(gentle music) >> Okay, we're back with Mark Hill who's the director of IT operations at Digital River. Mark, Welcome to "The Cube." Good to see you. >> Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. >> Hey, tell us a little bit more about Digital River, people know you as a payment platform. >> You've got marketing expertise. >> Yeah. >> How do you differentiate from other e-commerce platforms? >> Well, I don't think people realize it, but Digital River was founded about 27 years ago primarily as a one-stop shop for e-commerce, right? And so we offered site development, hosting, order management, fraud, expert controls, tax, physical and digital fulfillment as well as multilingual customer service, advanced reporting and email marketing campaigns, right? So it was really just kind of a broad base for e-commerce. People could just go there. Didn't have to worry about anything. What we found over time as e-commerce has matured, we've really pivoted to a more focused API offering specializing in just a global seller services. And to us that means payment, fraud, tax and compliance management. So our global footprint allows companies to outsource that risk management and expand their markets internationally very quickly and with the low cost of entry. >> Yeah, it's an awesome business. And, you know, to your point, you were founded way before there was such a thing as the modern cloud, and yet you're a cloud native business. >> Yeah. >> Which I think talks to the fact that incumbents can evolve, they can reinvent themselves from a technology perspective. I wonder if you could first paint a picture of how you use the cloud, you use AWS, you know, I'm sure you got S3 in there. Maybe we could talk about that a little bit. >> Yeah, exactly. So when I think of a cloud native business, you kind of go back to the history. Well, 27 years ago, there wasn't a cloud, right? There wasn't any public infrastructure. We basically started our own data center up in a warehouse. And so over our history, we've managed our own infrastructure and co-located data centers over time through acquisitions and just how things works, you know, those are over 10 data centers globally for us. For us it was expensive, well from a software, hardware perspective, as well as, you know, getting the operational teams and expertise up to speed too. And it was really difficult to maintain and ultimately not core to our business, right? Nowhere in our mission statement does it say that our goal is to manage data centers. (laughing) So, about five years ago we started the journey from our host into AWS. It was a hundred percent lift and shift plan and we were able to complete that migration a little over two years, right? Amazon really just fit for us, it was a natural, a natural place for us to land in and they made it really easy here for us to, not to say it wasn't difficult, but once in the public cloud, we really adopted a cloud first vision, meaning that we'll not only consume their infrastructure as the service, but we'll also purposely evaluate and migrate to software as a service. So, I come from a database background. So an example would be migrating from self deployed and manage relational databases over to AWS RDS, relational database service. You know, you're able to utilize the backups, the standby and the patching tools auto magically, you know, with a click of a button. And that's pretty cool. And so we moved away from the time consuming operational task and really put our resources into revenue and generating the products, you know, like pivoting to an API offering. I always like to say that we stopped being busy and started being productive. (laughing) >> I love that. >> And that's really what the cloud has done for us. >> Is that what you mean by cloud native? I mean, being able to take advantage of those primitives and native API. So what does that mean for your business? >> Yeah, exactly. I think, well, the first step for us was just to consume the infrastructure, right? But now we're looking at targeted services that they have in there too. So, you know, we have our data stream of services. So log analytics, for example, we used to put it locally on the machine. Now we're just dumping into an S3 bucket the way you're using Kinesis to consume that data and put it in elastic and go from there. And none of the services are managed by Digital River. We're just realizing the capabilities that AWS has there too. >> And as an e-commerce player, retail company, were you ever concerned about moving to AWS as a possible competitor, or did you look at other clouds? What can you tell us about that? >> Yeah, and so, I think e-commerce is really mature, right? And so we got squeezed out by the Amazons of the world. It's just not something that we were doing, but we had really a good area of expertise with our global seller services. So we evaluated Microsoft, we evaluated AWS as well as Google and, you know, back when we did that, Microsoft was Windows-based. Google was just coming into the picture, really didn't fit for what we're doing, but Amazon was just a natural fit. So, we made a business decision, right? It was financially really the best decision for us. And so we didn't really put our feelings into it, right? We just had to move forward and it's better than where we're at and we've been delighted actually. >> Yeah, makes sense, best cloud, the best tech. >> Yeah. >> You know, I want to talk about Chaos Search. A lot of people describe it as a data lake for log analytics. Do you agree with that? You know, what does that even mean? >> Yeah, well, from our perspective because the self-managed solutions are costly and difficult to maintain. You know, we had older versions of self deployed using Splunk, other things like that too. So over time, we made a conscious decision to limit our data retention in generally seven days. But in a lot of cases, it was zero. We just couldn't consume that log data because of the cost, intimidating in itself, because of this limit, you know, we've lost important data points, use for incident triage problem management, trending and