>> Narrator: From theCUBE's studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. >> Hi and welcome to a special CUBE Conversation, I'm Stu Miniman and happy to welcome back to the program, Michelle Peluso. She is the Senior Vice President of Digital Sales as well as the Chief Marketing Officer for IBM. Michelle, thanks so much for joining us. >> Hey Stu, great to see you again. Boy we had fun at Think, thank you so much for your help. >> Yeah, well Michelle, I'm really excited to, you know, get a little bit of the inside what happened from your end. Got to talk to you, you know, at the show, instead of 20,000 people, you know, dealing with San Francisco and Moscone and everything there. You had, if I read right, 100,000 people at least registered for the digital event, you know, bring us inside a little bit the control center, what was it like being part of that event, your team, of course, all distributed, and you know, anything surprise you during that event, >> Well it was nerve wracking. (laughing) Look, what an exciting thing, and kudos to the team for so much innovation. I mean, we had in 60 days to build a platform. Of course, using IBM technology, lots of media, the IBM Cloud, integrate some third parties, build a reporting suite. We make all of the content because in this world, of course, there are different things front and center on our clients minds, and not only that, but we had to film it all in remote locations in peoples homes, and make it all work, and so the team did an extraordinary job, and on the really positive side, you mentioned we had over 100,000 clients and business partners register, but it was still even more than three times any audience we've ever had come to our physical events at Think. So it was really extraordinary, and now of course, we're following up. We have a treasure trove of information about what clients are interested in, and what our business partners are interested in. We have a great opportunity to leverage the on demand content to continue the conversation. >> It's great. It's really interesting to time shift things instead of okay I'm going to dedicate however many days to do the event. Now, I love that mix of you can watch it live, you can watch it on demand, you can follow up. You know, how are you any trends that you're seeing as to where people are going, or how you're making sure that there are people to support and engage, not just say, you know, hey, here's a lot of content, you know, go watch our breakouts, go watch the cube stuff. >> Yeah, yeah. Well this is a huge thing, right? So both in terms of what we actually had to say, we really took our time to say, we interviewed clients, we look at search, you know, what's happening, what are our clients searching for, and PS data. So our big seven conversations, things like supply chain resiliency, things like engaging customers virtually, things like virtual work and return to work. We knew that those were really pertinent conversations, and now we have, you know, a couple things happening. One, all of our sellers are reaching out to people. Their clients, their business partners to talk about what they liked, what they didn't like, where they had to go deep in that conversation to progress, that conversation. For those that maybe registered and didn't attend, we're sending them on demand sessions based on what they said they were interested in, so they can consume at their own pace, and for many, we know that there are real opportunities that have emerged. So real business opportunity if they want IBM's help with, and there, of course, we're accelerating the conversations with those clients. >> Yeah, Michelle, your team actually sent over a few questions that some of the audience gave, and one of them talked about that there is, you know, no shortage of data out there. But what they put in the question is often there's not enough people that can curate or help you sort through. So you know, I think with the digital experience, right? How are you helping people curate the information? How are you making sure that people get from, you know, the data down that path towards you know, knowledge and you know, turn data into results eventually. >> Sure, well you have to ask good questions, you know? There's got to be great data standards, and governance, and you have to ask good questions, and that's really the simple thing. And you know, for us, we can ask some very simple questions. What are the signals we have on some clients that tend to think that they're interested in going deeper? You know, the clients where, you know, we had maybe 20, 30, 40 attendees. We had some clients attend over 1,000 sessions, and you know, really, maybe they're majoring on AI, or maybe they majored on cloud, and so how do we pair up our our sellers, our client execs with those clients to talk about taking that conversation to the next phase, right? To the next opportunity. Maybe doing demos, maybe doing a virtual garage, et cetera. Secondly, we had a lot of clients actually sign up for things like virtual garages, throughout Think there were these calls to action, and so we had many clients say, "Hey, I want to start "a virtual garage. I'll take advantage of that to our "free consulting." So for them, we know that we've got to go down a very specific path very quickly. And then there are other clients where the data said you know, there's a late, maybe a little bit of interest, but we have to nurture that they're not ready for the next step. So I think it always starts with just asking great questions. We're a very data driven organization in IBM marketing. We're really passionate about what we can learn. And, you know, beyond, of course, the data and things like Think we're passionate about things like Net Promoter Score. We get a million data points every year from our clients about how they're feeling about IBM. So all this enriches our ability to make sense of this world for our clients. >> Yeah, so Michelle, what one of the things I found really interesting is we've had online events for quite a long time now. You know, we've worked with IBM on that hybrid model, in physical and online events before, but there's a real thirst for you know, what are best practices now? What can you learn? So, you know, when your peers are reaching out for you, and saying, "Hey, Michelle, you did this." Other than not trying to do it all in from you know, from start to finish in six weeks, what other tips would you give, or lessons learned that you have? >> Well, I think, first of all, the platform makes a huge decision, right? We really have to have a flawless technical experience. And so we were very lucky to have Watson Media and hosting on the IBM Cloud. But we integrated some really good third party tooling before you know, analytics, real time analytics, and things like chat, et cetera. Secondly, I think you really have to think about how to make this engaging for the audience. It can't feel like a streaming event. And so for us that meant things like chat of course, then things like moderated live expert sessions mean things like going off platforms, Reddit and hosting sessions on Reddit, things like one on one client executive briefing room. So the second part is really about engaging the audience, and making sure it doesn't just feel like streaming third, shorter is better. You know, people's attention spans are small and no one can sit for five or six hours in front of a computer and consume. So we really cut down and tightened up our key messages. That I think was critical. I think the mix of live and on demand was really powerful and something to think about, but the last thing I would say is that how you progress and follow up on that interest, we all know how to do it in the event. You know, you sit down with your client, and you just watch today in sessions, you have a beer, you're probably watching some 80's band play, and you're talking about what you like, what you think what's exciting to you. What are your challenges? In a digital world that's harder for our client reps and our sellers, and so really thinking of the onset, and how do we make sure we create the space for those conversations after the event is critical. >> Great. Well, Michelle, so where do you and the IBM team take all those learnings? You know, engagement absolutely critical as you talked? What What should we expect to be seeing from IBM through the rest of 2020 when it comes to digital apps? >> I think we'll do things really differently from here on out. I mean, I think that, you know, of course we'll go back to live physical experiences at some point when it's safe for all of us. It is in certain parts of the world already, but we have a series of Think summits coming up all around the world, that idea that you can really engage bigger audiences, we can give them time to make the most of this. They don't have to spend money flying somewhere to really go deep. That's exciting to me. I think we've learned so much. So stay tuned for the Think regional summits happening all around the world, and and I hope we continue to innovate and bring the best of physical and digital into a new brand of experiences and events. >> Yeah, it's really fascinating stuff, Michelle, right? Not only do you get to reach a global audience, but you have the opportunity to personalize things a little bit more. >> Yeah. >> So, thank you so much for joining us. Definitely... >> It's always great to see you. >> Hope to see more and more on the summit's going forward. >> Terrific, always great to see you, and always thank you for your partnership. >> All right. Thank you for watching. I'm Stu Miniman, and as always, thank you for watching theCUBE. (calming music)

>>Yeah, >>from the Cube Studios in Palo Alto and Boston. It's the Cube covering IBM. Think brought to you by IBM. >>Everybody, this is Dave Vellante of the Cube. Welcome back. The continuous coverage that we're running here of the IBM Think Digital 2020 Experience. I'm with Radica Gunnar, who is a longtime Cube alum. She's the vice president for Data and AI. Expert labs and learning Radica. Always a pleasure. I wish we were seeing each other face to face in San Francisco. But, you know, we have to make the best. >>Always a pleasure to be with you, Dave. >>So, listen, um, we last saw each other in Miami Attain IBM data event. You hear a lot of firsts in the industry. You hear about Cloud? First, you hear about data. First hear about AI first. I'm really interested in how you see AI first coming customers. They want to operationalize ai. They want to be data first. They see cloud, you know, is basic infrastructure to get there, but ultimately they want insights out of data. And that's where AI comes in. What's your point of view on this? >>I think any client that's really trying to establish how to be able to develop a AI factory in their organization so that they're embedding AI across the most pervasive problems that they have in their order. They need to be able to start first with the data. That's why we have the AI ladder, where we really think the foundation is about how clients organized there to collect their data, organize their data, analyze it, infuse it in the most important applications and, of course, use that whole capability to be able to modernize what they're doing. So we all know to be able to have good ai, you need a good foundational information, architecture and the US A lot of the first steps we have with our clients is really starting with data doing an analysis of where are you with the data maturity? Once you have that, it becomes easier to start applying AI and then to scale AI across the business. >>So unpack that a little bit and talk about some of the critical factors and the ingredients that are really necessary to be successful. What are you seeing with customers? >>Well, to be successful with, a lot of these AI projects have mentioned. It starts with the data, and when we come to those kind of characteristics, you would often think that the most important thing is the technology. It's not that is a myth. It's not the reality. What we found is some of the most important things start with really understanding and having a sponsor who understands the importance of the AI capabilities that you're trying to be able to drive through business. So do you have the right hunger and curiosity of across your organization from top to bottom to really embark on a lot of these AI project? So that's cultural element. I would say that you have to be able to have that in beds within it, like the skills capabilities that you need to be able to have, not just by having the right data scientists or the right data engineers, but by having every person who is going to be able to touch these new applications and to use these new applications, understand how AI is going to impact them, and then it's really about the process. You know, I always talk about AI is not a thing. It's an ingredient that makes everything else better, and that means that you have to be able to change your processes. Those same applications that had Dev ops process is to be able to put it in production. Need to really consider what it means to have something that's ever changing, like AI as part of that which is also really critical. So I think about it as it is a foundation in the data, the cultural changes that you need to have from top to bottom of the organization, which includes the skills and then the process components that need to be able to change. >>Do you really talking about like Dev ops for AI data ops, I think is a term that's gonna gaining popularity of you guys have applied some of that in internally. Is that right? >>Yeah, it's about the operations of the AI life cycle in, and how you can automate as much of that is possible by AI. They're as much as possible, and that's where a lot of our investments in the Data and AI space are going into. How do you use AI for AI to be able to automate that whole AI life site that you need to be able to have in it? Absolutely >>So I've been talking a lot of C. XO CEO CEOs. We've held some C so and CEO roundtables with our data partner ET are. And one of the things that's that's clear is they're accelerating certain things as a result of code 19. There's certainly much more receptive to cloud. Of course, the first thing you heard from them was a pivot to work from home infrastructure. Many folks weren't ready, so okay, but the other thing that they've said is even in some hard hit industries, we've essentially shut down all spending, with the exception of very, very critical things, including, interestingly, our digital transformation. And so they're still on that journey. They realized the strategic imperative. Uh, and they don't want to lose out. In fact, they want to come out of this stronger AI is a critical part of that. So I'm wondering what you've seen specifically with respect to the pandemic and customers, how they're approaching ai, whether or not you see it accelerating or sort of on the same track. What are you seeing out there with clients? >>You know, this is where, um in pandemics In areas where, you know, we face a lot of uncertainty. I am so proud to be an IBM. Er, um, we actually put out offer when the pandemic started in a March timeframe. Teoh Many of our organizations and communities out there to be able to use our AI technologies to be able to help citizens really understand how Kobe 19 was gonna affect them. What are the symptoms? Where can I get tested? Will there be school tomorrow? We've helped hundreds of organizations, and not only in the public sector in the healthcare sector, across every sector be able to use AI capabilities. Like what we have with Watson assistant to be able to understand how code in 19 is impacting their constituents. As I mentioned, we have hundreds of them. So one example was Children's health care of Atlanta, where they wanted to be able to create an assistant to be able to help parents really understand what symptoms are and how to handle diagnosis is so. We have been leveraging a lot of AI technologies, especially right now, to be able to help, um, not just citizens and other organizations in the public and healthcare sector, but even in the consumer sector, really understand how they can use AI to be able to engage with their constituents a lot more closely. That's one of the areas where we have done quite a bit of work, and we're seeing AI actually being used at a much more rapid rate than ever >>before. Well, I'm excited about this because, you know, we were talking about the recovery, What there's a recovery look like is it v shaped? Nobody really expects that anymore. But maybe a U shaped. But the big concern people have, you know, this w shape recovery. And I'm hopeful that machine intelligence and data can be used to just help us really understand the risks. Uh, and then also getting out good quality information. I think it's critical. Different parts of the country in the world are gonna open at different rates. We're gonna learn from those experiences, and we need to do this in near real time. I mean, things change. Certainly there for a while they were changing daily. They kind of still are. You know, maybe we're on a slower. Maybe it's three or four times a week now, but that pace of change is critical and, you know, machine machines and the only way to keep up with that wonder if you could comment. >>Well, machines are the only way to keep, and not only that, but you want to be able to have the most up to date relevant information that's able to be communicated to the masses and ways that they can actually consume that data. And that's one of the things that AI and one of the assistant technologies that we have right now are able to do. You can continually update and train them such that they can continually engage with that end consumer and that end user and be able to give them the answers they want. And you're absolutely right, Dave. In this world, the answers change every single day and that kind of workload, um, and and the man you can't leave that alone to human laborers. Even human human labors need an assistant to be able to help them answer, because it's hard for them to keep up with what the latest information is. So using AI to be able to do that, it's absolutely critical, >>and I want to stress that I said machines you can't do without machines. And I believe that, but machines or a tool for humans to ultimately make the decisions in a crisis like this because, you see, I mean, I know we have a global audience, but here in the United States, you got you have 50 different governors making decisions about when and how certainly the federal government putting down guidelines. But the governor of Georgia is going to come back differently than the governor of New York, Different from the governor of California. They're gonna make different decisions, and they need data. And AI and Machine intelligence will inform that ultimately their public policy is going to be dictated by a combination of things which obviously includes, you know, machine intelligence. >>Absolutely. I think we're seeing that, by the way, I think many of those governors have made different decisions at different points, and therefore their constituents need to really have a place to be able to understand that as well. >>You know, you're right. I mean, the citizens ultimately have to make the decision while the governor said sick, safe to go out. You know, I'm gonna do some of my own research and you know, just like if you're if you're investing in the stock market, you got to do your own research. It's your health and you have to decide. And to the extent that firms like IBM can provide that data, I think it's critical. Where does the cloud fit in all this? I mentioned the cloud before. I mean, it seems to be critical infrastructure to get information that will talk about >>all of the capabilities that we have. They run on the IBM cloud, and I think this is where you know, when you have data that needs to be secured and needs to be trusted. And you need these AI capabilities. A lot of the solutions that I talked about, the hundreds of implementations that we have done over the past just six weeks. If you kind of take a look at 6 to 8 weeks, all of that on the IBM Public cloud, and so cloud is the thing that facilitates that it facilitates it in a way where it is secure. It is trusted, and it has the AI capabilities that augmented >>critical. There's learning in your title. Where do people go toe? Learn more How can you help them learn about AI And I think it started or keep going? >>Well, you know, we think about a lot of these technologies as it isn't just about the technology. It is about the expertise and the methodologies that we bring to bear. You know, when you talk about data and AI, you want to be able to blend the technology with expertise. Which is why are my title is expert labs that come directly from the labs and we take our learnings through thousands of different clients that we have interacted with, working with the technologies in the lab, understanding those outcomes and use cases and helping our clients be successful with their data and AI projects. So we that's what we do That's our mission. Love doing that every day. >>Well, I think this is important, because I mean, ah company, an organization the size of IBM, a lot of different parts of that organization. So I would I would advise our audience the challenge IBM and say, Okay, you've got that expertise. How are you applying that expertise internally? I mean, I've talked into public Sorry about how you know the data. Science is being applied within IBM. How that's then being brought out to the customers. So you've actually you've got a Petri dish inside this massive organization and it sounds like, you know, through the, you know, the expert labs. And so the Learning Center's you're sort of more than willing to and aggressively actually sharing that with clients. >>Yeah, I think it's important for us to not only eat our own dog food, so you're right. Interpol, The CDO Office Depot office we absolutely use our own technology is to be able to drive the insights we need for our large organization and through the learnings that we have, not only from ourselves but from other clients. We should help clients, our clients and our communities and organizations progress their use of their data and their AI. We really firmly believe this is the only way. Not only these organizations will progress that society as a whole breast, that we feel like it's part of our mission, part of our duty to make sure that it isn't just a discussion on the technology. It is about helping our clients and the community get to the outcomes that they need to using ai. >>Well, guy, I'm glad you invoke the dog food ing because, you know, we use that terminology a lot. A lot of people marketing people stepped back and said, No, no, it's sipping our champagne. Well, to get the champagne takes a lot of work, and the grapes at the early stages don't taste that pain I have to go through. And so that's why I think it's a sort of an honest metaphor, but critical your you've been a friend of the Cube, but we've been on this data journey together for many, many years. Really appreciate you coming on back on the Cube and sharing with the think audience. Great to see you stay safe. And hopefully we'll see you face to face soon. >>All right. Thank you. >>Alright. Take care, my friend. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Volante for the Cube. You're watching IBM think 2020. The digital version of think we'll be right back after this short break. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>>From the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston. It's the cube covering the IBM thing brought to you by IBM. We're back and this is Dave Vellante and you're watching the cube and we're covering wall-to-wall the IBM 2020 I think digital experience. Rob Thomas is here. He's the senior vice president of clouds and data. Right. Warm rub. Always a pleasure to see you. I wish you were face to face, but Hey, we're doing the best we can. As you say, doing the best we can. Great to see you Dave. Hope family safe, healthy, happy as best you can be. Yeah. Ditto. You back out your Robin. Congratulations on on the new role, you and the cube. We've been riding this data wave for quite some time now. It's really been incredible. It really is. And last year I talked to you about how clients, we're slowly making progress on data strategy, starting to experiment with AI. >>We've gotten to the point now where I'd say it's game on for AI, which is exciting to see and that's a lot of what the theme of this year's think is about. Yeah, and I definitely want to dig into that, but I want to start by asking you sort of moves that you saw you're in there seeing your clients make with regard to the cobot night covert 19 crisis. Maybe how you guys are helping them in very interested in what you see as sort of longterm and even, you know, quasi permanent as a result of this. I would first say it this way. I don't, I'm not sure the crisis is going to change businesses as much as it's going to be accelerating. What would have happened anyway, regardless of the industry that you're in. We see clients aggressively looking at how do we get the digital faster? >>How do we automate more than we ever have before? There's the obvious things like business resiliency and business continuity, managing the distributed workforce. So to me, what we've seen is really about, and acceleration, not necessarily in a different direction, but an acceleration on. The thing is that that we're already kind of in the back of their minds or in the back of their plans now that as we'll come to the forefront and I'm encouraged because we see clients moving at a rate and pace that we'd never seen before that's ultimately going to be great for them, great for their businesses. And so I'm really happy to see that you guys have used Watson to really try to get, you know, some good high fidelity answers to the citizens. I wonder if you could explain that initiative. Well, we've had this application called Watson assistant for the last few years and we've been supporting banks, airlines, retailers, companies across all industries and helping them better interact with our customers and in some cases, employees. >>We took that same technology and as we saw the whole covert 19 situation coming, we said, Hey, we can evolve Watson assistant to serve citizens. And so it started by, we started training the models, which are intent based models in Watson assistant on all the publicly available data from the CDC as an example. And we've been able to build a really powerful virtual agent to serve really any citizen that has questions about and what they should be doing. And the response has been amazing. I mean, in the last two weeks we've gone live with 20 organizations, many of which are state and local governments. Okay. Also businesses, the city of Austin children's healthcare of Atlanta. Mmm. They local governments in Spain and Greece all over the world. And in some instances these clients have gotten live in less than 24 hours. Meaning they have a virtual agent that can answer any question. >>They can do that in less than 24 hours. It's actually been amazing to see. So proud of the team that built this over time. And it was kind of proof of the power of technology when we're dealing with any type of a challenge. You know, I had a conversation earlier with Jamie Thomas about quantum and was asking her sort of how your clients are using it. The examples that came up were financial institutions, pharmaceutical know battery manufacturers, um, airlines. And so it strikes me when you think about uh, machine intelligence and AI, the type of AI that you're yeah, at IBM is not consumer oriented AI. It's really designed for businesses. And I wonder if you could sort of add some color to that. Yeah, let's distinguish the difference there. Cause I think you've said it well consumer AI is smart speakers things in our home, you know, music recommendations, photo analysis and that's great and it enriches all of our personal lives. >>AI for business is very different. This is about how do you make better predictions, how do you optimize business processes, how do you automate things that maybe your employees don't want to do in the first time? Our focus in IBM as part of, we've been doing with Watson is really anchoring on three aspects of AI language. So understanding language because the whole business world is about communication of language, trust meaning trusted AI. You understand the models, you understand the data. And then third automation and the whole focus of what we're doing here in the virtual think experience. It's focused on AI for automation. Whether that's automating business processes or the new announcement this week, which is around automating AI opera it operations for a CIO. You, you've talked the years about this notion of an AI ladder. You actually, I actually wrote a book on it and uh, but, but it's been hard for customers to operationalize AI. >>Mmm. We talked about this last year. Thanks. What kind of progress, uh, have we made in the last 12 months? There's been a real recognition of this notion that your AI is only as good as your data. And we use the phrase, there's no AI without IAA, meaning information architecture, it's all the same concept, which is that your data, it has to be ready for AI if you want to too get successful outcomes with AI and the steps of those ladders around how you collect data, how you organize data, how you analyze data, how you infuse that into your business processes. seeing major leaps forward in the last nine months where organizations are understanding that connection and then they're using that to really drive initiatives around AI. So let's talk about that a little bit more. This notion of AI ops, I mean it's essentially the take the concept of dev ops and apply it to the data pipeline if you will. >>Everybody, you know, complains, you know, data scientists complained that all, they spent all their time wrangling data, improving data quality, they don't have line of sight across their organization with regard to other data specialists, whether it's data engineers or even developers. Maybe you could talk a little bit more about that announcement and sort of what you're doing in that area. Sure. So right. Let me put a number on it because the numbers are amazing. Every year organizations lose 2016 point $5 billion of revenue because of outages in it system. That is a staggering number when you think about it. And so then you say, okay, so how do you break down and attack that problem? Well, do you have to get better at fixing problems or you have to get better at avoiding problems altogether. And as you may expect, a little bit of both. You, you want to avoid problems obviously, but in an uncertain world, you're always going to deal with unforeseen challenges. >>So the also the question becomes how fast can you respond and there's no better use of AI. And then to do, I hope you like those tasks, which is understanding your environment, understanding what the systems are saying through their data and identifying issues become before they become outages. And once there is an outage, how do you quickly triage data across all your systems to figure out where is the problem and how you can quickly address it. So we are announcing Watson AI ops, which is the nervous system for a CIO, the manager, all of their systems. What we do is we just collect data, log data from every source system and we build a semantic layer on top that. So Watson understands the systems, understands the normal behavior, understands the acceptable ranges, and then anytime something's not going like it should, Watson raises his hand and says, Hey, you should probably look at this before it becomes a problem. >>We've partnered with companies like Slack, so the UI for Watson AI ops, it's actually in Slack so that companies can use and employees can use a common collaboration tool too. Troubleshoot or look at either systems. It's, it's really powerful. So that we're really proud of. Well I just kind of leads me to my next question, which I mean, IBM got the religion 20 years ago on openness. I mean I can trace it back to the investment you made and Lennox way back when. Um, and of course it's a huge investment last year in red hat, but you know, open source company. So you just mentioned Slack. Talk about open ecosystems and how that it fits into your AI and data strategy. Well, if you think about it, if we're going to take on a challenge this grand, which is AI for all of your it by definition you're going to be dealing with full ecosystem of different providers because every organization has a broad set of capabilities we identified early on. >>That means that our ability to provide open ecosystem interoperability was going to be critical. So we're launching this product with Slack. I mentioned with box, we've got integrations into things like PagerDuty service now really all of the tools of modern it architecture where we can understand the data and help clients better manage those environments. So this is all about an open ecosystem and that's how we've been approaching it. Let's start, it's really about data, applying machine intelligence or AI to that data and about cloud for scale. So I wonder what you're seeing just in terms of that sort of innovation engine. I mean obviously it's gotta be secure. It's, it seems like those are the pillars of innovation for the next 10 plus years. I think you're right. And I would say this whole situation that we're dealing with has emphasized the importance of hybrid deployment because companies have it capabilities on public clouds, on private clouds, really everywhere. >>And so being able to operate that as a single architecture, it's becoming very important. You can use AI to automate tasks across that whole infrastructure that makes a big difference. And to your point, I think we're going to see a massive acceleration hybrid cloud deployments using AI. And this will be a catalyst for that. And so that's something we're trying to help clients with all around the world. You know, you wrote in your book that O'Reilly published that AI is the new electricity and you talked about problems. Okay. Not enough data. If your data is you know, on prem and you're only in the cloud, well that's a problem or too much data. How you deal with all that data, data quality. So maybe we could close on some of the things that you know, you, you talked about in that book, you know, maybe how people can get ahold of it or any other, you know, so the actions you think people should take to get smart on this topic. >>Yeah, so look, really, really excited about this. Paul's the capitalists, a friend of mine and a colleague, we've published this book working with a Riley called the a ladder and it's all the concepts we talked about in terms of how companies can climb this ladder to AI. And we go through a lot of different use cases, scenarios, I think. Yeah. Anybody reading this is going to see their company in one of these examples, our whole ambition was to hopefully plant some seeds of ideas for how you can start to accelerate your journey to AI in any industry right now. Well, Rob, it's always great having you on the cube, uh, your insights over the years and you've been a good friend of ours, so really appreciate you coming on and, uh, and best of luck to you, your family or wider community. I really appreciate it. Thanks Dave. Great to be here and again, wish you and the whole cube team the best and to all of our clients out there around the world. We wish you the best as well. All right. You're watching the cubes coverage of IBM think 20, 20 digital, the vent. We'll be right back right after this short break. This is Dave Volante.

