>> We're back at the ARIA Las Vegas. We're covering CrowdStrike's Fal.Con 22. First one since 2019. Dave Vellante and Dave Nicholson on theCUBE. Adam Meyers is here, he is the Senior Vice President of Intelligence at CrowdStrike. Adam, thanks for coming to theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me. >> Interesting times, isn't it? You're very welcome. Senior Vice President of Intelligence, tell us what your role is. >> So I run all of our intelligence offerings. All of our analysts, we have a couple hundred analysts that work at CrowdStrike tracking threat actors. There's 185 threat actors that we track today. We're constantly adding more of them and it requires us to really have that visibility and understand how they operate so that we can inform our other products: our XDR, our Cloud Workload Protections and really integrate all of this around the threat actor. >> So it's that threat hunting capability that CrowdStrike has. That's what you're sort of... >> Well, so think of it this way. When we launched the company 11 years ago yesterday, what we wanted to do was to tell customers, to tell people that, well, you don't have a malware problem, you have an adversary problem. There are humans that are out there conducting these attacks, and if you know who they are what they're up to, how they operate then you're better positioned to defend against them. And so that's really at the core, what CrowdStrike started with and all of our products are powered by intelligence. All of our services are our OverWatch and our Falcon complete, all powered by intelligence because we want to know who the threat actors are and what they're doing so we can stop them. >> So for instance like you can stop known malware. A lot of companies can stop known malware, but you also can stop unknown malware. And I infer that the intelligence is part of that equation, is that right? >> Absolutely. That that's the outcome. That's the output of the intelligence but I could also tell you who these threat actors are, where they're operating out of, show you pictures of some of them, that's the threat intel. We are tracking down to the individual persona in many cases, these various threats whether they be Chinese nation state, Russian threat actors, Iran, North Korea, we track as I said, quite a few of these threats. And over time, we develop a really robust deep knowledge about who they are and how they operate. >> Okay. And we're going to get into some of that, the big four and cyber. But before we do, I want to ask you about the eCrime index stats, the ECX you guys call it a little side joke for all your nerds out there. Maybe you could explain that Adam >> Assembly humor. >> Yeah right, right. So, but, what is that index? You guys, how often do you publish it? What are you learning from that? >> Yeah, so it was modeled off of the Dow Jones industrial average. So if you look at the Dow Jones it's a composite index that was started in the late 1800s. And they took a couple of different companies that were the industrial component of the economy back then, right. Textiles and railroads and coal and steel and things like that. And they use that to approximate the overall health of the economy. So if you take these different stocks together, swizzle 'em together, and figure out some sort of number you could say, look, it's up. The economy's doing good. It's down, not doing so good. So after World War II, everybody was exuberant and positive about the end of the war. The DGI goes up, the oil crisis in the seventies goes down, COVID hits goes up, sorry, goes down. And then everybody realizes that they can use Amazon still and they can still get the things they need goes back up with the eCrime index. We took that approach to say what is the health of the underground economy? When you read about any of these ransomware attacks or data extortion attacks there are criminal groups that are working together in order to get things spammed out or to buy credentials and things like that. And so what the eCrime index does is it takes 24 different observables, right? The price of a ransom, the number of ransom attacks, the fluctuation in cryptocurrency, how much stolen material is being sold for on the underground. And we're constantly computing this number to understand is the eCrime ecosystem healthy? Is it thriving or is it under pressure? And that lets us understand what's going on in the world and kind of contextualize it. Give an example, Microsoft on patch Tuesday releases 56 vulnerabilities. 11 of them are critical. Well guess what? After hack Tuesday. So after patch Tuesday is hack Wednesday. And so all of those 11 vulnerabilities are exploitable. And now you have threat actors that have a whole new array of weapons that they can deploy and bring to bear against their victims after that patch Tuesday. So that's hack Wednesday. Conversely we'll get something like the colonial pipeline. Colonial pipeline attack May of 21, I think it was, comes out and all of the various underground forums where these ransomware operators are doing their business. They freak out because they don't want law enforcement. President Biden is talking about them and he's putting pressure on them. They don't want this ransomware component of what they're doing to bring law enforcement, bring heat on them. So they deplatform them. They kick 'em off. And when they do that, the ransomware stops being as much of a factor at that point in time. And the eCrime index goes down. So we can look at holidays, and right around Thanksgiving, which is coming up pretty soon, it's going to go up because there's so much online commerce with cyber Monday and such, right? You're going to see this increase in online activity; eCrime actors want to take advantage of that. When Christmas comes, they take vacation too; they're going to spend time with their families, so it goes back down and it stays down till around the end of the Russian Orthodox Christmas, which you can probably extrapolate why that is. And then it goes back up. So as it's fluctuating, it gives us the ability to really just start tracking what that economy looks like. >> Realtime indicator of that crypto. >> I mean, you talked about, talked about hack Wednesday, and before that you mentioned, you know, the big four, and I think you said 185 threat actors that you're tracking, is 180, is number 185 on that list? Somebody living in their basement in their mom's basement or are the resources necessary to get on that list? Such that it's like, no, no, no, no. this is very, very organized, large groups of people. Hollywood would have you believe that it's guy with a laptop, hack Wednesday, (Dave Nicholson mimics keyboard clacking noises) and everything done. >> Right. >> Are there individuals who are doing things like that or are these typically very well organized? >> That's a great question. And I think it's an important one to ask and it's both it tends to be more, the bigger groups. There are some one-off ones where it's one or two people. Sometimes they get big. Sometimes they get small. One of the big challenges. Have you heard of ransomware as a service? >> Of course. Oh my God. Any knucklehead can be a ransomwarist. >> Exactly. So we don't track those knuckleheads as much unless they get onto our radar somehow, they're conducting a lot of operations against our customers or something like that. But what we do track is that ransomware as a service platform because the affiliates, the people that are using it they come, they go and, you know, it could be they're only there for a period of time. Sometimes they move between different ransomware services, right? They'll use the one that's most useful for them that that week or that month, they're getting the best rate because it's rev sharing. They get a percentage that platform gets percentage of the ransom. So, you know, they negotiate a better deal. They might move to a different ransomware platform. So that's really hard to track. And it's also, you know, I think more important for us to understand the platform and the technology that is being used than the individual that's doing it. >> Yeah. Makes sense. Alright, let's talk about the big four. China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. Tell us about, you know, how you monitor these folks. Are there different signatures for each? Can you actually tell, you know based on the hack who's behind it? >> So yeah, it starts off, you know motivation is a huge factor. China conducts espionage, they do it for diplomatic purposes. They do it for military and political purposes. And they do it for economic espionage. All of these things map to known policies that they put out, the Five Year Plan, the Made in China 2025, the Belt and Road Initiative, it's all part of their efforts to become a regional and ultimately a global hegemon. >> They're not stealing nickels and dimes. >> No they're stealing intellectual property. They're stealing trade secrets. They're stealing negotiation points. When there's, you know a high speed rail or something like that. And they use a set of tools and they have a set of behaviors and they have a set of infrastructure and a set of targets that as we look at all of these things together we can derive who they are by motivation and the longer we observe them, the more data we get, the more we can get that attribution. I could tell you that there's X number of Chinese threat groups that we track under Panda, right? And they're associated with the Ministry of State Security. There's a whole other set. That's too associated with the People's Liberation Army Strategic Support Force. So, I mean, these are big operations. They're intelligence agencies that are operating out of China. Iran has a different set of targets. They have a different set of motives. They go after North American and Israeli businesses right now that's kind of their main operation. And they're doing something called hack and lock and leak. With a lock and leak, what they're doing is they're deploying ransomware. They don't care about getting a ransom payment. They're just doing it to disrupt the target. And then they're leaking information that they steal during that operation that brings embarrassment. It brings compliance, regulatory, legal impact for that particular entity. So it's disruptive >> The chaos creators that's.. >> Well, you know I think they're trying to create a they're trying to really impact the legitimacy of some of these targets and the trust that their customers and their partners and people have in them. And that is psychological warfare in a certain way. And it, you know is really part of their broader initiative. Look at some of the other things that they've done they've hacked into like the missile defense system in Israel, and they've turned on the sirens, right? Those are all things that they're doing for a specific purpose, and that's not China, right? Like as you start to look at this stuff, you can start to really understand what they're up to. Russia very much been busy targeting NATO and NATO countries and Ukraine. Obviously the conflict that started in February has been a huge focus for these threat actors. And then as we look at North Korea, totally different. They're doing, there was a major crypto attack today. They're going after these crypto platforms, they're going after DeFi platforms. They're going after all of this stuff that most people don't even understand and they're stealing the crypto currency and they're using it for revenue generation. These nuclear weapons don't pay for themselves, their research and development don't pay for themselves. And so they're using that cyber operation to either steal money or steal intelligence. >> They need the cash. Yeah. >> Yeah. And they also do economic targeting because Kim Jong Un had said back in 2016 that they need to improve the lives of North Koreans. They have this national economic development strategy. And that means that they need, you know, I think only 30% of North Korea has access to reliable power. So having access to clean energy sources and renewable energy sources, that's important to keep the people happy and stop them from rising up against the regime. So that's the type of economic espionage that they're conducting. >> Well, those are the big four. If there were big five or six, I would presume US and some Western European countries would be on there. Do you track, I mean, where United States obviously has you know, people that are capable of this we're out doing our thing, and- >> So I think- >> That defense or offense, where do we sit in this matrix? >> Well, I think the big five would probably include eCrime. We also track India, Pakistan. We track actors out of Columbia, out of Turkey, out of Syria. So there's a whole, you know this problem is getting worse over time. It's proliferating. And I think COVID was also, you know a driver there because so many of these countries couldn't move human assets around because everything was getting locked down. As machine learning and artificial intelligence and all of this makes its way into the cameras at border and transfer points, it's hard to get a human asset through there. And so cyber is a very attractive, cheap and deniable form of espionage and gives them operational capabilities, not, you know and to your question about US and other kind of five I friendly type countries we have not seen them targeting our customers. So we focus on the threats that target our customers. >> Right. >> And so, you know, if we were to find them at a customer environment sure. But you know, when you look at some of the public reporting that's out there, the malware that's associated with them is focused on, you know, real bad people, and it's, it's physically like crypted to their hard drive. So unless you have sensor on, you know, an Iranian or some other laptop that might be target or something like that. >> Well, like Stuxnet did. >> Yeah. >> Right so. >> You won't see it. Right. See, so yeah. >> Well Symantec saw it but way back when right? Back in the day. >> Well, I mean, if you want to go down that route I think it actually came from a company in the region that was doing the IR and they were working with Symantec. >> Oh, okay. So, okay. So it was a local >> Yeah. I think Crisis, I think was the company that first identified it. And then they worked with Symantec. >> It Was, they found it, I guess, a logic controller. I forget what it was. >> It was a long time ago, so I might not have that completely right. >> But it was a seminal moment in the industry. >> Oh. And it was a seminal moment for Iran because you know, that I think caused them to get into cyber operations. Right. When they realized that something like that could happen that bolstered, you know there was a lot of underground hacking forums in Iran. And, you know, after Stuxnet, we started seeing that those hackers were dropping their hacker names and they were starting businesses. They were starting to try to go after government contracts. And they were starting to build training offensive programs, things like that because, you know they realized that this is an opportunity there. >> Yeah. We were talking earlier about this with Shawn and, you know, in the nuclear war, you know the Cold War days, you had the mutually assured destruction. It's not as black and white in the cyber world. Right. Cause as, as Robert Gates told me, you know a few years ago, we have a lot more to lose. So we have to be somewhat, as the United States, careful as to how much of an offensive posture we take. >> Well here's a secret. So I have a background on political science. So mutually assured destruction, I think is a deterrent strategy where you have two kind of two, two entities that like they will destroy each other if they so they're disinclined to go down that route. >> Right. >> With cyber I really don't like that mutually assured destruction >> That doesn't fit right. >> I think it's deterrents by denial. Right? So raising the cost, if they were to conduct a cyber operation, raising that cost that they don't want to do it, they don't want to incur the impact of that. Right. And think about this in terms of a lot of people are asking about would China invade Taiwan. And so as you look at the cost that that would have on the Chinese military, the POA, the POA Navy et cetera, you know, that's that deterrents by denial, trying to, trying to make the costs so high that they don't want to do it. And I think that's a better fit for cyber to try to figure out how can we raise the cost to the adversary if they operate against our customers against our enterprises and that they'll go someplace else and do something else. >> Well, that's a retaliatory strike, isn't it? I mean, is that what you're saying? >> No, definitely not. >> It's more of reducing their return on investment essentially. >> Yeah. >> And incenting them- disincening them to do X and sending them off somewhere else. >> Right. And threat actors, whether they be criminals or nation states, you know, Bruce Lee had this great quote that was "be like water", right? Like take the path of least resistance, like water will. Threat actors do that too. So, I mean, unless you're super high value target that they absolutely have to get into by any means necessary, then if you become too hard of a target, they're going to move on to somebody that's a little easier. >> Makes sense. Awesome. Really appreciate your, I could, we'd love to have you back. >> Anytime. >> Go deeper. Adam Myers. We're here at Fal.Con 22, Dave Vellante, Dave Nicholson. We'll be right back right after this short break. (bouncy music plays)

>>Okay, welcome back everyone to Supercloud 22, this is the cube studio's live performance. We streaming virtually@siliconangledotcomandthecube.net. I'm John for host the cube at Dave Alane with a distinguished panel talking about securing the Supercloud all cube alumni G written house was the CEO of Skyhigh security, Peter Sharma founder of, of QX sold to tenable and Tony qua who's investor. Co-founder former head of product at VMware chance. Thanks for coming on and to our, in all girls super cloud pilot event. >>Good to see you guys big topic. >>Okay. So before we get into secure in the cloud, one of the things that we were discussing before we came on camera was how cloud, the relationship between cloud and on premise and multi-cloud and how Supercloud fits into that. At the end of the day, security's driving a lot of the conversations at the op side and dev shift left is happening. We see that out there. So before we get into it, how do you guys see super cloud Tony? We'll start with you. We'll go down the line. What is Supercloud to you? >>Well, to me, super cloud is really the next evolution, the culmination of the services coming all together, right? As a application developer today, you really don't need to worry about where this thing is. Sit sitting or what's the latency cuz cuz the internet is fast enough. Now I really wanna know what services something provides. What, how do I get access to it now? Security. We'll talk about that later. That that becomes a, a big issue because of the fragmentation of how security is implemented across all the different vendors. So to me it's an IP address I program to it and you know, off we go, but there's a lot of >>You like that pipe happens >>Iceberg chart, right? Like I'm the developer touching the APIs up there. There's a bunch of other things. BU service. >>Okay. Looking forward again. Gee, what's your take? Obviously we've had many conversations on the cube. What's your super cloud update. >>Yeah, so I, I view it as just an extension of what we see today before like maybe 10 years ago we were mashing up applications built on other SAS applications and whatnot. Now we're just extending that down to further primitives, not, we don't really care where our mashup resides, what cloud platform, where it sits to Tony's point, as long as you have an IP address. But beyond that, we're just gonna start to get little micro services and deeper into the applications. >>BP, what should you take? >>I think, I think super cloud to me is something that don't don't exist. It exists only on my laptop. That's the super cloud means to me. I know it takes a lot behind the scene to get that working of and running. But, but essentially, essentially that the everything having be able to touch physically versus not being able to touch anything is super cloud to me. >>So we, what Victoria was saying. Yeah, we see serverless out there, all these cool things happening. Exactly. And you look at the, some of the successful companies that have come in, I call V two cloud. Some are, some are saying the next gen, they're all building on top of the CapEx. I mean, if, why would you not wanna leverage all that work AWS is doing and now Azure, and obviously Google's out there and you got other, other, other clouds out there. But in terms of AWS as a hyperscaler, they're spending all the money and they're getting better. They're getting lower level. We're talking about some of that yesterday, data bricks, snowflake, Goldman Sachs there's industry clouds that could be powerhouse service providers to themselves and their vertical. Then you got specialty clouds. Like there could be a data cloud, there could be an identity cloud. So yeah. How does this sort itself out? How do you guys see that? Because can they coexist? >>But I think they have to right, because I, I think, you know, eventually organizations will get big enough where they can be strong and really market leading in multiple segments. But if you think about what it takes to really build a massive scaled out database company that, that DNA doesn't just overnight translate to identity or translate to video, it takes years to build that up. So in the meantime, all these guys have to understand that they are one part of the service stack to power the next gen solutions. And if they don't play well with each other, then you're gonna have a problem. >>So security, I think is one of the hardest problems of, of super cloud. And not only do you have too many tools and a lack of talent, but you've now got this new first line of defense, which is the cloud. And the problem is you've got multiple clouds. So you've got multiple first lines of defense with multiple cloud provider tools. And then the CISO, I guess, is the next line of defense with the application development team. You know, there to be the pivot point between strategy and execution. And I guess audit is the third line of the defense. So it's an even more complicated environment. So gee, how do you see that CSO role changing and, and can there actually be a unified security layer in Supercloud? >>Yeah, so I believe that that they can be, the role is definitely changing because now a CSO actually has to have a basic understanding of how clouds work, the dependency of clouds on the, on the business that they serve. And, and this is to your point, not only do we have these new lines and opening up in a tax surface, but they're coupled together. So we have supply chain type connections between this. So there's a coherence across these systems that a CISO has to kind of think about not only these Bo cloud boundaries, but the trust boundaries between them. So classic example visibility, wh what, where are these things and what are the dependencies in my business then of course you mentioned compliance. Am I regulatory? And then of course protecting and responding to this, >>You know? Yeah. The, the, the supply chain piece that you just mentioned. I mean, I feel like there's like these milestones stocks, net was a milestone, you know, obvious obviously log four J was another one, the supply chain hack with solar winds. Yep. You know, it's just, the adversary just keeps getting stronger and stronger and, and, and more agile. So, so is this a data? Do we solve this as a data problem? Is it, you know, you can't just throw more infrastructure at it. What are your thoughts >>For it? I think, you know, great, great point that you're brought up. We need to look at things very fundamentally. What is happening is security has the most difficult job in the cloud, especially super cloud. The poor guys are managing some, managing something or securing something that they can't govern, right? Your, your custodian of the cloud as your developers and DevOps, they are the ones who are defining, creating, destroying things in the cloud. And that guy sitting at the end of the tunnel, looking at things that what he gets and he has to immediately respond. That's why it has to be fundamentally solve. Number one, we talked about supply chain. We talked about the, the, the stuck net to wanna cry, to sort of wins, to know the most recent one on the pipeline. Once the interesting phenomena is that the way industry has moved super cloud, the attackers are also moving them super attackers, right? They have stopped. They have not stopped, but they have started slowly moving to the left, which is the governance part. So they have started attacking your source code, you know, impersonating the codes, replacing the binary, finding one is there. So if they can, if the cloud is built so early, why can't I go early and, and, and inject myself. >>So super hackers is coming to super thinking Hollywood right now. I mean, that brings up a good point. I mean, this whole trust thing is huge. I mean, I hear zero trust. I think, wait a minute, that's not the conference I was just at, we went to, we managed, we work with DockerCon and they were talking about trust services. Yeah. So supply chain source code has trust brokering going on. And yet you got zero trust, which is which are they contextually different? I mean, what, what, >>What, from my perspective, though, the same in that zero trust is a framework that starts with minimum privileges and then build up those privileges over time. Normally in today's dialogue, zero trust is around access. I'm not having a broad access. I'm having a narrow access around an application, but you can also extend those principles to usage. What can, how much privilege do I have within an application? I have to build up my trust to enhance and, and get extended privileges within an application. Of course you can then extend this naturally to applications, APIs, applications, talking with each other. And so by you, you have to restrict the attack surface that is based on a trust model fundamentally. And then to your point, I mean, there's always this residual that you have to deal with afterwards. >>So, so super cloud implies more surface area. You're talking about private. So here we go. So how, and by the way, the AWS was supposed to be at this conference. They said they couldn't make it. They had a schedule issue, but they wanted to be here, but I would ask them, how do you differentiate AWS going forward? Do you go IAS all the way? Do you release the pass layer up? How does this solve? Because you have native clouds that are doing great, the complexity on super cloud, and multi-cloud has to be solved. >>Let me offer maybe a different argument. So if you think about we're all old enough to see the history sort of re pendulum shift and it shifting back in a way, if you're arguing that this culmination of all these services in the form of cloud today, essentially moving up stack, then really this is a architectural pattern that's emerging, right? And therefore there needs to be a super cloud, almost operating system. So operating systems, if you build one before you need a scheduler, you need process handler, you need process isolation, you need memory storage, compute all that together. Now that is our sitting in different parts of the internet. And, and there is no operating system. Yes. And that's the gap, right? And so if you don't even have an operating system, how do you implement security? And that's the pain. Yeah, because today it's one off, directly from service to service. Like how many times can you set up SAML orchestration? You can have an entire team doing that, right. If that's, that's what you have to do. So I think that's ultimately the gap and, and we're sort of just revolving around this concept that there's missing an operating system for superpower. >>It's like Maribel Lopez said in the previous panel that Lord of the rings, there will be no one ring rule the ball. Right. Probably there is needs one. Oh yeah. But, but, but, so what happens? So again, security's the hardest problem. So Snowflake's gotta implement its security, you know, data bricks with an open source model has to implement its security. So there's these multiple security models. You talk about zero trust, which I, if, if I infer what you said, gee, it's essentially, if you don't have privilege access, you don't get access. Yeah. Right. If you, okay. Okay. So that's the framework. Fine. And then you gotta earn it over time. Yeah. Now companies like Amazon, they have the, the talent and the skills to implement that zero trust framework. Exactly. So, so the, the industry, you, you guys with the R and D have to actually ultimately build that, that super cloud framework, don't you? >>Yeah. But I would just look all of the major cloud providers, the ones you mentioned and more will have their own framework within their own environment. Right? Yeah. The problem is with super cloud, you're extending it across multiple ones. There's no standards. There's no easy way to integrate that. So now all of that is left to the developer who is like throwing out code as fast as they can >>Is their, their job is to abstract that, I mean, they've gotta secure the, the run time, they gotta secure the container. >>You have to >>Abstract it. Right. Okay. But, but they're not security pros or ops. >>Exactly. They're haves. >>But to, but to G's point, right. If everyone's implementing their own little Z TNA, then inherently, there's a blind trust between two vendors. Right. That has to >>Be, >>That has to be >>Established. That's implicit. You're saying, >>Yeah. But, but it's, it's contractual, it's not technology. Right. Because I'm turning something out in my cloud, you're turning out something in your cloud that says we've got something, some token exchange, which gives us trust. But what happens if that breaks down and whatever happens to the third party comes in? I think that's the problem. >>Yeah. In fact, in fact, the, if I put the, you know, combine one of those commons, the zero trust was build, keeping identity authentication, then authorization in mind, right? Yeah. This needs to be extended because the zero test definition now probably go into integrity. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. I authenticated. I worked well with Tony in the past, but how do I know that something has changed on the Tony's side? Yeah, exactly. Right, right. That, that integrity is going to be very, very foundational. Given developers are building those third party libraries, those source code pumping stuff. The only way I can validate is, Hey, what has changed? >>And then throw edge into the equation, John and IOT and machine to machine. Exactly. It's just, >>Well, >>Yeah. I think, I think we have another example to build on Tony's operating system model. Okay. And that is the cloud access service broker model for SAS. So we, we have these services sitting out there, we've brokered them together. They're normally on user policies. What I can have access to what I can do, what I can't do, but that can be extended down to services and have the same kind of broker arrangement all through APIs. You have to establish that trust and the, and the policies there, and they can be dynamic and all of this stuff. But you can from an, either an operating system or a SAS interaction and integration model come to these same kind of points. So who >>Builds the, the, the secure Supercloud? Is it new guys like you? Is it your old company giants like Palo Alto? Who, who actually builds the and secures the Supercloud it sounds like it's an ecosystem. >>Yeah. It is an ecosystem. Absolutely. It's an ecosystem. >>Yeah. There's no one security Supercloud >>As well. No, but I, I do think there's one, there's one difference in that historically security has always focused on that shiny object. The, the, the, a particular solution to a particular threat when you're dealing with a, a cloud or super cloud, like the number of that is incalculable. So you have to come into some sort of platform. And so you will see if it's not one, you know, a finite number of platform type solutions that are trying to solve this on behalf of the >>Customer. That to your point, then get connected. >>I think it's gonna be like Unix, right? Like how many flavors of Unix were there out there? All of them 'em had a scheduler. All of them had these processes. All of them had their little compilers. You can compile to that system, target to that system. And for a while, it's gonna be very fragmented until multiple parties decide to converge. >>Right? Well, this is, this is the final question we have one minute left. I wish we had more time. This is a great panel. We'll we'll bring you guys back for sure. After the event, what one thing needs to happen to unify or get through the other side of this fragmentation than the challenges for Supercloud. Because remember the enterprise equation is solve complexity with more complexity. Well, that's not what the market wants. They want simplicity. They want SA they want ease of use. They want infrastructure risk code. What has to happen? What do you think each of you? >>So I, I can start and extending to the previous conversation. I think we need a consortium. We need, we need a framework that defines that if you really want to operate in super cloud, these are the 10 things that you must follow. It doesn't matter whether you take AWS slash or GCP, or you have all, and you will have the on-prem also, which means that it has to follow a pattern. And that pattern is what is required for super cloud. In my opinion, otherwise security is going everywhere. They're like they have to fix everything, find everything and so on. So forth, it's not gonna be possible. So they need a, they need a framework. They need a consortium. And it, this consortium needs to be, I think, needs to led by the cloud providers, because they're the ones who have these foundational infrastructure elements and the security vendor should contribute on providing more severe detections or findings. So that's, in my opinion is, should be the model. >>Well, thank you G >>Yeah, I would think it's more along the lines of a business model we've seen in cloud that the scale matters. And once you're big, you get bigger. We haven't seen that coals around either a vendor, a business model, whatnot, to bring all of this and connect it all together yet. So that value proposition in the industry I think is missing, but there's elements of it already available. >>I, I think there needs to be a mindset. If you look again, history repeating itself, the internet sort of came together around set of I ETF, RSC standards, everybody embraced and extended it. Right. But still there was at least a baseline. Yeah. And I think at that time, the, the largest and most innovative vendors understood that they couldn't do it by themselves. Right. And so I think what we need is a mindset where these big guys like Google, let's take an example. They're not gonna win at all, but they can have a substantial share. So how do they collaborate with the ecosystem around a set of standards so that they can bring, bring their differentiation and then embrace everybody >>Together. Guys, this has been fantastic. I mean, I would just chime in back in the day, those was proprietary nosis proprietary network protocols. You had kind of an enemy to rally around. I'm not sure. I see an enemy out here right now. So the clouds are doing great. Right? So it's a tough one, but I think super OS super consortiums, super business models are gonna emerge. Thanks so much for spending the time. Great conversation. Thank you for having us to bring, keep going hour superclouds here in Palo Alto, live coverage stream virtually I'm John with Dave. Thanks for watching. Stay with us for more coverage. This break.

