>>Hi everyone. Welcome to this special event, pure Storage, the Path to Sustainable it. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. Very pleased to be joined by Nicole Johnson, the head of Social Impact and Sustainability at Pure Storage. Nicole, welcome to the >>Cube. Thanks for having me, Lisa. >>Sustainability is such an important topic to talk about, and I understand that Pure just announced a report today about sustainability. What can you tell me what nuggets are in this report? >>Well, actually quite a few really interesting nuggets, at least for us. And I, I think probably for you and your viewers as well. So we actually commissioned about a thousand sustainability leaders across the globe to understand, you know, what are their sustainability goals, what are they working on, and what are the impacts of buying decisions, particularly around infrastructure when it comes to sustainable goals. I think one of the things that was really interesting for us was the fact that around the world we did not see a significant variation in terms of sustainability being a top priority. You've, I'm sure you've heard about the energy crisis that's happening across Europe. And so, you know, there was some thought that perhaps that might play into AMEA being a larger, you know, having sustainability goals that were more significant. But we actually did not find that we found sustainability to be really important no matter where the respondents were located. >>So, very interesting at pure sustainability is really at the heart of what we do and has been since our founding. It's interesting because we set out to make storage really simple, but it turns out really simple, is also really sustainable and the products and services that we bring to our customers have really powerful outcomes when it comes to decreasing their, their own carbon footprints. And so, you know, we often hear from customers that we've actually really helped them to significantly improve their storage performance, but also allow them to save on space power and cooling costs and, and their footprint. So really significant findings. One example of that is a company called Cengage, which is a global education technology company. They recently shared with us that they have actually been able to reduce their overall storage footprint by 80% while doubling to tripling the performance of their storage systems. So it's really critical for, for companies who are thinking about their sustainability goals, to consider the dynamic between their sustainability program and their IT teams who are making these buying decisions. >>Right? Those two teams need to be really inextricably linked these days. You talked about the fact that there was really consistency across the regions in terms of sustainability being of high priority for organizations. You had a great customer story that you shared that showed significant impact can be made there by bringing the sustainability both together with it. But I'm wondering why are we seeing that so much of the vendor selection process still isn't revolving around sustainability or it's overlooked? What are some of the things that you see despite so many people saying sustainability huge priority? >>Well, in this survey, the most commonly cited challenge was really around the fact that there was a lack of management buy-in. 40% of respondents told us this was the top roadblock. So getting, I think getting that out of the way. And then we also just heard that sustainability teams were not brought into tech purchasing processes until after it's already rolling, right? So they're not even looped in. And that, that being said, you know, we know that it has been identified as one of the key departments to supporting a company's sustainability goals. So we, we really want to ensure that these two teams are talking more to each other. When we look even closer at the data from the respondents, we see some really positive correlations. We see that 65% of respondents reported that they're on track to meet their sustainability goals, and that it, of those 65%, it is significantly engaged with reporting data for those sustainability initiatives. We saw that, that for those who did report, the sustainability is a top priority for vendor selection. They were twice as likely to be on track with their goals and their sustainability directors said that they were getting involved at the beginning of the tech purchasing program. Our process, I'm sorry, rather than towards the end. And so, you know, we know that to curb the impact of climate crisis, we really need to embrace sustainability from a cross-functional viewpoint. >>Definitely has to be cross-functional. So, so strong correlations there in the report that organizations that had closer alignment between the sustainability folks and the IT folks were farther along in their sustainability program development, execution, et cetera, those CO was correlations, were they a surprise? >>Not entirely. You know, when we look at some of the statistics that come from the, you know, places like the World Economic Forum, they say that digitization generated 4% of greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. So, and that, you know, that's now almost three years ago, digital data only accelerates and by 2025, we expect that number could be almost double. And so we know that that communication and that correlation is gonna be really important because data centers are taking up such a huge footprint of when companies are looking at their emissions. And it's, I mean, quite frankly, a really interesting opportunity for it to be a trailblazer in the sustainability journey. And, you know, perhaps people that are in IT haven't thought about how they can make an impact in this area, but there really is some incredible ways to help us work on cutting carbon emissions, both from your company's perspective and from the world's perspective, right? >>Like we are, we're all doing this because it's something that we know we have to do to drive down climate change. So I think when you, when you think about how to be a trailblazer, how to do things differently, how to differentiate your own department, it's a really interesting connection that IT and sustainability work together. I would also say, you know, I'll just note that of the respondents to the survey we were discussing, we do over half of those respondents expect to see closer alignment between the organization's IT and sustainability teams as they move forward. >>And that's really a tip the, to those organizations embracing cultural change. That's always hard to do, but for those two, for sustainability and IT to come together as part of really the overall ethos of an organization, that's huge. And it's great to see the data demonstrating that, that those, that alignment, that close alignment is really on its way to helping organizations across industries make a big impact. And wanna dig in a little bit to peers, ESG goals. What can you share with us about >>That? Absolutely. So as I mentioned, peers kind of at the beginning of our formal ESG journey, but really has been working on the, on the sustainability front for a long time. I would, I, it's funny as we're, as we're doing a lot of this work and, and kind of building our own profile around this, we're coming back to some of the things that we have done in the past that consumers weren't necessarily interested in then, but are now because the world has changed, becoming more and more invested in. So that's exciting. So we did a baseline scope one, two, and three analysis and discovered, interestingly enough that 70% of our emissions comes from use of sold products. So our customers work running our products in their data centers. So we know that we, we've made some ambitious goals around our Scope one and two emissions, which is our own office, our utilities, you know, those, they only account for 6% of our emissions. So we know that to really address the issue of climate change, we need to work on the use of sold products. So we've also made a, a really ambitious commitment to decrease our carbon emissions by 66% per bed per petabyte by 2030 in our products. So decreasing our own carbon footprint, but also affecting our customers as well. And we've also committed to a science based target initiative and our road mapping how to achieve the ambitious goals set out in the Paris agreement. >>That's fantastic. It sounds like you really dialed in on where is the biggest opportunity for us as peer storage to make the biggest impact across our organization, across our customers' organizations. There lofty goals that pure set, but knowing what I know about Pure, you guys are probably well on track to, to accomplish those goals in record time. >>I hope So. >>Talk a little bit about advice that you would give to viewers who might be at the very beginning of their sustainability journey and really wondering what are the core elements besides it, sustainability, team alignment that I need to bring into this program to make it actually successful? >>Yeah, so I think, you know, understanding that you don't have to pick between really powerful technology and sustainable technology. There are opportunities to get both and not just in storage, right in, in your entire IT port portfolio. We know that, you know, we're in a place in the world where we have to look at things from the bigger picture. We have to solve new challenges and we have to approach business a little bit differently. So adopting solutions and services that are environmentally efficient can actually help to scale and deliver more effective and efficient IT solutions over time. So I think that that's something that we need to, to really remind ourselves, right? We have to go about business a little bit differently and that's okay. We also know that data centers utilize an incredible amount of, of energy and, and carbon. And so everything that we can do to drive that down is going to address the sustainability goals for us individually as well as, again, drive down that climate change. So we, we need to get out of the mindset that data centers are, are about reliability, your cost, et cetera. And really think about efficiency and carbon footprint when you're making those business decisions. I'll also say that, you know, the earlier that we can get sustainability teams into the conversation, the more impactful your business decisions are going to be and helping you to guide sustainable decision making. >>So shifting sustainability and it left almost together really shows that the correlation between those folks getting together in the beginning with intention, the report shows and the successes that peers had, demonstrate that that's very impactful for organizations to actually be able to implement even the cultural change that's needed for sustainability programs to be successful. My last question for you goes back to that report. You mentioned in there that the data show a lot of organizations are hampered by management buy-in, where sustainability is concerned. How can pure help its customers navigate around those barriers so that they get that management buy and they understand that the value in it for >>Them? Yeah, so I mean, I think that for me, my advice is always to speak to hearts and minds, right? And help the management to understand, first of all, the impact right on climate change. So I think that's the kind of hearts piece on the mind piece. I think it's addressing the sustainability goals that these companies have set for themselves and helping management understand how to, you know, how their IT buying decisions can actually really help them to reach these goals. We also, you know, we always run kind of TCOs for customers to understand what is the actual cost of, of the equipment. And so, you know, especially if you're in a, in a location in which energy costs are rising, I mean, I think we're seeing that around the world right now with inflation. Better understanding your energy costs can really help your management to understand the, again, the bigger picture and what that total cost is gonna be. Often we see, you know, that maybe the, the person who's buying the IT equipment isn't the same person who's purchasing, who's paying the, the electricity bills, right? And so sometimes even those two teams aren't talking. And there's a great opportunity there, I think, to just to just, you know, look at it from a more high level lens to better understand what total cost of ownership is. >>That's a great point. Great advice. Nicole. Thank you so much for joining me on the program today, talking about the new report that on sustainability that Pure put out some really compelling nuggets in there, but really also some great successes that you've already achieved internally on your own ESG goals and what you're helping customers to achieve in terms of driving down their carbon footprint and emissions. We so appreciate your insights and your thoughts. >>Thank you, Lisa. It's been great speaking with you. >>Pleasure speaking with you as well. We wanna thank you so much for watching. This is Pure Storage, the path to sustainable it. I'm Lisa Martin, we'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) >> Hello, everyone. Welcome back to theCUBE's presentation of the AWS Startup Showcase. This is season two, episode four of the ongoing series covering the exciting startups from the AWS ecosystem. And talking about cybersecurity. I'm your host, John Furrier. Excited to have two great guests. Ed Casmer, founder and CEO of Cloud Storage Security, back CUBE alumni, and also James Johnson, AVP of Research and Development at iPipeline. Here to talk about cloud storage security antivirus on S3. James, thanks for joining us today. >> Thank you, John. >> Thank you. >> So the topic here is cloud security, storage security. Ed, we had a great CUBE conversation previously, earlier in the month. Companies are modernizing their apps and migrating the cloud. That's fact. Everyone kind of knows that. >> Yeah. >> Been there, done that. Clouds have the infrastructure, they got the OS, they got protection, but the end of the day, the companies are responsible and they're on the hook for their own security of their data. And this is becoming more permanent now that you have hybrid cloud, cloud operations, cloud native applications. This is the core focus right now in the next five years. This is what everyone's talking about. Architecture, how to build apps, workflows, team formation. Everything's being refactored around this. Can you talk about how organizations are adjusting and how they view their data security in light of how applications are being built and specifically around the goodness of say S3? >> Yep, absolutely. Thank you for that. So we've seen S3 grow 20,000% over the last 10 years. And that's primarily because companies like James with iPipeline are delivering solutions that are leveraging this object storage more and above the others. When we look at protection, we typically fall into a couple of categories. The first one is, we have folks that are worried about the access of the data. How are they dealing with it? And so they're looking at configuration aspects. But the big thing that we're seeing is that customers are blind to the fact that the data itself must also be protected and looked at. And so we find these customers who do come to the realization that it needs to happen, finding out, asking themselves, how do I solve for this? And so they need lightweight, cloud native built solutions to deliver that. >> So what's the blind spot? You mentioned there's a blind spot. They're kind of blind to that. What specifically are you seeing? >> Well so, when we get into these conversations, the first thing that we see with customers is I need to predict how I access it. This is everyone's conversation. Who are my users? How do they get into my data? How am I controlling that policy? Am I making sure there's no east-west traffic there, once I've blocked the north-south? But what we really find is that the data is the key packet of this whole process. It's what gets consumed by the downstream users. Whether that's an employee, a customer, a partner. And so it's really, the blind spot is the fact that we find most customers not looking at whether that data is safe to use. >> It's interesting. When you talk about that, I think about all the recent breaches and incidents. "Incidents," they call them. >> Yeah. >> They've really been around user configurations. S3 buckets not configured properly. >> Absolutely. >> And this brings up what you're saying, is that the users and the customers have to be responsible for the configurations, the encryption, the malware aspect of it. Don't just hope that AWS has the magic to do it. Is that kind of what you're getting at here? Is that the similar, am I correlating that properly? >> Absolutely. That's perfect. And we've seen it. We've had our own customers, luckily iPipeline's not one of them, that have actually infected their end users because they weren't looking at the data. >> And that's a huge issue. So James, let's get in, you're a customer partner. Talk about your relationship with these guys and what's it all about? >> Yeah, well, my pipeline is building a digital ecosystem for life insurance and wealth management industries to enable the sale of life insurance to under-insured and uninsured Americans, to make sure that they have the coverage that they need, should something happen. And our solutions have been around for many years. In a traditional data center type of an implementation. And we're in process now of migrating that to the cloud, moving it to AWS, in order to give our customers a better experience, a better resiliency, better reliability. And with that, we have to change the way that we approach file storage and how we approach scanning for vulnerabilities in those files that might come to us via feeds from third parties or that are uploaded directly by end users that come to us from a source that we don't control. So it was really necessary for us to identify a solution that both solved for these vulnerability scanning needs, as well as enabling us to leverage the capabilities that we get with other aspects of our move to the cloud and being able to automatically scale based on load, based on need, to ensure that we get the performance that our customers are looking for. >> So tell me about your journey to the cloud, migrating to the cloud and how you're using S3 specifically. What led you to determine the need for the cloud based AV solution? >> So when we looked to begin moving our applications to the cloud, one of the realizations that we had is that our approach to storing certain types of data was a bit archaic. We were storing binary files in a database, which is not the most efficient way to do things. And we were scanning them with the traditional antivirus engines that would've been scaled in traditional ways. So as our need grew, we would need to spin up additional instances of those engines to keep up with load. And we wanted a solution that was cloud native and would allow us to scan more dynamically without having to manage the underlying details of how many engines do I need to have running for a particular load at a particular time and being able to scan dynamically. And also being able to move that out of the application layer, being able to scan those files behind the scenes. So scanning in, when the file's been saved in S3, it allows us to scan and release the file once it's been deemed safe rather than blocking the user while they wait for that scan to take place. >> Awesome. Well, thanks for sharing that. I got to ask Ed, and James, same question next. It's, how does all this factor in to audits and self compliance? Because when you start getting into this level of sophistication, I'm sure it probably impacts reporting workflows. Can you guys share the impact on that piece of it? The reporting? >> Yeah. I'll start with a comment and James will have more applicable things to say. But we're seeing two things. One is, you don't want to be the vendor whose name is in the news for infecting your customer base. So that's number one. So you have to put something like this in place and figure that out. The second part is, we do hear that under SOC 2, under PCI, different aspects of it, there are scanning requirements on your data. Traditionally, we've looked at that as endpoint data and the data that you see in your on-prem world. It doesn't translate as directly to cloud data, but it's certainly applicable. And if you want to achieve SOC 2 or you want to achieve some of these other pieces, you have to be scanning your data as well. >> Furrier: James, what's your take? As practitioner, you're living it. >> Yeah, that's exactly right. There are a number of audits that we go through where this is a question that comes up both from a SOC perspective, as well as our individual customers who reach out and they want to know where we stand from a security perspective and a compliance perspective. And very often this is a question of how are you ensuring that data that is uploaded into the application is safe and doesn't contain any vulnerabilities. >> James, if you don't mind me asking, I have to kind of inquire because I can imagine that you have users on your system but also you have third parties, relationships. How does that impact this? What's the connection? >> That's a good question. We receive data from a number of different locations from our customers directly, from their users and from partners that we have as well as partners that our customers have. And as we ingest that data, from an implementation perspective, the way we've approached this, there's a minimal impact there in each one of those integrations. Because everything comes into the S3 bucket and is scanned before it is available for consumption or distribution. But this allows us to ensure that no matter where that data is coming from, that we are able to verify that it is safe before we allow it into our systems or allow it to continue on to another third party whether that's our customer or somebody else. >> Yeah, I don't mean to get in the weeds there, but it's one of those things where, this is what people are experiencing right now. Ed, we talked about this before. It's not just siloed data anymore. It's interactive data. It's third party data from multiple sources. This is a scanning requirement. >> Agreed. I find it interesting too. I think James brings it up. We've had it in previous conversations that not all data's created equal. Data that comes from third parties that you're not in control of, you feel like you have to scan. And other data you may generate internally. You don't have to be as compelled to scan that although it's a good idea, but you can, as long as you can sift through and determine which data is which and process it appropriately, then you're in good shape. >> Well, James, you're living the cloud security, storage security situation here. I got to ask you, if you zoom out and not get in the weeds and look at the board room or the management conversation. Tell me about how you guys view the data security problem. I mean, obviously it's important. So can you give us a level of how important it is for iPipeline and with your customers and where does this S3 piece fit in? I mean, when you guys look at this holistically, for data security, what's the view, what's the conversation like? >> Yeah. Well, data security is critical. As Ed mentioned a few minutes ago, you don't want to be the company that's in the news because some data was exposed. That's something that nobody has the appetite for. And so data security is first and foremost in everything that we do. And that's really where this solution came into play, in making sure that we had not only a solution but we had a solution that was the right fit for the technology that we're using. There are a number of options. Some of them have been around for a while. But this was focused on S3, which we were using to store these documents that are coming from many different sources. And we have to take all the precautions we can to ensure that something that is malicious doesn't make its way into our ecosystem or into our customers' ecosystems through us. >> What's the primary use case that you see the value here with these guys? What's the aha moment that you had? >> With the cloud storage security specifically, it goes beyond the security aspects of being able to scan for vulnerable files, which is, there are a number of options and they're one of those. But for us, the key was being able to scale dynamically without committing to a particular load whether that's under committing or overcommitting. As we move our applications from a traditional data center type of installation to AWS, we anticipated a lot of growth over time and being able to scale up very dynamically, literally moving a slider within the admin console, was key to us to be able to meet our customer's needs without overspending, by building up something that was dramatically larger than we needed in our initial rollout. >> Not a bad testimonial there, Ed. >> I mean, I agree. >> This really highlights the applications using S3 more in the file workflow for the application in real time. This is where you start to see the