>>From the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston. It's the cube covering IBM thing brought to you by IBM. >>All right, ready? We're back. This is the cubes continuous coverage of IBM 2020 the digital event experience. My name is Dave Volante. Dasgupta is here. She's the vice president of marketing at IBM. She's also the COO of the global business services. good to see you. Thanks for coming back in the cube. Oh, I'm so happy to be here. Deva fantastic to be here. Do you have a lot of experience with brands? IBM itself, you know, amazing well known, a leading brand well, I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on what you're seeing in terms of how brands are responding to the 19 crisis. There are things out there that you're seeing that are inspiring you and yeah. What should we be looking for? Oh my gosh. I mean all around the last two, two months we have been living now in a, in an, in a new reality and this is not going to go back, do what we knew was normal. >>Right. This is going to be the new normal and how brands react to it sets us up for future growth and future success. You know, as a in the global business services steam as a CMO there I meet a lot of every single day and they are coming to us with business challenges. What makes the big difference right now? I think in terms of of being a successful brand is the resilience and the adaptive. If you see a company like IBM and you've talked a little bit about how iconic this brand is, it's been there for about 108 hundred and nine years now and it is being able to successfully reinvent itself every turn of the century and every turn of what's happening around us. Uh, it being able to I think it's extremely important. What also is important as a brand is the emphasis that you can feel towards the growth and success of your client's business. I think sets, um, any, any brand apart from growth. So adaptability and empathy. Those would be my two big thanks. We talked to a number of CIO is IBM came out as one of the companies really helping. It wasn't just IBM, there were many, many large organizations, small organizations that really had this empathic, we're in this together. >>That's exactly right. If you look at it, it's, it's both of what we do for our clients but also what we do for our own employees. Um, 95% of our work IBM is not working from home in a safe and secure environment. We've been able to work with our clients and move those teams that work with our clients also in a more safe and safe your environment. For example, something like our cocreation workshop, the IBM garage would think that for cocreation innovation, you all need to be together in a room and put up sticky notes on the board behind you. Okay. Yeah. We have moved into to be a virtual experience and we are now offering free trials of a lot of our products and solutions to our clients for the next 90 days where they can get their most resting business. Yes. Problem solved. You know, we just want to make sure we get that together and get the economy back on track. Get the companies back on the track of. >>Now, one of the other passions of yours I know is this notion of of the cognitive business, a smarter business. And, and I want to ask you, help us understand what that is. You know, beyond the sort of marketing taglines, what is a smarter business? >>Yes, a smarter business is adaptive and resilient. that would be the biggest things, um, that I would highlight. Now, how do they do that? They do that because they are able to have business arms. They use the data that they have at their disposal. Then mind you, this is not the, um, data that is searchable online. 80% of or customer data is with. The organizations themselves. Now, how do they use that data to create business plans, forms that give them competitive advantage is one of the core tenets of what makes a smarter business. The second piece is around workflows that are more intelligent. Now, what makes these work, those more intelligent, what are these words? Those, these are end to end processes. So think of supply chain. How do you make your supply chain more resilient in the covert crisis right now that many, um, many companies are grappling with. >>How do you strengthen your direct to consumer routes? Many companies that used to deliver to stores now are figuring out how to get direct to consumers. So yeah, making these work close more intelligent, more resilient. How do you manage your work of course, right? Um, how do you make sure that the customer data that many employee's work is safe and secure? Sure. So second is the intelligence. Yes. And the third thing is all about the expedience and being able to engage with your customers in you are ways, if you think of some specific industries that are dealing with customer claims, you know, you look at the health, yeah. Provider industry, you're looking at insurance claims and and things like that. They are grappling with this new reality and being to then connect with your customers in new and engaging ways. I think is of utmost importance. So the three things, platforms, most expedience is what makes us smarter business possible. And that business is adaptive and resilient. >>Uh, the way in which brands are engaging dramatically different then it was just a few months ago. And our thinking is there's going to be some permanent changes here. What, what are your thoughts in that regard? >>Absolutely. 100% agree. Um, when we go back work, when we all get out of our home offices, um, it's going to be an a new way of. Right. Okay. And we're already seeing, uh, the engagement within our own work. Forced rising. Yeah. For example, I just came off of a, one of our all hands calls and we create these new videos on how we have new coworkers. We have, you know, pets and kids and parents cared for at home. Yeah. Mmm. all of this though, there is a greater sense of togetherness. There is a greater sense of solidarity. And what inspires me the most is when I look at the people around us in the delivery, uh, deems, you know, across the world. If you look at India, if you look at Philippines in our big teams that are delivering for clients every single day, the resiliency that they have shown in being able to overcome these, these hurdles are giving us ideas that this is not a one and done. >>This could actually be the new normal going beyond it. The automation that we have been able to apply. Um, uh, when you have like AI, how do you processes different if things are more efficient, wouldn't it be a better idea? Just have that go throughout to the rest of, you know, um, what's the new normal around us? So this is absolutely gonna change the way we work, the way we engage with our clients and the kind of, um, new ways of a new routes to market. I think that is the most exciting to me. How can we, how can we feel T and find out new routes to market new customers and be able to provide them value. The Watson Watson digital assistant is, is interesting to me because it allows us as one example of a hospital to be able to put out information that's accurate and timely. >>These things have to be done in near real time. As we know, the Covance situation, it changes daily. You know, maybe the change is, is decelerating a little bit, but it's still several times a week. there was a period of time where it was changing multiple times for days. Yes. So for instance, do I wear a mask? Do I not wear a mask? How far do I have to stand away? Can I can I actually get this by walking behind somebody, et cetera, et cetera. So much information that changed so quickly is the medical community got that. So you have to be able to access that data and you know, to your point about that, yeah, intelligent workflow, be able to do that in near real time. And that's what to me anyway, it's about operationalizing that data, you know, AI capability across the organization. >>Not just in some stovepipe where I have to ask somebody to some analysis for me that that is a huge change in the way in which businesses operate, isn't it? It is a huge change. And I think it's also about visibility, um, that the common man is right now the citizens that the people who are, who are, um, trying to access these technology. Yes. I think it gives them a renewed hope, um, in what technology could really provide. How are we are still being able to work while we are stuck in our homes, how we are still able to buy things online and the not jeopardize the safety of our loved ones who, you know, I'm the who maybe immunocompromised. You cannot go out and shop how we are able to still do the delivery. And, and the beauty of this is we in the technology industry we knew this, so >>go back one year we were working with. Um, no a company that supplies life saving medicines to many parts of Africa, the supply chain there and the technology and the intelligence that we had embedded in that hello made it possible for this human and tech interaction. And I think that is what the beauty of this is the renewed understanding of what technology can do for you. Yeah. And the ability to interact with the technology to make that happen. For example, in Africa, you have to sometimes rely on the Goodwill of the local villagers when there are floods and the pats are run over with water. You have to trigger, um, uh, an email or you know, you have to go to your cell phone so that the locals can then the medicine's over. Yeah. Uh, over the flooded planes to the hospitals. The interaction of the human with the technology that is there to help you and make your lives easier. I think right now there's renewed understanding and acceptance of that and I think it's a, it's a good thing. It's a good thing for all of us. >>I mean, it really is the, the uniqueness of IBM, deep industry expertise, knowledge, and yet know tons of R and D and technology. Oh, galore. Manny, thanks so much for coming back on the cubes. Great to see you. Hopefully next time it'll be face to face, but I really appreciate your time. >>Oh, I, I so wished for that I, so I, I do miss the the live connections, but you know, technology will take us forward till then and, uh, fantastic to be here. I loved it. Toxin. >>Great. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Volante, but the cube for the IBM digital event experience, you 2020. We'll be right back right after this short break.

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: From the cube Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, it's the cube! Covering IBM Think. Brought to you by IBM. >> Hi everybody, this is Dave Vellante of theCUBE, and you're watching our coverage of the IBM digital event experience. A multi-day program, tons of content, and it's our pleasure to be able to bring in experts, practitioners, customers, and partners. Sriram Raghavan is here. He's the Vice President of IBM Research in AI. Sriram, thanks so much for coming on thecUBE. >> Thank you, pleasure to be here. >> I love this title, I love the role. It's great work if you're qualified for it.(laughs) So, tell us a little bit about your role and your background. You came out of Stanford, you had the pleasure, I'm sure, of hanging out in South San Jose at the Almaden labs. Beautiful place to create. But give us a little background. >> Absolutely, yeah. So, let me start, maybe go backwards in time. What do I do now? My role's responsible for AI strategy, planning, and execution in IBM Research across our global footprint, all our labs worldwide and their working area. I also work closely with the commercial parts. The parts of IBM, our Software and Services business that take the innovation, AI innovation, from IBM Research to market. That's the second part of what I do. And where did I begin life in IBM? As you said, I began life at our Almaden Research Center up in San Jose, up in the hills. Beautiful, I had in a view. I still think it's the best view I had. I spent many years there doing work at the intersection of AI and large-scale data management, NLP. Went back to India, I was running the India lab there for a few years, and now I'm back here in New York running AI strategy. >> That's awesome. Let's talk a little bit about AI, the landscape of AI. IBM has always made it clear that you're not doing consumer AI. You're really tying to help businesses. But how do you look at the landscape? >> So, it's a great question. It's one of those things that, you know, we constantly measure ourselves and our partners tell us. I think we, you've probably heard us talk about the cloud journey . But look barely 20% of the workloads are in the cloud, 80% still waiting. AI, at that number is even less. But, of course, it varies. Depending on who you ask, you would say AI adoption is anywhere from 4% to 30% depending on who you ask in this case. But I think it's more important to look at where is this, directionally? And it's very, very clear. Adoption is rising. The value is more, it's getting better appreciated. But I think more important, I think is, there is broader recognition, awareness and investment, knowing that to get value out of AI, you start with where AI begins, which is data. So, the story around having a solid enterprise information architecture as the base on which to drive AI, is starting to happen. So, as the investments in data platform, becoming making your data ready for AI, starts to come through. We're definitely seeing that adoption. And I think, you know, the second imperative that businesses look for obviously is the skills. The tools and the skills to scale AI. It can't take me months and months and hours to go build an AI model, I got to accelerate it, and then comes operationalizing. But this is happening, and the upward trajectory is very, very clear. >> We've been talking a lot on theCUBE over the last couple of years, it's not the innovation engine of our industry is no longer Moore's Law, it's a combination of data. You just talked about data. Applying machine technology to that data, being able to scale it, across clouds, on-prem, wherever the data lives. So. >> Right. >> Having said that, you know, you've had a journey. You know, you started out kind of playing "Jeopardy!", if you will. It was a very narrow use case, and you're expanding that use case. I wonder if you could talk about that journey, specifically in the context of your vision. >> Yeah. So, let me step back and say for IBM Research AI, when I think about how we, what's our strategy and vision, we think of it as in two parts. One part is the evolution of the science and techniques behind AI. And you said it, right? From narrow, bespoke AI that all it can do is this one thing that it's really trained for, it takes a large amount of data, a lot of computing power. Two, how do you have the techniques and the innovation for AI to learn from one use case to the other? Be less data hungry, less resource hungry. Be more trustworthy and explainable. So, we call that the journey from narrow to broad AI. And one part of our strategy, as scientists and technologists, is the innovation to make that happen. So that's sort of one part. But, as you said, as people involved in making AI work in the enterprise, and IBM Research AI vision would be incomplete without the second part, which is, what are the challenges in scaling and operationalizing AI? It isn't sufficient that I can tell you AI can do this, how do I make AI do this so that you get the right ROI, the investment relative to the return makes sense and you can scale and operationalize. So, we took both of these imperatives. The AI narrow-to-broad journey, and the need to scale and operationalize. And what of the things that are making it hard? The things that make scaling and operationalizing harder: data challenges, we talked about that, skills challenges, and the fact that in enterprises, you have to govern and manage AI. And we took that together and we think of our AI agenda in three pieces: Advancing, trusting, and scaling AI. Advancing is the piece of pushing the boundary, making AI narrow to broad. Trusting is building AI which is trustworthy, is explainable, you can control and understand its behavior, make sense of it and all of the technology that goes with it. And scaling AI is when we address the problem of, how do I, you know, reduce the time and cost for data prep? How do I reduce the time for model tweaking and engineering? How do I make sure that a model that you build today, when something changes in the data, I can quickly allow for you to close the loop and improve the model? All of the things, think of day-two operations of AI. All of that is part of our scaling AI strategy. So advancing, trusting, scaling is sort of the three big mantras around which the way we think about our AI. >> Yeah, so I've been doing a little work in this around this notion of DataOps. Essentially, you know, DevOps applied to the data and the data pipeline, and I had a great conversation recently with Inderpal Bhandari, IBM's Global Chief Data Officer, and he explained to me how, first of all, customers will tell you, it's very hard to operationalize AIs. He and his team took that challenge on themselves and have had some great success. And, you know, we all know the problem. It's that, you know AI has to wait for the data. It has to wait for the data to be cleansed and wrangled. Can AI actually help with that part of the problem, compressing that? >> 100%. In fact, the way we think of the automation and scaling story is what we call the "AI For AI" story. So, AI in service of helping you build the AI that helps you make this with speed, right? So, and I think of it really in three parts. It's AI for data automation, our DataOps. AI used in better discovery, better cleansing, better configuration, faster linking, quality assessment, all of that. Using AI to do all of those data problems that you had to do. And I called it AI for data automation. The second part is using AI to automatically figure out the best model. And that's AI for data science automation, which is, feature engineering, hyperparameter optimization, having them all do work, why should a data scientist take weeks and months experimenting? If the AI can accelerate that from weeks to a matter of hours? That's data science automation. And then comes the important part, also, which is operations automation. Okay, I've put a data model into an application. How do I monitor its behavior? If the data that it's seeing is different from the data it was trained on, how do I quickly detect it? And a lot of the work from Research that was part of that Watson OpenScale offering is really addressing the operational side. So AI for data, AI for data science automation, and AI to help automate production of AI, is the way we break that problem up. >> So, I always like to ask folks that are deep into R&D, how they are ultimately are translating into commercial products and offerings? Because ultimately, you got to make money to fund more R&D. So, can you talk a little bit about how you do that, what your focus is there? >> Yeah, so that's a great question, and I'm going to use a few examples as well. But let me say at the outset, this is a very, very closed partnership. So when we, the Research part of AI and our portfolio, it's a closed partnership where we're constantly both drawing problem as well as building technology that goes into the offering. So, a lot of our work, much of our work in AI automation that we were talking about, is part of our Watson Studio, Watson Machine Learning, Watson OpenScale. In fact, OpenScale came out of Research working Trusted AI, and is now a centerpiece of our Watson project. Let me give a very different example. We have a very, very strong portfolio and focus in NLP, Natural Language Processing. And this directly goes into capabilities out of Watson Assistant, which is our system for conversational support and customer support, and Watson Discovery, which is about making enterprise understand unstructurally. And a great example of that is the Working Project Debater that you might have heard, which is a grand challenge in Research about building a machine that can do debate. Now, look, we weren't looking to go sell you a debating machine. But what did we build as part of doing that, is advances in NLP that are all making their way into assistant and discovery. And we actually just talked about earlier this year, announced a set of capabilities around better clustering, advanced summarization, deeper sentiment analysis. These made their way into Assistant and Discovery but are born out of research innovation and solving a grand problem like building a debating machine. That's just an example of how that journey from research to product happens. >> Yeah, the Debater documentary, I've seen some of that. It's actually quite astounding. I don't know what you're doing there. It sounds like you're taking natural language and turning it into complex queries with data science and AI, but it's quite amazing. >> Yes, and I would encourage you, you will see that documentary, by the way, on Channel 7, in the Think Event. And I would encourage you, actually the documentary around how Debater happened, sort of featuring back of the you know, backdoor interviews with the scientist who created it was actually featured last minute at Copenhagen International Documentary Festival. I'll invite viewers to go to Channel 7 and Data and AI Tech On-Demand to go take a look at that documentary. >> Yeah, you should take a look at it. It's actually quite astounding and amazing. Sriram, what are you working on these days? What kind of exciting projects or what's your focus area today? >> Look, I think there are three imperatives that we're really focused on, and one is very, you know, just really the project you're talking about, NLP. NLP in the enterprise, look, text is a language of business, right? Text is the way business is communicated. Within each other, with their partners, with the entire world. So, helping machines understand language, but in an enterprise context, recognizing that data and the enterprises live in complex documents, unstructured documents, in e-mail, they live in conversations with the customers. So, really pushing the boundary on how all our customers and clients can make sense of this vast volume of unstructured data by pushing the advances of NLP, that's one focus area. Second focus area, we talked about trust and how important that is. And we've done amazing work in monitoring and explainability. And we're really focused now on this emerging area of causality. Using causality to explain, right? The model makes this because the model believes this is what it wants, it's a beautiful way. And the third big focus continues to be on automation. So, NLP, trust, automation. Those are, like, three big focus areas for us. >> sriram, how far do you think we can take AI? I know it's a topic of conversation, but from your perspective, deep into the research, how far can it go? And maybe how far should it go? >> Look, I think we are, let me answer it this way. I think the arc of the possible is enormous. But I think we are at this inflection point in which I think the next wave of AI, the AI that's going to help us this narrow-to-broad journey we talked about, look, the narrow-to-broad journey's not like a one-week, one-year. We're talking about a decade of innovation. But I think we are at a point where we're going to see a wave of AI that we like to call "neuro-symbolic AI," which is AI that brings together two sort of fundamentally different approaches to building intelligence systems. One approach of building intelligence system is what we call "knowledge driven." Understand data, understand concept, logically, reasonable. We human beings do that. That was really the way AI was born. The more recent last couple of decades of AI was data driven, Machine learning. Give me vast volumes of data, I'll use neural techniques, deep learning, to to get value. We're at a point where we're going to bring both of them together. Cause you can't build trustworthy, explainable systems using only one, you can't get away from not using all of the data that you have to make them. So, neuro-symbolic AI is, I think, going to be the linchpin of how we advance AI and make it more powerful and trustworthy. >> So, are you, like, living your childhood dream here or what? >> Look, for me I'm fascinated. I've always been fascinated. And any time you can't find a technology person who hasn't dreamt of building an intelligent machine. To have a job where I can work across our worldwide set of 3,000 plus researchers and think and brainstorm on strategy with AI. And then, most importantly, not to forget, right? That you talked about being able to move it into our portfolios so it actually makes a difference for our clients. I think it's a dream job and a whole lot of fun. >> Well, Sriram, it was great having you on theCUBE. A lot of fun, interviewing folks like you. I feel a little bit smarter just talking to you. So thanks so much for coming on. >> Fantastic. It's been a pleasure to be here. >> And thank you for watching, everybody. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2020. This is Dave Vellante. We'll be right back right after this short break. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, it's theCUBE, covering IBM Think. Brought to you by IBM. >> Hi everybody, welcome back. This is Dave Vellante, and you're watching theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2020, the digital version of IBM Think and theCUBE is pleased to be providing the wall-to-wall coverage as we have physically for so many years at big IBM events. Jesus Mantas is here, he's the managing partner for Global Strategy for IBM and the Global Business Services. Jesus, great to see you, thanks for coming on. >> Great to be here, Dave. >> So, every guest that we've talked to this week, really, we've talked about COVID but just briefly. Here, we're going to do a bigger drill down and really try to get, Jesus your perspectives as an IBM's point of view on what's going on here. So let me start with, we've never seen anything like this before, obviously. I mean, there are some examples you got to go back to 1918, try to get some similarities, but 1918 is a long long time ago, so, what's different about this? What are the similarities? >> Yeah, it's, you know what Mark Twain used to say that history doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes. I think there are similarities of what we are experiencing right now in this pandemic with other pandemics like Spanish flu. I think the situation is unique in terms of the impact, and the synchronicity of that impact, right? So we can go back, whether if you want, economic crisis, or our society crisis, where you have either one country or one aspect being disrupted. But this is really society being interrupted, on a global scale. So its impact is unprecedented in that perspective in modern time, and I think all of us are adjusting to it. >> I want to ask you about digital transformation, because I've made the point that, while a lot of people talk digital transformation, there's been a lot of complacency, people say, not my lifetime, we're a bank, we're making a lot of money, we're doing okay. How do you think COVID-19 will sort of change that complacency and really accelerate digital transformation as a mindset and actually turn it into action? >> Yeah, I think the best way to put it is digital transformation five months ago was about obtaining competitive advantage and digital transformation today in many industries is about survival. That is how big of a change it is. The need for efficiency and cost savings, the need for resiliency that we have talked about, the need to be able to drive agility, to be able to switch and adapt, the need to make hyper local decisions, right, to use data, none of that can be done unless you have fully digitized processes, you are consuming local data and you have trained the people to really operate in those new, more intelligent processes. So, it has gone from optionality is okay, you can do okay but if you digitize you're going to do better to unless you digitize your business may not exist next year. I think that's the change, the change is, I think now is widely understood that the majority of our digitization processes have to be accelerated, and I would say there is a great statistic that when we go back in history, and there has been many, as I mentioned, of this crisis. You can look back at the two behaviors that businesses have, one is, to play defense and then what happens two years later, and the other one is, okay, you defense but you immediately switch to offense and then what happens two year later. Those companies that use this time to just defend and hunker down, history said in a couple of years later, 21% of them outperform. But those businesses that they shift from defense to offense and actually accelerate in these cases, programs like digitalization, 37% outperform. So, there is a premium for businesses that right now actually immediately switch to offense, focus on this set of digitalization and empowering cloud, managing data, ensuring the skills of the people, they're more likely not only to survive, but thrive in the next few years than those that just use this time to defend. >> To your point, it's about survival, it's not about, not getting disrupted, 'cause you're going to get disrupted, it's almost a certainty, and so in order to survive, you've got to digitally transform. Your final thoughts on digital transformation, then I want to ask you if there's a silver lining in all this. >> I think, what we do, we can't change the context. But we cannot let the context define who we are either as individuals or as company. What we can do, is to choose how do we act on that context. I would say, those organizations and those individuals that take advantage of the situation to understand that some of these behaviors are going to change, understand that the more that we shift technology to the cloud, the more that we shift work close to the cloud, the more that we use technologies like artificial intelligence and drive nonlinear decisions that massively optimize everything we do from the way that we deliver health care, to the way that we manage supply chains, to the way that we secure food, frankly, to the way that we protect the environment, there is a silver lining that technology it is one of those solutions that can help in all of these areas, and the silver lining of this is, hopefully, let's use this time to get better prepared for the next pandemia, to get better prepared for the next crisis, to implement technologies that drive efficiency faster, that create new jobs, that protect the environment, and while we cannot change the fact that we have COVID-19, we can change what happens after COVID-19, so what we return to is something better that what we enter before COVID-19. >> Very thoughtful commentary, Jesus. Thank you so much for coming on theCUBE, blessings to your family and yourself. >> Appreciated Dave, thank you, and thank you for everything you do to keep everybody informed. >> Really a pleasure. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2020 the digital event, to be right back right after the short break. (upbeat music)