other things too. So, Chaos Search has offered us a manageable and cost-effective opportunity to store months or even years of data that we can use for operations as well as trending automation. And really the big thing that we're pushing into is in the event of an architecture so that we can proactively manage our services. >> Yeah, you mentioned elastic. So I know I've talked to people who use the Elk Stack. They say, yes, this is exponential growth in the amount of data. So you have to cut it off at whatever. I think you said seven days, >> Yeah. >> Or less, you're saying you're not finding that with Chaos Search? >> Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that was one of the huge benefits here too. So, you know, we we're losing out if there was, you know, a lower priority incident for example and people didn't get to it until eight, nine days later. Well, all the bread crumbs are gone. So it was really just kind of a best guess or the incident really wasn't resolved. We didn't find a root cause. >> Yeah, like my video camera's down you know, by your other house, is that when somebody breaks in, I don't find out for two weeks and then the video's gone, kind of like same thing. >> Yeah. >> So, how do you, can you give us some more detail on how you use your data lake and Chaos Search specifically? >> Yeah, yeah. Yep and so there's many different areas, but what we found is we were able to easily consolidate data from multiple regions into a single pane of glass to our customers. So internal and externally, you know, it really does serve that operational support for the data extract transformation load process, right? It offered us also a seamless transition for the users who were familiar with elastic search, right? It wasn't difficult to move over. And so all these are a lot of selling points benefits. And so now that we have all this data that we're able to capture and utilize, it gives us an opportunity to use machine learning, predictive analysis. And like I said, you know, driving to an event driven architecture. >> Okay. >> So that's really what is offered and it's been a huge benefit. >> So you're saying you can speak the language of elastic. You don't have to move the data out of an S3 bucket and you can scale more easily. Is that right? >> Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it is so for us just because running in multiple regions to drive more high availability, having that data available from multiple regions in a single pane of glass or a single way to utilize it is a huge benefit as well, just to, you know, not to mention actually having the data. >> What was the initial catalyst to sort of rethink what you were doing with log analytics? Was it cost, was it flexibility scale? >> There was, I think all of those went into it. One of the main drivers, so last year we had a huge project, so we have our Elk Stack and it's probably from a decade ago, right? And, you know, a version point or two or something, you know, anyways, it's very old and we went through a whole project to get that upgraded and migrated over. And it was just, we found it impossible internally to do, right? And so this was a method for us to get out of that business, to get rid of the security risks and support risk and have a way for people to easily migrate over. And it was just a nightmare here consolidating the data across regions. And so that was a huge thing. But yeah, it has also been the cost, right? We're finding that cheaper to use Chaos Search and have more data available versus what we were doing currently in AWS. >> Got it, I wonder if you could share maybe any stories that you have or examples that underscore the impact that this approach to analytics, >> Yeah >> Is having on your business, maybe your team's everyday activities, any metrics you can provide, >> Yeah. >> Or even just anecdotal information? >> Yeah, yeah. And and I think, you know, one, coming from an Oracle background here, so Digital River historically has been an Oracle shop, right? And we've been developing a reporting and analytics environment on Oracle and that's complicated and expensive, right? We had to use advanced features in Oracle like partitioning materialized views and bringing other supporting software like Informatic, Hyperion, Essbase, right? And all of these require a large team with a wide set of expertise into the separate focus areas, right? And the amount of data that we were pushing at the KF search would simply have overwhelmed this legacy method for data analysis than a relational database, right? In that dimension, the human toll of the stress of supporting that Oracle environment than a 24 by seven by 365 environment, you know, which requires literal or no downtime. So just that alone, it was a huge thing. So, it's allowed us to break away from Oracle, it's allowed us to use new technologies that make sense to solve business solutions. >> You know, Chaos Search is just a really interesting company to me, I'm sure like me, you see a lot of startups. I'm sure they're knocking on your door every day. And I always like to say, "Okay, where are they going after? "Are they going after a big market? "How are they getting product market fit?" And it seems like Chaos Search has really looked that hard at log analytics and sort of maybe disrupting the Elk Stack. But I see, you know, other potential use cases, you know, beyond analyzing logs. I wonder if you agree, are there other use cases that you see in your future? >> Yeah, exactly. So, I think there's one area would be Splunk for example. We have that here too. So we use Splunk versus, you know, flat file analysis or other ways to capture that data just because from a PCI perspective, it needs to be secured for our compliance and certification, right? So Chaos Search allows us to do that. There's different types of authentication, really a hodgepodge of authentication that we used in our old environment, but Chaos Search has a more easily usable one, one that we could set up, one that can really segregate the data and allows to satisfy our PCR requirements too. But Splunk, I think really, deprecating all of our elastic search environments are homegrown ones, but then also taking a hard look at what we're doing with relational databases, right? 