>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021, brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to IBM Think 2021. This is the cubes ongoing coverage, where we go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise, of course virtually in this case, now we're going to talk about ecosystems, partnerships and the flywheel they deliver in the technology business. And with me are Jason Kelly, he's the general manager global strategic partnerships, IBM global business services and Mani Dasgupta, who's the vice president of marketing for IBM global business services. Folks it's great to see you again. I wish we were face-to-face, but this'll have to do. >> Good to see you Dave and same, I wish we were face to face, but we'll, we'll go with this. >> Soon. We're being patient. Jason, let's start with you. You, you have a partner strategy. I wonder if you could sort of summarize that and tell us more about it. >> So it's interesting that we start with the strategy because you said, we have a partner strategy Dave and I'd say that the market has dictated back to us, a partner strategy. Something that we it's not new, we didn't start it yesterday. It's something that we continue to evolve in and build even stronger. This thought of a, a partner strategy is it... Nothing's better than the thought of a partnership and people say, "Oh, well, you know you got to work together as one team and as a partner." And it sounds almost as a one to one type relationship. Our strategy is much different than that Dave and our execution is even better. And that, that execution is focused on now the requirement that the market, our clients are showing to us and our strategic partners, that one... One player, can't deliver all their needs. They can't design solution and deliver that from one place. It does take an ecosystem to the word that you called out, this thought of an ecosystem. And our strategy and execution is focused on that. And the reason why I say it evolves is because the market will continue to evolve and this thought of being able to look at a client's, let's call it a workflow, let's call it a value chain from one end to the other, wherever they start their process to wherever it ultimately hits that end user, it's going to take many players to cover that. And then we as IBM want to make sure that we are the general contractor of that capability with the ability to convene the right strategic partners, bring out the best value for that outcome, not just technology for technology's sake, but the outcome that the end client is looking for so that we bring value to our strategic partners and that end client. >> I think about when you talk about the, the value chain, you know, I'm imagining, you know the business books years ago where you see the conceptual value chain, you could certainly understand that and you could put processes together to connect them and now, you've got technology. I think of APIs. It's, it's, it really supports that everything gets accelerated and, and Mani, I wonder if you could address sort of the the go to market, how this notion of ecosystem which is so important is impacting the way in which you go to market. >> Absolutely. So modern business, you know demands a new approach to working. The ecosystem thought that Jason was just alluding to, it's a mutual benefit of all these companies working together in the market. It's a mutual halo of the brands. So as responsible, you know, for the championship of, of the IBM and the Global Business Services brand, I am very, very interested in this mutual working together. It should be a win, win, win as we say in the market. It should be a win for, our clients first and foremost, it should be a win for our partners and it should be a win for IBM, and we are working together right now on an approach to bring this go-to-market market strategy to life. >> So I wonder if we can maybe talk about, how this actually works and, and pulling some examples. You must have some favorites that we can touch on. Is that, is that fair? Can we, can we name some names? >> Sure. Names always work in debut writing. It's always in context of reality that we can talk about, as I said, this execution and not just a strategy and I'll, I'll start with probably what's right in the front of many people's minds. As we're doing this virtually because of what, because of an unfortunate pandemic. Just disastrous loss of life and things that have taken us down a path we go, whoa! (clears throat) How do we, how do we address that? Well, anytime there's a tough task IBM raises its hand first. You know, whether it was putting a person on the moon and bringing them home safely, or standing up a system behind the current social security administration, you know during the depression, you pick it. Well here we are now and why not start with that as an example because I think it calls out just what we mentioned here. First, Dave, this thought of, of an ecosystem because the first challenge, how do we create and address the biggest data puzzle of our lives which is, how do we get this vaccine created in record time? Which it was. The fastest before that was four years. This was a matter of months. So Pfizer created the first one out and then had to get it out to distribution. Behind that is a wonderful partner of ours, SAP trying to work with that. So us working with SAP, along with Pfizer in order to figure out, how to get that value chain and some would say supply chain, but I'll, I'll address that in a second, but there's many players there. And, and so we were in the middle of that with Pfizer committed to saying, how do we do that with SAP? So now you see players working together as one ecosystem. But then think about the ecosystem that that's happening where you have a federal government agency. You have Ms. State, Alocal, you have healthcare life science industry, you have consumer industry. Oh, wait a second Dave, this is getting very complicated, right? Well, this is the thought of convening in the ecosystem. And this is what I'm telling you is, is our execution and it, it has worked well and so it's, it's it's happening now and we see it still developing and being, being, you know very productive in real time. But then, I said there was a another example and that's with me, you, Mani, whomever. You pick the consumer. Ultimately we are that outcome of, of the value chain. That's why I said I don't want to just call it a supply chain because at the end is, is, is someone consuming and in this case we need a shot. And so we partnered with Salesforce, IBM and Salesforce saying, wait a minute that's not a small task. It's not just get, get the content there and put it in someone's arm. Instead there's scheduling that must be done. There's follow up, and entire case management like system. Salesforce is a master at this. So work.com team with IBM we said now, let's get that part done for the right type of UI UX capability, that user experience, user interaction interface and then also, in bringing another player in the ecosystem. One of ours, Watson health, along with our blockchain team, we brought together something called a digital health pass. So, I've just talked about two ecosystems where multiple ecosystems working together. So you think of an ecosystem of ecosystems. I call it out blockchain technology and obviously supply chain, but there's also AI, IOT. So you start to see where, look, this is truly an orchestration effort that has to happen with very well designed capability and so of course we master in design and tying that, that entire ecosystem together and convening it so that we get to the right outcome. You, me, Mani are all getting the shot, being healthy. That's a real-time example of us working with an ecosystem and teaming with key strategic partners. >> You know Mani, I, I, I mean, Jason you're right. I mean this pandemic's been horrible. I have to say, I'm really thankful it didn't happen 20 years ago because it would have been like, okay here's some big PCs and a modem and go ahead and figure it out. So, at least, the tech industry has saved the business. I mean, with, and earlier we mentioned AI, automation, data, you know, even things basic things like, security at the end point. I mean so many things and you're right. I mean, IBM in particular, other large companies, you mentioned, SAP who have taken the lead and it's really, I, I don't, I Mani I don't think the tech industry gets enough credit but I wonder if there's some of your favorite partnerships that you can talk about. >> Yeah. So I'm going to, I'm going to build on what you just said, Dave. IBM is in