>>The cube presents HPE discover 2022 brought to you by HPE. >>Okay. We're back to wrap up HPE discover 2022. The Cube's continuous coverage is day three. John furrier, Dave ante. We had a business friend that we met during the pandemic. A really interesting gentleman, norm Ette. He's the director of global technical marketing at Hewlett Packard enterprise, a real innovator norm. Great to see you. Thanks for making time for coming on >>The cube, gentlemen. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. You're giving me the opportunity to bring it home. Yeah. You know, if I'm only gonna get one shot at it, it might as well be >>The last we always, we always like to bring the energy in the last segment because you know, the cube, we grind it out for three days. I mean, it's just such a great content injection. And so we love to wrap it up, especially with someone like yourself who can really help us convey the themes, but even more so when we look around here this entire ecosystem, you and your team built this. And so take us through that. >>Well, we did, you know, and it takes a village. You know, we have the core team, HPE global technical marketing, uh, which is my team. And then of course we're partnered with other parts of the, our marketing organizations on different pieces, different aspects. And then we have a tremendous team of vendors that we work with on a regular basis. Companies such as, you know, F two B and ivory and others that, you know, really kind of pitch in. And they're, they're kind of my, I call 'em my flex force. You know, we also have another group called promote live and we bring all these people together. And, and in addition, all the vendors, we have something like 380 employees that come from all different parts of the organization to, to land in Las Vegas, to man, these booths and staff, these, uh, staff, these exhibits. >>And so for one week, we get to really work as a, as a, a team, as a family, you know, there's no organizational borders, so to speak, you know, you know, we're a big company, everybody has, you know, different objectives and different things that they're focused on, but we get a chance to all get together and work as one, one team. And so that, that the people aspect is what's so exciting, I think this week. And I think I even saw some of your broadcast earlier. So I think it kind of, it kind of came through as well. Just the joy of, of being together, you know? Sure. Human beings <laugh> >>And, and H HP's got a new spring and its step, which so much focus brought to the table from Antonio and, you know, the team is the lining. >>Yeah, we do. And that's, you know, when you go, when we start talking about the design and you know, one of the things that, you know, we work on this months ahead of time. Yeah. Right. And so it's kinda like a spinning top, you know, we, we, we keep, we, we keep spinning that thing tightening up and then this week you put it on the table and just let it go. Yeah. Right. But it's that whole multi-month process of, of, of twisting that top around and getting it going and right at the middle and right at the centerpiece. And, uh, the core design principle and an ask from, uh, Antonio is that we make sure that we major on HPE, uh, GreenLake edge to cloud platform that, you know, it, it's a, obviously you've been talking about it all week. Yeah. Uh, we've been talking about it all week. It's a big focus of our company. And so right at the very center, we have our HPE GreenLake edge to cloud platform demonstration, and then everything in the showcase then radiates from that centerpiece, uh, you know, right, right. At, right at the nexus of all the activities. So the experience starts there and propagates its >>Way. Well, I wanna get into some of the themes and the set pieces you have here. Um, you are in technical marketing and this platform is a tech play. So it's not so much just solutions that you're enabling the theme this year is very much technical marketing. So there's edge, especially cloud data and edge is the big themes security's baked in throughout the whole set, right as well. And that messaging, but it's technical marketing right now. We had, you know, platform play uett packer is a platform. Google packer enterprise is a >>Platform. It is, and it's a, it is a, it's a software platform. Um, you, it, it really completes a cloud strategy. And when you really think about it, I, again, I know some of these numbers have been floating around. Um, but, uh, you know, 70% of all data is still staying OnPrem for good reasons, you know, and then 30% of it can be out there in the public cloud. Uh, so what you kind of have is an incomplete cloud strategy, if you will. And what's happened is that organizations have gotten spoiled a little bit by the cloud experience. Mm-hmm <affirmative> right. That, you know, I, you know, your, your dev teams say go, Hey, I just, I wanna work in a Azure. I wanna work in AWS. I love how I go through this process. Why can't I do that with my on-prem stuff? Why, you know, why, you know, I want that kind of experience. So it organizations are really being challenged about how to create that, that kind of service and that experience to their customers because expectations are not because >>Data ha it has to be inclusive. It can't be exclusive to just one part of the organization. >>Yeah. And so how did you, how did that impact obviously, cause GreenLake was coming together, you know, you got the multiple months in advance planning for this big event, right. A lot of lot work goes into it. What was some of the impact to the execution of this event, um, that you can share in terms of the set pieces? Some of the displays was there was there, I won't say radical cause it's not radical. It looks, it turned out great. But what are some of the popular things happening here? What worked, what resonated with customers and what was different from, from, uh, that GreenLake enabled you to do differently? >>Well, I mean, first the first thing is that we, we kind of had a high touch experience at that center point, right. That nexus, the hub of the activity, the GreenLake edge to club platform, uh, demonstration. And it started with us just kind of, you know, having the strategy about first of all, if you sh, if you guys show this and I know, I think maybe you have, when you enter in, we've got like this big aha moment, right. And that aha moment is that platform right in the center, surrounded with wonderful visuals above, below, you know, behind, uh, all around it. But we, we, we had to think about, okay, now I'm staring at this thing. What am I, how am I gonna experience it? So, uh, when I say a high touch experience, we start with a, what I call a platform generalist that would greet you up front, engage in the conversation, you know, so realize that, you know, Dave is a network operations director, he's got some keen interests. >>He has some sort of peripheral idea about what the, uh, HPE GreenLake edge cloud platform is about, but what can it really do for him? You know, what can do, what can he use? How can he use it? So we start at that level of conversation, you know, socialize the core services, the attributes, you know, the, the technology that is actually enabling it. And then as we've identified in our conversation that you're a network geek, you know, and you want to understand, you've heard about Aruba, you know, how's Aruba central play into that. How do the networking services play into that? And so for then we take that, that, that big leap and go up two steps up onto the platform. And we go over to the network specialist, what I, what I'm calling a platform specialist, uh, who understands all the things about the platform, but then is peaked in networking. And we have that conversation and you see how the Aruba customer can benefit by this evolution, uh, and how the different platform services combine to give a holistic experience across a company. And so when I'm an it ops director, and I'm trying to service my network, guys, my storage guys, my compute guys, my external cloud services guys, that this is an environment that I can, so you >>Have an experience where they come in, they can easily move to a point quickly in the display, on the platform >>And it's tailored for them. Exactly. Right. Exactly. That's the exactly. Right. And so if I transition over to you, you know, and you're my, you know, you're my specialist, you know, you're not saying, Hey, Dave, what brings you here today? What are you today? <laugh>, you know, I, I mean, you're prequalified, it's a prequalified conversation. We jump into it. And then that specialist is armed with knowledge as to where, okay, this guy is really interested in switching technology and switches as well. Well, that's demo five 12. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, let me have one of my colleagues take you over there. So then you're, you're escorted over to demo five 12 to go to the next level or perhaps, and this has happened throughout the week that people want to take a test drive of the environment. And so we have the HPE GreenLake living lab, and we have a, a test drive environment right there. >>And so we bring you right to that test drive, where you can, you know, kick the tires yourself, you fire up a live environment. We have a series of exercises that you're taken through. And, uh, I think I've just checked with one of my colleagues where like, well over, you know, well, over 1100 experiences of people doing that here. And that lab has 25 seats, but also externally. Yeah. So right off of hpe.com, that same test drive experience that we're doing here. People can launch at home. And so we got in this morning, there were like four guys logged in from New Zealand, you know, doing exercises, which is pretty neat. So, so when you ask me the question, what are the design considerations, uh, that HPE GreenLake that we baked in and thought through it's again, that, Hey, it's a, it's a big thing. Yeah. It's a big, it's an experience. Let's start with you just digesting the, you know, the comp basic concepts. Then let's talk about your persona and how it directly maps to what you can do. And then if you want to get deeper, you know, we have the solutions that we design behind it, solution demos, and, and if you wanna drive it, let you know, buckle up. Let's >>Go. Yeah, you get right to a spot, multiple monitors, great experience, high touch. Um, that's awesome. I gotta ask you another question. Cause you've been, you know, pre pandemic, you've been doing a lot of this technical marketing and events and then virtual hit right now. We're back face to face, right? It's clear, Dave and I were just talking about our, on our opening day, year on day. One, people love to see each other back. Every event we've been to face to face. People are energized to a level. We didn't even see. What are you seeing here in terms of performance? Obviously, you got sales people here, you got executives here, you got customers right. Face to face, right. >>Doing belly to belly, >>Belly to belly, as Dave says, that's a positive, what's it like, explain what it's like. >>Well, I mean, you don't, you never know what you got until it's gone, right? >>Yeah. >>You, and so people didn't really realize that, Hey, we really needed to have this kind of touch and this, this kind of activity. And it was funny because people be before the pandemic, there was also a push to do a lot of virtual stuff, you know, economies of scale. Yeah. You know, some of that stuff works. Teams are making decisions, but then it all goes away and people realize how valuable, you know, just the conversations were, you know, meeting >>Somebody, relationships, meeting >>Somebody for a coffee, you know, talking through different bumping into colleagues than that. You haven't seen for years, or you worked with somebody and now they're doing this. And then you realize you have some sort of synergy with each other and you know, you can still help each other. And just the, just, you know, just the discovery <laugh> of being at discover, you know, and running into these different types of things. So, uh, well >>You think about it norm, you know, we, we've done plenty of stuff virtually we have, but I think we've talked maybe four times this week. Yeah. You've seen you here walking around the hallways. We saw you last night, right? Yeah. You just, that just wouldn't happen in your little virtual >>World. Yeah. I mean, not at all. And during that virtual era, and I think we'll look back on that and we're still gonna do virtual stuff >>Course, and we're learning, >>It's got value, but I just want to thank you guys for just being the cube and the whole team, you know, Frank, everybody just tremendous partners through that because you can still look at that content that we produced together last year and it's still relevant. We're still sharing it. It still has impact. We, we point, you know, we tell people, Hey, here's call to action. You're leaving. Discover by the way, there's these three or four pieces out on the cube that really go with, go at this topic. >>Right. That GreenLake event we did last year was phenomenal. >>It was, it was, and it was a partnership with you guys. And I, I, you know, I, I speak on, on behalf of many of my colleagues here at HPE, we just wanna thank the cube for all the support, creativity, uh, and how we got through that >>All together. We we'll back at you because norm you were a real innovator when John and I first met you, we were like, Hey, this guy, actually, he's gonna, he's gonna push us to some new levels. Technical >>Marketing know >>That's our, our team marketing. Like our team was a little nervous, a lot nervous actually, because you know, you do, you are not only demanding, but you're super creative. Well, thank you. And so you, you helped us, you know, up, up our game. >>Yeah. Thanks a lot. Yeah. You know, Frank was getting, Hey, Frank, Dave, can you guys do this? You >>Know, so yeah, we were on the background. >>I mean, but we were, we were growing and surviving and thriving together and getting through it, but what's coming out. The other side now is a new format. You mentioned virtual. That's not going away. Hybrid is a steady state for all of us. Even the cube. Yeah. So the new protocols and the new standards are emerging. And I think the newness of it scares people also like how do you do it? Um, who, whose role is it to take the virtual and digital? So this whole new set of experiences still coming out. Yeah. What's your vision? How do you see this? Cause we're face to face clearly is what everyone wants from school kids to adults. Right. We want face to face. Right. How does digital fit in? >>Well, I mean, that's, that's a, that's a really tricky question. I'll give you a, a, I'll kind of back into the answer a little bit. Um, you guys can see this, right, right behind us. We had this whole backdrop here, greetings from the edge of virtual reality experience. Well, we built that. We built that during the COVID era, so we could have experiences with people remotely. Right. Uh, and we used it for our executive summit, you know, last year for the virtual discovery, we shipped those Oculus headsets to everybody. They, everybody jumped into it. And so I was sitting there being a host, you know, with four CTOs that were scattered all over the world. So we were in cyberspace together. Right. And so of course being good, uh, you know, good business people we realized, Hey, this is pretty fun. So let's dust it off and bring it out here for the more general public. >>So again, it was like a 200 person, you know, uh, executive level experience and all of that, but it had tremendous value, different types of experiences. I recommend you try it if you ever have the opportunity. Um, so that's a way that we start emerging virtual reality and digital experiences to try to keep that human connection, but now we're using it again. And everybody's in these little pod rooms, six of them together. So they're having this experience in cyberspace and they're having it physically. Yeah. And so I think some, and everyone's enjoying being together and still in cyber space together. So I think when we start to build assets and we start to look at different types of things and experiences, we gotta think, we, we gotta think through that now. Right. You know, how is this, how is this investment or this, this experience, how's it gonna translate, you know, outside of these four walls, right. And how can we use it outside of these four walls, uh, and create, you know, a more engaging experience. So that's a little bit of a backing into that answer, but I think I'm, I'm, >>It's emerging. It's >>Important. Well, I'm saying it more as an example of us thinking through and trying to leverage. Yeah. >>I love it though. I mean, you always, you've always been struck me as a visionary and I, I loved that answer and I can just see, it's just gonna progress by the end of the decade. This is gonna become right. Uh, a a, you know, a normal sort of practice, and we're gonna bring people in from the outside and interacting. I love what you were saying about, yeah. Even though we're here physically, we're actually creating a virtual world within this physical pod. We are. Where can people discover more about that? About, about, about the shows, the content that >>Was here? Well on hpe.com, you can just launch into discover. We have a tremendous amount of content that's been recorded, keynote sponsor sessions, the cube they're dialed in all kinds of different pieces of assets that we've done. Um, I'll plug just another couple of things just to, again, to talk about the connectivity of things that we're doing. So one of the projects that I lead, uh, I am very proud to lead is HPE space born and our space born computer space, born computer two, flying a most powerful machine, uh, computer to ever fly in space. Uh, we've been up there for a year. We've done 24 different experiments over the year to, for the benefit of the entire scientific community. Um, also, you know, doing things for the ISS national lab in NASA, our partners up there, but what we've got is we've built a scale replica of the Columbus module, right? So this is, you know, this is a 28 by 12 foot module. Hey, we're bringing her home seriously. >>They're gonna pull the plugs. They're gonna pull the >>Plug on me soon. Right. So anyway, so we have that module built, right? And this is, uh, we work with a Hollywood production company. We've had it before, but you know, we we've customized it. We have a live link to the ISS station in there. And, and so we're talking about everything that we're doing there, but also in this virtual reality experience, we have you going on a space walk, right. And so we've, we've captured that as well. So we've, we're tying this physical and virtual experience together. Uh, and, uh, so it's a fun project. So you can check that >>Out. We did exit scale together during the pandemic, and that's when I first really got into to space point. It was awesome to see frontier announced actually breaking through the exo scale barrier. We, we were on the cusp, but we, we now see it breaking through. So, yeah. Congratulations on that. Thank you >>Very much. And, you know, a couple, you know, just couple other things that we're doing, that's pretty exciting. I don't, I don't wanna give away all my tricks, uh, but you know, we've organized our demonstrations through the customer lenses. So we have these customer journeys that we see people that are using our technology, you know, so I'm, I'm not talking about the storage business unit or, you know, the networking business unit, but how are our customers really trying to, you know, advance AI and machine learning, for example, how are they actually trying to, you know, protect their data? You know, the different things, the business issues, the business issues. Yeah. And so we've organized our demos through that, and we have these, these pods and then satellites, and you, you, you give you walk through that whole thing and it's addressing different aspects of that. >>Um, and then another thing that we've done is we have tours here, uh, as well, where, cuz there's so much content that people can take tours and you know, 1400 people have taken those tours. Uh, you know, and these are guided tours, headsets, curated, big numbers, designated places to go. And we see big traffic the first day or so and by design. And so we hit the highlights and then they decide how to use their valuable time later in the showcase about what they want to deep dive on. And so that's been a tremendous success for >>Us. Well norm thanks for bringing us on the tour of discover. Yeah. Well and really, you know, sharing that with our audience and you've been an awesome partner. And as you say, a great innovator, hope I can't wait to see what's next. All right. >>You so much. Hey, thanks for letting me on here guys. Welcome to our pleasure. I'm somebody I made. You're a Cub >>Alumni alumni. You're alumni. Welcome to alumni. So >>Guys great. Our week. That's a wrap on on day three, uh, Dave Valant day, John furrier for Lisa Martin. Don't forget to go to Silicon angle.com where we've got all the news, all the interviews that we've done this week, get written up and posted on Silicon angle.com. The cube.net I publish every week. Uh, my breaking analysis on, on, on wikibon.com. It's on a podcast. So check that out. Thanks to everybody. Thanks for the crew. Everybody back at the office. Really appreciate it. Great job. And we'll see you next time. All right.

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone. Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of Women In Tech, International Women's Day 2022. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. I have two guests from AWS here with me. Carolina Pina joins us, the head of Enterprise Enablement for LATAM and Laura Alvarez Modernel is here as well, Public Sector Programs Manager at AWS. Ladies, it's great to have you on theCUBE. >> Nice to meet you. >> Thank you for having us. >> Carolina, let's start with you. Talk to me a little bit about your role, what it is that you're doing there. >> So my role in AWS is to actually create mechanisms of massive training to try to close the talent gap that we have in the region. And when I mentioned talent gap, I'm talking about obviously digital and cloud-computing skills. So that's, that's, in a nutshell what my role entails. >> Lisa: Got it. How long have you been in that role? Just curious. >> So I've been at AWS a little bit over, over two years. I was actually in the public sector team when I joined, leading the education vertical for Latin American Canada. And I recently joined the commercial sector now leading these massive training efforts for the region for LATAM. >> And Laura, you're in public sector. Talk to me a little bit about your role. >> Yes, I'm in public sector. I'm also based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. So yeah, I'm from Latin America, and I lead educational and community impact programs in the Southern cone of Latin America. I also lead diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and I'm part of the Women at Amazon global board. That's our affinity group to make sure we make efforts towards building a more equal world. And on a personal note I'm really passionate about the topic of gender equality because I truly think it affects us all as women and as Latins. So that's something that I'm always interested in collaborating with. >> Lisa: Excellent. Carolina back to you. If we think about from an enablement perspective how is AWS partnering with its customers and its partners to train and employ women particularly in technology? >> Oh, sure. Lisa, so it's not a surprise. We, like I mentioned, you know we have a big cloud skills, talent gap in the region. In fact, you know, 69% of companies have reported talent shortages and difficulty hiring. So, and this represents a 15 year high. So, many of these companies are actually, you know, our own commercial customers. So they approach us saying, you know, asking for for support training and developing their talent. So like I mentioned, in my role I create massive training efforts and initiatives. So we always take into consideration women, minorities, underrepresented community, and not just for the current talent, meaning like the people that are currently employed, but also to ensure that we are proactively implementing initiatives to develop a talent of younger you know, a younger generation and a talent. So we can, you know, to inspire them and, and ensure that they, that we're seeing them represented in companies like AWS, you know and our customers, and in our partners. And obviously we, when we sit down with customers to craft these massive trainings you know, leveraging their ecosystems and communities, we actually try to use all our AWS training and certification portfolio which includes, you know, in live in class with live in structures, in classroom trainings. We also have our AWS Skill Builder platform which is the platform that allows us to, you know to reach a broader audience because it has, you know over 500 free and on-demand classes. And we also have a lot of different other programs that touches in different audiences. You know, we have AWS re/Start for underrepresented, and underemployed minorities. We also have AWS Academy, which is the program that we have for higher education institutions. And we have AWS, you know, Educate which also touches, you know, cloud beginners. So in every single of these programs, we ensure that we are encompassing and really speaking to women and developing training and developing women. >> Lisa: That's a great focus there. Laura, talk to me about upskilling. I know AWS is very much about promoting from within. What are some of the things that it's doing to help women in Latin America develop those tech skills and upskill from where, maybe where they are now? >> Well, Lisa, I think that is super interesting because there's definitely a skills gap problem, right? We have all heard about. And what's funny is also that we have this huge opportunity in Latin America to train people and to help further develop the countries. And we have the companies that need the talent. So why is there still a gap, right? And I think that's because there's no magic solution to solving this problem. No, like epic Hollywood movie scene that it's going to show how we close the gap. And it takes stepping out of our comfort zone. And as Carolina mentioned, collaborating. So, we at AWS have a commitment to help 29 million people globally to grow their technical skills with free cloud-computing skills training by 2025. I know that sounds a lot through educational programs but we do have as Carolina mentioned, a Skill Builder you can go into the website for free, enter, choose your path, get trained. We have Academy that we implement with universities. Re/Start that is a program that's already available in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Costa Rica. So there are a lot of opportunities, but you also mentioned something else that I would like to dive a bit deeper that is Latin American women. And yesterday we had the opportunity to record a panel about intersectionality with three amazing Latin women. And what we have to learn from that is that these are two minorities that intersect, right. We're talking about females that are minority. Latinas are minority. And in tech, that is also something that is even bigger minority. So there are more difficulties there and we need to make sure that we are meeting that talent that is there that is in Latin America, that exists. We know for sure we have unicorns in Latin America that are even AWS customers like Mercado Libre, and we have to meet them with the opportunities. And that's why we created a program that came from identifying how this problem evolves in Latin America, that there is a lack of confidence in women also that they don't feel prepared or equipped. There is a cultural component why we don't choose tech careers. And we partner with universities, more than 12 universities in Latin America with the International American Development Bank as well to create tech skills that's a free five weeks program in order to get students and get female in Latin America, into the tech world. And we also have them with mentorship. So I think that is an opportunity to truly collaborate because we as AWS are not going to solve these by ourselves, right? We need everyone pitching in on that. >> Lisa: Right. It's absolutely a team effort. You mentioned something important in terms of helping women, and especially minorities get out of their comfort zone. Carolina, I'm curious when you're talking with women and getting them into the program and sharing with them all of the enablement programs that you have, how do you help them be confident to get out of that comfort zone? That's a hard thing to do. >> Yeah, no, for sure. For sure, Lisa, well, I, you know, a lot of times actually I use myself as an example because, you know, I studied engineering and industrial systems engineering many years ago. And you know, a lot of my career has been in in higher education and innovation and startups. And as I mentioned in the intro I've been at AWS for a little bit over two years. So I, my career has not been in cloud and I recently joined the cloud. So I actually had to go through our own trainings and get our own certifications. So I, that's, you know a lot of times I actually, I use my own example, so people understand that you don't have to come from tech, you don't have to come, you can actually be a non-tech person and, and also see the the benefits of the cloud. And you don't have to only, you know, learn cloud if you're in the IT department or in an IT team. So sometimes, I also emphasize that the cloud and the future is absolutely the cloud. In fact, the world economic foreign, you know teaches us that cloud-computing is that the technology that's going to be mostly adopted by 2025. So that's why we need to ensure that every single person, women and others are really knowledgeable in the cloud. So that's why, you know, technical and untechnical. But I, you know, I use myself as an example for them to say, you know, you can actually do it. And obviously also I collaborate with Laura and a lot of the women at Amazon Latin America Group to also you know, ensure that we're doing webinars and panels. So we show them ourselves as role model like, Laura is an incredible role model for our community. And so it's also to to show examples of what the possibilities are. And that's what we do. >> Lisa: I love that you're sharing >> And can I make a note there also? >> Please, yes. >> To add to that. I think it also requires the companies and the, and the private sector to get out of their comfort zone, right? Because we are not going to find solutions doing what we are already doing. We truly need to go and get near these persons with a new message. Their interest is there in these programs we have reached more than 3,000 women already in Latin America with tech skills. So it's not that women are not interested. It's like, how do we reach them with a message that resounds with them, right? Like how we can explain the power of technology to transform the world and to actually improve their communities. I think there's something there also that we need to think further of. >> It's so important. You know, we say often when we're talking about women in tech, that she needs to see what she can be or if she can't see it, she can't be it. So having those role models and those mentors and sponsors is absolutely critical for women to get, I call it getting comfortably uncomfortable out of that comfort zone and recognizing there's so many opportunities. Carolina, to your point, you know, these days every company is a tech company, a data company whether you're talking about a car dealer, a grocery market. So your point about, you know, and obviously the future being cloud there's so much opportunity that that opens up, for everybody really, but that's an important thing for people to recognize how they can be a part of that get out of their comfort zone and try something that they maybe hadn't considered before. >> Yes. And, actually, Lisa I would love to share an example. So we have a group, O Boticário, which is one of our customers one of the, the lead retails in Brazil. And they've been a customer of AWS since 2013 when they realized that, you know the urgency and the importance of embracing state of the art technology, to your point, like, you know this is a retail company that understands that needs to be, you know embrace digital transformation, especially because, you know they get very busy during mother's days and other holidays during the year. So they realized that they, instead of outsourcing their IT requirements to technology experts they decided to actually start developing and bringing the talent, you know within itself, within, you know, technology in-house. So they decided to start training within. And that's when we, obviously we partnered with them to also create a very comprehensive training and certification plan that started with, you know a lot of the infrastructure and security teams but then it was actually then implemented in the rest of the company. So going back to the point like everybody really needs to know. And what we also love about O Boticário is they they really care about the diversion and inclusion aspect of this equation. And we actually collaborated with them as well through this program called Desenvolve with the Brazilian government. And Desenvolve means developing Portuguese and they this program really ensures that we are also closing that gender and that race gap and ensuring that they're actually, you know, developing talent in cloud for Brazil. So we, you know, obviously have been very successful with them and we will continue to do even more things with them particular for this topic. >> Lisa: I've always known how customer focused AWS is every time we get to go to re:Invent or some of the events but it's so nice to hear these the educational programs that you're doing with customers to help them improve DEI to help them enable their own women in their organizations to learn skills. I didn't realize that. I think that's fantastic very much a symbiotic part of AWS. If we think about the theme for this year's International Women's Day, Breaking The Bias I want to get both of your opinions and Laura we'll start with you, what that means to you, and where do you think we are in Latin America with breaking the bias? >> Well, I think breaking the bias is the first step to truly being who we are every day and being able to bring that to our work as well. I think we are in a learning curve of that. The companies are changing culturally, as Carolina mentioned we have customers that are aware of the importance of having women. And as we say at AWS not only because there is a good business reason because there is, because there are studies that show that we can increase the country's CPD, but also because it's important and it's the right thing to do. So in terms of breaking the bias I think we are learning and we have a long way to go. I talked a bit earlier about intersectionality and that is something that is also important to highlight, right? Because we are talking about females but we are also talking about another minorities. We're talking about underrepresented communities, Indigenous People, Latins. So when these overlap, we face even bigger challenges to get where we want to get, right? And to get to decision making places because technology is transforming the ways we take decisions, we live, and we need someone like us taking those decisions. So I think it's important at first to be aware and to see that you can get there and eventually to start the conversation going and to build the conversation, not to just leave it but to make sure we hear people and their input and what they're going through. >> Lisa: Yes. We definitely need to hear them. Carolina, what's your take on breaking the bias and where do you from your experience, where do you think we are with it? >> Yeah, no, I'm as passionate as Laura on this topic. And that's why we, you know we're collaborating in the Women at Amazon Latin America Chapter, because we're both very, I think breaking the bias starts with us and ourselves. And we are very proactive within AWS and externally. And I feel it's also, I mean, Lisa, what we've been doing is not only, obviously gathering you know, the troops and really making sure that, that we have very aggressive goals internally, but also bringing you know, bringing our male counterparts, and other, you know, other members of the other communities, because the change, we're not going to make it alone. Like the change where it is not women only talking to women is going to make the change. We actually need to make sure the male and other groups are represented. And the dialogue that they're that we're very conscious about that. And I feel like we're seeing more and more that the topic is becoming more of a priority not only within AWS and Amazon but we also see it because now that I meet with when I meet with customers around the region they really want to see how we can collaborate in these diversion and inclusion initiatives. So I think we are breaking the bias because now this topic is more top of mind. And then we are being more proactively addressing it and and training people and educating people. And I feel we're really in a pivoted point where the change that we've really been wanting to we will see in the next you know, few years which is very exciting. >> Lisa: Excellent, and we'll see that with the help of women like you guys. Thank you so much for joining me today, talking about what you're doing, how you're helping organizations across AWS's ecosystem, customers, partners, and helping, of course, folks from within you, right. It's a holistic effort, but we are on our way to breaking that bias and again, I thank you both for your insights. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Lisa, for the opportunity. >> My pleasure. For Carolina Pina and Laura Alvarez Modernel, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of Women in Tech, International Women's Day 2022. