>> Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE. Covering Inforum DC 2018. Brought to you by Infor. >> Good afternoon and welcome back to Inforum 2018. Our coverage here on theCUBE as we start to wrap up our two days of coverage here at the show. We're in Washington, D.C. at the Walter Washington Convention Center, along with Dave Vellante, John Walls here. We're joined now by Mayumi Hiramatsu, who is the SVP of Cloud Operations Engineering and Security at Infor. Mayumi, how are you doing? >> Great to be here, thanks for coming. >> And a recent honoree by the way, Woman of the Year at the Women in IT Awards, so congratulations on that. (clapping) >> Awesome! >> Thank you. >> Very nice honor. >> Great. >> Tell us... big picture here, cloud strategy as far as Infor is concerned and why that separates you from the pack. What makes that stand out, you think, from your peers? >> I think there are a couple of things. One is that when I think of cloud, a lot of people will think about cloud as, it's a software running in the cloud, but it's more than that. It's about the solution and the capabilities that we're building on the cloud. And Infor is perfect, in that we're building enterprise software solutions. So if you look at Infor and compare us to the competition, we may have multiple of competition wrapped together in a solution. And that's really powerful, and you can only do that, really well, in the cloud because it's already built for that. It's integrated and the power of data is really amazing, because when you think about cloud, it's not just the software, it's the data, what you can do with it. And with the latest technologies around artificial intelligence and machine learning, there is so much insight we can give to our enterprise customers to make them successful in their business. So, I think of cloud as not only the technology, which I love, because I'm actually an engineer, but it's really the business transformation, digital transformation that the cloud enables, with the technologies like artificial intelligence, data analytics, data science, machine learning. There's just so much bolted on, that you can really only do in the cloud. >> Can you help us understand that competitive nuance? >> Yeah. >> I'm not sure I fully understand, 'cause others will say, well, we have cloud too. What's different between the way in which you provide solutions in the cloud and... pick a company. >> Yeah. >> Another company says, we have cloud, all of our SaaS is in the cloud. >> Right, so I think the first thing is, Infor's always focused on solutions, which means that our competition may have one of, let's say, a dozen things that we put together. So, if you're using our competition, they may have a cloud and some of them were born in the cloud, but then you have to figure out, how do I integrate it with the rest of the world? Because if you think about it, ERP. It's running your business. And it might be your HR and about your employees. It might be CRM and customer information. It could be supply chain and figuring out what parts I need to buy. It could be billing and figuring out how do I bill my customers. All these different solutions today, if you look at our competition, they may solve one, two, three different portions, but certainly not a dozen of these all together and then tailored towards the industry. So, we can pretty much bolt on and get started pretty quickly, if you think about, for example, healthcare. We already have a healthcare solution ready to go, so you don't have to figure out how do I put 12, 15 different software, glue it together and make it work? And maybe some of it is running in the cloud, maybe some of it is not running in the cloud, then the integration and making it work gets really complex. But ours is already pre-built, ready for that, whether it's healthcare, manufacturing, food & beverage, fashion. We have a lot of these already ready to go, so then you just have to customize it, as opposed to starting from scratch, figuring out how to integrate all these different software, making sure they work together and then harnessing the data, and then adding all these different, artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities that is so powerful today. You can't do that without the cloud and you certainly can't do it if you're trying to glue together different solutions. It's just really not easy. And I'll add one more thing, I was talking to a customer about this today, which I thought was brilliant. The other thing is security. Most people worry about security in the cloud and I run our security as well, the Chief Information Security Officer reports in to me and the whole security team does. And I can tell you, if you're combining 12, 15 different types of software and trying to have consistent security all across? Oh, that's a very difficult thing to do. But we've already figured it out. So all you have to do is buy the package, the solution, it' already working together. You already have security overlay on it. They have consistency in terms of how we manage the security, whether it's single sign-on and who has access, and making sure that that gets all the way through, all the way up to the data lake, where all of the data gets captured, all the way up to the artificial intelligence. So, if you think about security and how important that is, and how difficult it might be to do on one software, let alone a dozen software, the fact that we've already built that, is a big differentiator. >> So it's all there, and when you talked about, all you have to do is customize it, you're talking about, you're not talking about hardcore coding, you're talking about things like naming and setting it up. Is that right? >> Yeah, and-- >> Or are you talking about deeper levels of custom mods? >> In our multi-tenant cloud, we don't do mods, but instead, we have extensions. And extensibility is really important because now those are, again, essentially plug-and-play. We already built it for you, so it's so much easier than creating each piece of code every single time. Again, it's about, how do you make sure that you can integrate these very important sets of business processes together. Not only how quickly can you use it, how secure is it? And ensuring that you can actually focus on your business value, right, because trying to assemble all of this together and making it work, it's an enormous amount of work and I think, as an enterprise, you want to focus on actually giving customer value instead of trying to figure out, the mechanics underneath the hood. >> I mean, you certainly get the value of cloud software, right, and cloud ERP. Who doesn't? Like out of the industries that you're trying to, get in front of or whose attention you're trying to get. Where's the, if there's someone that's kicking and screaming a little bit, who might that be or what might that be? >> I don't think that there's a specific industry, if you will, I think some industries, in fact, and when I think about it, all industries are getting disrupted, right? If they don't, they're actually getting left behind. So, I think some industries feel it more, as in, they might be behind the curve. And I wouldn't necessarily say industry, maybe some of the companies in that industry. >> Companies within? >> Yeah, are waking up to it. I went to a Gartner Supply Chain Conference a couple years ago and they were talking about bimodal supply chain, right. You have the teams that are doing the old way and then companies that are doing the new way. And companies are literally going through this shift. And I had this interesting conversation that it's really not bimodal. Companies are essentially somewhere in that spectrum and what they need to do is figure out from point A to point B and how you make that transition. It's a huge transition. I would also say that there's a cultural element as well, and so one of the key things that, especially for companies that are moving from on-prem to cloud. As a provider, it's really important to realize it's a completely different business model. And it's not always talked about, again, a lot of times people think, oh well, you know, Infor, you just moved the software into AWS and you're calling it SaaS. It's more than that. Besides the capabilities, its a huge cultural shift that even Charles talked about on-stage, which is that, software companies you focus on the product, versus, as a SaaS, the last 'S', Software as a Service, you are focusing on the service. So, the analogy I use a lot is, maybe we were actually a food company, we'd build beautiful food, delicious food, nutritious food, maybe it was a rotisserie chicken, right? But now I switch to a restaurant. Food is only table stakes. And you know, restaurant reviews is about services, the ambiance, how quickly you respond, how clean it is, all these other elements matter. And if you think about Infor or any other company for that matter, that we're focused on product and software, to then becoming a SaaS service provider, it's a huge transformation for a company, and I can tell you we're going through that, right? Infor as an on-prem company moving to the SaaS, and there's so much focus now on customer experience, is because realizing that we're no longer a software company, we're a Software as a Service company. And there's a lot more we need to put in, in terms of making sure the customer experience is good. As our customers go through the same journey, they also need to realize, it's no longer about providing that product, but the experience that they're providing to the customers, and we see our customers actually going through that journey. Some might be harder to move within whatever industry, because maybe they have legacy product, legacy machines, right, to be able to lift and ship to quickly. But there's definitely a path, and if you think about some of these industries that's been around for a long time, they're definitely going through this transition, and in fact, I think they have to. >> So how did you set priorities in terms of, you come to that recognition that we're services, in the cloud. Luckily, you don't have to manage data centers, so you could take that off the table, so what were your priorities and where did you start, and what are you focused on now? >> One of the first things that I did was really pushing this cultural shift for the company, because a lot of people, some people may think, okay, it's software, I'm putting in the AWS, it's cloud. But all the other service elements, like that restaurant analogy, it wasn't mature in terms of where we needed to be and therefore you hear a lot about customer experience and customer success and a lot of these elements that we really have to put more emphasis on. But the other areas that I focused, so I came in, I focused on cloud operations, security, tooling, and architecture, that was the set that I was focused on. What I did was essentially transformation, right, it's People Process Technology in addition to culture, so culture we already talked about, the sense of urgency is very different as well. On-prem, maybe you don't have to respond in two seconds, but in cloud, you do, and so making sure that we had crisp KPIs, which are different than on-prem, making sure that processes were completely redefined. I've actually done benchmark with our competition to see that our SLAs and KPIs are either on par or better. I'm a big proponent of engineering and technology, so we built a lot of technology monitoring, tooling, so that we can do a lot more in terms of self-service and automation, that's really the only to scale, and execute