(gentle music) >> Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of PagerDuty Summit. I'm your host for "theCUBE", Natalie Erlich. And now we're joined by the CEO and Chairperson for PagerDuty. We're joined by Jennifer Tejada. Thanks very much for joining the program. >> Hi, Natalie. It's great to have you, and "theCUBE", with us again. >> Fantastic, well, let's do an overview of what PagerDuty does and how it's helping its customers. >> Well, PagerDuty is a digital operations management platform. And what that means is that we use software to detect real-time issues and events from the complex ecosystem of technology that's really hard for humans to manage. We then intelligently orchestrate that work to the right teams, the right people with the right expertise, in the moments that matter the most to your business. And that's become especially important as the whole world has moved to a digital-first world. I mean, pretty much everything we do we can experience on demand today but that's only made possible through the complex technology and infrastructure that's managed and operated by responders all over the world. And PagerDuty's digital operation solution communicates issues in real time to ensure a perfect customer experience every time. >> Terrific, and if you could go through some of the key features like on-call management, incident response, event intelligence and analytics, it would be really great. >> Sure, so, our heritage started with automation of the on-call situation for engineers. So, back in the day, many organizations had software engineers building apps, platforms, infrastructure, but then they would throw that over the wall to an ops team who would manage it in production. That led to poor code quality, it led to lots of challenges when people would release software in the middle of the night on a Saturday, et cetera. And it meant that it took a very long time for companies to manually get a problem into the hands of the right person to solve it. We automated all of that using an API-based ecosystem that connects to over 460 of the most popular applications, observability stacks, monitoring systems, security applications, ticketing environments, cloud environments, et cetera. And so, all of that is now seamless. What that data enabled us to do was build an event management solution, which we call Event Intelligence, which now uses AI and machine learning to help responders understand the nature of all the different events coming at them. So, for instance, instead of seeing 100 events coming at you from 16 different monitoring environments in your infrastructure, PagerDuty will use AI to know that of those 175 are part of the same incident. They're events conspiring to becoming a business-impacting incident. And that allows our teams to get ahead of things, to become proactive versus reactive. We've also built analytics into our solution which helps our customers benchmark themselves and their operational efficiency versus their peer group. It helps them measure the health of their teams and understand which services are causing them the biggest challenges and the most expense whether that's labor expense or customer impact. And most recently, we've been really thrilled with our acquisition of Rundeck which helps us automate the remediation of events which now means that PagerDuty can automate incident management and incident response, both upstream, in terms of identifying events as they flow in, and also downstream, safe self-healing of infrastructure, application and platform environments to get things back to the way they need to work in order to serve end customers and serve employees across an enterprise. We're really excited as our vision has expanded to become the ubiquitous platform, the de facto platform, for real-time work. And what we've seen over the years is our customers coming up with very imaginative ways to use our software to solve real-time unstructured, unpredictable work across the company. That can be legal teams managing across different geographies and business units to close contracts at the end of the quarter, it could be financial services companies that are managing their physical security as well as their digital security through PagerDuty where time really, really matters if you have a data breach or a potential physical security incident. It could be customer service where customer service and support teams are working very closely with engineering teams to identify issues that are causing customers problems and to manage those issues collaboratively so that the customer experience is protected. So, just some examples of how PagerDuty is getting leveraged. And we're really excited to talk about some new innovations at Summit. >> Terrific, well, you really have your thumb on the pulse of corporate America, and as you know, last year, we talked about the pandemic and now we're looking at going back to the workforce, we're looking at the future of work. What does that look like for you? >> Well, the future of work is here and one thing is for sure, it has changed permanently. I think we all learned from the past year that remote work can provide a lot of flexibility and can level the playing field for people all around the world. It means you can access talent from different geographies. It means you can have a different level of work-life balance, but it also comes with its own set of complications. And one of the reasons we pulled Summit earlier from September into June was we really wanted to be a part of this kind of grand moment of reopening that we're seeing around the world. And that means that every organization that we're working with is redesigning their future. But that didn't start today, that started several months ago, as companies learned from their remote work experience, learned from their on-demand experience in dealing with their own customers. And it took some of those innovations and brought them forward into kind of the new design for the way teams will work, the way brands interact with their customers. And at Summit, you're going to hear us discuss why now is the moment, now is the moment to harness your digital acceleration because that's really the way that business is getting done. I mean, frankly, every business is now a software business and all business is now digital business. And PagerDuty has proven itself as the essential infrastructure on which all companies, all brands, can build their success. And as we widen our aperture we think about building the platform for not just today's challenges, but tomorrow's challenges. So, at Summit, you'll hear us talking a lot about resilience and how your entire organization and your brand will be judged on your ability to stand up a resilient business, a resilient brand experience for your customers. Today, uptime is money and resilience and reliability are the currency of tomorrow. We're entering into this era where autonomy is everything when it comes to work. I mean, employees, and generally humans, do not want to be stuck managing mundane tasks. And the hybrid work arrangements that we're anticipating mean that PagerDuty's platform will become even more essential for customers because hybrid work drives more complexity. It means your teams are distributed, they maybe distributed across regions, co-located, remote at home, in different time zones. And when something's going down that's really causing a problem in your business, you need to orchestrate work across the right people that can make a difference in that moment. Autonomy and flexibility, frankly, is what people expect from work. And they also expect to engage with apps and platforms that are easy to use, that are intuitive, that deliver really fast time to value. And that has long been at the core of PagerDuty's offering and value proposition. And none of these autonomous or automation investments replace human expertise. They allow our platform to channel that expertise and the expertise of your users to give them context and visibility to make the best possible decisions in the moment that matters. And I think that is so empowering as we think about this flexible new hybrid way of working. And then lastly- >> And I love the points. >> Oh yeah, go ahead. >> Yeah, I love the points that you make about resilience and autonomy. I'd love it if you could just drive a little further how we can build more connection now that we're going into the office and also integrating this kind of hybrid system. >> Well, I think it's really interesting because in some ways I feel super connected to my employees 'cause I'm engaging with them one-to-one, my box and their box. I have had the opportunity to stay connected to customers and executives across the industry over course of the pandemic. And yet, I'm an extrovert, I miss the in-person opportunity that kinetic energy that comes with being together in a room. And I'm looking forward to being back in studio, doing interviews with you, Natalie. But at the same time, I appreciate the convenience that I've gained. Like, I'm not looking forward to commuting again. I mean, I plan to only get on the road during off hours in the future. And I realize that I don't have to travel six hours for a two-hour meeting on the other side of the U.S., or 15 hours to have a meeting in Europe, I can get a lot of business done online. Having said that, that connection is so important. The social contract that you create with your customers and your businesses is so important. And making sure that we can connect the complex technology that runs the world today is also really important. And that's where PagerDuty plays a role. PagerDuty really helps you know who you need, what you can leverage them for, and gets them in touch when you need them, like I said, on the work that is somewhat unpredictable but can be very high priority, the highest priority in the case of a security breach or a major customer-impacting incident. And so, using AI apps, or sorry, using AI and automation to make sure that we can intelligently route work to the right people is a big part of how our platform has come together and really become the central nervous system of the digital economy. >> Yeah, I mean, these are really great points and it's a bit of a silver lining actually with the pandemic, learning that we can really stay connected despite not being in the office and now have more hybrid systems of work. But let's switch now gears to talk about leadership in our communities and how we can truly activate change and a far more just and equitable world. >> Well, I am a huge believer in social responsibility and social impact, and I really appreciate how all of our employees have come together to leverage PagerDuty's platform for good. When we went public, we launched pagerduty.org which was led by Olivia Khalili. And I know you'll hear from her and some of our impact customers this week at Summit, but I think what's really important is how engaging it is for our employee base. Last year, 93% of PagerDuty employees have volunteered their time for social causes and philanthropy. And that's in a time when we were all enduring a hardship of our own, we were all facing an unprecedented pandemic. We've donated over a million dollars in financial grants to over 400 organizations through strategic giving and employee-match programs. And we've opened civic engagement. We've opened source civic engagement with our Day for Change for our