27 years ago, there was only relational databases, Oracle and SQL server. So we've been logging into those types of databases and that's not cost-effective, it's not supportable. And so really getting away from that and putting the data where it belongs and that is easily accessible in a secure environment and allowing us to push our business forward. >> And when you say where the data belongs, it sounds like you're putting it in the bit bucket S3, leaving it there, >> Yeah. >> And this is the most cost-effective way to do it and then sort of adding value on top of it. That's what's interesting about Chaos Search to me. >> Yeah, exactly, yup, yup versus the high price storage, you know, that you have to use for a relational database, you know, and not to mention the standbys, the backups. So, you know, you're duplicating, triplicating all this data in here too in expensive manner. So yeah. >> Yeah, copy creating, moving data around and it gets expensive. It's funny when you say about databases, it's true. But database used to be such a boring market now it's exploded. Then you had the whole no SQL movement and SQL became the killer app, you know, it's like full circle. (laughing) >> Yeah, yeah, exactly. >> Well, anyway, good stuff Mark, really, I really appreciate you coming on "The Cube" and sharing your perspectives. We'd love to have you back in the future. >> Oh yeah, yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. >> Yeah, our pleasure. Okay, in a moment, I'll have some closing thoughts on getting more value out of your growing data lakes. You're watching "The Cube," you're leader in high-tech coverage. (gentle music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, It's the Cube. Covering AWS reInvent 2019. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services and Intel along with its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back everyone, we're live here in Las Vegas in the Cube for live coverage of Amazon reInvent 2019. I'm John Furrier here instructing the singer from the noise. We have an amazing guest here, the founder of Aviatrix, I mean the CEO of Aviatrix, Steve Mullaney. Welcome to the Cube, thanks for comin' out. >> Thank you, good to see you. >> So first of all, I want to get into your experience, because I think it's notable having you on, because you've been in the industry for years, you're CEO of a multicloud software, a new kind of company. And this is what Andy Jassy was talking about on his Keynote today, that there's new kinds of companies, there's the born in the cloud, then there's enterprises re-borning in the cloud, my word. It's actually pivoting or re-platforming, re-imagining, whatever you want to call it. This is the new game, and if you're not on that side of the street you could be out of business. >> Steve: Yeah, no we're definitely seeing that and I think that's the thing that really got me excited about a year ago, was watching enterprises make that transition and say you know what, the center of gravity has gone from architectures inside the on-prem data center, is now moved to in the cloud. That shift has happened, people talked about it five years ago, but they didn't mean it. Now when you talk to enterprises, they are actually moving into the cloud, not just talking about it. And they're saying that is the center of gravity. And what's interesting to me was, I think even just the tone of Andy Jassy today and what he was talking about was once you define what your architecture is, you push it everywhere. So cloud 1.0 and 2.0 was really more about taking my architecture that was on-prem and pushing it into the cloud. So let me take virtual clients, a virtual router, basically my hardware router, package it up, put it on the cloud. That's not cloud native, it's cloud naive as we talk, right? So the change that's happened is now everybody realizes that the center of gravity is in the cloud, and you start seeing things like outposts. You see things like wavelength, you see things like TGW network Manager and things getting pushed out. The architecture of the cloud, now actually pushing out and extending out into on premises. >> John: Well, I want to give you a prop for a couple things. One is, for the folks watching, and read my post about my interview with Andy Jassy, I said two things in there that I borrowed or stole from Steve. One was cloud native without the T is cloud naive. And T for trust, T for IT, that was clever. And we're going to get into that-- >> Well I stole that from our sales guy Harold Hilderbrand, so you know what? >> John: Harold shout out to you. The second thing that I heard used when we were talking, we were talking about transitions vs. transformations. I think that is so on point because I think that encapsulates what Jassy's saying and what the industry is feeling right now. Transitions are for incremental improvements, transformations are for flipping the script. >> Steve: Right, right. >> This is really happening. Can you share what you mean by transitions vs. transformations? >> Yeah, so when you're in a computing model, there's been really three computing models. There's mainframe, which was 50's or 60's, to 80's or 90's, there's a 20-30 year period where IBM, DAC and so forth. That was the way you did enterprise computing. Then this PC client server thing came along, which was viewed as a toy at the beginning. For print sharing and work groups and people said are you kidding me? PCs, Servers are just PCs with two power supplies. I'm not running my mission critical infrastructure on PCs. But in the 90's with the internet, IP protocol, it's shifted. That became that transformation. So incumbents never win transformations. DEC, IBM and what happens is they're never in the conversation, because it's a transformation. Incumbents always win transitions, so for the last 20 to 30 years, Cisco, great, fantastic company. Very respected company. John Jamers will talk about transitions and talk about