rise of ransomware other issues. And scale matters. Can you share your thoughts and reaction to what James just said? >> Yeah. I think it's critical. As the popularity of S3 has increased, so has the fact that it's an attack vector now. And people are going after it whether that's to plant bad malicious files, whether it's to replace code segments that are downloaded and used in other applications, it is a very critical piece. And when you look at scale and you look at the cloud native capability, there are lots of ways to solve it. You can dig a hole with a spoon, but a shovel works a lot better. And in this case, we take a simple example like James. They did a weekend migration, so they've got new data coming in all the time, but we did a massive migration 5,000 files a minute being ingested. And like he said, with a couple of clicks, scale up, process that over sustained period of time and then scale back down. So I've said it before, I said it on the previous one. We don't want to get in the way of someone's workflow. We want to help them secure their data and do it in a timely fashion that they can continue with their proper processing and their normal customer responses. >> Frictionless has to be key. I know you're in the marketplace with your antivirus for S3 on the AWS. People can just download it. So people are interested, go check it out. James, I got to ask you and maybe Ed can chime in over the top, but it seems so obvious. Data. Secure the data. Why is it so hard? Why isn't this so obvious? What's the problem? Why is it so difficult? Why are there so many different solutions? It just seems so obvious. You know, you got ransomware, you got injection of different malicious payloads. There's a ton of things going on around the data. Why is, this so obvious? Why isn't it solved? >> Well, I think there have been solutions available for a long time. But the challenge, the difficulty that I see, is that it is a moving target. As bad actors learn new vulnerabilities, new approaches and as new technology becomes available, that opens additional attack vectors. >> Yeah. >> That's the challenge, is keeping up on the changing world including keeping up on the new ways that people are finding to exploit vulnerabilities. >> And you got sensitive data at iPipeline. You do a lot of insurance, wealth management, all kinds of sensitive data, super valuable. This brings me up, reminds me of the Sony hack Ed, years ago. Companies are responsible for their own militia. I mean, cybersecurity is no government help for sure. I mean, companies are on the hook. As we mentioned earlier at the top of this interview, this really is highlighted that IT departments have to evolve to large scale cloud, cloud native applications, automation, AI machine learning all built in, to keep up at the scale. But also from a defense standpoint. I mean, James you're out there, you're in the front lines, you got to defend yourself basically, and you got to engineer it. >> A hundred percent. And just to go on top of what James was saying is, I think there, one of the big factors and we've seen this. There's skill shortages out there. There's also just a pure lack of understanding. When we look at Amazon S3 or object storage in general, it's not an executable file system. So people sort of assume that, oh, I'm safe. It's not executable. So I'm not worried about it traversing my storage network. And they also probably have the assumption that the cloud providers, Amazon is taking care of this for them. And so it's this aha moment. Like you mentioned earlier, that you start to think, oh it's not about where the data is sitting per se. It's about scanning it as close to the storage spot. So when it gets to the end user, it's safe and secure. And you can't rely on the end user's environment and system to be in place and up to date to handle it. So it's that really, that lack of understanding that drives some of these folks into this. But for a while, we'll walk into customers and they'll say the same thing you said, John. Why haven't I been doing this for so long? And it's because they didn't understand that it was such a risk. That's where that blind spot comes in. >> James, it's just a final note on your environment. What's your goals for the next year? How's things going over there on your side? How you look at the security posture? What's on your agenda for the next year? How are you guys looking at the next level? >> Yeah. Well, our goal as it relates to this is to continue to move our existing applications over to AWS to run natively there. Which includes moving more data into S3 and leveraging the cloud storage security solution to scan that and ensure that there are no vulnerabilities that are getting in. >> And the ingestion, is there like a bottlenecks log jams? How do you guys see that scaling up? I mean, what's the strategy there? Just add more S3? >> Well, S3 itself scales automatically for us and the cloud storage solution gives us leverage to pull to do that. As Ed mentioned, we ingested a large amount of data during our initial migration which created a bottleneck for us. As we were preparing to move our users over, we were able to make an adjustment in the admin console and spin up additional processes entirely behind the scenes and broke the log jam. So I don't see any immediate concerns there, being able to handle the load. >> The term cloud native and hyperscale native, cloud native, one cloud's hybrid. All these things are native. We have antivirus native coming soon. And I mean, this is what we're basically doing is making it native into the workflows. Security native. And soon there's going to be security clouds out there. We're starting to see the rise of these new solutions. Can you guys share any thoughts or vision around how you see the industry evolving and what's needed? What's working and what's needed? Ed, we'll start with you. What's your vision? >> So I think the notion of being able to look at and view the management plane and control that has been where we're at right now. That's what everyone seems to be doing and going after. I think there are niche plays coming up. Storage is one of them, but we're going to get to a point where storage is just a blanket term for where you put your stuff. I mean, it kind of already is that. But in AWS, it's going to be less about S3. Less about work docs, less about EVS. It's going to be just storage and you're going to need a solution that can span all of that to go along with where we're already at the management plane. We're going to keep growing the data plane. >> James, what's your vision for what's needed in the industry? What's the gaps, what's working, and where do you see things going? >> Yeah, well, I think on the security front specifically, Ed's probably a little bit better equipped to speak to them than I am since that his primary focus. But I see the need for just expanded solutions that are cloud native that fit and fit nicely with the Amazon technologies. Whether that comes from Amazon or other partners like Cloud Storage Security to fill those gaps. We are focused on the financial services and insurance industries. That's our niche. And we look to other partners like Ed to help be the experts in these areas. And so that's really what I'm looking for, is the experts that we can partner with that are going to help fill those gaps as they come up and as they change in the future. >> Well, James, I really appreciate you coming on, sharing your story and I'll give you the final word. Put a quick, spend a minute to talk about the company. I know Cloud Storage Security is an AWS partner with the security software competency and is one of I think 16 partners listed in the competency and the data category. So take a minute to explain what's going on with the company, where people can find more information, how they buy and consume the products. >> Okay. >> Put the plug in. >> Yeah, thank you for that. So we are a fast growing startup. We've been in business for two and a half years now. We have achieved our security competency as John indicated. We're one of 16 data protection security competent ISV vendors globally. And our goal is to expand and grow a platform that spans all storage types that you're going to be dealing with and answer basic questions. What do I have and where is it? Is it safe to use? And am I in proper control of it? Am I being alerted appropriate? So we're building this storage security platform, very laser focused on the storage aspect of it. And if people want to find out more information, you're more than welcome to go and try the software out on Amazon marketplace. That's basically where we do most of our transacting. So find it there. Start of free trial. Reach out to us directly from our website. We are happy to help you in any way that you need it. Whether that's storage assessments, figuring out what data is important to you and how to protect it. >> All right, Ed. Thank you so much. Ed Casmer, founder and CEO of Cloud Storage Security. And of course James Johnson, AVP of Research and Development, iPipeline customer. Gentlemen, thank you for sharing your story and featuring the company and the value proposition, certainly needed. This is season two, episode four. Thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. >> Casmer: Thanks John. >> Okay. I'm John Furrier. That is a wrap for this segment of the cybersecurity season two, episode four. The ongoing series covering the exciting startups from Amazon's ecosystem. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(upbeat intro music) >> Hello, everyone. Welcome back to theCube's presentation of the AWS Startup Showcase. This is season two, episode four, of the ongoing series covering the exciting startups from the a AWS ecosystem. Talk about cybersecurity. I'm your host, John Furrier. Here, excited to have two great guests. Ed Casmer, Founder & CEO of Cloud Storage Security. Back, Cube alumni. And also James Johnson, AVP of Research & Development, iPipeline here. Here to talk about Cloud Storage Security, antivirus on S3. Gents, thanks for joining us today. >> Thank you, John. >> Thank you. >> So, the topic here is cloud security, storage security. Ed, we had a great Cube conversation previously, earlier in the month. You know, companies are modernizing their apps and migrating to the cloud. That's fact. Everyone kind of knows that. Been there, done that. You know, clouds have the infrastructure, they got the OS, they got protection. But, the end of the day, the companies are responsible and they're on the hook for their own security of their data. And this is becoming more preeminent now that you have hybrid cloud, cloud operations, cloud-native applications. This is the core focus right now. In the next five years. This is what everyone's talking about. Architecture, how to build apps, workflows, team formation. Everything's being refactored around this. Can you talk about how organizations are adjusting, and how they view their data security in light of how applications are being built and specifically, around the goodness of say, S3? >> Yep, absolutely. Thank you for that. So, we've seen S3 grow 20,000% over the last 10 years. And that's primarily because companies like James with iPipeline, are delivering solutions that are leveraging this object storage more and above the others. When we look at protection, we typically fall into a couple of categories. The first one is, we have folks that are worried about the access of the data. How are they dealing with it? So, they're looking at configuration aspects. But, the big thing that we're seeing is that customers are blind to the fact that the data itself must also be protected and looked at. And, so, we find these customers who do come to the realization that it needs to happen. Finding out like how asking themselves, "How do I solve for this?" And, so, they need lightweight, cloud-native built solutions to deliver that. >> So, what's the blind spot? You mentioned there's a blind spot. They're kind of blind to that. What specifically are you seeing? >> Well, so when we get into these conversations, the first thing that we see with customers is, "I need to predict how I access it." This is everyone's conversation. "Who are my users? How do they get into my data? How am I controlling that policy? Am I making sure there's no east-west traffic there, once I've blocked the north-south?" But, what we really find is that the data is the key packet of this whole process. It's what gets consumed by the downstream users. Whether that's an employee, a customer, a partner. And, so, it's really the blind spot is the fact that we find most customers not looking at whether that data is safe to use. >> It's interesting. You know, when you talk about that, I think about like all the recent breaches and incidents. "Incidents" they call them. >> Yeah. >> They're really been around user configurations. S3 buckets not configured properly. And this brings up what you're saying, is that the users and the customers have to be responsible for the configurations, the encryption, the malware aspect of it. Don't just hope that AWS has the magic to do it. Is that kind of what you're getting at here? Is that the similar? Am I correlating that properly? >> Absolutely. That's perfect. And, and we've seen it. We've had our own customers, luckily, iPipeline's not one of them, that have actually infected their end users, because they weren't looking at the data. >> Yeah. And that's a huge issue. So, James, let's get in, you're a customer-partner. Talk about your relationship with these guys and what's it all about? >> Yeah. Well, iPipeline is building a digital ecosystem for life insurance and wealth management industries to enable the sale of life insurance to underinsured and uninsured Americans, to make sure that they have the coverage that they need should something happen. And, our solutions have been around for many years in a traditional data center type of an implementation. And, we're in process now of migrating that to the cloud, moving it to AWS. In order to give our customers a better experience, better resiliency, better reliability. And, with that, we have to change the way that we approach file storage and how we approach scanning for vulnerabilities in those files that might come to us via feeds from third parties, or that are uploaded directly by end users that come to us from a source that we don't control. So, it was really necessary for us to identify a solution that both solved for these vulnerability scanning needs, as well as enabling us to leverage the capabilities that we get with other aspects of our move to the cloud. Being able to automatically scale based on load, based on need. To ensure that we get the performance that our customers are looking for. >> So, tell me about your journey to the cloud, migrating to the cloud, and how you're using S3. Specifically, what led you to determine the need for the cloud-based AV solution? >> Yeah. So, when we looked to begin moving our applications to the cloud, one of the realizations that we had is that our approach to storing certain types of data, was a bit archaic. We were storing binary files in a database, which is not the most efficient way to do things. And, we were scanning them with the traditional antivirus engines, that would've been scaled in traditional ways. So, as our need grew, we would need to spin up additional instances of those engines to keep up with load. And we wanted a solution that was cloud-native, and would allow us to scan more dynamically without having to manage the underlying details of how many engines do I need to have running for a particular load at a particular time, and being able to scan dynamically and also being able to move that out of the application layer, being able to scan those files behind the scenes. So, scanning in, when the file's been saved in S3. It allows us to scan and release the file once it's been deemed safe, rather than blocking the user while they wait for that scan to take place. >> Awesome. Well, thanks for sharing that. I got to ask Ed and James, same question. And next is, how does all this factor into audits and self-compliance? Because, when you start getting into this level of sophistication, I'm sure it probably impacts reporting, workflows. Can you guys share the impact on that piece of it? The reporting. >> Yeah, I'll start with a comment, and James will have more applicable things to say. But, we're seeing two things. One, is you don't want to be the vendor whose name is in the news for infecting your customer base. So, that's number one. so you have to put something like this in place and figure that out. The second part is, we do hear that under SOC 2, under PCI, different aspects of it, there are scanning requirements on your data. Traditionally, we've looked at that as endpoint data and the data that you see in your on-prem world. It doesn't translate as directly to cloud data, but, it's certainly applicable. And if you want to achieve SOC 2 or you want to achieve some of these other pieces, you have to be scanning your data as well. >> James, what's your take? As practitioner, you're living it. >> Yeah. That's exactly right. There are a number of audits that we go through, where this is a question that comes up both from a SOC perspective, as well as our individual customers, who reach out, and they want to know where we stand from a security perspective and a compliance perspective. And, very often, this is a question of "How are you ensuring that the data that is uploaded into the application is safe and doesn't contain any vulnerabilities?" >> James, if you don't mind me asking. I have to kind of inquire, because I can imagine that you have users on your system, but also you have third parties, relationships. How does that impact this? What's the connection? >> That's a good question. We receive data from a number of different locations. From our customers directly, from their users, and from partners that we have, as well as partners that our customers have. And, as we ingest that data, from an implementation perspective, the way we've approached this, there's minimal impact there in each one of those integrations, because everything comes into the S3 bucket and is scanned before it is available for consumption or distribution. But, this allows us to ensure that no matter where that data is coming from, that we are able to verify that it is safe before we allow it into our systems or allow it to continue on to another third party, whether that's our customer or somebody else. >> Yeah. I don't mean to get in the weeds there, but it's one of those things where, you know, this is what people are experiencing right now. You know, Ed, we talked about this before. It's not just siloed data anymore. It's interactive data. It's third party data from multiple sources. This is a scanning requirement. >> Agreed. I find it interesting, too. I think James brings it up. We've had it in previous conversations, that not all data's created equal. Data that comes from third parties that you're not in control of, you feel like you have to scan and other data you may generate internally. You don't, have to be as compelled to scan that, although it's a good idea. But it's, you can kind of, as long as you can sift through and determine which data is which, and process it appropriately, then you're in good shape. >> Well, James. You're living the cloud security storage security situation, here. I got to ask you if you zoom out, not get in the weeds, and look at kind of the boardroom or the management conversation. Tell me about how you guys view the data security problem. I mean, obviously it's important, right? So, can you give us a level of, you know, how important it is for iPipeline and with your customers and where does this S3 piece fit in? I mean, when you guys look at this holistically, for data security, what's the view? What's the conversation like? >> Yeah. Well, data security is critical. As Ed mentioned a few minutes ago, you don't want to be the company that's in the news because some data was exposed. That's something that nobody has the appetite for. And, so, data security is, first and foremost, in everything that we do. And that's really where this solution came into play and making sure that we had not only a solution, but, we had a solution that was the right fit for the technology that we're using. There are a number of options. Some of them have been around for a while. But this is focused on S3, which we were using to store these documents that are coming from many different sources. And, you know, we have to take all the precautions we can to ensure that something that is malicious doesn't make its way into our ecosystem or into our customers' ecosystems through us. >> What's the primary use case that you see the value here with these guys? What's the "aha" moment that you had? >> With the Cloud Storage Security, specifically, it was really, it goes beyond the security aspects of being able to scan for vulnerable files, which is there are a number of options and, and they're one of those. But for us, the key was being able to scale dynamically without committing to a particular load, whether that's under committing or over committing. As we move our applications from a traditional data center type of installation to AWS, we anticipated a lot of growth over time. And being able to scale up very dynamically, you know, literally moving a slider within the admin console was key to us, to be able to meet our customer's needs without overspending. By building up something that was, dramatically larger than we needed in our initial rollout. >> Not a bad testimonial there, Ed. I mean. >> I agree. >> This is really highlights the applications using S3 more in the file workflow for the application in real time. This is where you start to see the rise of ransomware, other issues and scale matters. Can you share your thoughts and reaction to what James just said? >> Yeah, I think it's critical. I mean, as the popularity of S3 has increased, so has the fact that it's an attack vector now, and people are going after it. Whether that's to plant bad, malicious files, whether it's to replace code segments that are downloaded and used in other applications, it is a very critical piece. And when you look at scale, and you look at the cloud-native capability, there are lots of ways to solve it. You can dig a hole with a spoon, but a shovel works a lot better. And, in this case, you know, we take a simple example like James. They did a weekend migration, so, they've got new data coming in all the time. But, we did a massive migration. 