this unique position amongst this ecosystem. Not only the fact that we have the world's leading most innovative technologies to bring to bear, but we also have the consulting capabilities that go with it. Now to make any of these technologies work towards the solution that Jason was referring to in this digital health pass, it could be any other solution, you would need to connect these disparate systems sometimes make them work towards a common outcome to provide value to the clients. So I think our role as IBM within this ecosystem is pretty unique in that we are able to bring both of these capabilities to bear. In terms of, you know, you asked about favorites. There are, this is really a co-opetition market where everybody has products, everybody has services. The most important thing is how are we, how are we bringing them all together to serve the need or the need of the hour in this case? I would say one important thing in this, as you observe how these stories are panning out. In an ecosystem, in a partnership, it is about the value that we provide to our clients together. So it's almost like a "sell with" model from, from a go-to-market perspective. There is also a question of our products and services being delivered through our partners, right? So think about this, the span and scope or what we do here and so that's the sell through, and then of course we have our products running within our partner companies and our partner products for example, Salesforce, running within IBM. So this is a very interesting and a new way of doing business. I would say it's almost like the, the modern way of doing business with modern IT. >> Well, and you mentioned co-opetition. I mean, I look at it, you're, you're, you're part of IBM that will work with anybody 'cause you're your customer first. Whether it's AWS, Microsoft, I mean, Oracle is a, is a, is a really tough competitor but your customers are using Oracle and they're using IBM. So I mean, as a, those are some, you know good examples I think of your point about co-opetition. >> Absolutely. If you pick on any other client, I'll mention in this case, Delta. Delta was working with us on moving, being more agile and now this pandemic has impacted the airline sector particularly hard, right? With travel stopping and anything. So they are trying to get to a model which will help them scale up, scale down be more agile, be more secure be closer to their customers to try and understand how they can provide value to their customers and customers better. So we are working with Delta on moving them to cloud, on the journey to cloud. Now that public cloud could be anything. The, the beauty of this model in a hybrid cloud approach is that you're able to put them on red hat openshift, you're able to do and package the, the services into microservices kind of a model. You want to make sure all the applications are running on a... On a portable almost a platform agnostic kind of a model. This is the beauty of this ecosystem that we are discussing as the ability, to do what's right for the end customer at the end of the day. >> How about some of the like SaaS players? Like some of the more prominent ones. And we, we, we watched the ascendancy of ServiceNow and Workday, you mentioned Salesforce. How do you work with those guys? Obviously there's an AI opportunity but maybe you could add some color there. >> So I like the fact Dave that you call out the different hyperscalers, for example whether it's AWS, whether it's Microsoft, knowing that they have their own cloud instances, for example. And when you, when you mentioned, hey, had this happened a long time ago, you know you started talking about the, the heft of the technology. I started thinking of all the, the the truck loads of servers or whatever they, you know they'd have to pull up, we don't need that now because it can happen in the cloud. And you don't have to pick one cloud or the other. And so when people say hybrid cloud, that's what comes out. You start to think of what I call, I call, you know, a hybrid of hybrids because I told you before, you know these roles are changing. People aren't just buyers or suppliers. They're both. And then you start to say, what are, what are different people supplying? Well, in that ecosystem, we know there's not going to be one player. There's going to be multiple. So we partner by doing just what Mani called out as this thought of integrating in hybrid environments on hybrid platforms with hybrid clouds, multi-clouds. Maybe I want something on my premises, something somewhere else. So in giving that capability, that flexibility, we empower and this is what it's doing is that co-opetition. We empower our partners, our strategic partners. We want them to be better with us and this is just the thought of, you know, being able to actually bring more together and move faster. Which is almost counter-intuitive. You're like, wait a minute, you're adding more players but you're moving faster. Exactly. Because we have the capability to integrate those, those technologies and get that outcome that Mani mentioned. >> I would add to one Jason, you mentioned something very, very interesting. I think if you want to go just fast, you go alone. But if you want to go further, you go together. And that is the core of our point of view, in this case is that we want to go further and we want to create value that is long lasting. >> What about like, so I get the technology players and there's maybe things that you do, that others don't or vice versa so the gap fillers, et cetera. But what about, how, maybe customers do they get involved? Perhaps government agencies, maybe they be, they they be customer or an NGO as another example. Are they part of this value chain part of this ecosystem? >> Absolutely. I'll give you... I'll stick with the same example when I mentioned a digital health pass. That digital health pass, is something that we have as IBM and it's a credential. Think of it as a health credential, not a vaccine passport cause it could be used for a test for, a negative test on COVID, it could be used for antibodies. So if you have this credential it's something that we as IBM created years back and we were using it for learning. When you think of, you know getting people certifications versus a four-year diploma. How do we get people into the workforce? That was what was original. That was a Jenny Rometty thought. Let's focus on new collar workers. So we had this asset that we'd already created and then said wait, here's a place for it to work with, with health, with validation verification on someone's option, it's optional. They choose it. Hey, I want to do it this way. Well, the state of New York said that they want it to do it that way and they said, listen we are going to have a digital health pass for all of our, all of our New York citizens and we want to make sure that it's equitable. It could be printed or on a screen and we want it to be designed in this way and we want it to work on this platform and we want to be able to, to work with these strategic partners, like Salesforce and SAP, Alocal. I mean, I can just keep going. And we said, "Okay, let's do this." And this is this thought of collaboration and doing it by design. So we haven't lost that Dave. This only brings it to the forefront just as you said. Yes, that is what we want. We want to make sure that in this ecosystem, we have a way to ensure that we are bringing together, convening not just point products or different service providers but taking them together and getting the best outcomes so that that end user can have it configured in the way that they, they want it. >> Guys, we've got to leave it there but it's clear you're helping your customers and your partners on this, this digital transformation journey that we already, we all talk about. You get this massive portfolio of capabilities, deep, deep expertise. I love the hybrid cloud and AI focus. Jason and Mani, really appreciate you coming back in the cubes. Great to see you both. >> Thank you so much, Dave. Fantastic. >> Thank you Dave. Great to be with you. >> All right, and thank you for watching everybody. Dave Vellante, for the cube and in continuous coverage of IBM Think 2021, the virtual edition. Keep it right there. (poignant music) (bright uplifting music)