he would pat himself on the back, and how they would win market transitions. You're supposed to win a market transition as an incumbent, don't pat yourself on the back. The customers will force you to win the transition because they don't want another leader when you're in that same model. We are now entering that third transformation, this a model of computing change. This is from the top down business transformation Andy was talking about, which is true. You have companies redefining who they are, and they are leveraging cloud technologies to do that. This is not a cost thing, this is not a bottoms up technology thing that IT guys just say ah I want to learn something new. This is top down business transformation, existential threat to the survival of my company kind of stuff, and we need to move fast, and enterprises all move together. That's now happening and transformations, that confusion creates opportunities, because it moves so fast that the legacy vendors just don't have time. They have the innovators dilemma, they can't move to the new way quick enough. >> Yeah and one of the things I want to get your thoughts on and I want to get your reaction to is as we go to all the events in cloud, in this business, we see everything, the one tell sign, for me, is the security market. Security got unbuckled out of IT, in the board conversation. The jewels are on the table, the security, if you get hacked you're out of business. Talk about threats to the business, security is the leading indicator. What's going on in security? They're building their own staff, they're hiring developers in house. They are really changing the game on how they use technology. That's just in one area. You're talking about a complete reset, or reconsideration of everything that Jassy said. >> Everything, yeah, it's the business, right? Your applications are your business, right? And then all the infrastructure underneath that is there to service the applications and the data, that's why it's there. When you talk to different people, and you talk to customers like NBC and CBS, and content people, they're moving to the cloud. They're now having channels that are 100% hosted on AWS for the first time. Why are you doing that? I asked this of CBS. Because we need to move faster. Guess what, they're competing with Netflix and Amazon. They can't do it the old way, they're going to die. So they're moving all of their channels, hundreds of channels to be now cloud enabled. Because it allows them to deliver it in months as opposed to years. >> Your really interesting background, I'll share with the audience, you have a networking background, the old WellFleet became Bay Networks. Early employee at Cisco, then went to early employee at Palo Alto Networks security company. CEO Of Nicira, which is a big pioneer in software-defined networking. Which, at the time, evolved into the crown jewels of AVMWare. >> Yep, in a sense. >> You would say I would agree with that. And now you're on Aviatrix where it's got a multi-cloud abstraction, so you're kind of riding this new wave. So the question I have for you is, I coined the term being reborn in the cloud. Not born in the cloud. People who are born in the cloud, clean sheet of paper, they can scale up. But an enterprise has got to transform. Has to become reborn with cloud architecture. >> Steve: Yes, yes. >> This is a fundamental, almost look in the mirror moment as an enterprise executive, saying are we being reborn? >> Yes. >> How do companies do that? >> So we have a number of companies, enterprise companies, that are 30 year old, 40 year old enterprise software companies that, honestly, were left for dead. Where people thought, they weren't SaaS. They missed out on the whole Benny Hoff SaaS movement and they were on-prem. They had all the features, all the functionality, but they didn't have the delivery model of SaaS. They were hurting, they were going to die. People left them for dead. Now what they are doing is they've reborn themselves, in the cloud. They are pushing themselves in the cloud. Informatic, Variant, Epsolon, Eluysian, Teradata. We've got tens of these companies, that are, have reinvented themselves and now they're actually doing really, really, well. Because they had the functionality that they've always had, but now they have the delivery mechanism. There not SaaS actually, and the customers like that. Because I get my own three or four VPCs, it's my own network, it's not multi-tenant. It's hosted within AWS and now they're just migrating as fast as they can, all of their on-prem applications of customers into AWS and other clouds. >> John: All right, so I want to ask you about multi-cloud. Jassy didn't use the word multi-cloud, the critics are tweeting away on that. But, of course he's going to say multi-cloud, he's the cloud. He's the one cloud, he wants to be. >> Yeah. >> Multi-cloud is a reality. He did point out in my interview, and I think he might have mentioned on stage, that people are picking up primary and secondary. And then it's not 50/50 it's 70/30, 90/10. Whatever the ratio is then just pick one. Amazon gets picked a lot for the leader. What's your vision and how do you see the multi-cloud playing out? As people start becoming more cloud operations based. >> My view, and people, we are in the first pitch in the first inning of this cloud and people say AWS is a 40 billion dollar run rate, how can that be? Because the money has always been and always will be with large enterprise. They are now just starting to move into the cloud. There's trillions of dollars of spend that's coming into public cloud. So, first off, it's very beginning, early days. Second thing is AWS has done incredibly well with the developers and the born in the cloud people. Enterprises, not so much. And, you know what? Microsoft kind of understands enterprises. So I think we're going to be set up for a little bit of battle here, and it's, by no means, over. So I think AWS recognizes that and every single enterprise that I have talked to says I may not be a third, a third, a third across all three of the big clouds. Maybe I'll have