employees and our toolkits which we've shared broadly throughout the industry. We signed on to the Board Challenge which I was thrilled to do because I'm a big believer that more diversity in the boardroom is going to lead more equity in corporate America. And thrilled to add Bonita Stewart and Dr. Alec Gallimore to our board last year. And I think representation is so important at the board level, not just because it's the right thing to do, not just because it's the right thing for business, but it's the right thing for career growth for your employees, showing them the path to what's possible for them with your company. And finally, we published PagerDuty's first ever "Inclusion Diversity and Equity Report", which is part of our effort to provide transparency around not just what we're doing, but how we're measuring it, how we're progressing, so that we can get better every year. And we've highlighted our work to support time-critical health, our work to support equity in the response to COVID including vaccine distribution. And I really enjoy some of the impact stories that we hear from our non-for-profit partners that are working with us at pagerduty.org. So, leadership is what you make of it and you can lead from every chair in an organization. And I'm so proud of the leadership, our employees, and many of our customers have demonstrated in this time of particular challenge around the globe. And we're not through it entirely yet, and so, I'm just really hopeful that we can all come out of this better together. >> Right, and speaking about leadership, why do you think that diversity is so critical for effective leadership? >> Well, first of all, I think it's our responsibility to reflect the communities that we serve. My users do not all look the same, they don't come from the same background, they're from over 150 countries around the world. They're solving a diverse set of problems. And in fact, the problems they're solving with our platform is growing every day as they imagine how to apply our technology, our digital operations platform, to different types of real-time work around their companies. But diversity is also important in problem solving, in looking at challenges through different lenses, in thinking about the different stakeholders that you serve in that process, and in creating an equitable community around you, creating opportunity for people around you. I mean, one of the things that we did that was a business decision a couple of years ago was to open an office in Atlanta. And part of that was to create a path, create opportunities for Georgians and people in the Metro Atlanta area to participate in the tech industry. This was before everybody was working from home, before those geographical barriers were broken down. And I'm thrilled to say, we have a thriving community now in Atlanta that's growing and we're hiring. But that's just one example. That was the smart thing to do for our business, but it was also a great thing to do, I think, for the community. And we've brought new minds and all kinds of new people into our business. And this month we're celebrating Pride Month at PagerDuty, which I'm thrilled to do. We have very active LGBTQ community who contribute hugely to our efforts and to our customers' success. And we think that everybody deserves an equal shot at opportunity at the lifestyle they want and the opportunity to build their own bright future. >> Great, and just lastly, what's the main focus for PagerDuty in the next year? >> The main focus for PagerDuty next year is really executing on our strategy to become the defacto platform for real-time work, ensuring that we can leverage the largest domain-agnostic ecosystem of connected apps and services, that we can leverage the largest dataset based on responder data, workflows, events and incidents to help our customers deliver the resiliency, the autonomy, and the connectedness that they're looking for to serve their customers and accelerate their digital prospects and frankly, to prosper in the future. So, it really is about becoming that de facto platform for action for all your real-time, unstructured and important work. >> Well, Jennifer Tejada, the CEO and Chairperson of PagerDuty, loved having you on this program. Really appreciate your insights on diversity and leadership, and, of course, the next phase for PagerDuty itself. I'm your host for "theCUBE" now covering the PagerDuty Summit. Thanks for watching. (bright music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe. It's theCUBE with digital coverage of PagerDuty summit 2020, brought to you by PagerDuty. >> Welcome to theCUBES coverage of PagerDuty summit 20, I'm Lisa Martin. Very pleased to welcome back to theCUBE, one of our alumna, distinguished alumna, the CEO of PagerDuty, Jennifer Jehada. Jennifer it's great to be talking with you today. >> Thanks Lisa, it's great to be here with theCUBE again and great to see you. >> Yeah, so lots happened in the last six months alone with that whiplash from all that, but you've been fifth year of the PagerDuty summit. The first year virtual, lot of things have changed. Talk to us about the evolution of PagerDuty over the last few years in particularly the last six months. >> Well, let's start with the last six months. I mean, I think we have all seen a society go through a big transformation with a global pandemic, kind of underpinning a volatile economic environment, a very difficult jobs environment. But in many cases, we've also seen tremendous acceleration. We've seen companies pull forward 10 years of transformation into a matter of months. And we saw that recently in some Kinsey research. And this is really been driven by the compulsory need for brands to meet their consumers online, for companies to enable and empower their employees online and for children to be able to learn online. And so, as we've moved, made this shift to doing everything in the digital world, it means that all of our customers, the biggest brands in the fortune 500, the most innovative tech companies that you're aware of. They've all had to really transform quickly to deliver an entire, nearly perfect customer experience online. And the stakes are higher, because they can't depend on their bricks and mortar revenue for business success. And that's meant that IT teams and developer teams have become the frontline of the digital default era because digital really truly is, the new operating system. That kind of fits squarely into how PagerDuty is evolve. Because we started out as a platform that served developers and helping them manage on-call notifications and alerting. So, engineers who wanted to be alerted when something went wrong and make sure they could address an issue in a service they were responsible for, before it had customer impact. Over the last five years, we've really evolved the platform, leveraging over a decade of proprietary data, about events, about incidents, about people, responder behavior, with machine learning, to really help our customers and engineering and IT, and IT ops and security and in customer support, truly manage what is an increasingly complex digital tech ecosystem. And this means that we're using software and automation to detect issues. We're then intelligently routing those issues in that work, that unplanned spontaneous work to the right people in the right moments. So that a customer and employee doesn't even feel any pain. There is no issue with availability. They can continue to engage with a brand or a service the way they want to. And that's become increasingly important because that's where all the revenue is today. >> It's essential, it's like, we've been talking for months about essential frontline workers and we think right away of healthcare, fire police, things like that. But, the digital default that you talked about, there's new digital frontline. I know PagerDuty has over 13,000 customers and some of the new sort of digital frontline that are enabling people to do everything from work, shop, learn, zoom, Netflix for example, Peloton helping us, keep fit in this time of such isolation, are now considered essential and depending on PagerDuty to help them be able to do that. To meet those increasing customer demands. >> Sure, all of these are PagerDuty customers. And the thing about the digital frontline is they can be invisible. You don't necessarily see them because they're behind the scenes trying to manage all the complex technology that makes that on demand Peloton class efficient and amazing for you. And when that class doesn't work, you're unhappy with Peloton. It really directly impacts the brand. Luckily Peloton is very reliable. I'm a big Peloton fun myself. And I really like to acknowledge and just let the frontline know that we do see them. We know that digital workers have been putting in on average, an extra 10 to 15 hours a week. During this environment, many of them are also either living in isolation on their own because of shelter in place rules, or they're trying to manage their own children's schooling. And, we all ask ourselves this question, are we working from home or are we living at work? It's sometimes those lines are blurred. So, anything that we can do as a platform to automate more and more of this work for the digital frontline, is really our focus. And this year at summit, we're going to be talking in particular about freeing our users from complexity about helping them orchestrate and automate work more effectively. And about leveraging machine learning and analytics to improve the cost efficiency, the productivity and the team, the health of their digital teams and their digital operations. >> So, in your keynote, you're going to be talking about digital ops. That's kind of dig into that. Cause we've shifted from this very structured way of working to sort of this chaotic approach, the last six months. Digital ops, what does it mean from PagerDuty's perspective and how is it going to impact every business? >> Well, I think when we look forward in a couple of years, we won't even use the word digital. It'll just be the operations of a company of a modern organization. How do you bring together all the application technology, the infrastructure technology, the networking, the Wi-Fi connectivity, the customer engagement data. How do you bring all of that together, to deliver these wonderful experiences that we've become reliant? You use the word essential, right? Well, PagerDuty essentially become the critical foundation or infrastructure that helps companies manage all this technology. And the problem is, with architecture becoming more distributed with powerful tools like the cloud, that's actually proliferated the complexity. It's actually increased the speed of the number of applications and services that an organization has mattered. And so, adopting the cloud can be very powerful for a company. It can be very freeing. It can allow you to innovate much faster. But it also, is not an easy thing to do. There's a lot of change management associated with it. And you have to make sure, that your team is ready for it. PagerDuty really facilitates a cultural shift, leveraging DevOps, which really, in a DevOps culture really in methodology allows companies to empower people closest to the action, to make better decisions. If you think about this digital world, we're living in, a consumer wait a nanosecond, a microsecond, maybe a couple of seconds. If you don't