerstone to help with those migrations but we also have you know partnerships with you know data center providers and others globally from us our own built infrastructure to allow even you know a smaller stuff per site or more like post proximity location in the workload it's great you know everything had as a technical metaphor connection these days when you have a Internet digitally connected world we're living in you know the notion of a digital business was a research buzzword that's been kicked around for years but I think now kovat 19 you're seeing the virtual or digital it's really digital but you know virtual reality augmented reality is going to come fast to really get people to go WOW virtual virtualization of my business so you know we've been kind of kicking around this term business virtualization just almost as a joke but it's really more about okay this is about a new world a new opportunity to think about when we come out of this we're gonna still go back to our physical world now the hybrid now kicks in this kind of connects all aspects of business in every verticals not leahey I'm targeting like the this industry so there might be unique solutions in those industries but now the world is virtualized it's connected it's a digital environment these are huge concepts that I think has kind of been a fringe lunatic fringe idea but now it's brought mainstream this is gonna be a huge tailwind for you guys as well as developers and entrepreneurs and app application software this is gonna be we think a big thing what's your reaction to that which your based on your experience what do you see happening do you agree with it and you have any thing you might want to add maybe you know one kind of philosophical statement and then one more you know I bruised my shins a lot in this world and maybe share some of the black and blue coloration first from a philosophical standpoint the greater the crisis the more open-minded people become and the more creative people get and so I'm really excited about the creativity that I'm seeing you know with all of the customers that I work with directly plus our partners you know Googlers everybody's rallying together to think about this world differently and so to your point you know a shift in mindset you know there are there are very few moments where you get this pronounced a change and everyone is going through it all at the same time so that creates a you know an opportunity a scenario where the old thinking new strategies creativity you know bringing people in in new ways collaborating a new way and offer a lot of benefits more you know practically speaking and from my experience you know building technology for a couple decades you this is a it has an interesting parallel to you know building like tightly coupled really large maybe monoliths versus micro services and debate around you know do we build small things that can be reconfigured and you know built out by others or built on by others more easily or do we credit Golden Path and a more understood you know development environment and I'm not here to answer the question of which one's better is that's what's still a raging debate and I can tell you that the process of going through and taking a service or an application or a thing that we want to deliver the customer that one of our customers wants to deliver to their cost and thinking about it so comprehensively that you're able to think about it in its what its power its core functions and then thinking methodically about how to enable those core functions that is a you know that's a real opportunity and I think technology to your point is getting to the place where you know if you want to run across multiple clouds yeah this is the anthos conversation where you know recently g8 you know a global scale platform you know multi cloud platform that's a pretty big moment in technology and that opens up the aperture to think differently about architectures and that process of taking you know an application service and making it real well I think you're right on the money I think philosophically it's a flashpoints opportunity I think that's going to prove to be accelerating gonna see people win faster and lose faster you can see that quickly happen but to your point about the monolith versus you know service or decoupled based systems I think we allow a live in a world where it's a systems of you now you can have a monolith combined with decoupled systems that's distributed computing I think this is that the trend it's a system it's not one thing or the other so I think the debate will continue just like you know VI versus Emacs we know you don't know right so you know if people gonna have this debate but it's just if you think about as a system the use case defines the architecture that's the beautiful thing about the cloud so great insight I really appreciate it and how's everything going over there Google Cloud you got meat that's available how's your staff what's it like inside the Googleplex and the Google cloud team tell us what's going on over there people still working working remote how's everyone doing well as you can as you can tell from my scenario here my my backdrop yes still hard at work and we take this as a huge responsibility you know these moments is a huge responsibility because there are you know educators loved ones medical professionals you know critical life services that run on services that Google provides and so I can tell you were humbled by the opportunity to provide you know the backbone and the platform and the people and the curiosity and the sincere desire to help and I mentioned a couple of ways already just in this conversation where we've been able to leverage some of our investment in technology to help or people that really gets at the root of who we are so while we just like any other humans are going through a process of understanding our new reality what really fires us up and what really a chart is because is that this is a moment where what we do really well is very very important for the world in every geo in every vertical in every use case and every solution type so we're just take we're taking that responsibility very seriously and at the same time we're trying to make sure that you know all of our teams as well as all the teams that we work with our customers and partners are making it a human moment not just the technology moment well congratulations and thanks for spending the time great insight will appreciate will Grannis Managing Director head of Technology office of the CTO at Google cloud this certainly brings to the mainstream what we've been in the industry been into for a long time which is DevOps large-scale role of data and technology now we think it's going to be even more acute around societal benefits and thank God we have all those services for the frontline workers so thank you so much for all that way effort and thanks for spending the time here in the cube conversation appreciate it thanks for having John okay I'm John Farah here in Palo Alto Studios for remote cube conversation with Google cloud get in the update really looking at the future as it unfolds we are going to see this moment in time as an opportunity to move to the next level cloud native and change not only the tech industry but society I'm John Fourier thanks for watching

(upbeat music) >> Welcome to this special Cube conversation here in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE, we have two special guests, Karim Toubba, CEO of Kenna Security, and Caroline Japic, CMO, Kenna Security. Great to see you guys, thanks for coming on, appreciate you taking the time, appreciate it. >> Thanks for having us. >> So RSA is coming up, big show, security's at the top of the list of all companies. You guys have a very interesting company. Risk based vulnerability management is like the core secret sauce, but there's a lot going on. Take a minute to talk about your company. What do you guys do? Why do you exist? >> Yeah, sure. Thanks for having us. Some, the security landscape as you very well know, pretty crowded space, a lot of different vendors, a lot of technologies that enterprises and organisations have to deal with. What we do has a lot of complexity behind it, but in an app practicality for enterprises is actually quite simple. They have many, many data sources that are finding problems for them, mapping to their attack surface, what are misconfigurations? Where are there vulnerabilities in your network or your host, where there vulnerabilities in your applications, we taking all of that data, specifically from 48 different data sources, we map it to what attackers are doing in the wild, run it through a lens of risk, and then enable the collaboration between I.T. and security, on what to focus on at the tip of the spear with a high degree of fidelity and efficacy so that they know that they can't fix everything, but prioritize the things that matter and are going to move the meter the most. >> So you guys have emerged as one of those kind of new models, the new guard of security, it's interesting, it's been around for 10 years, but yet a lot's changed in 10 years but a lot of evolving. Risk based vulnerability management is the buzzword, R-B- >> V-M >> Okay, really comes from the founder of the company. Why is this becoming an important theme? Because you got endpoints, you got all kinds of predictive stuff with data, you got surface area is growing, but what specifically about this approach makes it unique and popular? >> Yeah, I think what's happening is if you, to really answer that question, you have to look at two different ends of the spectrum in terms of the business, the security side and the IT DevOps and application development side. And at the core of that is what was largely traditional tension. If you think about security teams, operations teams, incident response teams, and if you sit down with them and understand what they do on a day to day basis, beyond the incident response and reaction side, they have a myriad of tools and technologies that discover problems, typically millions of issues. Then you go to the IT side, and the application and DevOps side, and they care about building the next application, making sure the systems are up and running. And what happens is they, we've gotten to the point where they can't possibly fix everything security is asking them to fix, and that's created a lot of tension, people have woken up, started to realize that that tension has to give way to collaboration. And the only way you can do that is enable security to detect all the problems, but then very quickly focus and prioritize on the things that matter, and then go to IT and then tell them specifically what to fix so that they have a high degree of precision and understanding, that the needle will be moved relative to what they're asking them to do. >> So is it the timing of the marketplace and the evolution of the business where it used to be IT that handled it, and now security has gotten broader in its scope, that there's now too many cooks in the kitchen, so to speak? >> Yeah, it's gotten broader in its scope, and there's also been a realization that if you think about the security problem statement, they find all the problems, but if you if you peel back the layers, you quickly realize, they own very little the remediation path. Who fixes-- >> John: They being IT? >> They being security. >> John: Okay. >> Yeah, so it's actually quite fascinating. If you think about who fixes a vulnerability on an operating system like Windows or Linux, it's the IT team. If you think about who fixes or upgrades a Java library or rewrites an application it's DevOps or the application developers, but security's finding all the problems. So they're realizing, as they deploy more tools, find more issues, and increase the amount of data, they've got to get very precise and really enable an entirely new way of collaborating with IT so that they can get them to focus on the things that matter the most. >> Karim, I want to dig into some of the complexity, but first want to get the Caroline on the brand, and the marketing challenge because it's almost an easy job in the sense, because there's a lot of security problems out there to solve, but it's also hard on the other side, is that, where's the differentiation? There's so many vendors out, there's a lot of noise. How are you looking at the marketplace? Because you guys are emerging in with nice, lift on the value proposition, you won some recent awards. How do you view the marketplace? RSA is going to be packed with vendors, it's going to be wall to wall, we get put in the corner, we are going to have small space for theCUBE, but there's a lot there and customers are being bombarded. How are you marketing the value proposition? >> You are right. There's so much noise out there, but we are very clear and precise on the value we bring to our customers, we also let our customers tell the story. So whether it's HSBC, or SunTrust, or Levi, we work with them very closely with those CSOs, with their head of IT to understand their challenges, and then to bring those stories to life so we can help other companies because our biggest