5,000 files a minute being ingested. And, like he said, with a couple of clicks, scale up, process that over a sustained period of time, and then scale back down. So, you know, I've said it before. I said it on the previous one. We don't want to get in the way of someone's workflow. We want to help them secure their data and do it in a timely fashion, that they can continue with their proper processing and their normal customer responses. >> Yeah. Friction always has to be key. I know you're in the marketplace with your antivirus, for S3 on AWS. People can just download it. So, people are interested, go check it out. James, I got to ask you, and maybe Ed can chime in over the top, but, it seems so obvious. Data. Secure the data. Why is it so hard? Why isn't this so obvious? What's the problem? Why is it so difficult? Why are there so many different solutions? It just seems so obvious. You know, you got ransomware, you got injection of different malicious payloads. There's a ton of things going around around the data. Why is this? This is so obvious. Why isn't it solved? >> Well, I think there have been solutions available for a long time. That the challenge, the difficulty that I see is, that it is a moving target. As bad actors learn new vulnerabilities, new approaches. And as new technology becomes available, that opens additional attack vectors. That's the challenge. Is keeping up on the changing world. Including keeping up on the new ways that people are finding to exploit vulnerabilities. >> Yeah. And you got sensitive data at iPipeline. You do a lot of insurance, wealth management, all kinds of sensitive data, super valuable. You know, just brings me up, reminds me of the Sony hack, Ed, years ago. You know, companies are responsible for their own militia. I mean, cybersecurity, there's no government help for sure. I mean, companies are on the hook, as we mentioned earlier at the top of this interview. This really is highlighted that, IT departments and are, have to evolve to large scale cloud, you know, cloud-native applications, automation, AI machine learning all built in, to keep up at the scale. But, also, from a defense standpoint, I mean, James, you're out there, you're in the front lines. You got to defend yourself, basically, and you got to engineer it. >> A hundred percent. And just to go on top of what James was saying is, I think they're one of the big factors, and we've seen this. There's skill shortages out there. There's also just a pure lack of understanding. When we look at Amazon S3 or object storage in general, it's not an executable file system. So, people sort of assume that, "Oh, I'm safe. It's not executable. So, I'm not worried about it traversing my storage network." And they also probably have the assumption that the cloud providers, Amazon, is taking care of this for 'em. And, so, it's this "aha" moment, like you mentioned earlier. That you start to think, "Oh, it's not about where the data is sitting, per se, it's about scanning it as close to the storage spot. So, when it gets to the end user, it's safe and secure. And you can't rely on the end users' environment and system to be in place and up to date to handle it. So, it's that really, that lack of understanding that drives some of these folks into this, but for a while, we'll walk into customers and they'll say the same thing you said, John. "Why haven't I been doing this for so long?" And, it's because they didn't understand that it was such a risk. That's where that blind spot comes in. >> James, it's just a final note on your environment. What's your goals for the next year? How's things going over there in your side? How do you look at the security posture? What's on your agenda for the next year? How do you guys looking at the next level? >> Yeah, well, our goal as it relates to this is, to continue to move our existing applications over to AWS, to run natively there, which includes moving more data into S3 and leveraging the cloud storage security solution to scan that and ensure that it's, that there are no vulnerabilities that are getting in. >> And the ingestion? Is there like a bottlenecks, log jams? How do you guys see that scaling up? I mean, what's the strategy there? More, just add more S3? >> Well, S3 itself scales automatically for us and, the Cloud Storage Solution gives us levers to pull to do that. As Ed mentioned, we ingested a large amount of data during our initial migration, which created a bottleneck for us, as we were preparing to move our users over. We were able to, you know, make an adjustment in the admin console and spin up additional processes entirely behind the scenes and broke the log jam. So, I don't see any immediate concerns there. Being able to handle the load. >> You know, the term cloud-native and, you know, hyperscale-native, cloud-native, OneCloud, it's hybrid. All these things are native. We have anti-virus native coming soon. And I mean, this is what we're. You're basically doing is making it native into the workflows. Security native, and soon there's going to be security clouds out there. We're starting to see the rise of these new solutions. Can you guys share any thoughts or vision around how you see the industry evolving and what's needed, what's working and what's needed? Ed, we'll start with you. What's your vision? >> So, I think the notion of being able to look at and view the management plane and control that, has been where we're at right now. that's what everyone seems to be doing and going after. I think there are niche plays coming up, storage is one of them. But, we're going to get to a point where storage is just a blanket term for where you put your stuff. I mean, it kind of already is that, but, in AWS, it's going to be less about S3, less about work docs, less about EVS. It's going to be just storage and you're going to need a solution that can span all of that, to go along with where we're already at at the management plane. We're going to keep growing the data plane. >> James, what's your vision for what's needed in the industry? What's the gaps? What's working? And where do you see things going? >> Yeah, well, I think on the security front, specifically, Ed's probably a little bit better equipped to speak to them than I am. Since that's his primary focus. But I see the need for just expanded solutions that are cloud-native, that fit and fit nicely with the Amazon technologies, Whether that comes from Amazon or other partners like Cloud Storage Security, to fill those gaps. We're focused on, you know, the financial services and insurance industries. That's our niche. And we look to other partners, like Ed, to help be the experts in these areas. And so that's really what I'm looking for is, you know, the experts that we can partner with that are going to help fill those gaps as they come up and as they change in the future. >> Well, James, I really appreciate you coming on sharing your story. Ed, I'll give you the final word. Put a quick, spend a minute to talk about the company. I know Cloud Storage Security is an AWS partner, with the Security Software Competency. And is one of, I think, 16 partners listed in the competency and data category. So, take a minute to explain, you know, what's going on with the company, where people can find more information, how they buy and consume the products. >> Okay. >> Put the plug in. >> Yeah, thank you for that. So, we are a fast growing startup. We we've been in business for two and a half years, now. We have achieved our Security Competency. As John indicated, we're one of 16 data protection, Security Competent ISV vendors, globally. And, our goal is to expand and grow a platform that spans all storage types that you're going to be dealing with. And answer basic questions. "What do I have and where is it? Is it safe to use?" And, "Am I in proper control of it? Am I being alerted appropriately?" You know, so we're building this storage security platform, very laser-focused on the storage aspect of it. And, if people want to find out more information, you're more than welcome to go and try the software out on Amazon Marketplace. That's basically where we do most of our transacting. So, find it there, start a free trial, reach out to us directly from our website. We are happy to help you in any way that you need it, whether that's storage assessments, figuring out what data is important to you, and how to protect it. >> All right, Ed, thank you so much. Ed Casmer. Founder & CEO of Cloud Storage Security and of course James Johnson, AVP Research & Development, iPipeline customer. Gentlemen, thank you for sharing your story and featuring the company and the value proposition. It's certainly needed. This is season two, episode four. Thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. >> Thanks, John. >> Okay. I'm John Furrier. That is a wrap for this segment of the cybersecurity, season two, episode four. The ongoing series covering the exciting startups from Amazon's ecosystem. Thanks for watching. (gentle outro music)

>>Well, good day, everybody. And it's great to have you with us here on the cube. As we continue our key conversations as a part of the AWS startup showcase, please welcome Jennifer Johnson. Insidery, Jennifer's the chief marketing and strategy officer at amplitude, which is a global leader in product intelligence, and she tells her friends collar JJ. And so today it's still all JJ, how are you doing? I'm doing great, John, how are you doing very well. Thanks for being with us. We appreciate the time. Um, first off, tell us a little bit about amplitude about your work and job for those who might not be familiar. And also, I like to hear a little more about product intelligence about that concept. It's certainly taken on probably a pretty different meaning in this digital world that we're in today. That's right. That's right. Well, so I've been at amplitude. >>I joined in October of 2020. So, uh, not that long. Uh, and let me tell you, I, anyone who knows me knows that I am a CMO, but I am also a category designer. So I look at, uh, I look at companies, I look at opportunities as market creation opportunities, and we're going to talk about that because that's a big reason why I joined amplitude and why I'm so excited for the future of amplitude. Um, and so when we think about our website today says product intelligence. If you read between the lines and I tell you I'm a category designer, you might understand that maybe that will evolve over time, but what product intelligence actually means is it, is it really connects digital products to revenue. And what do I mean by that? And we all know that everything is digital. I don't need to tell you that everything is digital. >>We have the whole world just moved to digital. Um, and it's interesting because we think about digital and we think about the door dashes and the Peloton of the world, but really it's every company and every industry, um, you know, are some of our largest customers are hundred-year-old companies, right? And they have had to not just because of the last year in the pandemic, but they've been really thinking about how do we disrupt ourselves. Really? It's not even about disrupting the industry. It's actually about disrupting their own business around digital. So digital really, isn't a nice to have anymore. It's existential. And we all, I think we all know that at this point. Um, but you know, if the whole world has moved to digital and I think I read something that IDC wrote, we're going to spend $6.8 trillion by 2023 on digital transformation. We're spending an enormous, I mean, I think enormous has even an understatement amount of money on digital. >>So what is the next thing that you have to do once you've spent all this time and money and effort and probably millions of dollars, billions per company actually transforming is you have to actually optimize it and you have to figure out what your, what digital products and digital investments you're making. You have to make sure that actually connect to business outcomes. Things like, uh, revenue, things like lifetime value of things like loyalty, things that drive your business forward. And that's really where product intelligence and the future where amplitude is going is so critical. Because if you think about actually one of our customers said it best the customers of yesterday or the companies of yesterday. They put a website in front of their old way of doing things, their old products, their old way of doing things and call it a digital, like we just put a website in front of it. >>So it's digital. That is no longer the case. Now it's about redesigning your business and transforming value through new digital products and services. So digital products are actually the future of how businesses will operate in the new era. And so what happens is companies say, okay, we need to go build all these new products and services. And we have these goals of growth and revenue, and we hope the revenue comes out the other end, but there's really no way for, or no really effective way for companies to actually figure out how to manage and measure that in between you build a product, you put it out to market. Revenue comes out the other end, but how do you actually know if you're building the right things in the first place? How do you know what, uh, what features, what behaviors, what actions, what combinations of those actually lead to things like engagement and revenue and loyalty, and then how do you actually go and double down on those? >>And what I mean by that is adapting the experience. If you know, something works and you know that every customer that looks like that person will do this and you can predict an outcome. Why wouldn't you serve that up to every single person that looks like that. And really that whole notion of prediction and understanding, and prediction and adapting, that's really where amplitude plays a role. And that's what got me really excited about joining amplitude and really excited about the future is every company is a digital company and really companies have to completely rethink how they manage digital because it isn't just putting a website in front of it anymore. >>Yeah. I mean, you you've hit on something to them. In fact, we've got a lot to unpack here, which is great. Um, but, but you, you talk about that. Digital's lost, right? You got to have it's existential now you're dealing with business, which I think is absolutely correct, but because it's everybody and it is everywhere and you've got a lot of categories, right. Um, as a chief strategy officer, uh, you can't be all things to all people. You can't go off in every which way, but, so how are you focusing then your efforts in terms of identifying the key categories of prime categories, as opposed to looking at this huge landscape, and that could be overwhelming, you know, in some respects, how are you focusing? >>Yeah. I mean, there's, there's two ways to look at it and it is, you know, every company is a digital company, but really any company that has any kind of a digital product or an app digital app, anything that's digital is a as a relevant target for, for amplitude. Um, traditionally we have focused with probably no surprise. We focused on the, probably the, what I'd say the digital native companies, the companies that are more mature, but really they grew up through digitally through digital native. Those are the door dashes, the Postmates, the Uber's, the Lyft's right. Um, and those companies were just built by design to think this way, right? We're building products. Our app is our business. Our product is our business. So we need to make sure that we deeply understand how the interactions with our customers through that experience actually translates. And how do we continue to tweak and test and optimize and digitally native companies tend to understand that inherently. >>So that's been a lot of the early adopters of amplitude have been those digitally native companies. Now what we're seeing and no surprise is there's a really long tail of companies and more traditional industries. I mean, everything from, uh, you know, hospitality and restaurants, obviously media is going through a huge digital disruption right now. Um, automotive, I mean, any, any company that's looking at, how do we build new ways to engage and provide experiences to our customers through any kind of a digital means digital, digital product and app. Those are relevant targets for amplitude. So I think, you know, people think, Oh, it's every, every, uh, industry looks very different, but the commonality is everyone needs to move to digital. And the great thing for amplitude and for the market at large is a lot of our customers are these digitally native, what I would call the thought leaders around digital. And so if we can help bring that, bring those best practices and bring that approach to some of the more traditional companies in traditional industries and help them become more like the Peloton and the door dashes of the world. Then that's great for everybody, >>You know, JJ, when you talk about this transformation that's going on and the spaces in which is going on, which is everywhere right now, I imagine there are still some folks who might be a little reluctant, right? And you talked about slapping the new website and the old material, and they think they're done and they wash your hands and they go away and it's not that simple. Right. Um, so what's that conversation like to people who maybe aren't willing to jump in to take that risk as they see it, whereas, you know, it's an essential to their business. >>Yeah. So, you know, I do think that every disruption, technologically speaking or other is really change management and digital is no different, right? It's not just about moving to digital, it's changing the way that you're organized, it's changing your business structure, your, your strategy priorities. So I think that that organizations know they have to go there now. And even the ones that are reluctant, I'd say, if they're reluctant, they're probably going to get disrupted. So I think everyone understands they need to go there. Our role is really to help organizations get there without, I mean, digital, the, the word that usually follows digital is transformation. And I think a lot of people think that digital transformation needs to be this, you know, three to five year strategic journey and costs millions of dollars with armies of consultants. And really what we're helping to do is help organizations just answer the question, how is our product tied to our revenue? >>And we do that by bringing the data to the teams that actually need it. And it was really, it was really surprising to me to understand the process and some of these really large enterprises around how product and marketing teams, uh, get data. And, and a lot of times, if you have a question about something, if you're a product, if you're a product manager, obviously you want to understand how is our product doing what features are resonating? What features are leading to things like engagement or revenue or subscriptions or loyalty or whatever it is, right. As a marketer, you also want to know that as a marketer, you also want to know what campaigns are we driving that are actually creating value. Are there things that we should be doing? Are there areas we should double down on? And so the process is if you have a question about something or a hypothesis that you want to answer, a lot of times you have to send this request to some centralized data team or a data science team. >>Uh, you know, organizations have, you know, large B2C organizations. Most of them have armies of data scientists and business intelligence platforms. And you send a request and you might get an answer back in a few weeks, maybe a month. And, uh, maybe it's the right answer or usually what happens. And I think we can all relate to this. As you ask a question and you get data back and then it sparks five more questions. And so that whole process is the cyclical thing that I always say, if by the time you actually figure out the answer to your question, it's enough time to get Amazon in the new digital era. And so what we're actually doing is helping to bring that data, which we all know is the crown jewel of any organization. We're bringing that data and we're democratizing it and bringing it to all the teams that actually need it, lock, unlock it from data scientists and BI and bring it to the teams that need it, whether it's product, whether it's marketing, whether it's sales, whether it's customer success. >>And the greatest thing is it's not as a tool for everyone. And then all of a sudden you have these silo tools marketing as their tool product has their tools. CS has their tool is you actually have one platform, one system, and one source of data that all those teams use. So marketing doesn't say, well, yeah, my mind says this and it looks at it from this lens. And product says, well, my data says this, but it looks at it from this lens. All of a sudden you've removed that entire conversation or that entire debate. And that changes everything. It changes the way that companies get insights into customer behavior. It changes the way that they build products. It changes the way that the teams work together, product and marketing can now work off of a common set of data. And so really amplitude is helping to drive that change. >>And you don't have to do it through a three year implementation with an army of consultants that come in. It's something that can be done very easily. And so, and it, you know, I know everyone wants an easy button. Um, it is quite easy though. It's not, it's not the, the three-year or even the one year transformation. It's actually a way to, to bring that data to the teams that need it quickly. Um, the other thing I'd say to it is it's bringing the right data to them. Um, I was reading something from Gardner that said 85% of marketing analytics tools. Now these are tools that usually track things like ad attribution, website visits and how that, you know, how that relates to revenue well in a customer acquisition scenario, while you just want to know what ads actually lead to a cart, uh, put someone going to a cart, someone purchasing that was probably sufficient, but in the, in the new world, that's just not answering the same question. >>Like if you need to add, answer a question of what features, what behaviors, what actions within the product actually drive business outcomes, knowing what ads people clicked on and what web visits that you know, that, that, you know people had. And that's not going to answer it. That's not, it's just answering a totally different question. And 85% of companies are using marketing analytics tools to actually answer questions like what features we need to build. So that's another key point here is companies need to answer this question. They know they do. They just don't have the tools to do it and the data to do it. So they're using tools that were designed for a completely different purpose. And so really that's another great thing about amplitude is we're actually giving them the actual, the right data to answer the questions. >>So if you're, if you're somebody who's headlights, you know, for down the road, then in terms of, you know, you're looking for behavior, straights and patterns, you're looking for increased customer engagements, right. They have all these wonderful tools now, you know, not that you're missing anything, but where do you think that you could even sharpen the pencil a little bit more so that down the road here, what, what do you think technologically, you are capable or you would like to be able to, there's a making that an even richer in case even a bigger, a deeper dig? >>Well, I mean, so we, we have this, this, uh, immense deep, fast, smart database of customer behavior. So if you think of it, it's almost like the possibilities are endless. Anything that you need to be able to know or any question you could ask of your data to know what combinations of features, what combinations of behaviors actually lead to things like retention or churn or revenue. And then you can actually start to model those into cohorts. If I know that a customer does these five things in this order, and they're five times more likely to churn, well, then any customer that actually doesn't just look like that based on your demographics, who you are, where you live, et cetera, but based on actually what you do in the product, we can start to cohort them and say, this person actually looks like this other person based on their behavior. >>And therefore we might actually personalize an experience for them. We might send them an offer if we think they're going to turn, because we know they're likely to turn base cause other people that look like them do, um, or we're not going to send them anything because we already know they're loyal. So they're already likely to buy. So it's answering more questions, but then it's also, how do you actually use that to really personalize experiences? And I, that word is so overused, but in this way, I mean, it's not about I'm going to serve you a piece of content because I know what industry you work in, or I know where you live. I'm actually going to personalize your experience because I know that you, John, as an individual, do these things. And therefore I know that you are either a loyal customer or you've got a high likelihood to churn, et cetera. >>And then I'm going to personalize an experience. That's a good experience for you, but also it could experience for the business. So I think there's more, um, types of analytics. There's more ways to personalize and build experiences. I think in the, in the modern way, not the old demographic way. Um, but also even every organization around the company, like everyone touches the customer. So, you know, customer experience, as we know, is, is, you know, I hate to call it, call it the buzzword. Of course, everybody wants a great customer experience, but everybody talks about customer experience. Anyone who touches the customer as part of customer experience, which is basically the whole company. And so if you think about today, there's obviously product teams, marketing teams are heavy users of, of amplitude, but going forward, I mean, imagine a world where, you know, anytime, you know, anytime you have a touch point with a customer, you can use this, this insight into what they're actually doing in the product to, to get some level of, of intelligence that you didn't have before and use it to proactively give them a better experience, right? >>Whether it's, you know, uh, you know, at renewal time or you know, that they're likely to do something. So you offer something that gives them a better experience or you're in customer service. And wouldn't it be great to actually know if someone's logging a support ticket, what they're actually doing in the product it's going to help you give them a better support experience, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, the options here I think are because of the data that we have and the way that we can, like you said, build these patterns and pattern match, what features and actions lead to outcomes. Uh, I think the options are limitless. And I think this is the new way, like customers, that companies that understand this is the Holy grail of the new way of, of digital and understanding your customers and having this intelligence into the product is the new way to engage the customers that get that are going to be the customers that win. >>What is the new game you're right. I think limitless is a really good word too, because the capabilities that you're developing and the product and services you're providing. Um, so thanks for sharing the time and the insight and pleasure to have you on the queue. Thanks for being here. It's been great. Thank you, John. You've got jumbles here on the cube to conversation on AWS startup showcase. In fact, we have Jennifer Johnson.