>>From around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of IBM think 2021 brought to you by >>IBM. Welcome back to IBM Think 2021. This is the cubes ongoing coverage where we go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise of course, virtually in this case now we're going to talk about ecosystems, partnerships in the flywheel, they deliver in the technology business and with me or Jason kelly, general manager, global strategic partnerships, IBM global business services and Mani Das Gupta, who is the vice president of marketing for IBM Global Business services folks. It's great to see you again in which we're face to face. But this will have to do >>good to see you Dave and uh same, I wish we were face to face but uh we'll we'll go with this >>soon. We're being patient, Jason. Let's start with you. You have a partner strategy. I wonder if you could sort of summarize that and tell us more about it. >>So it's interesting that we start with the strategy because you said we have a partner strategy dave and I'd say that the market has dictated back to us a partner strategy something that we it's not new and we didn't start it yesterday. It's something that we continue to evolve and build even stronger. This thought of a partner strategy is it nothing is better than the thought of a partner ship. And people say oh well you know you got to work together as one team and as a partner And it sounds almost as a 1-1 type relationship. Our strategies is much different than that. David our execution is even better and that that execution is focused on now. The requirement that the market our clients are showing to us and our strategic partners that one player can't deliver all their needs, they can't Design solution and deliver that from one place. It does take an ecosystem to the word that you called out. This thought of an ecosystem and our strategy and execution is focused on that. And the reason why I say it evolves is because the market will continue to evolve and this thought of being able to look at a client's let's call it a a workflow, let's call it a value chain from one end to the other, wherever they start their process to wherever it ultimately hits that end user. It's going to take many players to cover that. And then we, as IBM want to make sure that we are the general contractor of that capability with the ability to convene the right strategic partners, bring out the best value for that outcome, not just technology for technology's sake, but the outcome that the incline is looking for so that we bring value to our strategic partners and that in client. >>I think about when you talk about the value chain, you know, I'm imagining, you know, the business books years ago you see the conceptual value chain, you can certainly understand that you can put processes together to connect them and now you've got technology, I think of a P. I. S. It's it's really supports that everything gets accelerated and and uh money. I wonder if you could address some of the the go to market how this notion of of ecosystem which is so important, is impacting the way in which you go to market. >>Absolutely. So modern business, you know, demands a new approach to working the ecosystem. Thought that Jason was just alluding to, it's a mutual benefit of all these companies working together in the market, it's a mutual halo of the brands, so as responsible for the championship of the IBM and the global business services brand. I am very, very interested in this mutual working together. It should be a win win win, as we say in the market, it should be a win for our clients, first and foremost, it should be a win for our partners and it should be a win for IBM and we are working together right now on an approach to bring this, go to market strategy to life. >>So I wonder if we could maybe talk about how this actually works and and pull in some examples, uh you must have some favorites that that we can touch on. Uh is that, is that fair? Can we, can we name some names, >>sure names, always working debut, right. And it's always in context of reality that we can talk about, as I said, this execution and not just a strategy. And I'll start with probably what's right in the front of many people's minds as we're doing this virtually because of what because of an unfortunate pandemic, um, this disastrous loss of life and things that have taken us down a path. We go well, how do we, how do we address that? Well, any time there's a tough task, IBM raises its hand first. You know, whether it was putting a person on the moon and bringing them home safely or standing up a system behind the current Social Security Administration, you know, during the Depression, you pick it well here we are now. And why not start with that as an example? Because I think it calls out just what we mentioned here first day, this thought of a, of an ecosystem because the first challenge, how do we create uh and address the biggest data puzzle of our lives, which is how do we get this vaccine created in record time, which it was the fastest before that was four years. This was a matter of months. Visor created the first one out and then had to get it out to distribution. Behind. That is a wonderful partner of R. S. A. P. Trying to work with that. So us working with S. A. P. Along with Pfizer in order to figure out how to get that value chain. And some would say supply chain, but I'll address that in a second. But there's many players there. And so we were in the middle of that with fires are committed to saying, how do we do that with S. A. P. So now you see players working together as one ecosystem. But then think about the ecosystem that that's happening where you have a federal government agency, a state, a local, you have healthcare, life science industry, you have consumer industry. Oh wait a second day. This is getting very complicated, Right? Well, this is the thought of convening an ecosystem and this is what I'm telling you is our execution and it has worked well. And so it's it's it's happening now. We still it's we see it's still developing and being, being, you know, very productive in real time. But then I said there was another example and that's with me, you mani whomever you pick the consumer. Ultimately we are that outcome of of the value chain. That's why I said, I don't want to just call it a supply chain because at the end is a someone consuming and in this case we need a shot. And so we partnered with Salesforce, IBM and Salesforce saying, wait a minute, that's not a small task. It's not just get the content there and put it in someone's arm instead they're scheduling that must be done. There's follow up an entire case management like system sells force is a master at this, so work dot com team with IBM, we sit now let's get that part done for the right type of UI UX capability that the user experience, user interaction interface and then also in bringing another player in the ecosystem, one of ours Watson health along with our block changing, we brought together something called a Digital Health pass. So I've just talked about two ecosystems work multiple ecosystems working together. So you think of an ecosystem of ecosystems. I called out Blockchain technology and obviously supply chain but there's also a I I O T. So you start to see where look this is truly an orchestration effort. It has to happen with very well designed capability and so of course we master and design and tying that that entire ecosystem together and convening it so that we get to the right outcome you me money all getting into shot being healthy. That's a real time example of us working with an ecosystem and teeming with key strategic partners, >>you know, money, I mean Jason you're right. I mean pandemics been horrible, I have to say. I'm really thankful it didn't happen 20 years ago because it would have been like okay here's some big pcs and a modem and go ahead and figure it out. So I mean the tech industry has saved business. I mean with not only we mentioned ai automation data, uh even things basic things like security at the end point. I mean so many things and you're right, I mean IBM in particular, other large companies you mentioned ASAP you have taken the lead and it's really I don't money, I don't think the tech industry gets enough credit, but I wonder if there's some of your favorite, you know, partnerships that you can talk about. >>Yeah, so I'm gonna I'm gonna build on what you just said. Dave IBM is in this unique position amongst this ecosystem. Not only the fact that we have the world leading most innovative technologies to bring to bear, but we also have the consulting capabilities that go with it now to make any of these technologies work towards the solution that Jason was referring to in this digital health pass, it could be any other solution you would need to connect these disparate systems, sometimes make them work towards a common outcome to provide value to