consistently. Spent a lot of time over the last year, literally re-defining the identity of our jobs to how do we make sure we have the right skillset, and retraining some of the folks who may have a new identity and they need to learn new skills, to coming up with new tools and technologies that they can use, to changing our processes so we can up our SLA and make sure that we're either meeting or beating our customers' SLAs, complete transformation in the last year. >> You must be exhausted. (laughs) >> When do you sleep? >> I don't sleep much, but... >> You must not. >> So, new metrics, this is intriguing to me. Can you give us an example of sort of this, new KPIs as a result of this cloud, SaaS world? >> Yeah, for sure. I think every company has their own sort of core KPIs that are public, and cloud is usually uptime, right? If you have support, it could be how quickly you respond, we call it mean time to respond. Underneath the hood, I've created key KPIs for, what I call, critical cloud qualities. One is, of course, reliability, so that would be in addition to uptime, like 99.7%, which is two hours and 11 minutes by the way, per month downtime, so making sure that we're actually meeting that. >> Sorry, just to interrupt. >> Yeah. >> You're measuring from the application view right, not the green light on the server, is that fair? >> That's a great question, because that is exactly the evolution we want as well, so when I talk about the transformation at my organization, we were measuring the hardware first. We are now measuring, essentially, outages. So I don't care if the server's still running, but if the customers can't log in, it's an outage, right? But that's not something you can monitor by looking at a server because sometimes the server's up and running. But maybe a process went down. >> System's fine. >> Exactly. So that's the monitoring-- >> Okay, so slight adjustment in the typical metrics, sorry to interrupt, but please carry on. >> That was a perfect question. >> Okay. >> So KPIs, so underneath the hood, so here are some examples of metrics for availability. Mean time to detect, that's an internal metric, and my internal metric is five minutes, meaning, if you don't know we have an issue in five minutes, it's probably not automated and monitored, so we better hook up some additional monitoring as an example. Mean time to respond, that's a very public one, a lot of times, customers demand that, and if you look at competition, that is the only metric that's actually public, potentially even on a contract, right? So we have mean time to respond, we also have mean time to resolution, that's usually an internal metric. I'm sure competition has that as well, but making sure that we have that response right away, because it's one thing to respond, but if it's not resolved as quickly, it's not good. Other metrics when it comes to reliability, mean time to communicate. And this is really interesting. One of the things that I found was, we could be working on something but we're not telling the customers, so they're wondering if we're actually sleeping on the job, even though we're actually actively working in the background, right? >> Did they get the message, right? >> Right, so mean time to communicate, as an example of reliability metrics. So reliability is one of the core tenets. The other tenets? Performance, how quickly do you respond, right? And I always say that if performance is too long, it's equivalent of being down. Imagine if you're using Google and you put a search in, and it takes you three minutes to get a response time, you probably have left by then. So that performance, page load time, page response time, these response times actually matter. So we have actually metrics around that and we monitor and manage them. Security, we have a boatload of security KPIs, whether it's number of critical vulnerabilities, how quickly we respond to security incidents, a boatload of those as well, and then, last but not least, agility. So how quickly we can respond if we have to do a deployment. So what that means is, let's say, every software company has a bug, and let's say we actually had to quickly respond to that, can we do it within 24 hours if we needed to? Security is a perfect example. A mature company should be able to say, okay, there was a security alert that got to the industry, right? We should be able to quickly respond to that and apply a patch immediately and address it. A company that may not be so mature, it might take them months to go through thousands of machines. So I call that time to market, how quickly can we actually deploy something, and that's not just deploying it, but testing it and making sure it's not going to break anything and be able to test it and verify it. So these are examples of metrics-- >> Great examples. Are your SLAs... for a SaaS company, your SLAs presumably have to be more strict than you'll contractually agree to, but maybe not, then your typical SLA out of AWS or Google, or Microsoft Azure. Is that true? >> Yes. >> So you guys will commit contractually to these types of SLAs that you would expect in an enterprise, versus kind of the standard, off-the-shelf AWS SLA, and how do you reconcile the gap or do you have a different agreement with AWS? >> We do have a... The SLA is pretty much standard when it comes to AWS specifically, right? >> 'Cause they want-- >> Yeah. >> Homogeneity. >> Exactly. So I think the challenge is, every SaaS provider needs to architect around it and when you think about it, hardware failure rate is usually 4% industry-wide. You can expect the hardware will go down, right? >> Yep. >> Network goes down, various things go down. So then it's our job that sits on top of it, to make sure that we build it for reliability. Perhaps we actually have redundancy built-in, and we can actually go from one side to the other, we have that, for example. So if AWS goes down, and they do, all right? I ran data centers for many, many years, it happens. It's our job to make sure that we can fail over it, and not have that customer experience, so it's an overlay availability that we have to build-- >> You're architecting recovery into the system, I know we're tight on time, but I got to ask you, 'cause Pam couldn't make it today. You're part of the WIN, the Women Infor Network, I presume, right? >> Yes. >> So maybe we can just talk a little about that-- >> Yeah. >> It's a great topic. >> Women in technology, right? >> I got some of the best interviews at Infor shows with women, Deborah Norville came on, Naomi Tutu, Lara Logan. Just some awesome folks, but so-- >> So your thoughts, we know you're passionate about the role of women in technology, so how you feel about that, if you want, and Infor, what's being done, or what can be done about that? >> Great questions. So I'm a big proponent of women in technology. Partly because I went through my pain, right, I've always been a small percentage in terms of engineering role as female in technology. I'm also a board member of Girls in Tech, and I channel my energy that way as well as I try to mentor and help others, for example, mentoring engineering students at Berkeley. I'm a Berkeley alum. And I think it's really important that we get more women in technology and keep in them in technology, and candidly, our latest trend is actually going down. So the reason why I think it's important, besides making sure that everybody has a chance, and all those good reasons, we have statistics that actually show, the more diversity you have, the better your product is going to be, and the better it's actually going to hit your top line revenue. And over and over again, whether it's women in the board seat, or women executives, or women engineers, no matter where, by getting women's input into technology, you're actually representing 50% of the consumer base. >> The user base, right. >> Right and so, if we don't do that as a company, we're actually not going to be able to get the user base feedback and I think it's so really important, not only for the economy to have those wonderful workforce in the job, but also for the company products to actually reflect the user's needs and actually improve the revenue, right? So from that perspective, I think it's really important, I love the fact that at Infor, we do a couple of things when it comes to diversity. So one, is WIN, as you know, Women Infor Network. I think it's a fabulous program, and in fact, I get a lot of male colleagues saying they want to join WIN, and they do. My last session, there were actually women and men joining it, because it's really about leadership and how do we cultivate our next, next talented workforce to be successful. The other one is EAP, the Infor Education Alliance Program, so that not only looks at women, but just diversity, right, and bringing students into this workforce. I think it's a great way to help the economy, help the products, help the company. And at the end of the day, why not? >> You're awesome, super impressive and articulate, and really self-confident, and hopefully an inspiration for young women out there watching, so thank you so much, really appreciate it. >> And hope you get some sleep sometime too. (laughing) >> Thank you. >> Busy, busy schedule. All right, thank you. Thank you Mayumi. We're back with more here on theCUBE, you are watching us live in Washington, D.C., and we'll be right back. (upbeat music)

>> Live from Washington D.C, it's the Cube, covering inforum DC 2018 Brought to you by inforum. >> And welcome back to Washington D.C. I think you kind of guess where we are. [Mumbles] Over my shoulder there inforum 2018, along with Dave Vellante. I'm John Walls, we are live here at the Walter Washington convention center for this years show. We are joined by Martine Cadet, who is vice president of the educational arts program at Inform. Martine, good to see you. >> Thank you. >> And Jennifer Bucanan who is manger and head of the Inforum practice and CFO Solutions. Jennifer, good to see you. >> Thank You >> Let's talk about the program. Martine, ou can give us, first off, the inside scope of this. And then Jennifer you're on the other side of the fence. >> Right >> Because the very people, the individuals that Martine and her program are training, you're hiring. >> Absolutley. >> So I want to hear, first off lets talk about the program in general and then to you, Jennifer for about why. And what do you find really attractive about these people? >> Absolutley >> So the Education Alliance Program is 4 years old this year actually, so we're very excited about that. And what we really set out to do was build a talent pipeline that our company and our ecosystem of partners and customers can tap into. So there's been a lot of conversation about the fact that there's not enough talent to fill the positions that are in the industry. So we wanted to do something different where by we could actually grow that talent organically. So instead of going to the oricals and the SAP And having that revolving desk of okay we can leave this here and go to this competetor and work for them and be experienced. We need to find another way to be able to grow our talent so that as an organization, we can continue to be innovative and grow as we move forward. So EAP really kind of serves within that gap, but we do it a little differently than some of the other programs. We really focus on not just identifying talent, but really training them on the industry skill set. So what people `learn in school is amazing, but it is usually more theory. How do you take that theory and really apply it to what is really needed in the