(upbeat music) >> Well, good day, everybody. And it's great to have you with us here on the theCUBE. As we continue our CUBE Conversations as a part of the AWS startup showcase. Pleased to welcome Jennifer Johnson in today. Jennifer is the Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at Amplitude, which is a global leader in product intelligence. And she tells me her friends call her JJ. And so, today it's... Hello JJ, how are you doing? >> I'm doing great, John. How are you? >> I'm doing very well. Thanks for being with us, we appreciate the time. First off, tell us a little bit about Amplitude, about your work in general for those who might not be familiar, and also, I'd like to hear a little more about product intelligence and about that concept, if you will, and how that has certainly taken on probably a pretty different meaning in this digital world that we're in today. >> That's right. Well, so I've been at Amplitude, I joined in October of 2020. So not that long. And let me tell you, anyone who knows me knows that I am a CMO, but I am also a Category Designer. So, I look at companies, I look at opportunities as market creation opportunities. And we're going to talk about that 'cause that's a big reason why I joined Amplitude and why I'm so excited for the future of Amplitude. And so when we think about... Our website today says product intelligence. If you read between the lines and I tell you I'm a category designer, you might understand that maybe that will evolve over time. But what product intelligence actually means is, is that it really connects digital products to revenue. And what do I mean by that? And we all know that everything is digital. I don't need to tell you that everything is digital. The whole world just moved to digital. And it's interesting because, we think about digital and we think about the DoorDashs and the Pelotons of the world, but really it's every company in every industry. Some of our largest customers are 100-year old companies. And they have had to, not just because of the last year in the pandemic, but they've been really thinking about how do we disrupt ourselves, really. It's not even about disrupting the industry. It's actually about disrupting their own business around digital. So digital really, isn't a nice to have anymore. It's existential. And we all, I think we all know that at this point. But, if the whole world has moved to digital and I think I read something that IDC wrote, we're going to spend $6.8 trillion by 2023 on digital transformation. We're spending an enormous, I mean, I think enormous is even an understatement amount of money on digital. So what is the next thing that you have to do, once you've spent all this time and money and effort in probably millions of dollars, billions per company actually transforming, is you have to actually optimize it. And you have to figure out what digital products and digital investments you're making. You have to make sure that they actually connect to business outcomes. Things like, revenue, things like lifetime value, things like loyalty, things that drive your business forward. And that's really where product intelligence and the future where Amplitude is going is so critical. Because if you think about... Actually, one of our customers said it best. The customers of yesterday or the companies of yesterday, they put a website in front of their old way of doing things, their old products, their old way of doing things and called it digital. Like we just put a website in front of it so it's digital. That is no longer the case. Now it's about redesigning your business and transforming value through new digital products and services. So digital products are actually, the future of how businesses will operate in the new era. And so what happens is, companies say, "Okay, we need to go build all these new products "and services. "And we have these goals of growth and revenue "and we hope the revenue comes out the other end." But there's really no way for... Or no really effective way for companies to actually figure out how to manage and measure that in-between. You build a product, you put it out to market, revenue comes out the other end, but how do you actually know if you're building the right things in the first place? How do you know what features, what behaviors, what actions, what combinations of those, actually lead to things like engagement and revenue and loyalty. And then how do you actually go and double down on those? And what I mean by that is adapting the experience. If you know something works, and you know that every customer that looks like that person will do this, and you can predict an outcome, why wouldn't you serve that up to every single person that looks like that? And really that whole notion of prediction and understanding and prediction and adapting, that's really where Amplitude plays a role. And that's what got me really excited about joining Amplitude and really excited about the future is, every company is a digital company and really companies have to completely rethink how they manage digital because it isn't just putting website in front of it anymore. >> Yeah I mean, you've hit on something there. In fact, we've got a lot to unpack here, which is great. But you talk about that digital (mumbles) you got to have. It's existential now to doing your business which I think is absolutely correct. But because it's everybody, and it is everywhere and you've got a lot of categories, as a Chief Strategy Officer, I mean, you can't be all things to all people. You can't go off in every which way, so how are you focusing then in your efforts in terms of identifying maybe key categories or prime categories, as opposed to, looking at this huge landscape, and that can be overwhelming in some respects how are you focusing then? >> Yeah. I mean, there's two ways to look at it. And it is... Every company is a digital company, but really any company that has any kind of a digital product or a digital app, anything that's digital is a relevant target for Amplitude. Traditionally, we have focused with probably no surprise, we focused on the, probably what I'd say the digital native companies, the companies that are more mature, but really they grew up through digital native. Those are the DoorDashs, the Postmates, the Ubers, the Lyfts. And those companies were just built by design to think this way. "We're building products. "Our app is our business. Our product is our business." So we need to make sure that we deeply understand how the interactions with our customers through that experience actually translates, and how do we continue to tweak and test and optimize. And digitally native companies, tend to understand that inherently. So that's been a lot of the early adopters of Amplitude have been those digitally native companies. Now what we're seeing, and no surprise is, there's a really long tail of companies in more traditional industries. I mean, everything from, hospitality and restaurants. Obviously media is going through a huge digital disruption right now. Automotive. I mean, any company that's looking at how do we build new ways to engage and provide experiences to our customers through any kind of a digital means, a digital product, an app, those are relevant targets for Amplitude. So I think people think, "Oh, it's..." Every industry looks very different but the commonality is everyone needs to move to digital. And the great thing for Amplitude and for the market at large is a lot of our customers are these digitally native, what I would call the thought leaders around digital. And so if we can help bring that, bring those best practices and bring that approach to some of the more traditional companies, in traditional industries and help them become more like the Pelotons and the DoorDashs of the world, then that's great for everybody. >> You know, JJ, when you talk about, this transformation that's going on and the spaces in which is going on which is everywhere right now, I imagine there are still some folks who might be a little reluctant. And you talked about slapping a new website on the old material and they think they're done and they wash their hands and they go away. And it's not that simple. So what's that conversation like to people who maybe aren't willing to jump in, to take that "risk" as they see it, whereas you know, it's an essential to their business. >> Yeah. So, I do think that every disruption technologically speaking or other, is really change management. And digital's no different. It's not just about moving to digital, it's changing the way that you're organized. It's changing your business structure, your strategy, your priorities. So, I think that organizations know they have to go there now. And even the ones that are reluctant, I'd say if they're reluctant they're probably going to get disrupted. So I think everyone understands they need to go there. Our role is really to help organizations get there, without... I mean, digital, the word that usually follows digital is transformation. And I think a lot of people think that digital transformation needs to be this, three to five year strategic journey, and cost millions of dollars with armies of consultants. And really what we're helping to do is, help organizations just answer the question, "how is our product tied to our revenue?" And we do that by bringing the data to the teams that actually need it. And it was really surprising to me to understand the process in some of these really large enterprises, around how product and marketing teams get data. And a lot of times if you have a question about something, if you're a product manager obviously you want to understand how is our product doing? What features are resonating? What features are leading to things like engagement or revenue or subscriptions or loyalty or whatever it is. As a marketer you also want to know that. As a marketer you also want to know, what campaigns are we driving that are actually creating value. Are there things that we should be doing? Are there areas we should double down on? And so the process is if you have a question about something or a hypothesis that you want to answer, a lot of times you have to send this request to some centralized data team or a data science team. Organizations have, large B2C organizations. Most of them have armies of data scientists and business intelligence platforms. And you send a request and you might get an answer back in a few weeks, maybe a month and maybe it's the right answer or usually what happens, and I think we can all relate to this. Is you ask a question and you get data back and then it sparks five more questions. And so that whole process is the cyclical thing that I always say, by the time you actually figure out the answer to your question, it's enough time to get Amazoned in the new digital era. And so what we're actually doing is helping to bring that data which we all know is the crown jewel of any organization. We're bringing that data and we're democratizing it and bringing it to all the teams that actually need it. Unlock it from data scientists and BI, and bring it to the teams that need it, whether it's product, whether it's marketing, whether it's sales, whether it's customer success. And the greatest thing is it's not a tool for everyone. And then all of a sudden you have these siloed tools, marketing has their tool, product has their tool, CS has their tool. Is you actually have one platform, one system, and one source of data that all those teams use. So marketing doesn't say, "Well yeah, my mind says this "and it looks at it from this lens." And product says, "Well, my data says this, "but it looks at it from this lens." All of a sudden you've removed that entire conversation or that entire debate. And that changes everything. It changes the way that companies get insights into customer behavior. It changes the way that they build products. It changes the way that the teams work together. Product and marketing can now work off of a common set of data. And so really Amplitude is helping to drive that change. And you don't have to do it through a three-year implementation with an army of consultants that come in. It's something that can be done very easily. And so, I know everyone wants an easy button. It is quite easy though. It's not the three-year or even the one-year transformation. It's actually a way to bring that data to the teams that need it quickly. The other thing I'd say to it is, it's bringing the right data to them. I was reading something from Gartner that said, 85% of marketing analytics tools, now these are tools that usually track things like ad attribution, website visits, and how that relates to revenue. Well in a customer acquisition scenario, well, you just want to know what ads actually lead to a cart. Put someone going to a cart, someone purchasing that was probably sufficient, but in the new world, that's just not answering the same question. Like if you need to answer a question of what features, what behaviors, what actions within the product actually drive business outcomes, knowing what ads people clicked on and what web visits that people had, that's not going to answer... It's just answering a totally different question. And 85% of companies are using marketing analytics tools to actually answer questions like what features, do we need to build? So that's another key point here is, companies need to answer this question. They know they do. They just don't have the tools to do it and the data to do it. So they're using tools that were designed for a completely different purpose. And so really that's another great thing about Amplitude, is we're actually giving them the actual, the right data to answer the questions. >> So, if you're somebody's headlights, for down the road, then in terms of, you're looking for behavior, straights and patterns. You're looking for increased customer engagements, and you have all these wonderful tools now, not that you're missing anything, but where do you think that you could even sharpen the pencil a little bit more so that down the road here, what do you think technologically you are capable or that you would like to be able to deliver, because of making that an even richer engagement, even a bigger, a deeper dig. >> Yeah. Well, I mean, so, we have this immense deep, fast, smart database of customer behavior. So if you think of it, it's almost like the possibilities are endless. Anything that you need to be able to know or any question you could ask of your data to know what combinations of features, what combinations of behaviors actually lead to things like retention or churn or revenue. And then you can actually start to model those into cohorts. If I know that a customer does these five things in this order, and they're five times more likely to churn, well then, any customer that actually, doesn't just look like that based on your demographics, who you are, where you live, et cetera, but based on actually what you do in the product. We can start to cohort them and say, "this person actually looks like this other person "based on their behavior." And therefore we might actually personalize an experience for them. We might send them an offer if we think they're going to churn because we know they're likely to churn base 'cause other people that look like them do. Or we're not going to send them anything because we already know they're loyal. So they're already likely to buy. So it's answering more questions, but then it's also, how do you actually use that to, really personalize experiences? And that word is so overused, but in this way, I mean, it's not about I'm going to serve you a piece of content because I know what industry you work in, or I know where you live. I'm actually going to personalize your experience because I know that you, John, as an individual, do these things and therefore I know that you are either, a loyal customer, or you've got a high likelihood to churn, et cetera. And then I'm going to personalize an experience, that's a good experience for you but also a good experience for the business. So, I think there's more types of analytics. There's more ways to personalize and build experiences. I think in the modern way, not the old demographic way. But also, even every organization around the company, like everyone touches the customer. So, customer experience as we know is, I hate to call it the buzzword. Of course, everybody wants a great customer experience but everybody talks about customer experience. Anyone who touches the customer is part of customer experience, which is basically the whole company. And so if you think about, today, there's obviously product teams, marketing teams, are heavy users of Amplitude. But going forward, I mean, imagine a world where, anytime you have a touch point with a customer, you can use this insight into what they're actually doing in the product to get some level of intelligence that you didn't have before, and use it to proactively give them a better experience. Whether it's, at renewal time, or you know that they're likely to do something so you offer something that gives them a better experience or you're in customer service. And wouldn't it be great to actually know if someone's logging a support ticket. What they're actually doing in the product is going to help you give them a better support experience, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, the options here I think are, because of the data that we have and the way that we can, like you said, build these patterns and pattern match what features and actions lead to outcomes, I think the options are limitless. And I think this is the new way. Like companies that understand this is the Holy grail of the new way of digital and understanding your customers and having this intelligence into the product is the new way to engage, the customers that get that are going to be the customers that win. >> Well, it is a new game, you're right. I think limitless is a really good word too because the capabilities that you're developing and the product and services you're providing, really are limitless. So thanks for sharing the time and the insight, a pleasure to have you on theCUBE. Thanks for being here. >> Thank you. It's been great. Thank you, John. >> You've got John Walls here on theCUBE, CUBE Conversation on the AWS startup showcase. I'm talking with Jennifer Johnson from Amplitude. (soft music)

>> Narrator: From Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Qualys Security Conference 2019. Brought to you by Qualys. >> Hey, welcome back, you ready with Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We are at the Qualys Security Conference in Las Vegas. This show's been going on, I think, 19 years. This is our first time here. We're excited to be here, and we've got, there's always these people that go between the vendor and the customer and back and forth. We've had it go one way, now we've got somebody who was at Qualys and now is out implementing the technology. We're excited to welcome Grant Johnson. He is the director of Risk and Compliance for Ancestry. Grant, great to see you. >> Thank you for having me, great to be here. >> Yeah, it is always interesting to me and there's always a lot of people at these shows that go back and forth between, and their creating the technology and delivering the technology versus implementing the technology and executing at the customer side. So, you saw an opportunity at Ancestry, what opportunity did you see and why did you make that move? >> Well it's a good question, I was really happy where I was at, I worked for here at Qualys for a long time. But, I had a good colleague of mine from way back just say, hey look, he took over as the chief information security officer at Ancestry and said, "they've got an opportunity here, do you want it?" I said, "hey sure." I mean, it was really kind of a green field. It was the ability to get in on the ground floor, designing the processes, the environment, the people and everything to, what I saw is really a really cool opportunity, they were moving to the cloud. Complete cloud infrastructure which was a few years ago, you know, a little uncommon so it was just and opportunity to learn a lot of different things and kind of be thinking through some different processes and the way to fix it. >> Right, right, so you've been there for a little while now. Over three years, what was the current state and then what was the opportunity to really make some of those changes, as kind of this new initiative with this new see, so? >> No, yeah, we were traditional. You know, a server data center kind of background and everything like that. But with the way the company was starting to go as we were growing it, really just crazy, just at a crazy clip, to where we really couldn't sustain. We wanted to go global, we wanted to move Ancertry out to Europe and to other environments and just see the growth that was going to happen there, and there just wasn't a way that we could do it with the traditional data center model. We're plugging those in all over the place, so the ideas is, we're going to go to a cloud and with going to the cloud, we could really rethink the way that we do security and vulnerability management, and as we went from a more traditional bottle which is, where you scan and tell people to patch and do things like that, to where we can try to start to bake vulnerability management into the process and do a lot of different things. And you know, we've done some pretty cool things that way, I think as a company and, always evolving, always trying to be better and better every day but it was a lot of fun and it's been really kind of a neat ride. >> So, was there a lot of app redesign and a whole bunch of your core infrastructure. Not boxes, but really kind of software infrastructure that had to be redone around a cloud focus so you can scale? >> Yeah. There absolutely was. We really couldn't lift and shift. We really had to take, because we were taking advantage of the cloud environment, if we just lifted and shifted our old infrastructure in there, it wasn't going to take advantage of that cloud expansion like we needed it to. >> Right. >> We needed it to be able to handle it tide, of high tide, low tide, versus those traffic times when we're high and low. So it really took a rewrite. And it was a lot of really neat people coming together. We basically, at the onset of this right when I started in 2016, our chief technology officer got up and said, "we're going to burn the ships." We have not signed the contract for our data center to renew at 18 months. So we have to go to the cloud. And it was really neat to see hundreds of people really come together and really make that happen. I've been involved in the corporate world for a long time in IT. And a lot of those projects fail. And it was really neat to see a big project like that actually get off the ground. >> Right, right. It's funny, the burning the ship analogy is always an interesting one. (grant laughs) Which you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger never had a plan B. (grant laughs) Because if you have plan B, you're going to fall back. So just commit and go forward. >> A lot of truth to that. Right, you're flying without a net, whatever kind of metaphor you want to use on that one. Yeah, but you have to succeed and there is a lot that'll get it done I think, if you just don't have that plan B like you said. >> Right, so talk about kind of where Ancestry now is in terms of being able to roll out apps quicker, in terms of being able to scale much larger, in terms of being able to take advantages of a lot more attack surface area, which probably in the old model was probably not good. Now those are actually new touch points for customers. >> It's a brave new world on a lot of aspects. I mean, to the first part of that, we're just a few days away from cyber Monday. Which is you know, our normal rate clip of transactions is about 10 to 12 transactions a second. >> So still a bump, is cyber Monday still a bump? >> It's still huge for us. >> We have internet at home now. We don't have to go to work to get on the internet to shop. >> You know, crazy enough, it still is. You know, over the course of the week, and kind of starting on Thanksgiving, we scale to have about 250 transactions a second. So that was one of the good parts of the cloud, do you invest and the big iron and in the big piping for your peak times of the year. Or and it sits, your 7-10% utilization during the rest of the year, but you can handle those peaks well. So I mean, we're just getting into the time of year, so that's where our cloud expansion, where a lot of the value for that has come. In terms, of attack surface, yeah, absolutely. Five years ago, I didn't even know what a container was. And we're taking advantage a lot of that technology to be able to move nimbly. You can't spin up a server fast enough to meet the demands of user online clicking things. You really have to go with containers and that also increases what you really need to be able to secure with people and the process and technology and everything like that. >> Right. >> So it's been a challenge. It's been really revitalizing and really, really neat to me to get in there and learn some new things and new stuff like that. >> That's great. So I want to ask you. It may be a little sensitive, not too sensitive but kind of sensitive right. Is with 23 and Me and Ancestry, and DNA registries, et cetera, it's opened up this whole new conversation around cold case and privacy and blah blah blah. I don't want to get into that. That's a whole different conversation, but in terms of your world and in terms of risking compliance, that's a whole different type of a data set I think that probably existed in the early days of Ancestry.com >> Yeah >> Where you're just trying to put your family tree together. So, how does that increased value, increased sensitivity, increased potential opportunity for problems impact the way that you do your job and the way that you structure your compliance systems? >> Boy. Honestly, that is part of the reason why I joined the company. Is that I really kind of saw this opportunity. Kind of be a part of really a new technology that's coming online. I'd have to say. >> Or is it no different than everyone else's personal information and those types of things? Maybe it's just higher profile in the news today. >> Not it all, no. It kind of inherent within our company. We realized that our ability to grow and stay affable or just alive as a business, we pivot on security. And security for us and privacy is at the fore front. And I think one of the key changes that's done for maybe in other companies that I get is, people from our development teams, to our operations teams, to our security department, to our executives. We don't have to sell security to em. They really get it. It's our customer privacy and their data that we're asking people to share their most personal data with us. We can give you a new credit card. Or, you can get a new credit card number issued. We can't give you a new DNA sequence. >> Right. >> So once that's out there, it's out there and it is the utmost to us. And like I said, we don't have to sell security internally, and with that we've gotten a lot of support internally to be able to implement the kind of things that we needed to implement to keep that data as secure as we can. >> Right, well that's nice to hear and probably really nice for you to be able to execute your job that you don't have to sell securities. It is important, important stuff. >> Grant: Yes, that's absolutely true. >> All right, good. So we are jamming through digital transformation. If we talk a year from now, what's on your plate for the next year? >> We just continue to evolve. We're trying to still continue the build in some of those processes that make us better, stronger, faster, as we go through, to respond to threats. And just really kind of handle the global expansion that our company's undergoing right now. Just want to keep the lights on and make sure that nobody even thinks about security when they can do this. I can't speak for them, but I think we really want to lead the world in terms of privacy and customer trust and things like that. So there are a lot of things that I think we've got coming up that we really want to kind of lead the way on. >> Good, good. I think that is a great objective and I think you guys are in a good position to be the shining light to be, kind of guiding in that direction 'cause it's important stuff, really important stuff. >> Yeah, we hope so, we really do. >> Well Grant, nothing but the best to you. Good luck and keep all that stuff locked down. >> Thank you, thank you so much! Thanks for having me. >> He's Grant, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCube. We're at the Qualys Security Conference at the Bellagio in La Vegas. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> From Cambridge Massachusetts, it's The Cube covering MIT Chief Data Officer, and Information Quality Symposium 2019. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. (electronic music) >> Welcome back to MIT in Cambridge, Massachusets everybody. You're watching The Cube, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante I'm here with Paul Gillin. Day two of the of the MIT Chief Data Officer Information Quality Conference. One of the things we like to do, at these shows, we love to profile Boston area start-ups that are focused on data, and in particular we love to focus on start-ups that are founded by women. Julie Johnson is here, She's the Co-founder and CEO of Armored Things. Julie, great to see you again. Thanks for coming on. >> Great to see you. >> So why did you start Armored Things? >> You know, Armored Things was created around a mission to keep people safe. Early in the time where were looking at starting this company, incidents like Las Vegas happened, Parkland happened, and we realized that the world of security and operations was really stuck in the past right? It's a manual solutions generally driven by a human instinct, anecdotal evidence, and tools like Walkie-Talkies and video cameras. We knew there had to be a better way right? In the world of Data that we live in today, I would ask if either of you got in your car this morning without turning on Google Maps to see where you were going, and the best route with traffic. We want to help universities, ball parks, corporate campuses do that for people. How do we keep our people safe? By understanding how they live. >> Yeah, and stay away from Lambert Street in Cambridge by the way. >> (laughing) >> Okay so, you know in people, when they think about security they think about cyber, they think about virtual security, et cetera et cetera, but there's also the physical security aspect. Can you talk about the balance of those two? >> Yeah, and I think both are very important. We actually tend to mimic some of the revolutions that have happened on the cyber security side over the last 10 years with what we're trying to do in the world of physical security. So, folks watching this who are familiar with cyber security might understand concepts like anomaly detection, SIEM and SOAR for orchestrated response. We very much believe that similar concepts can be applied to the physical world, but the unique thing about the physical world, is that it has defined boundaries, right? People behave in accordance with their environment. So, how do we take the lessons learned in cyber security over 10 to 15 years, and apply them to that physical world? I also believe that physical and cyber security are converging. So, are there things that we know in the physical world because of how we approach the problem? That can be a leading indicator of a threat in either the physical world or the digital world. What many people don't understand is that for some of these cyber security hacks, the first weak link is physical access to your network, to your data, to your systems. How do we actually help you get an eye on that, so you already have some context when you notice it in the digital realm. >> So, go back to the two examples you sited earlier, the two shooting examples. Could those have been prevented or mitigated in some way using the type of technology you're building? >> Yeah, I hate to say that you could ever prevent an incident like that. Everyone wants us to do better. Our goal is to get a better sense predicatively of the leading indicators that tell you you have a problem. So, because we're fundamentally looking at patterns of people and flow, I want to know when a normal random environment starts to disperse in a certain way, or if I have a bottle neck in my environment. Because if then I have that type of incident occur, I already know where my hotspots are, where my pockets of risk are. So, I can address it that much more efficiently from a response perspective. >> So if people are moving quickly away from a venue, it might be and indication that there's something wrong- >> It could be, Yeah. That demands attention. >> Yeah, when you go to a baseball game, or when you go to work I would imagine that you generally have a certain pattern of behavior. People know conceptually what those patterns are. But, we're the first effort to bring them data to prove what those patterns are so that they can actually use that data to consistently re-examine their operations, re-examine their security from a staffing perspective, from a management perspective, to make sure that they're using all the data that's at their disposal. >> Seems like there would be many other applications beyond security of this type of analysis. Are you committed to the security space, or do you have broader ambitions? >> Are we committed to the security space is a hundred percent. I would say the number one reason why people join our team, and the number one reason why people call us to be customers is for security. There's a better way to do things. We fundamentally believe that every ball park, every university, every corporate campus, needs a better way. I think what we've seen though is exactly what you're saying. As we built our software, for security in these venues, and started with an understanding of people and flow, there's a lot that falls out of that right? How do I open gates that are more effective based on patterns of entry and exit. How do I make sure that my staffing's appropriate for the number of people I have in my environment. There's lots of other contextual information that can ultimately drive a bottom line or top line revenue. So, you take a pro sports venue for example. If we know that on a 10 degree colder day people tend to eagres more early in the game, how do we adjust our food and beverage strategy to save money on hourly workers, so that we're not over staffing in a period of time that doesn't need those resources. >> She's talking about the physical and the logical security worlds coming together, and security of course has always been about data, but 10 years ago it was staring at logs increasing the machines are helping us do that, and software is helping us do that. So can you add some color to at least the trends in the market generally, and then maybe specifically what you're doing bringing machine intelligence to the data to make us more secure. >> Sure, and I hate to break it to you, but logs are still a pretty big part of what people are watching on a daily basis, as are video cameras. We've seen a lot of great technology evolve in the video management system realm. Very advanced technology great at object recognition and detecting certain behaviors with a video only solution, right? How do we help pinpoint certain behaviors on a specific frame or specific camera. The only problem with that is, if you have people watching those cameras, you're still relying on humans in the loop to catch a malicious behavior, to respond in the event that they're notified about something unusual. That still becomes a manual process. What we do, is we use data to watch not only cameras, but we are watching your cameras, your Wi-Fi, access control. Contextual data from public transit, or weather. How do we get this greater understanding of your environment that helps us watch everything so that we can surface the things that you want the humans in the loop to pay attention to, right? So, we're not trying to remove the human, we're trying to help them focus their time and make decisions that are backed by data in the most efficient way possible. >> How about the concerns about The Surveillance Society? In some countries, it's just taken for granted now that you're on camera all the time. In the US that's a little bit more controversial. Is what your doing, do you have to be sensitive to that in designing the tools you're building? >> Yeah, and I think to Dave's question, there are solutions like facial recognition which are very much working on identifying the individual. We have a philosophy as a company, that security doesn't necessarily start with the individual, it starts with the aggregate. How do we understand at an aggregate macro level, the patterns in an environment. Which means I don't have to identify Paul, or I don't have to identify Dave. I want to look for what's usual and unusual, and use that as the basis of my response. There's certain instances where you want to know who people are. Do I want to know who my security personnel are so I can dispatch them more efficiently? Absolutely. Let's opt those people in and allow them to share the information they need to share to be better resources for our environment. But, that's the exception not the norm. If we make the norm privacy first, I think we'll be really successful in this emerging GDPR data centric world. >> But I could see somebody down the road saying hey can you help us find this bad guy? And my kids at camp this week, This is his 7th year of camp, and this year was the first year my wife, she was able to sign up for a facial recognition thing. So, we used to have to scroll through hundreds and hundreds of pictures to see oh, there he is! And so Deb signs up for this thing, and then it pings you when your son has a picture taken. >> Yeah. And I was like, That's awesome. Oh. (laughing) >> That's great until you think about it. >> But there aren't really any clear privacy laws today. And so you guys are saying, look it, we're looking at the big picture. >> That's right. >> But that day is coming isn't it? >> There's certain environments that care more than others. If you think about universities, which is where we first started building our technology, they cared greatly about the privacy of their students. Health care is a great example. We want to make sure that we're protecting peoples personal data at a different level. Not only because that's the right thing to do, but also from a regulatory perspective. So, how do we give them the same security without compromising the privacy. >> Talk about Bottom line. You mentioned to us earlier that you just signed a contract with a sports franchise, you're actually going to help them, help save them money by deploying their resources more efficiently. How does your technology help the bottom line? >> Sure, you're average sporting venue, is getting great information at the point a ticket is scanned or a ticket is purchased, they have very little visibility beyond that into the customer journey during an event at their venue. So, if you think about again, patterns of people and flow from a security perspective, at our core we're helping them staff the right gates, or figure out where people need to be based on hot spots in their environment. But, what that also results in is an ability to drive other operational benefits. Do we have a zone that's very low utilization that we could use as maybe even a benefit to our avid fans. Send them to that area, get traffic in that area, and now give them a better concession experience because of it, right? Where they're going to end up spending more money because they're not waiting in line in the different zone. So, how do we give them a dashboard in real time, but also alerts or reports that they can use on an ongoing basis to change their decision making going forward. >> So, give us the company overview. Where are you guys at with funding, head count, all that good stuff. >> So, we raised a seed round with some great Boston and Silicon Valley investors a year ago. So, that was Glasswing is a Boston AI focused fund, has been a great partner for us, and Inovia which is Canada's largest VC fund recently opened a Silicon Valley office. We just started raising a series A about a week ago. I'm excited to say those conversation have been going really well so far. We have some potential strategic partners who we're excited about who know data better then anyone else that we think would help us accelerate our business. We also have a few folks who are very familiar with the large venue space. You know, the distributed campuses, the sporting and entertainment venues. So, we're out looking for the right partner to lead our series A round, and take our business to the next level, but where we are today with five really great branded customers, I think we'll have 20 by the end of next year, and we won't stop fighting 'till we're at every ball park, every football stadium, every convention center, school. >> The big question, at some point will you be able to eliminate security lines? (laughing) >> I don't think that's my core mission. (laughing) But, optimistically I'd love to help you. Right, I think there's some very talented people working on that challenge, so I'll defer that one to them. >> And rough head count today? >> We have 23 people. >> You're 23 people so- >> Yeah, I headquartered in Boston Post Office Square. >> Awesome, great location. So, and you say you've got five customers, so you're generating revenue? >> Yes >> Okay, good. Well, thank you for coming in The Cube >> Yeah, thank you. >> And best of luck with the series A- >> I appreciate it and going forward >> Yeah, great. >> All right, and thank you for watching. Paul Gillin and I will be back right after this short break. This is The Cube from MIT Chief Data Officer Information Quality Conference in Cambridge. We'll be right back. (electronic music)

[Music] hi I'm Peter Burris and welcome to another Cube conversation from our outstanding studios in Palo Alto California got a great conversation today we're gonna be talking about some of the challenges and changes taking place in the MSP the managed service provider part of the marketplace made possible by software to find when SD Wang technologies and to do that we've got Alastair Johnson as a principal architect at nuage Networks here with us on the cube today Alastair welcome to the cube Thank You Peter it's great to be here so let's start corporate update nuage Networks what's going on well we've had a pretty good year so far a number of customers that we'll be announcing over the next few months that we've established this year in addition to the the major wins that I'm sure most of the markets familiar with over the last few years we're really seeing that in the managed services space that Sdn is gaining a lot of traction we're finding that particularly outside of North America but with increasing North American interest that enterprises are looking towards a managed SD wine service as opposed to doing it themselves going down the path of having a carrier come in and provide them with both connectivity and the service layer or looking at taking the service layer from a managed services provider and sourcing the connectivity themselves so this is an area that's especially fruitful and open for some significant innovation and innovation that's going to have enormous impact in how the market pays so let me let me run something by you so here's the observation I've made over the years that servers Moore's law meant that there was this kind of smooth growth and performance and even in software it would kind of followed Moore's law but network because of its because of the degree of interplay and natural integration amongst the components there was always this kind of weird step function where every four or five years the big telecommunications companies our managed service providers would make major investments in their networks and you got this very rough course odd step function and that sometimes scared some of these companies away from participating in all the innovation of the cloud have I got that right absolutely I mean the tradition of having both your service layer and your transport layer being coupled you know an IP Network is offering both the IP transport but also the services like MPLS VPNs or layer 2 VPNs has meant that you know the tech lifecycle became relatively long the process to qualify deploy managed and then eventually automate services and the delivery of those services took a long time Sdn has presented a really interesting opportunity for the carrier's as long along with the broader audience in the industry to really leverage software and the frequency of updates the software can give you without needing to make those hardware changes at the same time so you can still do the hardware changes but you get a smoother upward innovation curve absolutely so the underlying transport platforms the routers the DWDM systems etc those can be changed as needed to buy capacity demands or vendor changes or new technology that comes out in those spaces but we can use Sdn or in this case st wan to smooth out the service offering on the top and as it becomes a software delivered function we can upgrade that much faster and we can roll it out much more like we update our you know cell phones our tablets etc and introduce new functionality into the service layer much faster than we were able to do in the past where we had a very much a hardware coupled service offering now I made a comment that in many respects some of the big telecommunications companies some of the beginner Spees have not participated in this explosive innovation that's associated with the cloud and part of the reason is because when you think about cloud someone can say I can think of a new service and then they can create it and deploy because it's largely in software whereas a lot of the telecommunications MSP type companies go I get to give a new service but then they look around and they say oh the hardware's not ready and I don't wait for the hardware to be ready how does this notion of SD win and this software to find service layers start to alter the way that some of these big companies think about their underlying infrastructure cost structures how they think about automation how they go about competing for new services well well it's it becomes a very big competitive differentiator because you know I can be a carrier and I can offer new services much faster a we touched on I'm getting a benefit of automation very quickly because Sdn was heavily around automating the configuration in the service elements and I can become a lot more cost-effective with that you know customers are looking for more self control more self management information Diagnostics tooling etc but without the overheads of running very large IT and network specialized personnel so the carrier's get that advantage the enterprise's get that advantage everyone is getting you know effectively a much more modern service experience we saw that with the cloud I guess revolution if you want to put it that way that you know I no longer needed to order a server put it in a rack deploy an operating system put my application on it take six months that changed with the cloud everyone understands that the network layer did not change it's fast and that's where we saw Sdn and the data centers come along to address that problem that's what we're solving with sd1 as well so when we think about the relationship between big cloud players and some of these nm msps it is that we've got the big cloud pairs that are virtualizing everything the msps are still kind of physically stuck but still have the vast majority of those last miles that are so crucial to having that end and productivity and compatibility absolutely does that start to change as we start to think about new wireless technologies how does SD LAN improve the MS Pease ability to both bring new automation and bri new but also introduced some of these new technologies that will bring make it easier to think cloud last-mile in the same breath well it's an interesting point I mean you could look at an MSP that has no lost mile infrastructure at all.they or maybe reselling a carriers infrastructure or procuring a full their enterprise customers now they have the ability to actually manage the service layer and they could be using carrier a today to reach the customers location but they strike a new deal tomorrow with carry a B and they can swap that customer over effectively changing the engines on the airplane in flight the customer experience doesn't change for the enterprise they're still getting the same Sdn service but maybe they swapped from DSL to cable as a transport or they've added an MPLS service to a new site as well for greater reliability so this allows the msps and the carriers to you know get services out to the customers faster decoupling it from whatever the last mile technology may be and this where there's opportunities for wireless you know we're seeing a lot of interest from enterprises to augment with LTE and in the future 5g as a backup connectivity to their sites particularly in retail I mean I'm sure in Silicon Valley you've seen everyone here is swiping your card on a tablet well you know you don't want that tablet to be offline it needs connectivity or they're not making money so making sure you have reliable connectivity with the same experience is a big deal for these enterprises and and they're msps but it's not becomes part of a coherent solution as opposed to I'm gonna do my cloud thing and I'm gonna do my MSP thing absolutely and so that's another area where we're seeing a lot of interest I mean even if I look at what our internal IT is doing which is you know we need to make sure that the cloud is part of our LAN and we need to make sure that we can you know drop an application in our private data center but have resources in our public infrastructure also using that and the experience for me sitting at my desk down the street from here is the same regardless of where that application is being accessed from all right the last thing I want to talk to you about Alastair is this this notion I have I'm going to test something by you and see if I if I got it right and if I can if I'm anticipating some of the changes over in C so a lot of people presume that the cloud was a one-way ticket to something centralized and big and that had an enormous impact on how people think about the cloud we actually think about the cloud as a strategy in the technology for more easily and coherently distributing data and distributing function to where it needs to be on location basis and in certain respects I can look at the cloud kind of as a network programming model where the some of those hybrid cloud services are they're being introduced by some of the big cloud players now are really almost a layer 7 they're providing some structure to the developer about how to think about building hybrid distributed applications now I want to test that does that resonate with you from a networking standpoint absolutely and again that's something we see a lot of interest in a reasonable amount of demand as enterprises and their internal developers are getting their heads around that concept that the application can live anywhere whether it be on premises at the branch data center or in the cloud and that cloud as you point out can be rightly geographically distributed and being able to be the network glue that binds all of those locations together allows the developer and the IT organization supporting that developer to have you know if the effect of a single fabric regardless of where the application or the user is seamlessly connecting them and so it also suggestions there's nothing on a test with you that that that we are it makes it possible to imagine greater specialization in what those distributed services look like especially from a networking perspective which means that if MSPs and big teller codes do successfully incorporate some of these technologies improve their automate ability their ability to think about the service and then deliver the service very rapidly then we could see them actually being able to pick up a sizeable piece of this cloud business because they can introduce services that are specialized with a network strong network affinity that have that build on that heritage of distribution of function absolutely and you see that today you know the carriers are already providing a valuable service connecting the enterprises to the cloud but that goes beyond in you know an SDN 2.0 model I need to move certain applications to the branch there's some things that always need to live there and as an IT manager I need to manage that networking effectively but I have applications that I want to have that are running you know in a very public cloud you know SAS applications etc and I want to give my users the most efficient path to them but I also have my private applications that it may be running in a public environment but I want to carry that as if it was part of my internal corporate one and being able to get that the from an enterprise you know services perspective from an MSP from a carrier that can bundle all of this together that's a huge advantage and a time-saving for me yeah the one other thing I'd say is that we're actually talking some very large enterprises right now that are discovering that their customers there their customers are demanding very concrete strict and well-documented notions of the capabilities that they provide and this idea of SD wine is making it easier for them to sell services in to companies that want that digital interface that highly competent working digital interface absolutely so it's what last thing is we think about where this is going is there any technology on the horizon that you think Sdn is going to make easier to deploy or that's gonna make SD went that much more important oh that's an interesting question and I think as you know the ongoing digital transformation of business happens you know we're connectivity is more important than ever making sure it's reliable and available and that the user experience regardless of what type of site I'm visiting as a you know an enterprise employee making sure that you know my telephony works that my can access my documents that my R&D teams can span the globe that is a key requirement of today's enterprise at Nokia that's how we need to work internally and that's how we do work I travel around the world visit our offices my experience is seamless in the same and that I think is where Sdn is bringing a huge amount of automation value security in many cases and tell you some great anecdotes that we found in the Sdn world there and just the management and control layer well let's save another cube conversation to talk about those security antidotes well but this is Peterborough's we've been talking to Alastair Johnson who's a principal architect at nuage networks about the potential for SD when to increase the relevance of MSPs telecom providers in a marketplace that is being dominated by the cloud experience and how greater automation leads to improve service opportunities for a lot of customers and a lot of cloud related service providers Alastair thanks very much for being on the cube thanks Peter and once again on Peter Burris and you've been watching another cube conversation until next time [Music] you