(relaxing music) >> Announcer: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, it's theCUBE, covering IBM Think, brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, I'm Stu Miniman, and this is theCUBEs coverage of IBM Think 2020, the digital experience, we're getting to talk to the IBM executive, the customers, and their partners Where they are around the globe, really happy to bring back the program, one of our people online. Michelle Peluso, she is the senior vice president of digital sales and chief marketing officer for all of IBM. Michelle, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you so much. It's great to have you as we get ready for Think 2020. >> boy, Michelle, you know, working for a big company like IBM, I can only imagine how much current global activities have impacting you, anybody If you turn on TV, you know that the ads that you're seeing are obviously have a very different manner than what we were seeing before this happened. And, you know, the focus of Think, of course, you know, really centers around what is happening, how you're helping IBM customers in part through there. So give us a little bit of insight as to, you know, how much the team has had the, you know, rapidly move towards the new reality? >> Well, look our company has been very focused on a couple of major priorities. First of all, our people keeping them safe and healthy and thinking about what are we learning from all this? How do we use new tools in different ways? How do we work in agile ways that will outlast even this current crisis? Secondly, of course, our clients we have pivoted hard to the essential offerings for recovery and transformation our clients need most right now. Things like business continuity, things like enabling Watson to engage all your customers virtually, things like supply chain resiliency, things like increased agility on the cloud, health and human Services. These are new offerings, new bundles that we know our clients need most right now, and so we've been pivoting hard. Third thing, as a marketer, of course, I've been very focused on how does the brand show up in this moment? How do we think about this cadre of events we used to do in person? How do we transform and think about generating demand in a virtual world, really improving the end to end digital experiences of everything we do? And of course, lastly, it's about how do we help create a cure? How do we help make sure that we speed this process along so we've done a lot from you know, taking super computing power and really applying it to the fight to find cures and find vaccines. We have donated things like Watson Assistant so that governments can get access to free chatbots to help their customers with knowledge and information about COVID-19. So, lots of things we're doing across all those friends. It's certainly been a time of really rapid transformation and the most important thing we can do is listen and pivot quickly. >> Yeah, really important points Michelle, listening to customers. I'm curious, you know, what are you hearing from customers? Obviously, you know, they have lots of challenges. And therefore, it probably changed a little bit how they think about who they partner with, you know, who they go to, to be a trusted, you know, partner in these times. So, you know, what feedback Are you getting from customers? How do they look at the relationship with IBM in your ecosystem, that might be a little different than before? >> Well, we're talking to customers more than ever, as you can imagine. And I think we have seen seven offerings, seven things that our clients really are learning going through this experience and need help with. And those range as I mentioned earlier, from supply chain continuity and resiliency to the new cybersecurity landscape. There's so many different and unique cyber risks right now. Virtual teaming, virtual work from home. Business continuity and resiliency, increased agility on the cloud things like, you know, making sure that we're supporting the health and human Services of our people. So those are some of the examples of what matters most to clients right now virtually engaging with customers with Watson. So those are the things that we have pivoted hard to make sure that we help our clients with the essential process of recovery and transformation. Because there isn't going where, there's no back to normal. We were very convinced that this is a rethink and Think 2020 is coming at the perfect time, as businesses start to slowly reopen their doors. You know, it's going to be a very important conversation with our clients on how we accelerate recovery and transformation. And transformation is important because we have learned a lot. And there are some things that we need to go back and improve. And there's some lessons we've learned that we can, you know, take with us into this sort of new world. So it's a challenging time for sure. But it's also one that is ripe with opportunities. And I've seen so much creativity and so much dedication. As we, you know, we had to remake Think in 60 days, a totally new platform, you know, new capabilities, new content, and at three x the volume. So the teams have done a remarkable job. And I'm excited for the conversation. >> What I'm curious, what you're hearing, is customers that are, you know, starting are in the midst of that journey, is the global pandemic, is it accelerating what they're doing? Is it stalling them? They're not definitely finding, >> you know, and I think it's really two things. One is, how does the team operate and you know, I've been very passionate for my entire career about agile as a discipline, small cross functional teams aligned on a mission, shared values, really have an incredible ability using the agile rituals to prioritize and to move quickly and to optimize that is more important than ever before. That is what is enabling kind of this more rapid, you know, cycles we're seeing and then I think are critical. >> What should we be taking as lessons and, you know, new practices that will continue in the future? >> Well, from a client perspective, I think we're going to see where digital has always sort of been, you know, mission critical. I think there's going to be incredible and continued, you know, rapid acceleration to a digital environment. And that's not just outside in what, you know, do we have a good mobile app? Do we have a good web experience that's inside out. How do we digitize the, you know, the call center so that customers can get virtual answers with chatbots? How do we digitize and use AI to improve HR, supply chain apart from fundamental, you know, manufacturing operational procedures. So that's one thing I think will be a permanent change. Secondly, I think we're going to see the same thing on the cloud, I think clients that had you know, three to five year journeys on their roadmaps of how they think about their cloud architecture in what workloads are we going to move to the public cloud? Almost all of them are saying that now has to be compressed. So I think we're going to see more rapid acceleration and adoption and journey to cloud. I think there's some new things that we'll see in terms of blockchain and cybersecurity and others that will also reimagine the landscape of our clients. On the people side, you know, we're adjusting, right? We're going to have to figure out this new way of being, this new way of normal, which might be a bit more hybrid than we're used to. Sometime in the office, sometime at home. I fundamentally believe more agile teams truly agile is a mission. So I think these are just some of the areas that we're going to see a reimagination of how work gets done, and what work gets done to make us more resilient, you know, stronger, and to emerge from what has been an immensely challenging period for so many, and personally so, for so many. And how do we take some lessons from this? So we emerged stronger >> All right. So Michelle, I was looking back at when we first had you on theCUBE. And when you were, you know, just coming on IBM as the CMO. And you know, you talk then about how you've always worked for digital companies, so here in 2020, the global pandemic, of course, you know, is on everyone's mind, but when people leave Think, how should they be thinking about IBM? if, you know, what is different, you know, and what is the same, over 100 year old company, one of the most trusted brands in the industry, but new leadership with Arvind, And how do you want people to think of IBM going forward? >> I think times of great challenge, are actually meant for the IBM brand. I think that our clients are looking more than ever for partners they can trust who can help them find the world's most innovative technology, with deep expertise and understanding of how work actually happens across these industries and with a blanket of Kind of security and likely trusted, responsible stewardship that matters more. So I hope our clients and our business partners because we have an immensely rich agenda for our business partners, I hope they emerge knowing that IBM is their essential partner for recovery and for transformation. And there is simply nothing we won't do to help them make their business stronger and in so doing to build a stronger more resilient world. >> Well, Michelle Peluso congratulations and the team on everything to make Think 2020 Digital come and really appreciate being able to participate with you. >> Thanks for I really appreciate it. >> Stay tuned for lots more coverage from the cube. I'm Stu Miniman. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>>Yeah, >>from The Cube Studios in Palo Alto and Boston. It's the Cube covering IBM. Think brought to you by IBM. >>Hi, everybody. We're back. And you're watching the Cube's coverage of the IBM think digital event for 2020. This is that he's socially distant and socially responsible. You? My name is Dave a lot. David Larose. Who's the general manager of the IBM partner ecosystem? David, Good to see you. >>Likewise. Great to be here. >>Yes, it is. Your first year in running the the ecosystem. You probably don't expect to be managing through the this world crisis this novel Corona virus. But what was your first move? Your outreach to partners? How are you communicating to them? Maybe you could share with us how that's all going. >>It certainly wasn't in the break. So when I took this job, you're right. But, you know, we have a very strong relationship with with our partners, and what we have is we have a global advisory board. So about 25 or 30 of our largest customers across the world, we engaged with them very, very quickly. That's all of the CIOs presidents, vice presidents of styles, um, and we engage with them on a survey and said, How are you thinking about it's what are the what are your big concerns and, you know, not unusually. They came back with a couple of key things. Number one was, and their primary concern is how do they support their clients? That was probably number one on their list of things followed very closely. By enabling their firms that have a financial stability that was number two and then probably number three. I would say it was, you know, managing their work. But they're moving to a digital only type of environment, similar to what IBM has done ever kind of the three, the three big concerns. And then we spent some time talking to them about how we could help, then really deal with that and address some of those problems. And earlier this week, we we announced so therefore very key things around. How do we help them? One. How do we adapt our programs and our incentives and, uh, really looking at providing them with, you know, extension of things like loyalty program. So don't worry about you know, your ability to re validate and recertify. We gotta protect your loyalty for 2020. We added a lot of incentives in the hardware systems program in the second quarter, so we've increased by half a percent off their based incentive from the first dollar that a lot of areas around programs in terms. Then we sort of really tried to address that point of view around digital. Um, some companies were digitally ready, but there are many companies that weren't actually know a digital platform, but also we very quickly rolled out what we call it my digital marketing platform, where partners can come in and download content and curate content from IBM and then wrap their own campaigns around that and get that out and continue to engage with their clients and their partners. Um, and we funding all of that 100% from an IBM perspective on using our car marketing goals. We used to have a 50 50 funding model without with their partners. But in this particular scenario, that's a digital program that they're running with funding at 100%. And then we're also opening up to provide consultancy on how to optimize digital. So I think you know the thing that we've done here is just their programs in terms quickly, um, or money back into the into the program during the second quarter and protect the ability for our partners and then really trying to help them and enable them to get Teoh Digital our workforce and the digital program. >>Yeah, a couple things there. I mean, we were talking earlier to the the folks from IBM Global Finance, and that's a key part that you mentioned liquidity. You know, certainly these partners air obviously very much concerned about the uncertainty ahead. So having a partner like IBM that can, whether it's, you know, pass on, you know, lease terms, etcetera and provide that sort of blacking is this key? I think the other thing, too we've heard from a lot of executives, is you've got to stay close to your clients during we always do, but especially during times like this, And that's where partners are so crucial in IBM huge company, you know, massive direct sales force, but you can't cover everything. And so having the partner who's got intimate relationships, I mean, I was on a call earlier this week with a partner in Minneapolis I mean, he knows everybody in that region. And so you just that level of intimacy, I think becomes very, very important in times like this, doesn't it? >>Absolutely. And stay connected with with that. So we have about, you know, just a lot of, Ah, 21,000 active planners across across the world and staying close to the senior members of our largest partners is is really important to us. We had a We hosted a call earlier this week actually, with with their advisory council to test the programs that we've gotten in the market, Are they getting where they need, where they need the help the most? We take a lot of feedback with adjusted our programs. We're looking at this on a literally a daily basis right now on don't envisage that we would we would update pretty agile in terms of how we move that. But you know, to your point, having a partner network that we do have around by the hardware and software only on and is right, so learn what were wrong. You know what they're hearing from their pot from their clients and, you know, it allows us to more easily and quickly address needs across all of the IBM client set. >>So we interview a lot of partners, and, you know, when you talk to the familiar, they've got to make money. They have. The margin is very important to them, but it's almost it's table stakes. I mean, again, they can make money a lot of different ways. So what differentiates the suppliers is all these other things that you're talking about? Um, So I want to ask you when you came in to this this role, what you're doing priorities in terms of, you know, partner outreach, retaining that, that loyalty And what do you see changing a za result of this pandemic? >>Yeah, it's a great question. So look, four key priorities that we declared very early on and, by the way, you know, took over from John Touched at the time. And John has spent the last two years really transforming, um, your channel and the way we engage with channel. And so there was a lot of hard lifting that was already done, but it was sort of four. Things that we focused in on one was obviously, how do we continue? Accelerate IBM drive into the hybrid multi cloud market, particularly now with the integration of Red Hat into the organization. That's a very different, you know, sales motion that Wei had so accelerating that was one of the key parties, the 2nd 1 waas. And how do we continue to differentiate on the value and so ensuring that that our programs are staying up to speed and that they're being modernized? You know, the IBM possible program is being a program predominantly built on Recile over the last 10 years. Now the microchip that we're now talking about platforms not talking about consumption. And this week during Partner World, we're gonna talk about how we are going to evolve the part of the program to move into the rest partners who are building on platforms. And how about they're moving to consumption again, all around hybrid, multi, multi cloud. That's kind of the second thing skills, skills and expertise for out for a channel. We kind of have declared that we want our channel to be the most skilled channel in the industry, and it's really interesting, Dave, during this period of the pandemic, it's one of these times where we seem to have more recent and more time, and the partners have been giving us a lot of feedback to say during this time around. Workforce is home and is connected digitally. Why don't we? Wasn't IBM help with in enhancing the enablement programme certification? And so we're doing a lot around that. We see a Z great opportunity to CIO to really develop certifications and skills and expertise during this period. Um, and then the full thing is around winning in what we call out selective segments. And so we want our partners to operate across the IBM portfolio and across our client set. But where we really need the help and where we're putting the money in the programs is around the mid size organizations where they can bring the portfolio into places that it doesn't have this today, new clients or existing clients with with IBM. But the Jason like server was that kind of the four priorities and what we're seeing is and this situation that we're going through this pandemic going through, it's actually accelerating the areas around moving. My partner multi cloud cloud is becoming a differentiator for us and accelerating. I need to get a program that is relevant beyond just resell. But you know this, this concept of platforms and building. But as they build with their own light beyond platform and consumption, So I think it's it's actually accelerating what we've seen and have it moving forward. >>It's interesting what you're saying about resale. We've talked many, many years now on the Cube about the partner ecosystem. It really used to be about resale. You know, we have a majority of his box selling, and you could make a lot of money doing that, you know, a decade or two ago. But when Cloud came, partners really started to underst and that that there was a sea change happening in I T. For a while there, they thought, Wow, you know, this is really going to be challenging. Cloud's going to kill us. But what they realized after a while is with five exactly complex hybrid Cloud is it's not simple to cure and create a seamless experience across clouds on prime etcetera. So the huge opportunities open up, add value. So there's been a massive change in the mindset. Uh, and it sounds like particularly with digital, that the pandemic is going to accelerate that on. People are going to come out of this, um, almost having done some exercises, maybe in a little bit better shape than they came into it. You buy that premise? >>My question is no question about it. I mean, if you think about, you know, IBM portfolio for a minute. Um, and over the last really 6 to 9 months, we have containerized out our software portfolio. It's based on the, you know, the kubernetes container ization and an open ship. So we're ready from a portfolio perspective. And, you know, now we're catching up from a program perspective we're introducing this week and out in the world this concept of a build program and a service program, and so that is their will preserve and continue to evolve the cell program that resell. But you know this concept of the build program and the service programs and only extend the reach that we have to the data and the ecosystem that we're operating in new sets of partners. But is that one of transition, that business from recent consumption? We're going to support that. But then you have to your point around this whole digital everything from digital capabilities around, generating amount of opportunity and a little bit about that earlier with my program and the funding that we've got behind that the experience that we're we're offering as consultants, but also this concept of digital selling. You know, there's not all about partners are savvy around digital selling. So we've been doing that for many, many years. And, uh and so we're opening up digital selling Enablement sessions, Webinars consultancy and a bunch of assets that that IBM has and has invested in for many, many years and opening that up to you want to add channel? >>Yes, There was some great opportunities there for our partners. I mean, we The Cube has been covering the Red Hat Summit we had Jim Whitehurst on. We're in the process of scheduling Arvin so great to see, you know, kind of connect the dots between those franchises and identify the opportunities, and they're significant. I mean, Red Hat has a lot of momentum in the market. IBM has a huge presence, great opportunity to modernize applications, And then your point about the hardware side we just saw on IBM s latest earnings, released at the Fisher running in hardware right now on, uh, you know, obviously tailwind of the Z cycle, but other parts of the portfolio storage from 19%. So so some exciting times for partners, even though there's so much uncertainty in the market again, staying close to customers, you know, doing doing right by your employees, leveraging the IBM relationship where you're obviously providing a lot of backdrop in support. David, I wonder if you could just sort of wrap a bow around. You know, think 2020 is the virtual trucks are pulling away away from the virtual digital Mosconi. What's the take? Aways will give us the bumper sticker. >>Look, the bumper sticker is that it's never been a better time to be an idea. We've got a leading portfolio that is now ready for the new world. Will the consumption and the world building on um, we are, you know, we're modernizing our programs to ensure that you can make money here. There's a lot of money to be made as we as we get into this thing, this new world and we are behind you right now to support you financially and to get you develop digitally enabled guy. So never been a time to be an IBM partner right now. >>David. Great message. Thank you very much for coming on the Cube. And best of luck to you. Stay safe and ah, again, really appreciate your time. >>You too, Dave. Thanks very much. Bye. Site. >>You know, uh, and you're watching the Cube here at IBM? Think 2020. Our digital coverage. We'll be right back right after this short break. I'm Dave Volante, and you're watching the Cube? >>Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Music] from the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston it's the cube covering the IBM thing brought to you by IBM hello everybody this is state velocity of the cube and you're watching our wall-to-wall coverage of the IBM think digital experience at Justin Youngblood is here he's the vice president of IBM security Justin good to see you again thanks for coming on hey Dave good to be here thank you so look let's get right into it I mean we're here remote I wish we were you know for face-to-face and in Moscow II but things have changed dramatically there's a massive shift to work from home that's you know obviously kovat 19 has tightened the need for security but let's start with some of the things that you're seeing how you're responding the to secure those remote workers and let's get into some of the trends that you're seeing in the security space yeah absolutely some major trends and there is a big response around Cove at night 19 right now and and first of all you know what we tell all of our employees our clients our partners the entire ecosystem is number one priority stay safe and healthy of course even at IBM right now we have over 95% of IBM erse who are working from home we've seen that trend across our clients and partners as well and basically three themes keep popping up as it relates to security in Kovan 19 the first is clients are asking us to help them secure their remote workforce we have a number of tools technologies and services to help them do that the second is detecting and responding to accelerating threats amidst Cova 19 the threat actors are more active than ever they're driving some targeted attacks and phishing campaigns and our clients are asking us for help on that front and then the third is virtually extending security teams and operations and we've got a set of services managed services and and remote employees who can actually work with our clients and help them with their security operation centers and anything they need from a security program yeah I mean when you talk to CISOs they'll tell you look we you know our biggest problem is a lack of talent and we have all these fragmented tools and then now you throw kovat 19 at them and it's okay now overnight blank and secure the remote workforce so talk a little bit about this notion of platforms I've said often the security marketplace is very fragmented that accentuates the skills issue is you got to learn all these different tools and this is integration issues talk about platforms and how that might help solve this problem absolutely security platforms are on the rise do you see a lot of security platforms being announced by vendors today the problem statements are very clear oh as enterprises have moved along on their journey to cloud and digital transformation they now have workloads applications data users spread across multiple cloud environments every enterprise is using multiple clouds today so the problem statements become very clear for security security leaders have too many security tools they have too much data and they don't have enough people right so too many security tools that lack interoperability the average Enterprise has anywhere from 50 to 80 different security point products that don't talk to each other but trying to solve a security problem to pinpoint an issue actually takes looking at multiple screens too much data that comes without insights trying to stitch together all of this disparate data across a fragmented security landscape is very complex and it allows threats to be missed and then not enough people the shortage in cybersecurity is well documented over 2 million unfilled jobs today and that number continues to grow so enter security platforms that are that are on the value proposition of cleaning up this mess in November last year we announced the cloud pack for security that's IBM security platform and it has some some attributes that are powerful compelling we're seeing a lot of traction with client well you mentioned two things that really caught my attention the detection and the response because you know you're gonna get infiltrated everybody gets infiltrated and you know you've seen the stats it takes you know whatever 250 300 days before you can even detect it and then and then responses is critical so so talk about the cloud pack for security you know there are other platforms out there what makes yours different yeah are basically traditional security is broken we have a vision of modern security at centers on the cloud pack for security we set out two years ago with the concept of a next-generation platform it's a security control plane that works across hybrid multi cloud environments it connects all your