challenge is that people just don't know that there's a better solution to this problem. This problem's been around a long time, it's getting worse every day, we're reading about the vulnerabilities that are happening on a regular basis, and we're here to let people know we can fix it, and we can do it in a pretty quick and painless way. >> You had mentioned before we came on camera that when you you're getting known, as the brand gets out there, but when you're in the deals, you win. Could you guys share some commentary on why that's the case? Why are you winning? >> Yeah, by the way, just to piggyback off that a little bit, there is a really interesting paradigm happening within the security space, if you look at the latest publications, I don't know, there are 1400 of us all buzzing around with the same words? I think what Caroline and the team have done an exceptional job on, particularly in relative to the positioning is, we don't want to scare people into looking at Kenna. We want to be more ethereal than that and make them understand that we're ushering in a new way away from tension to an era of collaboration with IT, DevOps and application teams. That's very different than telling somebody in your messaging, Hey, did you hear the latest attack that happened at XYZ? >> Yeah. >> That sort of fear and marketing through FUD, is creating a lot of challenges for organizations, and candidly, is making CISOs and other people in security close the door. >> I've definitely heard that, do you think that's happening a lot? >> I think that's happening a lot. I think we're sort of, I like to think that Caroline and the team are sort of at the forefront of leading that initiative, and you can, and we're doing it in every way possible to really sort of tell a much more positive story about how security can be smarter and spin in a positive light, and in fact, the technology is enabling that, so it's consistent. >> We live in dark times. Unfortunately, a lot of people like, if it bleeds, it leads, and that's a really kind of bad way to look at it. But back to your point about tension and collaborations, I think that's an interesting thread. There's a ton of tension out there, that's real, from the CISO's perspective. Because there's too many teams, I mean, you got, Blue Team, Red Team, IT, governance, compliance, full stack developers, app. So you have now too many teams, too many tools that have been bought and it's like, people have all these platforms, they're drowning in this. How do you guys solve that problem? >> Yeah, it's back to that point of collaboration, and what we've really found that's been interesting in solving that problem, because what we're doing if you step back, is, we're bringing in all these data sources, and where that tension comes in, if you unpack it a little bit, is from different people coming in with different data sources. So IT comes to the table about what to fix, with their own point of view, security comes with their own point of view, application teams come with their own point of view, governance and compliance comes with their point of view. What we do is we come in and even though we're technology, we're really aligning people in process. We're saying, "Look, we're going to to amass all that data, "we're going to very quickly use machine learning "and a bunch of algorithms to sift through "millions of pieces of data "and divine what actually matters." It's empirical, it's evidence based, and we align all the organizations around that filter through risks so that there's agreement on how to measure that, what to prioritize, what to action and what the results look like. And when it turns out that when you get a bunch of people across an organization, to get aligned around data that they all agree with as the source of truth, it gets much easier to get them to really focus on the things that ultimately matter. >> It's a single version of the truth, right? It's a single version that they all can work from. Security isn't telling IT, "This should be your priority today," when they say, "You don't know what my priorities are," is actually the data that's telling them what their priorities are by role, and that's really important and really gets past all the, the friction and the fighting in between the teams. >> Yeah, that's great point, back to my other question when I get back to you Caroline, is what is the success formula look like for you guys? Why are you winning? What are the feedback you're hearing from your customers? Because at the end of the day, references are important, but also, success is a tell sign. So what's the reasons behind the success? >> Yeah, I'll let Karim talk about being face to face with customers, because he does that all the time. But what we're saying is that, the customers are resonating with the story that we're telling, they understand they have the problem we're laying out in a very simple way for, to be able to solve their solution, and that's working. We've redone our positioning, our messaging, we've trained our sales team, people understand the value we can bring, and that's what we're communicating, and that's what's working. >> Karim, please add on that, I want to get more into this. >> Yeah, and on the customer side, what we see and I'll give you a pretty classic example for us with a very large bank that's a customer of ours. We actually started on the security side, right? We sold to their deputy CISO to deploy, and then eventually, they doubled down and then deployed globally across 64 countries. And that happened sponsored by the CIO. Now we're a security company, so you ask the question, well, why did that get driven in that structure? And why did that deal go down ultimately in that way? And what was the real value? The value to the security person was clear, I want to aggregate 10 to 12 different data sources, I want to prioritize, I want to collaborate with IT. The value to the CIO was the CIO happens to own all the application developers and all the IT people and the security people on a global basis. And so what they wanted to do, is they wanted to understand what the risk was for each of the lines of businesses they had within organization so that they can hold the business users accountable to paying a small tax for security, not just developing the next billion dollar high net worth application, which is extremely important to those businesses, but at the same time, ensuring that they're secure. And so that leverage when you start with security, and then branch out in other organizations, especially in large, multinational organizations, is really where the the real value comes into the platform. >> So if I hear you correctly, you come in for security, okay, we can get rid of the noise, help you out, check, win, and then the rest of the organization doesn't have security teams per se, >> Karim: Correct. >> Needs security to be built in from day one. >> Karim: Correct. >> You're providing a cross connect of value to the other teams? >> That's right. >> It's almost like, security is code, if you will. >> Karim: That's right. And nowhere is that more evident in our utilization statistics. So we're a SaaS platform, so of course we, like many other SaaS companies do a bunch of analytics on utilization of our customers, more often than not, in our large scale enterprises, we actually have more IT and non security users logging into Kenna, in a self service model, because they're the ones, back to the point you made earlier, that are actually driving the remediation path. >> Take us through how that works. So say I'm interested, okay, you sold me on it, great, I need the pain relief on the security side, I need the enablement and empowerment on the collaboration side, what do I do? Do I just plug my databases into you? Is it API driven? Are you on Amazon? Are you on Azure? What's cloud? What am I dealing with? Take me through the engagement. >> Yeah, so we're 100% cloud based platform. Multi cloud, so we can deploy in AWS, we can deploy in Google et cetera. And then what we do is we effectively through a bunch of API's called connectors that are transparent to the customers, we enable them to bring in their data. So this is everything from traditional scanning data like Qualys, Rapid7, Tenable, more, newer data like CrowdStrike, Tanium, DaaS SaaS, software composition analysis tools, WhiteHat, Veracode, Black Duck, Sonatype, you name it. The list goes on, specifically, there's about 48 of them. All of that is basically helps us understand what the totality of the attack surface is. That's very useful for security because they're using multiple tools. We then overlay what we call exploit and tell, this is the data that tells us about what attackers are doing in the wild. Specifically, we have 5 billion pieces of data that tell us about what vulnerabilities are being popped, what's the rate of change, what malware are they being embedded in? That use, that information is used through machine learning to help us prioritize and risk score each of the findings we get from the customer tools. And then where it pivots over to IT, is we then allow them to take all of that data and that metadata and asset criticality into what we call risk meters. So they're basically aligned with where, how IT operates. So for example, if you own all the Linux infrastructure in the cloud, you log in, you'll only see the risk across the infrastructure you own. Whereas if Caroline owns all the endpoint real estate across Windows, she logs in and understands what her risk is across Windows. And then we of course, integrate in the ticketing systems to drive the remediation and report up to executives and then over to security, about what the workflow you-- >> So you guys really focusing not so much on the security knock or the sock, it's more on indexing, if you will, for lack of a better description, the surface area, >> Karim: Correct. >> And getting that prepared from a visibility standpoint to acquire the data. >> Karim: That's right. >> And then leveraging that across-- >> Across the organizations, yeah. >> Did I get that, right? >> It's exactly right. And if you ask, if you again, double click deeper on that, what's fascinating to watch, so we have a an annual, or bi annual report that we do called prioritization or prediction, or P2P. And this is all of our customer data completely anonymized in a warehouse, and then we run a bunch of reports, and lot of the analytics we ran initially were around security. Now we're starting to pivot in IT. If you look at our latest report, one of the most interesting things I found in my time here is that the average large scale enterprise has actually no more than 10% remediation capacity, right? So what does that tell you? That tells you that 90% of the problems are going to go unsolved, which pinpoints why it's even more important to have specific prioritization on the things that matter. >> They solve the right 10%. >> At the right time too, >> At the right time. >> 10% capacity, operating capacity, assuming some automation that might take care of some of the low hanging fruit >> Exactly. >> Through DevOps or automation. You can focus on those 10% at the right time, which by the way, if you use that capacity for the wrong problems at the wrong time, it's wasted capacity. >> Karim: That's right. >> That's what you guys are trying to get at, right? >> Karim: That's exactly right, work smarter, not harder. >> So Kenna security, what's the vision? What's the next step? Why should someone care about working with you guys? Why is it important to engage you guys? What's the big deal? Is it the risk based vulnerability, kind of origination invention, which is the core or the DNA, or is it something bigger? What's the vision? What's the why? Yeah, well look for us, we started, our company was actually founded by a gentleman by the name Ed Bellis, who's the ex chief security officer at Orbitz, and he founded the company out of a need. We started very early in the traditional pure vulnerability space. This was like calling Classic Qualys, Rapid7, Tenable. We then expanded into the application world. So this is starting to take in, moving up stack if you will full stack, as the environment moves to cloud, as the environment moves to containers, as the environment moves to configuration management as the environment moves to a much more ephemeral state, that will drive an entirely new set of data sources that will drive an entirely different new set of priorities all aligned with the same model of risk. So our view of the future is that we are the platform that enables the organization to understand the totality of the attack surface, that enables collaboration across all the groups that deal with technology within enterprises, and allows them to really prioritize and understand risk in a way that not only fosters the collaboration, but gives you that return on investment that candidly ultimately CIOs are looking for. >> Caroline the story from a marketing perspective, what's the story you're trying to tell? >> We started this space, our founder Ed Bellis is the father of risk based vulnerability management and he loves it when I say that, but it's 100% true. We