>> From the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, It's theCUBE, covering HoshoCon 2018. Brought to you by Hosho. >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We're here live in Las Vegas for theCUBE's exclusive coverage of HoshoCon. This is the first inaugural event of its kind. It's the first security blockchain conference, where all the top minds in the security blockchain decentralized world come together to try to work on, solve, and enhance the security profile of how the world's running. As we know blockchains run the infrastructure, and we need security. I'm John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE. I'm here with David Johnson, the CEO of Latium. Welcome to theCUBE thanks for joining me. >> Thanks for having me John. >> So, you're one of the brain trusts in the industry here at this event, trying to solve the security problems. Let's get into it, but first take a minute to explain what you guys do. What does your company do? What's your purpose to exist? Why are you in business? >> Well our main goal is trying to help get the message of crypto out and increase adoption in the space. We do a lot of things, we're a multifunctional platform. We're trying to make it easy by putting everything in one place. We believe that there's a lot of complexity, there's a lot of technical knowledge required. I mean, I've been in technology for 30 years, and it's really complex to use crypto. And we just think everyday people probably will not learn that. It's like they don't know why their car moves when they press the gas pedal, but they know that it does, and we're trying to solve that for crypto. >> It's like a car, imagine having to open the hood up, throw a switch, put the screwdriver on this, get a charge, go back in, run in, I mean just turn the key, come on. >> It's asking a bit much, at least that's our philosophy. >> Okay, so when you say moving a lot of complexity into the platform, are you talking about custody, are you talking about tech stack? What specifically are you guys doing? Is it technology stack, is it a framework, is it software, is it? >> It's a platform, it's a platform as far, it is a community where they can come in. It's a multicurrency wallet, it's an exchange. They can work for crypto, they can hire for crypto. So, again we're taking it from the client side, anything they would want to do with crypto, we'll try to put that in one place. >> So, you're trying to build a multipurpose platform where someone can run turn key. >> Exactly. >> A full end to end life cycle of crypto. >> That's correct. >> And why would they do that, build an app, marketplaces, is it business model driven? So what's your target customer looking to do? Are they developers, are they big businesses? >> Well, our target market is the everyday person who wants access to crypto, they're hearing about crypto, but they don't know how to participate. So, it starts off easy for them. They can come into the platform and they can perform a task on our platform, and now they're immediately a crypto holder, right? So, we just want to expose that space and make that access point as easy as possible. >> That's where they get people into crypto, is give the crypto away. >> And that's kind of what we're doing, we're giving them crypto for their production. >> All right, so give me an example. We're into crypto, we're doing a little CUBE crypto. How do we get involved? What do we do, how do we use you? >> Well one way you could use it, is you could use us if you were trying to, say promote something. That would be one way to do it. You want the community to get behind something? You want feedback. Say you have a website and you want feedback. You need Beta testers, right? You could list a task on our platform, our community base would see that listing, they could decide, I want to perform this task, and be paid in crypto. >> So you guys are looking at the, the Upwork-like crypto model. >> Similar, similar. >> So WorkCoin is another, is they competitive to you guys? >> I don't really feel like anybody in the space is a true competitor. There's crossover in some functionality, but because we're approaching the whole solution, as a wallet, an exchange, and a tasking platform, I don't really see anybody as direct competition. >> That's good, I like the platform approach. So having platforms that are open versus closed is what people are concerned about these days. How are you handling the open versus closed question? You guys let people own their own data. How is that working on the platform? >> Well, as it stands right now, we're a hybrid between blockchain and centralization and the reason for that is for scalability purposes. Blockchain tech is just not there. I know we all want it to be there. >> That's true, that's fair. >> But if we're honest, we're not there. So we're trying to build an enterprise application and we know that if that's 100% pure blockchain right now that you're going to run into scale issues. >> And for liability, many issues, we all know that. >> Yes, and data ownership is definitely a sensitive topic. As far as our approach on that, we're pretty open on what we're storing. Our biggest data point is really a TrustScore and you have full control over that by how you participate within the system. You know, good actors get the benefits of being a good actor and there's consequences if you're a bad actor in the system. And the way that we do that is, we have a verification system that's using biometric data, off of your face, and we're creating a unique digital profile tied back to the user. So unlike other platforms where they could just make a new account, become a bad actor, you can't do that on our system. So that's one space that's very unique. >> I think crypto's got a lot of opportunities to manage bad actors, if you can make the incentive costly, that's an interesting dynamic. Is that kind of what you guys are thinking too? Bad actors, always the problem is in web it's easy to be anonymous. >> That's it. >> You start a bot and get killed, you create a new one, respawn. >> I always say that the internet gave us this amazing platform for communication and networking and opened up a whole new world, but it removed trust, totally removed trust. There is no concept of trust. >> Yeah, reputation and trust. Reputation and trust are scattered. >> It's a big issue. >> A lot of people in crypto are struggling with two things. I want to get your thoughts and reaction to. One is community. >> Yes >> And the other is marketplaces. You're a classic marketplace. If you're doing tasks, gig economy, >> Yes. >> We know what that means, you share, you're open you're publishing. >> Sure. >> It's open, so check on the marketplace. Community is another one, how do you build a community? >> Sure. >> People raise these big ICOs and they say, hey I need a community. >> Yes. >> You can't buy a community. >> No, no you have to have something people want. And so that's the question, I mean in any business model you got to define what it is that you're building that someone wants. If you can't define that, then you don't have a business. >> All right so here's a pressure question for you. What's the hallway conversations like that you're overhearing and also you're participating in here at HoshoCon? A lot of smart people, I've overheard a bunch of conversations I just want to bust in and listen. >> Yeah >> I feel rude, but I'm just leaning in. Interesting people here, great dynamics. What are some of the hallway conversations that you're overhearing, and some that you're participating in? >> Well I think there's a lot of focus on the security levels of the contracts. There's been quite a few hacks just in the last couple days so that's been a buzz, and I think it's kind of interesting that we're at a security conference and then we have hacks going on. So there's been a lot of buzz around that. >> 'Cause people have been traveling on a plane, they attack when all the security guys are traveling. (laughing) >> Absolutely. >> Social engineering at it's best. >> Yeah, that might be the case, yeah. >> All right anything else, sessions you've been to? >> As far as the sessions go, I mean I think that Max put on a great session today. He's always an eloquent speaker. And so that was a great speech as far as I was concerned. You know, I think that it's nice to see that we're moving in the direction of acknowledging that security is a big deal in the space and I think it's great that Hosho's bringing that out. >> What's the biggest surprise this week for you here? >> I would say that the biggest surprise for me is just how well organized the event is. You know, I've been to quite a few events and the Hosho team has done a great job organizing this event. >> Yeah, and it's not too crowded either. It's the right mix of people. Of course, you know, they're video taping all the sessions so just lettin' everyone know, we'll put those videos up in theCUBE cloud and make them searchable for HoshoCon. So we're going to help get those videos out as well. Cool, so what's new at the business? How's things going? Give us the update, funding status? Employees? >> Things are going really well, we've actually seen exponential growth this month. We're registering between a 1,000, 3,000 registrations a day now. We've got about 22,000 verified members in our system and when I say verified, it again means that they've actually gone through a verification process so they can't duplicate accounts. >> And they've got a wallet, they're downloading. >> Exactly. >> They've got the wallet. >> Exactly, it's all in one. You register, you get multicurrency wallet off the bat. So we've seen a lot of growth and a lot of attention so far in this month. >> And which blockchain are you using? >> Again, we're a multicurrency, so we're tied-- >> You don't care. >> Well, our token is a ERC-20, but as far as how we deal with other blockchains, right now we have Bitcoin integration, Tether integration, Ethereum integration, and we're going to be adding ERC-20s. >> So you're using the ERC-20 mainly for smart contract on the transaction? >> Yeah, we're using the ERC-20 for our own tokens, yes. >> Okay got it, and the tokens for the gigs, the work, utility tokens? >> Yes, that's our token. >> That's your token, okay got it. >> That's correct, so they're getting, but they can take that immediately and they can change it out for Bitcoin if they like or they can hold our token. >> That's the exchange piece. >> Correct, it's all there. >> So multipurpose, yeah that's interesting. Great, well hey congratulations, David Johnson, he's the CEO of Latium, check him out. End to end exchange, getting work done, tasks. We certainly could use some UI on our project so can we put that in there? >> There you go, there you go. (laughing) >> Get some business down here, theCUBE, bringing you live coverage here at HoshoCon. Stay with us, we've got two days of wall to wall coverage. We'll be back with more after this short break. (techno music)

[Music] [Applause] I'll Buena Burris and welcome to another cube conversation from our fantastic studios in beautiful palo alto california today we're going to be talking about what infrastructure can do to accelerate AI and specifically we're gonna use a relationship a burgeoning relationship between PDN and nvidia to describe what we can do to accelerate AI workloads by using higher performance smarter and more focused of infrastructure for computing now to have this conversation we've got two great guests here we've got Kurt ku kind who is the senior director of marketing at ddn and also Darren Johnson is a global director of technical marketing for enterprise and NVIDIA Kurt Gerron welcome to the cube thanks for thank you very much so let's get going on this because this is a very very important topic and I think it all starts with this notion of that there is a relationship that you guys have put forward Kurt once you describe it sure well so what we're announcing today is ddn's a3i architecture powered by Nvidia so it is a full rack level solution a reference architecture that's been fully integrated and fully tested to deliver an AI infrastructure very simply very completely so if we think about how this is gonna or why this is important AI workloads clearly have a special stress on underlying technology Darin talk to us a little bit about the nature of these workloads and why in particular things like GPUs and other technologies are so important to make them go fast absolutely and as you probably know AI is all about the data whether you're doing medical imaging whether you're doing natural language processing whatever it is it's all driven by the data the more data that you have the better results that you get but to drive that data into the GPUs you need great IO and that's why we're here today to talk about ddn and the partnership of how to bring that I owe to the GPUs on our dgx platforms so if we think about what you described a lot of small files off and randomly just riveted with nonetheless very high-profile jobs that just can't stop midstream and start over absolutely and if you think about the history of high-performance computing which is very similar to a I really I owe is just that lots of files you have to get it they're low latency high throughput and that's why ddn's probably nearly twenty years of experience working in that exact same domain is perfect because you get the parallel file system which gives you that throughput gives you that low latency just helps drive the GPU so we you'd mention HPC from 20 years of experience now it used to be that HPC you'd have scientists with a bunch of graduate students setting up some of these big honkin machines but now we're moving into the commercial domain you don't have graduate students running around you don't have very low cost high quality people you're you know a lot of administrators who nonetheless good people but a lot to learn so how does this relationship actually start making or bringing AI within reach of the commercial world exactly where this reference architecture comes in right so a customer doesn't need to start from scratch they have a design now that allows them to quickly implement AI it's something that's really easily deployable we've fully integrated this solution ddn has made changes to our parallel file system appliance to integrate directly within the DG x1 environment makes that even easier to deploy from there and extract the maximum performance out of this without having to run around and tune a bunch of knobs change a bunch of settings it's really gonna work out of the box and the you know nvidia has done more than just the DG x1 it's more than hardware you've done a lot of optimization of different of AI toolkits if Sarah I'm talking what about that Darin yeah so I mean talking about the example I use researchers in the past with HPC what we have today are data scientists data scientists understand pie tours they understand tensorflow they understand the frameworks they don't want to understand the underlying filesystem networking RDMA InfiniBand any of that they just want to be able to come in run their tensorflow get the data get the results and just turn that keep turning that whether it's a single GPU or 90 Jex's or as many dejection as you want so this solution helps bring that to customers much easier so those data scientists don't have to be system administrators so a reference architecture that makes things easier but that's more than just for some of these commercial things it's also the overall ecosystem new application providers application developers how is this going to impact the aggregate ecosystem it's growing up around the need to do AI related outcomes well I think one point that Darrin was getting to you there and one of the big effects is also as these ecosystems reach a point where they're going to need to scale right there's somewhere where ddn has tons of experience right so many customers are starting off with smaller data sets they still need the performance a parallel file system in that case is going to deliver that performance but then also as they grow right going from one GPU to 90 G X's is going to be an incredible amount of both performance scalability that they're going to need from their i/o as well as probably capacity scalability and that's another thing that we've made easy with a3i is being able to scale that environment seamlessly within a single namespace so that people don't have to deal with a lot of again tuning and turning of knobs to make this stuff work really well and drive those outcomes that they need as they're successful right so in the end it is the application that's most important to both of us right it's it's not the infrastructure it's making the discoveries faster it's processing information out in the field faster it's doing analysis of the MRI faster it's you know helping the doctors helping the anybody who's using this to really make faster decisions better decisions exactly and just to add to that I mean in automotive industry you have datasets that are from 50 to 500 petabytes and you need access to all that data all the time because you're constantly training and Retraining to create better models to create better autonomous vehicles and you need you need the performance to do that ddn helps bring that to bear and with this reference architecture simplifies it so you get the value add of nvidia gpus plus its ecosystem of software plus DD on its match made in heaven Darren Johnson Nvidia Curt Koo Kien ddn thanks very much for being on the cube thank you very much and I'm Peter burrs and once again I'd like to thank you for watching this cube conversation until next time [Music]

>> What up universe? Welcome to our theCUBE conversation from our fantastic studios in beautiful Palo Alto, California. Today we're going to be talking about what infrastructure can do to accelerate AI. And specifically we're going to use a relationship, a burgeoning relationship between DDN and NVIDIA to describe what we can do to accelerate AI workloads by using higher performance, smarter, and more focused infrastructure for computing. Now to have this conversation, we've got two great guests, here. We've got Kurt Kuckein, who's the senior director of marketing at DDN. And also Darren Johnson, who's the global director of technical marketing for Enterprise and NVIDIA. Kurt, Darren, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thanks For having us. >> Thank you very much. >> So let's get going on this because this is a very, very important topic. And I think it all starts with this notion of that there is a relationship that you guys put forth. Kurt, why don't you describe it. >> So what we're announcing today is the ends A3I architecture, powered by NVIDIA. So it is a full, rack-level solution, a reference to architecture that's been fully integrated and fully tested to deliver an AI infrastructure very simply very completely. >> So if we think about how this or why this is important, AI workloads clearly have a special stress on underlying technology. Darren, talk to us a little bit about the nature of these workloads, and why in particular, things like GPU's and other technologies are so important to make them go fast. >> Absolutely. And as you probably know AI is all about the data. Whether you're doing medical imaging, or whether your doing actual language processing, whatever it is, it's all driven by the data. The more data that you have, the better results that you get. But to drive that data into the GPU's, you need great IO. And that's why we're here today, to talk about DDN and the partnership and how to bring that IO to the GPU's on our DJX platforms. >> So if we think about what you describe, a lot of small files, often randomly distributed, with nonetheless very high profile jobs that just can't stop this dream and start over. >> Absolutely. And if you think about the history of high-performance computing, which is very similar to AI, really IO is just that, lots of files, you have to get it there, low latency, high throughput and that's why DDN's probably nearly 20 years of experience working in that exact same domain is perfect. Because you get the parallel file system which gives you that throughput, gives you that low latency, just helps drive the GPU. >> So you mentioned HPC from twenty years of experience, now, it used to be that HPC you'd have some scientists with a bunch of graduate students, setting up some of these big, honking machines. But now we're moving with commercial domain. You don't have graduate students running around. You don't have very low cost, high quality people here. So, you know, there's a lot of administrators who nonetheless good people, but want to learn. So, how does this relationship actually start making or bringing AI within reach of the commercial world? Kurt, why don't- >> That's exactly where this reference architecture comes in right. So a customer doesn't need to start from scratch. They have a design now that allows them to quickly implement AI, It's something that's really easily deployable. We've fully integrated this solution. DDN has made changes to our parallel file system appliance to integrate directly within the DGX-1 environment. That makes that even easier to deploy from there. And extract the maximum performance out of this without having to run around and tune a bunch of knobs, change a bunch of settings, it's really going to work out of the box. >> And you know it's really done more than just the DGX-1, it's more than hardware. You've done a lot of optimization of different AI toolkits, et cetera et cetera. Talk a little about that Darren. >> Yeah so, I mean, talking about the example used, researchers in the past with HPC, what we have today are data scientists. Data scientists understand pi charts, they understand tenser flow, they understand the frameworks. They don't want to understand the underlying file system, networking, RDMA, InfiniBand, any of that. They just want to be able to come in, run their tenser flow, get the data, get the results. And just churn that, keep churning that, whether it's a single GPU or 90 DJX's or as many DJX's as you want. So this solution helps bring that to customers much easier so those data scientists don't have to be system administrators. >> So, reference architecture that makes things easier. But it's more than just for some of these commercial things. It's also the overall ecosystem, you have application providers, application developers. How is this going to impact the average ecosystem that's growing up around the need to do AI related outcomes? >> Well, I think the one point that Darren was getting to there, and one of the big impacts is also as these ecosystems reach a point where they're going to need a scale. There's somewhere where DDN has tons of experience. So many customers are starting off with smaller data sets, they still need the performance, the parallel file system in that case is going to deliver that performance. But then also, as they grow, going from one GPU to 90 DJX's is going to be an incredible amount of both performance scalability that they're going to need from their IO, as well as probably capacity, scalability. And that's another thing that we've made easy with A3I, is being able to scale that environment seamlessly, within a single name space so that people don't have to deal with a lot of, again, tuning and turning of knobs to make this stuff work really well and drive those outcomes that they need as their successful. In the end, it is the application that's most important to both of us. It's not the end of a structure, it's making the discoveries faster, it's processing the information out in the field faster, it's doing analysis of the MRI faster, and helping the doctor, helping anybody who's using this to really make faster decisions, better decisions. >> Exactly. And just to add to that, in automotive industry, you have data sets that are from 50 to 500 petabytes, and you need access to all that data, all the time, because you're constantly training and retraining to create better models, to create better autonomous vehicles. And you need the performance to do that. DDN helps bring that to bear, and with this reference architecture, simplifies it. So you get the value add of InfiniData GPU's plus its ecosystem is software plus DDN is a match made in Heaven. >> Darren Johnson, NVIDIA, Kurt Kuckein, DDN. Thanks very much for being on theCube. >> Thank you very much. >> Glad I could be here. >> And I'm Peter Burns, and once again I'd like to thank you for watching this Cube Conversation. Until next time.