industry today, In a real job today? And that where the Education Alliance Program really kind of serves that niche. >> And generally speaking, the age group would be what? Of the trainees. >> The majority of the people that we train are more college age. So 18 all the way up to, I would say early 30's. So early in career talent is what we think about. >> Okay, are they in school? >> Some of, yeah. >> The majority of them right now are in school, but we also welcome people who are outside of school. We've kind of evolved our program where its not just partnerships with colleges and universities, but we train people who come from training organizations; like Yes We Code, and New York Urban League and things of that nature. And You're Up is another great partnership that we started having relationships with. So we do everything from the traditional integrate within a classroom setting, to more of a bootcamp model where talent gets trained over the course of a couple of months to meet this business needs that we have and are here now. >> Okay, and so Jennifer, then on the hiring side of this the advantage to you is what? >> Well for us, we are always looking for folks that coming out of school, whether it's a masters degree or a bachelors degree, that they have a little bit of a focus going into consulting and implementation services. There's a mix of skills that you look for. Some of it is that commitment to being a forthcoming service orientated person. Somebody with a little bit of perspective. And when we met the EAP students, that ambition just comes right out of those folks. And they have purpose in mind because they started to get a little bit of a taste of the real world of what they want to do. So they've got context and they've got direction and a lot of the folks that we've met with had some good accounting and finance knowledge, which we value. Plus they had the IT component, where traditionally if I just go to try to do some campus recruiting I might get one or the other, but it's hard to get both. >> So training that revolving door, that martine described which, there's still some of that going on, but you get a lot of viable knowledge. You know where the skeletons are buried. They can fast pass some of it. Trading that for excitement, diversity, maybe a different type of creativity. Certainly not as much well that's the way it's done in the enterprise. Right? Maybe discuss that a little bit. >> Yeah absolutley, the folks that, what we need coming in have that creative element and they're not just, ya know, crunching out and doing maybe the theory that you have mentioned. They've had a little bit of experience at a practical site of understanding how to apply technology and solve buisiness problems. Cause that experience that they go through in the EAP program is almost like a simulation and gives them a little taste of that. And when we talk about what we do and we introduce them to our business and try to look for a fit. They have a better understanding of what we are talking about and do. >> So Martine, in the 4 years since we've first met, what has changed? Has the scope, the goals expanded? What did you not forget that actually happened? >> Yeah Maybe you could share some of your experiences. >> Yeah, so in the four years we've gone deeper around world based training. So when we started, it was more around exposing students to different career opportunities, to what is EAP. I've been in the industry forever, but I was always more on the consumer side. So I didn't know what ERP was. [Laughing] Is this even professional? So helping students see the opportunities there, was kind of the initial focus and getting them to have kind of a toe in the water. We've gone much deeper this year, in particular going to role based training. So, what do you need? What skills encompanies you to be an amazing sales professional versus somebody who's going into the development space, or somebody who's going to manage kind of the cloud space, which is where our company is focused. So that's been one of the biggest evolutions in which we have done within EAP over the last couple years and were much more global than we were when we first started. So we are excited about that as well. And then in terms of things that surprised us. I think of of the areas that surprised us, it was a little bit harder to place students frankly, than we had initially had thought it would be. And so one of the ways that we've worked through that is we've worked with our talent science team, and they've been phenomenal at really helping identify fit. And so now we can have much richer conversations with the hiring managers around. Yes, I know that you would like an expereinced hire perhaps, but this is a reason why one of these more inexperienced hires is actually a great fit and will be your next superstar on you team. And on the flip side, we can have conversations with the talent around career opportunities that they might not have even thought about before. Cause now we've got kind of there fit for different roles. >> So were certainly seeing in many buisiness settings, that gut feel is being replaced by, you know, data and fact. When it comes to hiring people though, there's still that, well there's several things. There's gut feel, there's repor, there's biases, so are technologies like machines intelligence, and programs like this cutting through that? >> Yeah that's what we're trying to have happen. I mean it's hard, it's hard. Everyones trying to tackle these issues, but with technologies like talent signs, with having programs which address the feedback of well I don't know where to find a first talent. Well if you go to the same three schools that you always go to, that are by nature not diverse, then you're not going to find the diverse talent you are looking for. So if you can tap into a program where we go out of our way to make sure we're actually fishing in new ponds, and that we're bringing in amazing talent to the forefront that people can tap into. And we are really proud about that. >> Well, what's really key about that, and we were having this conversation earlier. Is that if you really want to bring diversity into your organization, you have to look beyond your inner circle. But it's a pain to do that, its time consuming. So what you've done, is you've fast passed that. Right? And give an opportunity for somebody to dive in. >> Yeah >> Yeah >> Sure, and some of those folks became part of our circle. Cause a year ago we met a wide group of the folks in the EAP program, and we were impressed by the broadness. Like I mentioned earlier, you've got some folks that are still sophomore, junior year that are just getting started. We've got relationships foudning with those folks. We have folks that are just getting ready to graduate, and we have folks that have been in the workplace, came back. So we've got a breath of experience, but folks from all over. And we were one of those folks who would go to the same school over and over. And you know, we would get good talent but, it's that breath, and that new perspective that comes in. And now that's our pipeline. We've got folks at different levels in their educational career that we stay in touch with. And a lot of the students reaching back to us is what helped us make connections for folks to bring on. >> So how do you find me? If I'm an interested student? >> Yeah >> Or how do I find you? >> Yeah >> If I am at a school. That's one question, and secondly once I'm in, is it like ROTC? Like I have a three year commitment after that? [Laughing] [Mumbling] >> You're invested in me. >> That's a great idea. [Laughing] >> A lot of resource time is being put into me, developing me, so what am I going to give you back? >> Yeah absolutely. >> Take on both of those if you would. >> Its more about finding the member institutions and then finding me the right talent within those organizations. Right? And so we do a lot of research and analysis on where we want to go. So we do want to make sure we are building pipelines that fit the busininesses needs first and foremost. So where do we have a majority of our offices? Where do our partners and customers have a majority of their offices? Where are the hiring needs and the types of roles? Then based on that we look for organizations that actually have core programs that align to that. And those are the ones that we want to have relationships with first and foremost. And then we seek out the talent. We actually have marketing communications people who are out there and promoting the courses and the partnerships that we have in the classroom to hopefully get the talent to actually apply to the class itself.. >> Alright so once I'm in. >> Once your in. >> You've got me. >> Yeah. >> I'm a junior, I'm studying, I'm doing my thing. >> Yeah. >> You're training me. Well I'm going to graduate in a year. So am I on the hook, or will you place me? >> We investin their training, and we also try to provide wrap around support services. So we've got people on the team who are beyond passionate and focused on making sure they've got the soft skills, who are also focused on making sure they are introduced to hiring managers within our ecosystem and within our organization who might be interested in talking to them. We set up kind of meet and greets as well, where we have events around that so placements important to us. We can't commit and guarantee a role per say, but we can open up opportunities perhaps the students didn't have before. And give them the training so that when they are compared against their peer, they can come out ahead. >> So having that Charles several times and interviewing him a number of times, this is, it certainly feels more than optics. What are the success metrics that you look at, and can you share some with us? >> Yeah, so we do look at how many people we actually trained and made it through the program. We look at how many people have been placed within Inforum as well as our ecosystem. We are looking to see how many students will actually pursue a path to certification, and go through the deeper training and learning. And then we look and see how many people are actually liking the program. Like what they're getting out of it. We'd love to see, I'd personally love to see in a couple years that people will have gone through EAP are now future customers, your future partners. You know, placement is one piece, but its also how are we influencing the industry as a whole? And for competitors, hiring EAP students, that actually goodness. Like we are trying to really change what is going on in the injustry perspective on how we grow and change talents. Because the way its working today doesn't work for everybody. So we've got to do something different. And the fact that Inforum has stepped up to actually grow it organically, I think is you know, a testimony to Charles. >> Great mindset, I mean you're not trying to just hang on and you're certainly embracing this. But if when an individual leaves, to whether even a competitor, there's some pride in that. Like hey we trained this individual and we're changing the industry. And you know, sometimes those things just have a way of coming back around. >> Yes, yeah, yes >> Absolutely >> So Jennifer, from the clients side if you will, how big could this program be for you? Like how helpful has it been, and how much more do you need it in order to meet these employee gaps? Cause as we've heard, the numbers aren't adding up right now. >> Right, right. So for us we've been having some conversations about how do we grow together on this? They've offered to say hey, CFO