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome everyone to this CUBE coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. We have a lot going on at this year's re:Invent with over 100 guests on the program, and I'm excited to welcome two of those guests here with me right now. We are joined by Ralph Munsen, the Chief Information Officer at Warner Music Group and Atif Khan, the CTO of Alkira and founder of Alkira as well. Gentlemen, welcome to the program. >> Thank you so much, Lisa. So glad to be here with you. >> Good to be here. >> Yeah. Good old fashioned Zoom is become our best friend in the last 22 months or so I'm losing count. Atif, I'd like to start with you. I know Alkira has been on the key before, but it's been a while and you guys are a relatively young company. Give the audience an overview of Alkira and what it is that you deliver. >> Absolutely, Lisa. So we started back in may of 2018, and the Cloud networking space, multicloud networking. And we came out of stealth mode back in April of 2020, and launched the company. In fact, one of our first events coming out of stealth mode was a Cuban interview back in April of 2020. So here at Telecare, what we are doing is we are building a Cloud platform, which allows customers to build a common network across multiple Clouds with built-in network and security services, with the policy and management layer on top full end to end visibility and governance capabilities. And all of this is delivered as a service and consumed as a service as well. And I'm very glad to be here with Ralph, who is from Warner Music Group and is one of our marquee customers. So I'll let Ralph introduce himself, and tell us a bit more about Alkira and WMTS Cloud journey. >> That sounds great. Ralph, why don't you start by giving the audience? I'm sure everyone knows Warner Music Group, but in case there's anyone out there that might not. Give us a little bit of a background. >> Yeah, so the Warner Music Group has been around since 1950 and 1940 even it had its roots at Hollywood and out of Warner Brothers Pictures, Today, say global company in 79 countries we operated. If the 100 employees and we have two major divisions, we have our era recorded music division, which has the labels people commonly turn to Atlantic records, Warner brothers records, and so forth. And then we have our publishing division, which is more a chapel, which is where our songwriters live. And of course we have some singer songwriters that are on both sides of our business. But now currently people may know our artists. We have ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Coldplay, Cardi B, Blake Shelton and I could go on and on. But exciting, great year, we're having one of our best years ever. And I'm so glad to be here and partnering with an Alkira. >> Excellent. I love all of those artists that you mentioned. Fantastic. So let's talk a little bit now Ralph about the backstory. Talk to me about the IT infrastructure at Warner Music Group, what you had there and some of the challenges that you had that you came to Alkira to solve. >> Yeah, well initially when I took over about five years ago now, we were very much a data center based business with traditional networking and IT functions. Additionally with our foreign affiliates, IT was sort of decentralized in the sense that a lot of the networking and data center components were left to regions. And so while we operated globally, we didn't really operate globally, at Warner among our affiliates. So one of the challenges was how do we get out of the data center? Cloud was new. One of the big things that were coming with big data, which is absolutely right for moving, going straight to the Cloud, especially if you don't have anything on-prem and how do we rationalize all of these different locations and conduct all the M&A work we've been doing? So it was quite a challenge, really. At the end, we wanted to have one view of the network, and Alkira. I looked at many a company and Alkira seemed the best to provide that to us. So. >> Well, talk to me a little bit more about why Alkira, because as Atif was saying, they're very young. What came out of stealth mode during the pandemic Warner Music Group, being around since the 40s and 50s, the legacy institution, a great brand. What made you take a risk on such an early stage startup? >> Quite frankly, there was nothing in the space (chuckles) at the time you loved, there were companies that had components of it, of what Alkira does, which is basically network orchestration allowing us to use existing components. And nobody has the whole package, especially incorporating security. So, we figured why not take, take a chance? There's no, it won't hurt you no harm. And if anything is successful, it will give us a great ability to manage our network, much more efficiently taking things that took days down to hours and being able to do it much more efficiently with much fewer staff, as opposed to hiring a lot more because when you orchestrate all the components that are underneath, obviously it requires more bodies, more resources. >> Right. That efficiency and cost optimization is key there. Atif I have to ask you, talk to me about, this is only a few years ago, the gap in the market that you and your brothers saw a few years ago, when you founded the company, because as Rob was saying, there was nobody else in the market at the time that could do what you're doing. >> Yeah, absolutely. So Lisa, as you know, myself and Amir, we were also a part of the founding team of Viptela, which was the SD-WAN Company. So back in the day when we did SD-WAN, the requirement was to connect sites together. So if you go back like 5, 10, 5, 7, 10 years ago, networking was done to connect sites together, which could be remote sites, data centers, sites to data centers, all of that together. But fast forward, a few more years with the adoption of Cloud, requirements changed from the networking perspective. So now your network is not just connecting sites together, but most of the traffic now is from sites or users, which could be sitting anywhere. If you look at, what's going on? in the pandemic people are working from all across the globe. They are not just sitting in campuses or sites. So traffic patterns are from sites or users mostly to the Cloud or SaaS applications. So now networks also need to evolve and they need to be built inside the Cloud rather than from outside or connecting into the Cloud. So Cloud access is one capability, but building a network inside the Cloud becomes a requirement. And secondly, now it's not just only about connectivity because security becomes even more important because your security perimeter is changing as well. So securing all these Cloud networks becomes very, very complicated. And now as Ralph can tell you, majority of the enterprises have a multicloud strategy and each Cloud is done differently. So the moment you bring in multiple Clouds, multiple regions across the globe, it becomes so complicated for enterprises to build and manage. They need something, or a platform which makes it easy, gives them one way of doing networking, building a common network across whether you're connecting multiple Clouds or Clouds to your on-prem locations or Clouds to internet or sites to internet. So that's where we saw this gap and we decided to build Alkira to tackle this problem. >> Got it. So Rob, let's talk now about what you've implemented as a team was saying we live in this, in this work from anywhere hybrid multicloud world. Talk to us about Warner, what you implemented and maybe a little bit about your multicloud strategy, if you've got one. >> Ralph: Yeah. So over the last five years, Warner has migrated entirely into Cloud. And to this point before it's multicloud, we're mainly in AWS, but we do have some pleasure and some Google Cloud. And with that, I was telling Atif and Amir. It was interesting and they built a Cloud on site. They totally forgot about the networking aspect. So (laughs), you have ease of use for services and servers inside (indistinct) cloud, but networking is not really present, not to mention when it was built out, it wasn't made to go to competing Clouds. So most companies are facing this problem. How do you treat these environments as a single holistic environment? How do you turn things up, turn things down? How do you secure it, When every single one is different habits, selling unique ways of doing things? So that really was, how we ended up looking for an out Alkira, because I just kept looking at the costs and the profit print grow and grow and grow. And the complexity to a (indistinct) before is growing exponential. One change in one thing would lead to two changes to another. If you add another Cloud or you add another point on the network, you've got exponential growth and complexity, complexity, you have to deal with. So one stop shop. (chuckles) >> One stop shop and reducing that complexity. Talk to me about reducing complexity, and what you're accomplishing there. Especially, in the last year and a half as things have been so dynamic, shall we say? (chuckles) >> Yeah, well, I will say this. It was turnkey for the most part. It took a matter of months as opposed to years, because out of the box, there was a lot of integrations with the major network of players. So as of right now, you can buy firewalls, routing, VPC, things like this, they all exist, but they're not orchestrated together. Right? And then you have policies and security, again not orchestrating a different set of tools. So it really only took us two to three months to get it up and running, I acts, I just had a conversation (chuckles) with them when we were going to finish. So I think we'll be finishing this up completely in January and sometime. So, I was pretty sure. >> LISA: That's fantastic. So really, >> Yeah. >> Sorry Relaph fast time to market there with getting things implemented. Talk to me about from a business outcome perspective, you are CIO, what are some of the outcomes? That this technology is enabling you to deliver back to the business? >> Yeah, it really, the number 1, 2 big ones come to mind. One being able to provide them a secure enterprise. I know when there is the change it's made uniforms for our network without, some of older something's being forgotten about. So that's number one, security is big. You can imagine a company like more ever marquee brands, all brands, any company of marquee brands are targets today. That's number one. Number two is our time to market for eminent. So when we buy a company the time it takes us to get them to be completely part of Warner and therefore start realizing the business case and benefits sort of reasonably bought. Bought the company to begin with. So, we're buying a lot more and we're turning them up and turning those business cases up faster. But usually those cases would say things like six months to a year to integrate with us, and then we can unlock the set of benefits. Now it's more like, two to three months and you start to be able to lock the benefits sooner. And of course, those are different than a case by case basis, but that's. >> Sure, but significantly faster there, you're looking at a two to three X multiplier there, as you talked about. >> Ralph: right. >> Now, you mentioned multicloud Ralph. So here we are at re:Invent. I imagine part of your AWS as part of your Cloud infrastructure and they're a technology partner of ALkira's. >> Ralph: Correct. Yeah. So AWS is actually our biggest Cloud provider of the three, and yeah (laugh) they're their partner without cure. So Good. >> And Atif then you, Alkira's technology partner of AWS, correct? >> Yeas. Alkira is a technology partner of AWS, we are also available on AWS marketplace. So customers can consume, AlKira's platform from AWS marketplace as well. >> But given the fact that so many businesses in every industry are multicloud, I assume that you work with all the Cloud vendors. Atif Yeah? >> Absolutely. So our platform runs inside of the Cloud and runs in AWS is a Cloud as well. And from there it connects to multiple Clouds. So if customers need to connect to Azure or AWS from there or Oracle Cloud or any other Cloud, for that matter, they can connect from our platform and our platform is it scales horizontally. So as customers needs scale, it scales as well. And one of the key advantages is, it's consumed as a service. So there's no software to download or hardware to run for or to acquire for any of the customers. It's a software solution and it's consumed as a service. >> Got it. Ralph one on one more question for you before we wrap things up here, want to get your recommendations for IT Executives, CEOs, who might be in a similar situation to you, whether or not they are with a legacy organization, what are some of your recommendations that you say you need to be looking at a, B and C? >> Yeah, I would primarily say really need to be looking at some of these newer technologies that can help speed up, people, especially in this case to transition to the Cloud and that planning ahead of time, especially goal-setting, I find to be it's any of these places, providers is absolutely Paramount, because you can, if you don't make your own (indistinct) take that step forward and you can end up with shelter. So I make sure that it's very important that when you commit to that, you commit fully, you plan it out and you make sure you actually use it to get the benefits. One of my tech key is software. So. (chuckles) (Lisa Laughing) I'm a bit of it so. >> Well, you've been there and It costs a lot of money and it doesn't do any good. It doesn't move the business forward. And in this day and age, there is a competitor right behind the rear view mirror who might be smaller, more nimble, and more agile, who can take your place easily. >> Absolutely. >> If the organization isn't willing to take the risks and commit, as you said, Atif last question over for you, where are the customers go to learn more? I know you are at re:Invent your booth 1628, but what do you recommend folks go attendees of the event, as well as just other prospects to go to learn more about what you guys are delivering for companies like Warner Music Group. >> So if you're at re:Invent, please stop by our booth. And one of our Cloud specialists will give you a demo as well. So it's a very quick demo and you'll see, how we are reinventing networking for the Cloud narrow. You can also go to our website and you'll find a lot of information on our website. You can request a demo there as well. So look forward to seeing most of you at our booth and those who are not attending in person, please go visit our website. >> Lisa: Reinventing Networking. I like your play on words. They are Atif very appropriate. Gentlemen, thank you for joining me today talking about Alkira, Warner Music Group, what you guys are doing together and how this new early stage technology is really quite transformative. We appreciate your insights. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> For Ralph Munsen and Atif Khan, I'm Lisa Martin, and you're watching theCUBE's continuous coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. Thanks for watching. (soft techno music)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome everyone to this CUBE coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. We have a lot going on at this year's re:Invent with over 100 guests on the program, and I'm excited to welcome two of those guests here with me right now. We are joined by Ralph Munsen, the Chief Information Officer at Warner Music Group and Atif Khan, the CTO of Alkira and founder of Alkira as well. Gentlemen, welcome to the program. >> Thank you so much, Lisa. So glad to be here with you. >> Good to be here. >> Yeah. Good old fashioned Zoom is become our best friend in the last 22 months or so I'm losing count. Atif, I'd like to start with you. I know Alkira has been on the key before, but it's been a while and you guys are a relatively young company. Give the audience an overview of Alkira and what it is that you deliver. >> Absolutely, Lisa. So we started back in may of 2018, and the Cloud networking space, multicloud networking. And we came out of stealth mode back in April of 2020, and launched the company. In fact, one of our first events coming out of stealth mode was a Cuban interview back in April of 2020. So here at Telecare, what we are doing is we are building a Cloud platform, which allows customers to build a common network across multiple Clouds with built-in network and security services, with the policy and management layer on top full end to end visibility and governance capabilities. And all of this is delivered as a service and consumed as a service as well. And I'm very glad to be here with Ralph, who is from Warner Music Group and is one of our marquee customers. So I'll let Ralph introduce himself, and tell us a bit more about Alkira and WMTS Cloud journey. >> That sounds great. Ralph, why don't you start by giving the audience? I'm sure everyone knows Warner Music Group, but in case there's anyone out there that might not. Give us a little bit of a background. >> Yeah, so the Warner Music Group has been around since 1950 and 1940 even it had its roots at Hollywood and out of Warner Brothers Pictures, Today, say global company in 79 countries we operated. If the 100 employees and we have two major divisions, we have our era recorded music division, which has the labels people commonly turn to Atlantic records, Warner brothers records, and so forth. And then we have our publishing division, which is more a chapel, which is where our songwriters live. And of course we have some singer songwriters that are on both sides of our business. But now currently people may know our artists. We have ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Coldplay, Cardi B, Blake Shelton and I could go on and on. But exciting, great year, we're having one of our best years ever. And I'm so glad to be here and partnering with an Alkira. >> Excellent. I love all of those artists that you mentioned. Fantastic. So let's talk a little bit now Ralph about the backstory. Talk to me about the IT infrastructure at Warner Music Group, what you had there and some of the challenges that you had that you came to Alkira to solve. >> Yeah, well initially when I took over about five years ago now, we were very much a data center based business with traditional networking and IT functions. Additionally with our foreign affiliates, IT was sort of decentralized in the sense that a lot of the networking and data center components were left to regions. And so while we operated globally, we didn't really operate globally, at Warner among our affiliates. So one of the challenges was how do we get out of the data center? Cloud was new. One of the big things that were coming with big data, which is absolutely right for moving, going straight to the Cloud, especially if you don't have anything on-prem and how do we rationalize all of these different locations and conduct all the M&A work we've been doing? So it was quite a challenge, really. At the end, we wanted to have one view of the network, and now Alkira. I looked at many of companies and I'm curious in the best to provide that to us. So. >> Well, talk to me a little bit more about why Alkira, because as Atif was saying, they're very young. What came out of stealth mode during the pandemic Warner Music Group, being around since the 40s and 50s, the legacy institution, a great brand. What made you take a risk on such an early stage startup? >> Quite frankly, there was nothing in the space (chuckles) at the time you loved, there were companies that had components of it, of what Alkira does, which is basically network orchestration allowing us to use existing components. And nobody has the whole package, especially incorporating security. So, we figured why not take, take a chance? There's no, it won't hurt you no harm. And if anything is successful, it will give us a great ability to manage our network, much more efficiently taking things that took days down to hours and being able to do it much more efficiently with much fewer staff, as opposed to hiring a lot more because when you orchestrate all the components that are underneath, obviously it requires more bodies, more resources. >> Right. That efficiency and cost optimization is key there. Atif I have to ask you, talk to me about, this is only a few years ago, the gap in the market that you and your brothers saw a few years ago, when you founded the company, because as Rob was saying, there was nobody else in the market at the time that could do what you're doing. >> Yeah, absolutely. So Lisa, as you know, myself and Amir, we were also a part of the founding team of Viptela, which was the SD-WAN Company. So back in the day when we did SD-WAN, the requirement was to connect sites together. So if you go back like 5, 10, 5, 7, 10 years ago, networking was done to connect sites together, which could be remote sites, data centers, sites to data centers, all of that together. But fast forward, a few more years with the adoption of Cloud, requirements changed from the networking perspective. So now your network is not just connecting sites together, but most of the traffic now is from sites or users, which could be sitting anywhere. If you look at, what's going on? in the pandemic people are working from all across the globe. They are not just sitting in campuses or sites. So traffic patterns are from sites or users mostly to the Cloud or SaaS applications. So now networks also need to evolve and they need to be built inside the Cloud rather than from outside or connecting into the Cloud. So Cloud access is one capability, but building a network inside the Cloud becomes a requirement. And secondly, now it's not just only about connectivity because security becomes even more important because your security perimeter is changing as well. So securing all these Cloud networks becomes very, very complicated. And now as Ralph can tell you, majority of the enterprises have a multicloud strategy and each Cloud is done differently. So the moment you bring in multiple Clouds, multiple regions across the globe, it becomes so complicated for enterprises to build and manage. They need something, or a platform which makes it easy, gives them one way of doing networking, building a common network across whether you're connecting multiple Clouds or Clouds to your on-prem locations or Clouds to internet or sites to internet. So that's where we saw this gap and we decided to build Alkira to tackle this problem. >> Got it. So Rob, let's talk now about what you've implemented as a team was saying we live in this, in this work from anywhere hybrid multicloud world. Talk to us about Warner, what you implemented and maybe a little bit about your multicloud strategy, if you've got one. >> Ralph: Yeah. So over the last five years, Warner has migrated entirely into Cloud. And to this point before it's multicloud, we're mainly in AWS, but we do have some pleasure and some Google Cloud. And with that, I was telling Atif and Amir. It was interesting and they built a Cloud on site. They totally forgot about the networking aspect. So (laughs), you have ease of use for services and servers inside (indistinct) cloud, but networking is not really present, not to mention when it was built out, it wasn't made to go to competing Clouds. So most companies are facing this problem. How do you treat these environments as a single holistic environment? How do you turn things up, turn things down? How do you secure it, When every single one is different habits, selling unique ways of doing things? So that really was, how we ended up looking for an out Alkira, because I just kept looking at the costs and the profit print grow and grow and grow. And the complexity to a (indistinct) before is growing exponential. One change in one thing would lead to two changes to another. If you add another Cloud or you add another point on the network, you've got exponential growth and complexity, complexity, you have to deal with. So one stop shop. (chuckles) >> One stop shop and reducing that complexity. Talk to me about reducing complexity, and what you're accomplishing there. Especially, in the last year and a half as things have been so dynamic, shall we say? (chuckles) >> Yeah, well, I will say this. It was turnkey for the most part. It took a matter of months as opposed to years, because out of the box, there was a lot of integrations with the major network of players. So as of right now, you can buy firewalls, routing, VPC, things like this, they all exist, but they're not orchestrated together. Right? And then you have policies and security, again not orchestrating a different set of tools. So it really only took us two to three months to get it up and running, I acts, I just had a conversation (chuckles) with them when we were going to finish. So I think we'll be finishing this up completely in January and sometime. So, I was pretty sure. >> LISA: That's fantastic. So really, >> Yeah. >> Sorry Relaph fast time to market there with getting things implemented. Talk to me about from a business outcome perspective, you are CIO, what are some of the outcomes? That this technology is enabling you to deliver back to the business? >> Yeah, it really, the number 1, 2 big ones come to mind. One being able to provide them a secure enterprise. I know when there is the change it's made uniforms for our network without, some of older something's being forgotten about. So that's number one, security is big. You can imagine a company like more ever marquee brands, all brands, any company of marquee brands are targets today. That's number one. Number two is our time to market for eminent. So when we buy a company the time it takes us to get them to be completely part of Warner and therefore start realizing the business case and benefits sort of reasonably bought. Bought the company to begin with. So, we're buying a lot more and we're turning them up and turning those business cases up faster. But usually those cases would say things like six months to a year to integrate with us, and then we can unlock the set of benefits. Now it's more like, two to three months and you start to be able to lock the benefits sooner. And of course, those are different than a case by case basis, but that's. >> Sure, but significantly faster there, you're looking at a two to three X multiplier there, as you talked about. >> Ralph: right. >> Now, you mentioned multicloud Ralph. So here we are at re:Invent. I imagine part of your AWS as part of your Cloud infrastructure and they're a technology partner of ALkira's. >> Ralph: Correct. Yeah. So AWS is actually our biggest Cloud provider of the three, and yeah (laugh) they're their partner without cure. So Good. >> And Atif then you, Alkira's technology partner of AWS, correct? >> Yeas. Alkira is a technology partner of AWS, we are also available on AWS marketplace. So customers can consume, AlKira's platform from AWS marketplace as well. >> But given the fact that so many businesses in every industry are multicloud, I assume that you work with all the Cloud vendors. Atif Yeah? >> Absolutely. So our platform runs inside of the Cloud and runs in AWS is a Cloud as well. And from there it connects to multiple Clouds. So if customers need to connect to Azure or AWS from there or Oracle Cloud or any other Cloud, for that matter, they can connect from our platform and our platform is it scales horizontally. So as customers needs scale, it scales as well. And one of the key advantages is, it's consumed as a service. So there's no software to download or hardware to run for or to acquire for any of the customers. It's a software solution and it's consumed as a service. >> Got it. Ralph one on one more question for you before we wrap things up here, want to get your recommendations for IT Executives, CEOs, who might be in a similar situation to you, whether or not they are with a legacy organization, what are some of your recommendations that you say you need to be looking at a, B and C? >> Yeah, I would primarily say really need to be looking at some of these newer technologies that can help speed up, people, especially in this case to transition to the Cloud and that planning ahead of time, especially goal-setting, I find to be it's any of these places, providers is absolutely Paramount, because you can, if you don't make your own (indistinct) take that step forward and you can end up with shelter. So I make sure that it's very important that when you commit to that, you commit fully, you plan it out and you make sure you actually use it to get the benefits. One of my tech key is software. So. (chuckles) (Lisa Laughing) I'm a bit of it so. >> Well, you've been there and It costs a lot of money and it doesn't do any good. It doesn't move the business forward. And in this day and age, there is a competitor right behind the rear view mirror who might be smaller, more nimble, and more agile, who can take your place easily. >> Absolutely. >> If the organization isn't willing to take the risks and commit, as you said, Atif last question over for you, where are the customers go to learn more? I know you are at re:Invent your booth 1628, but what do you recommend folks go attendees of the event, as well as just other prospects to go to learn more about what you guys are delivering for companies like Warner Music Group. >> So if you're at re:Invent, please stop by our booth. And one of our Cloud specialists will give you a demo as well. So it's a very quick demo and you'll see, how we are reinventing networking for the Cloud narrow. You can also go to our website and you'll find a lot of information on our website. You can request a demo there as well. So look forward to seeing most of you at our booth and those who are not attending in person, please go visit our website. >> Lisa: Reinventing Networking. I like your play on words. They are Atif very appropriate. Gentlemen, thank you for joining me today talking about Alkira, Warner Music Group, what you guys are doing together and how this new early stage technology is really quite transformative. We appreciate your insights. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> For Ralph Munsen and Atif Khan, I'm Lisa Martin, and you're watching theCUBE's continuous coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. Thanks for watching. (soft techno music)

>>Welcome back to the cubes coverage of Couchbase connect online, where the theme of the event is, or is modernized now. Yes, let's talk about that. And with me is Ravi, who's the senior vice president of engineering and the CTO at Couchbase Ravi. Welcome. Great to see you. >>Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here with you. >>I asked you what the new requirements are around modern applications. I've seen some, you know, some of your comments, you gotta be flexible, distributed, multimodal, mobile edge. It, that those are all the very cool sort of buzz words, smart applications. What does that all mean? And how do you put that into a product and make it real? >>Yeah, I think what has basically happened is that, uh, so far, uh, it's been a transition of sorts. And now we are come to a point where, uh, the tipping point and the tipping point has been, uh, uh, more because of COVID and there COVID has pushed us to a world where we are living, uh, in a sort of, uh, occasionally connected manner where our digital, uh, interactions, precede our physical interactions in one sense. So it's a world where we do a lot more stuff that's less than, uh, in a digital manner, as opposed to sort of making a more specific human contact that has really been the, uh, sort of accelerant to this modernized. Now, as a team in this process, what has happened is that so far all the databases and all the data infrastructure that we have built historically, are all very centralized. >>They're all sitting behind. Uh, they used to be in mainframes from where they came to like your own data centers, where we used to run hundreds of servers to where they're going now, which is the computing marvelous change to consumption-based computing, which is all cloud oriented now. And so, uh, but they are all centralized still. Uh, but where our engagement happens with the data is, uh, at the edge, uh, at your point of convenience at your point of consumption, not where the data is actually sitting. So this has led to, uh, you know, all those buzzwords, as you said, which is like, oh, well we need a distributed data infrastructure, where is the edge? Uh, but it just basically comes down to the fact that the data needs to be where you are engaging with it. And that means if you are doing it on your mobile phone, or if you are sitting, uh, doing something in your body or traveling, or whether you are in a subway, whether you're in a plane or a ship, wherever the data needs to come to you, uh, and be available as opposed to every time you going to the data, which is centrally sitting in some place. >>And that is the fundamental shift in terms of how the modern architecture needs to think, uh, when they, when it comes to digital transformation and, uh, transitioning their old applications to, uh, the, the modern infrastructure, because that's, what's going to define your customer experiences and your personalized experiences. Uh, otherwise people are basically waiting for that circle of death that we all know, uh, and blaming the networks and other pieces. The problem is actually, the data is not where you are engaging with. It has got to be fetched, you know, seven seas away. Um, and that is the problem that we are basically solving in this modern modernization of that data, data infrastructure. >>I love this conversation and I love the fact that there's a technical person that can kind of educate us on, on this, because date data by its very nature is distributed. It's always been distributed, but w w but distributed database has always been incredibly challenging, whether it was a global SIS Plex or an eventual consistency of getting recovery for a distributed architecture has been extremely difficult. You know, I hate that this is a terrible term, lots of ways to skin a cat, but, but you've been the visionary behind this notion of optionality, how to solve technical problems in different ways. So how do you solve that, that problem of, of, of, uh, of, uh, of a super rock solid database that can handle, you know, distributed data? Yes. >>So there are two issues that you're a little too over there with Forrest is the optionality piece of it, which is that same data that you have that requires different types of processing on it. It's almost like fractional distillation. It is, uh, like your crude flowing through the system. You start all over from petrol and you can end up with Vaseline and rayon on the other end, but the raw material, that's our data in one sense. So far, we never treated the data that way. That's part of the problem. It has always been very purpose built and cast first problem. And so you just basically have to recast it every time we want to look at the data. The first thing that we have done is make data that fluid. So when you're actually, uh, when you have the data, you can first look at it to perform. >>Let's say a simple operation that we call as a key value store operation. Given my ID, give him a password kind of scenarios, which is like, you know, there are customers of ours who have billions of user IDs in their management. So things get slower. How do you make it fast and easily available? Log-in should not take more than five minutes. Again, this is a, there's a class of problem that we solve that same data. Now, eventually, without you ever having to, uh, sort of do a casting it to a different database, you can now do a solid, uh, acquire. These are classic sequel queries, which is our next magic. We are a no SQL database, but we have a full functional sequel. The sequel has been the language that has talked to data for 40 odd years successfully. Every other database has come and try to implement their own QL query language, but they've all failed only sequel as which stood the test of time of 40 odd years. >>Why? Because there's a solid mathematics behind it. It's called a relational calculus. And what that helps you is, is, uh, basically, uh, look at the data and any common tutorial, uh, any, uh, any which way you look at the data. All it will come, uh, the data in a format that you can consume. That's the guarantee sort of gives you in one sense. And because of that, you can now do some really complex in the database signs, what we call us, predicate logic on top of that. And that gives you the ability to do the classic relational type queries, select star from where Canada stuff, because it's at an English level, it becomes easy to, so the same data, you didn't have to go move it to another database, do your, uh, sort of transformation of the data and all this stuff. Same day that you do this. >>Now, that's where the optionality comes in. Now you can do another piece of logic on top of this, which we call search. This is built on this concept of inverted index and TF IDF, the classic Google in a very simple terms, but Google tokenized search, you can do that in the same data without you ever having to move the data to a different format. And then on top of it, they can do what is known as a eventing or your own custom logic, which we all which we do on a, on programming language called Java script. And finally analytics and analytics is the ability to query the operational data in a different way. I'll talk budding. What was my sales of this widget year over year on December 1st week, that's a very complex question to ask, and it takes a lot of different types of processing. >>So these are different types of that's optionality with different types of processing on the same data without you having to go to five different systems without you having to recast the data in five different ways and find different application logic. So you put them in one place. Now is your second question. Now this has got to be distributed and made available in multiple cloud in your data center, all the way to the edge, which is the operational side of the, uh, the database management system. And that's where the distributed, uh, platform that we have built enables us to get it to where you need the data to be, you know, in a classic way, we call it CDN in the data as in like content delivery networks. So far do static, uh, uh, sort of moving of static content to the edges. Now we can actually dynamically move the data. Now imagine the richness of applications you can develop. >>The first part of the, the answer to my question, are you saying you could do this without skiing with a no schema on, right? And then you can apply those techniques. >>Uh, fantastic question. Yes. That's the brilliance of this database is that so far classically databases have always demanded that you first define a schema before you can write a single byte of data. Couchbase is one of the rare databases. I, for one don't know any other one, but there could be, let's give the benefit of doubt. It's a database which writes data first and then late binds to schema as we call it. It's a schema on read things. So because there is no schema, it is just a on document that is sitting inside. And Jason is the lingua franca of the web, as you very well know by now. So it just Jason that we manage, you can do key lookups of the Jason. You can do full credit capability, like a classic relational database. We even have cost-based optimizers and the other sophisticated pieces of technology behind it. >>You can do searching on it, using the, um, the full textual analysis pipeline. You can do ad hoc wedding on the analytic side, and you can write your own custom logic on it using our eventing capabilities. So that's, that's what it allows because we keep the data in the native form of Jason. It's not a data structure or a data schema imposed by a database. It is how the data is produced. And on top of it, we bring different types of logic, five different types of it's like the philosophy is bringing logic to data as opposed to moving data to logic. This is what we have been doing, uh, in the last 40 years because we developed various, uh, database systems and data processing systems of various points. In time in our history, we had key value stores. We had relational systems, we had search systems, we had analytical systems. >>We had queuing systems, all the systems, if you want to use any one of them, our answer has always been, just move the data to that system. Versus we are saying that do not move the data as we get bigger and bigger and data just moving this data is going to be a