>> Live from Washington DC, it's theCUBE. Covering Inforum DC 2018. Brought to you by Infor. >> Well good afternoon, and welcome back here on theCUBE as we continue our coverage here at Inforum 2018, live from Washington, DC. We're in the Washington Convention Center centrally located, I got to tell ya. The White house less than a mile that way, Capital Hill's just right up the street as well. We're kind of caught in the middle. Bad spot to be these days! (laughing) >> I hope you're not setting the tone for this. >> We'll leave that alone. >> I like being in the middle, personally. (laughing) I'll take it from both sides. >> When you sit in the middle of the road, there's a six inch yellow line, you get it equally hard from both sides. >> Bring it on! >> So, lets stay away from that. Dave Vellante, John Walls and Rod Johnson, who is the EVP of Manufacturing and Supply Chain, and the GT Nexus Business Unit at Infor. Rod, good to see you Sir! >> Great to be here, thanks guys. >> You're okay with being in the middle? >> Yeah, sure! Yeah, of course. >> Independent thought, right? I love it. >> Middle of the road. It's the place to be. >> So you're the new kid on the block, right? >> One of them, yeah. >> You've been here, just at Infor for a few months now, assuming the EVP role. How's it been for you so far? >> Hey, it's been a breath of fresh air. I was 11 years with one of our competitors, the Oracle Corporation. Its quite a breath of fresh air. Go with a company that's agile, innovative, much more customer centric. I think the timing is perfect for a company like Infor, that's really grown up in these key industries and working with customers for over decades. Now its made this transition to the Cloud, and now I think all the markets are waking up. It's not just CRM or HR, they're looking at: How do I take advantage of all this innovation, the Cloud's the platform, and who's the companies that really understand our type of business, whether you're a distribution company, or a food company, or an A&D Company. So it's a great time to be here, there's a lot of good energy, a lot of good innovation. A lot of good buzz from the customers about what we're doing. >> Necessity is the mother of invention, as the saying goes. I mean, you're right. The model of just having an install base that you can have locked in and just keep milking is very hard to do these days. Unless, you know, some of the private equity guys have done it, that's clearly not the case here at Infor. You know, Oracle is successful at it. I think it's because they do spend a lot of money on R&D, but boy oh boy! That model, you can't just go and reinvent that. >> Right. >> You're going to fail. >> Right. >> And if you're trying to hold on to that model, maybe they're the exception that proves the rule, but you're going to be toast. You know, in the long run. So you see what Amazon's doing, you see what Microsoft; how Microsoft completely pivoted away from that model. >> Right, Right. >> And Infor's riding that wave. >> Right, right. Hey, this is a business model. Fundamental business model change. You know, we can talk a lot about the technology, but transitioning from a product company that sells a license that sits on a maintenance base is a model that's no longer viable for what customers expect. They want a service provider that's delivering continuous innovation in service, and that's a big change. That's a big change to how we engage with our customers, how we support them, the service levels we're committing to. So, I lived through a bunch of that stuff at Oracle, transitioning to the cloud had a role for the last six years; doing that both from a sales and a global strategy role. Here, we're trying to do it better, faster, and never lose sight of the customer. >> So, you've serviced the manufacturing sector. >> Yeah, yeah. >> It's still a lot of Infor's business that install base and that maintenance. You're in the process of transitioning those customers. >> Yeah. >> So, that takes a lot of care, a lot of feeding, cause anytime there's a transition everybody wants a piece of that action. So how's that going, what's the conversation like, and why should they stay with Infor? >> The conversation is, One: We really believe in a pragmatic business-led path to the Cloud. There's not going to be any forced march, no technology agenda that's going to drive us. It's got to be driven by value. We've got to present a business case to them that makes sense. That makes them more productive, now allows them to better engage with their customers, delivers innovation to their supply chain. So that's what we're spending a lot of time talking about. What's the case for change? What's the business case for change? I mean, all of the stuff about operating the Cloud, the service levels, potential total co-services, great! But, at the end of the day we deal with pretty, we're dealing with manufacturers. They're pretty down to earth. They know that they make their money building stuff, and shipping stuff and servicing that product. So we got to be engaged at that level, to show them how we help them do that better. I think the excitement is growing. That they recognize that there is real net new business value, new innovation that could really help their business. >> So lets talk about that. Forced march is a powerful phrase and you certainly see that in the industry. Thinking about supply chain, and the opportunities to drive even more efficiencies out of the supply chain, maybe through automation, we've heard a lot about RPA. >> Yeah. >> Maybe even bring back some of that offshore manufacturing. >> Right. >> That's certainly a conversation >> Right. >> that's going on in your world, so talk about that a little bit. >> Yeah, so one of our diamonds in the Infor portfolio is a product called GT Nexus. Which is, its been around for about 20 years. We have 65,000 companies around the world who are operating on a common network based platform that provides supply chain visibilities, supplies supply chain financial processing. Connects brands to their manufacturers to provide all the visibility and control and that. So, that's a powerful capability because you're right, it's an incredibly dynamic time. With the change of trade wars, weather events that are ever increasing. The supply chain's a very hard thing to manage. So if the asset is we've got a platform that enables companies to connect much deeper in their supply chain then use that information to make far better decisions on how they get their products to their customer at the right cost. So, and I see, you know the supply chain market, I always think of this transition to Cloud in waves. You know, we had the first wave breaking was the sales. Then the HR, the finance function. Operations in supply chains is the one that's cresting on the horizon. And you know, keep that going, we've got our surfboards in the water, we've got great capability. And we're really, really excited about what we can do for our clients! >> You got to ride the waves or you'll become driftwood >> How big is that wave? >> Well, hey that's the biggest market, right? I mean, you look at the size of the Enterprise software spend. Core ERP supply chain industry functionality is the big piece. It's probably two. It's probably by an HR, CRM, financials together, and it's not even as big as sort of the industry supply chain, manufacturing, procurement market core ERP market. So, its big! Its a big opportunity, but it requires a much more sophisticated response because you talk to our customers they're like hey, we operate our plants 365 days a year, three shifts sometimes in peak seasons. We can't afford an environment that isn't mission critical, that doesn't step up to service levels. So, you know, we're working really hard to address the mission critical system challenge, not just the benefits and payroll. >> So, there's certainly an opportunity with AI, with machine learning, certainly more analytics, bringing that to the manufacturing world. >> Oh yeah. >> So that's clearly fundamental to your strategies. >> Yeah. >> Is that, in your view, the tipping point to get really this whole market moving? >> I think. I mean I would agree with you. Its sort of an accumulation of digital capabilities. Certainly, mobility's sort of proved that its important, but its a little bit of a nice-to-have. Some of the innovations around user experiences, is really important but nice-to-have. I think that is the game changer. When you can use data as a weapon, a competitive weapon that you can make decisions faster, and how you discount your product or how you identify shortage faster than someone else. That's where, there's real money that comes out of that. >> What about Block Chain? We hear a lot about Block Chain in the supply chain and cutting out the middle man. We haven't heard much here about it, its not something. We're going to ask Charles. Somebody said to me, Once Charles gets on it, boom the company is behind it. >> Yeah. >> But, how real is that in manufacturing and supply chain specifically? Is it just way too early? Do you think there's potential there? Have you looked at it? >> Obviously we've looked at it, we've worked on with customers on prototypes. There's a couple areas, you know, there's a lot of hype as you guys know. You talked to a lot of us, a lot of hype in that space. It's certainly unproven in a lot of areas. But we think in the area of supply chain financing, Block Chain has a very, very powerful, you know, where you have multi parties, you've got suppliers and logistics companies and banks all who need a piece of information. We need distributed capabilities around that. We think there's a big potential in some of that area. We're talking. We're working with some of the banks on that. We think in the area of getting deeper into the supply chain around sustainability, to the ethical and traceability of the Supply Chain. You know, where you're goin down. Yeah we got customers in the pero business that are going down to the farms. They want to know exactly the lineage of all of their stuff that's going into their product that's ending up in a consumer. That's potentially a more efficient mechanism, to have all these different entities collaborating on a distributed model. So, I mean; and especially if we talk about the GT Nexus Network. There's natural extensions to it. That it already is a common platform that is serving a wide variety of companies, logistics companies, and manufacturers. So there's a lot of natural exit points from that, sort of, that integrated network to support a couple of these more extended processes that are a little bit more distributed. >> Yes, the smart contracts maybe fits there, and you talked about distributed a couple of times. What about IOT? The pendulum seems to be swinging now. Obviously Cloud is hot. Its got a re-centralization. But IOT's a whole new world. You get a lot of IT companies kind of pushing the IT model top down into operations technology and we don't think that's the way it's going to work. That the OT guys are actually going to drive the standards and the trends. What are you seeing? >> Well I think yeah hey, the people that have the, that make the equipment, you know, make the pipelines. Hey, obviously they got a big stake in this. You know, they understand how their kipid works, they know how to attach the sensors. They know how to translate things that are going on in the machines into data. We're going to be, and we're going to be taking that data, and how do you connect it to a business process. That's something that they don't understand. They don't understand how a heat event could translate, could connect to a maintenance process and how do you deploy a technician with the right part to go in there so they can offer some proactive service? So I think there's going to be a very tight partnership, where people coming from the equipment up, or the asset up, connect with the people that understand process analytics and sort of execution. >> Yeah. You talked about sustainability there just a moment ago, so obviously companies, their focus is changing in that regard. Right? People are paying more attention, a lot of that is being customer driven. >> Right >> At the same time too, in terms of distribution, in terms of manufacturing, customer expectations are changing too. Right? >> Right. >> We expect things on a much different time table. >> Absolutely. >> So how are you helping your clients recognize all those things? Like you're thinking about tomorrow today, and trying to get them to address that in terms of their technology plays down the road to meet these really fast changing demands. >> Yeah, I mean one of our really dominant industries is distribution. You know, probably three out of five distribution companies around the world run our software. So distribution is a space, typically between the manufacturing world and the consumer or the retail world is under tremendous pressure. While Amazon is inching into distribution centric industry so there's a lot of pressure from that, but there's also rising expectations that you have to do instantaneous fulfillment. That you have to provide complete visibility into where my order is, when am I going to get it, because I don't want to carry this supply. You got to carry it. So we're seeing a big rejuvenation of that industry, a little because of the pressures driving them to rethink e-commerce, to rethink the types of services they're providing to their companies. That even in some cases they're sneaking into retail, and having that type of experience because they need to compete in different ways. And I think that's always, the industry change is good for companies like us that have a lot of experience in the industry cause we can help them! Ya know, and they need a catalyst, right? They need a catalyst to go out and change and rethink how they operate, and it's created a pretty interesting opportunity. >> So, I wonder Rod if you could talk a little bit about, I know you're only a few months in, but just your impressions of the differentiation. Give us the bumper sticker pitch. Why Infor? How are you different? >> So, I mean, three things. Just netted out three things. Industry, and we talk a lot about industry. We talk a lot about last mile, its real. Its compelling to our customers. They're tired of having to finish the software for the vendor at their site. They want the provider to finish the software and take it to meet their unique needs. Two is I think even though we're smaller than some of the big, big names out there, I think pound for pound we out innovate almost every company. And I can talk very specifically, transitioning from a very, very large competitor. When you're actually looking into the detail of what we've actually delivered around AI, or what we've actually delivered around analytics or mobility, and pound for pound we fight way above our weight on that front. And I think, you know, if you look at even what we've done at Hook and Loop Digital over the years, the types of proof points we have with customers are something that very few of our competitors could boast. So I think, digital over use term, but just sort of understanding how this new technology works and being able to translate that to our customers is huge. And three, is culture. I think we have a fast oriented culture. There's not a lot of levels. We can cut through the nonsense for our customers pretty quickly. We organize around our customers, we don't have 3,000 sales teams trying to sell them piece parts so we can do the solution thing. And we're really working hard to differentiate on customer centricity. I made the comment yesterday at our executive forum that, in general, service at Enterprise Software stinks. You wouldn't accept, ya know, if a retailer was treating you the way the average Enterprise Software, you wouldn't accept it, right? You'd go somewhere else. We've had the benefit, or we've had customers that have such big investments in us, they have to deal with it. And we need to, we have an opportunity to fix that, to change that, to really reorganize and reorient our customer around the outcomes that matter to them. And its so important, if they're going to trust us. And its really about trust. They got to trust us to run their applications, our mission critical applications in our Cloud. We need to really change the game on that front, and we're doing a lot of things structurally. Like for example, maybe someone talked about were taking development customer support in Cloud operations, integrating that into a common organization. So, there's no finger pointing. If something goes down, its not well its the network, Its a bug, Its a knowledge issue. It's one team that's accountable for making sure that we resolve that issue rapidly. Same on the field side. So now we're organizing for manufacturing and distribution. Really, all the resources we need to both sell and service, deliver for our customers in a common team, so there's accountability. And on both sides. There's our product side, product and Cloud ops side, there's accountability and from a sort of customer engagement or accounts management accountability. And then, you know, we got to do a lot of things around service and automation, and better, proactive. We're running their cloud, we should be able to tell them, hey, this isn't running optimally. We need to come in and do this change. I mean, that's where we need to get. That's where the industry needs to get. And we want to get there first. >> Well, you're on the right path. >> Yeah. >> Again, congratulations on the new position, >> Yeah, thank you! >> and we appreciate the time here today, and wish you all the best down the road. >> I appreciate what you guys do. I love your show and content. >> Thank you, Rod. We appreciate that. Thank you sir. Back with more here on theCUBE. We are at Inforum 2018. We're in Washington, DC. (electronic jingle)