the client. So I think our role as IBM within this ecosystem is pretty unique in that we are able to bring both of these capabilities to bear. In terms of you know, you asked about favorite there are this is really a coop petition market where everybody has products, everybody has service is the most important thing is how how are we bringing them all together to serve the need or the need of the hour in this case, I would say one important thing in this. As you observe how these stories are panning out in an ecosystem in in part in a partnership, it is about the value that we provide to our clients together. So it's almost like a cell with model from from a go to market perspective, there is also a question of our products and services being delivered through our partners. Right? So think about the span and scope of what we do here. And so that's the sell through. And then of course we have our products running within our partner companies and our partner products, for example. Salesforce running within IBM. So this is a very interesting and a new way of doing business. I would say it's almost like the modern way of doing business with modernity. >>Well. And you mentioned cooperation. I mean you're you're part of IBM that will work with anybody because your customer first, whether it's a W. S. Microsoft oracle is a is a is a really tough competitor. But your customers are using oracle and they're using IBM. So I mean as a those are some good examples. I think of your point about cooper Titian. >>Absolutely. If you pick on any other client, I'll mention in this case. Delta, Delta was working with us on moving, being more agile. Now this pandemic has impacted the airline sector particularly hard, right With travel stopping and anything. So they are trying to get to a model which will help them scale up, scale down, be more agile will be more secure, be closer to their customers, try and understand how they can provide value to their customers and customers better. So we are working with Delta on moving them to cloud on the journey to cloud. Now that public cloud could be anything. The beauty of this model and a hybrid cloud approach is that you are able to put them on red hat open shift, you're able to do and package the services into a microservices kind of a model. You want to make sure all the applications are running on a portable, almost platform. Agnostic kind of a model. This is the beauty of this ecosystem that we are discussing is the ability to do what's right for the end customer at the end of the day, >>how about some of the like sass players, like some of the more prominent ones and we watched the ascendancy of service now and and, and work day, you mentioned Salesforce. How do you work with those guys? Obviously there's an Ai opportunity, but maybe you could add some, you know, color there. >>So I like the fact that you call out the different hyper scholars for example, uh whether it's a W. S, whether it's Microsoft, knowing that they have their own cloud instances, for example. And when you, when you mentioned, he had this happened a long time ago, you know, you start talking about the heft of the technology, I started thinking of all the truckloads of servers or whatever they have to pull up. We don't need that now because it can happen in the cloud and you don't have to pick one cloud or the other. And so when people say hybrid cloud, that's what comes out, you start to think of what I I call, you know, a hybrid of hybrids because I told you before, you know, these roles are changing. People aren't just buyers or suppliers, they're both. And then you start to say what we're different people supplying well in that ecosystem, we know there's not gonna be one player, there's gonna be multiple. So we partner by doing just what monty called out is this thought of integrating in hybrid environments on hybrid platforms with hybrid clouds, Multi clouds, maybe I want something on my premises, something somewhere else. So in giving that capability that flexibility we empower and this is what's doing that cooperation, we empower our partners are strategic partners, we want them to be better with us. And this is this thought of being able to actually bring more together and move faster which is almost counterintuitive. You're like wait a minute you're adding more players but you're moving faster. Exactly because we have the capability to integrate those those technologies and get that outcome that monty mentioned, >>I would add to this one. Jason you mentioned something very very interesting. I think if you want to go just fast you go alone but if you want to go further, you go together. And that is the core of our point of view in this case is that we want to go further and we want to create value that is long lasting. >>What about like so I get the technology players and there may be things that you do that others don't or vice versa. So the gap fillers etcetera. But what about how to maybe customers that they get involved? Perhaps government agencies, may they be they be customer or an N. G. O. As another example, Are they part of this value chain? Part of this ecosystem? >>Absolutely. I'll give you I'll stick with the same example when I mentioned a digital health past that Digital Health Pass is something that we have as IBM and it's a credential Think of it as a health credential not a vaccine passport because it could be used for a test for a negative test on Covid, it could be used for antibiotics. So if you have this credential, it's something that we, as IBM created years back and we were using it for learning. When you think of getting people uh certifications versus a four year diploma, how do we get people into the workforce? That was what was original. That was a jenny Rometty thought, let's focus on new collar workers. So we had this asset that we'd already created and then it's wait, there's a place for it to work with, with health, with validation verification on someone's option, it's optional. They choose it. Hey, I want to do it this way. Well, the state of new york said that they wanted to do it that way and they said, listen, we are going to have a digital health pass for all of our, all of our new york citizens and we want to make sure that it's equitable, it could be printed or on a screen and we want it to be designed in this way and we wanted to work on this platform and we want to be able to, to work with the strategic Partners, a Salesforce and ASAP and work. I mean, I can just keep and we said okay let's do this. And this is the start of collaboration and doing it by design. So we haven't lost that day but this only brings it to the forefront just as you said, yes, that is what we want. We want to make sure that in this ecosystem we have a way to ensure that we are bringing together convening not just point products or different service providers but taking them together and getting the best outcome so that that end user can have it configured in the way that they want it >>guys, we got to leave it there but it's clear you're helping your customers and your partners on this this digital transformation journey that we already we all talk about. You get this massive portfolio of capabilities, deep, deep expertise, I love the hybrid cloud and AI Focus, Jason and money really appreciate you coming back in the cubes. Great to see you both. >>Thank you so much. Dave Fantastic. All >>Right. And thank you for watching everybody's day Vigilante for the Cuban. Our continuous coverage of IBM, think 2021, the virtual edition. Keep it right there. Yeah. Mhm. Mhm. >>Mhm.