humongous problem. If you're going to be moving petabytes of data for this is not one to fly instead, bring the logic to the data. So you can now apply different types of logic to the data. I think that's what, in one sense, the optionality piece of this, >>As you know, there's plenty of schema-less data stores. They're just, they're called data swamps. I mean, that's what they, that's what they became, right? I mean, so this is some, some interesting magic that you're applying here. >>Yes. I mean, the one problem with the data swamps as you call them is that that was a little too open-ended because the data format itself could change. And then you do your, then everything became like a game data casting because it required you to have it in seven schema in one sense at the end of the day, for certain types of processing. So in that where a lot of gaps it's probably flooded, but it not really, uh, how do you say, um, keep to the promise that it actually meant to be? So that's why it was a swamp I need, because it was fundamentally not managing the data. The data was sitting in some file system, and then you are doing something, this is a classic database where the data is managed and you create indexes to manage it, and you create different types of indexes to manage it. You distribute the index, you distribute the data you have, um, like we were discussing, you have acid semantics on top of, and when you, when you put all these things together, uh, it's, it's, it's a tough proposition, but they have solved some really tough problems, which are good computer science stuff, computer science problems that we have to solve to bring this, to bring this, to bear, to bring this to the market. >>So you predicted the trend around multimodal and converged, uh, databases. Um, you kind of led Couchbase through that. I want to, I always ask this question because it's clearly a trend in the industry and it, it definitely makes sense from a simplification standpoint. And, and, and so that I don't have to keep switching databases or the flip side of that though, Ravi. And I wonder if you could give me your opinion on this is kind of the right tool for the right job. So I often say isn't that the Swiss army knife approach, we have a little teeny scissors and a knife. That's not that sharp. How do you respond to that? Uh, >>A great one. Um, my answer is always, I use another analogy to tackle that, but is that, have you ever accused a smartphone of being a Swiss army knife? No. No. Nobody does that because it's actually 40 functions in one is what a smartphone becomes. You never call your iPhone or your Android phone, a Swiss army knife, because here's the reason is that you can use that same device in the full capacity. That's what optionality is. It's not, I'm not, it's not like your good old one where there's a keyboard hiding half the screen, and you can do everything only through the keyboard without touching and stuff like that. That's not the whole devices available to you to do one type of processing when you want it. When you're done with that, it can do another completely different types of processing. Like as in a moment, it could be a Tom, Tom telling you all the directions, the next one, it's your PDA. >>Third one, it's a fantastic phone. Uh, four, it's a beautiful camera, which can do your f-stop management and give you a nice SLR quality picture. Right? So next moment is a video camera. People are shooting movies with this thing in Hollywood, these days for God's sake. So it gives you the full power of what you want to do when you want it. And now, if you just taught that iPhone is a great device or any smartphone is a great device, because you can do five things in one or 50 things in one, and at a certain level, they missed the point because what that device really enabled is not just these five things in one place. It becomes easy to consume and easy to operate. It actually started the app is the economy. That's the brilliance of bringing so many things in one place, because in the morning, you know, I get the alert saying that today you got to leave home at eight 15 for your nine o'clock meeting. >>And the next day it might actually say 8 45 is good enough because it knows where the phone is sitting. The geo position of it. It knows from my calendar where the meeting is actually happening. It can do a traffic calculation because it's got my map and all of the routes. And then it's gone there's notification system, which eventually pops up on my phone to say, Hey, you got to leave at this time. Now five different systems have to come together and they can because the data is in one place without that, you couldn't even do this simple function, uh, in a, in a sort of predictable manner in a, in a, in a manner that's useful to you. So I believe a database which gives you this optionality of doing multiple data processing on the same set of data allows you will allow you to build a class of products, which you are so far been able to struggling to build, because half the time you're running sideline to sideline, just, you know, um, integrating data from one system to the other. >>So I love the analogy with the smartphone. I w I want to, I want to continue it and double click on it. So I use this camera. I used to, you know, my kid had a game. I would bring the, the, the big camera, the 35 millimeter. So I don't use that anymore no way, but my wife does, she still uses the DSLR. So is, is there a similar analogy here? That those, and by the way, the camera, the camera shop in my town went out of business, you know? And so, so, but, but is there, is that a fair, where, in other words, those specialized databases, they say there still is a place for them, but they're getting >>Absolutely, absolutely great analogy and a great extension to the question. That's, that's the contrarian side of it in one sense is that, Hey, if everything can just be done in one, do you have a need for the other things? I mean, you gave a camera example where it is sort of, it's a, it's a slippery slope. Let me give you another one, which is actually less straight to the point better. I've been just because my, I, I listened to half of the music on the iPhone. Doesn't stop me from having my full digital receiver. And, you know, my Harman Kardon speakers at home because they haven't, they produce a kind of sounded immersive experience. This teeny little speaker has never in its lifetime intended to produce, right? It's the convenience. Yes. It's the convenience of convergence that I can put my earphones on and listen to all the great music. >>Yes, it's 90% there or 80% there. It depends on your audio file mess of your, uh, I mean, you don't experience the super specialized ones do not go away. You know, there are, there are places where, uh, the specialized use cases will demand a separate system to exist, but even there that has got to be very closed. Um, how do you say close, binding or late binding? I should be able to stream that song from my phone to that receiver so I can get it from those speakers. You can say that, oh, there's a digital divide between these two things done, and I can only play CDs on that one. That's not how it's going to work going forward. It's going to be, this is the connected world, right? As in, if I'm listening to the song in my car and then step off the car and walk into my living room, that's same songs should continue and play in my living room speakers. Then it's a world because it knows my preference and what I'm doing that all happened only because of this data flowing between all these systems. >>I love, I love that example too. When I was a kid, we used to go to Twitter, et cetera. And we'd to play around with, we take off the big four foot speakers. Those stores are out of business too. Absolutely. Um, now we just plug into Sonos. So that is the debate between relational and non-relational databases over Ravi. >>I believe so. Uh, because I think, uh, what had happened was the relational systems. Uh, I've been where the norm, they rule the roost, if you will, for the last 40 odd years, and then gain this no sequel movement, which was almost as though a rebellion from the relational world, we all inhibited, uh, uh, because we, it was very restrictive. It, it had the schema definition and the schema evolution as we call it, all those things, they were like, they required a committee, they required your DBA and your data architect. And you have to call them just to add one column and stuff like that. And the world had moved on. This was the world of blogs and tweets and, uh, you know, um, mashups and, um, uh, uh, a different generation of digital behavior, digital, native people now, um, who are operating in these and the, the applications, the, the consumer facing applications. >>We are living in this world. And yet the enterprise ones were still living in the, um, in the other, the other side of the divide. So all came this solution to say that we don't need SQL. Actually, the problem was never sequel. No sequel was, you know, best approximation, good marketing name, but from a technologist perspective, the problem was never the query language, no SQL was not the problem, the schema limitations, and the inability for these, the system to scale, the relational systems were built like, uh, airplanes, which is that if, uh, San Francisco Boston, there is a flight route, it's so popular that if you want to add 50 more seats to it, the only way you can do that is to go back to Boeing and ask them to get you a set in from 7 3 7 2 7 7 7, or whatever it is. And they'll stick you with a billion dollar bill on the alarm to somehow pay that by, you know, either flying more people or raising the rates or whatever you have to do. >>These are called vertically scaling systems. So relational systems are vertically scaling. They are expensive. Versus what we have done in this modern world, uh, is make the system how it is only scaling, which is more like the same thing. If it's a train that is going from San Francisco to Boston, you need 50 more people be my guests. I'll add one more coach to it, one more car to it. And the better part of the way we have done this year is that, and we have super specialized on that. This route actually requires three, three dining cars and only 10 sort of sleeper cars or whatever. Then just pick those and attach the next route. You can choose to have ID only one dining car. That's good enough. So the way you scale the plane is also can be customized based on the route along the route, more, more dining capabilities, shorter route, not an abandoned capability. >>You can attach the kind of coaches we call this multi-dimensional scaling. Not only do we scale horizontally, we can scale to different types of workloads by adding different types of coaches to it quite. So that's the beauty of this architecture. Now, why is that important? Is that where we land eventually is the ability to do operational and analytical in the same place. This is another thing which doesn't happen in the past, because you would say that I cannot run this analytical Barre because then my operational workload will suffer. Then my friend, then we'll slow down millions of customers that impacted that problem. We will solve the same data in which you can do analytical buddy, an operational query because they're separated by these cars, right? As in like we, we fence the, the, the resources, so that one doesn't impede the other. So you can, at the same time, have a microsecond 10 million ops per second, happening of a key value or equity. >>And then yet you can run this analytical body, which will take a couple of minutes to run one, not impeding the other. So that's in one sense, sort of the, part of the, um, uh, problems that we have solved here is that relational versus, uh, uh, the no SQL portion of it. These are the kinds of problems we have to solve. We solve those. And then we yet put back the same quality language on top. Y it's like Tesla in one sense, right underneath the surface is where all the stuff that had to be changed had to change, which is like the gasoline, uh, the internal combustion engine, uh, I think gas, uh, you says, these are the issues we really wanted to solve. Um, so solve that, change the engine out, you don't need to change the steering wheel or the gas pedal or the, you know, the battle shifters or whatever else you need, or that are for your shifters. >>Those need to remain in the same place. Otherwise people won't buy it. Otherwise it does not even look like a car to people. So, uh, even when you feed people the most advanced technology, it's got to be accessible to them in the manner that people can consume. Only in software, we forget this first design principle, and we go and say that, well, I got a car here, you got the blue harder to go fast and lean back for, for it to, you know, uh, to apply a break that's, that's how we seem to define, uh, design software. Instead, we should be designing them in a manner that it is easiest for our audience, which is developers to consume. And they've been using SQL for 40 years or 30 years. And so we give them the steering wheel on the, uh, and the gas bottle and the, um, and the gear shifter is by putting cul back on underneath the surface, we have completely solved, uh, the relational, uh, uh, limitations of schema, as well as scalability. >>So in, in, in that way, and by bringing back the classic acid capabilities, which is what relational systems, uh, we accounted on and being able to do that with the sequel programming language, we call it like multi-state SQL transaction. So to say, which is what a classic way all the enterprise software was built by putting that back. Now, I can say that that debate between relational and non-relational is over because this has truly extended the database to solve the problems that the relational systems had to grow up the salt in the modern times, but rather than get, um, sort of pedantic about whether it's, we have no SQL or sequel or new sequel, or, uh, you know, any of that sort of, uh, jargon, oriented debate, uh, this, these are the debates of computer science that they are actually, uh, and they were the solve and they have solved them with, uh, the latest release of $7, which we released a few months ago. >>Right, right. Last July, Ravi, we got to leave it there. I, I love the examples and the analogies. I can't wait to be face to face with you. I want to hang with you at the cocktail party because I've learned so much and really appreciate your time. Thanks for coming to the cube. >>Fantastic. Thanks for the time. And the Aboriginal Dan was, I mean, very insightful questions really appreciate it. Thank you. >>Okay. This is Dave Volante. We're covering Couchbase connect online, keep it right there for more great content on the cube.

>> Welcome back to the cubes coverage of Couchbase connect online, where the theme of the event is, is modernize now. Yes, let's talk about that. And with me is Ravi mayor him, who's the senior vice president of engineering and the CTO at Couchbase Ravi. Welcome. Great to see you. >> Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here with you. >> I want to ask you what the new requirements are around modern applications. I've seen some of your comments, you got to be flexible, distributed, multimodal, mobile, edge. Those are all the very cool sort of buzz words, smart applications. What does that all mean? And how do you put that into a product and make it real? >> Yeah, I think what has basically happened is that so far it's been a transition of sorts. And now we are come to a point where that tipping point and that tipping point has been more because of COVID and there are COVID has pushed us to a world where we are living in a in a sort of occasionally connected manner where our digital interactions precede, our physical interactions in one sense. So it's a world where we do a lot more stuff that's less than in a digital manner, as opposed to sort of making a more specific human contact. That does really been the sort of accelerant to this modernize Now, as a team. In this process, what has happened is that so far all the databases and all the data infrastructure that we have built historically, are all very centralized. They're all sitting behind. They used to be in mainframes from where they came to like your own data centers, where we used to run hundreds of servers to where they're going now, which is the computing marvelous change to consumption-based computing, which is all cloud oriented now. And so, but they are all centralized still, but where our engagement happens with the data is at the edge at your point of convenience, at your point of consumption, not where the data is actually sitting. So this has led to, you know, all those buzzwords, as you said, which is like, oh, well we need a distributed data infrastructure, where is the edge? But it just basically comes down to the fact that the data needs to be there, if you are engaging with it. And that means if you are doing it on your mobile phone, or if you're sitting, but doing something in your while you're traveling, or whether you're in a subway, whether you're in a plane or a ship, wherever the data needs to come to you and be available, as opposed to every time you going to the data, which is centrally sitting in some place. And that is the fundamental shift in terms of how the modern architecture needs to think when they, when it comes to digital transformation and, transitioning their old applications to the, the modern infrastructure, because that's, what's going to define your customer experiences and your personalized experiences. Otherwise, people are basically waiting for that circle of death that we all know, and blaming the networks and other pieces. The problem was actually, the data is not where you are engaging with it. It's got to be fetched, you know, seven sea's away. And that is the problem that we are basically solving in this modern modernization of that data, data infrastructure. >> I love this conversation and I love the fact that there's a technical person that can kind of educate us on, on this because date data by its very nature is distributed. It's always been distributed, but with the distributed database has always been incredibly challenging, whether it was a global SIS Plex or an eventual consistency of getting recovery for a distributed architecture has been extremely difficult. You know, I hate that this is a terrible term, lots of ways to skin a cat, but, but you've been the visionary behind this notion of optionality, how to solve technical problems in different ways. So how do you solve that, that problem of, of, of, of, of a super rock solid database that can handle, you know, distributed data? >> Yes. So there are two issues that you alluded little too over there. The first is the optionality piece of it, which is that same data that you have that requires different types of processing on it. It's almost like fractional distillation. It is like your crude flowing through the system. You start all over from petrol and you can end up with Vaseline and rayon on the other end, but the raw material, that's our data. In one sense. So far, we never treated the data that way. That's part of the problem. It has always been very purpose built and cast first problem. And so you just basically have to recast it every time we want to look at the data. The first thing that we have done is make data that fluid. So when you're actually, when you have the data, you can first look at it to perform. Let's say a simple operation that we call as a key value store operation. Given my ID, give him a password kind of scenarios, which is like, you know, there are customers of ours who have billions of user IDs in their management. So things get slower. How do you make it fast and easily available? Log-in should not take more than five milliseconds, this is, this is a class of problem that we solve that same data. Now, eventually, without you ever having to sort of do a casting it to a different database, you can now do solid queries. Our classic SQL queries, which is our next magic. We are a no SQL database, but we have a full functional SQL. The SQL has been the language that has talked to data for 40 odd years successfully. Every other database has come and tried to implement their own QL query language, but they've all failed only SQL has stood the test of time of 40 odd years. Why? Because there's a solid mathematics behind it. It's called a relational calculus. And what that helps you is, is basically a look at the data and any common editorial, any, any which way you look at the data, all it will come, the data in a format that you can consume. That's the guarantee sort of gives you in one sense. And because of that, you can now do some really complex in the database signs, what we call us, predicate logic on top of that. And that gives you the ability to do the classic relational type queries select star from where, kind of stuff, because it's at an English level becomes easy to so the same day that you didn't have to go move it to another database, do your sort of transformation of the data and all the stuff, same day that you do this. Now that's where the optionality comes in. Now you can do another piece of logic on top of this, which we call search. This is built on this concept of inverted index and TF IDF, the classic Google in a very simple terms, what Google tokenized search, you can do that in the same data without you ever having to move the data to a different format. And then on top of it, they can do what is known as a eventing or your own custom logic, which we all which we do on a, on programming language called Java script. And finally analytics and analytics is the, your ability to query the operational data in a different way. And talk querying, what was my sales of this widget year over year on December 1st week, that's a very complex question to ask, and it takes a lot of different types of processing. So these are different types of that's optionality with different types of processing on the same data without you having to go to five different systems without you having to recast the data in five different ways and apply different application logic. So you put them in one place. Now is your second question. Now this has got to be distributed and made available in multiple cloud in your data center, all the way to the edge, which is the operational side of the, the database management system. And that's where the distributed platform that we have built enables us to get it to where you need the data to be, you know, in the classic way we call it CDN'ing the data as in like content delivery networks. So far do static, sort of moving of static content to the edges. Now we can actually dynamically move the data. Now imagine the richness of applications you can develop. >> And on the first part of, of the, the, the answer to my question, are you saying you could do this without scheme with a no schema on, right? And then you can apply those techniques. >> Fantastic question. Yes. That's the brilliance of this database is that so far classically databases have always demanded that you first define a schema before you can write a single byte of data. Couchbase is one of the rare databases. I, for one don't know any other one, but there could be, let's give the benefit of doubt. It's a database which writes data first and then late binds to schema as we call it. It's a schema on read thing. So, because there is no schema, it is just a Json document that is sitting inside. And Json is the lingua franca of the web, as you very well know by now. So it just Json that we manage, you can do key value look ups of the Json. You can do full credit capability, like a classic relational database. We even have cost-based optimizers and other sophisticated pieces of technology behind it. You can do searching on it, using the, the full textual analysis pipeline. You can do ad hoc webbing on the analytics side, and you can write your own custom logic on it using or inventing capabilities. So that's, that's what it allows because we keep the data in the native form of Json. It's not a data structure or a data schema imposed by a database. It is how the data is produced. And on top of it, bring, we bring different types of logic, five different types of it's like the philosophy is bringing logic to data as opposed to moving data to logic. This is what we have been doing in the last 40 years, because we developed various database systems and data processing systems at various points in time in our history, we had key value stores. We had relational systems, we had search systems, we had analytical systems. We had queuing systems, all these systems, if you want to use any one of them are answered. It always been, just move the data to that system. Versus we are saying that do not move the data as we get bigger and bigger and data just moving this data is going to be a humongous problem. If you're going to be moving petabytes of data for this, it's not going to fly instead, bring the logic to the data, right? So you can now apply different types of logic to the data. I think that's what, in one sense, the optionality piece of this. >> But as you know, there's plenty of schema-less data stores. They're just, they're called data swamps. I mean, that's what they, that's what they became, right? I mean, so this is some, some interesting magic that you're applying here. >> Yes. I mean, the one problem with the data swamps as you call them is that that was a little too open-ended because the data format itself could change. And then you do your, then everything became like a game data recasting because it required you to have it in seven schema in one sense at, at the end of the day, for certain types of processing. So in that where a lot of gaps it's probably related, but it not really, how do you say keep to the promise that it actually meant to be? So that's why it was a swamp I mean, because it was fundamentally not managing the data. The data was sitting in some file system, and then you are doing something, this is a classic database where the data is managed and you create indexes to manage it. And you create different types of indexes to manage it. You distribute the index, you distribute the data you have, like we were discussing, you have ACID semantics on top of, and when you, when you put all these things together, it's, it's, it's a tough proposition, but we have solved some really tough problems, which are good computer science stuff, computer science problems that we have to solve to bring this, to bring this, to bear, to bring this to the market. >> So you predicted the trend around multimodal and converged databases. You kind of led Couchbase through that. I, I want, I always ask this question because it's clearly a trend in the industry and it, and it definitely makes sense from a simplification standpoint. And, and, and so that I don't have to keep switching databases or the flip side of that though, Ravi. And I wonder if you could give me your opinion on this is kind of the right tool for the right job. So I often say isn't that the Swiss army knife approach, where you have have a little teeny scissors and a knife, that's not that sharp. How, how do you respond to that? >> A great one. My answer is always, I use another analogy to tackle that, and is that, have you ever accused a smartphone of being a Swiss army knife? - No. No. >> Nobody does. That because it actually 40 functions in one is what a smartphone becomes. You never call your iPhone or your Android phone, a Swiss army knife, because here's the reason is that you can use that same device in the full capacity. That's what optionality is. It's not, I'm not, it's not like your good old one where there's a keyboard hiding half the screen, and you can do everything only through the keyboard without touching and stuff like that. That's not the whole devices available to you to do one type of processing when you want it. When you're done with that, it can do another completely different types of processing. Right? As in a moment, it could be a TomTom, telling you all the directions, the next one, it's your PDA. Third one. It's a fantastic phone. Four. It's a beautiful camera which can do your f-stop management and give you a nice SLR quality picture. Right? So next moment, it's the video camera. People are shooting movies with this thing in Hollywood, these days for God's sake. So it gives you the full power of what you want to do when you want it. And now, if you just thought that iPhone is a great device or any smartphone is a great device, because you can do five things in one or 50 things in one, and at a certain level, he missed the point because what that device really enabled is not just these five things in one place. It becomes easy to consume and easy to operate. It actually started the app based economy. That's the brilliance of bringing so many things in one place, because in the morning, you know, I get an alert saying that today you got to leave home at >> 8: 15 for your nine o'clock meeting. And the next day it might actually say 8 45 is good enough because it knows where the phone is sitting. The geo position of it. It knows from my calendar where the meeting is actually happening. It can do a traffic calculation because it's got my map and all of the routes. And then it's got this notification system, which eventually pops up on my phone to say, Hey, you got to leave at this time. Now five different systems have to come together and they can because the data is in one place. Without that, you couldn't even do this simple function in a, in a sort of predictable manner in a, in a, in a manner that's useful to you. So I believe a database which gives you this optionality of doing multiple data processing on the same set of data allows you will allow you to build a class of products, which you are so far been able to struggling to build. Because half the time you're running sideline to sideline, just, you know, integrating data from one system to the other. >> So I love the analogy with the smartphone. I want to, I want to continue it and double click on it. So I use this camera. I used to, you know, my kid had a game. I would bring the, the, the big camera, the 35 millimeter. So I don't use that anymore no way, but my wife does, she still uses the DSLR. So is, is there a similar analogy here? That those, and by the way, the camera, the camera shop in my town went out of business, you know? So, so, but, but is there, is that a fair and where, in other words, those specialized databases, they say there still is a place for them, but they're getting. >> Absolutely, absolutely great analogy and a great extension to the question. That's like, that's the contrarian side of it in one sense is that, Hey, if everything can just be done in one, do you have a need for the other things? I mean, you gave a camera example where it is sort of, it's a, it's a slippery slope. Let me give you another one, which is actually less straight to the point better. I've been just because my, I, I listened to half of my music on the iPhone. Doesn't stop me from having my full digital receiver. And, you know, my Harman Kardon speakers at home because they, I mean, they produce a kind of sounded immersive experience. This teeny little speaker has never in its lifetime intended to produce, right? It's the convenience. Yes. It's the convenience of convergence that I can put my earphones on and listen to all the great music. Yes, it's 90% there or 80% there. It depends on your audio file-ness of your, I mean, your experience super specialized ones do not go away. You know, there are, there are places where the specialized use cases will demand a separate system to exist. But even there that has got to be very closed. How do you say close, binding or late binding? I should be able to stream that song from my phone to that receiver so I can get it from those speakers. You can say that all, there's a digital divide between these two things done, and I can only play CDs on that one. That's not how it's going to work going forward. It's going to be, this is the connected world, right? As in, if I'm listening to the song in my car and then step off the car, walk into my living room, that same songs should continue and play in my living room speakers. Then it's a connected world because it knows my preference and what I'm doing that all happened only because of this data flowing between all these systems. >> I love, I love that example too. When I was a kid, we used to go to Tweeter, et cetera. And we used to play around with three, take home, big four foot speakers. Those stores are out of business too. Absolutely. And now we just plug into Sonos. So that is the debate between relational and non-relational databases over Ravi? >> I believe so, because I think what had happened was relational systems. I've mean where the norm, they rule the roost, if you will, for the last 40 odd years and then gain this no SQL movement, which was almost as though a rebellion from the relational world, we all inhabited because we, it was very restrictive. It, it had the schema definition and the schema evolution as we call it, all those things, they were like, they required a committee. They required your DBA and your data architect. And you had to call them just to add one column and stuff like that. And the world had moved on. This was a world of blogs and tweets and, you know, mashups and a different generation of digital behavior, There are digital, native people now who are operating in these and the, the applications, the, the consumer facing applications. We are living in this world. And yet the enterprise ones were still living in the, in the other, the other side of the divide. So out came this solution to say that we don't need SQL. Actually the problem was never SQL. No SQL was, you know, best approximation, good marketing name, but from a technologist perspective, the problem was never the query language, no SQL was not the problem, the schema limitations and the inability for these, the system to scale, the relational systems were built like airplanes, which is that if a San Francisco, Boston, there is a flight route, it's so popular that if you want to add 50 more seats to it, the only way you can do that is to go back to Boeing and ask them to get you a set from 7 3 7 2 7 7 7, or whatever it is. And they'll stick you with a billion dollar bill on the allowance that you'll somehow pay that by, you know, either flying more people or raising the rates or whatever you have to do. These are all vertically scaling systems. So relational systems are vertically scaling. They are expensive. Versus what we have done in this modern world is make the system horizontally scaling, which is more like the same thing. If it's a train that is going from San Francisco to Boston, you need 50 more people be my guest. I'll add one more coach to it, one more car to it. And the better part of the way we have done this here is that, and we are super specialized on that. This route actually requires three, three dining cars and only 10 sort of sleeper cars or whatever. Then just pick those and attach the next route. You can choose to have, I need only one dining car. That's good enough. So the way you scale the plane is also can be customized based on the route along the route, more, more dining capabilities, shorter route, not an abandoned capability. You can attach the kind of coaches we call this multidimensional scaling. Not only do we scale horizontally, we can scale to different types of workloads by adding different types of coaches to it, right? So that's the beauty of this architecture. Now, why is that architecture important? Is that where we land eventually is the ability to do operational and analytical in the same place. This is another thing which doesn't happen in the past, because, you would say that I cannot run this analytical query because then my operational workload will suffer. Then my front end, then we'll slow down millions of customers that impacted that problem. They'll solve the same data once again, do analytical query, an operational query because they're separated by these cars, right? As in like we, we, we fence the, the, the resources so that one doesn't impede the other. So you can, at the same time, have a microsecond 10 million ops per second, happening of a key value or a query. And then yet you can run this analytical query, which will take a couple of minutes to them. One, not impeding the other. So that's in one sense, sort of the part of the problems that we have solved it here is that relational versus the no SQL portion of it. These are the kinds of problems we have to solve. We solve those. And then we yet put back the same query language on top. Why? It's like Tesla in one sense, right underneath the surface is where all the stuff that had to be changed had to change, which is like the gasoline, the internal combustion engine the gas, you says, these were the issues we really wanted to solve. So solve that, change the engine out, you don't need to change the steering wheel or the gas pedal or the, you know, the battle shifters or whatever else you need, over there your gear shifters. Those need to remain in the same place. Otherwise people won't buy it. Otherwise it does not even look like a car to people. So even when you feed people, the most advanced technology, it's got to be accessible to them in the manner that people can consume. Only in software, we forget this first design principle, and we go and say that, well, I got a car here, you got the blow harder to go fast. And they lean back for, for it to, you know, to apply a break that's, that's how we seem to define design software. Instead, we shouldn't be designing them in a manner that it is easiest for our audience, which is developers to consume. And they've been using SQL for 40 years or 30 years. And so we give them the steering wheel on the, and the gas pedal and the, and the gear shifters by putting SQL back on underneath the surface, we have completely solved the relational limitations of schema, as well as scalability. So in, in, in that way, and by bringing back the classic ACID capabilities, which is what relational systems we accounted on, and being able to do that with the SQL programming language, we call it like multi-statement SQL transaction. So to say, which is what a classic way all the enterprise software was built by putting that back. Now, I can say that that debate between relational and non-relational is over because this has truly extended the database to solve the problems that the relational systems had to grow up to solve in the modern times, rather than get sort of pedantic about whether it's we have no SQL or SQL or new SQL, or, you know, any of that sort of jargon oriented debate. This is, these are the debates of computer science that they are actually, and they were the solve, and they have solved them with the latest release of 7.0, which we released a few months ago. >> Right, right. Last July, Ravi, we got got to leave it there. I love the examples and the analogies. I can't wait to be face-to-face with you. I want to hang with you at the cocktail party because I've learned so much and really appreciate your time. Thanks for coming to the cube. >> Fantastic. Thanks for the time. And the opportunity I was, I mean, very insightful questions really appreciate it. - Thank you. >> Okay. This is Dave Volante. We're covering Couchbase connect online, keep it right there for more great content on the cube.