security data and tools with a common platform that includes IBM and security tools and cloud platforms so whether you're using a sim like Q radar or Splunk endpoint detection systems like carbon black or CrowdStrike and any of the IBM any of the cloud platforms including IBM AWS or Azure it connects all of those and brings the insights together we work with over 50 enterprises and service providers help us co-create this solution and the attributes are its multi cloud capable but for security is multi cloud capable it can bring all the insights together from across these hybrid multi cloud environment it's open it's built and based on open standards and open technologies it's simple and it's composable in the sense that it has the ability to integrate with IBM and third-party technologies and add more capabilities over time what we see from other security platforms in the industry is they they basically approached the problem saying mr. customer bring all your data to our cloud will run the analytics on it and then provide you the insights what's different with cloud pack for security is we take the analytics to the data customers don't need to move their data from all the disparate sources where it exists we take the analytics to the data and bring those insights back to a common console or the or the security leaders and security analysts to take action on why you preaching to the choir now because well first of all you've got the the integration matrix and you've got the resources obviously I mean you mentioned a couple of really prominent and you know some hot products right now and this is the challenge right best to breathe versus fully integrated suite and what you're saying if I understand it correctly is we're not asking you to make that trade-off if you want to use you know of some tool go for it we're gonna integrate with that and give you the control and then the second piece is bringing that analytics capability to the data cuz that's the other thing you really don't want to move your data you the Einstein written move as much data as you have to but no more right absolutely this is a this is a team sport security is a team sport and that's where open technologies are so important the ability with an open API to integrate with any IBM or third-party technology this is not a rip and replace strategy clients can't afford to do that they want to work within their existing security tools but they need a common platform for bring it all together so we talked about the ability to gain complete insights across your hybrid multi cloud environment the ability to act faster with a set of playbooks and automation that basically runs security run books once a once an incident is detected to automatically go about about the fix and then third is the ability to run anywhere cloud pack for security like all of the IBM cloud packs is built on kubernetes and Red Hat openshift so it can be deployed on-premise or on the public cloud of the customers choosing complete choice and flexibility in that deployment I mean another key point you just made is automation and you talked earlier about that skills gap and the unfilled jobs automation is really the way certainly a way and probably a the most important way to close that gap I want to ask you about open could you think about you know security and networks and you know opens almost antithetical to secure I want close but you mean open in a different context and what if we could talk about that and maybe break down the key aspects of open as you defined it we've seen open technologies open standards open source be adopted across technology domains think of operating systems and Linux think of application development think of the management domain and kubernetes which now has a community of over 4,000 developers behind it it's more than any single vendor could put behind it so it's so open technologies really provide a force multiplier for any any industry security has been a laggard in adopting open standards and open source code so last year 2019 October time frame IBM partnered with McAfee and dozens of other vendors and launching the open Cyber Security Alliance focused on open standards that promote interoperability across security tools focused on open source code which we've adopted into an underpin the cloud pack I beams cloth pack for security focused on threat intelligence and analytics and ultimately sharing best practices and let me talk about run books this really comes down to the automated play books that customers need to run in response to a security threat or incident that's become really important automating actions to help security operations teams be more productive so all of those capabilities in total sum up what we're talking about with open technology for security and it underpins our IBM cloud pack for security solution well I've always felt that Open was part of the answer and like you said the industry was slowly to adopt adversary is highly capable he-she they're very well-funded do you think our industry is ready for this open approach we're absolutely ready for the open approach we see customers responding extremely positively to the cloud pack for security and the fact that it is built on open technologies many enterprises come to us and say they want that future proofing of their investments they want to know that what they purchased will interoperate with their existing environments without a rip rip and replace and the only way to get there is through open standards and open technology so it's it's already being well received and we're gonna see it grow just like it has any other technology domains operating systems application development management etc now is the time for security while Justin you're operating in one of the most important aspects of the IT value chain thank you for keeping us safe stay safe down there in Austin and thanks for coming on the queue thank you Dave good to be here take care and thank you for watching everybody watching the cubes coverage of IBM sync 2020 ibm's digital production keep it right there we're right back right after this short break [Music] you

[Music] from the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston it's the cube covering the IBM thing brought to you by IBM hi I'm Stu Minuteman and this is the cubes coverage of IBM think 2020 the digital experience we talked to IBM executives their partners and their customers really thrilled to welcome back one of our cube alumni he has a new role since the last time he was on the cube at an event Jim white Hersey is now the president of IBM of course former CEO of Red Hat Jim pleasure to see you thanks so much for joining us hey it's great to be back hope you're doing well we are all trying to stay safe we miss seeing you and the team in person had a great digital event with the Red Hat team last week for summit of course I love you know either going to San Francisco or my backyard here in Boston from it but the thing we've been saying is we are now together even when we're apart so so many changes going on of course the global pandemic impacting everyone and the keynote you and the other IBM executive talking about you know really how it's helping IBM solidify what they believe their their decisions are and the technology direction so you know not a big vivid or change but Jim really want to get your feedback as to what advice you have for your customers where should they be investing worst they be slowing down how should they be thinking about their IP spend in today's world yeah so first off you know our hybrid cloud strategy which IBM and you know Red Hat now combined have been on for quite a long time has been all about flexibility resilience in an unknown future I think there were ever a time where having flexibility is important it's now so you know we have had clients saying hey I can use the cloud because all of a sudden with work at home I have huge increases in demand we find others that say wow I was using the cloud but I have a reduction in absolute demand so I want to pull those workloads back I'm gonna run premises say the marginal dollars so you have people kind of doing very different things than we thought we would be doing this month and going forward through the year and so having an architecture that's built for change it's certainly hybrid cloud architectures a part of that is I think being born out here as people are trying to understand new ways of working and certainly with IBM you know with some of the technologies we have around AI with helping various industries as they're all volumes increased as people are you know changing tickets or have more questions and our ability to help people scale up AI to address those so they're not trying to add people in a very difficult time you know just broadly you know our platforms run some of the most mission critical systems so keeping those systems up going and being resilient and with thousands of things CEOs and CIOs have to worry about you know knowing that you have a partner that's gonna keep your most important systems up and running are all things that we do every day and I think that value shows through even more right now yeah absolutely we've been hearing plenty of reports customers as they you know might have been thinking about how fast they move or how do they leverage cloud pods an important piece of what they need to be doing how does the combination of IBM and Red Hat differentiate from some of the other cloud offerings both cloud Nai across the industry today yeah sure well let me start off with cloud and then I'll talk about how AI complements and accelerates that that strategy so what's different about what IBM is doing is we have a vision that the best architecture is a choice full horizontal architecture where you can run your application anywhere but it's not just about running it now you know clouds are now becoming internet themselves a source of innovation via various api's with functionality behind those so in order to consume innovation learn ever it might come from you have to have flexibility to be able to move your work and so IBM is unique in saying hey we're not just a cloud provider we're actually providing a platform that runs across any of the major cloud providers and so we make that real by having the Red Hat platform OpenShift is a core part of what we do I think secondly as having the platform's great but it's all about having the platform so you can consume innovation to deliver business value and iBM has injected that with a whole series of capabilities whether that's being able to pull data and information out of you know existing workloads to the whole AI portfolio to help people really build a cognitive Enterprise and inject intelligence and AI into business processes so they can build you know a different intelligent kind of AI infused set of business processes or in our new businesses so the combination of a horizontal platform going to run anywhere with the ability whether it's with software or with services capability to add on top we can now help you leverage that we can help you take that Ferrari he built out for a drive to help you build new sources of value right one of the big discussion points this week has been edge computing a lot of discussion it's you know much earlier in the adoption and maturation of the ecosystems compared to what we were talking about for cloud so what's important with edge how our BM and RedHat going to extend what they've been doing to edge type of deployment well edge becomes an extension of the data center you know I think there was a period of time when we thought about computers as individual things and now we've had this idea of a data center is where computing happens and then they're you know thin devices like phones or whatever kind of out in the ether the tether back but you know as the Internet of Things continues to expand as the ability of computing technology towards the edge you know continues to grow with technology advances as 5g continues to expand out and you know abroad the ability to have use cases of computing at the edge just increase it increases so whether that's autonomous driving is an obvious major use case where they'll be massive amounts of you that you can't handle the latency of taking all that compute back to the data center to you know how you're making sure the paint finish that a factory is putting on a you know a piece of metal is being done you know correctly and optimally and environmentally efficiently all those things are far sensing at the edge and computing at the edge to be economic but here's the issue you don't want to have to develop a whole new infrastructure of software and you'll be able to do that a whole different set of developers with different skill sets and different rules on different infrastructure so what we're doing with this platform I talked about when I said this platform runs everywhere it's not just that it runs on the major public clouds or in your data center or bare metal or virtualized it runs all the way out to the edge now as soon as you get out to the edge you have a whole new set of management challenges because the types of applications are different how they temper hether back are different so we are working with large enterprises and with telcos not only on Bhaiji rollout but also edge infrastructure and the management tooling to be able to have an application run in the factory in an effective efficient safe way but then be able to be tethered all the way back to bringing data back for analytics in the data center so we've made some really exciting announcements on what we're doing with both industrial enterprise customers on edge computing and then how we're working with telcos to bring that to life because a lot of that obviously gets integrated back into the core telco infrastructure so this idea of edge computing and mobile edge computing are critical to the future of you know of computing but importantly they're critical to the future of how enterprises are going to operate that value going forward and so you know we've taken a real leadership position around that given that we have the core infrastructure but we also understand you know our clients and you know industry verticals and business processes so we could kind of come at it from both angles and really bring that value quickly to our all right and Jim what's the role of open source there you know one of the bigger points that was talked about at Summit last week was the I believe it's the advanced cluster management for cloud and it was some IBM people and some IBM technology came in to Red Hat and they've opened forced it we're just talking about edge computing and telecommunications service providers I remember talking with you and the team you know back at OpenStack summits with network functions fertilization open source was a big piece of it so where does open play in these ecosystem discussions well I should say this is one of the really exciting things about the the marriage of Red Hat and IBM is in Red Hat has deep capability and open source and delivering open source platforms and has been doing that for two decades now in IBM's always been a large participant in open source but has never really delivered platforms right it's always infused open source components in other kind of solutions and so by bringing the two together we can truly leverage the power of open source to help enterprises and telcos consume open source at scale to really be able to take advantage of this massive innovation is happening and so in particular you know we're seeing in telco exactly what we saw happened in the data center which is people did have these vertical stacks and the data center it was the unix's you know of the past where applications were tied to the operating systems tied to the hardware the same thing exists in telco infrastructure now and the telcos understand this idea the value of a horizontal platform so how do you have a commodity yet infrastructure underneath so hardware with an open source infrastructure so people can feel confident they're not locked into one vendor so also can feel confident that they can drive feature set that they need into these platforms and so the idea that open kind of almost think of it as Oh Linux but for data centers are now Linux for a 5g which is a combination of OpenStack on the virtualized side OpenShift brunetti ECM containers from a container of perspective be able to bring that to telcos and 5g rollouts allows them to separate the in functionality which sits in an application whether that's a virtualized application or a container and be able to confidently be able to run that on open infrastructure is something that open-source is doing today in telco and the same way it disrupted you know traditional data center infrastructure over the last couple decades and then IBM can both bring that with services capability as well as a whole set of value-added services kind of further up the stack which makes the open source infrastructure usable you know in a manageable cost-effective way today and so that's why we're so excited about especially what we could do with edge because we're bringing the same disruption we brought to the data center 20 years ago and we can do it in a safe secure reliable and manageable way all right well Jim thank you so much for the updates congratulations on all the accomplishments of the Red Hat team last week and the IBM team this week great thank you it's great to be back and I look forward to seeing you again live in the not-too-distant future absolutely until we're back in person the cube bringing you IBM think the digital experience on Stu minimun and as always thank you for watching the queue [Music] you

from the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world this is a cube conversation hello everybody welcome to the cubes exclusive coverage of IBM thanks 2020 digital event experience the cube covering wall-to-wall we've got a number of interviews planned for you going deep my name is Dave Volante I'm here with stoom in ament's - how you doing doing great Dave so we're socially distant as you can see in the studio and mohab row everybody's you know six feet apart got our masks on took them off for this for this segment so Stu let's get into it so a very interesting time obviously for IBM Arvind Krishna doing the big keynote Jim Whitehurst new president so you got a new leadership a lot of talk about resilience agility and flexibility you know which is kind of interesting obviously a lot of their clients are thinking about kovat 19 in that context iBM is trying to provide solutions and capabilities we're going to get into it but really the linchpin of all this is open shift and RedHat and we're gonna talk about what that means for the vision that Arvind Krishna laid out and let's get into it your your thoughts on think 2020 yeah so Dave of course you know last week we had Red Hat summit so Red Hat is still Red Hat you and I had a nice discussion going into Red Hat summit yes thirty four billion dollar acquisition there now under IBM Jim white her slides over in that new role as president but you know one of the questions we've had fundamentally Dave is does an acquisition like this will it change IBM will it change the cloud landscape openshift and Red Hat are doing quite well we definitely have seen some some of the financials and every audience that hasn't seen your analysis segment of IBM should really go in and see that because the Red Hat of course is one of the bright spots in the financials they're you know good growth rate on the number of customers and what they're doing in cloud and underneath a lot of those announcements you dig down and oh yeah there's openshift and there's Red Hat Enterprise Linux rel so you know I long partner for decades between IBM and Red Hat but is you know how will the IBM scale really help the Red Hat pieces there's a number of announcements underneath you know not just you know how does the entire world work on you know Z and power and all of the IBM platforms but you know I believe it's arvind says one of the enduring platforms needs to be the hybrid cloud and you heard a Red Hat summit the entire week it was the open hybrid cloud was the discussion well yes so that actually is interesting you brought up Arvin's sort of pillars there were three enduring platforms that he cited then the fourth of course is I guess open hybrid cloud but the first was mainframes the second was and I'm not sure this is the right order the second was services and then the third was middleware so basically saying excuse me we have to win the day for the architecture of hybrid cloud what's that mean to you then I'd like to chime in yeah so so Dave first of all you know when when we did our analysis when IBM bought red Hatton says you know my TL DR was does this change the cloud landscape my answer is no if I'm a Amazon I'm not sitting there saying oh geez you know the combination of IBM and Red Hat well they're partners and they're they're gonna be involved in it does IBM have huge opportunities in hybrid cloud multi cloud and edge computing absolutely one of the questions is you know how will I be M services really be transformed you know Dave we've watched over the last decade some of the big service organizations have really shrunk down cloud changed the marginal economics you've done so much discussion of this over the last handful of years that you need to measure yourself against the hyper scalars you need to you know see where you can add value and the question is Dave you know when and where do we think of IBM in the new era well so coming back to sort of your point about RedHat and services is it about cloud is a developer's near-term I've said it's it's more about services than it is about cloud longer-term I think it is about cloud but but IBM's definition of cloud is maybe a little different than 10 hours but when Jeannie when on the roadshow - after the redhead acquisitions you said this is gonna be a creative - free cash flow within one year and the reason why I always believe that is because they were gonna plug Red Hat and we've talked about this an open shift right into their services business and start modernizing applications right away they've actually achieved that so I think they had pretty good visibility and that was kind of a mandate so IBM's huge services organization is in a good position to do that they've got deep industry expertise we heard Arvind Krishna on his keynote talking about that Jim Whitehurst talking more about services you really didn't hear Jim you know previously in his previous roles talk a lot about services other than as part of the ecosystem so it's an interesting balancing act that that iBM has to do the real thing I want to dig into Stu is winning the day with the with with the architecture of hybrid cloud so let's start with with cloud talk about how IBM defines cloud IBM on its earning earnings call we talked about this on our Red Hat Summit analysis the cloud was you know 23 billion you know growing it whatever 20 20 plus percent when my eyes have been bleeding reading IBM financial statements in ten case for the last couple of weeks but when you go in there and you look at what's in that cloud and I shared this on my braking analysis this week a very small portion of that cloud revenue that what last year 21 billion very small portion is actually what they call cloud cloud and cognitive software it's only about 20 percent of the pie it's really services it's about 2/3 services so that is a bit of a concern but at the same time it's their greatest opportunity because they have such depth and services if IBM can increase the percentage of its business that's coming from higher margin software a business which was really the strategy go back 20 years ago it's just as services became this so big it's so pervasive that that software percentage you know maybe it grew maybe it didn't but but that's IBM's opportunities to really drive that that that software based revenues so let's talk about what that looks like how does OpenShift play in that IBM definition of cloud which includes on Prem the IBM public law everybody else's public cloud multi-cloud and the edge yeah well first of all Dave right the question is where does IBM technologies where do they live so you know look even before the Red Hat piece if we looked at IBM systems there's a number of times that you're seeing IBM software living on various public clouds and that it's goodness you know one of the things we've talked about for a number of years is you know how can you become more of a software company how can you move to more of the you know cloud consumption models you go in more op X and capex so IBM had done some of that and Red Hat should be able to help supercharge that when we look at some of the announcements the one that of course caught my other most Dave is the you know IBM cloud satellite would would say the shorthand of it it's IBM's version of outposts and underneath that what is it oh it's open shift underneath there and you know how can I take those pieces and we know open ship can live across you know almost any of the clouds and you know cannot live on the IB cloud IBM cloud absolutely can it be open ship be in the data center and on virtualization whether it be open source or VMware absolutely so satellite being a fundamental component underneath of open ship makes a lot of sense and of course Linux yeah Linux underneath if you look at the the one that we've heard IBM talking about for a while now is cloud packs is really how are they helping customers simplify and build that cloud native stack you start with Red Hat Enterprise Linux you put openshift on top of that and then cloud packs are that simple toolset for whether you're doing data or AI or integration that middleware that you talked about in the past iBM has way the ways that they've done middleware for decades and now they have the wonderful open source to help enable that yeah I mean WebSphere bluemix IBM cloud now but but OpenShift is really that pass layer that that IBM had coveted right and I was talking to some of IBM's partners getting ready for this event and they say if you dig through the 10k cloud packs is one of those that you know there are thousands of customers that are using this so it's good traction not just hey we have this cloud stuff and it's wonderful and we took all of these acquisitions everything from SoftLayer to software pieces but you know cloud packs is you know a nice starter for companies to help really move forward on some of their cloud native application journey yes so what whatever we talked about this past week in the braking analysis and certainly David floor has been on this as well as this notion of being able to run a Red Hat based let's call it a stack everywhere and Jim White has talked about that essentially really whether it's on Prem at the edge in the clouds but the key there stew is being able to do so natively so every layer of you know it began call it the stack IT services the data plane the control plane the management plane all the planes being able to the networking the transport etc being natively able to run wherever it is so that you can take fine-grain advantage and leverage the primitives on respective clouds the advantage that IBM has in my view would love your thoughts on this is that Red Hat based platforms it's open source and so I mean it's somebody gonna trust Amazon to be the the cloud native anybody's cloud yeah you know solution well if you're part of the Amazon stack I mean I Amazon frankly an Oracle have similar kind of mindset you know redstack Amazon stack make it all homogeneous and it'll run just fine IBM's coming at it from an open source perspective so they they in some ways will have more credibility but it's gonna take a lot of investment to really Shepherd those standards they're gonna have to put a lot of commitments in committers and they're gonna have to incent people to actually adhere to those standards yeah I mean David's the idea of pass the platform as a service that we've been chasing as an industry for more than a decade what's interesting if you listen to IBM what's underneath this well it's you know taking advantage of the container based architecture with kubernetes underneath so can I run kubernetes anywhere yeah pretty much every cloud has their own service OpenShift can live everywhere the question is what David floors rightly putting out okay if I bake to a single type of solution can i really take advantage of the native offerings so the discussion we've always had for a long time as dua virtualize something in which case I'm really abstract away I get to you know I can't take advantage of the all various pieces do I do multi cloud in which case I have some least common denominator way of looking at cloud because I what I want to be able to do is get the value in differentiation out of each cloud I use but not be stuck on any cloud and yes Dave Red Hat with openshift and based with kubernetes and the open source community is definitely a leading way to do that what you worry about is saying okay how much is this stuck on containerization will it be able to take advantage of things like serverless you talk to IBM and say okay underneath it's going to have all this wonderful components Dave when I talked to Andy Jesse and he says if I was rebuilding AWS today it would all be service underneath so what is that underlying construct you know is it flexible and can it be updated Red Hat and IBM are going to bridge between the container world and the serverless world with things like a