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering IBM Think 2018. Brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to IBM Think 2018, you're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage, my name is Dave Vellante, I'm here with my co-host Peter Burris. Gene Chao is here as the Global VP of IBM Automation and Jason Kelley, Cube Alum, is the GM of Blockchain Services. Gentlemen, welcome back to theCUBE. >> Thank you much. >> Great to see you. >> You guys, I call you heat-seeking inefficiency missiles, so, Jason's... Just a shout-out, take it from there. What are you guys up to, what are you doing? How are you helping businesses? >> Well, we're driving trust into transactions. The elusive things that we've been trying to-- >> Gene: Whoops, there goes heat-seeking. (laughing) >> Exactly. Or we're seeking the heat. It's coming after us, as soon as we say trust, someone wants to attack you. And so what we're bringing into business is that thought that, if I can add trust into transactions, I don't need a third-party to validate it. I can now say, look, you are who you are. We both know each other. All that we do, we go way back. We know each other, and what we're about to exchange is known as well. So if I can keep that validation from happening, I'm going to remove cost, labor, time, out of it. And I'm also going to then maybe avail new market opportunities of those who could not enter the system before because we didn't trust their identities. Or we didn't trust that their goods were their goods, and they were trying to exchange it. So think of that heat-seeking missile, we're trying to bring that capability and that heat is the energy in the system now going bigger, better, faster because there's trust. >> And your role is to bring those Blockchain services to market, is that right? >> That's correct, bringing the services as a whole, because see, Blockchain isn't a product. Blockchain, you know, I don't have under the table a bucket of Blockchain. >> Dave: Let me see your Blockchain. >> Sorry, no Blockchains here. So, if in fact, we're bringing this capability to the market, there's all types of services from what's the business value design? First, what's your outcome? Why say Blockchain? Believe it or not, it says it on my chest, so it means I get paid to do it, but maybe you don't need this? And so, quite simply, maybe you need to do something else. So the first thing is, let's understand the outcome that your business is running toward, and then let's understand if it's a Blockchain, and then can we bring some automation with Gene and team? >> Okay, that's the set-up for you Gene, so you're the automation piece of the puzzle. Explain. >> So, I love the commentary around the better, faster, but we're also bringing more scale. So automation has scale. What does that mean? We're really focused on two things, guys, the first thing is around taking advantage of the new technologies to enable what I'll call software-based labor. So there's a new concept of the digital workforce model that enables how transactions or how work gets done. Coupled with that is how that workflow or process, business process, IT process, whatever it is, how does that workflow fundamentally change through these technologies. Why that's important is as we look at Blockchain, as an example, as a pivot point for trusted transactions, I need to build trusted automation around it. Trusted ways to leverage these technologies in that workflow so those transactions are easily scalable, works at machine time, and runs through very quickly. >> This is fascinating stuff, 'cause look. The way that we like to characterize the big change in the industry is we say, for the first 50 years of computing, there was no process, accounting, HR, et cetera, on known technology. How do we implement? What technology do you choose to implement? The implementation choices are becoming clear. Cloud, et cetera. What's less known is the process. The unknown process, unknown technology. Now it's unknown process, known technology. And what you guys are talking about is one of the challenges when you think about processes. Who does what? Can we verify that we've done it? Did they do it right? Did they meet to do what they said they were doing? Et cetera, the whole range of issues. And the contracting process is extremely complex, but if you set it up in a Blockchain form, you've got a simple contract, a simple definition of who is trusted, simple definitions of roles, and now we can dramatically accelerate new process creation and then automate it. Have I got that right? >> I think you got it, when you think about dramatically, dramatically accelerated, you say that it means something different to everyone. But let's think about my friend Frank Yiannas at Wal-Mart, for example, where they're working on food trust. They're trying to make sure that from farm to fork, we know where that food came from. One-third of all food that's processed goes to waste. Because we lack food trust. Food is guilty until proven innocent, right? To keep that from being-- >> Spoiled. >> Spoiled, I'm... The humor is killing me. (laughing) So, no pun intended, food trust, right? So, Frank and team wanted to understand how fast they could move this thought of tracking, tracing, with transparency, this food through the system. Just as you said, there's certain contrast, think of the handshakes from getting, in their case, a mango from a farm all the way to your home, Well, it used to take them seven days. Actually, six days, twenty-some hours, in order to figure out that process. Put it on the Blockchain? 12 seconds. And then once they cured the lag and the technology, 2.2 seconds. So think of that. Now you're shrinking this to seconds versus days, what does that do to the process? What do you do when you say, now my system can go that fast. My people can go that fast. What do you do? Think of the automation that you're bringing in now, and things that you will now have to automate, out of not just necessity, but things you will say, wow, we've opened up a whole new ecosystem of possibilities in order to do business in a different way. >> Well, so let me build on that for a second. 'Cause one of the things that potentially means is that because you can handle more complex, newly designed, process, better, faster, more automated, that you can start to expand the scope of participants in a transaction? The range of characteristics of the transaction, or the type of work? That's how you build up to new businesses and new business models, right? >> Sure. >> Right, right. >> If I can jump in on that one. There's a concept in this one, and this is where Jason and I are connected at the hip. You know, we think in terms of a smarter product, we think in terms of a smarter contract, or transaction, that the guiding principle that we're using is the old way of thinking, and I carry this narrative all over with me is, the old way of thinking is you have people following your creating process, supported by that technology. So the things that you talked about, unknown technology, unknown process, continuously sourced by people? Fundamentally changed. We're now working in a world where the process is run by the technology and supported by the people. It's not that the people are going away, it's a fundamental retooling of the skills and understanding of how to support it, but that scalability, the ability to get to that exponential growth, is because the process is the king. At the top of the food chain, now. And that technology lets it expand. >> But we could do levels of complexity in that process and the number of participants in that process, unheard of! It's scale and scope. >> Yes. >> But doesn't that force... Look, we've had some conversations, Dave and I have had some conversations, with a number of big user organizations about this stuff and we keep coming back to the issue of that they can't just look at the technology, they have to focus on the design. That one of the most crucial features of this process is the design of the Blockchain. We got that right? >> You heard me use the phrase at the very beginning, if you didn't, I'll say it again, I said, business value design. Because in fact, that design is not just a UI or UX, but let's make sure that the business and technology are doing the right thing to get to the outcome. As we say, design doesn't stop until the problem is solved. And guess what, the problem's never solved. So design happens... Many people say, "Oh we're going to do some "design thinking at the beginning. "We did that," check the block, and then they run off and do something else. For us, design's like an infinity loop. You continue to do it. From the beginning all the way to the end, and then, what you're able to do, and hint-hint, this is something that we do in our services, we start with our clients, we get them started so they understand, then we help them accelerate, and then innovate. Three steps: start, accelerate, innovate. And that's a design process in and of itself. So if you start at, you know, the days of Blockchain tourism were a couple years ago, everybody wanted to kick the tires, and then last year was PoC PoV, this year's the year of production. And people are quick in saying, "How do I quickly start "production and keep moving?" >> So let's talk about some other examples. You mentioned Wal-Mart, we heard Plastic Mag this morning, I introduced somebody, I think Evercorp was the name of the company, Diamond Providence. Others that you're excited about, that have made a business impact. >> Well, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Mike White and others at our JV with