are continuing down this path, I mean, there are so many companies that have this problem that don't know that there's a better way to solve it. And so for now, our mission is to make sure that we're educating those people, they understand what's possible to do today, and then continuing from there, so. >> Well, I really appreciate you guys coming in and introducing and sharing more about Kenna Security, we've been seeing successes. I'm going to ask you about what you guys think about RSA, I'd love to get both you guys to weigh in. But before we get to the RSA kind of what's coming, take a quick minute to plug the company. What do you guys looking to do? You hiring? You just got some funding? Give the quick pitches. >> Yeah, sure, we did. We just closed $48 million series D round. We had all of our investors and a new investor, Sorenson Ventures come in. We also had two strategic investors, Citi and HSBC, because we do quite well, that very good validation. And we're also quite prominent in the financial services vertical, it helps that. And so for us, it's really about scaling, right? Scaling people, scaling the technology, scaling capabilities-- >> John: Across the board. >> Across the board. >> Engineering, obviously. >> Engineering, sales, geographies, it's really about getting the word out there and then being able to follow that up with the feed on the street that matter. >> We're definitely hiring, but we're also growing through OEMs. So we have a relationship with VMware, they're embedding us into their app defense products, and so if you buy app defense from VMware, you are buying Kenna whether you know it or not. >> So you're going to be an ingredient in other products. >> That's right. >> And or direct or indirect, probably some channel ecosystem opportunities? >> That's right. >> So we're growing on the technology partner OEM front, definitely interested in talking to companies that are interested on that front. >> We should do a whole segment on my fascination with what I call tier two or tier 1B clouds, specialty clouds, security clouds. So maybe do that another time. Okay, final question for you guys. RSA is coming this year 2020, and then a series of other events. Cloud Security has been a hot topic since re:Inforce last year was launched, we were there, kicking off theCUBE in security. What do you guys expect this year at RSA? What do you think the big themes are going to be? The hype? The meat on the bone? What's the real deal? What's the hype? What do you guys think is going to happen? >> Karim: I'll let you start. >> Yeah, I can tell you our theme is the right fight club. Because we are focused on the right fight that you need to have every day inside your enterprise. It's not focused on all the vulnerabilities that are hitting you because they're hundreds of thousands of them, millions of them, and there's going to be more every single day, it's about fighting the right fight. So if you come by our booth, you'll see that, it's going to be very exciting-- >> And of course, don't talk about the Fight Club vulnerabilities. (Karim laughs) >> You know the rules of the fight club. >> The first rule is to talk to Kenna about the right fight club. That is the first rule. >> That's cool. >> Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. Every, as you very well know, every year when people walk away from RSA, there's a few blogs that are written about what was the theme this year, I suspect this year's in security specifically, is going to be about AI driven security. We've been starting to see that for a while, it started to bleed into last year's event. I think for us in particular, we have a very particular point of view, and our book point of view is that doesn't matter if it's ML, if it's AI, or what type of algorithms you're running, the question is, what's the value? What is the value when you have 1400 people all screaming to get in the door of an organization? Everybody really has to begin to answer that question fundamentally. And I think the people that have that position in the market are the people that are going to be able to stand out. It's interesting, as always the hype with AI, but it's interesting, I was just trying to figure out when the term there is no perimeter was kind of first coined in theCUBE, I'm thinking probably about five years ago, it really became a narrative and then more recently, with the cloud, the perimeter is dead. Edge is out there. >> Karim: Right. >> So this is, what's the gestation period of real scalable security post perimeter is dead. It's interesting, is it years, is it seems to be hitting this year. It seems to be the point where, okay, I tried everything, now I've got to be data driven or figure out a way to map the surface area. >> That's right. >> End to end. Well, thanks to Kenna Security coming in, a solution for figuring out the vulnerabilities with a real invention. We're going to be covering security at RSA with Kenna Security and others. Thanks for watching, this is theCUBE. (upbeat music)

(fast intro music) >> Narrator: From London England, it's the Cube, covering Coupa Inspire 19 EMEA. Brought to you by Coupa. >> Hey, welcome to The Cube. Lisa Martin coming to you from Coupa Inspire 19 in London. Pleased to welcome one of Coupa's spend setters, joining me now is James Wagstaff, the chief procurement officer of Provident. James, welcome to the Cube. >> Hello, Lisa, nice to be here. >> So you had a very busy day. Thank you for taking some time to talk to me about Provident, what you doing with Coupa. But give our audience an overview of Provident and what you guys do and deliver to your customers. >> Very good, so Provident is a ftse 250 UK financial services business. It lends money to people without access to mainstream lending. Um, so it's real focus is to do that in a responsible, caring way. So if you can't borrow money from Barclays or HSBC, then Provident is a company that will help you get back to access to that mainstream market. >> Individuals as well as like small businesses? >> Consumers, around two million people in the UK currently use Provident, either the credit card or our home credit or our car leasing business. >> Okay, so how long have you been there? >> I have been at Provident now since April of 2018. >> Okay. >> So we're coming up now to, I think 19 months, and we put Coupa into the bank, which is the credit card business in April or April/May. >> Okay talk to me, though, about about your journey in business and finance. One of the things I read about you is that you were encouraged from an early age to really understand all aspects of a business from operations to finance to marketing to truly provide value through procurement. Talk to me about the history there that you have. >> So I'm a big fan of mentor programs. So I think everyone should have a mentor, and I lucked into mine, a chap called Terry, who, for reasons best known to him, took me under his wing. I was quite old when I came to procurement. I was around late 20s, maybe 30, and he had a vision about what great procurement looked like, and it was a holistic view. So procurement at its worst can be very tactical, very cost focused, and Terry was very focused on the bigger picture, about top-line growth not just bottom line, and right from day one, he seeded that in me, and it's been the strength of my career. So I owe Terry, Terry Western, if he's watching, I owe Terry, I owe Terry everything for that. And then I spent the last 10 years as an expat. So prior to Provident, I had three years as the group CPI for VimpelCom, which is the Russian equivalent of Vodafone or AT&T, who have businesses throughout Soviet Union, CIS, and Asia-Pac. And then seven years with Huawei, who are China's largest private company, telecoms company, and I was traveling around the world on the sales side facing procurement. So that was a very sobering enlightening experience to see procurement from the supplier side of the table, and I think it's made me a different procurement person as a result in terms of the way the I treat people and relate to people. So that holistic nature combined with, I think, a very business-centric view of what procurement should do. >> Interesting, though, that you that you said, I got a late start in procurement, but your start was founded upon someone giving you very solid advice of look beyond that because this is an element of the business that can, somebody that clearly was seeing how transformative, but also how it was important for procurement to partner and understand different requirements and needs within each division within an organization, so it sounds like you didn't really grow up in that traditional siloed approach of procurement. >> I did not, and I think that for me it makes my life interesting. So I think if you're in procurement and the danger is you become quite siloed, you're very narrow, and I did my MBA quite recently while I was traveling just to get that bigger perspective. It makes the job fun. I mean, I think you know you can negotiate contract after contract after contract, but it's the context of what that's doing for the business. And I think when I looked at Coupa as a system, it was with that in mind. So looking at Coupa, not from the perspective of what it did for procurement, but how it was for end-user customers. So as a service, was it really, really simple to use? Did it feel like an Amazon shopping experience? Because that drives adoption, and if you can get people wanting to use the system because it's easy, then the data's in the system, and then the data's in the system you can do something with it. So you're not, you're not fighting that adoption issue that you would be on a lot of systems. So if you go to some of the big ERP systems, they can be really hard for people to change and adopt, and Coupa's not been like that. It's been relatively easy. >> Interesting that you talk about it as it needs to be as simple as an Amazon marketplace. As consumers we're so used to that, right. I mean, people transact daily and get fulfillment of whatever product or service they're ordering from Amazon within... Sometimes it's within an hour or two. So we have this expectation and this demand. To your point, though, about wanting to have software that would be as easy for your teams to take up, that consumer effect. Talk to me about that as an influence. Because you know, kind of right away experience with other systems that might be bigger legacy systems that are challenging to get folks to use because they're not that intuitive. Did you know right away when you came into Provident that I need to have something that is more consumer-like. >> I knew that we needed a system and because as a regulated industry, we had to control our spend. So the fact that we needed a procurement system was a given, so then the choice is what do you buy? I think you don't really need a big ERP unless you really want to spend a lot of money on assistant inspirations and complexity. So your then into the mid-market space. And, um, there's a lot of vendors out there that have had an on-premise model, been around a long time, but you can feel that when you use it. So I didn't do a paper-based RFP. I think this is probably a terrible way of evaluating systems because you can get a function list on paper, but that doesn't really tell you what it's like to use. So the procurement process was around video online demos. So getting users into the room, three hours for an online demo walk through the system. So it's a very non-traditional procurement process to buy a procurement system. And I think at the end of that, I think it was a more valuable process for it. >> Was that something that was driven by you or was that something that was driven by Coupa? Is that how they deliver that type of experience? >> It was driven by me, but I think it was welcomed by Coupa. I think, I think from the sales guys I think they do an awful lot of paper-based RFP, and I think it's a challenge because it's very hard to differentiate on paper. Actually, a lot of the systems kind of do the same stuff, but it's not what they do. It's how they do it. And you can't, you can't get that out of the paper. You have to see it and feel it and touch it. >> Exactly. One of the things that Rob Bernshteyn talks about, and he spoke about it this morning, is that the best UI is no UI. And he really talked about what they've done to be user-centric and talked proudly about the adoption that they've had. And you know, it's... We all know whatever software you're putting in an organization, all these, you know, whether its marketing, finance, operation, sales, if people aren't going to use it, it's not going to be able to deliver the value that whoever purchased it and brought it on needs it to do. Talk to me about that user-centric. Did you see and feel that right away in those demos? >> I think if you're a procurement guy, you have suppliers every day send you certain messages, and those messages are fairly consistent around, you know, delivering value and solutions. I mean, Rob's great. He's a bit of a force of nature. Um, you got to say that. But what I like about it is that he's got a very clear sense of