native but absolutely we are not yet at the Nirvana that developers can just build their apps and know that it can run anywhere and take advantage of anything so you know some things we know we need to keep working so a couple other things there so Jim Weider has talked about ingesting innovation that the nature of innovation is such that it comes from a lot of different places open source obviously is a you know fundamental you know component of that he talked about the telco edge he gave an example of Vodafone Arvind Krishna talked about anthem kind of redefining healthcare post kovat so you're seeing some examples of course that's good that IBM puts forth some really you know proof points it's not just you know slide where which is good I think the the interesting thing you know you can't just put you know containers out there and expect the innovation to find its way into those containers it's gonna take a lot of work to make sure that as those different layers of the stack that we were talking about before are actually going to come to fruition so there's there's the there's some other announcements in this regard to these Edgecumbe edge computing application manager let's say the telco edge a lot of automation focused you mentioned IBM satellite there's the financial services cloud so we're seeing IBM actually you know sprinkle around some investments there as I said in my breaking in houses I'd like to see them dial up those investments a little bit more maybe dial down the return of cash at least for the next several years to shareholders yeah I mean Dave the concern you would talk to most customers and you say well if you try to even optimize your own data center and turn it into a cloud how can you take advantage of the innovation that the Amazon Microsoft Google's and IBM's are Tait are putting out there in the world you want to be able to plug into that you want to be able to leverage those those new services so that is where it's definitely a shift Dave you think about IBM over a hundred years usually they're talking about their patent portfolio I I think they've actually opened up a lot of their patent portfolio to help attack you know the kovat 19 so it is definitely a very different message and tenor that I hear under Arvind Krishna you know in very early days than what I was used to for the last decade or two from IBM yeah well at the risk of being a little bit repetitive one of the things that I talked about in my breaking the analysis I highlighted that arvind said he wants to lead with a technical story which I really like Arvin's a technical visionary his predecessors his three predecessors were not considered technical visionaries and so I think that's one of the things that's been lacking inside of IBM I think it's one of the reason why why Services has been such a dominant component so look Lou Gerstner too hard to argue with the performance of the company but when he made the decision and IBM made the decision to go all-in on services something's got to give and what gave and I've said this many many times in the cube was was product leadership so I'd like to see IBM get back to that product leadership and I think Red Hat gives them an opportunity to do that obviously Red Hat Linux you know open source is a leader the leader and this is jump all as we've talked about many times in this multi hybrid cloud edge you know throwing all the buzzwords but there's some interesting horses on the track you got you got VMware we throw in AWS just because they're there you can talk about cloud without talking about AWS certainly Microsoft has designs there Cisco Google everybody wants a piece of that pie and I would say that you know Red Hat with with with OpenShift is in a good position if in fact they can make the investments necessary to build out those stacks yeah it's funny Dave because IBM for the history the size that they are often can get overlooked you talk about you know we've probably spent more air time talking about the VMware Amazon relationship than almost any in the last few years well we forget we were sitting at vmworld and two months before VMware announced the Amazon partnership who was it that was up on the main stage with Pat Gelson der it was IBM because IBM was the first partner I I believe that I saw numbers that IBM was saying that they have more hosted VMware environments than anyone out there I'd love to see the data on it to understand there because you know IBM plays in so many different places they just often are not you know aggregated and counted together you know when you get outside of some of the you know middleware mainframe some of the pieces that you talked about earlier Dave so IBM does have a strong position they just haven't been the front center leader too often but they have a broad portfolio and very much services led so they they kind of get forgotten you know off on the sides so IBM stated strategy is to bring those mission critical workloads into the cloud they've said that 80% of the workloads remain on Prem only 20% have been been clarified you know when you when you peel the onions on that there's just is so much growth and cloud native workloads so you know there's there is a somewhat of a so what in that but I will say this so where are the mission critical workloads where do they live today they live on Prem we can but but but whose stacks are running those it's IBM and it's Oracle and and David floor has done some research that suggests that if you're gonna put stuff into the cloud that's mission-critical you're probably better off staying with those those stacks that are going to allow you to a lower risk move not have to necessarily rip and replace and so you know migrating mission-critical Oracle database into AWS or db2 you know infrastructure into AWS is is gonna be much more challenging than than going same-same into the IBM cloud or the respective Oracle cloud so I guess my question to you Stu is why do people want to move those mission critical workloads into the cloud do they well first of all it's unlocking innovation that you talked about Dave so you know we've looked at from a VMware standpoint versus a red hat standpoint if you talk about building new apps doing containerization having that cloud native mindset do I have a bimodal configuration not so not a word that we talk about as much anymore because I want to be able to modernize it modernizing those applications doing any of those migrations we know or super challenging you know heck David Flair has talked about it for a long long time so you bring up some great points here that you know Microsoft might be the best at meeting customers where they are and giving people a lot of options IBM lines up in many ways in a similar ways my biggest critique about VMware is they don't have tight ties to the application it's mostly you know virtual eyes it or now we have some cloud native pieces but other than the pivotal group they didn't do a lot with modernization on applications IBM with their middleware history Red Hat with everything that they do with the developer communities are well positioned to help customers along those digital journeys and going through those transformations so it's you know applications need to be updated you know if anybody that's used applications that are long in the tooth know that they don't have the features that I want they don't react the way they want heck today Dave everybody needs to be able to access things where they are on the go you know it's not a discussion anymore about you know virtual desktop it's about you know work anywhere have access to the data where I need it and be much more flexible and agile and those are some of the configurations that you know iBM has history and their services arm can help customers move along those journeys yeah so you know I think one of the big challenges iBM has it's got a it's got a its fingers in a lot of pies AI you know they talk a lot about blockchain they're about quantum quantum is not gonna be here for a while it's very cool we have an interview coming up with with Jamie Thomas and you know she's all over the quantum we've talked to her in the past about it but I think you know if you think about IBM's business in terms of services and product you know it's whatever it is a 75 you know billion dollar organization 2/3 or and maybe not quite 2/3 maybe 60 Plus percent is services services are not an R&D intensive business you look at a company like Accenture Stu I think Accenture spent last year 800 million on R&D they're a forty five billion dollar forty six billion dollar company so if you really isolate the IBM you know company to two products whatever its call it 25 30 billion they spend a large portion of that that revenue on R&D to get to the six billion but my argument is it's it's not enough to really drive the type of innovation that they need just another again Accenture data point because they're kind of a gold standard along with IBM you.why and others and and a couple of others in services they return seventy six percent of their cash to shareholders iBM has returned consistently 50 to 60 percent to its shareholders so arvind stated he wants to return IBM to growth you know every every IBM CEO says that Ginni I used to talk about has to shrink to grow as I said unfortunately so you should run out of time and now it's up to Arvind to show that but to me growth has got to come from fueling Rd whether it's organic or inorganic I'd like to see you know organic as the real driver for obvious reasons and I don't think just open source in and of itself obviously is going to attract that it'll attract innovation but whether or not IBM will be able to harness it to his advantage is the real challenge unless they're making huge huge commitments to that open source and in a microcosm you know it's a kind of a proxy we saw what happened to Hortonworks and cloud era because they had to had to fund that open source commitment you know IBM we're talking about much much with the hybrid multi-cloud edge much much bigger opportunity but but requirement and we haven't even talked about AI you know bringing you know I think I think you have a quote on you know data is the fuel what was that quote yes it was Jim Whitehurst he said data is the fuel cloud is the platform AI is accelerant and then security my paraphrase is the mission control there so sounds a lot like your innovation cocktail that you've been talking about for the last year or so Dave but iCloud but so okay but AI is the accelerant and I agree by the way applying AI to all this data that we have you know over the years automating it and scaling it in the cloud it's critical and if IBM wants to define cloud as you know the cloud experience anywhere I'm fine with that I'm not a fan of the way they break down their cloud business I think it's bogus and I've called them on that but okay fine so maybe we'll get by that I'll get over it but but but really that is the opportunity it's just it's got to be funded yeah no Dave absolutely iBM has a lot of really good assets there they've got strong leadership as you said can Arvind do another Satya Nadella transformation there's the culture there's the people and there's the product so you know IBM you know absolutely has a lot of great resources and you know smart people and some really good products out there as well as really good ecosystem partnerships it's you know Amazon is not the enemy to IBM Microsoft is a partner for what they're doing and even Google is somebody that they can work with so you know I always say back in the ten years I've been working for you Dave I think the first time I heard the word coopertition I thought it was like an IBM trademark name because they were the ones that really you know lead as to have a broad portfolio and work with everybody in the ecosystem even though you don't necessarily agree or partner on every piece of what you're doing so in a multi cloud AI you know open ecosystem IBM's got a real shot yeah I mean a Satya Nadella like move would be awesome of course Satya had a much much larger you know of cash hoard to play with but but I guess the similarity stew are you you're notwithstanding that now we have three prominent companies run by Indian native born leaders which is pretty astounding when you think about it but notwithstanding that there are some similarities just in terms of culture and emphasis and getting back to sort of the the technical roots the technical visionaries so I'm encouraged but I'm watching very closely stew as I'm sure you are kind of where those investments go how how it plays in the marketplace but but I think you're right I think people underestimate IBM and and but the combination of IBM Red Hat could be very dangerous yeah Dave how many times do we write the article you know has the sleeping giant of IBM been awoken so I think it's a different era now and absolutely there's IBM has the right cards to be able to play at some of these new tables and it's a different IBM for a different era somebody said to me the other day that and probably you've probably heard this you have to but it was first I heard of it is that within five years IBM had better be a division of Red Hat versus the other way around so all right Stu thanks for for helping to set up the IBM think 2020 digital event experience what coming at you wall-to-wall coverage I think we've got over 40 interviews lined up Stu you you have been doing a great job both last week with the Red Hat summit and helping out with IBM thanks so thanks for that Dave no no rainy week at the new Moscone like we had last year a really good content from the comfort of our remote settings yeah so keep it right there buddy this is Dave a lot a force to Minutemen go to Silicon angle calm you'll check out all the news the the cube net we'll have all of our videos will be running wall-to-wall wiki bong calm has some some of the research action this day Volante force too many we'll be right back right after this short break [Music]

>>From the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston. It's the cube covering IBM thing brought to you by IBM. >>Welcome back. I'm Stu Miniman and we're here with the cubes coverage of IBM. Thank you. 2020. The global experience reaching all of the participants of the event where they are. I'm happy to welcome back one of our cube alumni, Mike Farris, who is the vice president of corporate development and strategy at red hat. Mike, it's great to see you. Likewise too. Happy to be here. All right, so what Mike, uh, you know, lots of things to talk about a few weeks back. Uh, of course the management changes happened. Uh, we're fresh off of a red hat summit. Uh, I, I had a pleasure really talking to a lot of your peers, uh, your new boss, uh, and uh, you know, many of the customers. Uh, but for our, I think audience, right? Bring us up to speed. Uh, you know, back in 2019, it, uh, the, the largest software acquisition ever, uh, completed with IBM buying red hat and there've been some management changes, uh, some people, uh, switching roles. >>And, and you've got a new title, so, uh, bring her audience speed. Sure. Absolutely. So it's, it's been an exciting several, several months as we've gone through this. Of course. Um, we knew things were going to happen, things were announced clearly with Jenny's retirement quite a while ago. Um, but certainly, you know, the Arvin announcement and then as well as having both Jim Whitehurst become president. Okay. Oh, Cormier becoming CEO of red hat. You know, it's been an exciting several months trying to try to go through this and understand, you know, what would change and frankly, what would not change. Um, I'll say from red hats perspective, having been with red hat for coming up, you're on 20 years, uh, not a lot is really changed. We're still focused on our mission of being the owner leading enterprise open source software company, uh, focusing on both taking our, our platforms, both red hat enterprise Linux and now OpenShift a Ford in the market, partnering around middleware components, hardening around our management, uh, as well as our storage elements. >>So, you know, our mission hasn't changed and that's kind of one of the key aspects of this. I'll say that certainly, you know, with Arvind now as CEO of IBM and Jim Whitehurst is president of IBM along with Oh for me or being, you know, CEO of red hat and we've got a really strong leadership group in place at IBM that understands what red hat is, what we mean to the customer and just as importantly what we mean to the open source community. Uh, and, and that type of action and, and, and drive is certainly something that, that we think, you know, that leadership in place will help to ensure that the value we've delivered to customers, frankly from day one back when we launched red hat enterprise Linux or red hat advanced server, frankly, uh, it's something that, that we'll be able to continue to do and drive in the community and with the customers as we move forward. >>Yeah. Mike, it's interesting when we look out, uh, on the, the ecosystems and happening out there, we understand for customers sometimes it might be challenging to say, Hey, I listened to 10 different vendors and they all say the same words. I've got multi hybrid cloud, digital modernization, things like that. Well, with our hat as a, as an analyst firm, we kind of say, okay, everybody does things a little bit different. Do you know if you look at the big cloud players, they are all playing different games. When we looked at the IBM strategy pre acquisition of red hat and red hat, they line up pretty well, you know, red hat. Yeah, very much. At summit it was open hybrid cloud. Uh, when I look at IBM, maybe a little bit more talk of multicloud than hybrid. Well, but hybrid is long bend a piece of it. >>So yeah. Okay. Give us a little bit of the inside, you know, with your strategy hat on it. How much had it been okay. Strong alignment, obviously IBM and red hat decades. Um, but you know, there are some places where, uh, you need to make sure that people understand that, you know, red sat still please markers with all the clouds. And of course IBM has services that span many places, but they also have, you know, products and services that are, uh, it was particular to IBM thing. Absolutely. And I think, you know, it's important to note, and this is well established that, you know, one of the core, uh, justifications and reasons for the acquisition was really around red hats. A physician, not just an open source, but in the hybrid cloud. Um, we've been talking about that for sure many years in fact, before most of the vendor's name has predicted up. >>Um, uh, but just as importantly, I think if you look back at Marvin Krishna's announcements on frankly the day that he was named CEO, uh, you know, he starts talking about things like IBM's focus being hybrid. Yeah. AI. And how did those things come together and who were the participants in that value being delivered? Certainly from red hat's perspective is, as we've said, we've been talking about hybrid and delivering on hybrid for many years now. Now that's being, being pushed as part of the IBM overall message. Um, and so certainly being able to leverage that value and extend it throughout the ecosystem that IBM brings throughout the software that IBM has and their services. You know, certainly we think we've got a, a good opportunity to really take that message broader in the market. Um, you know, with again, with, with both Paul and Jim, president and CEO of red hat working together and we'll be able to take that and leverage that capability throughout all of IBM generally. >>Yeah. I'm glad you brought up the AI piece because one of the things that really struck me, thumb it often we're talking about plot worms and we're talking about infrastructure. And while that is my background, we understand that the reason infrastructure exists is because my Apple, that application and one of the most important piece of applications or data. So, you know, red hat of course has a strong history with hi guys, uh, to applications and data. You, you've got an operating system as you know, one of the core pieces of what you're doing. And when I think about IBM and its strengths, well the first thing I probably think of is services. But the second thing I think of was all of the businesses productivity, uh, the databases, you know, all these applications that IBM has. I read it over the years, uh, wondering if we can just click down one notch and you talk about, uh, you know, hybrid cloud and AI and everything. >>How are IBM and red hat helping customers build all of those new applications go through those transformations, uh, to really be modern enterprises? Yeah, so certainly if you look at red hat's history where we focused very much on building the platforms and again, whether that was red hat, enterprise, Linux open shift or J boss, you know, our focus has been how can we make a standardized platform, it will work across the industry regardless of use case or industry verdict. IBM, you know, has both platforms as well as a lot of investment in capabilities in the higher level value services as well as the specializations. And use of these applications and platforms for specific vertical industries. And a lot of what they've been able to bring to the table with your investments in Watson and AI as well as a lot of their data services has certainly start to come to fruition. >>And when we start taking these two in combination and applying, for example, a focus on developers, developer tools, being able to bring a value to not just uh, the operations folks, but also the developer side and really put a lot of the AI capabilities cross that we're starting to see, you know, accelerated value, accelerated use. And then if you layer that on top of a hybrid approach, you know, we've got a very strong message that crosses everything from, you know, existing applications to net new applications before developing from their DevOps cycle all the way through their operation cycle at the bottom end where they're, they're actually trying to do boy cross multiple platforms, multiple infrastructures, and keep everything consistently managed, secured and operated. And that's, that's really the overall message that we're seeing as we talk about this together with IBM. All right. So, Mike, you touched on some of the products that that red hat, uh, offers in the portfolio. >>Uh, it was, it was a real focus at summit, not really to talk about the announcements, you know, a week before a summit two came out. Yeah. Uh, OpenShift bar dog four wasn't a big w blob. Uh, you know, give us the update on really the red hat portfolio and you know, where are those points? You know, IBM is helping red hat scale. Yeah. So certainly you've touched on some of the big ones, right? Well, OpenShift itself with the four dot. Four release brings a lot of new capabilities, uh, that are being brought forward to those customers. I have a better management, better capabilities and what they can do from monitoring service, et cetera. Um, but certainly also things like what we're doing with OpenShift virtualization, which was another announcement. There were, we're actually doing, you know, bringing a game, changing capability to the market, uh, and enabling customers that have both existing, uh, virtual virtualized environments and also new or, or migrated or transformed a container, native environments and running those on the same platform. >>With the same management infrastructure, we see that as huge to be able to simplify the management capabilities, understand cost and be able to control those environments in a much more consistent way. Uh, secondly, uh, you know, one of the big things that's been happening is really around advanced container management. What we're calling an ACM. Uh, this is, this is a good example of how red hat and IBM have worked together, uh, to bring existing IBM capabilities and what they had called a multi cluster management or MCM and bring those not just into red hat yes. Part of our platforms, but also have red hat take the step of open sourcing that and making it part of the industry standard through open source community. So being able to take that type of value that IBM had matured, take it through red hat into the open source community, but simultaneously deliver it to our customers. >>Yeah. Open shift and make it part of the platform. It's something we really see as, as a huge value add. Mmm. We're also doing a lot more with hyperscalers, especially in the space of OpenShift managed services. Uh, you saw some of those last week and I would encourage everyone to go out and, and look at the Paul Cormier and Scott Guthrie announcements that we did. There was a keynote, a video that you can go review. Uh, but, but certainly, uh, certainly the focus on how do we work with these hyperscalers inclusive of IBM, uh, to make open shift and much more fluid deployment option, have it more, more service oriented, a both on premise and off premise so the customers can actually, uh, work together better in it. Yeah. A red hat I think has always done a really good job of highlighting those partnerships. It's way easy on the outside to talk about the competitive nature of the industry. >>And I remember a few years ago, a red hat made, you know, a strong partnership with AWS. You mentioned, you know, Scott Guthrie from Microsoft. Well, okay. Not Satya Nadella. Okay. Love it last year, but Microsoft long partner. Oh, okay. Of course, with IBM back to the earliest days, uh, and with red hat or, uh, you know, in the much more recent days, uh, there was those partnerships. So critically important. ACM definitely an area, uh, we want to watch it. It was really question we had had, if you look at last year, Microsoft announced Azure, uh, there are lots of solutions announced as to how am I going to manage in this multicloud world. Um, because it's not, my piece is everywhere. It's now I need to manage a lot of things that are out of my control from different vendors and hopefully we learned a lot of the lessons from the multi-vendor era that will be fixed in the multi cloud era. >>Oh, absolutely. And you know, arc was part of our discussion with Scott Guthrie last week or Paul's discussion and you'll see a demo of that. But I would also expect that you'll see more things coming from us markers as well. Right. You know, this is about building a platform, a hybrid platform that works in a multicloud world and being able to describe that in a very consistent way. Manage it. You were at entitled it in a very consistent way of across all the vendors, inclusive of both self and managed services, only one option. And so we're very focused on doing that. Um, IBM, certainly AXA assisting in that, helping grow it. But overall this focus is really about red has perspective about making that hybrid, right? the leading hybrid platform, the leading Coobernetti's. Okay. uh, in the industry. And that's, that's really where starting from with OpenShift. >>All right. So, so Mike, we started out the discussion talking about some of the changes and you know, where red hat stays, red hat and where the company is working together. Obviously the leadership changes. Oh, we're a big piece. Uh, congratulations you, you got, you know, a new role. I've seen quite a few people, uh, with some new titles. Uh, you know, w which is always nice to see. Uh, the, the people that have been working for a long time. The other area where seems from the outside there coordinated effort is around the covert response. So, you know, I've seen the, the public letters from, from Arvin Krishna of course. red hat and Paul Cormier's letter. Well, he is there. Uh, IBM was one of the first companies that we had heard from, uh, that said, Hey, you know, we're not going to RSA conference this year. >>We're moving digital, uh, with the events. So no real focus on them boys. And then of course boarding customers. Yeah. How does that covert response happen? And am I right from the outside that it looks like there, there is a bit of United right attack, this global pandemic response. It is a, you know, I think there's two levels to this. Certainly between red hat and IBM were well coordinated. Um, within, within red hat we have, uh, we have teams that are specifically dedicated to making sure, yeah, our associates and more importantly, uh, our customers and the overall communities are well-served through this. As you said earlier in the interview, uh, certainly we hold back on any significant product announcements at summit, including with some of our partners merely because we wanted to maintain this focus on how can we help everyone through this very unfortunate experience. >>Um, and so, you know, as obviously a lot of us, all of us are sitting at home now globally. Uh, the focus is very much how do we stay connected or we keep the business flowing as much as possible through this and, and, and keep people safe and secure in their environments and make sure that we serve both the customers and the associates. Yes. Awesome away. So there's a lot of sensitivity and we want to make sure that, you know, the industry and the overall world knows, uh, that we're very focused on keeping people healthy and moving forward as we, as we work through this together as a world. Yeah. Well, Mike Ferris, thank you so much for the update. It's been been a pleasure catching up. Great. Thanks dude. Appreciate it. All right. Stay tuned for lots more coverage from IBM. Think 20, 20. The global digital experience. Okay. To a minimum. And thank you. We're watching. Thank you.