one primary, and I think Andy Jassy says that, which I kind of agree with. I think people will have a primary, but I don't think everyone's primary is going to be AWS. I think there's going to be a lot of Azure primaries. And even some Google primaries, probably more, and I think it will be a two horse race for that. But then they're going to use the other clouds because, I was just talking to a customer today. The signature recognition software runs better in Azure. They're an AWS customer, they're moving to Azure for this. Why, because that app runs better in Azure for some reason. I think people, particularly enterprises, will make that decision. >> All right, so I want to get your take on two things, first of all I agree with you. >> I think that's what will happen. >> I would agree with that, so let's just take this scenario. Amazon wins on capabilities, they're constantly adding new stuff everyday. So, if you're a builder, it's the ultimate tool shed for technology. Azure isn't there yet, they're trying to catch up as fast as they can, they're pedaling as fast as they can. But there's a build out level and then there's a consumption level. So there's having all that capability, but also the customer's consumption has to be addressed. Solutions packaging, ease of use. So delivery mechanisms for infrastructure in the cloud. The consumption, how I buy and use, is now a consideration. Or consumer experience or whatever you want to call it. What's your take on those two dynamics? >> I think you'll see, from AWS, I don't know this, but it has to be, because this is what enterprises want. The phrase 'Go Build' is great for an early adopter. You go tell that to an enterprise, here's the power tools, go build your house. They go, I'm going to cut my hand off. I don't want to go build anything, I want to consume. So I think you're going to see them changing their tune a little bit, because the markets evolved, and I think it's caught them a little bit by surprise as well. I think Microsoft, because they know the enterprise, they won't say 'Go Build'. They're going to say 'Come Consume'. And I think that's going to resonate with enterprises. Because, at the end of the day, they don't really want to do that. Now, either way, I think it's going to be a battle. That's where Aviatrix comes into play. We help enterprises, no matter what cloud you're on, across multiple clouds or one, actually consume services. So we abstract away all the details of those native services. >> Well, I would say, if you got to transform, you have to do some building, but it would have to be the easy kit. >> Steve: Yeah, I want the easy button, I mean. >> John: Paint by numbers. >> Yeah. >> John: Self-installing house. So I got your take on that. So you got a lot of buzz in the analyst community around a phrase I've heard you say. >> Steve: Which one is that? >> There's no more food left in the data center. >> Oh, okay, yeah. >> John: And the animals are leaving the data center. >> And that's right. >> John: Food being the supplier. >> The on-prem data center. >> John: The on-prem are money and the animals being the vendors. So if there's no food in the data center, what's happening? What does that mean? >> Steve: They're goin' through, the center of gravity has moved into the cloud, that's where the food is. So you're going to see a lot of cloud naive legacy vendors put cloud on things, right? It's the same crap they had, they're just going to put cloud on it because, like I said, what do animals do when they run out of food? They go find where the food is, right? If people get mad when I say that because data centers are not going away. I know that data centers aren't goin' away, but they're going to get quarantined like mainframes got quarantined. It's going to be an expense area, it's not going to be an investment. And what do you do with an expense? You quarantine it, you cap it, you hopefully keep it flat, or your reduce it. But, sure, the data centers are going to be around for a long time but all their market caps are based on big growth. And, where people are confused is, for the last five years, everybody said we are moving to cloud. But they were talking. So if you look over the last five years, all the people selling the on-prem have done very well. So, clearly, this whole cloud thing was a hoax, right? Because, for five years, you said it was coming and it hasn't, so therefore I'm good. The problem is you're good right up until you're not good and that just happened. >> And that's happening now in your opinion? >> That's happening now and your seeing it in peoples results, publicly. And they're washing it over. They're saying it's a temporary problem. I compensated the field wrong. Bullshit, I know what's going on and, you know what? There's going to be no hiding from that. >> Yeah, and the expansion's going to be in the cloud where the developers are building apps that drive top line. >> Steve: That's where all the investment's going. >> Okay so, there's a couple of major areas developing with the cloud dynamic. The cloud scale and now data tsunami and data scale. Diversity of data and all those things are happening. You can see that in the announcements. Large scale data, the data layer network, data ops, data as code, infrastructure as code, large scale, all that's great. But networking still becomes the fundamental problem. Jassy talked about it on stage. Hops to the network, they got this wavelength thing for 5G. That's really cool. All the kind of important things that are going on, is going on at the network. Same concepts being applied to a new architecture. >> Yeah. >> Your thoughts? >> Exactly right. One of our customers, I forget who it was, said a phrase to me that I love. Again I steal everything John. >> John: I steal from you. >> Yeah, he said the network comes first. I go that is perfect, I'm going to use that. In fact, actually it's on our website. The network comes first. Because when you're building up that infrastructure, in all of computing. Compute network and storage, what's the most important? Network by far. Why, because if the network