vision about what the system should be, and I think he's done a great job of getting that throughout the company, top to bottom. And to date we've felt that. So normally what happens is you buy the software license, you sign the agreement, there's lots of love and care, and then kind of the vendor disappears a little bit, and you're on your own. And to date, Coupa done a great job. We got Damian Pinnell, who's our success manager. I get the sense that he really cares about whether the system is going to do what it promised to do. And how do we get more value out of it? Some of it is about selling more licenses because Coupa have got other modules they want you to buy, but that's kind of okay if the modules are delivering more value, then you don't mind paying for them. But even the modules we own, there is a real sense of are you exploiting it to the max? And that's pretty cool. >> What are some of the key values that you have gleaned so far in just the, what, maybe six months or so that you guys have been using the platform? >> So I'm getting, I'm quite surprised at the extent to the insights, the value I'm getting out of the insights. So as an example, and I'll be honest. Coupa told me that said your, your spend-through catalog is 27% and your industry top quartile is 95. And I kind of went, "Nah, I don't believe you." And then they said, "Your electronic invoicing could be 77%, and you're currently single digits." And I went, "Nah, I don't believe you." And then through the community we spoke to Co-Oper, another Coupa customer, and Marley there was saying, "No, we're doing it. We're at this. "We're at 95% or 97% even." And I went "Well, how are you doing it?" And she just talked me through how they sell it to suppliers and how, in my head, the reluctance to adopt actually evaporated because she was able to sell the idea to suppliers, sell the value as. She didn't force them to do it. She just said this is what you're going to get out of it if you do it this way, and she's genuinely got to 97. So what it's done for me is it's remove my own blockers in my own mind, you know, in my own head "You can't do this." Well, insights and speaking to other communities. Yes, I can. So it's opened my, changed my targets, changed what I think is possible. And I think that's cool. >> You look back to the beginning of your journey in procurement, business, and finance, when you were given this great advice, like "Be open-minded, understand how different parts of the business work," from then to where you are now and what you're able to deliver, in just a short time, leveraging Coupa, would have believed you'd been able to go from there to there? >> Uh, yeah, so Terry would always say to me, you know, if you're going to negotiate a deal, before you even pick up a contract, you would spend an hour with the business owner or the techie or whoever it is, and you just white board, at a technical level, what the solution is. I think that, years and years and years of doing that, of going deeper into technology and software and integration and through deal after deal after deal, when you come to run the project, to implement Coupa, you have that as a foundation. So you're not just at the surface and relying on other technical people because you're lost when you get to this level of detail. You've already got a little bit more depth. So I think that was the big spin-off, in a way. That you're able to have more in-depth conversations at a technical level, which you need to unblock stuff. >> So some of the news that came out today. They talked about what they're doing to expand Coupa Pay with American Express. I was just talking with Barclays. Barclays card been on that for a little while. Looking at the payment space for instance, on the BDC side, we have this expectation as consumers. We can do any transaction, we can pay bills. It hasn't been as... On the B2B side, it hasn't been as innovative. Some technology gaps, large scale. Where do you see Coupa in that respect with what they're doing with Coupa Pay? Do you see that influence from the consumer side that might eventually become an important part of what you're able to do at Provident? >> We haven't enabled Coupa Pay, so I'm in a position to talk authoritatively about it. >> In terms of taking the consumer and demand? >> So I look at the one-time-use credit cards, and I'm really quite excited about what that could do, and I kind of get the business sense and the use case behind that. So that's certainly on our radar. I like the risk-aware products as well, using the big data and AI stuff. So, there's a few things in the road map I've got my eye on. We're deploying expenses module in December/January, so that'll keep us busy on that. And then we'll need to route six months of data through Coupa so that we've got enough of a data pool to do the analytics. So we've got a busy road map, that's for sure. >> For a last question for you, James, for peers of yours, whether they're in financial services industry or not that are facing similar challenges and opportunities to transform procurement, what's you're best advice? >> Mmm, go and spend a few years as a supplier. I think procurement suffers a little bit from people who have only ever been in procurement. And I think that different perspective would be enormously powerful. So I think if we could get more marketing people, more lawyers, more different people and different professions into procurement, I think it would give you a broader perspective rather than a "I've grown up in procurement the last 20 years" sort of perspective. So go and get that holistic, global view would be my suggestion. >> Well, James, that's great advice for anybody, anywhere, and I'm sure Terry would be proud to hear you say that. >> I'm sure he would. >> Thank you so much for joining me on The Cube and sharing with us what Provident is doing with Coupa. We appreciate your time. >> It's been a real pleasure. Thank you, Lisa. >> Excellent. To James Wagstaff, I'm Lisa Martin, and you're watching The Cube from Coupa Inspire 19. Thanks for watching. (computerized tune)

>> Live from San Francisco, it's the Cube. Covering Google Cloud Next '19. Brought to you by Google Cloud and its ecosystem partners. >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We're here live in San Francisco on the ground floor here. Day 3 of Three Days of Wall to Wall Coverage, Cube coverage of Google Cloud Next 2019. I'm John Furman, co host Steve Alante. Steve looking good here. >> Thank you, John. I'm feeling good! >> Day three we're getting energy. Our next guest, Ulku Rowe, who is the technical director for financial services for Google Cloud. Thanks for joining us! >> Well thanks for having me, good to be here today. >> So, obviously all the verticals, the big theme here is that all the industries have opportunities with Anthos and all the data driven activities and open source greatness. But financial services is always kind of an early tell-sign. All the trends kind of happen in financial services because the data, whether its algorithmic trading or whatever, is clearly a competitive advantage. From fraud detection to competitive advantage revenue, big driver. That's your sweet spot. What's going on there? What's the signals from the marketplace? How is Google Cloud Next here impacted fina-- What's the big news? What's the big stories? >> It's a very exciting time in financial services. You know Google Cloud is enabling financial services customers across the globe, across all the sub-sectors. Whether you are in retail bank, in capital markets, or asset manager, or a hedge fund, insurance, FinTax. Cloud is enabling all of our customers to transform their businesses to reduce their cost, and to create better and new products. And it is very exciting for them. They're using our, you know, our data platforms to be able to look at the data that they have and understand their customers better to be able to create better experiences for them. Whether it's through chat box, or our contact centers, or better online experiences. They are able to provide more customized products for them. Especially on the trading site, on the retail banks and hedge funds, they're using our high performance compute environments, that our HPC offerings to be able to create better risk management systems to look at their portfolios and understands the risk. Whether it's a credit risk or a market risk, or fraud, or if they use it for anti-money laundering. We're seeing customers in the insurance space to create personalized products, they are streamlining their actual aerial processes. FinTex, obviously are using, you know they're Cloud native. It's very exciting for them to have this opportunity to challenge the big players. >> Don't forget blockchain. It's coming right around the corner, too. So you're a technical director. What does that mean? What is your job? What's your focus? >> It's a number of things. I sit mostly on the engineering side of the house to make sure that our product offering works for financial services. And it includes things like making sure our security offerings, or our compliance works, our data platforms, our computational platforms, higher level services, they do what financial services customers need them to do. I also have the privilege of spending a lot of time with our clients across the globe. And I get a view into what they're thinking about, how Cloud is changing their businesses. >> So we spend a lot of time in New York and 10 years ago when we started the Cube, when you talked to financial services company there were two narratives. One was "Cloud is evil, we're never going to go to Cloud." And the other was "Well we have global scale, "we're going to build on our own Cloud". A couple things have happened, as you know. They're obviously, going hard into Cloud. But they are building their own global Clouds, they're just building it on top of your Cloud. So, talk about that change, and what are some of the big trends that you're seeing today in terms of their adoption? >> Yeah, that has changed quite a bit, the narrative. You know it used to be that "We're never going there" to "Well, maybe we'll go there". And now it's, "How quickly can we get there". And customers are now using, now they're seeing the Cloud as a place to innovate and actually change their businesses. Initially they started maybe as a cost-play because they had big legacy platforms and Cloud came in and the ability to be able to reduce that cost-space especially under the competitive pressures they're in. It initially started with a cost-play. But then it very quickly turned into "This is now my innovation play". "This is how I can change my business. This is how I can stay competitive. This is actually how I can up level my security and compliance". So, it has become very much a partnership between us and our customers to actually think about how the future in financial services is going to be. >> Again, we've been in New York a lot. Back in my (mumbles) late 80s early 90s, I covered a lot, sold and did some system engineering with all the banks, all the financial institutions and other in New York. They're good customers but also they're tough customers. They buy a lot, early adopters on everything new, but they're tough customers. They're very demanding because the stakes are high, money. >> I used to be one of those customers. >> Also risk management. So, they're pushing the envelope, with the RND, buying early. They have stringent demands in terms of performance, also risk and security all kind of come together. So how does that boil into today? What are they looking at? What tires are they kicking here at Google Cloud? What are some of their tough questions and requirements? And obviously security has got to be big then. Your thoughts. >> Exactly. I think financial services is a business of trust. So usually the conversation starts there. And trust is established through security and compliance and privacy and transparency. And that happens to be one of our differentiators. Our security offering actually allows them to create a product for them that is actually even more secure than our on premise settings. The second thing is Hybrid and Multi-Cloud. Especially if you are a financial services institution that's been around a while. You're carrying a lot of legacy. You've got a lot of technical debt. You want to be able to also have flexibility to be able to run your workloads wherever you want. So, Anthos, if I were to pick a word that dominated the conversations with our financial services customers over the last couple of days, it has been Anthos, our Multi Hybrid Cloud solution. The ability to run workloads on-premise, on Google Cloud and on other Clouds at the same time and have that flexibility to be able to choose where to put your workloads depending on your needs has been very exciting for them. >> What specific questions were they asking? Were there certain technical attributes of Anthos that was interesting to them? What was some of that, when they started to look under the hood, what are the conversations like there? >> Well I think the most commonly asked question is how soon can we start? >> So there's demand. >> There