get that experience to be perfect for them. And yet traditional ways of solving technology problems, or ticketing systems and command and control environments that would take hours, maybe days to resolve issues. We don't have that time anymore. And so, digital operations is all about instantly detecting an issue, being able to run correlation and consolidate those issues to start to become more proactive, to predict whether or not, this small issue could become a major incident. And address it, resolve it, leveraging automation, before customers feel any pain before you see any impact to the business, the bottom line or brand reputation. >> All of those, are absolutely critical for every type of company, every size, every industry, because as you talked about, customers are demanding, we're also ready to, if something doesn't happen right away, we're going to go find the next service that's going to be able to deliver it. And the cost of that to a business, is I saw some numbers that you shared that if that costs you a hundred, a second of a minute, rather of downtime. A year ago, costs you a $100,000. That's now 4 to 5X. So, that costs can actually put a company adding up out of business. And we're in this. Let's not just survive, but thrive mode. And, to be able to have that immediate response. And as you say, shift from being reactive to proactive is I think absolutely business critical. >> Lisa, you should come work for us. >> You have this down pat. >> (laughs) And you're exactly right. I mean, I remember back in the day when I used to work in an office and walk out onto the street before I went home, you would see employees standing outside, switching back and forth between their rideshare app, their food delivery app, maybe their dating app, or their movie entertainment app. And if one thing is not serving them fast enough, they just switched to the other one. And, consumers are very fickle. They've got become increasingly more demanding, which means there are more demands on our teams and that digital frontline and our technology. And in fact, to your point, because all of that revenue has shifted online over the last six months. We've seen the cost of a minute and that cost is really calculated based on loss, labor productivity, but also lost revenue. We've seen that cost go up, from if you lost a $100,000 during disruption last year, you're maybe losing half a million dollars a minute when your app is disrupted. And, these apps and websites don't really go down very often anymore, but small disruptions, when you're trying to close out your shopping cart, when you're trying to select something, when you're trying to do some research. It can be very frustrating, when all of those little pieces backed by very complex technology, don't come together beautifully. And, that's where PagerDuty brings the power of automation, the power of data and intelligence and increasingly orchestrates all this work. We don't start our day anymore by coming into an office, having a very structured well laid out calendar and environment. We often are interrupted constantly throughout the day. And PagerDuty was designed and architected to serve unpredictable, spontaneous, but emergent, meaning time critical and mission critical work. And I think that's really important because that digital environment is how companies and brands build trust with their consumers or their employees. PagerDuty essentially operationalizes that trust. The challenge with trust, is it can take years to build trust up and you can destroy it in a matter of seconds. And so, that's become really important for our customers. >> Absolutely, another thing that obviously has gone on, in the last six months is, you talked about those digital frontline workers working an extra 10 to 15 hours a week, living at work basically, but also the number of incidents has gone up. But how has PagerDuty helping those folks respond to and reduce the incidents faster? >> Well, this is something that I'm very proud of, and PagerDuty's entire product and engineering team should be extremely proud of. I mean, we were held to a very high standard. Because we're the platform that is expected to be up, when everything else is having a bad day. And in this particular environment, we've seen a number of our customers experience unprecedented demand and scale, like zoom and Netflix, who you mentioned earlier. And when that happens, that puts a lot of pressure, events transiting across our platform on PagerDuty. PagerDuty has not only held up extremely well. Seeing some customers experiencing 50 times the number of incidents and other customers experiencing maybe 12 times the number of incidents they used to. Those customers are actually seeing an improvement in their time to resolve an incident by about 20%. So, I love the fact that, not only have we scaled almost seamlessly in this environment with the customers of ours that are seeing the most demand and the most change. And at the same time, we've helped all of our customers improve their time to resolve these incidents, to improve their overall business outcomes. >> One of the things I saw Jennifer recently, I think it was from McKinsey, was that 92% of this, is the survey before the pandemics. That, yeah, we've got to shift to a digital business. So, I'm curious customers that were on that cussing. We're not there yet, but we need to go. When this happened six months ago, when they came to PagerDuty, how did you advise them to be able to do this when time was of the essence? >> Well, first of all, one of our first company value, is champion the customer. So, I think our initial response to what we saw happen as COVID started to impact many industries was to listen. Was to lean in with empathy and try and understand the position our customers were in. Because just like our employees, every person is affected differently by this environment. And every customer has had a different experience. Some industries have done very well, and we hear a lot about that on the news, but many industries are really having a very difficult time and have had to massively transform their business model just to survive, much less to thrive. And so, PagerDuty has really worked with those customers to help them manage the challenge of trying to transform and accelerate their digital offerings and at the same time, reduce their overall costs. And we do that very effectively. We did a study with IDC about a year ago, and found that, most of our enterprise customers experience a 730% return on investment in four months. And that's because we automate what has traditionally been a lot of manual work, instead of just alerting someone there's a problem. We orchestrate that problem across cross-functional teams, who otherwise might not be able to find each other and are now distributed. So, there's even more complicated. You can't just sit in a room and solve these problems together anymore. We actually capture all of the data that is created in the process of resolving an incident. And now, we're using machine learning and AI to make recommendations, to suggest ways to resolve an incident, to leverage past incident experiences and experts within the platform to do that. And that means that we're continually consolidating the time that it takes to resolve an incident from detection all the way through to being back to recovery, but also reducing the amount of manual work that people have to do, which also reduces their stress when they're under fire and under time constraints. Because they know these types of incidents can have a public and a financial impact on their companies. We also help them learn from every incident that runs on the platform. And we're really bringing a more power to the table on that front, with some of the new releases. I'll be talking about later on this morning with analytics and our analytics lab. >> As we look at the future, the future of life is online, right? The future of work is online, but also distributed teams. Cause we know that things are going to come back to normal, but a lot isn't. So, being able to empower organizations to make that pivot so quickly, you brought up a great point about it's not just the end-user customer who can churn and then go blast about it to social media and cause even more churn. But it's also the digital frontline worker who totally needs to be cared for, because of burnout happens. That's a big issue that every company has to deal with. How is PagerDuty kind of really focused on, you mentioned culture on helping that digital frontline worker not feel burnout or those teams collaborate better? >> Well, we look at operations through the lens of sort of humanity. And we think about what's the impact of the operational environment today on what we call team health. And in our analytics solution, we can heat map your team for you and help you understand who in your team is experiencing the most incident response stress. they're having to take on work during dinner time, after hours on weekends, in the middle of the night. Cause these big incidents, for some reason, don't seem to happen at one on a Tuesday. They tend to happen at 4:00 AM on a Saturday. And oftentimes what happens is what I call the hero syndrome. You have a particularly great developer who becomes the subject matter expert, who gets pulled into every major difficult puzzle or incident to solve. And the next thing, that person's spending 50% of their time on unplanned, unpredictable high stress work. And we can see that, before it becomes that challenging and alert leaders that they potentially have a problem. We also, in our analytics products can help managers benchmark their teams in terms of their overall productivity, how much their services are costing them to run and manage. And also looking after the health of those folks. And, we've often said PagerDuty is for people. We really build everything from design to architecture, in service of helping our users be more efficient, helping our users get to the work that matters the most to them. And helping our users to learn. Like I said, with every incident or problem or challenge that runs on the platform. And likewise, I believe culture is a business imperative. Likewise is diversity and equality and PagerDuty as a platform from a technology perspective that doesn't discriminate. And we're also a company that is really focused on unbalanced, on belonging, on inclusion, diversity and equality in everything that we do. And I'm really excited that at summit, we have Derek Johnson who is the president of the NAACP, speaking with us to talk about how we get out the vote, how we support individuals in having a say in leveraging their voices at a time when I think it's more important than ever. >> And that was one of the things that really struck me Jennifer, when I was looking at, Hey, what's going on with PagerDuty summit 20. And just even scanning the website with the photographs of the speakers from keynotes and general session to break out influencers, the amount of representation of women and people of color and diversity, really struck me. Because we just don't see that enough. And I just wanted to say, congratulations as a woman who's been in tech for 15 years. That is so important, but it's not easy to achieve. >> Well, thank you for saying that. I mean, honestly, I think that when you look on that summit website and at those speakers, it really is a great picture or