>>Really excited about this year's data, citizens with so many of you together. Uh, I'm going to talk today about accessible data, because what good is the data. If you can get it into your hands and shop for it, but you can't understand it. Uh, and I'm here today with, uh, bald, really thrilled to be here with Paul. Paul is an award-winning author on all topics data. I think 20 books with 21st on the way over 300 articles, he's been a frequent speaker. He's an expert in future trends. Uh, he's a VP at cognitive systems, uh, over at IBM teachers' data also, um, at the business school and as a champion of diversity initiatives. Paul, thank you for being here, really the conformance, uh, to the session with you. >>Oh, thanks for having me. It's a privilege. >>So let's get started with, uh, our origins and data poll. Um, and I'll start with a little story of my own. So, uh, I trained as an engineer way back when, uh, and, um, in one of the courses we got as an engineer, it was about databases. So we got the stick thick book of CQL and me being in it for the programming. I was like, well, who needs this stuff? And, uh, I wanted to do my part in terms of making data accessible. So essentially I, I was the only book that I sold on. Uh, obviously I learned some hard lessons, uh, later on, as I did a master's in AI after that, and then joined the database research lab at the university that Libra spun off from. Uh, but Hey, we all learned along the way. And, uh, Paula, I'm really curious. Um, when did you awaken first to data? If you will? >>You know, it's really interesting Stan, because I come from the opposite side, an undergrad in economics, uh, with some, uh, information systems research at the higher level. And so I think I was always attuned to what data could do, but I didn't understand how to get at it and the kinds of nuances around it. So then I started this job, a database company, like 27 years ago, and it started there, but I would say the awakening has never stopped because the data game is always changing. Like I look at these epochs that I've been through data. I was a real relational databases thinking third normal form, and then no SQL databases. And then I watch no SQL be about no don't use SQL, then wait a minute. Not only sequel. And today it's really for the data citizens about wait, no, I need SQL. So, um, I think I'm always waking up in data, so I'll call it a continuum if you will. But that was it. It was trying to figure out the technology behind driving analytics in which I took in school. >>Excellent. And I fully agree with you there. Uh, every couple of years they seem to reinvent new stuff and they want to be able to know SQL models. Let me see. I saw those come and go. Uh, obviously, and I think that's, that's a challenge for most people because in a way, data is a very abstract concepts, um, until you get down in the weeds and then it starts to become really, really messy, uh, until you, you know, from that end button extract a certain insights. Um, and as the next thing I want to talk about with you is that challenging organizations, we're hearing a lot about data, being valuable data, being the new oil data, being the new soil, the new gold, uh, data as an asset is being used as a slogan all over. Uh, people are investing a lot in data over multiple decades. Now there's a lot of new data technologies, always, but still, it seems that organizations fundamentally struggle with getting people access to data. What do you think are some of the key challenges that are underlying the struggles that mud, that organizations seem to face when it comes to data? >>Yeah. Listen, Stan, I'll tell you a lot of people I think are stuck on what I call their data, acumen curves, and you know, data is like a gym membership. If you don't use it, you're not going to get any value on it. And that's what I mean by accurate. And so I like to think that you use the analogy of some mud. There's like three layers that are holding a lot of organizations back at first is just the amount of data. Now, I'm not going to give you some stat about how many times I can go to the moon and back with the data regenerate, but I will give you one. I found interesting stat. The average human being in their lifetime will generate a petabyte of data. How much data is that? If that was my apple music playlist, it would be about 2000 years of nonstop music. >>So that's some kind of playlist. And I think what's happening for the first layer of mud is when I first started writing about data warehousing and analytics, I would be like, go find a needle in the haystack. But now it's really finding a needle in a stack of needles. So much data. So little time that's level one of mine. I think the second thing is people are looking for some kind of magic solution, like Cinderella's glass slipper, and you put it on her. She turns into a princess that's for Disney movies, right? And there's nothing magical about it. It is about skill and acumen and up-skilling. And I think if you're familiar with the duper, you recall the Hadoop craze, that's exactly what happened, right? Like people brought all their data together and everyone was going to be able to access it and give insights. >>And it teams said it was pretty successful, but every line of business I ever talked to said it was a complete failure. And the third layer is governance. That's actually where you're going to find some magic. And the problem in governance is every client I talked to is all about least effort to comply. They don't want to violate GDPR or California consumer protection act or whatever governance overlooks, where they do business and governance. When you don't lead me separate to comply and try not to get fine, but as an accelerant to your analytics, and that gets you out of that third layer of mud. So you start to invoke what I call the wisdom of the crowd. Now imagine taking all these different people with intelligence about the business and giving them access and acumen to hypothesize on thousands of ideas that turn into hundreds, we test and maybe dozens that go to production. So those are three layers that I think every organization is facing. >>Well. Um, I definitely follow on all the days, especially the one where people see governance as a, oh, I have to comply to this, which always hurts me a little bit, honestly, because all good governance is about making things easier while also making sure that they're less riskier. Um, but I do want to touch on that Hadoop thing a little bit, uh, because for me in my a decade or more over at Libra, we saw it come as well as go, let's say around 2015 to 2020 issue. So, and it's still around. Obviously once you put your data in something, it's very hard to make it go away, but I've always felt that had do, you know, it seemed like, oh, now we have a bunch of clusters and a bunch of network engineers. So what, >>Yeah. You know, Stan, I fell for, I wrote the book to do for dummies and it had such great promise. I think the problem is there wasn't enough education on how to extract value out of it. And that's why I say it thinks it's great. They liked clusters and engineers that you just said, but it didn't drive lineup >>Business. Got it. So do you think that the whole paradigm with the clouds that we're now on is going to fundamentally change that or is just an architectural change? >>Yeah. You know, it's, it's a great comment. What you're seeing today now is the movement for the data lake. Maybe a way from repositories, like Hadoop into cloud object stores, right? And then you look at CQL or other interfaces over that not allows me to really scale compute and storage separately, but that's all the technical stuff at the end of the day, whether you're on premise hybrid cloud, into cloud software, as a service, if you don't have the acumen for your entire organization to know how to work with data, get value from data, this whole data citizen thing. Um, you're not going to get the kind of value that goes into your investment, right? And I think that's the key thing that business leaders need to understand is it's not about analytics for kind of science project sakes. It's about analytics to drive. >>Absolutely. We fully agree with that. And I want to touch on that point. You mentioned about the wisdom of the crowds, the concept that I love about, right, and your organization is a big grout full of what we call data citizens. Now, if I remember correctly from the book of the wisdom of the crowds, there's, there's two points that really, you have to take Canada. What is, uh, for the wisdom of the grounds to work, you have to have all the individuals enabled, uh, for them to have access to the right information and to be able to share that information safely kept from the bias from others. Otherwise you're just biasing the outcome. And second, you need to be able to somehow aggregate that wisdom up to a certain decision. Uh, so as Felix mentioned earlier, we all are United by data and it's a data citizen topic. >>I want to touch on with you a little bit, because at Collibra we look at it as anyone who uses data to do their job, right. And 2020 has sort of accelerated digitization. Uh, but apart from that, I've always believed that, uh, you don't have to have data in your title, like a data analyst or a data scientist to be a data citizen. If I take a look at the example inside of Libra, we have product managers and they're trying to figure out which features are most important and how are they used and what patterns of behavior is there. You have a gal managers, and they're always trying to know the most they can about their specific accounts, uh, to be able to serve as them best. So for me, the data citizen is really in its broadest sense. Uh, anyone who uses data to do their job, does that, does that resonate with you? >>Yeah, absolutely. It reminds me of myself. And to be honest in my eyes where I got started from, and I agree, you don't need the word data in your title. What you need to have is curiosity, and that is in your culture and in your being. And, and I think as we look at organizations to transform and take full advantage of their, their data investments, they're going to need great governance. I guarantee you that, but then you're going to have to invest in this data citizen concept. And the first thing I'll tell you is, you know, that kind of acumen, if you will, as a team sport, it's not a departmental sport. So you need to think about what are the upskilling programs of where we can reach across to the technical and the non-technical, you know, lots and lots of businesses rely on Microsoft Excel. >>You have data citizens right there, but then there's other folks who are just flat out curious about stuff. And so now you have to open this up and invest in those people. Like, why are you paying people to think about your business without giving the data? It would be like hiring Tom Brady as a quarterback and telling him not to throw a pass. Right. And I see it all the time. So we kind of limit what we define as data citizen. And that's why I love what you said. You don't need the word data in your title and more so if you don't build the acumen, you don't know how to bring the data together, maybe how to wrangle it, but where did it come from? And where can you fixings? One company I worked with had 17 definitions for a sales individual, 17 definitions, and the talent team and HR couldn't drive to a single definition because they didn't have the data accurate. So when you start thinking of the data citizen, concept it about enabling everybody to shop for data much. Like I would look for a USB cable on Amazon, but also to attach to a business glossary for definition. So we have a common version of what a word means, the lineage of the data who owns it, who did it come from? What did it do? So bring that all together. And, uh, I will tell you companies that invest in the data, citizen concept, outperform companies that don't >>For all of that, I definitely fully agree that there's enough research out there that shows that the ones who are data-driven are capturing the most markets, but also capturing the most growth. So they're capturing the market even faster. And I love what you said, Paul, about, um, uh, the brains, right? You've already paid for the brains you've already invested in. So you may as well leverage them. Um, you may as well recognize and, and enable the data citizens, uh, to get access to the assets that they need to really do their job properly. That's what I want to touch on just a little bit, if, if you're capable, because for me, okay. Getting access to data is one thing, right? And I think you already touched on a few items there, but I'm shopping for data. Now I have it. I have a cul results set in my hands. Let's say, but I'm unable to read and write data. Right? I don't know how to analyze it. I don't know maybe about bias. Uh, maybe I, I, I don't know how to best visualize it. And maybe if I do, maybe I don't know how to craft a compelling persuasion narrative around it to change my bosses decisions. So from your viewpoint, do you think that it's wise for companies to continuously invest in data literacy to continuously upgrade that data citizens? If you will. >>Yeah, absolutely. Forest. I'm going to tell you right now, data literacy years are like dog years stage. So fast, new data types, new sources of data, new ways to get data like API APIs and microservices. But let me take it away from the technical concept for a bit. I want to talk to you about the movie. A star is born. I'm sure most of you have seen it or heard it Bradley Cooper, lady Gaga. So everyone knows the movie. What most people probably don't know is when lady Gaga teamed up with Bradley Cooper to do this movie, she demanded that he sing everything like nothing could be auto-tuned everything line. This is one of the leading actors of Hollywood. They filmed this remake in 42 days and Bradley Cooper spent 18 months on singing lessons. 18 months on a guitar lessons had a voice coach and it's so much and so forth. >>And so I think here's the point. If one of the best actors in the world has to invest three and a half years for 42 days to hit a movie out of the park. Why do we think we don't need a continuous investment in data literacy? Even once you've done your initial training, if you will, over the data, citizen, things are going to change. I don't, you don't. If I, you Stan, if you go to the gym and workout every day for three months, you'll never have to work out for the rest of your life. You would tell me I was ridiculous. So your data literacy is no different. And I will tell you, I have managed thousands of individuals, some of the most technical people around distinguished engineers, fellows, and data literacy comes from curiosity and a culture of never ending learning. That is the number one thing to success. >>And that curiosity, I hire people who are curious, I'll give you one more story. It's about Mozart. And this 21 year old comes to Mozart and he says, Mozart, can you teach me how to compose a symphony? And Mozart looks at this person that says, no, no, you're too young, too young. You compose your fourth symphony when you were 12 and Mozart looks at him and says, yeah, but I didn't go around asking people how to compose a symphony. Right? And so the notion of that story is curiosity. And those people who show up in always want to learn, they're your home run individuals. And they will bring data literacy across the organization. >>I love it. And I'm not going to try and be Mozart, but you know, three and a half years, I think you said two times, 18 months, uh, maybe there's hope for me yet in a singing, you'll be a good singer. Um, Duchy on the, on the, some of the sports references you've made, uh, Paul McGuire, we first connected, uh, I'm not gonna like disclose where you're from, but, uh, I saw he did come up and I know it all sorts of sports that drive to measure everything they can right on the field of the field. So let's imagine that you've done the best analysis, right? You're the most advanced data scientists schooled in the classics, as well as the modernist methods, the best tools you've made a beautiful analysis, beautiful dashboards. And now your coach just wants to put their favorite player on the game, despite what you're building to them. How do you deal with that kind of coaches? >>Yeah. Listen, this is a great question. I think for your data analytics strategy, but also for anyone listening and watching, who wants to just figure out how to drive a career forward? I would give the same advice. So the story you're talking about, indeed hockey, you can figure out where I'm from, but it's around the Ottawa senators, general manager. And he made a quote in an interview and he said, sometimes I want to punch my analytics, people in the head. Now I'm going to tell you, that's not a good culture for analytics. And he goes on to say, they tell me not to play this one player. This one player is very tough. You know, throws four or five hits a game. And he goes, I'd love my analytics people to get hit by bore a wacky and tell me how it feels. That's the player. >>Sure. I'm sure he hits hard, but here's the deal. When he's on the ice, the opposing team gets more shots on goal than the senators do on the opposing team. They score more goals, they lose. And so I think whenever you're trying to convince a movement forward, be it management, be it a project you're trying to fund. I always try to teach something that someone didn't previously know before and make them think, well, I never thought of it that way before. And I think the great opportunity right now, if you're trying to get moving in a data analytics strategy is around this post COVID era. You know, we've seen post COVID now really accelerate, or at least post COVID in certain parts of the world, but accelerate the appetite for digital transformation by about half a decade. Okay. And getting the data within your systems, as you digitize will give you all kinds of types of projects to make people think differently than the way they thought before. >>About data. I call this data exhaust. I'll give you a great example, Uber. I think we're all familiar with Uber. If we all remember back in the days when Uber would offer you search pricing. Okay? So basically you put Uber on your phone, they know everything about you, right? Who are your friends, where you going, uh, even how much batteries on your phone? Well, in a data science paper, I read a long time ago. They recognize that there was a 70% chance that you would accept a surge price. If you had less than 10% of your battery. So 10% of battery on your phone is an example of data exhaust all the lawns that you generate on your digital front end properties. Those are logs. You can take those together and maybe show executive management with data. We can understand why people abandoned their cart at the shipping phase, or what is the amount of shipping, which they abandoned it. When is the signal when our systems are about to go to go down. So, uh, I think that's a tremendous way. And if you look back to the sports, I mean the Atlanta Falcons NFL team, and they monitor their athletes, sleep performance, the Toronto Raptors basketball, they're running AI analytics on people's personalities and everything they tweet and every interview to see if the personality fits. So in sports, I think athletes are the most important commodity, if you will, or asset a yet all these teams are investing in analytics. So I think that's pretty telling, >>Okay, Paul, it looks like we're almost out of time. So in 30 seconds or less, what would you recommend to the data citizens out there? >>Okay. I'm going to give you a four tips in 30 seconds. Number one, remember learning never ends be curious forever. You'll drive your career. Number two, remember companies that invest in analytics and data, citizens outperform those that don't McKinsey says it's about 1.4 times across many KPIs. Number three, stop just collecting the dots and start connecting them with that. You need a strong governance strategy and that's going to help you for the future because the biggest thing in the future is not going to be about analytics, accuracy. It's going to be about analytics, explainability. So accuracy is no longer going to be enough. You're going to have to explain your decisions and finally stay positive and forever test negative. >>Love it. Thank you very much fall. Um, and for all the data seasons is out there. Um, when it comes down to access to data, it's more than just getting your hands on the data. It's also knowing what you can do with it, how you can do that and what you definitely shouldn't be doing with it. Uh, thank you everyone out there and enjoy your learning and interaction with the community. Stay healthy. Bye-bye.