Maersk. And you know, you think of that, where you have the classic thought of a supply chain, this linear steps in the process, you know, these handshakes that have to happen. Now what we have is we have this process of thinking how we can bring transparency into all of that, and it's not just a supply chain, but a value chain. So you have where 80% of whatever you all are touching or have owned right now, with the shipping line. But not only through a shipping line, but then there was also ground and air, and ultimately to a retail location. Then you consumed it. Well, think of all of those processes now having the transparency where you can see from point of consumption all the way back to origin. Think of the supply chain visibility, that elusive thing called supply chain optimization. Now you can do that, but not only the supply chain, but the value chain. Someone's paying invoices under that big thing called a value chain. Someone's doing trade promotion management in that value chain. Now, if you have that visibility, what do you enable? How many more packages can go through the system? How much more shipping? And the estimate is 5% increase in GDP if we're able to get all of this shipping into the Blockchain. You start talking GDP? It opens eyes. >> Right now you're talking growth, right? >> Yes. >> Real growth. >> So, it's 20% of the four trillion associated with shipping? Is bound up in paperwork? >> Yes. >> So we're talking about 800 billion dollar change. >> And returning capital into the system. Returning capital. You think of this thought of opening up new opportunity, And I'll throw another example, another client, so we're not just talking, but you think of what's happening with We.Trade. Nine banks in Europe who compete. You think of Santander Bank and a Deustche Bank and those are now, they're all coming together, saying "How do we now share data and information "so that we can let small to medium size enterprises "into the system?" So now you're getting not just savings of cost and time, but now you're opening up markets. Getting greater throughput. High waters raise all boats. And that's what we're seeing in a lot of these examples with, it's not just taking out those old things, you're thinking of new processes running the business a different way. >> And Jason's a great lead guy. You asked for an example, our friends at DBS Bank. They are fundamentally looking at changing the business models within the bank across all different divisions of the bank, whether it's credit transactions, mortgages, personal wealth, and the way they approached it was, we know these new technologies are going to allow us to fundamentally look at the workflow and change it. But here's the question: Who will be looking at changing these things? What's going to enable these model changes, the workflow changes may not be human capital. It may be working alongside this sort of man plus machine element or formula-- >> Peter: Patterns. >> Right, to allow the technology to tell you where your efficiencies could be gained. Allow the technologies to make the correlations in those disparate business models, to fundamentally change how you do business. So that's happening today. >> So, phase one is what is this, phase two, POC, now you're sort of in real production, but you obviously doing a lot more POCs, you're scaling out. Where do you see this going over the next three or four years? >> Well, I think last year was a year of the PoC PoV. I think this year's a year of production. And when you think of some of the examples that we've given, we've talked about consumer trade with Wal-Mart, we talk about shipping trade with Maersk, we talk about trade finance with We.Trade. Each of those individual networks, where do we see it going? We see these networks becoming a network of networks. Where each one of them have their own ecosystems and they come together. And they come together with trusted data, with trusted information, access that's unparalleled. So that's where we see it heading. And you have to say then, okay, it sounds really simple in the way you've just described it, so where's the challenge? The challenge is going to be doing this from a business and technology perspective. There's a lot of things that have to be figured out here. How are you going to make those processes work at that speed? What do you rightfully automate and what things don't you automate? That's more than just a technology. You can't plug a technology in and solve this. It takes an end to end capability. And that's what we're seeing, becoming more of a differentiating capability for our teams, where they can say, "Gene, Jason, "can your teams talk to us together?" 'Cause, of course, they work together. That's a differentiating effect of moving at scale and at speed, and that's where we see it going. Scale and speed. >> So what Jason and the Blockchain frame does for us, is it's an accelerant. Okay, we talk about knowledge worker, automation, we talk about different areas of software-based labor, but that accelerant is doing one big thing, is it's forcing us into what I'll call vertically integrated processes or workflow. Gone are the days of segmentation of, "Oh, that's back office," or "That's front office." We now have to take that workflow and pivot that to vertical integration. Why? That accelerant is moving at the speed of light for trusted transactions, I have to make the systems supporting that. The process, the people, I have to keep up with that pace of change. If I don't vertically integrate those processes inter and intracompany? This doesn't work. It falls down. So that's our marriage. >> Tough to go to market. How do you go to market? >> How do we go to market? We go to market as fast as we can, and we go joined at the hip, with clear and simple understanding. >> Where's the Blockchain for going to market? >> Yeah, right? >> And is there partner ecosystem that... >> Absolutely. So we talk about a Blockchain, Blockchain's a team sport. And it is a true demonstration of Metcalfe's Law, you know, the network drives the value. And so we do. We go to market with this thought of, who's going to play in that network? And we have networks where its obvious value may have a founder network, like Wal-Mart, where you say look, we see the ecosystem, we have the ecosystem, we're the founding partner, or you have a consortium such as We.Trade, where they come in and they say, "Look, let's pull all this together "'cause we see the value." So we go to market with that ecosystem, knowing that they have to partner, they have to work together. >> Outstanding. >> There's three distinct chapters in our go to market strategy. One is the services architecture, the second one is software ecosystem, and the third is around platforms, like a Blockchain. So when we start-- >> No design? >> Sorry, say again? >> No design? >> No, there is absolutely design. Absolutely design. So at a service architecture's perspective, there is fundamental workflow design happening. At a platform level, that's an even further advancement of design, because of the frameworks and blueprints happening inside a Blockchain, inside the different next-gen technologies happening. So I have to be two things, I have to be an automation-led environment where I'm providing the way to do these things, differences in RPA versus other technologies, but I also have to be an automation-attached. I have to be attached into the Blockchain framework to make sure we're coupled in the different elements of that framework. So that's how we jointly go to market. >> Peter: RPAs, I'm sorry? >> I'm sorry, Robotic Process Automation companies, so these are the relatively new technologies that enable software-based labor components. They're replicating human activity. >> Software robots? >> Software robots. >> You have a path to automation anyway. >> Exactly right. Exactly right. >> And it's funny when you ask, you know, no design. Design's in there. And this is the way we work at IBM, I mean, we're past that calling it out. So if someone's calling it out, it's like you're going to buy a phone and say, "Oh yeah, we included the battery." Like, it's there now, right? So that's how we run. So is it in there? You mention IBM, anything that you're going to consume from us? Includes IBM design. By practice. >> Wow, you guys, today was Blockchain day. I mean, you must have been thrilled to see all the main tech-- >> You mean every day's not Blockchain day? >> Dave: Well, at IBM, thinks every day... >> Okay, alright, I was just checking. >> You guys sucked all of the air out of the morning. And we heard-- >> And by the way, I certainly hope not. (laughing) >> You hope not what? >> That every day is Blockchain day. >> I hope so. Jason here. >> Makes me not have to buy a new wardrobe. >> If every day's Blockchain day, it ain't working. This is going to be one of those technologies, the less we know about it, the more successful it's been. >> I agree, I agree. >> Well, gentlemen, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. Always a pleasure. >> Thank you guys. >> Thanks very much. >> Appreciate it. >> Alright, keep it right there, buddy. We'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. You're watching theCUBE live from IBM Think 2018. Be right back.