snapshot of the richly diverse community that PagerDuty serves and engages in partners in. Sometimes you just have to be more intentional about identifying some of those phenomenal speakers, who are maybe not like the obvious person to have on a topic because we become accustomed used to having the same types of speakers over and over again. So, this started with intent, but to be honest, like these people are out there and I think we have to give them a stage. We have to give them a spotlight. And it's not about whether you're a man or a woman at our stage. It's making sure that the entire summit environment really brings a diverse and I think rich collection of expertise of experience to the table, so that we all benefit. And I'm really excited. There are just so many fantastic folks joining us from Brett Taylor, who is the president and CEO of Salesforce and was the founding CTO of Facebook to Andy Jassy, who is leading Amazon web services right now. There's Ebony Beckwith who's going to speak about some of the great things that we're doing with pagerduty.org and the list goes on and on. I could spend, all morning talking about the people I'm excited to hear from and learn from. But I would encourage everybody who's putting an event together, to have a strategy and be intentional and be insistent about making sure that your content and the people providing that content, the experts that you're bringing to bear really do reflect the community that we're all trying to serve. >> That is outstanding and congratulations on PagerDuty summit by the first virtual, but you're going to have the opportunity to influence and educate so many more people. Jennifer, it's been such a pleasure talking to you and having you back on theCUBE. I look forward to seeing you again soon. >> Thank you so much, Lisa. It's been great to be with you. >> All right, for Jennifer Tejada. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE conversation. (upbeat music)

>> From Union Square in downtown San Francisco, it's theCUBE covering PagerDuty Summit '18. Now, here's Jeff Frick. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at PagerDuty Summit at the Westin St. Francis in Union Square, San Francisco. About a thousand people getting together talking about the evolution of PagerDuty. We're really excited to have Jennifer Tejada here, the CEO just coming off a terrific keynote. And I got to say congratulations on your recent round of funding that made all the news a week ago. It's great to see you. >> Thank you very much. It's great to see you again as always, Jeff. We love having theCUBE with us at Summit. >> Thank you, and I have to say we do hundreds of events over six years I've been doing this. I've never seen a summit picture in the keynote until the Summit. So, you got it worked in twice. I love the message really about taking the team to the top of the mountain, that moment of truth, and then you got to just go for it. You got to be prepared, you got to have the team, and at some point in time, you just got to go. >> Point 'em down. >> Yeah, so let's jump into it. So, big topic, here before it's been kind of DevOps, but you guys are moving beyond that. You're kind of taking this classic play, start as an application, move into a platform space. And you guys now with all these integration announcements, the announcements of BI, the growth obviously, the support from the funding that you just got shows that you guys are well on your way to take what was a pretty special purpose application and take it into a platform play that crosses a whole bunch of other applications. >> Yeah, I'd take it even one step further, we almost started out more like a consumer app. It was really an application built for engineers to make better use of their time on call. And frankly, not being woken up when they didn't need to be, right? >> Right. >> And so, everything about our first product was designed around what does a developer need, what does an Ops person need, what does that look like, et cetera? As opposed to being designed for the CIO, or the CTO, or the company. >> Right, right. >> Right. And I think that that user centricity, that user ethos has served us really well, because we start there. That's our starting point. Who's the community that is using our products and services? How is their role changing? How is their world changing? And what do they need from us? And that was really the foundation of the trust that we built to start to become truly an ecosystem. Because all those users started pushing their data to us. Their monitoring data from their APM environments, or the data from their ticketing platforms, or the data from their cloud services. And with that information comes the power to be able to really create context. >> Right, right. >> And now, with the aggregation of nearly 10 years of data coming from our responders, and how they behave when they're under pressure of the workflows, which ones work better, which ones don't work so well. And the events, the signals that all of technology and the internet of things throws off in realtime all the time. You bring that data together and apply machine learning and artificial intelligence to it, and we really are putting ourselves in a position not only to be the platform that serves a realtime business, and orchestrates teams as sort of the platform for action, but importantly, becomes the trusted engagement for automation or engagement of autonomy. >> Right. >> For a fast-moving business in the future. >> Right, 'cause you talked about realtime and I just want to throw a couple of numbers out that you had from the keynote. 3.6 billion events, so it becomes apparent really fast-- >> So far this year. >> Right, even the people who are at the center of that, that's kind of hard to manage. So, you have to start using intelligence. You have to start to use business intelligence and artificial intelligence to help filter and help that person do their job much better. So, you guys are making a lot of plays there. And we see it all the time. It's not the BI vendors per se, it's the use of this technology in the background to make apps work better. >> And it's the fact that not only do we correlate the signals and turn them into intelligent insights, but we can then route those signals intelligently to the right people, and orchestrate the actual physical work. So, a lot of the technology community has been focused on just that, technology. And our focus is really on people and teams. How do you empower teams closest to the action, closest to where the proverbial stuff hits the fan. >> Right, right. >> I had to really exercise restraint there. To be in a position to make the best possible decision in those tiny micro-moments that matter. And the consumer, like used to wait maybe six minutes for a website to download. Now, if an app doesn't work perfectly in six seconds, maybe three seconds, you're gone. I walk out of the building in our office in San Francisco, and see our employees and they're toggling back and forth between ride sharing apps and food delivery apps, and Tinder, and whatever else is going on. And it's literally like in a couple of minutes, they're working through eight, nine applications at once. And if any one of those does not work the way it's supposed to, they're done. >> Right, right. >> They just move on. And it's one or two times before they'll delete that. >> Right. >> So, the technology community is now responsible for delivering the perfect brand experience digitally every time. And they've got to be empowered to do that with the right tools and services. >> And the expectation is set by the best. That's the funny thing, right? What was the best or cutting edge quickly becomes the expected norm. >> What is the most delightful thing that ever happened to me, well, that's what I want from you. >> Right. >> That is basically the way it works. >> Right, right. And you talked about trust, and trust is such an important part because one of the key pieces that you guys are enabling, you talked about it in your keynote, is letting the person at the front line in that moment of decision have the tools, and the data, and the authority to make the right call. And it's not a escalation up the food chain, waits, and some emails. It's really empowering that individual to get the right thing done. >> And that's a core tenet of DevOps culture. It's actually born and agile, in fact. But what's really interesting about it is it's the way companies need to be run now. If PagerDuty waited for me to make every big decision, we would be back where we were three years ago. >> Right. >> Right. And as a result of being able to empower our teams with great information, very clear understanding of our goals, and the timeframes we expect to achieve those goals, and then context as we progress through our journey to understand how we're doing against those goals, it gives them the power and the intelligence to make better decisions every moment when I obviously can't be there, or their leadership can't be there. And in fact, it means that the most important decisions are getting made where the person's closest to our end customer, the user. >> Right. >> And that makes a ton of sense to me. Even if it's not the way I was taught leadership, or taught to manage. >> Right, well, you clearly get out front and run those people down that big, giant mountain. >> Well, I just, you know-- >> Every time we meet-- >> I got to figure it out, man. >> I learned about Australia last time I saw you speak at the Girls in Tech thing. So, this is great. Another thing that you acknowledge in your keynote I want to get into is that tech people are imperfect. They are imperfect and that's kind of part of what the DevOps ethos is is that that's okay, we're just going to make it better today than it was yesterday. And I think Ray Kurzweil's keynote about exponential growth and just the power of compounding, which so many people miss out on. So, that's really where you're trying to help people solve problems. It isn't to big eureka moment, it's how do we learn, how do we get better, how do we make improvements? >> Well, and a lot of people in the valley talk about failing fast. In order for failing fast to have a benefit for a company, you not only have to be allowed to fail, it has to be okay when you fail, and there has to be an open transparent conversation about what you learned, what went wrong? And that has to be a blameless, high-empathy discussion or it doesn't work. If someone thinks they're going to get fired by marching you through all the details of their failure, they're never going to tell you the truth. So, when we think about incidents as they come up, or something breaking, not working the way it's supposed to, or a business initiative not turning out the way we thought it would, there has to be a blameless conversation so that everybody in that community learns, so we're better the next time around. And that's where the compounding benefits come. >> Right, right, to the whole team, in fact. I thought the quote, I've never seen that quote that you brought up today. Teamwork remains the ultimate competitive advantage because it's both so powerful and so rare. That is a really scary statement, but we see it all the time. In fact, that was in another keynote and there was a behaviorist talking about, how do we get everybody pulling in the same direction? And John also talked about that in terms of