Solutions, would you like to be involved in some of the teaching opportunities? So we've been having dialouge about how that might be. And we've been talking about particular skill sets. You know, they start out with kind of a broad skill set and we work with a very specialized component of that. So we've been talking about the product mix that they involve in their program and bringing something more direct to what we're working with. So that's a big. >> Personalized learning. >> Yes. So its helping us kind of refine our pipeline because we know what's going to be coming out of it and we know that is is getting that slice of this US and the world if necessary right? It gives us a little assurity that we can get folks at different levels of their career. We can start talking to them now and we can start working with these guys on honing the skillset that they'll be coming in with. The soft skills piece that you had mentioned earlier was on of the real standout skills that we saw come out of this. All these folks, I can't overemphasize the driviness, the commitment they had, the communicating with me over a year period. And they're boldness, cause that's one of the main things that we need out of the folks that we bring and put in front of our clients. >> So this is all awesome, touchy feely stuff too, but at the end of the day, I've read that it has a buisiness impact. >> Absolutely, absolutley. >> So what's your experience been in terms of the bottom line? >> Well, so buiness impact wise, when we take a risk and bring somebody fresh out of school, and we bring him to a porject where you require very specialized skills, we need people that we can take a risk on, who will hit the ground running. So if I go and grab somebody from anywhere, I don't know what I'm going to get. I don't know if they're going to like their career. I don't know if they're going to understand what we are doing. And there's a lot of ramp up time, time before I can bill for that source, just to be practical. And when we bring in Eap students, I know they've had a taste of it, and they're ambitious and driven for it. And I can get them billable more quickly. And then I can be proud to have them out in front, because they can tell a story. A lot of this is a relationship business. I can have them come to a project kickoff and they can talk about what they've come from. And that they've had an involvement with Inforum, not just hey I'm fresh out of school. I don't know what I'm doing here. It's hey, I've been working with a product for a couple years. Even now and they hit the ground running just so much more quickly. >> So faster time to value. >> Yes, faster time to value. We've seen internally for the folks we've hired, that we've got one hundred percent voluntary retention rate. >> That's amazing. >> For early retention rate. For early career talent, four years into the program, where that's about 20% better than the rest of the talent that we have, right? So we're looking at retention, cause we know if you lose somebody, that's nine months of salary probably to replace them and to retrain somebody else. >> That's right, yes >> Absolutely >> Much easier to hang onto somebody than go find somebody new. >> Okay so you're getting the billing faster, higher quality, I heard. Which means better customer retention and less employee turnover. >> Less employee turnover. >> Which means lower cost. >> Absolutely. >> And on the recruiting side of things too, the development of trying to find talent, there's a lot of time invested and we're a firm that has a very lean operations team. A lot of us wear many hats. So one of my hats is my recruiting and development, and this just streamlines things for me and makes it so much easier. I don't have to spread myself thin trying to find folks. I know I've got kind of a pipeline and I've been sharing it with my other leadership in the other practices to kind of share that along the firm >> And to put it in context, I mean so for the trainings that are around rules and careers, were looking at getting the students to have 200 plus hours of training over bootcamp experience. Now, put that against somebody else who has zero right? You're getting to faster productivity, you're shaving off anywhere from 3 to 4 to 6 months of on boarding time by hiring somebody through this program. >> Yeah. >> And minimizing on boarding frustration which would help. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Sympathize with. >> Makes perfect sense. Great sounding program, we appreciate the insight today. Thanks for being with us. >> Martini- Yeah, thank you. >> And you're wearing many hats, you'll need a rain hat out there today. >> I will, I will. [Laughing] >> Congratulations. >> One more, yeah. Great program, thank you ladies. We're back with more on Live. The Cube is in Washington D.C at Inforum 2018.

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at the Girls in Tech Catalyst event. About 700 people listening to two days of short presentations by senior leaders, mainly women senior leaders, and it's a really good event. We were here a couple years ago. Girls in Tech's a great organization, and so we're excited to have a board member with us right now. She's Mayumi Hiramatsu. She's a senior vice president, Cloud Ops, Engineering and Security for Infor. Great to see you. >> Great to see you, too. Thanks for inviting me. >> Absolutely. So let's just jump in. So you've spoken in prior years, you're not speaking this year, but from a corporate perspective as well as a personal perspective, what does this event mean to you? >> From a corporate perspective, from Girls in Tech's perspective, it's just amazing. Every year year it gets better. I did speak the last two years, and I'm humbled by the speakers this year. So I'm actually really enjoying it. (laughing) It's quite a caliber of-- It's kind of fun when you can just sit and relax and watch everybody else speak, right? >> Exactly. And quite a caliber the team's put together. So as a board member, I can't be prouder than what the team's pulled together. And it's so much buzz. Everybody's inspired, I see people taking notes. Folks are really taking this to heart in terms of takeaways, practical tips, and getting energized. So I think it's great. From a personal perspective, a little bit about myself: So I'm from originally Japan, I came here at 17. I didn't speak any English. I wasn't planning on getting in engineering, I have an economics degree. So you can imagine, I got into engineering and built my career here. It was not easy. For a foreigner, a female, Asian, a non-speaking English person. >> You checked all the wrong boxes, right? >> Yeah. I don't know why I choose to do something harder than it needs to be, and I don't even have an engineering degree. I have an economics degree. But I love technology. I've been doing this for 20 plus years, and I think it's a wonderful place for any woman like me to be able to give it a chance and actually have a wonderful career. I also love the fact that it sort of gives, it evens out everybody's potential. So with an economics degree, or from another country, I've been at Silicon Valley and have done great. So if I can do it, I know anybody else can do it. So for me, giving back to the community and making sure the next generation can successfully come through the technology ranks, or have their own company, is really exciting. So it's great to be on the board of Girls in Tech, and I can channel my energy through that way, and I think Girls in Tech is one of the largest, if not the largest world non-profit organization to help women with very practical, and great tips, as well as, not only these Catalyst conferences, but, my goodness, we do hackathons, we do pitch nights and give entrepreneurs a chance to actually shine, global classrooms where we can actually give a lot of teaching opportunities, and learning opportunities. So, super excited to be here. >> Then what about from the Infor perspective? Did you spearhead the Infor participation? Did Girls in Tech, Adriana come seek you out? How did you get directly involved, how did you sell it, and why does it matter to Infor? >> Yeah, so I've been a board member for year and a half, and not so coincidentally you can see Cisco's also there. I used to be a Cisco. Once I introduced Cisco and Infor to Girls in Tech, everybody was really excited. There's just so much win-win. So for Infor, it's great on a couple of things. You may know that Infor is a pretty large company. We're the third or fourth largest ERP. And we have really important business solutions software. For example, focus on verticals; for example, health care, manufacturing, retail, and as a company we're doing really well, but the other thing that really attracted me to Infor is our diversity programs. So we have two of them. One is WIN, Women Infor Network, and it's about essentially women network to help each other out and continue to grow our career, which is important. But the other program is EAP, which is Education Alliance Program. And I love the fact that we actually have a program, we have 80 plus universities that we tie in with, to bring in a diverse workforce, and teach them in the universities and bring them into the workforce, whether it's Infor or not, candidly. So it's STEM programs that gives diversity, whether it's gender, or background, or international location, or even age, right? Because we're bringing in college grads. I just love the programs that Infor has. >> So what is that? How does the relationship go between Infor and the universities? What's kind of the formal structure? >> Yeah, so there's a program called Education Alliance Program, EAP, very, very successful as I mentioned. 80+ universities that we work with already. And what we do is we essentially give these students in the university training program that teaches our software, and there are actually a couple of great things that come out of it. Of course, it's promoting STEM, and making sure that these kids have, young adults, have great technology STEM education coming out of college. It's also great for Infor because we also have people graduating with our technology skillset. So not only directly impacts us as they join our company, but also even if they don't join our company, we've given them a chance to get into technology and it's very, very successful. I'm very proud of it. So Infor is big on diversity in technology as you can see. And, of course, we're proud to be here this year as one of the sponsors. >> So I'll give you the last word as a board member to the audience. How can they get involved with Girls in Tech? How should they get involved? What are some of the ways that you would suggest for them to get their toe in the water if they're not familiar with the organization? >> Yeah, girlsintech.org is a great place to start. We have a wonderful website, of course, and we have various types of programs involved so depending on what it is. If you want to learn you can actually join some of the hackathons or global classrooms to get some practical skills. If you're a founder and you actually want to pitch your idea and get some funding, you can actually go to Pitch Night. There are different programs that we can leverage and I highly encourage everybody to join. >> Alright, well Mayumi thanks for taking a few minutes. Congrats on the sponsorship and all your good work on the board. >> Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. She's Mayumi, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. We're at Girls in Tech Catalyst 2018 in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching.