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Interconnect 2017. Brought to you by IBM. >> Okay, welcome back everyone, we're live in Las Vegas for IBM Interconnect 2017, this is theCUBE's three-day coverage, we're in day two, wall-to-wall coverage with theCUBE, I'm John Furrier, with my co-host, Dave Vellante. Our next guest is Jason Kelley, Vice President, he's a partner at IBM's Global Business Solutions, GBS Solutions and Design, part of the group that brings it all together in the digital transformation for IBM. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Grand to be here, thanks for having me. >> So, we were just talking about South by Southwest, before we kicked on the cameras, and you guys had a huge presence there. But you're an interesting part of IBM, and I want you just to make a minute to explain what you do, because everyone talks about, "Oh UX design, you're going to develop the future," it's a lot more complicated than just saying UX design. >> That's true, very true. >> There's some work involved, so take us through what this design experience concept's about, and how does it work, and why everyone's so buzzed-up about it, 'cause it's gettin' a lot of traction. >> Great question to start with, and I always get to spin that then back to you. So as you said UX, first thing that came out, you said design and UX, so tell me, when you hear design, what do you think of? Do you think of cool ties, jackets, what do you think? >> I don't know, a nice cube setup with good user-- >> A couple good lookin' guys. >> Interface on the website. >> I was thinking devices. >> Dave's tie. >> I think of cool visuals, right? I think of movies, actually. >> Okay, okay. So, they are things that give you some type of experience. >> Dave: Yeah, they create a feeling inside, an emotion, it's a motive. >> All right, okay. So, now we're headed in that direction. So take that emotion piece, set that to the side, and think about what also came out, you said device, so it's something that you use. And often when you say design now, they think of the wonderful things like-- >> John: The iPhone. >> You got it, iPhone. They say, "Oh, what wonderful design." That design evokes emotion. And so, when we think of emotion, take that and put that into business, and think about creating an elegant solution for the outcomes of the end user in a business. So, you have a business that has a problem, they need to solve it, and you want to create a solution that evokes emotion. So that as they experience, like you can't set down that phone, we don't want them to set down their IBM solutions, that's the type of design that I'm talking about. >> Jason, this is interesting, Dave and I always talk about this in theCUBE when we get into this kind of like, get into The Cloud and look down at the world, the computer industry has always been centered on how many users do you have? I mean user, are you a drug user? What kind of user are you? It's the consumer, right? So, now you're really getting at the heart of design transcending computer, a user on a terminal. They're all consumers. So this is kind of the new normal. >> That's right, the new norm is, the consumer, meaning the focus. We'll go back to your phone, you think about this consumable capabilities and that consumption. You think back when we thought were cool and you would say, "This is my home office, "and I've got my fax machine here and I've got my-- >> John: A pager! >> "I've got my pager, I've got my telephone, "I've got all these things." >> My stereo. >> You had all those, and now... Here it is. And who did this? This is the consumer. And so, having consumable solutions that a consumer would be excited about, but taking that to the enterprise, at scale. At scale, did I send someone a great text there? >> No, I was just plugging in. (Jason and John laughing) >> So that you have to-- >> It's got a cognitive energy in it, so it's designed well. (all laughing) >> Honey, bring me more milk and bread. What we do from a consumability perspective is just that: how do you make sure that you have consumer grade solutions that the enterprise can enjoy? Right? So that is key, and this is what you pivot around. >> One of the things that we also were watching last week, we were at the Big Data event that we had in Silicon Valley, you can judge 'em as Strata Hadoop is, the collision course between the big data world which tends to be analytics: Watson's got cognitive, and then The Cloud, you've got brute force blocking and tackling, Cloud under the hood, hard IT problems, in-production workloads; and then you have the cool, sexy, sizzley web app, and mobile apps, creativity, kind of comin' together. So, on one hand you got creativity, you have energy, you have emotions, all this kind of outcome-based consumer thinking, and then you got the hard scaffolding, the iron under the hood, like workloads, hard stuff. So, how do you balance that when you get into the Design Center? It's not what people might think, "Oh, they got the crazy ideas, and I'm going to do this, "change the world," but at the end of the day you got to go implement it, so take me through that process. >> So you think about implementation, and we have, here over the last four years, established 26-plus IBM Design Studios globally. And our clients love to come to those studios because they get to talk about what you're asking me here, "Look we have all these things, these piece parts, "some things new, some things legacy. "How do I take this, and how do I tie it all together?" They usually come with these business challenges and say, "Look, I have a front office, and a back office, "and I'm tyin' to get all this," we go "Wait a second. "What you've just described is really one office, "and in that one office, "at the center of all those challenges are data, typically." And you're tryin' to figure out, "How can I make this data work?" And then, as soon as you solve that problem you say, "Wait a minute, then there's business process, "that's working between the front office, "and the back office, and this middle office." And then "Oh wait, there's also then some regulation "that I have to worry about." So now, you have this crashing of these different capabilities, you have this challenge of saying, "How do I make the business architecture, "work with the technical architecture, "work with my human architecture?" And that's where design comes in, that's where you begin to weave those things together by understanding how each one of those diverse pieces of the business work in harmony. >> So Jason, what are some of your favorite examples of an outcome that drove business value? >> I'll use a great example, and it was one with a client I was just havin' a wonderful dinner with last night, the Bank of the Philippine Islands. Banking has each one of these things that I've talked about: trying be more nimble on the front end, as well as having a very complicated, and often regulated back end. This wonderful, wonderful client of IBM said, "Listen, could you come in "and help me solve my data problem? "Because we have a big data challenge." I said, "Sure, well let's understand that, "let's get under the covers of this data problem," in a design workshop with them, walking them through their end users, their end users being all the way through their enterprise, our process realized, wait a minute, it's not our data problem that we have, it's a start-up problem. We're always going to have a data problem, but we can't run like a start-up, we can't move fast, we're not as agile as we think we are. We think we do DevOps, but our DevOps hit separate from agile, and by the way, this design-thinking thinking is great, how do you weave all of that together? What they found then in their start-up was now that we know what our problem is, you've wowed us, we're wowed. But then, how do we execute? We use this term, if I can wow you, you will definitely then how me, right? So how do we do this? And this is where the design came in where we said, "Look, now let's understand how you move like a start-up," which then did get under the covers with: well we need a Cloud capability; we need to have some tooling, like Bluemix, where we can go ahead and quickly assemble those things together; and we need to understand how we can apply some of our analytics, and maybe even cognitive, towards our clients. So, that's something that started one way, here's the problem, and it's data, that really ended up another way. And as they will tell you if you were to ask Bank of Philippine Islands, they'd say, "Listen, the design doesn't stop." And what they've learned from us is that design never stops, everything's a prototype in a sense, and design only stops when the problem is solved. And I can ask you, is the problem ever solved? >> No, it's a moving train every day. >> Jason: You're never done. >> The Design Center, really Studio is a great idea, I think it's phenomenal. The question I want to kind of probe into is how much of it is therapy for the customer to kind of, "Doctor, am I okay? "I think what's goin' on with me, can you look around me?" 