incident post-mortems and how do you make sure that you're learning and not just filing reports. >> Totally. >> So, you guys are right in the middle of that. >> I thought John captured it really well when he said, "It's not about the technology. "We spend all of our time monitoring "and talking about the technology. "It's about us. "And it's us that actually makes this technology great "and applies it so effectively to problems, "and challenges, and opportunities "in our world and in our lives." what's also interesting is Patrick Lencioni's paradigm around the first team. So, most employees come into a business and they think the most important world for me in this company is my team, the people in the team who I report to, a leader, and it's just us. Or for leaders, they say it's just the team that reports into me. Your first team is your peer group. Your first team is that, and by first team I mean the most important, highest priority, aligned organism that is going to drive massive change in a business, it's your peer group. It's the people who work across functions to help reduce friction in a business. >> And drive fast outcomes and great results, right? But most people naturally kind of hunker down into their core team and that's the beginning of the silo mentality. >> Right. >> Right. And so, one of the things I love about Patrick's book, and you're going to hear about that tomorrow onstage, is this idea of what it takes to be an ideal team player, to be humble, to be hungry like good is never good enough, and to be smart, to like constantly be learning, to really care deeply about how you continue to push the envelope to get better. >> Right. So, I want to switch gears a little bit from the people in the individual teams to the ecosystem. You had the ton of partners here at the show, and you talked about in the keynote, 300 integrations. >> Yeah. >> And I think some people might be confused, right? Because it's always this wrestle for whose screen am I working on when I'm doing my daily job? But as you said, we're in a lot of different screens, right? And I'm going back from Salesforce. I'm in my G Suite. Maybe I'm jumpin' into Hootsuite for some social stuff. You guys have basically embraced the ecosystem for all these different types of systems, and really kind of plugged into that. I wonder if you can explain a little bit more. 'Cause I'm sure most people might be confused by that. >> You know, I sort of think of us in the same way I would think of like the brain of an Olympic athlete. That athlete, their arms, their legs, their muscles, their pulmonary capability, like the respiratory system is all super important to their performance. But the brain has to accept the signals from all the different parts of the body, and then work through them, correlate them, and then drive action, right? And I sort of think of PagerDuty as sitting at the center of this rapidly changing technology ecosystem, this live organism, and really understanding the signals no matter what, is it raining, is there a pothole in the ground, et cetera? And be able then to drive change in the process on the fly to help the body perform more effectively. The challenge is like if you try and fight with the arms, and the legs, and every other part of the body, they don't work nicely with you. >> Right. >> So, being central to the ecosystem is about being neutral, and agnostic, and really demonstrating you will not only say you will partner, but investing in those partnerships. So, we built first class integrations to companies that may see us as competition, if that's what our customers need. >> Right, 'cause like you said, it's got to be customer-- >> Totally. >> Customer centric first. >> And it's an open ecosystem, and this is what developers, and employees, and tech workers expect. >> Right, and to your point, the amount of data that's flowin' through that nervous system is only getting more. And the amount of noise to get through to the signal-- >> Figure out-- >> To take the right action. >> What really is important. >> Is not getting any easier, right? >> Yeah. >> All right, Jennifer, well thanks again for havin' us. Congratulations on the funding and the great show, and it's always great to catch up. >> Thank you, I have the best job in the world. I feel very lucky. >> All right. >> It's great to see you, Jeff. >> Thank you, all right, she's Jennifer Tejada, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watchin' theCUBE. We're at PagerDuty Summit where they actually show summits on the keynotes screen. Thanks for watchin', we'll see you next time. (bouncy electronic music)

>> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at PagerDuty Summit. It's our first time at PagerDuty Summit and Pier 27, our first time to this cool venue. It's right on the water between the Bay Bridge and Pier 39, beautiful view outside. Unfortunately, the fire smoke's a little over-the-top. But we're excited to have one of our favorite guests, Jennifer Tejada. She's the CEO at PagerDuty. Jennifer, great to see you. >> Thank you. It's so great to be back, Jeff. >> Absolutely. So this is, what, your second PagerDuty Summit? >> This is our second PagerDuty Summit. >> 500-some-odd people? >> I think we've had 700 through the door already. We've got a few hundred streaming online. Almost twice what we did last year. So we're really excited. We're still in the infancy stages of sponsoring an industry event, and we've been really focused on trying to make it a little different to insure that people walk away with actionable insights, and best practices and learnings they can take immediately back to their teams, and to their companies. So we've had just some awesome guest speakers and panelists here today, and it's been a lot of fun. The PagerDuty band played live at lunch. >> That's right, I saw them at lunchtime. >> Yeah, which was great. So we're having a good time. >> What are they called? The On-Calls. >> The On-Calls. I let them name themselves. >> And so, you've been here a year now. So, how are things moving, how are you moving the company along since you got here? What are some of the strategic things that you've been able to execute, and now you're looking forward? >> So, it's just been an incredible year, honestly. You always hope for a number of things when you come into a new role. You hope that the team rallies around the business. You hope that the opportunity is as significant as you thought it would. You hope that there aren't more bad surprises than you think there are going to be. PagerDuty's been so unique, in that there have been more good surprises than bad surprises. There's so much potential to unlock in the business. But probably the thing that's most amazing about it is the people, the community, and the culture around PagerDuty, and just the sense of alliance towards making the engineering world work better to insure that customer experience and employee experience is better. There's just a real sense of duty there, and there's a sense that the community is there with you trying to make it happen, as opposed to working against you. So a lot of our innovation this year, and I mean, we've released tons of new technology product, including machine learning and analytics, and going from reactive and responsive to proactive. There's a lot of stuff happening. So much of that has come from input from our practitioner community and our customer base. You just don't always have that kind of vocal engagement, that proactive, constructive engagement from your customer base, so that's just been amazing. And the team's awesome. We've expanded into the UK and western Europe over this summer. We opened an office in Sydney recently. We've shifted from being a single-product company to a platform company. We've more than doubled in size, 150 people to over 350 people. We're in 130 countries now, in terms of where our customer base lives, and just around 10 thousand customers, so really, really amazing progress. Sometimes I feel like we're a little bit of a teenage prodigy, you know? We're growing super fast, other kids are starting to learn how to play the piano. It's a little awkward, but we're still really good at what we do. I think the thing that keeps us out in front is our commitment, and all of our efforts being in service to making both the lives better of the practitioners in our community, and creating quantifiable value for our enterprise customers. >> It's interesting to focus on the duty, because that kind of came with the old days of when you were the person that had to wear the pager, right? Whether you're a doctor on call, or you were the IT person. So it's an interesting metaphor, even though probably most of the kids here have never seen a pager. >> No, I remember as a kid, my dad was in healthcare, and he had a pager, and you knew that when the pager went off, it was time. You were on-duty, you were out. And there's an honor in duty, and it is a service to the organization. Adrian Cockcroft was here this morning, VP of architecture from AWS, and known for cloud architecture that he built out at Netflix. And he said something really interesting, which is, he believes all people should be on-call, because you need the pain to go where it's most useful. And if everybody's on-call, it also creates this kind of self-fulfilling cycle. If you know you're going to be on-call, you build better code. If you know you're going to be on-call on the weekend, you don't ship something stupid on Friday night. If you know you're going to be on-call and you're a non-technical person, you align yourselves with people who are technical that can help you when that happens. So there's something sort of magical that happens when you do have that culture of being available on the spot when things don't go as planned. >> And now you've got a whole new rash of technology that you can apply to this, in the area of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Wonder if you could share a little bit, where is that now taking you for the next step? >> I think the biggest opportunity with machine learning for us is that, over the last eight years, we've been collecting a tremendous amount of data. And AI and machine learning are only as good as the data they sit on top of. So we have three really interesting data sets. We have the events and the signals that come from all of the machine instrumentation, the applications, the monitoring environment, the ticketing platforms that we integrate directly to. We have information around the workflow, what works best for most of our customers, what doesn't work. What's the best agile-centric DevOps related workflow that enables ultimate response and ultimate availability and resilience for customers. And then finally, what's going on with the people? Who are the people that work the hardest for you? Who are the people that have the subject matter expertise to be the most useful when things aren't working the way they should? You bring all of that together, and you build a model that starts to learn, which immediately means you can automate a lot of manual process. You can improve the quality of decisions, because you're making those decisions in context. An example would be, if an incident pops up, we see it in the form of a signal or a set of events. And our machine learning will recognize that we've actually seen those events before. And the last time this happened, here's what the outcome was, here's