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at the Girls in Tech Catalyst event. About 700 people listening to two days of short presentations by senior leaders, mainly women senior leaders, and it's a really good event. We were here a couple years ago. Girls in Tech's a great organization, and so we're excited to have a board member with us right now. She's Mayumi Hiramatsu. She's a senior vice president, Cloud Ops, Engineering and Security for Infor. Great to see you. >> Great to see you, too. Thanks for inviting me. >> Absolutely. So let's just jump in. So you've spoken in prior years, you're not speaking this year, but from a corporate perspective as well as a personal perspective, what does this event mean to you? >> From a corporate perspective, from Girls in Tech's perspective, it's just amazing. Every year year it gets better. I did speak the last two years, and I'm humbled by the speakers this year. So I'm actually really enjoying it. (laughing) It's quite a caliber of-- It's kind of fun when you can just sit and relax and watch everybody else speak, right? >> Exactly. And quite a caliber the team's put together. So as a board member, I can't be prouder than what the team's pulled together. And it's so much buzz. Everybody's inspired, I see people taking notes. Folks are really taking this to heart in terms of takeaways, practical tips, and getting energized. So I think it's great. From a personal perspective, a little bit about myself: So I'm from originally Japan, I came here at 17. I didn't speak any English. I wasn't planning on getting in engineering, I have an economics degree. So you can imagine, I got into engineering and built my career here. It was not easy. For a foreigner, a female, Asian, a non-speaking English person. >> You checked all the wrong boxes, right? >> Yeah. I don't know why I choose to do something harder than it needs to be, and I don't even have an engineering degree. I have an economics degree. But I love technology. I've been doing this for 20 plus years, and I think it's a wonderful place for any woman like me to be able to give it a chance and actually have a wonderful career. I also love the fact that it sort of gives, it evens out everybody's potential. So with an economics degree, or from another country, I've been at Silicon Valley and have done great. So if I can do it, I know anybody else can do it. So for me, giving back to the community and making sure the next generation can successfully come through the technology ranks, or have their own company, is really exciting. So it's great to be on the board of Girls in Tech, and I can channel my energy through that way, and I think Girls in Tech is one of the largest, if not the largest world non-profit organization to help women with very practical, and great tips, as well as, not only these Catalyst conferences, but, my goodness, we do hackathons, we do pitch nights and give entrepreneurs a chance to actually shine, global classrooms where we can actually give a lot of teaching opportunities, and learning opportunities. So, super excited to be here. >> Then what about from the Infor perspective? Did you spearhead the Infor participation? Did Girls in Tech, Adriana come seek you out? How did you get directly involved, how did you sell it, and why does it matter to Infor? >> Yeah, so I've been a board member for year and a half, and not so coincidentally you can see Cisco's also there. I used to be a Cisco. Once I introduced Cisco and Infor to Girls in Tech, everybody was really excited. There's just so much win-win. So for Infor, it's great on a couple of things. You may know that Infor is a pretty large company. We're the third or fourth largest ERP. And we have really important business solutions software. For example, focus on verticals; for example, health care, manufacturing, retail, and as a company we're doing really well, but the other thing that really attracted me to Infor is our diversity programs. So we have two of them. One is WIN, Women Infor Network, and it's about essentially women network to help each other out and continue to grow our career, which is important. But the other program is EAP, which is Education Alliance Program. And I love the fact that we actually have a program, we have 80 plus universities that we tie in with, to bring in a diverse workforce, and teach them in the universities and bring them into the workforce, whether it's Infor or not, candidly. So it's STEM programs that gives diversity, whether it's gender, or background, or international location, or even age, right? Because we're bringing in college grads. I just love the programs that Infor has. >> So what is that? How does the relationship go between Infor and the universities? What's kind of the formal structure? >> Yeah, so there's a program called Education Alliance Program, EAP, very, very successful as I mentioned. 80+ universities that we work with already. And what we do is we essentially give these students in the university training program that teaches our software, and there are actually a couple of great things that come out of it. Of course, it's promoting STEM, and making sure that these kids have, young adults, have great technology STEM education coming out of college. It's also great for Infor because we also have people graduating with our technology skillset. So not only directly impacts us as they join our company, but also even if they don't join our company, we've given them a chance to get into technology and it's very, very successful. I'm very proud of it. So Infor is big on diversity in technology as you can see. And, of course, we're proud to be here this year as one of the sponsors. >> So I'll give you the last word as a board member to the audience. How can they get involved with Girls in Tech? How should they get involved? What are some of the ways that you would suggest for them to get their toe in the water if they're not familiar with the organization? >> Yeah, girlsintech.org is a great place to start. We have a wonderful website, of course, and we have various types of programs involved so depending on what it is. If you want to learn you can actually join some of the hackathons or global classrooms to get some practical skills. If you're a founder and you actually want to pitch your idea and get some funding, you can actually go to Pitch Night. There are different programs that we can leverage and I highly encourage everybody to join. >> Alright, well Mayumi thanks for taking a few minutes. Congrats on the sponsorship and all your good work on the board. >> Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. She's Mayumi, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. We're at Girls in Tech Catalyst 2018 in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching.

>> Announcer: Live from the Javits Center in New York City, it's theCUBE. Covering Inforum 2017. Brought to you buy Infor. >> Welcome back to Inforum 2017 everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. Duncan Angove is here, the President of Infor and a Cube alum. Good to see you again Duncan. >> Hey, afternoon guys. >> So it's all coming together right? When we first met you guys down in New Orleans, we were sort of unpacking, trying to squint through what the strategy is. Now we call it the layer cake, we were talking about off camera, really starting to be cohesive. But set up sort of what's been going on at Infor. How are you feeling? What the vibe is like? >> Yeah it's been an amazing journey over the last six years. And, um, you know, all the investments we put in products, as you know, we said to you guys way back then, we've always put products at the center. Our belief is that if you put innovation and dramatic amounts of investment in the core product, everything else ends up taking care of itself. And we put our money where our mouth was. You know, we're a private company, so we can be fairly aggressive on the level of investment we put into R&D and it's increased double digit every single year. And I think the results you've seen over the last two years, in terms of our financials is that, you know the market's voting in a way that we're growing double digits dramatically faster than our peers. So that feels pretty good. >> So Jim is, I know, dying to get into the AI piece, but lets work our way up that sort of strategy layer cake with an individual had a lot to do with that. So you know, you guys started with the decision of Micro-verticals and you know the interesting thing to us is you're starting to see some of the big SI's join in. And I always joke, that they love to eat at the trough. But you took a lot of the food away by doing that last mile. >> Yeah. >> But now you're seeing them come in, why is that? >> You know I think the whole industry is evolving. And the roles that different and the valor that different companies in that ecosystem play, whether it's an enterprise software vendor or it's a systems integrator. Everything's changing. I mean, The Cloud was a big part of that. That took away tasks that you would sometimes see a systems integrator doing. As larger companies started to build more completely integrated suites, that took away the notion that you need a systems integrator to plug all those pieces together. And then the last piece for us was all of the modifications that were done to those suites of software to cover off gaps in industry functionality or gaps in localizations for a country, should be done inside the software. And you can only do that if you have a deep focus, by industry on going super, super deep at a rapid rate on covering out what we call these last malfeatures. So that means that the role of the systems integrators shifted. I mean they've obviously pivoted more recently into a digital realm. They've all acquired digital agencies. And having to adapt to this world where you have these suites of software that run in The Cloud that don't need as much integration or as much customization. So we were there you know five, six years ago. They weren't quite there. It was still part of this symbiotic relationship with other large vendors. And I think now, you know, the reason for the first time we've got guys like Accenture, and Deloitte, and Capgemini, and Grant Thornton here, is that they see that. And their business model's evolved. And you know those guys obviously like to be where they can win business and like to build practices around companies they see winning business. So the results we've seen and the growth we've seen over the last two to three years, obviously that's something they want a piece of. So I think it's going to work out. >> Alright so Jim, you're going to have to bear with me a second 'cause I want to keep going up the stack. So the second big milestone decision was AWS. >> Duncan: Yeah. >> And we all understand the benefits of AWS. But there's two sides to that cone and one is, when you show your architectural diagram, there's a lot of AWS in there. There's S3, there's DynamoDB, I think I saw Kinesis in there. I'm sure there's some Ec2 and other things. And it just allows you to focus on what you do best. At the same time, you're getting an increasingly complex data pipeline and ensuring end-to-end performance has to be technically, a real challenge for you. So, I wanted to ask you about that and see if you could comment and how you're managing that. >> Yeah so, I mean obviously, we were one of the first guys to actually go all in on Amazon as a Cloud delivery platform. And obviously others now have followed. But we're still one of their top five ISV's on there. The only company that Amazon reps actually get compensated on. And it's a two way relationship right? We're not just using them as a Cloud delivery partner. We're also using some