is definitely demand. There is definitely demand and excitement. And for the reasons that I've just laid out, to give them the flexibility that they want and the reality that the Prem set up is going to live for a while. So for them to be able to manage this across a single pane, no matter where their workloads are working, it's a big interesting proposition. >> I want to get your reactions on that. We've been doing a lot of customer digging into the requirements around on Prem, Hybrid, Multi-Cloud, and Pure Cloud, and there's a debate around cloud selection. And I was going to read a quote from one of my article that I'm writing right now. I won't say the customer name, we are currently over 500 existing planned cloud efforts across the company, and we're going to support. We've got thousands of networks, data centers, and more than 500 cloud efforts with lead industry leaders. But we want to manage it individually. So, the trend is hey I got a workload. This workload look works great on "X" cloud. This workload works great on "Y" cloud. This workload works great on this other cloud. So (mumbles) we multi-cloud. The workloads are dictating cloud selection. And they still want to manage themselves. So a little bit of control-freak action going on there. But also flexibility on cloud selection. So it's not a one cloud rules the world but, if the one cloud (mumbles) serve the workload. The workloads are driving it. Do you agree with that, are you seeing the same thing? Yeah, I think what's important to financial services clients is to be able to have skill and reliability. And they've started on this journey first with standardization and that standardization was offered by (rambles) containerization. So they already started taking their legacy workloads and started containerizing them so that they can actually now put them no matter where they want. And now, on top of that (rambles) and containerization availability, the services that Anthol springs, observability and security and a single control plane, is now, I think, an extension of the desire for standardization. Which brings the security and reliability across the board. >> Sounds like an operating system to me. Cloud operating system maybe? >> It is, yes. >> We talk about an operating-- >> Yes, yes. >> (rambling) clouds, its operating (rambling) clouds. >> No, it used to be Unix was the operating system, Anthos is the operating system of the Cloud. >> What's the disruption conversation like? Cause banking really hasn't been highly disrupted, but I've certainly heard CIO's in the banking world ask the question, "Well, do banks need physical bags?" and "We're becoming "a software company". But the industry itself hasn't been highly disrupted. The leaders are still really strong, lots of disruption scenarios but, is there a paranoia? Is there, they're obviously aggressive people, are they getting out ahead of the disruption? What's that like? >> Financial services is an industry that's been slow to move to the Cloud in many ways cause it is a very heavily regulated industry, it's got a lot of legacy. But disruption happened, right? FinTex have started happening everywhere. It's a reality of today. I don't think it's whether disruption is going to come, it's here. And I think it's actually creating a very healthy environment in the financial services sector because initially I think that financial services firms were saying, "Wait a minute, I need to "stay competitive." Then it turned into, "Wait a minute, maybe we can be collaborative." So now we're seeing the big players collaborating more and more for FinTex, and now we're seeing a lot more open systems where we've got open banking, open API's, where we're seeing a very healthy ecosystem being created in financial services. >> So I was going to ask you, do you think traditional banks will lose control of the payment systems, or do you feel like this new mindset is going to allow them to maintain their hold on that? >> I don't have a crystal ball, but I think it's going to be more of a collaboration. I think there's going to be more players, I think there's going to be healthy competition and also healthy collaboration across board. >> You mentioned blockchain before. We've had Nick Cucuru from Mastercard on many times. He's talked about their blockchain initiatives. But the other thing that's interesting is, they're actually, as they said, becoming a software company, providing services and becoming more marketing oriented, not just to consumers, but to other businesses. It's fascinating changes. >> One thing that I wanted to ask you is that you mentioned earlier ecosystems open, more collaborative, which we agree. We see that a hundred percent as well. But the interesting dynamic of these big financial institutions is they've had a huge build-out on data centers over the years. Just go back a couple decades, all they've been is gearing up and building out. And now in comes the Cloud, they're not going to just let that on-prem go away, I get that. But now you got new white spaces emerging with Cloud. What Cloud is operating in is not so much knock the big guys off their perch, it's more of white space opportunities for point solutions that could be funded and grow by just being creative. Whether its slinging API's together, or using glue layer software, or some sort of connective tissue around data. >> Yes. >> How does that evolve? Cause New York's got a new renaissance around its entrepreneur ecosystem. >> Yes, New York's becoming the next home of FinTex. >> What are these white space opportunities? Do you see that either service providers, either global service providers, or ecosystem partners could take advantage of. Cause white space is where the opportunities are that's where the ecosystem will develop. Your thoughts? >> So I think you're absolutely right. I think as financial services providers are using Cloud to be able to bring their cost down and handle their legacy, now they have more resources than they can use to create new products, new solutions, new opportunities to be able to reach maybe different kinds of clients that they haven't considered in the past or weren't able to address. Because I think it's all about using their data. Whether its data about their customers to be able to create new products for those customers. Or using market data, I mentioned market data, cause financial services has always been a very data heavy industry looking at the market data to create new trading opportunities, to create new portfolios to understand how the market behaves. What are the correlation differences between different instruments. All of those capabilities, now they can build on Google Cloud with our Cloud partners as well. >> I want to get your thoughts on (rambles) an interview with Apache earlier. Mitt Zavy came on, he's new to the company, only a couple months in, but clearly Apache is going to be a real interesting opportunity because API marketplace is going to evolve from just connecting API (rambles), it'll be much more programmable. This is going to be a big part of it. How do you see that playing into your role, because you're brokering API's now, you're adding more codability to it. Coding API's is now the next level up. What's your thoughts on that? >> Exactly, API is becoming the connective tissue between all the players and the financial services market. I mean, that's how you create the ecosystem. You need a language to talk to each other. And the API's are the ones that are creating that language. And I think it's helping in two ways. One, it is creating this universal language for the providers, and the consumers, and the different players to talk to each other. It is also enabling financial institutions now to expose some of their Legacy systems without having to completely re-engineer them. But to put a veneer on it, containerize them, put an API layer on them so that they can actually be agile in this new world without having to rewrite everything. >> And the business model opportunities or having new business models are emerging from this. We saw AccuWeather came on, was talking about this. This is potentially a money-making opportunity. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. >> We're not just (mumbling) partners. >> Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. >> What are some of the harder technical problems that maybe ten years ago were unsolvable that you've helped customers solve, or that Google is in a best position to solve that you're working on? >> When you think about Google's differentiators one of the places is data analytics NAI. As we talked about it, financial services is a very data heavy business, but unfortunately the data had been sitting in different silos for a very, very long time. And Google's data analytics tools to be able to take all of that data, put it together, and then put that data in front of business people that doesn't necessarily have to have a computer science degree. And to be able to get insights from that data is creating a massive shift in the market. And of course the next stage from that is using our AI and email capabilities to create new insights from that data. At Google we've been using ML and machine learning and I've been embedding them into our products for a very long time. And now our focus is to be able to make it as easy for our customers to do the same in their systems. Everything from how you source that data, how you process that data, and then how do you build the models, how do you train them, how do you execute them and how do you create control over those models? And those are the places that are very attractive to financial services because as you've rightly said, it is a data business and it's important to the core of their business. >> One of the things I want to get your thoughts on. This may or may not be in your wheelhouse, but given your experience I think you might have a comment on this because technology's a big part of the shift. Culture is a big part of the shift. In terms of either mindset, whether its not an age thing, it's more of a mindset thing. But one of the things we're seeing from customers telling us that slowing down adoption on the innovation curve is procurement, and that a lot of these companies have 1995 procurement rules. That's client server, that was before the web started. So procurement, how do you procure a modern Apache API marketplace programmability (rambles) infrastructure's code completely different application renaissance is happening. So you got modern application, multi-cloud, hyper-cloud. There's no rules on procurement. There's no, "Well, split the deal amongst three vendors." You can't do that anymore. Google's great for this Cloud, why even look another cloud, or Amazon. Or Amazon for this, Google for that. So procurement has lagged. >> Yes. >> And so does that get in the way? Do you (rambles) into that? Just generally, what's your comment? How does your procurement evolve? >> I think especially in financial services like procurement takes a long time. In some cases rightly so because you got to make sure you have the right security, you got the right processing in place. But I think it's probably time for us to modernize our procurement processes as well. >> Make it faster. I mean, a lot of the times its on the customer too, not just you guys. Self-services changed the game, certainly. But even just the procurement rules. Well, we're running out of time. Thanks for coming out, I appreciate the insights. >> Great interview. >> Final question. What is the biggest learnings of the past couple of years, now you're starting to see complete visibility into programmability networking layer. Now you get (rambling) service, (rambling) right around the corner. What's the big revelation in your mind of where we are? >> Well, I think, especially for financial services, we've been on this journey for a while. I think the conversation has shifted, I think that was the very first question that you have asked. And I think we are now at the place where it's no longer just experimentation or just doing proof release systems. We now have the customers that are doing mission critical, global systems on Google Cloud. HSBC has been on us with the stage, Scotia Bank, (mumbles), some of the biggest customers. So what have we learned from that experience? I think one, you got to start. You got to start getting your hands dirty. Because it is a different paradigm and it does take a while to learn that. And it is not just a technical paradigm shift, it is a cultural paradigm shift. If you don't start early, its going to take you a while to bring the entire organization with you. Start the technology early, start the cultural transformation early as well. >> Ulku, thank you for come sharing the insights. Congratulations, good work. Financial service, it's a tough business. You guys do a good job, thanks. >> Thank you very much, thanks for having me. >> Live Cube Coach here in San Francisco. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. Stay tuned for more live coverage after the short break. Day three, of Three Days of Wall to Wall Coverage here on The Cube in San Francisco, stay with us.