what went well and not so well, here's how you fixed it, and here's the person who was on top of it, here's the expert you need to call. So I've immediately shortened the distance between signal and action. I've gotten the people, now, that are going to come in to that process to respond to either a problem or an opportunity, are already much more prepared to be successful quickly, efficiently, and effectively. >> So you've shortened it and you've increased the probability of success dramatically. >> Exactly. And maybe you don't even need a person. That person can go off and do other more important proactive work. >> But you're all about people. And we first met when you were at Keynote and we brought you out for a Women in Tech interview. So you had a thing on Tuesday night that I want for you to share. What did you do Tuesday night? >> I was just super moved and inspired and excited. I've had the opportunity to attend lots of diversity events, lots of inclusion events, a lot of support groups, I'm asked to speak a lot on behalf of women and under-represented minorities, and I appreciate that, and I see that as my own civic duty to help lead the way and set an example, and reach back for other people and help develop younger women and minorities coming up. But I've found that a lot of these events, it's a bunch of women sitting in a room talking about all the challenges that we're facing. And I don't need to spend more time identifying the problem. I understand the problem. What I really wanted to do was bring together a group of experts who have seen success, who have a demonstrable track record for overcoming some of these barriers and challenges, and have taken that success and applied it into their own organizations, and sort of beating the averages in terms of building inclusive, diverse teams and companies. So Tuesday was all about one, creating a fun environment, we had cocktails, we had entertainment, it was in a great venue at Dirty Habit, where we could have a proactive, constructive, action-oriented conversation about things that are working. Things that you can hear from a female leader who's a public company executive, and take that directly back to your teams. Expert career advice, how some of these women have achieved what they have. And we just had a phenomenal lineup. Yvonne Wassenaar, who's the CEO of Airware, and Andreessen Horowitz come, theCUBE alumni, previously CIO at New Relic. We had Merline Saintil, who's the head of operations for all of product and technology for Intuit. Sheila Jordan, the CIO of Symantec. We had Alvina Antar, who's the CIO at Zuora. And, I'm missing one ... Oh, Rathi Murthy, the CTO at the Gap. And so, just quite an incredible lineup of executives in their own right. The fact that they happen to be a diverse group of women was just all the more interesting. And then we surprised the organization. After about 45 minutes of this discussion, sharing key learning, sharing best practices, we brought in the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, who are just embarking, in the next 10 days, on a trip called the Lavender Pen Tour, where they're looking to spread love, hope, and social justice, and proof that diversity delivers results, in the southern states, where equality equals gender equality, and I think challenges for equal opportunity for the LGBTQ community are really significant. And Mikkel Svane, who's the CEO of Zendesk, introduced me to Chris, the director there, about a week before, and I was so inspired by what they're doing. This is a group of 450 volunteers, who have day jobs, who perform stunning shows, beautiful music together, that are going to go on four buses for 11 days around the Deep South, and I think, make a big difference. And they're taking the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir with them. So just really cool. So they came, and I mean, when's the last time you went to a diversity event and people were singing, and dancing, and toasting? It was just really different, and everybody walked away learning something new, including the number of male executives, champions that I asked to come as my special guest, to support people in building sponsorship, to support these women and these under-represented minorities in finding connections that can help them build their own careers, they learned a lot at the event. It was incredible. I'm really proud of it, and it's the start of something special. >> I love it. I mean, you bring such good energy, both at your day job, and also in this very, very important role that you play, and it's great that you've embraced that, and not only take it seriously, but also have some fun. >> What's the point if you're not going to have fun? You apply the growth mindset to one of the biggest problems in the industry, and you hack it the same way you would a deeply technical problem, or a huge business problem. And when we get constructive and focused like that, amazing things happen. And so I now have people begging to be on the next panel, and we're trying to find the next venue, and got to come up with a name for it, but this is a thing. >> And oh, by the way, there's better business outcomes as well. >> I mean, I did a ton of business that night. Half that panel were customers that are continuing to invest and partner with PagerDuty, and we're excited about the future. And some of those women happen to be machine learning experts, for instance. So, great opportunity for me to partner and get advice on some of the new innovation that we've undertaken. >> Well, Jennifer, thanks for inviting us to be here. We love to keep up with you and everything that you're doing, both before and in your current journey. And congrats on a great event. >> My pleasure. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. >> She's Jennifer Tejada, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from PagerDuty Summit. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> From Phoenix, Arizona, the CUBE, at Catalyst Conference. Here's your host, Jeff Frick. >> Hey welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with the CUBE. We're in Phoenix, Arizona at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. There's a lot of catalyst conference, but there's only one Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. It's their fourth year, about 400 people they're going to be back in San Francisco next year. Wanted to come down and see what's going on. And we're really excited with our next guest. Actually part of my prep, I went and watched our last interview and we knocked it out of the park, I have to say. Jennifer Tejada, former President and the CEO of Keynote. Welcome back. >> Thank you, thanks so much for having me. It's great to see you again. >> Absolutely, so just to set the record straight, 'cause there's little bits on the internet, you're no longer the CEO of Keynote. >> I am no longer the CEO of Keynote. Keynote was acquired by a company called Compuware. It was merged with a business within Compuware called Dynatrace. Following that integration last year, I stepped out of the business and have been spending my time making some investments, pursuing the growth arena in Tech, and also spending a lot of time on boards and helping other women establish themselves in the community of boards and the technology industry. >> Okay, so if they weren't ringing off the hook already, now your phones will begin to ring off the hook. >> (laughs) >> You couldn't get a better CEO than Jennifer. >> Oh, thank you. >> But let's jump in. So you've been spending your time too, helping at conferences like this. So you had a session here. >> Yeah, I'm speaking today about operations. >> That's right, coming up. >> My presentation's called "Ops Chops". It's a subject that's very dear to my heart because of the pragmatism of operations, and how underrepresented I think it is at conferences like this. You know, we've seen many inspiring speakers in the last two days, talking about their paths to success, and to leadership, and giving the women in the room a lot of great advice on how to manage everything, from your career development, to work-life balance, to conflict, to challenges, how to really navigate the tech industry. Which, you know if someone could send me the book on that, that would be great. But no-one's really talking about, I think, where the rubber meets the road, which is operations. I believe operations is the bridge between strategy and the execution of great results. And there's a lot of math in operations. In the tech industry right now, we're hearing a lot of storytelling, and narratives about great new companies, new products, and the vision for how we're going to change the world, et cetera. But at the end of the day, if you want to be successful, you have to set goals that are helpfully aspirational, but realistic, and then you've got to nail your delivery. Because if you miss a beat, you don't have a lot of time to make up for that miss. And you've got investors, you've got shareholders, you have employees that expect you to deliver. And so operations I think is a great mix between art and science. The math of really measuring your business, the rigor of measuring your progress, really understanding the underlying financial drivers in your business, and then orienting your culture, and your people around the best possible execution that gives your strategy the most potential to be successful >> Right, and ops kind of gets a bad rap all the time. Everyone's talking about strategy and strategy, and we're all about strategy. At the end of the day, strategy with no execution, it's just a nice PowerPoint slide, right? But it's not like you on this. >> Exactly, exactly. And I think, you know I've been around for a little while. I've seen the market cycles in the technology industry. And we're certainly seeing a connection now. And a lot of businesses that marked themselves and measured themselves on how much money they've raised, or how much money they've spent, are now trying to figure out how to generate cash flow, and how to survive over a longer period of time if the market does soften. So I have a lot of respect for people who know how to generate cash flow, and deliver results, and deliver revenue, and measure their business on the basis of growth. Customers that vote with their dollars, right? >> Right. >> And so, yeah, I think operations, it's the unsung hero. When it comes to business outcomes. And so we're going to spend some time today talking about what I think is the quiet achiever in leadership. >> The other thing that's kind of interesting, cause we've got all these big data shows, right? Big data, cloud, probably two of the biggest topics right now, internet of things, of course being right there. But this kind of nirvana picture that gets painted, where there's going to be all this automation, and I'm just going to throw it in a big Hadoop cluster, and voila, everything happens. >> Boom, I'll have the answer. >> It doesn't really work that way. >> Not yet. I do think that machine learning, and artificial intelligence is progressing rapidly. And I think we're moving away from the automation of process to the automation of getting to the answer. I think analytics without action, though, leaves you kind of empty-handed. >> Right >> Like, so great, I have a lot of information, I have all this big data. I need the small data. I need data in the context of problems that