>>Yeah, yeah. >>Welcome back. I'm so excited to introduce our next session empowerment through inclusion, reimagining society and technology. This is a topic that's personally very near and dear to my heart. Did you know that there's only 2% of Latinas in technology as a Latina? I know that there's so much more we could do collectively to improve these gaps and diversity. I thought spot diversity is considered a critical element across all levels of the organization. The data shows countless times. A diverse and inclusive workforce ultimately drives innovation better performance and keeps your employees happier. That's why we're passionate about contributing to this conversation and also partnering with organizations that share our mission of improving diversity across our communities. Last beyond, we hosted the session during a breakfast and we packed the whole room. This year, we're bringing the conversation to the forefront to emphasize the importance of diversity and data and share the positive ramifications that it has for your organization. Joining us for this session are thought spots Chief Data Strategy Officer Cindy Housing and Ruhollah Benjamin, associate professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. Thank you, Paola. So many >>of you have journeyed with me for years now on our efforts to improve diversity and inclusion in the data and analytic space. And >>I would say >>over time we cautiously started commiserating, eventually sharing best practices to make ourselves and our companies better. And I do consider it a milestone. Last year, as Paola mentioned that half the room was filled with our male allies. But I remember one of our Panelists, Natalie Longhurst from Vodafone, suggesting that we move it from a side hallway conversation, early morning breakfast to the main stage. And I >>think it was >>Bill Zang from a I G in Japan. Who said Yes, please. Everyone else agreed, but more than a main stage topic, I want to ask you to think about inclusion beyond your role beyond your company toe. How Data and analytics can be used to impact inclusion and equity for the society as a whole. Are we using data to reveal patterns or to perpetuate problems leading Tobias at scale? You are the experts, the change agents, the leaders that can prevent this. I am thrilled to introduce you to the leading authority on this topic, Rou Ha Benjamin, associate professor of African studies at Princeton University and author of Multiple Books. The Latest Race After Technology. Rou ha Welcome. >>Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be in conversation with you today, and I thought I would just kick things off with some opening reflections on this really important session theme. And then we could jump into discussion. So I'd like us to as a starting point, um, wrestle with these buzzwords, empowerment and inclusion so that we can have them be more than kind of big platitudes and really have them reflected in our workplace cultures and the things that we design in the technologies that we put out into the world. And so to do that, I think we have to move beyond techno determinism, and I'll explain what that means in just a minute. Techno determinism comes in two forms. The first, on your left is the idea that technology automation, um, all of these emerging trends are going to harm us, are going to necessarily harm humanity. They're going to take all the jobs they're going to remove human agency. This is what we might call the techno dystopian version of the story and this is what Hollywood loves to sell us in the form of movies like The Matrix or Terminator. The other version on your right is the techno utopian story that technologies automation. The robots as a shorthand, are going to save humanity. They're gonna make everything more efficient, more equitable. And in this case, on the surface, he seemed like opposing narratives right there, telling us different stories. At least they have different endpoints. But when you pull back the screen and look a little bit more closely, you see that they share an underlying logic that technology is in the driver's seat and that human beings that social society can just respond to what's happening. But we don't really have a say in what technologies air designed and so to move beyond techno determinism the notion that technology is in the driver's seat. We have to put the human agents and agencies back into the story, the protagonists, and think carefully about what the human desires worldviews, values, assumptions are that animate the production of technology. And so we have to put the humans behind the screen back into view. And so that's a very first step and when we do that, we see, as was already mentioned, that it's a very homogeneous group right now in terms of who gets the power and the resource is to produce the digital and physical infrastructure that everyone else has to live with. And so, as a first step, we need to think about how to create more participation of those who are working behind the scenes to design technology now to dig a little more a deeper into this, I want to offer a kind of low tech example before we get to the more hi tech ones. So what you see in front of you here is a simple park bench public bench. It's located in Berkeley, California, which is where I went to graduate school and on this particular visit I was living in Boston, and so I was back in California. It was February. It was freezing where I was coming from, and so I wanted to take a few minutes in between meetings to just lay out in the sun and soak in some vitamin D, and I quickly realized, actually, I couldn't lay down on this bench because of the way it had been designed with these arm rests at intermittent intervals. And so here I thought. Okay, the the armrest have, ah functional reason why they're there. I mean, you could literally rest your elbows there or, um, you know, it can create a little bit of privacy of someone sitting there that you don't know. When I was nine months pregnant, it could help me get up and down or for the elderly, the same thing. So it has a lot of functional reasons, but I also thought about the fact that it prevents people who are homeless from sleeping on the bench. And this is the Bay area that we were talking about where, in fact, the tech boom has gone hand in hand with a housing crisis. Those things have grown in tandem. So innovation has grown within equity because we haven't thought carefully about how to address the social context in which technology grows and blossoms. And so I thought, Okay, this crisis is growing in this area, and so perhaps this is a deliberate attempt to make sure that people don't sleep on the benches by the way that they're designed and where the where they're implemented and So this is what we might call structural inequity. By the way something is designed. It has certain effects that exclude or harm different people. And so it may not necessarily be the intense, but that's the effect. And I did a little digging, and I found, in fact, it's a global phenomenon, this thing that architects called hostile architecture. Er, I found single occupancy benches in Helsinki, so only one booty at a time no laying down there. I found caged benches in France. And in this particular town. What's interesting here is that the mayor put these benches out in this little shopping plaza, and within 24 hours the people in the town rallied together and had them removed. So we see here that just because we have, uh, discriminatory design in our public space doesn't mean we have to live with it. We can actually work together to ensure that our public space reflects our better values. But I think my favorite example of all is the meter bench. In this case, this bench is designed with spikes in them, and to get the spikes to retreat into the bench, you have to feed the meter you have to put some coins in, and I think it buys you about 15 or 20 minutes. Then the spikes come back up. And so you'll be happy to know that in this case, this was designed by a German artists to get people to think critically about issues of design, not just the design of physical space but the design of all kinds of things, public policies. And so we can think about how our public life in general is metered, that it serves those that can pay the price and others are excluded or harm, whether we're talking about education or health care. And the meter bench also presents something interesting. For those of us who care about technology, it creates a technical fix for a social problem. In fact, it started out his art. But some municipalities in different parts of the world have actually adopted this in their public spaces in their parks in order to deter so called lawyers from using that space. And so, by a technical fix, we mean something that creates a short term effect, right. It gets people who may want to sleep on it out of sight. They're unable to use it, but it doesn't address the underlying problems that create that need to sleep outside in the first place. And so, in addition to techno determinism, we have to think critically about technical fixes that don't address the underlying issues that technology is meant to solve. And so this is part of a broader issue of discriminatory design, and we can apply the bench metaphor to all kinds of things that we work with or that we create. And the question we really have to continuously ask ourselves is, What values are we building in to the physical and digital infrastructures around us? What are the spikes that we may unwittingly put into place? Or perhaps we didn't create the spikes. Perhaps we started a new job or a new position, and someone hands us something. This is the way things have always been done. So we inherit the spike bench. What is our responsibility when we noticed that it's creating these kinds of harms or exclusions or technical fixes that are bypassing the underlying problem? What is our responsibility? All of this came to a head in the context of financial technologies. I don't know how many of you remember these high profile cases of tech insiders and CEOs who applied for Apple, the Apple card and, in one case, a husband and wife applied and the husband, the husband received a much higher limit almost 20 times the limit as his wife, even though they shared bank accounts, they lived in Common Law State. And so the question. There was not only the fact that the husband was receiving a much better interest rate and the limit, but also that there was no mechanism for the individuals involved to dispute what was happening. They didn't even know what the factors were that they were being judged that was creating this form of discrimination. So in terms of financial technologies, it's not simply the outcome that's the issue. Or that could be discriminatory, but the process that black boxes, all of the decision making that makes it so that consumers and the general public have no way to question it. No way to understand how they're being judged adversely, and so it's the process not only the product that we have to care a lot about. And so the case of the apple cart is part of a much broader phenomenon of, um, racist and sexist robots. This is how the headlines framed it a few years ago, and I was so interested in this framing because there was a first wave of stories that seemed to be shocked at the prospect that technology is not neutral. Then there was a second wave of stories that seemed less surprised. Well, of course, technology inherits its creator's biases. And now I think we've entered a phase of attempts to override and address the default settings of so called racist and sexist robots, for better or worse. And here robots is just a kind of shorthand, that the way people are talking about automation and emerging technologies more broadly. And so as I was encountering these headlines, I was thinking about how these air, not problems simply brought on by machine learning or AI. They're not all brand new, and so I wanted to contribute to the conversation, a kind of larger context and a longer history for us to think carefully about the social dimensions of technology. And so I developed a concept called the New Jim Code, which plays on the phrase Jim Crow, which is the way that the regime of white supremacy and inequality in this country was defined in a previous era, and I wanted us to think about how that legacy continues to haunt the present, how we might be coding bias into emerging technologies and the danger being that we imagine those technologies to be objective. And so this gives us a language to be able to name this phenomenon so that we can address it and change it under this larger umbrella of the new Jim Code are four distinct ways that this phenomenon takes shape from the more obvious engineered inequity. Those were the kinds of inequalities tech mediated inequalities that we can generally see coming. They're kind of obvious. But then we go down the line and we see it becomes harder to detect. It's happening in our own backyards. It's happening around us, and we don't really have a view into the black box, and so it becomes more insidious. And so in the remaining couple minutes, I'm just just going to give you a taste of the last three of these, and then a move towards conclusion that we can start chatting. So when it comes to default discrimination. This is the way that social inequalities become embedded in emerging technologies because designers of these technologies aren't thinking carefully about history and sociology. Ah, great example of this came Thio headlines last fall when it was found that widely used healthcare algorithm affecting millions of patients, um, was discriminating against black patients. And so what's especially important to note here is that this algorithm healthcare algorithm does not explicitly take note of race. That is to say, it is race neutral by using cost to predict healthcare needs. This digital triaging system unwittingly reproduces health disparities because, on average, black people have incurred fewer costs for a variety of reasons, including structural inequality. So in my review of this study by Obermeyer and colleagues, I want to draw attention to how indifference to social reality can be even more harmful than malicious intent. It doesn't have to be the intent of the designers to create this effect, and so we have to look carefully at how indifference is operating and how race neutrality can be a deadly force. When we move on to the next iteration of the new Jim code coded exposure, there's attention because on the one hand, you see this image where the darker skin individual is not being detected by the facial recognition system, right on the camera or on the computer. And so coated exposure names this tension between wanting to be seen and included and recognized, whether it's in facial recognition or in recommendation systems or in tailored advertising. But the opposite of that, the tension is with when you're over included. When you're surveiled when you're to centered. And so we should note that it's not simply in being left out, that's the problem. But it's in being included in harmful ways. And so I want us to think carefully about the rhetoric of inclusion and understand that inclusion is not simply an end point. It's a process, and it is possible to include people in harmful processes. And so we want to ensure that the process is not harmful for it to really be effective. The last iteration of the new Jim Code. That means the the most insidious, let's say, is technologies that are touted as helping US address bias, so they're not simply including people, but they're actively working to address bias. And so in this case, There are a lot of different companies that are using AI to hire, create hiring software and hiring algorithms, including this one higher view. And the idea is that there there's a lot that AI can keep track of that human beings might miss. And so so the software can make data driven talent decisions. After all, the problem of employment discrimination is widespread and well documented. So the logic goes, Wouldn't this be even more reason to outsource decisions to AI? Well, let's think about this carefully. And this is the look of the idea of techno benevolence trying to do good without fully reckoning with what? How technology can reproduce inequalities. So some colleagues of mine at Princeton, um, tested a natural learning processing algorithm and was looking to see whether it exhibited the same, um, tendencies that psychologists have documented among humans. E. And what they found was that in fact, the algorithm associating black names with negative words and white names with pleasant sounding words. And so this particular audit builds on a classic study done around 2003, before all of the emerging technologies were on the scene where two University of Chicago economists sent out thousands of resumes to employers in Boston and Chicago, and all they did was change the names on those resumes. All of the other work history education were the same, and then they waited to see who would get called back. And the applicants, the fictional applicants with white sounding names received 50% more callbacks than the black applicants. So if you're presented with that study, you might be tempted to say, Well, let's let technology handle it since humans are so biased. But my colleagues here in computer science found that this natural language processing algorithm actually reproduced those same associations with black and white names. So, too, with gender coded words and names Amazon learned a couple years ago when its own hiring algorithm was found discriminating against women. Nevertheless, it should be clear by now why technical fixes that claim to bypass human biases are so desirable. If Onley there was a way to slay centuries of racist and sexist demons with a social justice box beyond desirable, more like magical, magical for employers, perhaps looking to streamline the grueling work of recruitment but a curse from any jobseekers, as this headline puts it, your next interview could be with a racist spot, bringing us back to that problem space we started with just a few minutes ago. So it's worth noting that job seekers are already developing ways to subvert the system by trading answers to employers test and creating fake applications as informal audits of their own. In terms of a more collective response, there's a federation of European Trade unions call you and I Global that's developed a charter of digital rights for work, others that touches on automated and a I based decisions to be included in bargaining agreements. And so this is one of many efforts to change their ecosystem to change the context in which technology is being deployed to ensure more protections and more rights for everyday people in the US There's the algorithmic accountability bill that's been presented, and it's one effort to create some more protections around this ubiquity of automated decisions, and I think we should all be calling from more public accountability when it comes to the widespread use of automated decisions. Another development that keeps me somewhat hopeful is that tech workers themselves are increasingly speaking out against the most egregious forms of corporate collusion with state sanctioned racism. And to get a taste of that, I encourage you to check out the hashtag Tech won't build it. Among other statements that they have made and walking out and petitioning their companies. Who one group said, as the people who build the technologies that Microsoft profits from, we refuse to be complicit in terms of education, which is my own ground zero. Um, it's a place where we can we can grow a more historically and socially literate approach to tech design. And this is just one, um, resource that you all can download, Um, by developed by some wonderful colleagues at the Data and Society Research Institute in New York and the goal of this interventionist threefold to develop an intellectual understanding of how structural racism operates and algorithms, social media platforms and technologies, not yet developed and emotional intelligence concerning how to resolve racially stressful situations within organizations, and a commitment to take action to reduce harms to communities of color. And so as a final way to think about why these things are so important, I want to offer a couple last provocations. The first is for us to think a new about what actually is deep learning when it comes to computation. I want to suggest that computational depth when it comes to a I systems without historical or social depth, is actually superficial learning. And so we need to have a much more interdisciplinary, integrated approach to knowledge production and to observing and understanding patterns that don't simply rely on one discipline in order to map reality. The last provocation is this. If, as I suggested at the start, inequity is woven into the very fabric of our society, it's built into the design of our. Our policies are physical infrastructures and now even our digital infrastructures. That means that each twist, coil and code is a chance for us toe. We've new patterns, practices and politics. The vastness of the problems that we're up against will be their undoing. Once we accept that we're pattern makers. So what does that look like? It looks like refusing color blindness as an anecdote to tech media discrimination rather than refusing to see difference. Let's take stock of how the training data and the models that we're creating have these built in decisions from the past that have often been discriminatory. It means actually thinking about the underside of inclusion, which can be targeting. And how do we create a more participatory rather than predatory form of inclusion? And ultimately, it also means owning our own power in these systems so that we can change the patterns of the past. If we're if we inherit a spiked bench, that doesn't mean that we need to continue using it. We can work together to design more just and equitable technologies. So with that, I look forward to our conversation. >>Thank you, Ruth. Ha. That was I expected it to be amazing, as I have been devouring your book in the last few weeks. So I knew that would be impactful. I know we will never think about park benches again. How it's art. And you laid down the gauntlet. Oh, my goodness. That tech won't build it. Well, I would say if the thoughts about team has any saying that we absolutely will build it and will continue toe educate ourselves. So you made a few points that it doesn't matter if it was intentional or not. So unintentional has as big an impact. Um, how do we address that does it just start with awareness building or how do we address that? >>Yeah, so it's important. I mean, it's important. I have good intentions. And so, by saying that intentions are not the end, all be all. It doesn't mean that we're throwing intentions out. But it is saying that there's so many things that happened in the world, happened unwittingly without someone sitting down to to make it good or bad. And so this goes on both ends. The analogy that I often use is if I'm parked outside and I see someone, you know breaking into my car, I don't run out there and say Now, do you feel Do you feel in your heart that you're a thief? Do you intend to be a thief? I don't go and grill their identity or their intention. Thio harm me, but I look at the effect of their actions, and so in terms of art, the teams that we work on, I think one of the things that we can do again is to have a range of perspectives around the table that can think ahead like chess, about how things might play out, but also once we've sort of created something and it's, you know, it's entered into, you know, the world. We need to have, ah, regular audits and check ins to see when it's going off track just because we intended to do good and set it out when it goes sideways, we need mechanisms, formal mechanisms that actually are built into the process that can get it back on track or even remove it entirely if we find And we see that with different products, right that get re called. And so we need that to be formalized rather than putting the burden on the people that are using these things toe have to raise the awareness or have to come to us like with the apple card, Right? To say this thing is not fair. Why don't we have that built into the process to begin with? >>Yeah, so a couple things. So my dad used to say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, so that's >>yes on. In fact, in the book, I say the road to hell is paved with technical fixes. So they're me and your dad are on the same page, >>and I I love your point about bringing different perspectives. And I often say this is why diversity is not just about business benefits. It's your best recipe for for identifying the early biases in the data sets in the way we build things. And yet it's such a thorny problem to address bringing new people in from tech. So in the absence of that, what do we do? Is it the outside review boards? Or do you think regulation is the best bet as you mentioned a >>few? Yeah, yeah, we need really need a combination of things. I mean, we need So on the one hand, we need something like a do no harm, um, ethos. So with that we see in medicine so that it becomes part of the fabric and the culture of organizations that that those values, the social values, have equal or more weight than the other kinds of economic imperatives. Right. So we have toe have a reckoning in house, but we can't leave it to people who are designing and have a vested interest in getting things to market to regulate themselves. We also need independent accountability. So we need a combination of this and going back just to your point about just thinking about like, the diversity on teams. One really cautionary example comes to mind from last fall, when Google's New Pixel four phone was about to come out and it had a kind of facial recognition component to it that you could open the phone and they had been following this research that shows that facial recognition systems don't work as well on darker skin individuals, right? And so they wanted Thio get a head start. They wanted to prevent that, right? So they had good intentions. They didn't want their phone toe block out darker skin, you know, users from from using it. And so what they did was they were trying to diversify their training data so that the system would work better and they hired contract workers, and they told these contract workers to engage black people, tell them to use the phone play with, you know, some kind of app, take a selfie so that their faces would populate that the training set, But they didn't. They did not tell the people what their faces were gonna be used for, so they withheld some information. They didn't tell them. It was being used for the spatial recognition system, and the contract workers went to the media and said Something's not right. Why are we being told? Withhold information? And in fact, they told them, going back to the park bench example. To give people who are homeless $5 gift cards to play with the phone and get their images in this. And so this all came to light and Google withdrew this research and this process because it was so in line with a long history of using marginalized, most vulnerable people and populations to make technologies better when those technologies are likely going toe, harm them in terms of surveillance and other things. And so I think I bring this up here to go back to our question of how the composition of teams might help address this. I think often about who is in that room making that decision about sending, creating this process of the contract workers and who the selfies and so on. Perhaps it was a racially homogeneous group where people didn't want really sensitive to how this could be experienced or seen, but maybe it was a diverse, racially diverse group and perhaps the history of harm when it comes to science and technology. Maybe they didn't have that disciplinary knowledge. And so it could also be a function of what people knew in the room, how they could do that chest in their head and think how this is gonna play out. It's not gonna play out very well. And the last thing is that maybe there was disciplinary diversity. Maybe there was racial ethnic diversity, but maybe the workplace culture made it to those people. Didn't feel like they could speak up right so you could have all the diversity in the world. But if you don't create a context in which people who have those insights feel like they can speak up and be respected and heard, then you're basically sitting on a reservoir of resource is and you're not tapping into it to ensure T to do right by your company. And so it's one of those cautionary tales I think that we can all learn from to try to create an environment where we can elicit those insights from our team and our and our coworkers, >>your point about the culture. This is really inclusion very different from just diversity and thought. Eso I like to end on a hopeful note. A prescriptive note. You have some of the most influential data and analytics leaders and experts attending virtually here. So if you imagine the way we use data and housing is a great example, mortgage lending has not been equitable for African Americans in particular. But if you imagine the right way to use data, what is the future hold when we've gotten better at this? More aware >>of this? Thank you for that question on DSO. You know, there's a few things that come to mind for me one. And I think mortgage environment is really the perfect sort of context in which to think through the the both. The problem where the solutions may lie. One of the most powerful ways I see data being used by different organizations and groups is to shine a light on the past and ongoing inequities. And so oftentimes, when people see the bias, let's say when it came to like the the hiring algorithm or the language out, they see the names associated with negative or positive words that tends toe have, ah, bigger impact because they think well, Wow, The technology is reflecting these biases. It really must be true. Never mind that people might have been raising the issues in other ways before. But I think one of the most powerful ways we can use data and technology is as a mirror onto existing forms of inequality That then can motivate us to try to address those things. The caution is that we cannot just address those once we come to grips with the problem, the solution is not simply going to be a technical solution. And so we have to understand both the promise of data and the limits of data. So when it comes to, let's say, a software program, let's say Ah, hiring algorithm that now is trained toe look for diversity as opposed to homogeneity and say I get hired through one of those algorithms in a new workplace. I can get through the door and be hired. But if nothing else about that workplace has changed and on a day to day basis I'm still experiencing microaggressions. I'm still experiencing all kinds of issues. Then that technology just gave me access to ah harmful environment, you see, and so this is the idea that we can't simply expect the technology to solve all of our problems. We have to do the hard work. And so I would encourage everyone listening to both except the promise of these tools, but really crucially, um, Thio, understand that the rial kinds of changes that we need to make are gonna be messy. They're not gonna be quick fixes. If you think about how long it took our society to create the kinds of inequities that that we now it lived with, we should expect to do our part, do the work and pass the baton. We're not going to magically like Fairy does create a wonderful algorithm that's gonna help us bypass these issues. It can expose them. But then it's up to us to actually do the hard work of changing our social relations are changing the culture of not just our workplaces but our schools. Our healthcare systems are neighborhoods so that they reflect our better values. >>Yeah. Ha. So beautifully said I think all of us are willing to do the hard work. And I like your point about using it is a mirror and thought spot. We like to say a fact driven world is a better world. It can give us that transparency. So on behalf of everyone, thank you so much for your passion for your hard work and for talking to us. >>Thank you, Cindy. Thank you so much for inviting me. Hey, I live back to you. >>Thank you, Cindy and rou ha. For this fascinating exploration of our society and technology, we're just about ready to move on to our final session of the day. So make sure to tune in for this customer case study session with executives from Sienna and Accenture on driving digital transformation with certain AI.

>>Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be in conversation with you today. And I thought I would just kick things off with some opening reflections on this really important session theme, and then we can jump into discussion. So I'd like us to, as a starting point, um, wrestle with these buzz words, empowerment and inclusion so that we can, um, have them be more than kind of big platitudes and really have them reflected in our workplace cultures and the things that we design and the technologies that we put out into the world. And so to do that, I think we have to move beyond techno determinism and I'll explain what that means in just a minute. And techno determinism comes in two forms. The first on your left is the idea that technology automate. Um, all of these emerging trends are going to harm us are going to necessarily, um, harm humanity. >>They're going to take all the jobs they're going to remove human agency. This is what we might call the techno dystopian version of the story. And this is what Hollywood loves to sell us in the form of movies like the matrix or Terminator. The other version on your right is the techno utopian story that technologies automation, the robots, as a shorthand are going to save humanity. They're going to make everything more efficient, more equitable. And in this case, on the surface, they seem like opposing narratives, right? They're telling us different stories. At least they have different endpoints, but when you pull back the screen and look a little bit more closely, you see that they share an underlying logic, that technology is in the driver's seat and that human beings, that social society can just respond to what's happening. But we don't, I really have a say in what technologies are designed. >>And so to move beyond techno determinism, the notion that technology is in the driver's seat, we have to put the human agents and agencies back into the story protagonists and think carefully about what the human desires, worldviews values assumptions are that animate the production of technology. We have to put the humans behind the screen back into view. And so that's a very first step in when we do that. We see as was already mentioned that it's a very homogenous group right now in terms of who gets the power and the resources to produce the digital and physical infrastructure that everyone else has to live with. And so, as a first step, we need to think about how to, to create more participation of those who are working behind the scenes to design technology. Now, to dig a little more deeper into this, I want to offer a kind of low tech example before we get to the more high tech ones. >>So what you see in front of you here is a simple park bench public it's located in Berkeley, California, which is where I went to graduate school. And on this one particular visit, I was living in Boston. And so I was back in California, it was February, it was freezing where I was coming from. And so I wanted to take a few minutes in between meetings to just lay out in the sun and soak in some vitamin D. And I quickly realized actually I couldn't lay down on the bench because of the way it had been designed with these arm rests at intermittent intervals. And so here I thought, okay, th th the armrests have a functional reason why they're there. I mean, you could literally rest your elbows there, or, um, you know, it can create a little bit of privacy of someone sitting there that you don't know. >>Um, when I was nine months pregnant, it could help me get up and down or for the elderly the same thing. So it has a lot of functional reasons, but I also thought about the fact that it prevents people who are, are homeless from sleeping on the bench. And this is the Bay area that we're talking about, where in fact, the tech boom has gone hand in hand with a housing crisis. Those things have grown in tandem. So innovation has grown with inequity because we have, I haven't thought carefully about how to address the social context in which technology grows and blossoms. And so I thought, okay, this crisis is growing in this area. And so perhaps this is a deliberate attempt to make sure that people don't sleep on the benches by the way that they're designed and where the, where they're implemented. And so this is what we might call structural inequity, by the way something is designed. >>It has certain yeah. Affects that exclude or harm different people. And so it may not necessarily be the intent, but that's the effect. And I did a little digging and I found, in fact, it's a global phenomenon, this thing that architect next call, hostile architecture around single occupancy, benches and Helsinki. So only one booty at a time, no Nolan down there. I've found caged benches in France. Yeah. And in this particular town, what's interesting here is that the mayor put these benches out in this little shopping Plaza and within 24 hours, the people in the town rally together and have them removed. So we see here that just because we, we have a discriminatory design in our public space, doesn't mean we have to live with it. We can actually work together to ensure that our public space reflects our better values. But I think my favorite example of all is the metered bench. >>And then this case, this bench is designed with spikes in them and to get the spikes to retreat into the bench, you have to feed the meter. You have to put some coins in, and I think it buys you about 15, 20 minutes, then the spikes come back up. And so you will be happy to know that in this case, uh, this was designed by a German artist to get people to think critically about issues of design, not the design of physical space, but the design of all kinds of things, public policies. And so we can think about how our public life in general is metered, that it serves those that can pay the price and others are excluded or harmed. Whether we're talking about education or healthcare. And the meter bench also presents something interesting for those of us who care about technology, it creates a technical fix for a social problem. >>In fact, it started out as art, but some municipalities in different parts of the world have actually adopted this in their public spaces, in their parks in order to deter so-called loiters from using that space. And so by a technical fix, we mean something that creates a short-term effect, right? It gets people who may want to sleep on it out of sight. They're unable to use it, but it doesn't address the underlying problems that create that need to sleep outside of the first place. And so, in addition to techno determinism, we have to think critically about technical fixes, that don't address the underlying issues that the tech tech technology is meant to solve. And so this is part of a broader issue of discriminatory design, and we can apply the bench metaphor to all kinds of things that we work with, or that we create. >>And the question we really have to continuously ask ourselves is what values are we building in to the physical and digital infrastructures around us? What are the spikes that we may unwittingly put into place? Or perhaps we didn't create the spikes. Perhaps we started a new job or a new position, and someone hands us something, this is the way things have always been done. So we inherit the spiked bench. What is our responsibility? When we notice that it's creating these kinds of harms or exclusions or technical fixes that are bypassing the underlying problem, what is our responsibility? All of this came to a head in the context of financial technologies. I don't know how many of you remember these high profile cases of tech insiders and CEOs who applied for apples, >>The Apple card. And in one case, a husband and wife applied, and the husband, the husband received a much higher limit, almost 20 times the limit as his, >>His wife, even though they shared bank accounts, they lived in common law state. Yeah. >>And so the question there was not only the fact that >>The husband was receiving a much better rate and a high and a better >>The interest rate and the limit, but also that there was no mechanism for the individuals involved to dispute what was happening. They didn't even know how, what the factors were that they were being judged that was creating this form of discrimination. So >>In terms of financial technologies, it's not simply the outcome, that's the issue, or that can be discriminatory, >>But the process that black box is all of the decision-making that makes it so that consumers and the general public have no way to question it, no way to understand how they're being judged adversely. And so it's the process, not only the product that we have to care a lot about. And so the case of the Apple card is part of a much broader phenomenon >>Of, um, races >>And sexist robots. This is how the headlines framed it a few years ago. And I was so interested in this framing because there was a first wave of stories that seemed to be shocked at the prospect, that technology is not neutral. Then there was a second wave of stories that seemed less surprised. Well, of course, technology inherits its creators biases. And now I think we've entered a phase of attempts to override and address the default settings of so-called racist and sexist robots for better or worse than here. Robots is just a kind of shorthand that the way that people are talking about automation and emerging technologies more broadly. And so, as I was encountering these headlines, I was thinking about how these are not problems simply brought on by machine learning or AI. They're not all brand new. And so I wanted to contribute to the conversation, a kind of larger context and a longer history for us to think carefully about the social dimensions of technology. And so I developed a concept called the new Jim code, >>Which plays on the phrase, >>Jim Crow, which is the way that the regime of white supremacy and inequality in this country was defined in a previous era. And I wanted us to think about how that legacy continues to haunt the present, how we might be coding bias into emerging technologies and the danger being that we imagine those technologies to be objective. And so this gives us a language to be able to name this phenomenon so that we can address it and change it under this larger umbrella of the new Jim code are four distinct ways that this phenomenon takes shape from the more obvious engineered inequity. Those are the kinds of inequalities tech mediated in the qualities that we can generally see coming. They're kind of obvious, but then we go down the line and we see it becomes harder to detect it's happening in our own backyards, it's happening around us. And we don't really have a view into the black box. And so it becomes more insidious. And so in the remaining couple of minutes, I'm just, just going to give you a taste of the last three of these, and then a move towards conclusion. Then we can start chatting. So when it comes to default discrimination, this is the way that social inequalities >>Become embedded in emerging technologies because designers of these technologies, aren't thinking carefully about history and sociology. A great example of this, uh, came to, um, uh, the headlines last fall when it was found that widely used healthcare algorithm, effecting millions of patients, um, was discriminating against black patients. And so what's especially important to note here is that this algorithm, healthcare algorithm does not explicitly take note of race. That is to say it is race neutral by using cost to predict healthcare needs this digital triaging system unwittingly reproduces health disparities, because on average, black people have incurred fewer costs for a variety of reasons, including structural inequality. So in my review of this study, by Obermeyer and colleagues, I want to draw attention to how indifference to social reality can be even more harmful than malicious intent. It doesn't have to be the intent of the designers to create this effect. >>And so we have to look carefully at how indifference is operating and how race neutrality can be a deadly force. When we move on to the next iteration of the new Jim code, coded exposure, there's a tension because on the one hand, you see this image where the darker skin individual is not being detected by the facial recognition system, right on the camera, on the computer. And so coded exposure names, this tension between wanting to be seen and included and recognized whether it's in facial recognition or in recommendation systems or in tailored advertising. But the opposite of that, the tension is with when you're over, it >>Included when you're surveilled, when you're >>Too centered. And so we should note that it's not simply in being left out, that's the problem, but it's in being included in harmful ways. And so I want us to think carefully about the rhetoric of inclusion and understand that inclusion is not simply an end point, it's a process, and it is possible to include people in harmful processes. And so we want to ensure that the process is not harmful for it to really be effective. The last iteration of the new Jim code. That means the, the most insidious let's say is technologies that are touted as helping us address bias. So they're not simply including people, but they're actively working to address bias. And so in this case, there are a lot of different companies that are using AI to hire, uh, create hiring, um, software and hiring algorithms, including this one higher view. >>And the idea is that there there's a lot that, um, AI can keep track of that human beings might miss. And so, so the software can make data-driven talent decisions after all the problem of employment discrimination is widespread and well-documented, so the logic goes, wouldn't this be even more reason to outsource decisions to AI? Well, let's think about this carefully. And this is the idea of techno benevolence, trying to do good without fully reckoning with what, how technology can reproduce inequalities. So some colleagues of mine at Princeton, um, tested a natural learning processing algorithm and was looking to see whether it exhibited the same, um, tendencies that psychologists have documented among humans. And what they found was that in fact, the algorithm associated black names with negative words and white names with pleasant sounding words. And so this particular audit builds on a classic study done around 2003 before all of the emerging technologies were on the scene where two university of Chicago economists sent out thousands of resumes to employers in Boston and Chicago. >>And all they did was change the names on those resumes. All of the other work history education were the same. And then they waited to see who would get called back and the applicants, the fictional applicants with white sounding names received 50% more callbacks than the, the black applicants. So if you're presented with that study, you might be tempted to say, well, let's let technology handle it since humans are so biased. But my colleagues here in computer science found that this natural language processing algorithm actually reproduced those same associations with black and white names. So two with gender coded words and names as Amazon learned a couple years ago, when its own hiring algorithm was found discriminating against women, nevertheless, it should be clear by now why technical fixes that claim to bypass human biases are so desirable. If only there was a way to slay centuries of racist and sexist demons with a social justice bot beyond desirable, more like magical, magical for employers, perhaps looking to streamline the grueling work of recruitment, but a curse from any job seekers as this headline puts it. >>Your next interview could be with a racist bot, bringing us back to that problem space. We started with just a few minutes ago. So it's worth noting that job seekers are already developing ways to subvert the system by trading answers to employers tests and creating fake applications as informal audits of their own. In terms of a more collective response. There's a Federation of European trade unions call you and I global that's developed a charter of digital rights for workers that touches on automated and AI based decisions to be included in bargaining agreements. And so this is one of many efforts to change the ecosystem, to change the context in which technology is being deployed to ensure more protections and more rights for everyday people in the U S there's the algorithmic accountability bill that's been presented. And it's one effort to create some more protections around this ubiquity of automated decisions. >>And I think we should all be calling for more public accountability when it comes to the widespread use of automated decisions. Another development that keeps me somewhat hopeful is that tech workers themselves are increasingly speaking out against the most egregious forms of corporate collusion with state sanctioned racism. And to get a taste of that, I encourage you to check out the hashtag tech, won't build it among other statements that they've made and walking out and petitioning their companies. One group said as the, at Google at Microsoft wrote as the people who build the technologies that Microsoft profits from, we refuse to be complicit in terms of education, which is my own ground zero. Um, it's a place where we can, we can grow a more historically and socially literate approach to tech design. And this is just one resource that you all can download, um, by developed by some wonderful colleagues at the data and society research Institute in New York. >>And the, the goal of this intervention is threefold to develop an intellectual understanding of how structural racism operates and algorithms, social media platforms and technologies not yet developed and emotional intelligence concerning how to resolve racially stressful situations within organizations and a commitment to take action, to reduce harms to communities of color. And so as a final way to think about why these things are so important, I want to offer, uh, a couple last provocations. The first is pressed to think a new about what actually is deep learning when it comes to computation. I want to suggest that computational depth when it comes to AI systems without historical or social depth is actually superficial learning. And so we need to have a much more interdisciplinary, integrated approach to knowledge production and to observing and understanding patterns that don't simply rely on one discipline in order to map reality. >>The last provocation is this. If as I suggested at the start in the inequity is woven into the very fabric of our society. It's built into the design of our, our policies, our physical infrastructures, and now even our digital infrastructures. That means that each twist coil and code is a chance for us to weave new patterns, practices, and politics. The vastness of the problems that we're up against will be their undoing. Once we, that we are pattern makers. So what does that look like? It looks like refusing colorblindness as an anecdote to tech media discrimination, rather than refusing to see difference. Let's take stock of how the training data and the models that we're creating. Have these built in decisions from the past that have often been discriminatory. It means actually thinking about the underside of inclusion, which can be targeting and how do we create a more participatory rather than predatory form of inclusion. And ultimately it also means owning our own power in these systems so that we can change the patterns of the past. If we're, if we inherit a spiked bench, that doesn't mean that we need to continue using it. We can work together to design more, just an equitable technologies. So with that, I look forward to our conversation.