>> fly from San Francisco. It's the Cube covering Google Club next nineteen Tio by Google Cloud and its ecosystem partners. >> Hey, welcome back. Everyone live here in San Francisco, California is the cubes coverage of Google Cloud Next twenty nineteen star Third day of three days of wall to wall coverage. John for a maiko stupid demon devil on things out around the floor. Getting stories, getting scoops. Of course, we're here with Sadeer has Bay. Who's the director of product management? Google Cloud. So great to see you again. Go on Back on last year, I'LL see Big Query was a big product that we love. We thought the fifty many times about database with geek out on the databases. But it's not just about the databases. We talked about this yesterday, all morning on our kickoff. There is going to be database explosion everywhere. Okay, it's not. There's no one database anymore. It's a lot of databases, so that means data in whatever database format document relational, Unstructured. What you want to call it is gonna be coming into analytical tools. Yes, this's really important. It's also complex. Yeah, these be made easier. You guys have made their seers announcements Let's get to the hard news. What's the big news from your group around Big Queria Mail Auto ml Some of the news share >> the news. Perfect, I think not. Just databases are growing, but also applications. There's an explosion off different applications. Every organization is using hundreds of them, right from sales force to work today. So many of them, and so having a centralized place where you can bring all the data together, analyze it and make decisions. It's critical. So in that realm to break the data silos, we have announced a few important things that they went. One is clouded effusion, making it easy for customers to bring in data from different sources on Prum Ices in Cloud so that you can go out and as you bring the data and transform and visually just go out and move the data into Big query for for analysis, the whole idea is the board and have Dragon drop called free environment for customers to easily bring daytime. So we have, like, you know, a lot of customers, just bringing in all the data from their compromise. The system's oracle, my sequel whatever and then moving that into into big Query as they analyze. So that's one big thing. Super excited about it. A lot of attraction, lot of good feedback from our customers that they went. The second thing is Big Query, which is our Cloud Skill Data warehouse. We have customers from few terabytes to hundreds of terabytes with it. Way also have an inline experience for customers, like a data analyst who want to analyze data, Let's say from sales force work, they are from some other tools like that if you want to do that. Three. I have made hundred less connectors to all these different sense applications available to our partners. Like five Grand Super Metrics in Macquarie five four Barrel Box out of the box for two five clicks, >> you'LL be able to cloud but not above, but I guess that's afraid. But it's important. Connectors. Integration points are critical table stakes. Now you guys are making that a table stakes, not an ad on service the paid. You >> just basically go in and do five clicks. You can get the data, and you can use one of the partners connectors for making all the decisions. And also that's there. and we also announced Migration Service to migrate from candidate that shift those things. So just making it easy to get data into recipe so that you can unlock the value of the data is the first thing >> this has become the big story here. From the Cube standpoint on DH student, I've been talking about day all week. Data migration has been a pain in the butt, and it's critical linchpin that some say it could be the tell sign of how well Google Cloud will do in the Enterprise because it's not an easy solution. It's not just, oh, just move stuff over And the prizes have unique requirements. There's all kinds of governance, all kinds of weird deal things going on. So how are you guys making it easy? I guess that's the question. How you gonna make migrating in good for the enterprise? >> I think the one thing I'll tell you just before I had a customer tell me one pain. You have the best highways, but you're on grams to the highway. Is that a challenge? Can you pick that on? I'm like here are afraid. Analogy. Yeah, it's great. And so last year or so we have been focused on making the migration really easy for customers. We know a lot of customers want to move to cloud. And as they moved to cloud, we want to make sure that it's easy drag, drop, click and go for migration. So we're making that >> holding the on ramps basically get to get the data in the big challenge. What's the big learnings? What's the big accomplishment? >> I think the biggest thing has Bean in past. People have to write a lot ofthe court to go ahead and do these kind of activities. Now it is becoming Click and go, make it really cold free environment for customers. Make it highly reliable. And so that's one area. But that's just the first part of the process, right? What customers want is not just to get data into cloud into the query. They want to go out and get a lot of value out off it. And within that context, what we have done is way made some announcements and, uh, in the in that area. One big thing is the B I engine, because he'd be a engine. It's basically an acceleration on top of the query you get, like subsequently, agency response times for interactive dash boarding, interactive now reporting. So that's their butt in with that. What we're also announced is connected sheets, so connected sheets is basically going to give you spreadsheet experience on top ofthe big credit data sets. You can analyze two hundred ten billion rose off data and macquarie directly with drag drop weakened upriver tables again. Do visualizations customers love spreadsheets in general? >> Yeah, City area. I'm glad you brought it out. We run a lot of our business on sheep's way of so many of the pieces there and write if those the highways, we're using our data. You know what's the first step out of the starts? What are some of the big use cases that you see with that? >> So I think Andy, she is a good example of so air. Isha has a lot of their users operational users. You needed to have access to data on DH, so they basically first challenge was they really have ah subsequently agency so that they can actually do interact with access to the data and also be an engine is helping with that. They used their story on top. Off half now Big Quit it, Gordon. Make it accessible. Be engine will vote with all the other partner tooling too. But on the other side, they also needed to have spread sheet like really complex analysis of the business that they can improve operation. Last year we announced they have saved almost five to ten percent on operational costs, and in the airline, that's pretty massive. So basically they were able to go out and use our connective sheets experience. They have bean early Alfa customer to go out and use it to go in and analyse the business, optimize it and also so that's what customers are able to do with connected sheets. Take massive amounts of data off the business and analyze it and make better. How >> do we use that? So, for a cost, pretend way want to be a customer? We have so many tweets and data points from our media. I think fifty million people are in our kind of Twitter network that we've thought indexed over the years I tried to download on the C S V. It's horrible. So we use sheets, but also this They've had limitations on the han that client. So do we just go to Big Query? How would we work >> that you can use data fusion with you? Clicks move later into Big Query wants you now have it in big query in sheets. You will have an option from data connectors Macquarie. And once you go there, if you're in extended al far, you should get infection. Alfa. And then when you click on that, it will allow you to pick any table in bickering. And once you link the sheets to be query table, it's literally the spreadsheet is a >> run in >> front and got through the whole big query. So when you're doing a favour tables when you're saying Hey, aggregate, by this and all, it actually is internally calling big credit to do those activities. So you remove the barrier off doing something in the in the presentation layer and move that to the engine that actually can do the lot skill. >> Is this shipping? Now you mention it. Extended beta. What's the product? >> It's an extended out far for connected sheets. Okay, so it's like we're working with few customers early on board and >> make sure guys doing lighthouse accounts classic classic Early. >> If customers are already G sweet customer, we would love to get get >> more criteria on the connected sheets of Alfa sending bait after Now What's what's the criteria? >> I think nothing. If customers are ready to go ahead and give us feedback, that's what we care of. Okay, so you want to start with, like, twenty twenty five customers and then expanded over this year and expand it, >> maybe making available to people watching. Let us let us know what the hell what do they go? >> Throw it to me and then I can go with that. Folks, >> sit here. One of the other announcements saw this week I'm curious. How it connects into your pieces is a lot of the open source databases and Google offering those service maybe even expand as because we know, as John said in the open there, the proliferation of databases is only gonna increase. >> I think open source way announced lot of partnerships on the databases. Customers need different types of operational databases on. This is a great, great opportunity for us to partner with some of our partners and providing that, and it's not just data basis. We also announced announced Partnership with Confident. I've been working with the confident team for last one place here, working on the relationship, making sure our customers haven't. I believe customers should always have choice. And we have our native service with Cloud pops up. A lot of customers liked after they're familiar with CAFTA. So with our relationship with Khan fluent and what we announced now, customers will get native experience with CAFTA on Jessie P. I'm looking forward to that, making sure our customers are happy and especially in the streaming analytic space where you can get real time streams of data you want to be, Oh, directly analytics on top of it. That is a really high value add for us, So that's great. And so so that's the That's what I'm looking forward to his customers being able to go out and use all of these open source databases as well as messaging systems to go ahead and and do newer scenarios for with us. >> Okay, so you got big Big query. ML was announced in G. A big query also has auto support Auto ml tables. What does that mean? What's going what's going on today? >> So we announced aquarium L at Kew Blast next invader. So we're going Ta be that because PML is basically a sequel interface to creating machine learning models at scale. So if you have all your data and query, you can write two lines ofthe sequel and go ahead and create a model tow with, Let's say, clustering. We announced plastering. Now we announced Matrix factory ization. One great example I will give you is booking dot com booking dot com, one of the largest travel portals in the in the world. They have a challenge where all the hotel rooms have different kinds off criteria which says they have a TV. I have a ll the different things available and their problem was data quality. There was a lot of challenges with the quality of data they were getting. They were able to use clustering algorithm in sequel in Macquarie so that they could say, Hey, what are the anomalies in this data? Sets and identify their