I'm trying to solve. Whether, I'm thinking about it from consumer perspective, or a business perspective. So I see a real convergence between analytics and applications coming. You know, I think LifeLock has a funny commercial where they talk about alerting. And you know, don't just point to the fire. Like help me put the fire out. Help me figure out how the thing caught fire. And I think that's where machine learning and artificial intelligence can be super helpful. I also think that we're a long way away from really being able to leverage the true power of all this data. If you think about digital health, for example, and all the proprietary data stacks, that are being built through your FitBit, or your iPhone. You know, the way we're sensoring our personal health and fitness. But where's all that data going? Is it really contributing to research to solve, you know, health epidemics, right? No, because those stacks are all proprietary. No one wants to share them. >> Right >> So we need to get to a universal language, or a universal technology platform, that enables the researchers of the world to get a hold of that data, and do something super meaningful with it. So I think with progress, you'll also create open-ended questions. >> Absolutely >> And I think it's all positive. But I think we still have a long way to go, to see that big data environment really deliver great results. >> Right. So let's shift gears a little bit to leadership. >> Yeah. >> Another kind of softer topic. Not a big data topic. And when we talked last time, you came from Procter & Gamble When I graduated from undergrad, one of the great training programs was the Macy training program. May Company had one. So there were kind of these established things. IBM was always famous for their kind of training. It's a process where you went into a program, and it was kind of like extended school, just in a business context. You don't see that as much any more. Those programs aren't as plentiful. And so many people with the startup bug, so you see like in Iberia, they jump right in. I think you're mentioning off-air, one of the companies you're involved with, the guy's never had another job. So how do you see that kind of playing out? Kind of the lack of these kind of formal leadership opportunities, and what's that going to look like down the road. As the people who haven't had the benefit of this kind of training, or maybe it wasn't a benefit, get into these more senior positions. >> For sure. Look, leadership development is a topic that is of real interest to me. I was so fortunate and am so grateful for the opportunity that I had at Proctor & Gamble. I spent nearly six years there. And a big chunk of my time was spent in a leadership rotation program. Where you got to participate in a number of different projects and jobs, but you had mentorship, structured training and education, around what it takes to be, not just a good manager, but an effective leader. How you build a culture. How you engender people's commitments and dedication. How you really make the best of the resources that you have. How you manage your management. Whether that's board, or that's a CEO, or that's your shareholders. How you think about those things. And really tactically, what works and what doesn't. And being surrounded by people who are experts in their field. That was a long time ago, Jeff. And I don't see as many companies in the tech industry investing in that kind of leadership. And for kids coming out of college today, they're not rolling into structured leadership training programs. And so if you fast forward 20 years, what does that mean for the boards of the future? What does that mean for the Global 1000, and how those businesses are run? The good news is there's technology, there are plenty of amazing, inspirational founders out there, that have figured out how to build businesses on their own. And there's plenty of people like me, who actually want to mentor and help to build out the skill sets of these founders and these executives. But I do think that like many other areas of training and education which have been democratized in the industry, there's an opportunity to democratize leadership development and leadership training. And so that's something I'm spending a little bit of time on now. >> Good. And one of the great points you talked about. Again, go back and look at the other interview. Just Google Jennifer Tejada the Cube. Was really about as a leader, how you worked with exchanging value with your employees, right? And to quote you, you know, they're doing things that, they're not doing things that they might rather be doing. Spending time with their family on vacation, et cetera. And how you manage that as a leader of the company, to make them happy that they're there working, and to give them a meaningful place to be. And to spend that time that they're not spending on things that they might like more. >> I think culture is so important to the success of a business. You know, there are some investors that think culture is like an afterthought. It's one of those soft topics that they really don't need to care about. But for employees today, culture is everything. If you are going to spend a disproportionate amount of your waking hours with a group of people, it better be on a mission that's meaningful to you. And you'd better be working alongside of people that you think you can learn from, that inspire you, that stretch you to do more than you thought you could do. And so for me, it's about creating a culture of innovation, of performance, of collaboration. A real orientation around goals that everybody in the organization understands. In a way that is meaningful to them, within their role in the business. And that it's fun. Like, I won't do anything if it's not fun. I don't want to work with people who aren't fun. I was really excited. Two of the women who were on my leadership team at Keynote Flew here just to join me today, and support me as I'm giving a talk. But also to go out and have a drink. Because that's what we used to do after a long day at work. >> Right, right. >> And I think you have to be able to create a fire in someone by making sure that they, that they are being stretched. That they're learning and developing in that process. That they're part of something bigger than them. And that they can look back after a week, after a month, after a year in that business with you, and realize that they made an impact. That they made a difference. But that they also gained something from it, too. And I don't think we can ever underestimate the value of recognition, right? Not just money, but are you really recognizing someone for their commitment. For their emotional commitment to the business. For the time that they're spending and for what they've delivered for you, for the business, for your shareholder, for your customers. >> Jennifer, I could go with you all day long. >> (laughs) >> I'm going to get to one more before I let you go. Cause we're out of time, unfortunately. But you're now on some boards. There's a lot of talk. It feels like kind of the last plateau. Not that we've conquered the other ones. Because the last plateau is to get more women on boards. And we hear it's a matching problem, it's not so much of a pipeline problem. From your perspective, what can you advise? How can you help either people looking for qualified women, such as yourself, to be on boards. For qualified women who want to get on boards, to find them? >> That's a great question. I am very fortunate that there are people within my network that have spent time working with me, and can identify pieces of my experience that they think could be useful within their investment portfolio or within their companies. I'm part of a board called Puppet. It's an infrastructure software company based out of Portland. Super talented founder and team. Fast growing business in a really important space, software automation. Great board. I mean, I joined that board because every single person on the board, to a fault, is an amazing, accomplished executive, in and of themselves. Whether they're an investor, or a career CFO, or a career sales leader from the big technology side of the industry. So for me, it's such a great opportunity to collaborate with those people, and also take my experience, and lend what I know, and the pattern recognition that I have from running businesses, to loop the founder into his team. But I tell you, I wish that, and I hope that, the market starts to really think about diversity at the board level from a longer-term perspective. It's not just about how you find the women now. And by the way, there aren't that many female CEOs. But those of us who have sort of ticked that box and had that experience, we are available. And there are places where it's easy to find us. The Boardlist, for instance, is one of them. The Athena Alliance. Coco, the founder of that business is here. Women in Tech. I mean, it's out there. It's not that hard to find us. The challenge, I think, is the depth, the bench strength. Like who are the next female leaders that are coming up? That have functional expertise. You may need someone who's a marketing expert. You may need someone who's a product expert. You may need somebody who functionally knows consumer software, right? And it's really being willing, as a recruiter, as a recruiting executive, as a board member on the governance and nomination committee to say to your recruiters, to say to your investors, we want women on the short list. Or we want diversity on the short list. Like gender diversity, age diversity, racial diversity. A diverse board makes better decisions, full stop. Delivers better results. And I think we have to be demanding about that effort. We have to, the recruiting industry needs to hear that over and over again. And then on the flip side, we've got to develop these women. Help them build the skills. I mean, when I talk to women who want to be on boards, I say tell everybody, you want to be on a board. Be specific about the help that you need, right? Find the people that are connected in that network. Because once you're on one board, you meet board members there, they're on other boards. It does snowball. And in fact then you have to really choose the board wisely. Because it's not a two year commitment. You're in it for the long haul. So when you make that decision to choose a board, make sure it's a business that you have a real affinity to. That these are people that you want to spend time with over several years, right? And that you're willing to see that business through thick and thin. You don't get to leave the board if things go badly. That's when they need you the most. >> Right. >> So my hope is that we become much more open minded and demanding about diversity at the board level. And equally that we invest in developing women, men, people of different ages and bringing them to the board level. You don't have to be a CEO to be an effective board member, either. If you have functional, visional, regional expertise, that is a fit to that business, then you're going to be a very effective board member. >> All right, Jennifer, we have to let you go unfortunately. Thank you so much for stopping by and sharing your insight. No longer keynote, so now we can just use all our tags. Great Cube alumni, and tech athlete. So again, thanks for stopping by. >> Awesome, thank you so much for having me. >> Absolutely. Jennifer Tejada, I'm Jeff Frick. We are in Phoenix, Arizona at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Thanks for watching, we'll be right back. (upbeat music)