isn't architected correctly, you're screwed for life. So you've got to get that right. So that's what everybody is doing right now. Is they look and they say strategically, we're going to go build a city. First thing I got to go and do is get the basic infrastructure, and the network comes first. That is the core of my basic infrastructure. If you get that wrong, life is bad for a long long time. That's what's going on right now. >> Okay, so you've had a great career, you got the CEO of Aviatrix going on. You're also looking at startups, you advise, been on boards. What's your view of the startup landscape if you're advising startups to go at this market, this trillion dollar enterprise market, the money's being thrown in the air and the money's in the middle of the table. How do they attack that money, how do they attack the marketplace? >> First thing, number one, you got to be cloud native. You have got to understand the basic native constructs of Azure, Google, AWS. You cannot be just this thing that plops on top of it, you got to be able to programmatically, program that infrastructure and leverage it. Because all of the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent, you want to use that, right. You don't want to have to go recreate that. So that, to me, is number one. And then number two, I think there's a lot of opportunity in the cloud. Everybody thinks AWS will do anything and everything you need in networking. That is a bunch of crap. There is so many limitations that they have for enterprises. Like hundreds of limitations. The beautiful thing with networking is you push one area, and ten other problems happen. So we've got 20 years of things to do to make networking better. So that's what we're going to do. But also at the edges, right? I would say where the interesting thing happens, is the interface between on-prem and cloud. So BGP, IOS, Cisco IOS, all the things that, because it's kind of like the virtual, the physical interface. It's the cloud to on-prem interface. There's still going to be an interface. >> John: You still need plumbing. >> Then there's still going to be an interface. That interface is where a lot of the complexity and friction comes. So whether it's IoT, edge computing type things, or things that we do of bringing that cloud in a seamless, kind of simple, automated way. Bringing on the on-prem into the cloud world in a very seamless way. >> John: So, I'm got to ask you a final question. You came out of retirement. You had the good life on boards, golfing, clipping coupons, going to the beach every day. Now you're the CEO of a company going grinding it out again. A lot of older ageism coming back into the biz. A lot of people who have been in the systems business. >> Steve: Oh yeah. >> A lot of people coming back into the game. Why did you come back, what was the main driver for you to come back out of retirement? >> 'Cause this is a thousand foot wave and it's ten times bigger than what I saw in client server. It's the biggest opportunity of value creation and innovation that I have ever seen and ever will see in my life. What's also fun is every single one of the customers that we are dealing with are all old guys like me. They're all 40s, 50s, 60s, it's the IT guys from 30 years ago that everyone left for dead. Everyone thought, oh it's the developer-led infrastructure, the developers are going to do everything, uh uh. This is IT, IT is coming back and saying thank you very much developer, we got it from here. This is serious business now. This isn't fun and games anymore. We're taking over. >> But it's serious IT, it's reborn IT, it's not the old IT. >> Not the old IT, they want to do it. It's the old guys. But they're enlightened guys and gals and they want to do it in the cloud way, with the simplicity and the automation. But yet I want to bring the functionality, visibility, and control that I had on-prem. I don't want to do it the old way. I want to do it the new way. Guy today I was just talking to a customer who said, I don't want to build my Dad's network. But he's 50 years old, he's my age, you know. And so, but I think that's the key, they're enlightened networking people, yet they have the 30 years of history of understanding the subtleties of BGP and networking. >> This was our chance to hear you in the Cube, we had such a great time, our team's awesome. It's our seventh year doing reInvent, eight years total of this conference. What's your take of Jassy's Keynote this year? Is this an inflection point? Is this one of those moments where you're going to look back and say this was a time that Amazon made a change, or gassed it extra hard? >> I think, my take is, look every year he says amazing things and every year is another step function. But I think this year will go down as the year that people will look back a couple of years from now and say that was the point, that it got serious, like really serious in terms of big enterprises coming in and I think it's going to send a message to the other public clouds, and a message to all the other enterprises that say hey, maybe I'm falling behind. When you see Goldman Sachs and you see banks are laggers to the cloud. They're not early adopters, they're laggers. You see that and you go well, wait a minute, maybe I'm missing out. I think it's going to actually accelerate because he's seeing it, you know. So I think it will go down as a big inflection point. >> John: Steve Mullaney, President and CEO of Aviatrix, who's going to, you'll be on Thursday to go over some of the stuff you guys do as a company. Appreciate the commentary, and great experience riding the wave. How high was that wave? >> A thousand foot. >> Thousand foot wave. We've been riding this wave for years. What a great time it is to be here at reInvent. Keep coverage, I'm John Furrier. We will be back with more coverage after this short break. Here in the Cube Intel Studios sponsored by Intel. Thanks to Intel for your generous contributions to making the Cube and supporting our mission. We really appreciate it. Thanks for watching, we've got the more coverage after this short break. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live, from Las Vegas, It's theCube! Covering Informatica World 2018, brought to you by Informatica. >> Welcome back everyone. It's theCube's live coverage of Informatica World 2018, here in Las Vegas. I'm John Furrier, your host and analyst, with Peter Burris, co-host and analyst at Wikibon and still going on theCube. Our next two guests is Gitesh Ghai, C Vice President, General Manager of Data Quality Security and Governance for Informatica, and Smail Haddad who is the Senior IT Director of Data Governance and Data Delivery Architecture at Toyota, company wide, Great to have you on Gitesh. Great to have you on Smail. So we were just talking before coming on camera, before we went on live about the massive role that you have at Toyota with data. You are looking at everything now. You're touching all the data. But it wasn't always like that. >> Smail: Yeah it wasn't always like that... >> Tell us about your journey and your role at Toyota. >> Yeah thank you. So Toyota, again, started business in North America. People know, maybe not, 65 years ago. And we started as a little dealership in North Hollywood. Bringing these Japanese cars. So we grew from that single dealership in North Hollywood to this big company we are today, with almost 25 plants around North America, Canada, US, and Mexico. And almost 2,600 dealerships across nationwide. So what that came with, it came with a big responsibility, in terms of understanding our customer base and trying to be more closer to what the customer needs. So our supply chains, where we produce the vehicles, it really was mostly a push supply chain, where we build a car and we push it to the customer to buy it. The model works very well, all the way to 2008. Where things change and we all understand what happened back in the financial meltdown and the crisis, that was a worldwide crisis. And that was a turning point for Toyota because we start seeing a shift in the demand. The customers becoming more savvy. Demanding for example, more electrical cars, less gas guzzlers vehicles and so on. The marketing department, which was a different company back then, understood that but the production companies, which was producing the vehicles, they didn't have that knowledge. So the journey to bring these two together became really critical after that 2008 crisis. Because what it forced us to do was the vehicles were being produced everyday, the dealers were not able to sell, and we were just stuck in vehicles around the lot. So why the digital disruption was so key for us, is the data was always there. Data always told us the truth. And that's what the facts are. Where we started looking at, back after that, is hey, if we look at the data and the data always predicted that the shift in the market will happen that way. And we should've have throttled down maybe, our production system better. Why we didn't do it that way? We were not looking at the data. Data was available. So what we undertook, under Toyota IS, we said, "Can we bring all this data across all these silos, "into one place?" So we build our big data solution, where the data is coming from various departments and various business lines. And it's being blended together and correlated. What that gives us is really that 360 view of our business, which we were missing. 'Cause we were looking at the business in silo, in pieces. And with that explosion of data, that we were gathering, obviously that brings a lot of questions about where this data, how good it is, if I'm going to make decisions on it, can I trust it? All that was a good takeaway into the business I'm in, which is the Data Governance. It's basically how can we govern this data that we are collecting on a daily basis today? And so my department is leading basically, the North American Governance and Quality across all the business line in North America. So as we are gathering these data points everyday, on a daily basis, even today we are gathering. What made it even, made it go even further in terms of volume, is we started capturing data coming from the cost, on a real time basis. So this is not just sales data where we capture the experience, the sales, and configuration of the vehicles on a daily basis... >> John: That's a lot of data coming in. >> A lot of it, a lot of it. So the volume exploded. With that, the responsibility to put a solution, where people can go quickly, find the right data. So basically, the time to data became so critical. How can we shorten that time to find the right data you want? And understand it, and trust it, and use it? >> John: So last... >> Sorry John, the Toyota story that you're telling us is especially interesting 'cause Toyota is legendary for empirical based management, lean manufacturing, so you have plants and marketing organizations, and sales organizations who, because of the Toyota way, have grown up on the role that data needs to play in their function. And what you're doing is you're saying, "That was great. "But we had to take it to a next level "and organize our data differently so we could look at it "across the entire company." >> Across the entire company. So absolutely, there are four, basically, goals that Toyota is trying to achieve today. One is understanding our customer in a more personalized way. Understand today's demand and hopefully predict tomorrow's demand. The second important pillar, empower our employees and our team members. By the way, Toyota, we call employees team members. And the third one is optimize our operations. And the fourth is transform our product. In order to achieve all these four goals, data is at the middle of all this. Why it's so important, we understand that today, in this day and age of digital disruption. And by the way, the automotive industry is being disrupted. Not our competition right now, Toyota, is no more the GM, and the Ford, the traditional automotive companies. But our new competition is all the technology companies, Google, Apple, Amazon. And you might have heard the news. Everyday, how they are disrupting these segments where you hear