hotel rooms. That would say I'm a satellite TV, but no TV available. So those claims direct Lansing stuff. They were easily able to do with a data analyst sequel experience so that's that. >> That's a great example of automation. Yeah, humans would have to come in, clean the data that manually and or write scripts, >> so that's there. But on the other side, we also have, Ah, amazing technology in Auto Emma. So we had our primal table are normal vision off thermal available for customers to use on different technologies. But we realized a lot of problems in enterprise. Customers are structured data problems, So I have attained equerry. I want to be able to go in and use the same technology like neural networks. It will create models on top of that data. So with auto Emel tables, what we're enabling is customers can literally go in auto Emel Table Portal say, Here is a big query table. I want to be able to go out and create a model on. Here is the column that I want to predict from. Based on that data, and just three click a button will create an automated the best model possible. You'LL get really high accuracy with it, and then you will be able to go out and do predictions through an FBI or U can do bulk predictions out and started back into Aquarian also. So that's the whole thing when making machine learning accessible to everyone in the organization. That's our goal on with that, with a better product to exactly it should be in built into the product. >> So we know you've got a lot of great tech. But you also talk to a lot of customers. Wonder if you might have any good, you know, one example toe to really highlight. Thie updates that you >> think booking dot com is a good example. Our scent. Twentieth Century Fox last year shared their experience off how they could do segmentation of customers and target customers based on their past movies, that they're watched and now they could go out and protect. We have customers like News UK. They're doing subscription prediction like which customers are more likely to subscribe to their newspapers. Which ones are trying may turn out s o those He examples off how machine learning is helping customers like basically to go out and target better customers and make better decisions. >> So, do you talk about the ecosystem? Because one of things we were riffing on yesterday and I was giving a monologue, Dave, about we had a little argument, but I was saying that the old way was a lot of people are seeing an opportunity to make more margin as a system integrated or global less I, for instance. So if you're in the ecosystem dealing with Google, there's a margin opportunity because you guys lower the cost and increase the capability on the analytic side. Mention streaming analytics. So there's a business model moneymaking opportunity for partners that have to be kind of figured out. >> I was the >> equation there. Can you share that? Because there's actually an opportunity, because if you don't spend a lot of time analyzing the content from the data, talk aboutthe >> money means that there's a huge opportunity that, like global system integrators, to come in and help our customers. I think the big challenges more than the margin, there is lot of value in data that customers can get out off. There's a lot of interesting insights, not a good decision making they can do, and a lot of customers do need help in ramping up and making sure they can get value out of that. And it's a great opportunity for our global Asai partners and I've been meeting a lot of them at the show to come in and help organizations accelerate the whole process off, getting insights from from their data, making better decisions, do no more machine learning, leverage all of that. And I think there is a huge opportunity for them to come in. Help accelerate. What's the >> play about what some other low hanging fruit opportunities I'LL see that on ramping or the data ingestion is one >> one loving fruit? Yes, I think no hanging is just moving migration. Earlier, he said. Break the data silos. Get the data into DCP. There's a huge opportunity for customers to be like, you know, get a lot of value. By that migration is a huge opportunity. A lot of customers want to move to cloud, then they don't want to invest more and more and infrastructure on them so that they can begin level Is the benefits off loud? And I think helping customers my great migrations is going to be a huge Obviously, we actually announced the migration program also like a weak back also way. We will give training credits to our customers. We will fund some of the initial input, initial investment and migration activities without a side partners and all, so that that should help there. So I think that's one area. And the second area, I would say, is once the data is in the platform getting value out ofit with aquarium in auto ml, how do you help us? It must be done. I think that would be a huge opportunity. >> So you feel good too, dear. But, you know, build an ecosystem. Yeah. You feel good about that? >> Yeah, way feel very strongly about our technology partners, which are like folks like looker like tableau like, uh, talent confluence, tri factor for data prep All of those that partner ecosystem is there great and also the side partner ecosystem but for delivery so that we can provide great service to our customers >> will be given good logos on that slide. I got to say, Try facts and all the other ones were pretty good etcetera. Okay, so what's the top story for you in the show here, besides your crew out on the date aside for your area was a top story. And then generally, in your opinion, what's the most important story here in Google Cloud next. >> I think two things in general. The biggest news, I think, is open source partnership that we have announced. I'm looking forward to that. It's a great thing. It's a good thing both for the organizations as well as us on DH. Then generally, you'LL see lot off examples of enterprise customers betting on us from HSBC ends at bank that was there with mean in the session. They talked about how they're getting value out ofthe outof our data platform in general, it's amazing to see a lot more enterprises adopting and coming here telling their stories, sharing it with force. >> Okay, thanks so much for joining us. Look, you appreciate it. Good to see you again. Congratulations. Perfect fusion ingesting on ramps into the into the superhighway of Big Query Big engine. They're they're large scale data. Whereas I'm Jeffers dipping them in. We'LL stay with you for more coverage after this short break

>> fly from San Francisco. It's the Cube covering Google Club next nineteen, right Tio by Google Cloud and its ecosystem partners. >> Okay, welcome back, everyone. We are here live in San Francisco for cubes. Coverage of Google next twenty nineteen. Hashtag Google. Next nineteen, Google's Cloud Conference, where their customers, developers all come together Cubes. Three days of coverage. Day one. I'm John forward, my Coast, Dave Aloft as well. Astute many men Who's out there doing some reporter? Next guess Allison. Wagon filled is the CMO of Google Cloud. Great to see you. Thanks for joining us. >> Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here, >> so I got to say, looking out on the floor here, we're in the middle of the floor. Great demographics. A lot of developers, lot of enterprise customers. A lot of you know, sea levels will also enterprise architects and cloud architects. So this is not just a developer fest. This is a business developer conference. >> Yes. So that's been a real change this year. Not only have we increase the numbers I think I mentioned earlier that we have thirty thousand people are actually able even more than that. We had a cap registration we sold out last week. But the composition is different this year because this year we have over seventy percent from enterprise companies and then within enterprise Cos it's Dev's decision makers, business leaders. And then we have a whole executive track of leader Circle program as well. So it's been a really great mix of different energy, different questions in different sessions. >> You guys do a great job in event kudos to the team original Google Io was a great event that continues to be the consumer side on Google. You guys have that same kind of grew swing going on a lot of sessions. Take him in to explain the theme of the show. What's going on around the events? Breakouts? What's the focus? >> Yes, so the focus? Well, there's a theme and a couple different levels. The broad theme is a cloud like no other, because we've introduced a lot of new, different features and products and programs. We introduced Antos this morning, which was really revolutionary way of using containers broadly multi cloud, high but cloud. So it's from a product standpoint, but it's also a cloud like no other, because it's about the community that's here, and it's truly a partnership with our customers and our partners about building this cloud together, and we see the community as a really key part of that. It's really corta Google's values around openness, open source technology and really embracing the broader community to build the cloud together. >> And I thought was interesting. The Kino was phenomenal. You had the CEO of Google come out Sundar Pichai and the new CEO on the job for ten weeks. T K >> Sommers. Korean. Yes. Lot of action >> going on a Google right now. >> Yeah, it's been great to have Thomas. Diane was phenomenal and building the business. It's wonderful. Have Sundar here. He's got a lot of commitment, really engaged with our customers. And so it's a lot of energy and a lot of excitement. A Google. >> I thought the vory class act of Thomas Curry and his first words on stage at the CEO was to give props. The Diane Green very, very respected, that was >> great, was very gracious of, Thomas >> said. Sorry, he said. The press, sir, that one of things I really like about Google is not afraid of hard problems, So I wanted to ask you a CMO I always asked the most about brand promise. What's the brand promise? That you want customers and the community to take away from an event like this? >> So the brand promise has a couple different areas. First and foremost, we want our customers to be successful with their customers. And so we think, really holistically about lessons. Make sure that we're delivering the cloud technologies so that customers can really serve everyone that they want to serve, whether it be a retailer that wants to create a wonderful, offline and online experience, whether it's a health care provider that wants to ensure that every doctor, it knows all of the right data about all the patients or within a hospital. And so that's the way we're always thinking is how do we ensure that we help our customers set up to be successful? >> So one of the big teams we heard this morning was the industry focus, and you just referenced that again. It seems to be an increasingly important part of the messaging and the technologies that you're creating, and it ties into digital transformation. You seeing every industry transform data is at the heart of that transformation. You're seeing big companies traverse different industries. So what if you could talk about the industry focus? Uh, where'd that come from? Where do you see it going? >> Yes, So there's really three core parts of what we've been talking about today. First and foremost is the infrastructure and ensuring that we have the world's best infrastructure. Then, on top of that, it's ensuring that we have all the right applications to help with digital transformation. And then, as part of that further, is the industry solutions. Because in our six focus industries, we want to make sure that we're really developing the right applications with the right solutions and half a deep expertise that