>> From Union Square in downtown San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering PagerDuty Summit '18. Now here's Jeff Frick. >> Hey welcome back, everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at PagerDuty Summit 2018 at the Westin St. Francis in Union Square, San Francisco. Great event, 900 people, we're excited to be here, it's our second year, and now we get to talk to some customers, which we are always excited to do. And our next guest is Alan Alderson. He is the Director of IT Ops for William Hill. Great to see you. >> Afternoon, it's great to be here. >> Absolutely, so for people that aren't familiar with William Hill, what are you guys all about? >> So William Hill offer customers opportunities to place bets on sporting events, presidential elections, snow at Christmas, you name it. We present about a million opportunities every week for customers to have a bet on. >> A million opportunities a week? >> Yeah, so picking on football matches, you know the game of the ramble. So we have opportunities for people to bet playing up to the game, and then once the game kicks off, we transition into what's called in play, so people can then place a bet on who's going to score the next goal, and about another 120 markets within that one game whilst the game's in play. >> Wow, so what's the average duration of the window to put a bet down? >> So generally leading up to the match it's as much time as you want, as soon as the markets are out there you can place the bet before the game kicks off. >> Okay. >> But once the game kicks off, you can, right up until about towards the last few minutes of the game, there'll be markets available to have a bet on. >> Okay, and then what percentage is kind of things that I would guess easily, like sporting events or those types of things, versus you know, whether it's going to snow or not? >> Well we provide the opportunities on the website, so you can have a look and, you know it's snow on Christmas day is a popular bet. People do their research, and they like to have a bet on it. There is a lot of novelty bets. There used to be, you know, life being found on Mars, Elvis being found, et cetera. So there's a lot >> Still taking action on Elvis? >> I don't think so. >> I thought we'd find him. So we're here at PagerDuty Summit. What are you doing here at PagerDuty Summit? >> So I've just come back from a stint in Australia, working for the William Hill business over there. So we introduced PagerDuty over there to help out with just getting the right message out to the right support teams quickly. So we deployed it out there, and we just brought it in to do infrastructure to start with but once we deployed it, it's a bit of a ripple effect. So it was like dropping a pebble into a pool, the ripple effect, and everybody, they seem to be doing all right over there, they use it now for the support models and so those sorts of questions. It's very quick how the other teams decided to latch onto PagerDuty as well. So I since moved back to the UK. So I moved back in January, took on this role back in the Leeds office in the north of England, and one of the first things I said is, guys, start having a look at PagerDuty, we've deployed it successfully in Australia, so let's have a look at what it can do for us. And so management works at William Hill. So I'm not trying to fix anything that's broken. So, it works. But what we can do is increase its speed of how we deal with things. So there's a lot of manual tasks in there that PagerDuty will come in and automate. It will take the pressure off the incident analysts 'cause, you know if there's an incident at two o'clock in the morning, we have 24 by seven business, so if there's an incident overnight, we've got to get on it and start fixing, resolving the incident. And if there's one guy who's trying to call out a number of responders, calling out a duty manager, trying to get comms out, it's a lot of pressure on one person to do that, and when there's pressure mistakes happen. I want PagerDuty to take away the possibility of the mistakes, take the pressure of the incident analyst, so they can focus on resolving the incident and getting service back to our customers as quickly as possible. >> I'm curious though when you said that other people and other groups saw PagerDuty in action. What were some of the other tasks that were not the primary tasks that you brought it in, where people saw value and are implementing it for some other types of activities? >> So initially when we put it in, we put it in purely for service. So for looking at the CPU disk and memory alerts. And we were getting our acknowledgements down from minutes to seconds in Australia. So the other teams are watching in, and within their applications there was a lot of alerts just landing as an email and not getting actioned upon very quickly. So we brought PagerDuty in, they said, can this help out in this space, and they started integrating it into their applications. So through hooking it into their applications they could get the alerts directly from PagerDuty, rather than it going through knocks and service decks et cetera, so it's just a quicker response and get 'em onto the issue quicker. >> And do you have it integrated in with some of your other development tools so it's just kind of part of whole process, or is it more kind of standalone notification system? >> It was integrated straight into ServiceNow and PagerDuty. PagerDuty would integrate with ServiceNow, raise the ticket, and then the things started moving. But the big win was getting the guys the call straight away as that alert happened. Otherwise you're relying on people watching screens, watching queues, waiting for that to happen, and then make the call. So if the call's gone straight to the engineer, he's on it immediately. >> Right, right, right. So what are some of your impressions here? Seeing kind of the ecosystem, what's behind PagerDuty, some great keynotes earlier today, really in terms of, again, the mission it sounds like it's very much in line with what you're trying to do, which is to help teams be more effective. >> Yeah, and what I like about PagerDuty is their passion. You just get a sense of urgency about this place, and you get a sense of passion and commitment, and they want to help people out, and that's what's drawn me to PagerDuty. The guys I worked with in Australia, the guys I worked with in the UK, they just can't do enough for you, and they want to help you succeed as well. You know, you deals with some companies that, they just want to sell you something and move on. These guys are, you know, they look after you, they work with you and they make sure that you're getting the value out of their product. >> It's a pretty interesting culture, 'cause when I talked to Jennifer Tejada a couple of years ago, I used to tease her, I'm like, nobody here knows what a pager is, right? Nobody was born when pagers were >> I had one. >> the rage. >> You had one, yeah, I had one. Shell Oil upside down, I think it says hello, I can't remember, I have to check that. But it's an interesting, there's kind of culture around what a pager represents, and the work that they have duty in there as well, which is a very different kind of level of responsibility when you are the person with the pager on, and that seems to have really carried forward in the way that they deliver the services. >> Yeah, yeah. I mean, on-call has people running, doesn't it? When people, you know when they join a job and go, "Oh you might be expected to be on call", they run a mile, and they think that's not for me. But as we go down more of a DevOps transformation and we get a lot more down the we code it, we own it model, I think it'll change people's perceptions of being on call and just doing the right thing for the business, rather thank, you know, delivering something and expecting the Ops team to fix it all the time and call out the developers at a third line. We should be, we are heading towards being a team, where the alerts go to the right people at the right time, and we get issues resolved as soon as possible. >> Right. I'd just love to get your take on, a lot of talk about digital transformation, and the modernization of IT, and kind of expected behavior on apps going on. You're right in the middle of it. >> Massively in the middle of it. >> Massively in the middle of it, right. I'm sure, what percentage of your bets come in via mobile versus... >> On the digital platform, over 56%. >> A lot, right, a lot. >> And we've got, just said in the last session we had is, we've got competition. So if our app isn't performing, it isn't quick, or it's down, people will go elsewhere. They've got options, they've got choices, and they'll just go elsewhere. And the challenge is getting those customers back. We want to have a stack that just is available and is performing, so we don't drive customers away, or we make sure that things are available at peak times, so when they are wanting to bet on the Super Bowl, the Grand National, the three o'clock kickoffs on a Saturday afternoon in the UK, it's available for them and people can get the bet on as quickly as possible. >> Right. So do you have all your own infrastructure, or do you leverage public cloud? I'm just thinking as you're talking about Super Bowl and some of these other big events, you must have just crazy big spikes. >> You know we've, in the UK it's all on-premise, so we've got to build an infrastructure to cope with that one day of the year, which is Grand National. In the US, we've just opened up in New Jersey. The front end of that stack is in AWS, so we can scale, so when Super Bowl does turn round next January, February, we should be able to scale with the load. >> Right, last question before I let you go. What are your priorities next? What are some of the things that you're working on with your team, to kind of stay at the leading edge of this very competitive space? >> Yeah we're heading into AWS. So we're looking to move into Amazon next year, start migrating some applications in there, and we're looking to get some applications in there the back end of this year, but migrate the existing apps from the start of next year. We're going through a DevOps transformation. We've been doing an agile transformation as well over the last 12 to 18 months, so there's a huge amount of digital transformation going on at William Hill at the moment. It's a very, very exciting place to be. The US expansion, the place has just gone mad, you know. There's a lot going on, it's just a great place to be. >> Yeah, I mean significant changes obviously in the US attitude, I think you guys are a little more progressive on that side of the Atlantic. Big changes happening here. >> 14th of May was a big day, PASPA being repealed has opened up the betting opportunities in any state that wants to regulate. And we are leading the way in that charge at the moment, so it's very exciting. >> All right, well I'm going to let you go so you can get some sleep, 'cause I'm sure you're a very busy man. Alan, thanks for stopping by. >> Thank you very much. >> All right, he's Alan, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're at PagerDuty Summit 2018, thanks for watching.