of their components. You know you talked about some of their data storage components. We're also leverage them for AI which we'll get into in a second. But it's a two way relationship. You know, they run our asset management facility for all of their data centers globally. We do all the design and manufacturing of their drones and robots. We're partnered with them on the logistic side. So it's a deep two way relationship. But to get to your question on just sort of the volume and the integration. We work in integrations with staggering volumes right? I mean, retail, you're dealing with billions and billions of data points. And we'll probably get into that in a second you know. The whole asset management space, is one of the fastest growing applications we have. Driven by cycle dynamics of IoT and explosion in device data and all of that. So we've had for a very, very long time, had to figure out an efficient way to move large amounts of data that can be highly chatty. And do it in an efficient way. And sometimes it's less about the pipes in moving it around, it's how you ingest that data into the right technology from a data storage perspective. Ingest it and then turn it into insights that can power analytics or feed back into our applications to drive execution. Whether it's us predicting maintenance failure on a pump and then feeding that back into asset management to create a work order and schedule an engineer on it. Right? >> That's not a trivial calculus. Okay, now we're starting to get into Jim's wheelhouse, which is, you call it, I think you call it the "Age of Network Intelligence". And that's the GT Nexus acquisition. >> Yeah. >> To us it's all about the data. I think you said 18 years of transaction history there. So, talk about that layer and then we'll really get into the data the burst piece and then of course the AI. >> Yeah, so there were two parts to why we called it "The Age of Network Intelligence". And it's not often that technology or an idea comes along in human history that actually bends the curve of progress right? And I think that we said it on stage, the steam engine was one of those and it lead to the combustion engine, it lead to electricity and it lead to the internet and the mobile phone and it all kind of went. Of course it was invented by a British man, an Englishman you know? That doesn't happen very often right? Where it does that. And our belief is that the rise of networks, coupled with the rise of artificial intelligence, those two things together will have the same impact on society and mankind. And it's bigger than Infor and bigger than enterprise software, it's going to change everything. And it's not going to do it in a linear way. It's going to be exponential. So the network part of that for us, from an Infor perspective was, yes it was about the commerce network, which was GT Nexus, and the belief that almost every process you have inside an enterprise at some point has to leave the enterprise. You have to work with someone else, a supplier or a customer. But ERP's in general, were designed to automate everything inside the four walls. So our belief was that you should extend that and encompass an entire network. And that's obviously what the GT Nexus guys spent 18 years building was this idea of this logistics network and this network where you can actually conduct trade and commerce. They do over 500 billion dollars a year on that network. And we believe, and we've announced this as network CloudSuites, that those two worlds will blur. Right? That ultimately, CloudSuites will run completely nakedly on the network. And that gives you some very, very interesting information models and the parallel we always give is like a Linkedin or a Facebook. On Linkedin, there's one version of the application. Right? There's one information model where everyone's contact information is. Everyone's details about who they are is stored. It's not stored in all these disparate systems that need to be synchronized constantly. Right? It's all in one. And that's the power of GT Nexus and the commerce network, is that we have this one information model for the entire supply chain. And now, when you move the CloudSuite on top of that, it's like this one plus one is five. It's a very, very powerful idea. >> Alright Jim, chime in here, because you and I both excited about the burst when we dug into that a little bit. >> Yes. >> Quite impressed actually. Not lightweight vis, you know? It's not all sort of BI. >> Well the next generation of analytics, decision support analytics that infuse and inform and optimize transactions. In a distributed value chain. And so for the burst is a fairly strong team, you've got Brad Peters who was on the keynote yesterday, and of course did the pre-briefing for the analyst community the day before. I think it's really exciting, the Coleman strategy is really an ongoing initiative of course. First of all, on the competitive front, all of your top competitors in this very, I call it a war of attrition in ERP. SAP, Oracle and Microsoft have all made major investments on going in AI across their portfolios. With a specific focus on informing and infusing their respective ERP offerings. But what I conceived from what Infor's announced with the Coleman strategy, is that yours is far more comprehensive in terms of taking it across your entire portfolio, in a fairly accelerated fashion. I mean, you've already begun to incorporate, Coleman's already embedded in several of your vertical applications. First question I have for you Duncan, as I was looking through all the discussions around Coleman, when will this process be complete in terms of, "Colemanizing", is my term? "Colemanizing" the entire CloudSuite and of course network CloudSuite portfolio. That's a huge portfolio. And it's like you got fresh funding, a lot of it, from Koch industries. To what extent can, at what point in the next year or two, can most Infor customers have the confidence that their cloud applications are "Colemanized"? And then when will, if ever, Coleman AI technology be made available to those customers who are using your premises based software packages? >> So yeah, we could spend a long time talking about this. The thing about Coleman and RAI and machine learning capabilities is that we've been at work on it for a while. And you know we created the dynamic science labs. Our team of 65 Ph.D.'s based up in M.I.T. got over three and a half four years ago. And our differentiation versus all the other guys you mentioned is that, two things, one, we bring a very application-centric view of it. We're not trying to build a horizontal, generic, machine learning platform. In the same way that we- >> Yeah you're not IBM with Watson, all that stuff. >> Yeah, no, no. Or even Auricle. >> Jim: Understood. >> Or Microsoft. >> Jim: Nobody expects you to be. >> No, you know, and we've always been the guys that have worked for the Open Source community. Even when you look at like, we're the first guys to provide a completely open source stack underneath our technology with postscripts. We don't have a dog in the hunt like most of the other guys do. Right? So we tap in to the innovation that happens in the Open Source community. And when you look at all the real innovation that's happening in machine learning, it's happening in the Open Source Community. >> Jim: Yes. >> It's not happening with the old legacy, you know, ERP guys. >> Jim: Pencer, Flow and Spark and all that stuff. >> Yeah, Google, Apple, the GAFA. >> Yeah. >> Right? Google, Apple, Facebook, those are the guys that are doing it. And the academic community is light years ahead on top of that of what these other guys will do. So that's what we tap into right? >> Are you tapping into partners like AWS? 'Cause they've obviously, >> Duncan: Absolutely >> got a huge portfolio of AI. >> Yeah, so we. >> Give us a sense whether you're going to be licensing or co-developing Coleman technologies with them going forward. >> Yeah so we obviously we have NDA's with them, we're deeply inside their development organization in terms of working on things. You know, our science is obviously presented to them around ideas we think they need to go. I mean, we're a customer of their AI frameup to machine learning and we're testing it at scale with specific use cases in industries, right? So we can give them a lot of insights around where it needs to go and problems we're trying to solve. But we do that across a number of different organizations and we've got lots and lots of academic collaborations that happen on around all of the best universities that are pushing on this. We've even received funding from DAPA in certain cases around things that we're trying to solve for. You know quietly we've made some machine-learning acquisitions over the last five, six years. That have obviously brought this capability into it. But the point is we're going to leverage the innovation that happens around these frameworks. And then our job is understanding the industries we're in and that we're an applications company, is to bring it to life in these applications in a seamless way, that solves a very specific problem in an industry, in a powerful and unique way. You know on stage I talked about this idea of bringing this AI first mindset to how we go about doing it. >> So it's important, if I can interject. This is very important. This is Infor IP, the serious R&D that's gone into this. It's innovation. 'Cause you know what your competitors are going to say. They're going to deposition and say, oh, it's Alexa on steroids. But it's not. It's substantial IP and really leveraging a lot of the open source technologies that are out there. >> Yeah. So you know, I talked about there were four components to Coleman, right? And the first part of it was, we can leverage machine-learning services to make the CloudSuites conversational. So they can chat, and talk, and see, and hear, and all of that. And yeah, some of those are going to use the technology that sits behind Alexa. And it's available in AWS's Alexa as you guys know. But that's only really a small part of what we're doing. There are some places where we are looking at using computer vision. For example, automated inspection of car rental returns, is one area. We're using it for quality management pilot at a company that normally has humans inspect something on a production line. That kind of computer-vision, that's not Alexa, right? It's you know, I gave the example of image recognition. Some of it can leverage AWS's framework there. But again, we're always going to look for the best platform and framework out there to solve the specific problem that we're trying to solve. But we don't do it just for the sake of it. We do it with a focus to begin with, with an industry. Like, where's a really big problem we can solve? Or where is there a process that happens inside an application today that if you brought an AI first mindset to it, it's revolutionary. And we use this phrase, "the AI is the UI". And we've got some pretty good analogies there that can help bring it to life. >> And I like your approach for presenting your AI strategy, in terms of the value it delivers your customers, to business. You know, there's this specter out there in the culture that AI's going to automate everybody out of a job. Automation's very much a big part of your strategy but you expressed it well. Automating out those repetitive functions so that human beings, you can augment the productivity of human beings, free them up for more value-added activities and then augment those capabilities through conversational chat box. And so forth, and so on. Provide you know, in-application, in process, in context, decision support with recommendations and all that. I think