about autonomous driving cars and everybody's jumping on it. And behind all that, taking just the autonomous driving cars. The amount of data behind these so you can make the vehicle drive itself and take you from point a to point b in a safe manner and avoid all the road hazards. That needs a huge amount of data that's behind it, and fuels that. We're able to make huge stride. The new story of Data Governance at Toyota, is really, how we can enable that and not being just about compliance and risk management, which is kind of understood, that's part of the job. But we make that seamless. We wanted our business unit to focus more on the core business and goals, versus worrying about, "Am I in compliance, do I need to do this or that?" Try to seize the opportunities and put Toyota in a competitive way so they can compete with all these new disrupters like I said, Google, and the, the Apple of the world. Because what they have in common, those companies, >> John: They're data companies. >> Exactly. Data companies, technology. They understand how to use data. They understand how to analyze data. This is where traditional automotive companies like Toyota, and GM, and Ford, are basically bound to learn about that. >> But Waymo is not a car manufacturer, Uber is not a car manufacturer, they're companies that are providing a transportation service. And the only way that Toyota could provide a transportation service, is if you started organizing your data differently, in service to the idea of providing consumers a better, and businesses, with better transportation services. Whether you call it personal. I don't want to be the typical analyst that kind of goes off and starts renaming things. But that's fundamentally what you're trying to do. Is you're saying, "Our customers are mainly focused "on getting from point a to point b safely. "Let's make sure that we have products and services "that help them get there. "Perhaps through a lot of intermediaries along the way." But is that kind of how you're organizing things? >> Absolutely, so in order to achieve that goal. We wanted to bring the silos. Like I said, the data was always there but it was always built in silos, stored in silos. What we did in the next, last few years, we started breaking all the silos because we started looking at the data as an enterprise assets and no more as just a departmental assets or as a tool to get to a goal. It became the strategic assets for the company. And in order to achieve that, was to really break the silos. Bring it together so we can see across and understand how are business is operating. And hopefully, put the company in a competitive advantage to see the future coming to. >> It must be really frustrating to know that the data was there the whole time. And you're kind of kicking yourself. What did you do? I mean, you brought Informatica in. What's the Informatica connection, Gitesh? Get a word in, come on. With the Informatica connection, these guys. Are you the core supplier? Do you guys, the connective tissue between Toyota's groups? >> It's all about the data, right? It's all about the data. Informatica's role in all of this, it's a great story. Toyota's, Smail's story, is a great story. What Informatica brought to bear for Toyota, it's actually the promise of big data. The promise of big data is bringing together data that hasn't been analyzed together in a new context before. So breaking down these silos and bringing together the data. What's interesting is when you bring it together, you create a data lake. But there's a very big difference between a data lake and a data swamp. Which is why naturally, governance, quality, trustworthiness became a focus area of bringing all of this data together. >> Well last year, talking about data swamp and data lake as our core theme. This year governance and enterprise catalog is a bigger story because you guys easily could've been swamped out because of all this new data coming in, whether it's car telemetry or new data. 'Cause if you had set the table for your intercompany connective tissue, if you will, then you're like, "Oh, hey we're done, wait a minute." >> But Toyota was applying data to the work of manufacturing, to the work of marketing cars. And now you're trying to apply data to the work of providing better transportation. And the only way to think that through is to see how all this data can be reorganized and brought together. And at the same time, you can still, then turn that data around and still apply it for the work of manufacturing, the work of marketing, and the work of selling. >> Gitesh: Absolutely. >> Also I'd add, to be competitive in a new market, they are going to use their, leverage their assets. Not only data but their physical assets. To compete at a new level, a new playing field. >> Smail: Absolutely. >> With data at the center. >> And I think you said it earlier, you have to bring this data together in the lake. But you need an organized view of all the data that's out there, which starts with our data catalog. So the data catalog gives you a sense of what data do you want to bring in the lake and what data, frankly, is noise, doesn't matter? >> Whole 'nother level of operations, whole 'nother level of intelligence. Competitive advantage, competitive strategy. >> Peter: What a job. >> We're data geeks, geeking out here. Great story, I'd like to do a follow up. I think that this is a real big story of not only of digital transformation, digital evolution, digital disruption, digital business, great story... >> You used to be able to do this job in Southern California. >> Yes, absolutely. >> Thanks for bringing Toyota to the table. Thanks for coming on. >> My pleasure. Thank you for having me on. >> The beginning of a journey that's going to continue it's not ending anytime soon. Toyota company, really bringing data into the center of the action. Of course, we're in the center of the action as theCube, bringing you the data from Informatica World, right here, on theCube. More coverage after this short break. I'm John Furrier, Peter Burris. Stay with us, we'll be right back. (upbeat music)