(radio calls) >> Announcer: From around the globe, its theCUBE covering Space & Cybersecurity Symposium 2020, hosted by Cal poly. Hello, welcome back to theCUBE virtual coverage with Cal Poly for the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium, a day four and the wrap up session, keynote session with the Lieutenant Governor of California, Eleni Kounalakis. She's here to deliver her keynote speech on the topic of California's role in supporting America's Cybersecurity future. Eleni, take it away. >> Thank you, John, for the introduction. I am Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis. It is an honor to be part of Cal Poly Space and Cybersecurity Symposium. As I speak kind of Pierre with the governor's office of business and economic development is available on the chat, too ready to answer any questions you might have. California and indeed the world are facing significant challenges right now. Every day we are faced with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the economic downturn that is ensued. We have flattened the curve in California and are moving in the right direction but it is clear that we're not out of the woods yet. It is also impossible right now to escape the reality of climate change from the fire sparked by exceptionally rare, dry lightening events to extreme heat waves threatening public health and putting a strain on our electricity grid. We see that climate change is here now. And of course we've been recently confronted with a series of brutal examples of institutionalized racism that have created an awakening among people of all walks of life and compelled us into the streets to march and protest. In the context of all this, we cannot forget that we continue to be faced with other less visible but still very serious challenges. Cybersecurity threats are one of these. We have seen cities, companies and individuals paralyzed by attacks costing time and money and creating an atmosphere of uncertainty and insecurity. Our state agencies, local governments, police departments, utilities, news outlets and private companies from all industries are target. The threats around cybersecurity are serious but not unlike all the challenges we face in California. We have the tools and fortitude to address them. That is why this symposium is so important. Thank you, Cal Poly and all the participants for being here and for the important contributions you bring to this conference. I'd like to also say a few words about California's role in America's future in space. California has been at the forefront of the aerospace industry for more than a century through all the major innovations in aerospace from wooden aircraft, to World War II Bombers, to rockets and Mars rovers. California has played a pivotal role. Today, California is the number one state in total defense spending, defense contract spending and total number of personnel. It is estimated the Aerospace and Defense Industry, provides $168 billion in economic impact to our state. And America's best trained and most experienced aerospace and technology workforce lives here in California. The fact that the aerospace and defense sector, has had a strong history in California is no accident. California has always had strong innovation ecosystem and robust infrastructure that puts many sectors in a position to thrive. Of course, a big part of that infrastructure is a skilled workforce. And at the foundation of a skilled workforce is education. California has the strongest system of public higher education in the world. We're home to 10 university of California campuses, 23 California State university campuses and 116 California Community Colleges. All told nearly 3 million students are enrolled in public higher education. We also have world renowned private universities including the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University numbers one and three in the country for aerospace engineering. California also has four national laboratories and several NASA facilities. California possesses a strong spirit of innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship. Half of all venture capital funding in the United States, goes to companies here in California. Lastly, but certainly no less critical to our success, California is a diverse state. 27% of all Californians are foreign born, 27% more than one in four of our population of 40 million people are immigrants from another country, Europe central and South America, India, Asia, everywhere. Our rich cultural diversity is our strength and helps drive our economy. As I look to the future of industries like cybersecurity and the growing commercial space industry, I know our state will need to work with those industries to make sure we continue to train our workforce for the demands of an evolving industry. The office of the lieutenant governor has a unique perspective on higher education and workforce development. I'm on the UC Board of Regents, the CSU Board of Trustees. And as of about two weeks ago, the Community Colleges Board of Governors. The office of the lieutenant governor is now the only office that is a member of every governing board, overseeing our public higher education system. Earlier in the symposium, we heard a rich discussion with Undersecretary Stewart Knox from the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency about what the state is doing to meet the needs of space and cybersecurity industries. As he mentioned, there are over 37,000 job vacancies in cybersecurity in our state. We need to address that gap. To do so, I see an important role for public private partnerships. We need input from industry and curriculum development. Some companies like Lockheed Martin, have very productive partnerships with universities and community colleges that train students with skills they need to enter aerospace and cyber industries. That type of collaboration will be key. We also need help from the industry to make sure students know that fields like cybersecurity even exist. People's early career interests are so often shaped by the jobs that members of their family have or what they see in popular culture. With such a young and evolving field like cybersecurity, many students are unaware of the job opportunities. I know for my visits to university campuses that students are hungry for STEM career paths where they see opportunities for good paying jobs. When I spoke with students at UC Merced, many of them were first generation college students who went through community college system before enrolling in a UC and they gravitated to STEM majors. With so many job opportunities available to STEM students, cybersecurity ought to be one that they are aware of and consider. Since this symposium is being hosted by Cal Poly, I wanted to highlight the tremendous work they're doing as leaders in the space and cybersecurity industry. Cal Poly California Cybersecurity Institute, does incredible work bringing together academia, industry and government training the next generation of cyber experts and researching emerging cybersecurity issues. As we heard from the President of Cal Poly, Jeff Armstrong the university is in the perfect location to contribute to a thriving space industry. It's close to Vandenberg Air Force Base and UC Santa Barbara and could be home to the future permanent headquarters of US Space Command. The state is also committed to supporting this space industry in the Central Coast. In July, the State of California, Cal poly US-based force and the others signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a commercial space port at Vandenberg Air Force Base and to develop a master plan to grow the commercial space industry in the region. Governor Newsom has made a commitment to lift up all regions of the state. And this strategy will position the Central Coast to be a global leader in the future of the space industry. I'd like to leave you with a few final thoughts, with everything we're facing. Fires, climate change, pandemic. It is easy to feel overwhelmed but I remain optimistic because I know that the people of the State of California are resilient, persistent, and determined to address our challenges and show a path toward a better future for ourselves and our families. The growth of the space industry and the economic development potential of projects like the Spaceport at Vandenberg Air Force Base, our great example of what we can look forward to. The potential for the commercial space industry to become a $3 trillion industry by mid century, as many experts predict is another. There are so many opportunities, new companies are going to emerge doing things we never could have dreamed of today. As Lieutenant General John Thompson said in the first session, the next few years of space and cyber innovation are not going to be a pony ride at the state fair, they're going to be a rodeo. We should all saddle up. Thank you. >> Okay, thank you very much, Eleni. I really appreciate it. Thank you for your participation and all your support to you and your staff. You guys doing a lot of work, a lot going on in California but cybersecurity and space as it comes together, California's playing a pivotal role in leading the world and the community. Thank you very much for your time. >> Okay, this session is going to continue with Bill Britton. Who's the vice president of technology and CIO at Cal Poly but more importantly, he's the director of the cyber institute located at Cal Poly. It's a global organization looking at the intersection of space and cybersecurity. Bill, let's wrap this up. Eleni had a great talk, talking about the future of cybersecurity in America and its future. The role California is playing, Cal Poly is right in the Central Coast. You're in the epicenter of it. We've had a great lineup here. Thanks for coming on. Let's put a capstone on this event. >> Thank you, John. But most importantly, thanks for being a great partner helping us get this to move forward and really changing the dynamic of this conversation. What an amazing time we're at, we had quite an unusual group but it's really kind of the focus and we've moved a lot of space around ourselves. And we've gone from Lieutenant General Thompson and the discussion of the opposition and space force and what things are going on in the future, the importance of cyber in space. And then we went on and moved on to the operations. And we had a private company who builds, we had the DOD, Department Of Defense and their context and NASA and theirs. And then we talked about public private partnerships from President Armstrong, Mr. Bhangu Mahad from the DOD and Mr. Steve Jacques from the National Security Space Association. It's been an amazing conference for one thing, I've heard repeatedly over and over and over, the reference to digital, the reference to cloud, the reference to the need for cybersecurity to be involved and really how important that is to start earlier than just at the employment level. To really go down into the system, the K through 12 and start there. And what an amazing time to be able to start there because we're returning to space in a larger capacity and it's now all around us. And the lieutenant governor really highlighted for us that California is intimately involved and we have to find a way to get our students involved at that same level. >> I want to ask you about this inflection point that was a big theme of this conference and symposium. It was throughout the interviews and throughout the conversations, both on the chat and also kind of on Twitter as well in the social web. Is that this new generation, it wasn't just space and government DOD, all the normal stuff you see, you saw JPL, the Hewlett Foundation, the Defense Innovation Unit, Amazon Web Services, NASA. Then you saw entrepreneurs come in, who were doing some stuff. And so you had this confluence of community. Of course, Cal Poly had participated in space. You guys does some great job, but it's not just the physical face-to-face show up, gets to hear some academic papers. This was a virtual event. We had over 300 organizations attend, different organizations around the world. Being a virtual event you had more range to get more people. This isn't digital. This symposium isn't about Central California anymore. It's global. >> No, it really has gone. >> What really happened to that? >> It's really kind of interesting because at first all of this was word of mouth for this symposium to take place. And it just started growing and growing and the more that we talk to organizations for support, the more we found how interconnected they were on an international scale. So much so that we've decided to take our cyber competition next year and take it globally as well. So if in fact as Major General Shaw said, this is about a multinational support force. Maybe it's time our students started interacting on that level to start with and not have to grow into it as they get older, but do it now and around space and around cybersecurity and around that digital environment and really kind of reduce the digital dividing space. >> Yeah, General Thompson mentioned this, 80 countries with programs. This is like the Olympics for space and we want to have these competitions. So I got great vision and I love that vision, but I know you have the number... Not number, the scores and from the competition this year that happened earlier in the week. Could you share the results of that challenge? >> Yeah, absolutely. We had 83 teams participate this year in the California Cyber Innovation Challenge. And again, it was based around a spacecraft scenario where a spacecraft, a commercial spacecraft was hacked and returned to earth. And the students had to do the forensics on the payload. And then they had to do downstream network analysis, using things like Wireshark and autopsy and other systems. It was a really tough competition. The students had to work hard and we had middle school and high school students participate. We had an intermediate league, new schools who had never done it before or even some who didn't even have STEM programs but were just signing up to really get involved in the experience. And we had our ultimate division which was those who had competed in several times before. And the winner of that competition was North Hollywood. They've been the winning team for four years in a row. Now it's a phenomenal program, they have their hats off to them for competing and winning again. Now what's really cool is not only did they have to show their technical prowess in the game but they also have to then brief and out-brief what they've learned to a panel of judges. And these are not pushovers. These are experts in the field of cybersecurity in space. We even had a couple of goons participating from DefCon and the teams present their findings. So not only are we talking technical, we're talking about presentation skills. The ability to speak and understand. And let me tell you, after reading all of their texts to each other over the weekend adds a whole new language they're using to interact with each other. It's amazing. And they are so more advanced and ready to understand space problems and virtual problems than we are. We have to challenge them even more. >> Well, it sounds like North Hollywood got the franchise. It's likethe Patriots, the Lakers, they've got a dynasty developing down there in North Hollywood. >> Well, what happens when there's a dynasty you have to look for other talent. So next year we're going global and we're going to have multiple states involved in the challenge and we're going to go international. So if North Hollywood pulls it off again next year, it's going to be because they've met the best in the world than defeated >> Okay, the gauntlet has been thrown down, got to take down North Hollywood from winning again next year. We'll be following that. Bill, great to get those results on the cyber challenge we'll keep track and we'll put a plug for it on our site. So we got to get some press on that. My question to you is now as we're going digital, other theme was that they want to hire digital natives into the space force. Okay, the DOD is looking at new skills. This was a big theme throughout the conference not just the commercial partnerships with government which I believe they had kind of put more research and personally, that's my personal opinion. They should be putting in way more research into academic and these environments to get more creative. But the skill sets was a big theme. What's your thoughts on how you saw some of the highlight moments there around skill sets? >> John, it's really interesting 'cause what we've noticed is in the past, everybody thinks skill sets for the engineering students. And it's way beyond that. It's all the students, it's all of them understanding what we call cyber cognizance. Understanding how cybersecurity works whatever career field they choose to be in. Space, there is no facet of supporting space that doesn't need that cyber cognizance. If you're in the back room doing the operations, you're doing the billing, you're doing the contracting. Those are still avenues by which cybersecurity attacks can be successful and disrupt your space mission. The fact that it's international, the connectivities, all of those things means that everyone in that system digitally has to be aware of what's going on around them. That's a whole new thought process. It's a whole new way of addressing a problem and dealing with space. And again it's virtual to everyone. >> That's awesome. Bill, great to have you on. Thank you for including theCUBE virtual, our CUBE event software platform that we're rolling out. We've been using it for the event and thank you for your partnership in this co-creation opening up your community, your symposium to the world, and we're so glad to be part of it. I want to thank you and Dustin and the team and the President of Cal Poly for including us. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, John. It's been an amazing partnership. We look forward to it in the future. >> Okay, that's it. That concludes the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, your host with Cal Poly, who put on an amazing virtual presentation, brought all the guests together. And again, shout out to Bill Britton and Dustin DeBrum who did a great job as well as the President of Cal poly who endorsed and let them do it all. Great event. See you soon. (flash light sound)

>> Announcer: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is theCUBE conversation. >> Hey, welcome back everybody Jeff Frick here with the cube. This is a special week it's Grace Hopper week, and Grace Hopper is the best name in tech conferences. The celebration of women in computing, and we've been going there for years we're not there this year, but one of the themes that comes up over and over at Grace Hopper is women and girls need to see women in positions that they can envision themselves being in someday. That is a really important piece of the whole diversity conversation is can I see people that I can role model after and I just want to bring up something from a couple years back from 2016 when we were there, we were there with Mimi Valdez, Christina Deoja and Dr. Jeanette Epps, Dr. Jeanette Epps is the astronaut on the right. They were there talking about "The Hidden Figures" movie. If you remember it came out 2016, it was about Katherine Johnson and all the black women working at NASA. They got no credit for doing all the math that basically keep all the astronauts safe and they made a terrific movie about it. And Janet is going up on the very first Blue Origin Space Mission Next year. This was announced a couple of months ago, so again, phenomenal leadership, black lady astronaut, going to go into space and really provide a face for a lot of young girls that want to get into that and its clearly a great STEM opportunity. So we're excited to have four terrific women today that well also are the leaders that the younger women can look up to and follow their career. So we're excited to have them so we're just going to go around. We got four terrific guests, our first one is Annabel Chang, She is the Head of State Policy and Government Regulations at Waymo. Annabel great to see you, where are you coming in from today? >> from San Francisco >> Jeff: Awesome. Next up is Inamarie Johnson. She is the Chief People and Diversity Officer for Zendesk Inamarie, great to see you. Where are you calling in from today? >> Great to be here. I am calling in from Palos Verdes the state >> Jeff: awesome >> in Southern California. >> Jeff: Some of the benefits of a virtual sometimes we can, we couldn't do that without the power of the internet. And next up is Jennifer Cabalquinto she is the Chief Financial Officer of the Golden State Warriors. Jennifer, great to see you Where are you coming in from today? >> Well, I wish I was coming in from the Chase Center in San Francisco but I'm actually calling in from Santa Cruz California today. >> Jeff: Right, It's good to see you and you can surf a lot better down there. So that's probably not all bad. And finally to round out our panelists, Kate Hogan, she is the COO of North America for Accenture. Kate, great to see you as well. Where are you coming in from today? >> Well, it's good to see you too. I am coming in from the office actually in San Jose. >> Jeff: From the office in San Jose. All right, So let's get into it . You guys are all very senior, you've been doing this for a long time. We're in a kind of a crazy period of time in terms of diversity with all the kind of social unrest that's happening. So let's talk about some of your first your journeys and I want to start with you Annabel. You're a lawyer you got into lawyering. You did lawyering with Diane Feinstein, kind of some politics, and also the city of San Francisco. And then you made this move over to tech. Talk about that decision and what went into that decision and how did you get into tech? 'cause we know part of the problem with diversity is a pipeline problem. You came over from the law side of the house. >> Yes, and to be honest politics and the law are pretty homogenous. So when I made the move to tech, it was still a lot of the same, but what I knew is that I could be an attorney anywhere from Omaha Nebraska to Miami Florida. But what I couldn't do was work for a disruptive company, potentially a unicorn. And I seized that opportunity and (indistinct) Lyft early on before Ride Hailing and Ride Sharing was even a thing. So it was an exciting opportunity. And I joined right at the exact moment that made myself really meaningful in the organization. And I'm hoping that I'm doing the same thing right now at Waymo. >> Great, Inamarie you've come from one of my favorite stories I like to talk about from the old school Clorox great product management. I always like to joke that Silicon Valley needs a pipeline back to Cincinnati and Proctor and Gamble to get good product managers out here. You were in the classic, right? You were there, you were at Honeywell Plantronics, and then you jumped over to tech. Tell us a little bit about that move. Cause I'm sure selling Clorox is a lot different than selling the terrific service that you guys provide at Zendesk. I'm always happy when I see Zendesk in my customer service return email, I know I'm going to get taken care of. >> Oh wow, that's great. We love customers like you., so thank you for that. My journey is you're right from a fortune 50 sort of more portfolio type company into tech. And I think one of the reasons is because when tech is starting out and that's what Zendesk was a few five years back or so very much an early stage growth company, two things are top of mind, one, how do we become more global? And how do we make sure that we can go up market and attract enterprise grade customers? And so my experience having only been in those types of companies was very interesting for a startup. And what was interesting for me is I got to live in a world where there were great growth targets and numbers, things I had never seen. And the agility, the speed, the head plus heart really resonated with my background. So super glad to be in tech, but you're right. It's a little different than a consumer products. >> Right, and then Jennifer, you're in a completely different world, right? So you worked for the Golden State Warriors, which everybody knows is an NBA team, but I don't know that everyone knows really how progressive the Warriors are beyond just basketball in terms of the new Chase Center, all the different events that you guys put on it. And really the leadership there has decided we really want to be an entertainment company of which the Golden State Warrior basketball team has a very, very important piece, you've come from the entertainment industry. So that's probably how they found you, but you're in the financial role. You've always been in the financial role, not traditionally thought about as a lot of women in terms of a proportion of total people in that. So tell us a little bit about your experience being in finance, in entertainment, and then making this kind of hop over to, I guess Uber entertainment. I don't know even how you would classify the warriors. >> Sports entertainment, live entertainment. Yeah, it's interesting when the Warriors opportunity came up, I naturally said well no, I don't have any sports background. And it's something that we women tend to do, right? We self edit and we want to check every box before we think that we're qualified. And the reality is my background is in entertainment and the Warriors were looking to build their own venue, which has been a very large construction project. I was the CFO at Universal Studios Hollywood. And what do we do there? We build large attractions, which are just large construction projects and we're in the entertainment business. And so that sort of B to C was a natural sort of transition for me going from where I was with Universal Studios over to the Warriors. I think a finance career is such a great career for women. And I think we're finding more and more women entering it. It is one that you sort of understand your hills and valleys, you know when you're going to be busy and so you can kind of schedule around that. I think it's really... it provides that you have a seat at the table. And so I think it's a career choice that I think is becoming more and more available to women certainly more now than it was when I first started. >> Yeah, It's interesting cause I think a lot of people think of women naturally in human resources roles. My wife was a head of human resources back in the day, or a lot of marketing, but not necessarily on the finance side. And then Kate go over to you. You're one of the rare birds you've been at Accenture  for over 20 years. So you must like airplanes and travel to stay there that long. But doing a little homework for this, I saw a really interesting piece of you talking about your boss challenging you to ask for more work, to ask for a new opportunity. And I thought that was really insightful that you, you picked up on that like Oh, I guess it's incumbent on me to ask for more, not necessarily wait for that to be given to me, it sounds like a really seminal moment in your career. >> It was important but before I tell you that story, because it was an important moment of my career and probably something that a lot of the women here on the panel here can relate to as well. You mentioned airplanes and it made me think of my dad. My father was in the air force and I remember him telling stories when I was little about his career change from the air force into a career in telecommunications. So technology for me growing up Jeff was, it was kind of part of the dinner table. I mean it was just a conversation that was constantly ongoing in our house. And I also, as a young girl, I loved playing video games. We had a Tandy computer down in the basement and I remember spending too many hours playing video games down there. And so for me my history and my really at a young age, my experience and curiosity around tech was there. And so maybe that's, what's fueling my inspiration to stay at Accenture for as long as I have. And you're right It's been two decades, which feels tremendous, but I've had the chance to work across a bunch of different industries, but you're right. I mean, during that time and I relate with what Jennifer said in terms of self editing, right? Women do this and I'm no exception, I did this. And I do remember I'm a mentor and a sponsor of mine who called me up when I'm kind of I was at a pivotal moment in my career and he said you know Kate, I've been waiting for you to call me and tell me you want this job. And I never even thought about it. I mean I just never thought that I'd be a candidate for the job and let alone somebody waiting for me to kind of make the phone call. I haven't made that mistake again, (laughing) but I like to believe I learned from it, but it was an important lesson. >> It's such a great lesson and women are often accused of being a little bit too passive and not necessarily looking out for in salary negotiations or looking for that promotion or kind of stepping up to take the crappy job because that's another thing we hear over and over from successful people is that some point in their career, they took that job that nobody else wanted. They took that challenge that really enabled them to take a different path and really a different Ascension. And I'm just curious if there's any stories on that or in terms of a leader or a mentor, whether it was in the career, somebody that you either knew or didn't know that was someone that you got kind of strength from kind of climbing through your own, kind of career progression. Will go to you first Annabel. >> I actually would love to talk about the salary negotiations piece because I have a group of friends about that we've been to meeting together once a month for the last six years now. And one of the things that we committed to being very transparent with each other about was salary negotiations and signing bonuses and all of the hard topics that you kind of don't want to talk about as a manager and the women that I'm in this group with span all types of different industries. And I've learned so much from them, from my different job transitions about understanding the signing bonus, understanding equity, which is totally foreign to me coming from law and politics. And that was one of the most impactful tools that I've ever had was a group of people that I could be open with talking about salary negotiations and talking about how to really manage equity. Those are totally foreign to me up until this group of women really connected me to these topics and gave me some of that expertise. So that is something I strongly encourage is that if you haven't openly talked about salary negotiations before you should begin to do so. >> It begs the question, how was the sensitivity between the person that was making a lot of money and the person that wasn't? And how did you kind of work through that as a group for the greater good of everyone? >> Yeah, I think what's really eye opening is that for example, We had friends who were friends who were on tech, we had friends who were actually the entrepreneurs starting their own businesses or law firm, associates, law firm partners, people in PR, so we understood that there was going to be differences within industry and frankly in scale, but it was understanding even the tools, whether I think the most interesting one would be signing bonus, right? Because up until a few years ago, recruiters could ask you what you made and how do you avoid that question? How do you anchor yourself to a lower salary range or avoid that happening? I didn't know this, I didn't know how to do that. And a couple of women that had been in more senior negotiations shared ways to make sure that I was pinning myself to a higher salary range that I wanted to be in. >> That's great. That's a great story and really important to like say pin. it's a lot of logistical details, right? You just need to learn the techniques like any other skill. Inamarie, I wonder if you've got a story to share here. >> Sure. I just want to say, I love the example that you just gave because it's something I'm super passionate about, which is transparency and trust. Then I think that we're building that every day into all of our people processes. So sure, talk about sign on bonuses, talk about pay parody because that is the landscape. But a quick story for me, I would say is all about stepping into uncertainty. And when I coach younger professionals of course women, I often talk about, don't be afraid to step into the role where all of the answers are not vetted down because at the end of the day, you can influence what those answers are. I still remember when Honeywell asked me to leave the comfort of California and to come to the East coast to New Jersey and bring my family. And I was doing well in my career. I didn't feel like I needed to do that, but I was willing after some coaching to step into that uncertainty. And it was one of the best pivotal moment in my career. I didn't always know who I was going to work with. I didn't know the challenges and scope I would take on, but those were some of the biggest learning experiences and opportunities and it made me a better executive. So that's always my coaching, like go where the answers aren't quite vetted down because you can influence that as a leader. >> That's great, I mean, Beth Comstock former vice chair at GE, one of her keynotes I saw had a great line, get comfortable with being uncomfortable. And I think that its a really good kind of message, especially in the time we're living in with accelerated change. But I'm curious, Inamarie was the person that got you to take that commitment. Would you consider that a sponsor, a mentor, was it a boss? Was it maybe somebody not at work, your spouse or a friend that said go for it. What kind of pushed you over the edge to take that? >> It's a great question. It was actually the boss I was going to work for. He was the CHRO, and he said something that was so important to me that I've often said it to others. And he said trust me, he's like I know