that's the exact right way to pitch it. One of the things that we focus on and work on in terms of application development, disciplines that are totally fundamental to this new paradigm. Recommendation engines, recommender systems, in line to all application. It's happening, I mean, Coleman, that really in many ways, Coleman will be the silent, well not so silent, but it'll be the recommendation engine embedded inside all of your offerings at some point. At least in terms of the strategy you laid out. >> Yeah, no, absolutely right I mean. It's not just about, we all get hung up on machine-learning and deep learning 'cause it's the sexy part of AI, right? But there's a lot more. I mean, AI, all the way back, you can go all the way back to Socrates and the father of logic right? I mean, some of the things you can do is just based on very complex rules and logic. And what used to be called process automation right? And then it extends all the way to deep learning and neural networks and so on. So one of the things that Coleman also does, is it unifies a lot of this technology. Things that you would normally do for prediction or optimization, and optimization normally is the province of operations research guys right? Which again it's a completely different field. So it unifies all of that into one consistent platform that has all of that capability into it. And then it exposes it in a consistent way through our API architecture. So same thing with bots. People always think chat bots are separate. Well that too is unified inside Coleman. So it's a cohesive platform but again, industry focused. >> What's your point of view on developers? And how do you approach the development community and what's your strategy there? >> Yeah, I mean, it's critical right? So we've always, I mean, hired an incredible number of application engineers every year. I think the first 12 months we were here, we hired 1800 right? 'Cause you know, that's kind of what we do. So we believe hugely in smarts. And it sounds kind of obvious, but experience can be learned, smarts is portable. And we have a lot of programs in place with universities. We call it the Education Alliance Program. And I think we have up to 32 different universities around the world where we're actually influencing curriculum, and actually bringing students right out of there. Using internships during the year and then actually bringing them into our development organization. So we've got a whole pipeline there. I mean that's critical that we have access to those. >> And what about outside your four walls, or virtual walls have been four? Is there a strategy to specifically pursue external developers and open up a PAZ layer? >> Yeah we do. >> Or provide an STK for Coleman for example, for developers. >> Yeah so we did, as part of our Infor Operating Service update. Which is, you know, the name for our unified technology platform. We did announce Mongoose platform was a service. Our Mongoose pass. >> Host: Oh Mongoose, sure. >> So that now is being delivered as a platform with a service for application development. And it's used in two ways. It's used for us to build new applications. It's a very mobile-first type development framework too. And obviously Hook and Loop had a huge influence in how that ships. The neat thing about it, is that it ships with plumbing into ION API, plumbing into our security layer. So customers will use it because it leverages our security model. It's easy to access everything else. But it's also used by our Hook and Loop digital team. So those guys are going off and they're building completely differentiated curated apps for customers. And again, they're using Mongoose. So I think between ION API's and between all the things you get in the Infor Operating Service, and Mongoose, we've got a pretty good story around extensibility and application development. As it relates to an STK for Coleman, we're just working through that now. Again, our number one focus is to build those things into the applications. It's a feature. The way most companies have approached optimization and machine learning historically, is it's a discrete app that you have to license. And it's off to the side and you integrate it in. We don't think that's the right way of doing it. Machine-learning and artificial intelligence, is a platform. It's an enabler. And it fuses and changes every part of the CloudSuite. And we've got a great example on how you can rethink demand forecasting, demand planning. Every, regardless of the industry we serve, everyone has to predict demand right? It's the basis for almost every other decision that happens in the enterprise. And, how much to make, how many nurses to put on staff, all of that, every industry, that prediction of demand. And the thinking there really hasn't changed in 20, 30 years. It really hasn't. And some of that's just because of the constraints with technology. Storage, compute, all of that. Well with the access we have to the elastic super-computing now and the advancements in sort of machine-learning and AI, you can radically rethink all of that, and take what we call and "AI First" approach, which is what we've done with building our brand new demand prediction platform. So the example we gave is, you think about when early music players came along on the internet right? The focus was all around building a gorgeous experience for how to build a playlist. It was drag and drop, I could do it on a phone, I could share it with people and it showed pictures of the album art. But it was all around the usability of making that playlist better. Then guys like Spotify and Pandora came around and it took an AI First approach to it. And the machine builds your playlist. There is no UI. AI is the UI. And it can recommend music I never knew I would've liked. And the way it does that, comes back to the data. Which is why I'm going to circle back to Infor here in a second. Is that, it breaks a song down into hundreds if not thousands of attributes about that song. Sometimes it's done by a human, sometimes it's even done by machine listening algorithms. Then you have something that crawls the web, finds music reviews online, and further augments it with more and more attributes. Then you layer on top of that, user listening activity, thumbs up, thumbs down, play, pause, skip, share, purchase. And you find, at that attribute level, the very lowest level, the true demand drivers of a song. And that's what's powering it right? Just like you see with Netflix for movies and so on. Imagine bringing that same thought process into how you predict demand for items, that you've never promoted before. Never changed the price before. Never put in this store before. Never seen before. >> The cold start problem in billing recommendation areas. >> Exactly right, so, that's what we mean by AI First. It's not about just taking traditional demand planning approaches and making it look sexier and putting it on an iPad right? Rethink it. >> Well it's been awesome to watch. We are out of time. >> Yeah, we're out of time. >> Been awesome to watch the evolution, >> We could go on and on with this yeah. >> of Infor as it's really becoming a data company. And we love having executives like you on. >> Yeah >> You know, super articulate. You got technical chops. Congratulations on the last six years. >> Thanks. >> The sort of quasi-exit you guys had. >> Great show, amazing turnout. >> And look forward to watching the next six to 10. So thanks very much for coming out. >> Brilliant, thank you guys. Alright thank you. >> Alright keep it right there everybody, we'll be back with our next guest, this is Inforum 2017 and this is theCUBE. We'll be right back. (digital music)

(upbeat music) >> Voiceover: Live from the Javits Center in New York City It's theCube covering Inforum 2017 Brought to you by Infor. >> Welcome back to theCube's coverage of Inforum. I'm your host Rebecca Knight along with my cohost Dave Vellante. We're joined by Martine Cadet. She is the Infor Vice President and head of the Education Alliance Program. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Martine: Thank you for having me. >> So let's start out by talking about what the Education Alliance Program is and how it came about, it's not very old. >> No, it's not old. Actually, we'll be three years in September. The Education Alliance Program came about, oh gosh, it was an idea that Charles Phillips, our CEO had a while back, he was looking about, how do we actually get more talents within Infor. How do we get people to even know, quite frankly, who Infor is, and drive some more market awareness. How do we make sure people are excited about our products and solutions long term, right. So, the future customers, the future partners, hopefully the future employees as well. So, through that what we started to do was, he created this position and luckily I was hired into the role. And we've built this program where we partner with colleges, universities, as well as nonprofit organizations. We invest in them to invest in their students. So, essentially the same products and solutions and technologies that our customers here are basically learning about and paying for, we train students on. So, through their professors they learn hands on immersive technologies that businesses run on each and every single day and then hopefully they'll get excited and they'll want to come to work for Infor, one of our customers or one of our partners. And actually, they can actually, probably work for any IT company or any company in general because ERP is so pervasive. >> So, have you seen, you said this started a few years ago. >> Martine: Yes. >> Are you seeing results yes? >> Yes, we are starting to see results. We are actually really, really excited. So, we've hired I believe 24 students at Infor. Our partners are starting to hire students as well. In fact, we had somebody hire one of the graduates just last week and we had our first talent fair on Sunday, which was exceedingly well attended, so there's been a ton of excitement. We have, I believe there are about 12 partners who are in our formal Partner In Education Program where we actually bring the partners in, they engage in the classroom and the training and have hands on experiences with the students themselves. And the students get to shadow them in real life situations. So, things like consulting, which are pretty hard. I mean in IT part of what we are challenged with is SAP and Oracle and Infor, we all seem to hire from the same talent pool and the folks basically go from company to company to company. >> Hundred people, 99 seats. >> Yes, thank you. And what you see is customers want somebody who's got 20 years of deep industry expertise and so we get it. But you need an opportunity to actually start building that industry expertise so what we've been doing is actually creating that pathway for the students to be able to do that and our partners and our customers are actually much more open to that then they were before. So, we're starting to see that pipeline truly grow. By the September of this year, I believe we'll have close to a hundred students who've taken our first series of implementation consulting courses at QNE, which we launched this winter. So, that's one of the biggest things that we've done. As well as we've got our Center of Excellence that we've also opened up at City University of New York. So, we've got a practical experience course, we've got students who are also going very deep around analytics and just kind of building from there. And I think the last time we had spoken last year, I think we had about 16 or less institutions. We've grown to 33 institutions worldwide. We have eight, I believe in Amia, seven in the APAC area and they represent