Narrator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, it's theCUBE! Covering IBM Think, brought to you by IBM. >> Hello everybody, we're back. And this is theCUBE, and we're covering IBM Think 2020, the Digital Think, and we are covering wall-to-wall. We're here with Keith Dyer, who's the Vice President of Sales and Channels at Cisco, and Laura Guio, long-time friend to CUBE Alum, she's the General Manager of the Global Cisco Alliance, and California Senior State Exec. Folks, welcome back to theCUBE, good to see you again. >> Nice to see you, Dave. >> Good to see you too, Dave. >> Hey, I got to ask you, Laura, what's this California Senior State Executive into your title? Tell me about that. >> So, I'm responsible for all of the IBM population here in the state of California, and during this time of COVID-19, it's been very interesting, so I manage all the, as I call it, care and feeding of the employees up and down the state, and how we're responding to the shelter-in-place orders, and how IBM is responding from an employee perspective. >> Yeah, you know, I've interviewed a number of CXOs, some from both your companies, and that's the theme that we keep hearing, Keith, is: Number one is the health and wellbeing and safety of our employees, and then once that's confirmed, get to work. >> Yeah, it's a completely different environment that we're in, and I mean, Cisco and IBM both being big global companies, coming from being in offices and in environments of working closely with one another to sheltering in  home and working out of our home offices, I think the thing that both of our companies have the ability to do is to empower our folks to do that. And we're doing that, we're doing that both from an individual perspective, with our tools and our technologies, but we're also doing that together, with a lot of the things that this partnership and this alliance brings to this, which is really, you know, being able to provide IT services to remote workers and to be able to still keep this economy moving along. >> Yeah, along with our data partner, ETR, we were one of the first to report that sort of work-from-home offset, how budgets are shifting, in fact, 20% of the CIOs that we surveyed, 1200 CIOs, said their budgets were actually increasing. So, I wonder, Laura, if you could talk about the, you guys had a relationship with Cisco and IBM for a long time. Maybe, talk about some of the go-to-market highlights, and I want to double-click on that. >> Yeah, so we've had a long-standing relationship, over 20 years, that we've partnered together in the marketplace. And because of that long-standing relationship, it gives us an opportunity, not at just the very senior levels of this relationship, but all the way out to the field in the sellers, on what's needed out there from a client perspective. We're constantly coming out with new, integrated solutions, things that answer the questions and the problems that our customers are trying to solve. One in particular, right now, is called Private Cloud Infrastructures as a Service. This with Cisco Technology, and IBM Technology and Services gives the client an answer on how to get that private Cloud in their facility and not have to have the CAPEC question on getting that server portion of that in there. Cisco has a unique opportunity with IBM, to offer that customer. >> So Keith, one of the things I'd like to talk about with any go-to-market strategies is, you get together when you get a market partner and you try to identify the ideal customer, what's the right profile, What's the value proposition. And I'm wondering, just generally, what does that look like for you guys, and then specifically, how has that changed, or has that changed as a result of COVID-19? >> Well, I think a couple of things: One, one of the things where Cisco and IBM have long been partners together has been from a security perspective, and as we move into this new class of workers that are working remotely, and that are working in environments where security is paramount, and one of the work that we've done together around threat management and the way we both have put security measures and security products in place and solutions to help remote workers to be able to work with security into their networks. >> Yeah, so in our reporting, we've noted that it's not just video collaboration tools that are on the uptake, it is things like, whether it's VPNs, networking bandwidth, wide area networks, securing that remote infrastructure. So Laura, maybe, you could help us understand what IBM's bringing to the table, and maybe we can talk about what Cisco's bringing to the table here. >> Well, when you look at it from an IBM perspective, our huge client base out there from a services perspective. Generally, where we start, those customers are looking for end-to-end solutions. So when you take technologies like Cisco has, and combine it with the breadth of technology, around Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, Security, that gives the ability to a client to come to one place, get that end-to-end solution, and feel secure that it is an enterprise-quality solution, that they don't have to worry about all the other part pieces they have to plug in there. >> Yeah, one of the things we've been talking about is: I was just talking to Rob Thomas about this, he said, "You know, Dave, I don't know if anything's "going to really dramatically change with COVID-19, "maybe, it is, maybe it isn't, "but definitely some things are being accelerated. "And when you think about the acceleration to Cloud, talking about the industry angle, Laura, Edge, IOT, I wonder if you guys could talk a little bit about, maybe, start with Keith, do you see there are some learnings here in this period, during this pandemic, that maybe will accelerate, sort of some of those Edge discussions, or the things that we've learned that maybe, would have taken longer to put into practice? Let us start with Keith. >> Yeah, I think first and foremost, it's just getting at the data, and being able to have that data to a decision faster, and that's the whole reason we're really investing around Edge technologies, so that we can take that data in, we can hope it helps us make decisions faster, and get to outcomes for customers better, and a part of that becomes around having the right security postures, but also then being able to link up back to the data center, which is what we do with IBM around HyperCloud. >> Laura, anything you'd add to that from an industry perspective? >> Yeah, I think that the technology that Cisco brings to the table really it helps accelerate that solution, and get what the client's looking for. We had a recent example, well, at the end of last year; we met with a number of manufacturing customers in Europe. And we took them through a solution that we have with the Edge and Security that Cisco offers, the pieces that IBM brings to the table, but the manufacturers really looked at this and said, "Wow! This really gives me that Edge technology that I need, "it provides all the security that I'm looking for, "and allows this manufacturing to line autonomously, "run without having to have that intervention "that a number of other solutions would require." >> You know, it's kind of a sensitive topic when I talk to executives, and when we talk to the CIOs and CSOs with ETR in the roundtable, there was a sensitivity to, and sort of a negative sensitivity to so-called "the ambulance chasing." And so what they don't want is, "Hey, here's a free trial for, you know, "but you got to swipe your credit card, "you have to promise to sign something. "We just don't have time for that." I bring that up because Cisco and IBM came up in this roundtable as two companies, there were others, too, by the way, that were really responding well from the customer perspective. And these were industries that were hard-hit, you know, we're talking about airlines, we're talking about hospitality, really hard-hit types of industries, and they called out IBM, Cisco, and as I say, seven or eight other companies, so I think the industry, because you guys are large companies, established companies, they expect more of you. They expect kind of adult supervision, if you will, in the room. I wonder if you could talk about, maybe, some of the other things that, but first of all, react to that, and tell me the other things, Laura, that, maybe, you guys have done, either as individual companies or jointly. >> Yeah, I'll start and I'll let Keith answer here. So, I liked the comment, "the adults in the room". What we're finding as customers are coming to companies like Cisco and IBM and saying, "Look, I need a solid enterprise solution. "I'm looking for somebody who's tested it, tried-and-true, "that you've got recognition in the industry, "that you're going to bring a complete, "solid solution forward." And so we are being tapped into as two companies, to really bring us two to the clients, they don't have a whole lot of time right now to go figure it out, and they believe in us, and what we've been able to provide for the market. >> Yeah, and one of the things that I would add to that was that the investment that both of our companies are making, really just in our customers, and helping them get through this journey. You know, we both have fantastic CEOs, who are really visionaries, and who are really beginning to look at, and how they can help accelerate our customers, so that when we get on the other side we're stronger and we're able to deliver technology, and be able to deliver to our customers. You know, Laura and I, we're inundated, almost on a daily basis of requests and support. And we've actually had a grassroots effort that really kind of bore up through our sales teams are providing education and providing services in the education sector, using IBM technology, and using Cisco Webex Technology. We've been partnering with other partners, such as Samsung and Apple, to deliver those on devices, and you know, these aren't necessarily things that came out of the CEO offices, these were solutions and efforts that are grassrooted up through our organization, because of the strong partnership that we have in the industry. >> I love that, because, I mean, we've all been touched by education, kids' remote learning, healthcare's another one. I mean, everybody knows somebody, you know, a nurse, or now the first responders, "the today's heroes", that are having to really risk their lives, literally, every day when they go into work, and that is happening on the front lines, so Keith, I appreciate your comment, that it's a grassroots effort and Laura, you got a new CEO, you know, Arvind, stepped into this and I'm excited to talk to him about his first moves, but any other color you can add to that, or other initiatives that you've seen in the field? >> Yeah, so Keith touched on it just a moment ago there, you talk about the ICUs in the hospitals. Almost a month ago when this all started, I sat there watching the news, watching people dying in the hospital without a chance to really talk to their family members, and the burden that it was putting onto the health care professionals. We came up with, I said, there's a solution there, went to Keith, said, "You know, we've got Webex, "we've got other things in the portfolio," went to Samsung, they have devices that are military-grade, that'll work there. We were able to put a solution together pretty quickly. We've got a number of hospitals that are evaluating it right now, we're almost ready to roll this out, but that just goes to a mature company that has all this security and interactions with other companies that have the part pieces that you need, and then test it, make sure it's secure, that it's enterprise-grade, and get it out there. There's not many companies in the world that can do that. >> Well, I think that goes to what you were saying before, I called it "adult supervision," but I talked to Sri Srinivasan, who runs Cisco's Collaboration division, and as they say, the CIOs told us, "You know, we're really off-put "by people trying to sell us," but what Sri told me was that Cisco made a free-offering, no swipe of the credit card, "Hey, if you buy something down the road that's fine, "if you don't, you know, doesn't matter." And that's the kind of leadership that I think people expect from companies like IBM and Cisco, quite frankly. >> Yeah, and you know, Dave, what Sri and what Chuck did there, you know, that wasn't easy to do, I mean, we've essentially doubled and almost tripled our capacity of Webex as we've gone through this, and we were just absolutely, that organization that is working well overtime, overtime, overtime. Laura and I were able to take that, take some of that technology, be able to get out in the front, and truly it's not about creating revenue right now, it's about helping get our customers through this crisis together. We'll worry about, you know, commercial opportunities that come down the road. >> Yeah, and those will happen, those are going to be outcomes of your business practices, and talking to Rob Thomas, and again, and he'd been the data angle here, all the data, the data sources, the data quality, you're seeing it. You see even the maps, you see even the real-time updates, I mean, things change, literally, on a day-to-day basis, and that's kind of IBM's wheelhouse, really. >> Yeah, yeah. And we're addressing a lot of that with what we're doing here between our two companies, and providing that solution, getting to that data, get it securely where it needs to be. We've been on the forefront of providing from an IBM perspective, around the COVID information that's being used around the world through our weather company application that we have out there. We've offered up the mainframe technologies, and our supercomputers around, be able to help hospitals and those that are working on vaccines and all of that information, so you've got to have the networking piece of that, you've got to have the technology that it works on, and then you've got to have that data that you can access and manipulate quickly to get those answers out. >> Yeah, and Cisco, IBM, it's been a partnership that made a lot of sense, there's not a ton of overlap in your portfolios, which is quite amazing given the size of your companies. You know, there is some, but generally speaking, it's been a pretty productive partnership. Keith, Laura, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE, sharing a little bit of information, and thanks for what you're doing during this crisis. Stay safe. >> Thanks Dave. Thanks Dave. >> All right, you're welcome. And thank you for watching. Everybody, this is Dave Vellante, our wall-to-wall coverage of IBM's Digital Think 2020. You're watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, it's theCUBE, covering IBM Think brought to you by IBM. >> Hi, there, this is Dave Vellante. We're back at the IBM Think 2020 Digital Event Experience are socially responsible and distant. I'm here in the studios in Marlborough, our team in Palo Alto. We've been going wall to wall coverage of IBM Think, Kit Chee here is the Vice President, and general manager of Cloud and Enterprise sales at Intel. Kit, thanks for coming on. Good to see you. >> Thank you, Dave. Thank you for having me on. >> You're welcome, and Evaristus Mainsah, Mainsah is here. Mainsah, he is the general manager of the IBM Cloud Pack Ecosystem for the IBM Cloud. Evaristus, it's good to see you again. Thank you very much, I appreciate your time. >> Thank you, Dave. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. >> You're welcome, so Kit, let me start with you. How are you guys doing? You know, there's this pandemic, never seen it before. How're things where you are? >> Yeah, so we were quite fortunate. Intel's had an epidemic leadership team. For about 15 years now, we have a team consisting of medical safety and operational professionals, and this same team has, who has navigated as across several other health issues like bad flu, Ebola, Zika and each one and one virus then navigating us at this point with this pandemic. Obviously, our top priority as it would be for IBM is protecting the health and well being of employees while keeping the business running for our customers. The company has taken the following measures to take care of it direct and indirect workforce, Dave and to ensure business continuity throughout the developing situation. They're from areas like work from home policies, keeping hourly workers home and reimbursing for daycare, elderly care, helping with WiFi policies. So that's been what we've been up to Intel's manufacturing and supply chain operations around the world world are working hard to meet demand and we are collaborating with supply pains of our customers and partners globally as well. And more recently, we have about $16 Million to support communities, from frontline health care workers and technology initiatives like online education, telemedicine and compute need to research. So that's what we've been up to date. Pretty much, you know, busy. >> You know, every society that come to you, I have to say my entire career have been in the technology business and you know, sometimes you hear negative toward the big tech but, but I got to say, just as Kit was saying, big tech has really stepped up in this crisis. IBM has been no different and, you know, tech for good and I was actually I'm really proud. How are you doing in New York City? >> Evaristus: No, thank you, Dave, for that, you know, we are, we're doing great and, and our focus has been absolutely the same, so obviously, because we provide services to clients. At a time like this, your clients need you even more, but we need to focus on our employees to make sure that their health and their safety and their well being is protected. And so we've taken this really seriously, and actually, we have two ways of doing this. One of them is just on to purpose as a, as a company, on our clients, but the other is trying to activate the ecosystem because problems of this magnitude require you to work across a broad ecosystem to, to bring forth in a solution that are long lasting, for example, we have a call for code, which where we go out and we ask developers to use their skills and open source technologies to help solve some technical problems. This year, the focus was per AVADA initiatives around computing resources, how you track the Coronavirus and other services that are provided free of charge to our clients. Let me give you a bit more color, so, so IBM recently formed the high performance computing consortium made up of the feYderal government industry and academic leaders focus on providing high performance computing to solve the COVID-19 problem. So we're currently we have 33 members, now we have 27 active products, deploying something like 400 teraflops as our petaflop 400 petaflops of compute to solve the problem. >> Well, it certainly is challenging times, but at the same time, you're both in the, in the sweet spot, which is Cloud. I've talked to a number of CIOs who have said, you know, this is really, we had a cloud strategy before but we're really accelerating our cloud strategy now and, and we see this as sort of a permanent effect. I mean, Kit, you guys, big, big on ecosystem, you, you want frankly, a level playing field, the more optionality that you can give to customers, you know, the better and Cloud is really been exploding and you guys are powering, you know, all the world's Clouds. >> We are, Dave and honestly, that's a huge responsibility that we undertake. Before the pandemic, we saw the market through the lens of four key mega trends and the experiences we are all having currently now deepens our belief in the importance of addressing these mega trends, but specifically, we see marketplace needs around key areas of cloudification of everything below point, the amount of online activities that have spiked just in the last 60 days. It's a testimony of that. Pervasive AI is the second big area that we have seen and we are now resolute on investments in that area, 5G network transformation and the edge build out. Applications run the business and we know enterprise IT faces challenges when deploying applications that require data movement between Clouds and Cloud native technologies like containers and Kubernetes will be key enablers in delivering end to end data analytics, AI, machine learning and other critical workloads and Cloud environments at the edge. Pairing Intel's data centric portfolio, including Intel's obtain SSPs with Red Hat, Openshift, and IBM Cloud Paks, enterprise can now break through storage bottlenecks and have unconstrained data availability in the hybrid and multicloud environments, so we're pretty happy with the progress we're making that together with IBM. >> Yeah, Evaristus, I mean, you guys are making some big bets. I've, you know, written and discussed in my breaking analysis, I think a lot of people misunderstand IBM Cloud, Ginni Rometty arm and a bow said, hey, you know, we're after only 20% of the workloads are in cloud, we're going after the really difficult to move workloads and the hybrid workloads, that's really the fourth foundation that Arvin you know, talks about, that you and IBM has built, you know, your mainframes, you have middleware services, and in hybrid Cloud is really that fourth sort of platform that you're building out, but you're making some bets in AI. You got other services in the Cloud like, like blockchain, you know, quantum, we've been having really interesting discussions around quantum, so I wonder if you can talk a little bit about sort of where you're allocating resources, some of the big bets that, that you're making for the next decade. >> Well, thank you very much, Dave, for that. I think what we're seeing with clients is that there's increasing focus on and, and really an acceptance, that the best way to take advantage of the Cloud is through a hybrid cloud strategy, infused with data, so it's not just the Cloud itself, but actually what you need to do to data in order to make sure that you can really, truly transform yourself digitally, to enable you to, to improve your operations, and in use your data to improve the way that you work and improve the way that you serve your clients. And what we see is and you see studies out there that say that if you adopt a hybrid cloud strategy, instead of 2.5 times more effective than a public cloud only strategy, and Why is that? Well, you get thi6ngs such as you know, the opportunity to move your application, the extent to which you move your applications to the Cloud. You get things such as you know, reduction in, in, in risk, you, you get a more flexible architecture, especially if you focus on open certification, reduction and certification reduction, some of the tools that you use, and so we see clients looking at that. The other thing that's really important, especially in this moment is business agility, and resilience. Our business agility says that if my customers used to come in, now, they can't come in anymore, because we need them to stay at home, we still need to figure out a way to serve them and we write our applications quickly enough in order to serve this new client, service client in a new way. And well, if your applications haven't been modernized, even if you've moved to the Cloud, you don't have the opportunity to do that and so many clients that have made that transformation, figure out they're much more agile, they can move more easily in this environment, and we're seeing the whole for clients saying yes, I do need to move to the Cloud, but I need somebody to help improve my business agility, so that I can transform, I can change with the needs of my clients, and with the demands of competition and this leads you then to, you know, what sort of platform do you need to enable you to do this, it's something that's open, so that you can write that application once you can run it anywhere, which is why I think the IBM position with our ecosystem and Red Hat with this open container Kubernetes environment that allows you to write application once and deploy it anywhere, is really important for clients in this environment, especially, and the Cloud Paks which is developed, which I, you know, General Manager of the Cloud Pak Ecosystem, the logic of the Cloud Paks is exactly that you'll want plans and want to modernize one, write the applications that are cloud native so that they can react more quickly to market conditions, they can react more quickly to what the clients need and they, but if they do so, they're not unlocked in a specific infrastructure that keeps them away from some of the technologies that may be available in other Clouds. So we have talked about it blockchain, we've got, you know, Watson AI, AI technologies, which is available on our Cloud. We've got the weather, company assets, those are key asset for, for many, many clients, because weather influences more than we realize, so, but if you are locked in a Cloud that didn't give you access to any of those, because you hadn't written on the same platform, you know, that's not something that you you want to support. So Red Hat's platform, which is our platform, which is open, allows you to write your application once and deploy it anyways, particularly our customers in this particular environment together with the data pieces that come on top of that, so that you can scale, scale, because, you know, you've got six people, but you need 600 of them. How do you scale them or they can use data and AI in it? >> Okay, this must be music to your ears, this whole notion of you know, multicloud because, you know, Intel's pervasive and so, because the more Clouds that are out there, the better for you, better for your customers, as I said before, the more optionality. Can you6 talk a little bit about the rela6tionship today between IBM and Intel because it's obviously evolved over the years, PC, servers, you know, other collaboration, nearly the Cloud is, you know, the latest 6and probably the most rel6evant, you know, part of your, your collaboration, but, but talk more about what that's like you guys are doing together that's, that'6s interesting and relevant. >> You know, IBM and Intel have had a very rich history of collaboration starting with the invention of the PC. So for those of us who may take a PC for granted, that was an invention over 40 years ago, between the two companies, all the way to optimizing leadership, IBM software like BB2 to run the best on Intel's data center products today, right? But what's more germane today is the Red Hat piece of the study and how that plays into a partnership with IBM going forward, Intel was one of Red Hat's earliest investors back in 1998, again, something that most people may not realize that we were in early investment with Red Hat. And we've been a longtime pioneer of open source. In fact, Levin Shenoy, Intel's Executive Vice President of Data Platforms Group was part of COBOL Commies pick up a Red Hat summit just last week, you should definitely go listen to that session, but in summary, together Intel and Red Hat have made commercial open source viable and enterprise and worldwide competing globally. Basically, now we've65 used by nearly every vertical and horizontal industr6y. We are bringing our customers choice, scalability and speed of innovation for key technologies today, such as security, Telco, NFV, and containers, or even at ease and most recently Red Hat Openshift. We're very excited to see IBM Cloud Packs, for example, standardized on top of Openshift as that builds the foundation for IBM chapter two, and allows for Intel's value to scale to the Cloud packs and ultimately IBM customers. Intel began partnering with IBM on what is now called Pax over two years ago and we 6are committed to that success and scaling that, try ecosystem, hardware partners, ISVs and our channel. >> Yeah, so theCUBE by the way, covered Red Hat summit last week, Steve Minima and I did a detailed analysis. It was awesome, like if we do say so ourselves, but awesome in the sense of, it allowed us to really sort of unpack what's going on at Red Hat and what's happening at IBM. Evaristus, so I want to come back to you on this Cloud Pack, you got, it's, it's the kind of brand that you guys have, you got Cloud Packs all over the place, you got Cloud Packs for applications, data, integration, automation, multicloud management, what do we need to know about Cloud pack? What are the relevant components there? >> Evaristus: I think the key components is so this is think of this as you know, software that is designed that is Cloud native is designed for specific core use cases and it's built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Red Hat Openshift container Kubernetes environment, and then on top of that, so you get a set of common services that look right across all of them and then on top of that, you've got specific both open source and IBM software that deals with specific plant situations. So if you're dealing with applications, for example, the open source and IBM software would be the run times that you need to write and, and to blow applications to have setups. If you're dealing with data, then you've got Cloud Pack to data. The foundation is still Red Hat Enterprise Linux sitting on top of with Red Hat Openshift container Kubernetes environment sitting on top of that providing you with a set of common services and then you'll get a combination of IBM zone open, so IBM software as well as open source will have third party software that sits on top of that, as well as all of our AI infrastructure that sits on top of that and machine learning, to enable you to do everything that you need to do, data to get insights updates, you've got automation to speed up and to enable us to do work more efficiently, more effectively, to make your smart workers better, to make management easier, to help management manage work and processes, and then you've got multicloud management that allows you to see from a single pane, all of your applications that you've deployed in the different Cloud, because the idea here, of course, is that not all sitting in the same Cloud. Some of it is on prem, some of it is in other Cloud, and you want to be able to see and deploy applications across all of those. And then you've got the Cloud Pack to security, which has a combination of third party offerings, as well as ISV offerings, as well as AI offerings. Again, the structure is the same, REL, Red Hat Openshift and then you've got the software that enables you to manage all aspects of security and to deal with incidents when, when they arise. So that gives you data applications and then there's integration, as every time you start writing an application, you need to integrate, you need to access data security from someplace, you need to bring two pipes together for them to communicate and we use a Cloud Pack for integration to allow us to do that. You can open up API's and expose those API so others writing application and gain access to those API's. And again, this idea of resilience, this idea of agility, so you can make changes and you can adapt data things about it. So that's what the Cloud Pack provides for you and Intel has been an absolutely fantastic partner for us. One of the things that we do with Intel, of course, is to, to work on the reference architectures to help our certification program for our hardware OEMs so that we can scale that process, get many more OEMs adopt and be ready for the Cloud Packs and then we work with them on some of the ISV partners and then right up front. >> Got it, let's talk about the edge. Kity, you mentioned 5G. I mean it's a really exciting time, (laughs) You got windmills, you got autonomous vehicles, you got factories, you got to ship, you know, shipping containers. I mean, everything's getting instrumented, data everywhere and so I'm interested in, let's start with Intel's point of view on the edge, how that's going to evolve, you know what it means to Cloud. >> You know, Dave, it's, its definitely the future and we're excited to partner with IBM here. In addition to enterprise edge, the communication service providers think of the Telcos and take advantage of running standardized open software at the Telco edge, enabling a range of new workloads via scalable services, something that, you know, didn't happen in the past, right? Earlier this year, Intel announced a new C on second generation, scalable, atom based processes targeting the 5G radio access network, so this is a new area for us, in terms of investments going to 5G ran by deploying these new technologies, with Cloud native platforms like Red Hat Openshift and IBM Cloud Packs, comm service providers can now make full use of their network investments and bring new services such as Artificial Intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality and gaming to the market. We've only touched the surface as it comes to 5G and Telco but IBM Red Hat and Intel compute together that I would say, you know, this space is super, super interesting, as more developed with just getting started. >> Evaristus, what do you think this means for Cloud and how that will evolve? Is this sort of a new Cloud that will form at the edge? Obviously, a lot of data is going to stay at the edge, probably new architectures are going to emerge and again, to me, it's all about data, you can create more data, push more data back to the Cloud, so you can model it. Some of the data is going to have to be done in real time at the edge, but it just really extends the network to new horizons. >> Evaristus: It does exactly that, Dave and we think of it and which is why I thought it will impact the same, right? You wouldn't be surprised to see that the platform is based on open containers and that Kubernetes is container environment provided by Red Hat and so whether your data ends up living at the edge or your data lives in a private data center, or it lives in some public Cloud, and how it flows between all of them. We want to make it easy for our clients to be able to do that. So this is very exciting for us. We just announced IBM Edge Application Manager that allows you to basically deploy and manage applications at endpoints of all these devices. So we're not talking about 2030, we're talking about thousands or hundreds of thousands. And in fact, we're working with, we're getting divided Intel's device onboarding, which will enable us to use that because you can get that and you can onboard devices very, very easily at scale, which if you get that combined with IBM Edge Application Manager, then it helps you onboard the devices and it helps you divide both central devices. So we think this is really important. We see lots of work that moving on the edge devices, many of these devices and endpoints now have sufficient compute to be able to run them, but right now, if they are IoT devices, the data has been transferred to hundreds of miles away to some data center to be processed and enormous pass and then only 1% of that actually is useful, right? 