you don't have all the answers, I know we don't have this role all figured out, I know you're going to move your family, but if you trust me, there is a ton of learning on the other side of this. And sometimes that's the best thing a boss can do is say we will go on this journey together. I will help you figure it out. So it was a boss, but I think it was that trust and that willingness for him to stand and go alongside of me that made me pick up my family and be willing to move across the country. And we stayed five years and really, I am not the same executive because of that experience. >> Right, that's a great story, Jennifer, I want to go to you, you work for two owners that are so progressive and I remember when Joe Lacob came on the floor a few years back and was booed aggressively coming into a franchise that hadn't seen success in a very long time, making really aggressive moves in terms of personnel, both at the coaches and the players level, the GM level. But he had a vision and he stuck to it. And the net net was tremendous success. I wonder if you can share any of the stories, for you coming into that organization and being able to feel kind of that level of potential success and really kind of the vision and also really a focus on execution to make the vision real cause vision without execution doesn't really mean much. If you could share some stories of working for somebody like Joe Lacob, who's so visionary but also executes so very, very effectively. >> Yeah, Joe is, well I have the honor of working for Joe, for Rick Welts to who's our president. Who's living legend with the NBA with Peter Guber. Our leadership at the Warriors are truly visionary and they set audacious targets. And I would say from a story the most recent is, right now what we're living through today. And I will say Joe will not accept that we are not having games with fans. I agree he is so committed to trying to solve for this and he has really put the organization sort of on his back cause we're all like well, what do we do? And he has just refused to settle and is looking down every path as to how do we ensure the safety of our fans, the safety of our players, but how do we get back to live entertainment? And this is like a daily mantra and now the entire organization is so focused on this and it is because of his vision. And I think you need leaders like that who can set audacious goals, who can think beyond what's happening today and really energize the entire organization. And that's really what he's done. And when I talked to my peers and other teams in there they're talking about trying to close out their season or do these things. And they're like well, we're talking about, how do we open the building? And we're going to have fans, we're going to do this. And they look at me and they're like, what are you talking about? And I said, well we are so fortunate. We have leadership that just is not going to settle. Like they are just always looking to get out of whatever it is that's happening and fix it. So Joe is so committed His background, he's an epidemiologist major I think. Can you imagine how unique a background that is and how timely. And so his knowledge of just around the pandemic and how the virus is spread. And I mean it's phenomenal to watch him work and leverage sort of his business acumen, his science acumen and really think through how do we solve this. Its amazing. >> The other thing thing that you had said before is that you basically intentionally told people that they need to rethink their jobs, right? You didn't necessarily want to give them permission to get you told them we need to rethink their jobs. And it's a really interesting approach when the main business is just not happening, right? There's just no people coming through the door and paying for tickets and buying beers and hotdogs. It's a really interesting talk. And I'm curious, kind of what was the reception from the people like hey, you're the boss, you just figure it out or were they like hey, this is terrific that he pressed me to come up with some good ideas. >> Yeah, I think when all of this happened, we were resolved to make sure that our workforce is safe and that they had the tools that they needed to get through their day. But then we really challenged them with re imagining what the next normal is. Because when we come out of this, we want to be ahead of everybody else. And that comes again from the vision that Joe set, that we're going to use this time to make ourselves better internally because we have the time. I mean, we had been racing towards opening Chase Center and not having time to pause. Now let's use this time to really rethink how we're doing business. What can we do better? And I think it's really reinvigorated teams to really think and innovate in their own areas because you can innovate anything, right?. We're innovating how you pay payables, we're all innovating, we're rethinking the fan experience and queuing and lines and all of these things because now we have the time that it's really something that top down we want to come out of this stronger. >> Right, that's great. Kate I'll go to you, Julie Sweet, I'm a big fan of Julie Sweet. we went to the same school so go go Claremont. But she's been super aggressive lately on a lot of these things, there was a get to... I think it's called Getting to 50 50 by 25 initiative, a formal initiative with very specific goals and objectives. And then there was a recent thing in terms of doing some stuff in New York with retraining. And then as you said, military being close to your heart, a real specific military recruiting process, that's formal and in place. And when you see that type of leadership and formal programs put in place not just words, really encouraging, really inspirational, and that's how you actually get stuff done as you get even the consulting businesses, if you can't measure it, you can't improve it. >> Yeah Jeff, you're exactly right. And as Jennifer was talking, Julie is exactly who I was thinking about in my mind as well, because I think it takes strong leadership and courage to set bold bold goals, right? And you talked about a few of those bold goals and Julie has certainly been at the forefront of that. One of the goals we set in 2018 actually was as you said to achieve essentially a gender balance workforce. So 50% men, 50% women by 2025, I mean, that's ambitious for any company, but for us at the time we were 400,000 people. They were 500, 6,000 globally. So when you set a goal like that, it's a bold goal and it's a bold vision. And we have over 40% today, We're well on our path to get to 50%, I think by 2025. And I was really proud to share that goal in front of a group of 200 clients the day that it came out, it's a proud moment. And I think it takes leaders like Julie and many others by the way that are also setting bold goals, not just in my company to turn the dial here on gender equality in the workforce, but it's not just about gender equality. You mentioned something I think it's probably at as, or more important right now. And that's the fact that at least our leadership has taken a Stand, a pretty bold stand against social injustice and racism, >> Right which is... >> And so through that we've made some very transparent goals in North America in terms of the recruitment and retention of our black African American, Hispanic American, Latinex communities. We've set a goal to increase those populations in our workforce by 60% by 2025. And we're requiring mandatory training for all of our people to be able to identify and speak up against racism. Again, it takes courage and it takes a voice. And I think it takes setting bold goals to make a change and these are changes we're committed to. >> Right, that's terrific. I mean, we started the conversation with Grace Hopper, they put out an index for companies that don't have their own kind of internal measure to do surveys again so you can get kind of longitudinal studies over time and see how you're improving Inamarie, I want to go to you on the social justice thing. I mean, you've talked a lot about values and culture. It's a huge part of what you say. And I think that the quote that you use, if I can steal it is " no culture eats strategy for breakfast" and with the social injustice. I mean, you came out with special values just about what Zendesk is doing on social injustice. And I thought I was actually looking up just your regular core mission and value statement. And this is what came up on my Google search. So I wanted to A, you published this in a blog in June, taking a really proactive stand. And I think you mentioned something before that, but then you're kind of stuck in this role as a mind reader. I wonder if you can share a little bit of your thoughts of taking a proactive stand and what Zendesk is doing both you personally, as well as a company in supporting this. And then what did you say as a binder Cause I think these are difficult kind of uncharted waters on one hand, on the other hand, a lot of people say, hello, this has been going on forever. You guys are just now seeing cellphone footage of madness. >> Yeah Wow, there's a lot in there. Let me go to the mind reader comments, cause people are probably like, what is that about? My point was last December, November timing. I've been the Chief People Officer for about two years And I decided that it really was time with support from my CEO that Zendesk have a Chief Diversity Officer sitting in at the top of the company, really putting a face to a lot of the efforts we were doing. And so the mind reader part comes in little did I know how important that stance would become, in the may June Timing? So I joked that, it almost felt like I could have been a mind reader, but as to what have we done, a couple of things I would call out that I think are really aligned with who we are as a company because our culture is highly threaded with the concept of empathy it's been there from our beginning. We have always tried to be a company that walks in the shoes of our customers. So in may with the death of George Floyd and the world kind of snapping and all of the racial injustice, what we said is we wanted to not stay silent. And so most of my postings and points of view were that as a company, we would take a stand both internally and externally and we would also partner with other companies and organizations that are doing the big work. And I think that is the humble part of it, we can't do it all at Zendesk, we can't write all the wrongs, but we can be in partnership and service with other organizations. So we used funding and we supported those organizations and partnerships. The other thing that I would say we did that was super important along that empathy is that we posted space for our employees to come together and talk about the hurt and the pain and the experiences that were going on during those times and we called those empathy circles. And what I loved is initially, it was through our mosaic community, which is what we call our Brown and black and persons of color employee resource group. But it grew into something bigger. We ended up doing five of these empathy circles around the globe and as leadership, what we were there to do is to listen and stand as an ally and support. And the stories were life changing. And the stories really talked about a number of injustice and racism aspects that are happening around the world. And so we are committed to that journey, we will continue to support our employees, we will continue to partner and we're doing a number of the things that have been mentioned. But those empathy circles, I think were definitely a turning point for us as an organization. >> That's great, and people need it right? They need a place to talk and they also need a place to listen if it's not their experience and to be empathetic, if you just have no data or no knowledge of something, you need to be educated So that is phenomenal. I want to go to you Jennifer. Cause obviously the NBA has been very, very progressive on this topic both as a league, and then of course the Warriors. We were joking before. I mean, I don't think Steph Curry has ever had a verbal misstep in the history of his time in the NBA, the guy so eloquent and so well-spoken, but I wonder if you can share kind of inside the inner circle in terms of the conversations, that the NBA enabled right. For everything from the jerseys and going out on marches and then also from the team level, how did that kind of come down and what's of the perception inside the building? >> Sure, obviously I'm so proud to be part of a league that is as progressive and has given voice and loud, all the teams, all the athletes to express how they feel, The Warriors have always been committed to creating a diverse and equitable workplace and being part of a diverse and equitable community. I mean that's something that we've always said, but I think the situation really allowed us, over the summer to come up with a real formal response, aligning ourselves with the Black Lives Matter movement in a really meaningful way, but also in a way that allows us to iterate because as you say, it's evolving and we're learning. So we created or discussed four pillars that we wanted to work around. And that was really around wallet, heart, beat, and then tongue or voice. And Wallet is really around putting our money where our mouth is, right? And supporting organizations and groups that aligned with the values that we were trying to move forward. Heart is around engaging our employees and our fan base really, right? And so during this time we actually launched our employee resource groups for the first time and really excited and energized about what that's doing for our workforce. This is about promoting real action, civic engagement, advocacy work in the community and what we've always been really focused in a community, but this really hones it around areas that we can all rally around, right? So registration and we're really focused on supporting the election day results in terms of like having our facilities open to all the electorate. So we're going to have our San Francisco arena be a ballot drop off, our Oakland facilities is a polling site, Santa Cruz site is also a polling location, So really promoting sort of that civic engagement and causing people to really take action. heart is all around being inclusive and developing that culture that we think is really reflective of the community. And voice is really amplifying and celebrating one, the ideas, the (indistinct) want to put forth in the community, but really understanding everybody's culture and really just providing and using the platform really to provide a basis in which as our players, like Steph Curry and the rest want to share their own experiences. we have a platform that can't be matched by any pedigree, right? I mean, it's the Warriors. So I think really getting focused and rallying around these pillars, and then we can iterate and continue to grow as we define the things that we want to get involved in. >> That's terrific. So I have like pages and pages and pages of notes and could probably do this for hours and hours, but unfortunately we don't have that much time we have to wrap. So what I want to do is give you each of you the last word again as we know from this problem, right? It's not necessarily a pipeline problem, it's really a retention problem. We hear that all the time from Girls in Code and Girls in Tech. So what I'd like you to do just to wrap is just a couple of two or three sentences to a 25 year old, a young woman sitting across from you having coffee socially distanced about what you would tell her early in the career, not in college but kind of early on, what would the be the two or three sentences that you would share with that person across the table and Annabel, we'll start with you. >> Yeah, I will have to make a pitch for transportation. So in transportation only 15% of the workforce is made up of women. And so my advice would be that there are these fields, there are these opportunities where you can make a massive impact on the future of how people move or how they consume things or how they interact with the world around them. And my hope is that being at Waymo, with our self driving car technology, that we are going to change the world. And I am one of the initial people in this group to help make that happen. And one thing that I would add is women spend almost an hour a day, shuttling their kids around, and we will give you back that time one day with our self driving cars so that I'm a mom. And I know that that is going to be incredibly powerful on our daily lives. >> Jeff: That's great. Kate, I think I might know what you're already going to say, but well maybe you have something else you wanted to say too. >> I don't know, It'll be interesting. Like if I was sitting across the table from a 25 year old right now I would say a couple of things first I'd say look intentionally for a company that has an inclusive culture. Intentionally seek out the company that has an inclusive culture, because we know that companies that have inclusive cultures retain women in tech longer. And the companies that can build inclusive cultures will retain women in tech, double, double the amount that they are today in the next 10 years. That means we could put another 1.4 million women in tech and keep them in tech by 2030. So I'd really encourage them to look for that. I'd encouraged them to look for companies that have support network and reinforcements for their success, and to obviously find a Waymo car so that they can not have to worry where kids are on for an hour when you're parenting in a few years. >> Jeff: I love the intentional, it's such a great word. Inamarie, >> I'd like to imagine that I'm sitting across from a 25 year old woman of color. And what I would say is be authentically you and know that you belong in the organization that you are seeking and you were there because you have a unique perspective and a voice that needs to be heard. And don't try to be anything that you're not, be who you are and bring that voice and that perspective, because the company will be a better company, the management team will be a better management team, the workforce will be a better workforce when you belong, thrive and share that voice. >> I love that, I love that. That's why you're the Chief People Officer and not Human Resources Officer, cause people are not resources like steel and cars and this and that. All right, Jennifer, will go to you for the wrap. >> Oh my gosh, I can't follow that. But yes, I would say advocate for yourself and know your value. I think really understanding what you're worth and being willing to fight for that is critical. And I think it's something that women need to do more. >> Awesome, well again, I wish we could go all day, but I will let you get back to your very, very busy day jobs. Thank you for participating and sharing your insight. I think it's super helpful. And there and as we said at the beginning, there's no better example for young girls and young women than to see people like you in leadership roles and to hear your voices. So thank you for sharing. >> Thank you. >> All right. >> Thank you. >> Okay thank you. >> Thank you >> All right, so that was our diversity panel. I hope you enjoyed it, I sure did. I'm looking forward to chapter two. We'll get it scheduled as soon as we can. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From theCube studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is theCube Conversation. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCube. We're still on our Palo Alto studios, we're still getting through COVID and we're still doing all of our remotes, all of our interviews via remote and I'm really excited to have a guest we had around a long time ago. I looked it up is 2016, April 2016. She's Coco Brown, the founder and CEO of the Athena Alliance. Coco, it's great to see you. >> It's great to see you as well. We actually formally started in April of 2016. >> I know, I saw, I noticed that on LinkedIn. So we were at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference in Phoenix, I remembers was a really cool conference, met a ton of people, a lot of them have turned out that are on your board. So yeah, and you formally on LinkedIn, it says you started in May. So that was right at the very, very beginning. >> Yeah, that's right. >> So for people that aren't familiar with the at the Athena Alliance give them the quick overview. >> Okay. Well, it's a little different that it was four years ago. So Athena first and foremost is a digital platform. So you literally log in to Athena. And we're a combination of community access to opportunity and learning. And so you can kind of envision it a little bit like a walled garden around the LinkedIn, meets Khan Academy for senior executives, meets Hollywood agency for women trying to get into the boardroom and senior level roles in the c-suite as advisors, et cetera. And then the way that we operate is you can have a self-service experience of Athena, you can have a concierge experience with Athena with real humans in the loop making key connections for you and you can add accelerators where we build brand packages and BIOS and give you executive coaching. So... >> Wow. >> Kind of a... >> You've built out your services portfolio over the last several years. But still the focus >> yes, we have. is boards, right? Still the focus is getting women on public boards, or is that no longer still the focus? >> No, that's a big piece of it for sure. I mean, one of the things that we discovered, that was the very first mission of Athena, was to bring more women into the boardroom. And as we were doing that we discovered that once you get into a senior realm of leadership in general, there's more things that you want to do than just get into the boardroom. Some of it may be wanting to be an investor or an LP in a fund or become a CEO, or certainly join outside boards but also be relevant to your own inside board. And so we started to look at Athena as a more holistic experience for senior leaders who are attempting to make sure that they are the best they can be in this very senior realm of overarching stewardship of business. >> Awesome. and have you seen, so obviously your your focus shifted 'cause you needed to add more services based on the demand from the customers. But have you seen the receptiveness to women board members change over the last four years? How have you seen kind of the marketplace change? >> Yeah, it's changed a lot, I would say. First of all I think laws like the California law and Goldman Sachs coming out saying they won't take companies public unless they have diverse board data. The statements by big entities that people are paying attention to made the boardroom dynamics a conversation around the dinner table in general. So it became more of a common conversation and common interest as opposed to just the interest of a few people who are trying to get in there. And so that's created a lot of momentum as well as sort of thoughtfulness from leaders and from employees and from larger stakeholders to say the diversity at the top business has to mimic the demographics of society as a whole. And that's become a little bit more accepted as opposed to grudgingly sort of taken in. >> Right. So one of the big problems always it's like the VC problem, right? Is the whole matchmaking problem. How do you, how do qualified people find qualified opportunities? And I wonder if you can speak a little bit as to how that process has evolved, how are you really helping because there's always people that are looking for quality candidates, and there's great quality candidates out there that just don't know where to go. How are you helping bridge kind of that kind of basic matchmaking function? >> Yeah. I mean, there's a couple of different ways to go about it. One is certainly to understand and have real connections into the parts of the leadership ecosystem that influences or makes the decision as to who sits around that table. So that would be communities of CEOs, it's communities of existing board directors, it's venture capital firms, its private equity firms, and as you get really entrenched in those organizations and those ecosystems, you become part of that ecosystem and you become what they turn to to say, "Hey, do you know somebody?" Because it still is a "who do yo know" approach at the senior most levels. So that's one way. The other mechanism is really for individuals who are looking for board seats who want to be on boards to actually be thinking about how they proactively navigate their way to the kinds of boards that they would fit to. I like in a very much to the way our children go after the schools that they might want to when it's time for university. You'll figure out who your safeties, your matches, your reaches are, and figure out how you're going to take six degrees of separation and turn them into one through connections. So those are that's another way to go about it. >> You know, it's interesting, I talked to Beth Stewart from True Star, they also help place women on boards. And one of the issues is just the turnover. And I asked that just straight up, are there formal mechanisms to make sure that people who've been doing business from way before there were things like email and the internet eventually get swapped out. And she said, that's actually a big part of the problem is there isn't really a formal way to keep things fresh and to kind of rotate the incumbents out to enable somebody who's new and maybe has a different point of view to come in. So I'm curious when someone is targeting their A-list and B-list and C-lists, how do they factor in kind of the age of the board composition of the existing board, to really look for where there's these opportunities where a spot opens up, 'cause if there's not a spot open up clearly, there's really not much opportunity there. >> Yeah, I mean, you have to look at the whole ecosystem, right? I mean, there's anything from let's say series A, venture backed private companies all the way up to the mega cap companies, right? And there's this continuum. And it's not, there's not one universal answer to what you're talking about. So for example, if you're talking about smaller private companies, you're competing against, not somebody giving up their seat, but whether or not the company feels real motivation to fill that particular independent director seat. So the biggest competition is often that that seat goes unfilled. When you're talking about public companies, the biggest competition is really the fact that as my friend Adam Epstein of the small cap Institute will tell you, that 80% of public companies are actually small cap companies. And they don't have the same kinds of pressures that large caps do to have turnover. But yeah, it takes a big piece of the challenge is really boards having the disposition collectively to see the board as a competitive advantage for the business as a very necessary and productive piece of the business and when they see that then they take more proactive measures to make sure they have a evolving and strong board that does turnover as it needs to. >> Right. So I'm curious when you're talking to the high power women, right, who are in operational roles probably most of the time, how do you help coach them, how should they be thinking, what do they have to do different when they want to kind of add board seats to their portfolio? Very different kind of a role than an operational role, very different kind of concerns and day to day tasks. So, and clearly, you've added a whole bunch of extra things to your portfolio. So how do you help people, what do you tell women who say, "Okay, I've been successful, "I'm like successful executive, "but now I want to do this other thing, "I want to take this next step in my career"? What usually the gaps and what are the things that they need to do to prepare for that? >> Well, I'm going to circle in then land a little bit. Autodesk was actually a really great partner to us back when you and I first met. They had a couple of women at the top of the organization that were part of Athena, specifically because they wanted to join boards. They are on boards now, Lisa Campbell, Amy Bunszel, Debbie Clifford. And what they told us is they were experiencing everything that we were offering in terms of developing them, helping them to position themselves, understand themselves, navigate their way, was that they simply became better leaders as a result of focusing on themselves as that next level up, irrespective of the fact that it took them two to three years to land that seat. They became stronger in their executive role in general and better able to communicate and engage with their own boards. So I think, now I'm landing, the thing that I would say about that is don't wait until you're thinking oh, I want to join a board, to do the work to get yourself into that ecosystem, into that atmosphere and into that mindset, because the sooner you do that as an executive, the better you will be in that atmosphere, the more prepared you will be. And you also have to recognize that it will take time. >> Right. And the how has COVID impacted it, I mean, on one hand, meeting somebody for coffee and having a face to face is a really important part of getting to know someone and a big part of I'm sure, what was the recruitment process, and do you know someone, yeah, let's go meet for a cup of coffee or dinner or whatever. Can't do that anymore, but we can all meet this way, we can all get on virtually and so in some ways, it's probably an enabler, which before you could grab an hour or you didn't have to fly cross-country or somebody didn't have to fly cross-country. So I'm kind of curious in this new reality, which is going to continue for some time. How has that impacted kind of people's ability to discover and get to know and build trust for these very very senior positions. >> HBR just came out with a really great article about the virtual board meeting. I don't know if you saw it but I can send you a link. I think that what I'm learning from board directors in general and leaders in general is that yes, there's things that make it difficult to engage remotely, but there's also a lot of benefit to being able to get comfortable with the virtual world. So it's certainly, particularly with COVID, with racial equity issues, with the uncertain economy, boards are having to meet more often and they're having, some are having weekly stand ups and those are facilitated by getting more and more comfortable with being virtual. And I think they're realizing that you don't have to press flesh, as they say, to actually build intimacy and real connection. And that's been a hold up, but I think as the top leadership gets to understand that and feel that for themselves, it becomes easier for them to adopt it throughout the organization that the virtual world is one we can really embrace, not just for a period of time. >> It's funny we had John Chambers on early on in this whole process, really talking about leadership and leading through transition. And he used the example, I think had been that day or maybe a couple days off from our interview where they had a board meeting, I think they were talking about some hamburger restaurant, and so they just delivered hamburgers to everybody's office and they had the board meeting. But that's really progressive for a board to actually be doing weekly stand ups. That really shows a pretty transformative way to manage the business and kind of what we think is the stodgy old traditional get together now and then, fly and then get some minutes and fly out, that's super progressive. >> Yeah. I mean, I was on three different board meetings this week with a company I'm on the board of in Minnesota. And we haven't seen each other in person in, I guess since January. (woman laughs) >> So final tips for women that want to make this this move, who, they've got some breathing space, they're not homeschooling the kids all day while they're trying to get their job done and trying to save their own business, but have some cycles and the capabilities. What do you tell them, where should they begin, how should they start thinking about, kind of taking on this additional responsibility and really professional growth in their life? >> Well, I mean, I think something very important for all of us to think about with regard to board service and in general as we get into a very senior level point in our careers at a managing and impact portfolio. People get into a senior point and they don't just want to be an executive for one company, they want to have a variety of ways that they're delivering impact, whether it's as an investor or as a board member or as other things as well as being an operator. And I think the misnomer is that people believe that you have to add them up and they, one plus one plus one equals three, and it's just not true. The truth is that when you add a board seat, when you add that other thing that you're doing it makes you better as a leader in general. Every board meeting I have with [Indistinct] gives me more than I bring back to Athena as an example. And so I think we tend to think of not being able to take on one more thing and I say that we all have a little more space than we think we have to take on the things we want to do. >> Right? That's a good message to me. It is often said if you want to get something done, give it to the busiest person in the room. It's more likely to get it done 'cause you got to be efficient and you just have that kind of get it done attitude. >> That's right. >> All right, Coco. Well, thank you for sharing your thoughts. >> Congratulations, so I guess it's your four year anniversary, five year anniversary [Indistinct] about right? >> Yes, four. >> That's terrific. And we look forward to continuing to watch the growth and hopefully checking in face to face at some point in the not too distant future. >> I would like that. >> All right. Thanks a lot Coco. >> Great talking to you. >> Already. >> She's Coco, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCube. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)