over 400 colleges and universities. So, it's been, it's been really exciting. >> So Martine, can you frame the parameters of the type of candidates that you are recruiting? How do you find them, what are the requirements? >> It's a combination. So, it can be anywhere from a business student who's actually possibly thinking of being in finance who hasn't even thought about a career in IT or technology. But those are the ones with a business mindset that we actually want to get interested because they will make amazing consultants over time. To somebody who's transitioning from roles, right, so maybe they've worked for a couple years in an industry and they've decided, you know, "I really don't want to do the marketing piece," or, "I'm burnt out on the finance piece "and I want to do something different." We have them in our continuing education courses as well. And they bring a very different view to that course. Because they're now learning those practical skills for being either a consultant or a sales person or or whatever they've actually decided to go about and do. And our employers actually get way excited about them as well because they are able to think not just as a technologist or not just as a business person, but within that kind of gray area which is where the industry is going, you have to know a little of all of it in order to be supremely effective. Especially on this consulting side. >> So, big theme, AI at the show, the hard question, median income in 1999 United States was $55,000 dollars, it's now around $50,000 dollars. Man versus machine, right. Now humans have always been replaced by machines, but it's the first time, really in history, that it's cognitive functions that are being replaced. Thoughts, I mean many people believe, I think they're correct, that education is the answer to that gap. Education, creativity, the combinations of those things are what will help solve that problem. Your thoughts on just that topic in general and what role education plays. >> I think what we're doing around AI is so exciting and it's just amazing to work at a company, one, that has named AI Coleman after the women who were in Hidden Figures, but from an education perspective I think you're spot on. I think the only way that we can actually continue to compete as a nation is if we make sure that we fix the education problem and I'm really excited to work for an organization where we're taking a very active role in doing that. So, by changing the model of having people just sit in a classroom learning something where there's really no context for how it's being used in business and it's more about what's being taught today for the roles that are today. What we're trying to do is imbed this kind of thought, leadership into the classroom, open the students' perspectives on what's possible and get them ready to be thoughtful about, okay, how do we embrace technology? How do you think it differently? How do you become agile? Because a lot of the jobs that are here today weren't here when I graduated, right so, how do we change the idea of what we go to school for and what we get educated on that we are actually producing people who are able to be thoughtful and to merge and to find different ways to use technology to come up with different pathways that have not been thought about before. We've never thought that way, right? >> And to evolve as the jobs change. So, we're preparing people for jobs that don't exist yet and they need to versatile in their own approach to how-- >> And excited about it, right? Not be fearful. >> And not fearful. >> Exactly, not be fearful, yeah. >> Well I wanted to congratulate you too because you were recently honored by Network Journal as one of the 25 most influential black women in business. Congratulations! >> Thank you. >> What does that mean to you especially when you think about young black women coming up in business, in technology, and in other industries, at a time where, there's questions about really how much opportunity... >> It's surreal, it was exceedingly humbling. It's on the backs of an amazing team. Who has done a lot of work, I've got some really great people behind me that I push really hard and I am very grateful for. I also have an exceedingly strong family. Who, when I was getting the award I made the comment that I don't feel like I've achieved anything that my parents have achieved, my parents are physicians. They came from Haiti, they came to the U.S. to give us better opportunities and they've done that. And that's what drives me, and in terms of people of color, we've got such a long way to go, but we've come so far. And I just wish that when you look at the history of the U.S. and the world, slavery was not that long ago in the grand scheme of things, and every time the U.S. takes two steps forward, sometimes you take a step back and it might feel like we're taking a step back right now, but if you stay focused on moving forward we will get there. And we will get further because doors are opening and people are doing amazing things and we need to do, I think, a better job when we are in positions where we are more visible in making sure we open doors for other people and not being apologetic about doing so. Because I think there's coded language sometimes that you hear about on, "Well, I can't have a diverse pipeline," "Oh, that means I'm lowering standards," that's bull, quite frankly. There are plenty of people looking for opportunities perhaps they don't fit the profiles that have always put in place, but when we talk about technology and careers the one thing we've talked about and we know is things are ever evolving and changing, and there is no one set profile or standard. So you might find that this kid who's actually been out there doing very different things in the community and just showing themselves as a leadership person in that community is the person that you need in your org. But because we're not having sometimes those conversations across our very safe ponds and we kind of stay with the same people a lot of times, it makes it hard to make those connections. But if we just start talking to each other a little bit more and the ones of us who are actually in these roles be unapologetic about making sure we're having those conversations and opening up doors, I think things will continue to move forward. >> So, what is your advice to companies in technology and in other industries about getting those people, who as you say, do not quite fit the profile, the standard profile of what they think they're looking for but that do add new perspectives and new ideas and new insights into companies. I mean, what would your advice be to employers? Do they need to start an Education Alliance Program? Is that the beginning? >> That can be part of it, but they just, they need to stop being corporate and stop being political. I mean, I don't know how else to say it. Change is hard, and you can do all of the right things, but if a hiring manager is still going to hire everybody who looks just like them then it's not going to change. And I don't think people do it all the time thoughtfully. It just kind of happens. You have to make the change, it has to come from the top. It also has to come from within the ranks. You have to have the tough conversations. It has to be an embedded part of what companies say they actually value and then they actually have to back it up. 'Cause lot of times people talk about it, but it doesn't come with the, "Okay, well I'm going to give you the approvals." Or, "I'm going to mandate that, yes, "when you have 20 open positions "that you actually have a diverse pipeline." Not a, "I'm going to set aside X number of seats "for one type of person," but you should at least interview a diverse pipeline. Perhaps you'll be surprised in what you see come out. We don't thoughtfully, in general, do that, and I think that's one of the key areas companies can be thoughtful about, and then the other thing is actually looking for talent outside of the same five schools or the same five places that people go to. It's getting out of your comfort zone. >> Can we tell the story, just to get it on record, of Coleman and how it was named, how it was announced this morning? Because not everybody in our audience was watching. >> Okay, so I hope I do it justice. (laughs) I was one of the people in the audience, but essentially for the folks who hopefully have seen Hidden Figures the movie, and it was about the women who were monumental, fundamental, the reason why we were able to make it to the moon. So, when we were having issues and we weren't sure if we had all our calculations in place and they were really thinking, okay, can we do this? Are we going to not be the first ones to get there? Our astronaut said, "Okay, I need this woman. "I need Miss Coleman to actually check these calculations. "If she says these are right, then we're good. "If not, I'm not going." >> Goosebumps, Martine. >> Right? That was amazing, that was amazing. And our CEO had the foresight, the idea, and the chutzpah I should say, (laughs) to decide, okay, when we're thinking about AI and we're thinking about visionaries, we're thinking about what we need to quantum leap what's happening in technology, we're thinking about having that level of insight and intelligence, that is who he wanted to name the product after, and I was telling my team, you know, I was tearing up, like, I'm so proud to work in an organization where our CEO would stand up unapologetically and say, this is how I'm going to name my product and this will be, you know, go down for quite some time. And the family was there which was so cool. And we had a standing applause, the first standing applause in the room. So it was amazing. >> Well it's not often you get a standing ovation at a tech conference. >> At a product announcement. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> So I want to also just quickly talk about, piggy back off of this, and that is the culture of Infor. And you know, the things that we keep hearing about. It's a culture of learning, a culture of education, a culture that really starts at the top of bringing in different perspectives and also understanding the importance of, yes, of naming a new product after this black woman who toiled in obscurity and really was a hero of getting us to the moon, how do you create that culture? I mean and how to do you kind of keep it going? >> I think it comes down to leadership. I think it comes down to people you hire. It has to be every level of the organization. I think Charles does set the tone by doing things like this as well as other things like having an Education Alliance Program, quite frankly. And the way our program is scheduled we don't look just to the Harvards or the Princetons. We're looking to partner with community colleges that have amazing talent that possibly did not have the same access, but they still have the same possibility. So I think doing all of that is how you create the culture. Then making sure it is embedded in the people that you continue to bring into the organization and giving them the time and the freedom to have these sorts of conversations and embed it into the work that they do. So we've got creative people, like Hook and Loop, that in itself, so cool. How many IT companies said, oh, you know what, I'm going to bring over some artists, I'm going to bring over some film producers, that's the kind of thinking that gets you to diversity. >> Great, Martine thanks so much. It's been a pleasure having you on the show. >> Thank you so much. Thank you guys so much for the time, I appreciate it. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Dave Vellante, we will have more from Inforum after this. (upbeat music)