99% of it gets thrown away. Some of that actually has data residency requirements, so you may not be able to move the data to process, so why wouldn't you just process the data where the data is created around your analytics where the data is spread, or you have situations that are disconnected as well. So you can't actually do that. You don't want to stop this still in the supermarket, because there's, you lost connectivity with your data center and so the importance of being able to work offline and IBM Edge Application Manager actually allows you so it's tournament so you can do all of this without using lots of people because it's a process that is all sort or automated, but you can work whether you're connected or you're disconnected, and then you get replication when you get really, really powerful for. >> All right, I think the developer model is going to be really interesting here. There's so many new use cases and applications. Of course, Intel's always had a very strong developer ecosystem. You know, IBM understands the importance of developers. Guys, we've got to wrap up, but I wonder if you could each, maybe start with Kit. Give us your sense as to where you want to see this, this partnership go, what can we expect over the next, you know, two to five years and beyond? >> I think it's just the area of, you know, 5G, and how that plays out in terms of edge build out that we just touched on. I think that's a really interesting space, what Evaristus has said is spot on, you know, the processing, and the analytics at the edge is still fairly nascent today and that's growing. So that's one area, building out the Cloud for the different enterprise applications is the other one and obviously, it's going to be a hybrid world. It's not just a public Cloud world on prem world. So the whole hybrid build out What I call hybrid to DoD zero, it's a policy and so the, the work that both of us need to do IBM and Intel will be critical to ensure that, you know, enterprise IT, it has solutions across the hybrid sector. >> Great. Evaristus, give us the last word, bring us home. >> Evaristus: And I would agree with that as well, Kit. I will say this work that you do around the Intel's market ready solutions, right, where we can bring our ecosystem together to do even more on Edge, some of these use cases, this work that we're doing around blockchain, which I think you know, again, another important piece of work and, and I think what we really need to do is to focus on helping clients because many of them are working through those early cases right now, identify use cases that work and without commitment to open standards, using exactly the same standard across like what you've got on your open retail initiative, which we're going to do, I think is going to be really important to help you out scale, but I wanted to just add one more thing, Dave, if you if you permit me. >> Yeah. >> Evaristus: In this COVID era, one of the things that we've been able to do for customers, which has been really helpful, is providing free technology for 90 days to enable them to work in an offline situation to work away from the office. One example, for example, is the just the ability to transfer files and bandwidth, new bandwidth is an issue because the parents and the kids are all working from home, we have a protocol, IBM Aspera, which will make available customers for 90 days at no cost. You don't need to give us your credit card, just log on and use it to improve the way that you work. So your bandwidth feels as if you are in the office. We have what's an assistant that is now helping clients in more than 18 countries that keep the same thing, basically providing COVID information. So those are all available. There's a slew of offerings that we have. We just want listeners to know that they can go on the IBM website and they can gain those offerings they can deploy and use them now. >> That's huge. I knew about the 90 day program, I didn't realize a sparrow was part of that and that's really important because you're like, Okay, how am I going to get this file there? And so thank you for, for sharing that and guys, great conversation. You know, hopefully next year, we could be face to face even if we still have to be socially distant, but it was really a pleasure having you on. Thanks so much. Stay safe, and good stuff. I appreciate it. >> Evaristus: Thank you very much, Dave. Thank you, Kit. Thank you. >> Thank you, thank you. >> All right, and thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Volante for theCUBE, our wall to wall coverage of the IBM Think 2020 Digital Event Experience. We'll be right back right after this short break. (upbeat music)

[Music] from the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston it's the cube covering the IBM think brought to you by IBM hi everybody we're back and this is Dave Valentine you're watching the cubes coverage of the IBM think 20/20 digital event experience lisa cisco is here she's the global head of go to market and IBM cloud at wit-pro Lisa good to see you thanks for coming on how you doing you're welcome how things holding up down in Florida you guys staying safe good working from home like like most of us everyone's doing good so I want to ask you don't go right to it talk about digital transformation and I want to get your take and maybe share some thoughts that we've heard from clients but digital transformation you're kind of in the heart of it you've got cloud you do and work with cognitive and AI and and blockchain and and the like so what are you seeing in terms of how clients are adopting this notion this digital transformation journey and how has kovat affected that great question so the hopefully the digital transformation won't always be about Kovan but there always will be a need for companies to move quickly and adopt new technologies and do things that are unexpected whether that's from an acquisition or an unexpected competitive move or new market that they want to be in so any of those things and affect businesses and what we're seeing right now is businesses who have adopted digital technology and by extension adopted cloud as the backbone to that digital technology have been able to move faster in this environment they're able to do things like work from home they're able to ensure security is in place they're able to give their employees and their customers access to information in a faster and more cost-effective way and so we're really not excited to have coated but we're really it's an interesting time to be looking at digital technologies and first mover advantages here and the digital Tudo era is all about enabling business responsiveness and those are the things that we're doing with the technology plays that we're working on today yeah I mean the customers we've talked to the the CIOs the CISOs they've said in many hard-hit industries hey we basically has shut down spending with some exceptions digital transformation being one of them you've got experience in two areas that are being affected pretty dramatically by kovat want a supply chain on the other is e-commerce you know supply chains are just you know especially for a while we're just in shambles or seeming to come back you know a little bit but what have you seen from the supply chain and what do you think what kind of changes do you expect are gonna be affected by koban going forward so again this was an area that if you had invested in your supply chain and you have automated some of those processes you're having an easier time onboarding your suppliers and knowing where your shipments are and understanding what your forward-looking position is going to be if you haven't done those things um even though your IT budgets might be being slashed they're things that you have to do right now and so doing some of those things using supply chain automation on the cloud it's it's um it's the right way for companies to go right now that find themself in a predicament and maybe aren't as prepared as they'd like to be so some of the technologies that we're helping bring to market we've we're seeing results with with things like five times faster adoption and 40% more cost efficient than if they weren't trying to do these things in an automated way using the cloud and so for companies that that need help doing this iBM has some of the best supply chain solutions in the market and and Wipro certainly has years of experience bringing those turquoise and then e-commerce is the other one I mean obviously there's been an explosion nobody wants to go out if they don't have to we're ordering anything and everything online there's been a kind of similar situation right if you if you had your kind of e-commerce you know we have you been running water through the pipes and you've perfected that over the last you know a couple of years or part of a decade then you're in pretty good shape but what are you seeing there with if you didn't have a loyal customer base now the time to really get used to interacting with your customers in that way so restaurants for example think the local mom-and-pop shops I live in a small town outside of Orlando and I'm seeing little businesses get online and and sew clothing and wine and things that they wouldn't normally see and dabbling in e-commerce so it's it's really comfortable for most people now to buy things online and we're seeing services that you wouldn't normally be be having online things like education k12 all allerjies everything can be pretty much bought on-line these days or consumed in a digital format and so I think again customers that have experience in doing this are ahead of the curve and customers that don't are going to quickly find that they have too I want to turn our attention to in the conversation to cloud and get your perspectives I mean I've reported a number of times that you know the IBM cloud it's not it's not an infrastructure as a service and the race to the bottom obviously IBM offers infrastructure of service but IBM strategy is not to try to take AWS head-on and you know storage cost per bit it's really to bring value through its software estate and portfolio and help its customers really take advantage of that the cloud model how are you and your clients taking advantage of the IBM cloud what kind of solutions do you have that are that are specific that leverage the IBM cloud that's correct we have two solutions that we're working on building out with with IBM and leveraging hybrid clouds so for an environment where 94% of enterprises have multiple clouds now they all have a combination of AWS or Azure or private clouds or IBM cloud and 73% of our clients see the ability to move between those clouds as a high priority and we are addressing that with two main solutions that we've built out at with row one is called our boundary list enterprise solution and you can think of that as the infrastructure and the knowledge we've taken the knowledge from thousands of successful hybrid cloud migrations that we've done and we've built it into this framework to help our customers be able to have a single dashboard and manage their view across hybrid cloud in an automated way and be able to be nimble and move between those clouds as business requirements it demand that they do and so that's the boundary-less Enterprise side the other side that we're working on with IBM is the application and integration modernization and we have a solution that we call moderniser and that is using some of the IBM technologies some third-party technologies and again the with our knowledge from our successful engagement and making it so that we can easily see what the workload is going to be to contain a rise and a single integration methodology that we're going to be bringing to our clients to help them be able to do this in a in an automated in a better way a faster way a more economical way so those are the two things that we're working on now and some of IBM's products are under the covers things like multiple cloud manager some of their DevOps and automation tools and there's some some tools again from third parties in firmware that we've brought in there as well so the boundary let's enterprise them in the idea there is that you've got a layer that allows you to go across clouds and have the same experience whether you're on pram whether you're in an Amazon Cloud and IBM cloud as you're wherever is that correct and it's a single sort of cloud experience single dashboard you know glass that you can look and you can serve you know in an IT environment your constituents the best way possible so that you're not locked into any cloud vendor and you can take advantage of where your workloads need to go and the modernization piece the modernized moderniser you talk about how clients are approaching it where do they start when they modernize their applicants that they do kind of and you help them do an application portfolio assessment they identify the high value workloads in their portfolio maybe the ones that they're going to sunset is a rationalization exercise the first step may be to talk about that every client is different but if the plant was to approach us and recommend the best practice we actually have a free two-week consulting engagement that we use for our clients that take a look at the workloads that they have and potentially will want to move to good we help them organize those workloads and figure out what the low-hanging fruit will be the things that will take a little bit more time on the things that are going to give them the highest bang for the buck and we will make some recommendations to them and that that two-week engagement about how to get started what about the I wanna shift gears talk about the you guys done in India with the Novus lab what is that all about what kind of expertise is there how does how two clients take advantage of that so we in IBM and out of the first soon-to-be announced we've just built it and we're soon to launch the I began with pro nobis loan you know this is the latin word from new or for innovation and that's what we plan to be doing in this lounge together so we have we pro talent and 150 seats where we'll have clients and different experts coming in and in residing in that center as well as access to all of the products i just talked about we'll be working closely with the IBM on GSI labs and bringing in new technologies building out new solutions so everything from taking supply chain to the next step to adding additional industry solutions one of the first things that we're going to do in that IBM Davis line just take advantage of the new IBM finance services cloud which is going to be a covering cloud focused at that industry and we're really excited to get started working on that technology to bring in our clients so ok so that's a that's an example of an industry solution and it's what it's it's optimized or for for banking and financial services or explain that if you would that's correct so iBM has worked with their clients in the financial services industry and they have packaged some of the governance and security and regulations that are needed for the financial services industry and they've put that into a solution that they'll be rolling out shortly I'm sure you'll hear more about it at IBM thing and that solution is going to be based on the industry guidelines by country on rolling out in the US and then shortly to Europe and we're going to be able to use that to jumpstart a lot of the workloads that we want to bring to our financial services clients without having to make them reinvent the wheel or all of the governance and security and regulatory things that they need well I can see you guys doing this across multiple industries kind of an out of the box you know tune something for retail government financial services Manufacturing healthcare where you've got the the requisite of security and compliance edicts depending on where you are in the world if it's a global organization you're able to you know identify what those local laws are maybe there's certain analytics capabilities and dashboards that you'd include is that is that kind of the right way to think about this that's exactly where we're headed and we're already starting to talk about healthcare as the next industry where we tackling after the services yeah well I mean the healthcare is that there are so heads down right now yeah believe you know we could think they'd come out of this and take a take a little breather and then can really you know get back to some of the more strategic things that they want to do in the industry I'll leave you with the last word kind of where you see the IBM Wipro partnership going you know what's your vision for that we really like IBM's approach in terms of avoiding vendor lock-in but we love what's happened with the acquisition of Red Hat and being able to use that technology more easily in our solutions we think that the industry approach is the right approach all of those things will have our focus in the noon double Ange this year and so while things are unusual in this current environment and we have a lot of things that we have to do immediately to help our clients just be able to survive we're very much looking to the future and what we can bring when this is all over that will help our clients make sure that they're ready for whatever the next Rose might be well Lisa thanks very much for coming on the cube you got a deep experience appreciate you sharing that with our with our audience they say you're welcome and thank you for watching everybody this is Dave Volante for the cube and our continuing coverage wall-to-wall coverage of IBM think 2020 the digital event experience you watch in the cube we were right back right after this short break [Music] you

Narrator: From the Cube studios in Palo Alto and Boston, (upbeat intro music) it's theCUBE! Covering IBM Think. Brought to you by IBM. >> Hi, everybody, we're back. This is Dave Vellante and you're watching theCUBE's coverage of the IBM Think 2020 digital event experience, wall to wall coverage, of course in the remote Cube studios in Palo Alto and Boston. Greg Lotko is here. He's with Broadcom. He's a senior vice president and general manager of the Broadcom mainframe division. Greg, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Hey good seeing you too, happy to be here. >> Hey, lets talk Z. You know, I got to say when Broadcom made a nearly 19 billion dollar acquisition of CA, many people, myself included said, "Huh? I don't really get it." But as you start to see what's happening, the massive CA install base and the cross selling opportunities that have come to Broadcom, you start to connect the dots and say, "Ah, maybe this does make some sense." But you know, how's it going? How's the acquisition been? It's been, you know, what now, two years since that move? >> Yeah we're coming up on two years. I think it kind of shocked the world, right? I mean, there is a lot of value there and the customers that have been using the mainframe and running their core businesses for many, many years, they knew this, right? So Broadcom came in and said, "Hey, you know, I don't think this is the cash cow "that others maybe have been treating it as." You know, we absolutely believed with some investment that you could actually drive greater value to customers and you know, what a novel concept right? You know, expand expense, invest, drive greater value, and that would be the way you'd expand revenue and profit. >> Yeah, I mean I think generally, the mainframe market is misunderstood. It obviously goes in cycles. I did a report, you know, a couple of months ago on really focusing on Z15X, it was last summer. And how historically, IBM performance overall as a company is really driven still by mainframe cycles because it all still drags so much software and services and so we're in the midst of a Z15 tailwind and so, of course, the COVID changes everything. But nonetheless it's a good business. IBM's a dominant player in that business. Customers continue to buy mainframes because it just works. It's too risky to rip 'em out. People say, "Oh, why don't you get rid of the mainframe?" No way customers are going to do that. It's running their business. So it's a fabulous business if you have a play there and clearly... (poor internet connection interrupts Dave speaking) >> Yeah, and if you think about those cycles that's largely driven by the hardware, right? As each generation comes out, and if you look at traditional pricing metrics that really look at using that capacity, or even using full capacity, that's what caused this cyclicality with the software as well but, you know, there's a lot of changes even in that space. I mean with us, with mainframe consumption licensing from Broadcom, with IBM doing tailor fit pricing, you know, the idea that you can have that headroom on the hardware and then pay as you go, pay as you grow. I think that actually will smooth out and remove some of that cyclicality from the software space. And as you said, correctly, you look at the COVID stuff going on, I mean there's an awful lot of transactions going on online. People are obviously checking their financials with the economics going on. The shipping companies are booming with what they have to do, so that's actually driving transactions up as well, to use that capacity that's in the boxes. >> Yeah, and financial services is actually in really good... I know that the stocks have been hit, but the liquidity in the banks is very, very strong because of the 2009 crisis. So the fiscal policy sort of, you know, dictated that or, you know, the public policy dictated that. And the banks are obviously huge consumers of mainframe. >> Sure. >> One of the things that IBM did years ago was to sort of embrace Linux, was one of its first moves to open up the mainframe. But it's much more than just Linux. I wonder if you could talk about sort of your point of view on open meets mainframe. >> Yeah, so open is way more than just Linux, right? I mean Linux is good, running around the mainframe. I mean that's absolutely an open paradigm from the operating system, but open is also about opening up the API's, opening up the connectivities so that it's easier to interact with the platform. And, you know, sometimes people think open is just about dealing with open source. Certainly we've made a lot of investments there. We contributed the command line interface and actually a little more than 50% of the original contribution to the Zowe project, under the OMP, the Open Mainframe Project. So that was about allowing open source technologies that interact with distributed and cloud technologies to now interact with that mainframe. So it's not just the open source technologies, but opening up the API's, so you can then connect across technologies that are on the platform or off platform. >> So what about the developer community? I mean there's obviously a lot of talk in the industry about DevOps. How does DevOps fit into the mainframe world? What about innovations like Agile? And sort of beyond DevOps, if you will. Can you comment on that? >> Yeah, absolutely, I mean you can bring all those paradigms, all those capabilities to the mainframe now with opening up those API's. So I mean we had a large European retail bank that has actually used the Git Bridge that we work with providing, you know, through Zowe, to connect into Endeavor, so they could leverage all the investments they had made in that existing technology over the years, but actually use the same kind of CICD pipeline, the same interaction that they do across distributed platforms and mainframe together, and open up that experience across their development community. What that really means is you're using the same concepts, the same tools that they maybe became comfortable with in university or on different platforms, to then interact with the mainframe and it's not that you're doing anything that, you know, takes away from core capabilities of the mainframe. You're still leveraging the stability, the resiliency, the through put, the service ability. But you're pressing down on it and interacting with it just like you do with other platforms. So it's really cool. And that goes beyond Linux, right? Because you're interacting with capabilities and technologies that are on the mainframe and ZOS environment. >> Yeah, and the hardened security as well, >> Absolutely. >> is another key aspect of the mainframe. Let's talk about cloud. A lot of people talk about cloud, cloud first, multicloud. Where does the mainframe fit in the cloud world? >> So, there's a lot of definitions of cloud out there, right? I mean people will talk about private cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud across multiple private clouds. They'll talk about, you know, this multicloud. We actually talk about it a little differently. We think about the customer's cloud environment. You know, our institution that we're dealing with, say it's a financial institution, to their end customers, their cloud is however you interact. And you think about it. If you're checking an account balance, if you're depositing in a check, if you're doing any of these interactions, you're probably picking up a mobile device or a PC. You're dealing with an edge server, you're going back into distributed servers, and you're eventually interacting with the mainframe and then that's got to come all the way back out to you. That is our customer's cloud. So we talk about their cloud environment, and you have to think about this paradigm of allowing the mainframe to connect through and to all of that while you hit it, preserving the security. So we think of cloud as being much more expansive and the mainframe is an integral part of that, absolutely. >> Yeah, and I've seen some of your discussions where you've talked about and sort of laid out, look, you know, the mainframe sits behind all this other infrastructure that, you know, ultimately the consumer on his or her mobile phone, you know, goes through a gateway, goes through, you know, some kind of site to buy something. But, you know, ends up ultimately doing a transaction and that transaction you want to be, you know, secure. You want it to be accurate. And then how does that happen? The majority of the word's transactions are running on some kind of, you know, IBM mainframe somewhere, in someway touches that transaction. You know, as the world gets more complex, that mainframe is... I called it sort of the hardened, you know, sort of back end. And that has to evolve to be able to adapt to the changes at the front end. And that's really kind of what's happening, whether it's cloud, whether it's mobile, whether it's, you know, Linux, and other open source technology. >> Right, it's fabulous that the mainframe has, you know, IO rates and throughput that no other platform can match, but if you can't connect that to the transactions that the customer is driving to it, then you're not leveraging the value, right? So you really have to think about it from a perspective of how do you open up everything you possibly can on the mainframe while preserving that security? >> I want to end with just talking about the Broadcom portfolio. When you hit the Broadcom mainframe site, it's actually quite mind boggling, the dozens and dozens of services and software capabilities that you provide. How would you describe that portfolio and what do you see as the vision for that portfolio going forward? >> Yeah, so when people normally say portfolio, they're thinking software products, and we have hundreds of software products. But we're looking at our portfolio as more than just the software. Sometimes people talk about, hey let me just talk to you about my latest and greatest product. One of the things we were really afforded the opportunity to do with Broadcom acquiring us was to reinvest, to double down on core products that customers have had for many years and we know that they want to be able to count on for many years to come. But the other really important thing we believe about driving value to our customers was those offerings and capabilities that you put around that, you know? Think about the idea of if you want to migrate off of a competitive product, or if you want to adopt an additional product that have the ability to tie these together. Often in our customer's shops, they don't have all the skills that they need or they just don't have the capacity to do it. So we've been investing in partnership. You know, we kept our services business from, at least the resources, the people, from CA. We rolled them directly into the division and we're investing them in true partnership, working side by side with our customers to help them deploy these capabilities, get up and running, and be successful. And we believe that that's the value of a true partnership. You invest side by side to have them be successful with the software and the capabilities and their operation. >> Well, like I said, it caught a lot of people, myself included, by surprise that acquisition. It was a big number, but you could see it, you know, Broadcom's performance post. You know, the July 2018 acquisition, done quite well. Obviously COVID has affected, you know, much of the market, but it seems to be paying off great. Thanks so much for coming to theCUBE and sharing your insights, and best of luck going forward. Stay safe. >> Pleasure being here. Everybody here, yourself, and everybody out there, be safe, be well. Take care. >> And thank you for everybody for watching. This is theCUBE's coverage of the IBM Think 2020 digital event experience. We'll be right back, right after this short break. You're watching theCUBE. (upbeat outro music)