'Cause they're lookin' from kind of that 360 blind spot, and how to be innovative. And so, you kind of rub their shoulders, "You been doin' okay, you're going to survive," and then you got to wow them. So before you wow them, you have to kind of whip 'em into shape and get their perspective, so how much of the percentage of time is herding the cats in a therapeutic way? Or is it not a factor to then, when you get that momentum going? Take us through the psychology of the buyer, your customer, because I can almost imagine the opportunities is somewhat intoxicating these days. So you go, "Hey, I got pressure to go Cloud native, "but I know it's going to be a disaster if I do." >> You're on a great point, and I like the thought of the therapy because look, it is somewhat of a Dr. Phil moment that they have. Where you sit back and what we find client after client is that sure, we could tell them, "Here are your pain points. "We're IBM, we deal with thousands of clients every week," but that doesn't cause change. I mean, you really have to change in the way that you're acting, so you can't really, we like to use this phrase-- >> Hit the playbook, run the offense. >> That's right. >> You got to have the culture. >> And you will have some people say that you have to have a culture, so you can't think your way into a new way of acting, you have to act your way into a new way of thinking. And so that's the process, is where you bring this discovery by way of using the basics of empathy, and this is design thinking, in the core of its essence. >> Empathy, great word. Business empathy is really the challenge because, I hate to use the example of will the parachute open? You know I always say to my kids, "Pack your own parachute, learn how to pack a parachute." Not that I tease that dangerous, but it can be, I mean, security breaches are one of those things where the blind trust that's out there, and some opportunities, to Jenny's point on stage today, trust economy. >> That's very true. >> This could be a dangerous world, so you don't want to just trust the parachute's going to open. >> No, no, I will tell ya in a prior life I used a parachute, I jumped Airborne Ranger, jumped out of planes, and I always joked saying, "Hey, no one is going to get shot out, "or have to jump out of an airplane today," so it'll be fine. Well, I can laugh and joke, but you're right because you sit there and to any of our clients, it's not a joke. That trust economy that we're in is reality, and it has to be underlayed with the confidence that we can bring that to-- >> Well Cloud, I have said The Cloud which underpins all this is going to move at the speed of trust, if you don't trust The Cloud, you're not going to use it. >> Jason: Very true. >> That example you gave, I want to go back to it, 'cause we talked about the emotion. So, the emotion comes from what, the consumer experience? You know the bank, that you gave that example. So, take us through sort of what that outcome was, I mean, it was the entire experience that was reimagined? Is that right? >> Well that's exactly, the experience was when the diverse team across the bank was in one room, and going through some of the exercises we take them through to use this empathy for the enterprise. Not just for the individual, or design for a product, this is design for an entire business. As they sit there and they look across that, what they got out of that was this thought that, "Wait a second, this is very complicated "for my part of the business. "Oh but wait, your part of the business "is having similar challenges, and oh, yours as well." And then you have the aha moment you're like, "Wait, we're all having similar challenges." And this becomes the emotion, the emotion goes, "Wait a second, you've just helped me see something "that was right in front of me, it was right there." Thank you, this is the Dr. Phil moment, because then you say, "Oh well, "then we're doing this together." And you go, "Yes, now let us walk you through, "walk you through walking us through "what we might do together collaboratively," and that's where you get this new step change of action. >> So, you're a business therapist, but also can implement. >> Right, because ultimately you have to make, and we have these steps where we look at how we walk through our cycle. If you think of an infinity sign, we go through: you must understand, reflect and make. And we have those as stages of this infinity sign, that you never stop going through those loops, as we call it, the loop of understanding, reflecting and making. >> Jason, I want to talk about the, you mentioned a Dr. Phil moment, this empathy, really a legitimate thing that goes on but-- >> Yeah, you're going to think I'm Dr. Phil, right? >> But also, a lot of customers I can imagine are grounded in disappointment. I mean, the way I felt when Duke lost in the March Madness, I'm like, and then like, "Oh my God, how could they be out?" I had them goin' all the way, it kind of screws up the brackets. So, like that's IT. IT's a lot like, you know, you make a bet, and sometimes it doesn't pan out, you got to be agile. So coming into the disappointment, clients come into the Design Center, probably with either an itch they're scratching, I want to innovate, and then problems that they're trying to solve, which might be some baggage, some sort of issue. Is there a pattern that you see when you have prospects come through, and clients come through the Design Center that are consistent? Like is there a trend, a trending chart, like top three, stack-ranked, issues fall into categorically, Cloud transformation, Watson analytics, is there a trend line? And by the way, did you have Duke to go all the way? >> I thought they would. In the trend that we see, there's some common things that come to mind where a client will say, "I want to move faster." And none of these are going to be surprises: I need to move faster, okay; I need to be agile; I would love to be more innovative; I would like to take my innovation and put it in action; how do I do all of there things? And you'll find if you work with them you go, "So why?" "Why?" We play the game of 5-Whys, and eventually you get to what the true, the true need is, and that true need is to get to get an outcome very quickly, they all have something right in front of them, and it's to be agile, innovative, and out in front of the market. All of those things require what you've already called-out with the technologies, and they are just technologies, the challenge is putting them in action. >> So with the Whys, you get to the outcome, that's the real pain point, and then you settle in to a variety of solution architectural choices. >> Yes, because that architecture battle, as we hear from Jenny, it's going to be the architecture battles on cognitive, on AI and data. And finding those three areas, that's where it has to be knit together. >> Enterprise strong, data first, and cognitive to the core. >> Well said. >> See, I was listening Jenny, I've listened to all your words in your speech, and I don't need Watson for that, but I'll forget tonight after I have a few cocktails. Jason, thank you so much for comin' on theCUBE, appreciate the insight. >> I appreciate the time. >> Be safe jumping out of the airplanes. >> All right, take care guys. >> Thanks so much. More live coverage here from theCUBE after the show, stay with us, some more interviews still on day two to come. Great content here, great guests, more after the short break.