companies are looking for so that we can really part with partner with them and really, truly be innovative. And we could feel much more comfortable being innovative. But we really understand our customer problems >> keep Part of that is the global s eyes. You look out here, you see all the big names I won't name because I'll forget one. But there's two obvious ones right there because once you start to see those guys come into the ecosystem, that's when you can partner and get really deep industry expertise globally, >> I agree. And so we do have a great partnerships that said here with Accenture in tow, Lloyd and Antos or three of them, many more that we were working really closely with. And there really are an extension of what we want to build because we know that we will not be able Teo create every single last mile industry solution and every single industry, and working with those companies really helps us. >> I was on the plane last night watching the game. Of course, I love you guys got to see it. You're probably appear busy, but I focused. Google was all over the this year, >> so this is our second year of our partnership with the law, and it's been great. There's a couple dimensions to that partnership. First and foremost, we help them analyze eighty years worth of data. And through all of that analysis, we've been working with him about making predictions about games in helping them understand players and coaches and teams better. Everything from creating brackets. Teo, how do you fan experience? And then as part of that, we also had opportunity to do some advertising within their games. So you may have seen some of the TV spots that we did, which was about analyzing that data. We put ourselves on the line by making predictions during the game about what we thought would happen based on all of our analysis. And then the Big Chef this year was we included students, so it was really studies. Last year we created all these models, but we did it within Google. We had Google, Debs and Google engineers creating prediction models. We said, like, What if we brought students in tow? Help us? So we recruited thirty or so all star students around the country from their schools, brought them together. They learned DCP like that. It was awesome. And then they started working together doing predictions. And so a lot of what you saw in the Games and on our hub was actually students using Google Claude platform to make predictions about the games. >> So just get this right. The reference on stage by T K students. So you had data from the that was exposed to the students. They had a hackathon. How much lead time that they have? What was that >> did everything with thirty days. So they hack it on was about two months ago or so. But within the last thirty days, they did all of these different projects and they were actually doing really creative things about trying to come up with new types of stats like explosiveness. What does that mean? Does that mean that you move in closer to the basket or does it mean that here they're coming up, the stats around pace of game and different elements of the place? It was really fun. >> How many slam dunk this, Miss Fowles? So >> question, Who do you who you're rooting for? I was >> writing from Virginia. You know, Let's say I >> was right for >> Virginia after my bracket got busted, so I was allowed to kind of change a little bit. And they're Michigan. Once they were gone, I was like, >> So I use no way. I but I hit ninety ninth percentile. So you go. I had Michigan in Michigan State rather in Virginia in my Final Four for Michigan State. Lost, but still, I would have been >> That's pretty good >> night, point nine. So what is with what kind of predictions were the students doing well, >> predictions about everything from, well, last night we had some predictions about the number two point last. We had about how many different times we're going to exchange like the ball will go back and forth between teams. We had predictions about three pointers and one game everything. So it's been really fun. Teo work with >> that kind of in game predictions. To see that a lot. >> You probably saw some stats real >> probability of, ah, victory, which of course, last night. Forget it. I mean, it's changed so quickly. >> Great program. One of those I want to ask you change gears is you have a book in the press room called customer Voices. So this has been a focus, and I think a lot of people have been Lego Google's great tact, but not a lot of customers, which you guys air debunking with. Not only this, but here to show shown the logo slide really kind of showing the traction from a customer's standpoint. >> Yes, about >> the focus on the customer. How does that change? How you doing your job? How is the tech rolling out? Can you share some insight into customer focused. >> Yeah, this has been a really big step change this year. We have over four hundred customers speaking throughout this event, and then we have a number of them that are on stage in the keynotes telling real stories. Two years ago, we had some customers speaking and they would say, I'm looking. I'm dabbling and this But now they're making rial kind of bet The company decisions using our technology. And so this customer voices is looking at those companies. We have something called the customer innovation serious this afternoon, where the CIA of HSBC will be talking about their evolution and Gogo Cloud. Two years ago, Darrell West was on stage talking about just kind of what they will be getting. Two Dio with Google Cloud Platform And now here we are two years later, when they've made a lot of progress and we'LL be sharing their stories that the custom innovation Siri's is one of my favorite parts. It next, >> you know, we cover a lot of events. David eyes were like two ESPN of tech or game day. We've gotten the shows, we see a lot of events and you kind of hear the key words over and over again. Soon these events here we're hearing scale, which we've heard all the time. Google scales, scales, scales solve all our problems. But we're hearing more about customers. OK, this has been a big focus. How have you guys shifted internally? Because this seems to been around for a while. Like you said, I think it's a step function from what we're seeing as well. What's going on internally. How you guys mobilizing, How you guys taking this to the mark? Because you've got great partition. So Cisco onstage VM wears even up there. You got an ecosystem developing a lot of momentum. >> So we're truly this year Enterprise ready to use a buzz word that comes up. So two years ago, we still had some holes in some of our technology stack, and we're still really building to go to market teams. We still vastly scaling that so absolutely growing there. But we're in a whole different place as a business where we are able to serve really large enterprises at scale. McKesson just announced sixth largest company that they are moving and working with us a Google cloud. I mean, so these air major companies that are making big decisions to work with us. And so it's at a whole different level this year, and we're really proud that the customers have chosen to work with us, and we're building the organization to ensure that their successful. So that's our customer success program. That's ensuring we have the right kind of customer engineers working hand in hand with our customers. So it's a big focus ever. Whole group. It's a focus where Thomas Kurian has a lot of background serving enterprise customers at Oracle for twenty years, bringing that expertise. So you'LL see that everywhere. So I'm glad you picked up on that and feel it because it's really permeates everything we're doing at Google clouds, >> and it's been a good, positive change. The results of their What's the focus for you As you look forward, It's a lot to do. You guys are a great opportunity. I always say Google's dark horse now Samson's got a good lead out there being first in, but you guys have a lot of tech. You got the customer focus. You got a lot of momentum on the tech side. Cloud native Open source. Partner ecosystem Developing customer ecosystem. So kind of ball's in your court, so to speak. >> You feel really well, position we It's early. So in the whole market, people seem to think that I like all these decisions, but it's really still eighty percent of workload Zoran data centers of these big enterprises, everybody who's here with us right now. And most companies were choosing a multi club strategy this morning. We announced a major product and those that really enables the multi cloud strategy so enables Google to really be at the center of that multi cloud and provide the services using containers and a lot of the biggest best advances right now. And so as we scale our go to market, we can really bring this technology that way here, over and over again, is the best technology in the business. Yeah, we had it really had to go to market in place to bring it to customers. And this is really where we're taking it so we can help get this awesome technology. It's so fun is a marketer to them, bring it to everybody. >> I always say it so early. The wave is just getting started more ways behind it. I'm very impressed. That intrigue also by the rebranding of the Google Cloud platform what you guys announced last kind of hybrid and those is interesting because it's a rebrand slash new set of integration points Sisco again on stage kind of integrating with your container platform is a key key story that I think is nuanced but kind of points to a whole new Google. What was behind the rebranding? Can you just share some insight that what the commerce she's like Google Cloud Platforms is descriptive. But I mean, >> sister, thanks >> Cloud Services platform when we chose that name last year is when we wanted to Alfa with a product and frankly, within the marketing team, he kind of knew was always a placeholder name. And then the debate was, What do we change the name when you go to Beta, which we did a couple months ago? Or when we go to went to Gaea and we decided this would be a great opportunity to change the name, so we always knew it was going to change the name. Picking a name is always complicated, and so we spent a lot of time thinking about what way wanted that name too mean and what we wanted to stand for. And we really liked Anthros. It's a Greek word. It is a nod to the Greek aspects of the history of the product. With Cooper, Netease, Andhis, Teo and other areas. It means the blossom it means to grow. It means all. And so you many words like Anthology and things like that. So we'd liked both what it meant, And we also liked that with all Namie decisions, it's easy to spell. It's easy to find. It's all great, >> and it's super >> booming in California. Here as we speak. Well, ironic. >> It has an international flavor to it. But you guys, you guys are taking this show overseas, right? They've got a big show in London in November, I know and yes, >> be in Tokyo in July at next and then London in November. And then we do it between all of these. What we call Clouds Summit Siri's, which are in country slightly smaller. But we bring a lot of the same technology, and speakers and sessions just have a slightly scaled down version. >> Intimate. We really appreciate your support. We love doing the Cube hearing a lot of Czech athletes, as we say here on the show floor. Lot of knowledge, good customer converses. Alison's Thanks for sharing the inside congratulates on the great >> show, so I left be here. Thanks >> for rebranding as the market shifts. Great time to have a rebrand, certainly when it means something more. Multi cloud hybrid cloud Google Cloud Platform now and those that cube bring you live coverage here from the floor at Google next twenty nineteen. Stay with us for more after this short break.