[Music] from the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston it's the cube covering the IBM thing brought to you by IBM hi everybody this is David Lally you're watching the cube and our multi day coverage of the IBM think Digital 20/20 experience the event experienced wall-to-wall coverage prasad saccharine is here he's the senior managing director at Accenture technology great to see you thanks for coming on for Sun and thank you for having me there pleasure to be on very welcome so um I'm looking at your bio here you're responsible for the relationship with with IBM Red Hat so I'm interested in that and you're driving the Accenture intelligent cloud and engineering practice so we got a lot to talk about here let's start with Red Hat obviously it's probably the most important in at least new part of IBM so here you're in the right spot what's going on with with with Red Hat these days in your practice there oh yeah so you know Red Hat is a extremely important part of our practice I am very much focused on what Accenture does within the hybrid cloud space for our clients and red hat with OpenShift is you know the most powerful platform that there is out there today in helping our clients both innovate in the new as they expand in what they're doing digitally as well as move and modernize some of the equipment they have you know from existing history you know I went when the Red Hat deal was completed I did a little braking analysis my sort of weekly editorial segment and I said you know this this Red Hat acquisition openshift is the linchpin and I went right there right we just went it was all about application modernization and hybrid cloud bringing that cloud experience to on-prem or cross clouds and so that it was always my take you know there was a lot of sort of marketing around cloud generally but but more specifically it's a to me it was always about that application modernization so I'm curious as to how your your clients have responded to that and you know whether or not I'm sort of on the right track there yeah I think there are multiple factors I mean if you look at just broadly the areas I think there are three areas the first as you correctly said there is application modernization so our clients are looking at the amount of technical debt that they have and their legacy systems they're looking to you know modernize the right parts of their legacy estate you know one looking at the trade-off around the costs as well as the performance so Red Hat and open ship really gives them the platform that allows them to do that and make take their journey forward from an app mod perspective onto the clouds and you know the various public clouds the second area is actually in greenfield development so as clients are building new applications they want to be able to you know build applications that they can run across you know multiple platforms whether it's private cloud or public cloud and particularly in areas like Europe I think this is particularly significant and we can talk about that in some more detail and then the third area which is emerging as you know is is the whole area of edge and IOT which is going to actually move a lot of the computer way from the central clouds into the into the edge and you know obviously open ship is going to play a big part there as well bringing all all the three parts of the enterprise as it were you know the edge and the cloud as well as all of the legacy and private estates that exist today so to talk more about Europe what's going on there is that a GDP or a related thing a country you know in country may keep the data in country what is the issue there yeah it's a little bit of board I you know if you look at particularly financial services but certainly other industries as well the regulator's are extremely focused on making sure that you know the right balance is being struck even if you're using public clouds you know they are going to talk about the amount of public cloud usage that can be for every application the various applications that have to be actually running on a private cloud estate so in a scenario like that you will really want to be able to build applications that you can run across you know multiple different platforms and you know open ship gives you the answer to be able to do that to be able to you know have a policy based approach where you know certain workloads can be working on your private cloud and certainly you can move it out to you know public cloud when the need arises result explain the edge angle is that about bringing a programmability or the cloud model to the data at the edge you can explain that more detail sure sure and you know the edge and IOT and the Internet of Things impacts different industries differently you know I can talk about you know since we mentioned financial services let me bring up insurance for example you look at autonomous you know cars and you know self driven vehicles and so on as their going to change daily life what happens in those cases is that you want a lot of that data to be processed at the vehicle level so at the edge rather than a lot of processing happening across the network you know up at the central crowd and then coming back down to the vehicle because the latency just doesn't allow these these sorts of applications to happen you look at multiple industries that are really being impacted by the edge and so as that starts to become more prevalent and about 50 to 60 percent of a lot of this compute moves off of the central cloud through various education what you really want to have is like the versions of these platforms running on those particular devices and the rest of it running either on your private or your central clouds so you have to be able to use and move a lot of these applications which are container base you know platform you know Ginni Rometty now arvind talked about how the only 20% of the workloads have moved to the cloud it's they're really difficult to move workloads that are sort of the next next wave how do you see that evolving from Accenture perspective I think I think you have I mean you get your technology agnostic right I mean you really you know you're not a purveyor of hardware or software and so how do you see as a kind of a quasi-independent here how do you see that that hybrid cloud that cloud journey playing out yeah I think you know the we have the same number by the way I mean we see about when we talk to our clients and we've surveyed several CEOs and CIOs the number we we arrive at is that about 20 percent I think of workloads having moved to the cloud now a lot of that has been SAS based you know they've taken a lot of functions that could really be satified so to speak now comes the part around really taking portions of your legacy estate that you need to move to the cloud whether you're going to do it as a pass or an i as you know doesn't really matter and then you know weave into that the requirements around data privacy around compliance around high performance etc which might either take you to a private cloud type of orientation or take it to various public clouds so there's a lot of that work be done so what we are doing with many of our clients is really working with them taking a lot of our tools we have a tool that that we use called my nav which allows you to really assess a client's legacy estate and figure out you know what part of it that really we should be modernizing and which of the partners brilliant that we need to be working with to be able to modernize that aspect in concurrence with that is all of the new development that's happening on the cloud native development which is naturally glowing going into you know a lot of these public as well as private cloud so a lot of that work the next you know let's say 30 to 40 percent over the next few years is going to be a lot of work that happens and that's going to be heavier lifting as compared to you know the initial 20% that is half of it well heavy heavy lifting is kind of your area of expertise and we think about Accenture deep industry expertise global presence I mean as does IBM empiricist essaouira your relationship with IBM what what's the partnership like maybe you could describe sort of where you guys complement each other I know you compete in certain segments but where do you complement each other you know like you pointed out earlier Dave you know we are we're very much technology agnostic we have been on a public cloud journey for the last several years and really built our skills and our you know support around that what the hyper scale is we're doing in the market as hybrid cloud has evolved over the last you know couple of years especially we see that open shift and Red Hat and IBM you know play a big part in you know in this part of the journey as well as IBM public cloud we see you know the use of IBM public cloud continue to increase in the market so all of these you know companies I think play a very important role in what our clients want to do to take their journeys to the cloud forward so you know we're trying to piece all of that together to to have the right you know solutions to our clients and really brings together I think the aspects one is you know country specific requirements the second is the specific industry that you're talking about and you know the third is technology so really it's a it's an intersection of region technology as well as industry it's something that you know we're naturally good at we have several clients where we do a lot of you know a lot we have deep existing relationships and we certainly partner with IBM very closely we are the largest system integrator of all of IBM software products globally outside of IBM themselves and we've been that maintaining that status for many years we've been doing the same on the Red Hat side so as IBM and Red Hat come together I think at many of our clients we're a very natural consultant and systems integrator for or IBM rather we haven't talked much about multi-cloud this week I know Stu minimun my colleague has been hosting the Red Hat summit and it talked a lot about it but again I want to tap you're sort of you know that you're agnostic brain you look at the landscape and you've got different suppliers coming at it from different angles right AWS won't use the term via Microsoft obviously has a good story there you know Google with anthos etc VMware wants its piece of the pie iBM is kind of to me one of the most interesting with red hat of course because not only does it have its own cloud but it's very aggressive around supporting multiple clouds it's it it seems to be you know intent on doing whatever the client wants clearly that's your business I wonder what you can share with us about your thoughts on on multi cloud specifically yeah absolutely I think you know multi cloud is certainly where a lot of our clients are at and they've started the multi cloud journey you know you know a few years ago they have gone with more than you know maybe one hyper scaler although they have had you know just few workloads perhaps in in in multiple of them and really focused on one of them but as they start increasing the percentage of work that they're doing within the within the clouds they start looking at a lot of these clouds for very specific reason and most of our clients end up using food with P public clouds and when I look at the public cloud certainly you mentioned all of them AWS Microsoft Azure Google you know to the GCP product as well as you know IBM with IBM's public cloud and then with OpenShift really being able to run across all of these public clouds allow you allows you to actually design you know micro services based applications that are containerized and you can you know pretty much run them across whichever cloud you want and this is where we really you know work with our clients to really understand their need and to help them with you know the specific clouds that we won't be working with and which applications really should reside where makes sense for them and like I said from a Europe perspective you know with gdpr etc I think that journey is a little bit you know further advanced than it is perhaps in other places other parts of the world but we're seeing you know much more use of multi-cloud in addition to of course sass and increase user way Superdog your role is global obviously not just yes not just us right pan-pan the world or is it US and Europe no it is its global so it's us Europe as well as what we call the growth market so it includes China then is that correct or yes yeah so okay so now you got Alibaba you know you're playing there that's yet another cloud and so and what your one of the roles that you play as a systems integrator and somebody who's you know trying to trust it is you help customers pick the right workload for the right you know infrastructure and make it work obviously and help them de-risk one of the things we've noted is you know going back to the 80/20 or 20 has moved 80 hasn't it's the hard stuff it's that a lot of that mission-critical stuff hasn't moved in mate may never move but some of it will it just seems to us that you know moving the mission critical workloads is very risky and so what you want to do is make sure that you D risk that maybe keep it on you know if it's an IBM mission-critical workload maybe IBM's got ways to keep it safe in the IBM cloud and you know cross connect them etc I wonder what your thoughts are on moving what has heretofore been hard to move workloads does it make sense to put them in the cloud or does it make sense to put a brick wall around them and leave them on Prem I know it depends but but but maybe you could frame that for us sure absolutely so we have you know a concept that we call digital decoupling and what that really entails is is to take a look at these monolithic applications that are running you know on the back end and then we look at certain speech ER extraction that you know you can you can perform take those features out especially things that will give you access to digital channels you know rewrite those applications containerize them and then be able to run them on on multiple clouds and we've been doing that with you know many clients for example you know large hotel chains where we've taken a lot of that functionality containerized it run it on public clouds and it's only the final commit after you go through the process of figuring out you know what kind of room do you want picking out the various features it's not till the final commit that that happens on the mainframe side so feature extraction through digital decoupling I think offers you tremendous offloading of a lot of those features as well as processing onto the public cloud certainly iBM is also looking at many in many ways in which they can move some of these core functions as well on to their public cloud so I think the journey continues like you said you know it may not be ever that you have a hundred percent of the processing that happens on the public cloud and again we have to take a look at the amount of work that there is the risk reward the cost that it will take and you know with the enormous amount of functionality that has to take place this is where we have to advise our clients on you know the journey as well as the order in which via TP for the landscape we talked earlier about edge you're talking about multiple clouds you've got on-prem you've got mission critical workloads and you mentioned you know containers people want portability of course containers are necessary ingredient of that portability but it's insufficient and so you just see complexity increasing as we as we proceed down this cloud journey you've got to secure those those those those containers and and micro services sometimes aren't so micro you've you've got to make them work across cloud so it seems to me that you guys and your your clients get a lot of work to do which is which is a good thing as long as they make the business case and it's adding value to the organization yeah absolutely and then this is where you know you take certain functions I think you have a lot of sass options particularly around certain things that you're doing that tend to be you know commoditized so to speak certain other functions where you don't need perhaps their elasticity either about offers so you can have you know past solutions that you can build more quickly but then you want other solutions that need to be more mission-critical more resilient and in certainly movement elastic and that's where you know you look at you know producing micro-services containerized applications that you can really burst across you know multiple clouds and so on so these are all part of the architectures that we're building designing and implementing a wrapper Versailles where can I go to get more info on this whole topic from you know a hybrid cloud perspective as well as a public cloud perspective we go to Accenture comm and you do go to the cloud section there's a lot of information as well as credentials and white papers that you'd be able to access and also gives you access to specific people that you can you know reach out to and contact and get for the information on what they've been able to do very interesting conversation prasad and it's great to see you guys working very closely with with IBM i love it two global companies deep industry expertise solving hard problems so thanks so much for coming with you Naruto thank you so much for doing this very welcome and thank you for watching everybody this is Dave Volante and it's a wall-to-wall coverage of the IBM digital event experience around think 2020 we're right back right at this short break you're watching the Hume [Music] you

[Music] from the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston it's the cube covering the IBM think brought to you by IBM hi everybody welcome back to the cubes coverage wall-to-wall coverage of the IBM think 20/20 digital event experience my name is Dave Volante we'll be going really all week and and focusing on the impact of the pandemic how IBM is responding how customers are likely to respond I'm really excited Luke Niazi is here's the global managing director of consumer industries at IBM Luke good to see you nice do you see even that nice to be on the cool I mean if I think about consumer all the assumptions that we made about consumer behavior they're really up in the air right now I wonder if you could share with us what your current thinking is I mean the consumer has powered this global economy years what are you thinking about the consumer right now in the consumer behavior well was he some a massive shift in terms of the immediacy let me this back a little bit Dave and give you a bit of context we did some research at the beginning of the year that we launched the National Retail Federation and we surveyed over 19,000 people globally and that survey showed that they were do be on a shifts that are appearing first of all there was a shift in of the purpose given consumer of the 19,000 people that we surveyed 40% of them said that they were making decisions that were purpose different compared to 41% that make visions that were convenience and that's people who care about sustainability and where products are coming and the other big thing that we saw was popping in micro moments increase digital shopping and of anytime anywhere now of course with the and Emmy we are seeing an acceleration and fastening of those first of all beyond the immediate move panic buying that occurred we've seen a big big shift in online buying and we think like Ron and driver also a reinforcement of this move to more sustainable product and services yeah I mean so right now you have I guess buying for what's available you need something it might not be available as a consumer you're making a lot of trade-offs okay well I'll go for you know alcohol-based hand sanitizer you know as opposed to just conventional hand sanitizer as an example oh well I'll make some trade-offs in tissue paper etcetera etcetera and maybe there's some boredom buying I don't have you've seen that your people are shut-in but though all kinds of of daily changes weekly changes so how do you see this exiting how do you see compute consumer behavior you know changing as we exit this pandemic in waves and we're only sure how we're going to exit well let me kind of break it down in terms of what's been going on right now so of course we saw this massive waves of you know a shift to sanitary products a shift or groceries then we've seen a shift about how can I keep my kids entertained while they're at home and kind of more discretionary choices being much lower so when you kind of look at that in terms of actual impact on business we've seen grocery say in the u.s. up by about twenty seven and we've seen a move on digital in the u.s. about three percent of the of the US population shifts about buys online that's do 43 percent during this period and of course we think that these are things that are going to sustain what it's done is it's accelerate the type of purchases that people are doing in a digital context and we think that that is you know continued by some thoughts the data on the pandemic looks like it's been to continue for many months and and in ways those that we've seen the shifted digital and initially people are kind of looking for things anywhere but it's going to be combined with a kind of a new type of delivery model there's much more buy online pick up in center distribution center pick up our part whether that's you know your groceries or whether that's health related so it's going to change the delivery models it also means of course that stores are going to change a great great deal at the moment grocery stores all have social distancing with the protection of the store associates been you know a key element of that you're gonna see not the same amount of people in those stores going forward and you know a different configuration and application of technology also in store to keep monitoring both the safety of the employees and the safety of the customers but also make sure that occupancy levels are appropriate etc so big shifts the digital the big shifts to different types of delivery models you know big shifts of safety related technology of course what we're also seeing and this is the difficult piece which is if you have discretionary spend fashion apparel luxury the open those volumes are very very significant I mean look I've actually been quite impressed with some providers that have pivoted very quickly to things like curbside pickup and have really responded you know quite fast to that at the same time I've seen others where I mean it's clear that they really didn't have the infrastructure or the processes of their asking hey how how did we do do you mind taking a quick survey because they need to iterate how can I be M help those that really weren't that prepared and it sort of band-aided together some solutions get to the point post pandemic before this thing ends where they really need to be what are you guys doing with client yeah so well first and foremost as the pandemic we focused very much on resilience making sure that our clients but operators as robustly as possible in fact you know 95 percent to our services are being delivered it just began and remotely right what then happened was how do I deal with these massive volumes of airing in my two centers where by the way I have less staff because the people are I having to even themselves safe and social distance and so we deployed immediately beyond our resiliency solutions all centers that are helping our clients booth by aura ties and scream one of our major retail clients in the u.s. said you know I thought that the Watson Chapman knowledge ease were going to be helpful they weren't just helpful they saved us and so that kind of things occurring in the immediate that's the next piece of course you then start see is that finds have realized that both their digital panels and their fulfillment models have not been able to keep up nobody is being able to keep up with the demand that's not even Amazon's been able to keep up and what was you know a 24 or 48 hour delivery slot those those kind of slots have gone out the window so we are going to see a wave of reinvest in enhancing digital channels and we will leverage no both our our services business as well as our cloud knowledge ease to support that and then underpinning that you you're also seeing a need to rebalance the supply chain because of course where products come from have changed where is vsauce is now having to move much more from a global supply chain to a global local supply chain and we're having to balance supply with more local providers and so is a there's a demand supply balancing to be done that means that eyes are and i think about the practicalities of that but they were investing in next-generation technologies to support that for IBM that things like our IBM sterling portfolio but it's also the activation of our supply chain AI this massive demand set by and of imbalancing and we've been helping certain clients look at that and move stock most appropriate locations we've been doing that to help clients kind of rethink that there's this budgeting so we're gonna see a lot of that we have all of the intelligence of by chain and we're going to see no investment in the intelligence of buy chain just like we see this investment at baring in the change in the commerce engines last thing to say is wrap in trace is going to be hugely important reckon trace of all products and where they come from where they were handled and people and so technologies like lock pane and what we do with food trusts are also going to be a really important element yeah another really piece of digital I mean the cube we go to physical events and we've been saying that hang that this is not going to go back to 2019 the people are going to learn through this experience that there's really some additional value that they they can create through digital you think you think about consumer that's a much much more complex environment tens of thousands and fully hundreds of thousands or even millions of fights the product dimension chat thoughts you know the entire experience that we talked about a curbside pickup lead times people you know managing demand with lead times you can only or limiting the volume you mentioned supply chain track and trace block pain so a whole new set of digital assumptions are going to emerge or are emerging I don't want to make it sound like there's a there's some kind of binary beginning an end to this thing this is this is going to be a slow but yet fast iteration of constant iteration and continuous improvement yeah it is what am i - the newer faculty were talking earlier this week and they said look as difficult the environment is right now and of course we've been focused on our current operations and fulfilling our customers as best we can it's actually bringing us through a whole new window about who we think the priority is of our investment and how we look at that going forward and you know he's almost saying well I'm gonna have to zero based budgeting approach and against that we're gonna see a much better investment in almost regardless of what your model is whether you are digital first or physical first you're gonna see much better focus on kind of dealing with the pasady and the variability that we've experienced because organizations weren't geared up for that and you're going to see them the investment in the intelligence and the supply chain who support that backed up with trust and traceability and now back to the points that I start at the beginning of this session it means that the trends that we saw and we assess actually are going to be almost perpetuated because we think this move to sustainable and more local sourcing more balanced sourcing will continue to be a big factor and we think that this kind of idea of shopping in the micro moment but shopping in a much more digital way is here to stay the consequence of that is it's gonna have a what a big impact on the physical environments and unfortunately there aren't gonna do there are going to be as easy in this with certain sectors that are not going to be able to sustain the the big shift in the model so obviously physical down for the immediate and probably mid and maybe even long term digital up you one of your areas of expertise is agribusiness we thought you note you know tumour in general I wonder if you could share with us what you're what you're seeing there I'm inferring more more local sourcing which obviously has some impacts on what's available at different times a year potentially on on pricing thoughts on agribusiness and how they're responding yeah well it's it's fascinating you know if you take it into first of all of course you know agriculture has been impacted right now by not so much for the professional farming which has a large-scale mechanization before a lot of farming in large parts of Asia or Latin parts of Latin America or parts of Africa and even parts of Europe there's a lot of transitionary labor that occurs in order to be able to harvest crops and so that's a that's a really difficult immediate problem we've seen you people volunteering in certain countries like here in the UK where I live either people volunteering you can't work in their current job see how can I help that's kind of it an immediate thing that's needed right now but the broader topic in the work that my teams do is that actually the application of digital technologies and science who is behind what it is in other industries and there's such a great opportunity by leveraging digital only be more effective in actually hitting the most out of farming land without over farming the land and so we're working quite a lot on digital economics of buying base ability you truly from farmed or and no but have been together data sources that were not in the same base to be able to help build effectively an AgrAbility for the benefit the farmers and cross those things were going to see farmers empowered with more information in it more insight so simple things like The Weather Channel application that we have from our weather comm we're deploying that to millions of farmers in Africa and Asia and on top of that we're being able to and for the deployment of other related information though how to farm but also we could start to look at how to provide safety related information etcetera to those farmers so so we are going to see through effective use of technology increase appropriate digitization of no farming processes and there'll be in a very practical level what I'd put onto my phone so so definitely this is a big thing and and of course as you know the traceability that we do with our food resan isn't just about safety and talk about how food was produced how far it's traveled what conditions was it handled in what's a co2 footprint and so that traceability engine can actually accelerate also this is and as I referred to earlier Luca mean as we're discussing you know the moment-by-moment the assumptions are changing you know the narrative this weekend of course at least in the US was pay we've got it now get out there and and many are saying this not all but but just effect mass unity that it's really going to be the only way vaccines aren't coming anytime soon young people will go out retail environment of course you're gonna have social distancing people that are compromised or older aren't going to go out the clearly volumes are going to be down but it's a very fluid situation so business resiliency and flexibility is critical here and it sounds like you're helping organizations really build that into their operating model that is critical yeah absolutely and you know for some of the grantees that I haven't boomer you what you're seeing in things like a chorale fashion luxury is a a move to try to drive that engagement to you the customer in a much more digital sense so how do I interact with the brand how do I experience the band how can I all the way through to my purchase digitally when I don't have the ability to get stores so this digital transformation agenda will affect pretty much all major segments obviously the foods by chain the health by chain is the focus right now but we will see on the increasing digitization and a need to rebalance the in-store experience even for the segments so there will be a lot of transformation to be done a while of course having to deal with the cost balancing that need in these industries as they effectively shift more towards digital yeah you're right I mean the cost structure may dramatically change yet at the same time it may be critical for or maintaining or even gaining market share so a lot of potential disruption Luke I'll give you the final word your thoughts bring us home well you know first of all you know people's well-being in safety is our paramount purpose and that's what we've been looking at the outset but I think people would be positive that there is a lot of opportunity in which we can deliver the things that they need in a safe way in a secure way in a digital way that is able to cope with the environments that we see today and may prevail and it's about winning that intelligence and innovation into both the promise and the digital channels and into the supply chains all the way through to the track and trace which is what we focus on well look thanks so much for coming on the cube was great to have you with your your insights on the IBM very clearly has its hands and a lot of these different industries and it's great to have your industry expertise sharing with our audience I really appreciate your time take care thank you all right thank you for watching everybody this is Dave Volante for our continuous coverage of IBM think digital event experience 2020 you're watching the cube right back right after this short break you [Music] you