(techno music) >> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its Ecosystem Partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, we are live on day one is Las Vegas, of Dell Technologies World. I'm Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante. And we have a couple guests joining us now. We've got Ruya Barrett, the VP of Product Marketing for Data Protection at Dell EMC. Welcome back to theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Lisa: And we've also got Kerry "KJ" Johnson from FieldCore, you are a senior systems engineer. Welcome, KJ. >> Thank you very much. >> So, KJ, we'll start with you. Tell us a little bit about FieldCore. I know you're a GE company but what is it about FieldCore that you guys do that makes you unique and how are you working with Dell EMC? >> Okay, so FieldCore is a global service provider in the power services sector. Our customers are governments and large countries. We service and build power plants all over the world. We're in the power generation business. So, anything that generates power. That could be wind, it could be water, it could be traditional oil and gas, it could be nuclear, anything that generates power. Basically, what FieldCore does is we service it, and we keep the lights on around the world, especially in, we're in 92 countries. So, other countries don't have the infrastructure that the United States has and experience outages a little more frequently than us. So our job is to get the power back on as quickly and as efficiently as possible. >> So last fall in the U.S. we were slammed with a lot of natural disasters, including Hurricane Irma. You guys at FieldCore had a critical situation last fall when that hurricane struck. Tell us about that, and how working with Dell EMC Technologies you were able to recover. >> Okay, so last year, they changed the forecast on Hurricane Irma from coming up the east coast of the state to coming up the west coast. And they were projecting it to hit the Tampa Bay area, which put all of our production systems directly in its path. So with them projecting the storm to hit us within about three to four days, we weren't prepared for it. I was on a call with all of the directors, and they asked me, what was our level of preparedness for this storm. So I told them that as far as data protection, we had replication, that was fine. We were replicating all of our SAP, Oracle, databases, all of our email via Exchange and file systems, to our data recovery center that was in Atlanta, via Dell EMC RecoverPoint appliances, so that was fine. We had a recovery point objective of less than two minutes. We could go back two minutes and be up and running. The problem was, had the storm hit us, and we had to then throw over and go live at our DR facility in Atlanta because Tampa was down, we wouldn't have any way to have backups during that time that we were live. So that was a gap that I identified. They subsequently asked me, is there something that could be done in three days- >> Dave: Got any magic beans? >> Yeah, exactly, so I'm going, I'll do everything in my power to make something happen. So basically I got on the phone and called my Dell EMC Data Protection rep, Matthew Sattler. And he was actually at a Dell management boot camp in Boston I believe, at the headquarters. And he actually took my call. He snuck out of the meeting and answered the call, which was an all-day meeting, which was, that enabled us to do what we did. He offered a solution that we could actually use virtual appliances, because we had not rolled out our DR equipment yet, it was wasn't even scheduled to be delivered for two weeks. So he shored up the licensing, he called a sales engineer, who got in touch with me, his name was Dominic Greco, he's based out of Pittsburgh, great guy. He lined up all of the resources. I got my resources together, and we put a plan together, and we actually had the project started by the end of that first day. >> Just another day at the factory. >> Hey, you know, our customers call us and we answer. That's how it works. >> So, it's common scenario for you guys? >> I think we had an exceptional team on the account, so exceptional teams always make a huge difference, and I think in this case, we definitely had a great team. And I think one of the things that KJ talked about, is how flexible the software-defined data protection approach can be. I think sometimes people think of us as an infrastructure company, infrastructure meaning hardware predominantly, but our data protection capabilities are just as robust on the software-defined data center front. So I think the flexibility of being able to do DR, and put in place a DR environment, that gave KJ all that flexibility, is really a testament to the software capabilities. >> So could we just kind of review exactly what happened? So, if I understand it correctly, you were concerned about the exposure on your remote site, right? You're going to fail over, RPO of only two minutes, so you're going to lose, maybe exposed to two minutes of data loss, you can live with that in business, right, understood that, you communicate it. But then you have no way to back up that failover site. >> KJ: Yeah. >> And so, the team came in and what, you you accelerated a DR project that was sort of in the pipeline? >> Exactly, we had hardware that was scheduled to be delivered to Atlanta, and be deployed within two weeks, but we didn't have the two weeks. >> Ruya: Three days. >> So our DR facility was still running on a legacy product, and that wouldn't work for us, because all of our production data was backed up to data domain and it's not interoperable. So, we went with the virtual appliances, and we deployed a virtual data domain, a virtual Avamar appliance, running Dell EMC Data Protection Software Suite, and an NDMP Accelerator, I always have trouble with that one, for our file systems, and by the end of the day, they were deployed and we were already starting the replication. >> So in this situation did you do you failover proactively, or you just wait for the disaster to hit? What's the- >> Well, the thing was just to be prepared. So, the storm was projected to hit Saturday. Day two, was Thursday, and we convened the conference call, an indefinite conference call, that means I was going to be on it, all of Dell EMC's people were going to be on it, until either we finished, or the storm blew us away. So we monitored the replication all Thursday and by like 6:45 that evening, all of the data had replicated over to the DR, and the next day, the office had closed early so people could go home and hunker down for the storm, look after their families and their property, and we kept the call going from home, but the data had finished by that evening. And the storm hit, started coming around midnight that evening on Saturday. So, fortunately, the storm only hit us as a weak Category 1, so we never even had to throw over to it, but had it hit us as a Category 3, we would have been very much in trouble, had we, weren't able to accomplish that. >> So I wanted to get, kind of an idea KJ, in terms of what is the business impact that you've been able to achieve? You've obviously had to accelerate this part of your security transformation, which you were able to do, what's the business impact that your bosses, and their bosses in the C-suite, at FieldCore, have seen as a result of being able to have the agility, with Dell EMC to implement this so quickly? >> Well, some of the things that came into play with the setup that we had with Dell EMC, one was the Data Protection Suite encompasses everything, hardware, software, licensing, replication, it's all one suite of things. It's not nickel and dime add-ons or bolt-ons, it's one full protection suite. So the package that we had, Matt said, "You already have this package", you know, there's nothing to buy, there was no charge for any of the resources rolling it out because we were on a, what's called a utility mode of billing, and it's basically, it's like instead of a CapEx expenditure, where we buy hardware, we don't buy anything, they bring it out for free, they install it for free, as soon as we start backing up, okay, how much deduplicated data do you have on a data domain? We'll bill you for it. And they send us a bill every month. So that helped us out. >> And you know the data domain efficiency quotient is just through the roof, it's one of the best platforms for dedupe, so it really helps our customers, especially when you're talking about a utility-base model as well, that efficiency, that architecture, that really brings that to bear. >> Dave: What do you call this utility model? >> This utility, it's the utility model, it's just one of our consumption models. It's the flexible consumption models that we offer across data protection software, as well as our platforms. >> So it's a pay by the drink? >> Ruya: Yeah absolutely. >> Now, I'm interested in the ripple effects, and I don't know your business well enough, but it sounds like, not only were you covered, but had a Category 3 hit, your customers, there would've been a ripple effect here to your customers, around the world, 92 countries I think you said. Is that right or is it, is this not a real-time business? >> Well, our users, the vast majority of them, are field technicians, they're field service guys. >> Dave: Oh. They work on turbines, they work on boilers, they work on nuclear plants, they're out in the field. They work on windmills. So they're not very technical people, but all of the laptops that they carry and hook up to this equipment, feeds equipment into our systems, and our systems can't go down. So, the impact would've been pretty great had our systems been offline for any amount of time, because when your global you know, there's really no good time to be down. When I'm sleeping, there's people busting their butts in other countries and you know, middle production hours. >> So last question here Ruya, to you, on this theme of Dell Technologies World, of make it real, KJ you've done a great job articulating how you've been leveraging your partnership as well as the technology, to make your security transformation a reality. Ruya, last question to you is, there was a recent ESG study on IT maturity, can you share with us some of the impacts there that you've seen, and how it kind of relates to FieldCore? >> Yeah, absolutely, be happy to. So we just recently unveiled a study we did with ESG, where we surveyed 4,000 customers, IT professionals, over 16 countries. And it really had to do with the IT transformation maturity curve, and their adoption. And one of the things that was really interesting is customer feedback, was that transformed companies, that have gone through this massive IT transformation, are perceived to be 16 times more innovative, be 2 1/2 times more competitive, perceived as being 2 1/2 times more competitive, and six times more apt to have IT as part of the business decision-making process. And data protection was one of the top areas of this transformation as well, because it's so critical. As data's moving out of the data center and becoming more distributed, we talked about the distributed core today, going to the edge with IOT, and all of those types of applications, there is this massive amount of data moving out, outside of the data center. So data's growing, it's moving out, and it's also becoming more and more critical for customers. So data protection, that recoverability, operational recoverability, disaster recoverability, cyber recovery, are becoming more and more critical. And there was three things in the maturity curve on data protection. Transformed companies are basically protecting data in five types of different applications. So they're not really looking at just physical protection, which a lot of legacy companies are still kind of stuck at physical, and maybe virtual, and starting to really do a lot more on virtual. These guys are looking at data protection across distributed environments, they're looking at public cloud, they're looking at hybrid cloud, they're looking at physical, virtual, so very comprehensive. So that was number one. Two, is really self-service models. Transformed companies, that have gone through IT transformation for their data protection have enabled application owners to be able to do self-service. So that has become a part of how they offer data protection. And the last one was really about automation and automated policies. So when you add a virtual machine, when you bring in a new system, how do you automatically apply policies, so protection isn't something that needs to happen as a backend consideration? And I think KJ talked about some of those things as well. And they're doing a self-service model as part of what they're rolling out, as well as the automated protection policies. So I think they're well on their way to transformation, and this is what makes it great, in terms of the partnership we have with our customers. >> Well thank you both so much for stopping by, sharing, KJ the great successes that you've had with that one very, very potent example, Ruya thanks for stopping by and sharing with us that data protection continues to be hot, hot, hot. >> And thanks for having us again. Thank you, nice seeing you guys. >> Our pleasure. We want to thank you, you're watching theCUBE live, day one, Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas, stick around. I'm Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante. We'll be back after a short break. (techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE, covering DevNet Create 2018. Brought to you by Cisco. (jingle) >> Hi, welcome back to theCUBE. My name is Lauren Cooney, and I'm here today with Matt Johnson who is a technologist at Cisco, with Cisco DevNet. Hi Matt. >> Hi, how's it going? Good to see you again. >> Pretty good. Good to see you again too. So what's going on here? What's going on with the show and what are you working on? >> Oh, sure. So the show in general is just this ability for us, you know, Cisco DevNet have always had quite a large and a growing presence at Cisco Live, kind of Cisco's, Europe and US yearly conferences. But this is the second year we've done Create, and it's really an opportunity to kind of take the real developer angle, the makers, the API integrators, kind of the real, kind of developer ecosystem that's going around Cisco's products and our APIs, and just kind of focus on that audience. So, you know, all the content here is developer for developer. And so it's just really nice to be able to experiment in a bit more of an open format. >> Yeah, exactly. So it's kind of that DIY environment of developers that are coming in and really doing all this stuff and starting to innovate on their own. >> Yeah, absolutely. And what I'm really excited about here we have the, we had kind of a two-day hackathon running at the same time as the event, and so, instead of that just being a little bit of time spent between sessions, these are teams that have already kind of been working behind the scenes on the run-up to the event, so they've already kind of met each other virtually through collaboration, they've already worked out what kind of problem space they want to solve, they've already started working on kind of sample and PLC code, so the idea that at the end of a two-day conference we could actually see some working solutions to real problems that our partners and our customer ecosystem is seeing, I think that's quite-- >> That's great. >> An exciting idea. >> Yeah, Mandy Whalen was just on with us. >> Oh, fantastic. >> And she actually talked a little bit about that, and you know, so these guys will be up for 24 hours hacking on stuff. Hopefully we'll see some great solutions come the end and you know, we'll talk about it here on theCUBE. >> Yeah. >> So tell me about what you're doing today at Cisco DevNet. >> Sure, so from one style of hacking to another, we are actually running this demo called the Black Hat White Hat Challenge. And I went to, I've always been a bit of a kind of hobbyist pentester. >> Lauren: Never, no. >> I liked breaking things from a young age. And I got to attend my first Defcon in Las Vegas last year, and coming from an evangelism background, coming from kind of doing workshops and talks and demos, I was absolutely amazed at the interactivity of pretty much everything that goes on at the black hat hacking conference, sorry the Defcon hacking conference. My apologies. They have, you know, hands-on IoT villages where you can go and try hacking against all the hardware, there is kind of labs and tutorials for people that are maybe just getting into kind of that side of hacking and penetration testing. So I kind of brought that back and I've always had a passion for security, and IoT nowadays, we are in a situation where a lot of these devices we are starting to bring into our homes and our businesses and things, are built to a budget. They are built cheap, they're not security devices. People aren't thinking of security, they're thinking of functionality when they're building those, so someone that makes fridge freezers isn't going to be thinking about the 10 year security roadmap for that fridge freezer. They're going to be thinking about selling the latest smart freezer. >> Lauren: Exactly. >> And so I wanted to kind of bring some of that hands-on Defcon-style hacking into a real-world scenario. So at security conferences and at developer conferences, we always talk about things being insecure, and we talk about needing to think about security. But what we have is a booth here where we actually take off-the-shelf IoT devices, and in a curated path we are getting attendees with no background in kind of pen testing to use real-world hacking tools and real exploits against those devices, to build their access into that network and eventually get to the goal, which is getting into an electrical safe with like a price inside. And all of that is real off-the-shelf IoT. It's real security. And the aim of that is to kind of-- >> So they are actually cracking the safe. >> They are cracking the safe, they are cracking into Wi-Fi. They're getting onto the guest Wi-Fi and then finding a vulnerability in the router which gets them onto the wired network, so that'd be like a guest network in a corporate environment or a guest network in a hotel, getting you onto the hotel's infrastructure network and then to a camera. >> So this is like straight up hacker one. >> Straight up, yeah, exactly, right? Which is perfect. >> Lauren: This is great. >> Yeah, exactly. So that's what we're doing and the idea is to just to kind of stop talking about it and start showing. This is not stuff you need to be super good at. This is stuff you can Google. The tools are out there, the tools are getting more and more easy to use. And also vulnerabilities are becoming more and more common because of the growth of IoT. There were double the number of CVE, like known vulnerabilities in the wild in 2017 than there were in 2016. >> Okay. >> And that's because of this constant pace of new devices. So we're kind of showing that these are really crackable by anyone with a bit of time and research. And then also showing kind of what can be done about that. And, you know, even without kind of the proactive and firewalls and things like that, just getting a developer audience thinking about this stuff, getting them, you know, fresh in their mind, you know, these are the kind of places we should be focusing on IoT security because it's these developers that will be writing code and those products today-- >> I think that's great. And I think security is so important today with everything going on, and then there's Facebook and testimonies that are happening today, and you know, lots of different things. Now, what are you using to actually kind of fill these holes, fill these kind of security vulnerabilities that you're using with these off-the-shelf IoT devices? >> Sure, so what we are showing is how kind of, if you know if you have these devices on your network, obviously layering things like Cisco's net-gen firewalls in line with those devices, has signatures that will detect. It's not going to patch the device itself, 'cause that might be from another vendor or an IoT camera or a light switch or something, but it's going to detect the malicious traffic trying to attack that device and drop it. So you're kind of protecting your perimeter, you're stopping a vulnerable device becoming an actual hack. Alternatively from a personal perspective, as we start looking at how we consume hardware in our homes and businesses, I actually really like kind of the Meraki model and the Nest Cam model, and you know, all the other camera vendors which charge you with subscription, 'cause if you buy hardware one-off, you have no idea whether that price for that hardware allotted budget for the development team to keep thinking about security or whether that team doesn't exist anymore and they're off building their next product. >> Lauren: Yup. >> Whereas if you're buying something on kind of a subscription basis, even though the hardware is in your home, you know that their profit is based on them keeping your product up-to-date. >> Lauren: Definitely. >> So you expect, you know, real-time updates, you expect timely security updates. And so I think that kind of a software as a service style delivery of on-prem hardware is definitely a more secure approach. >> Yeah, and the Meraki model is definitely moving forward as one of the prevalent models that we, you know, Cisco has. >> Exactly. Yeah. >> And it's, you know, that plug and play, easy-to-use, get it up and running, et cetera. >> Exactly, and then on the back of that you know that there's people working on those security things, which isn't something that you think about when you buy it for its APIs and its plug-and-play in its ease-of-use, but just knowing that that is there and, you know, you're paying for that development, is a good thing. >> Where do you see most of these vulnerabilities, and I know you have a lot of background in cloud computing and you know, in these arenas, but where do you see most of these vulnerabilities? >> Matt: So-- >> It's a big question. >> Yeah. I mean a lot of the, hackers are going to wherever, you know, is easiest for the amount of time and effort. Certainly when we see kind of malicious actors kind of looking for a large footprints, large, building botnets et cetera. There could be a very, very clever attack that requires a lot of time and effort, or there could be an IoT device that you know there's going to be 4 million of them sold online, they're going to go for those. And like I said, these devices are low-power, built to a budget. You can get them into your hands and like SaaS service online. So people can take them apart, they can have a look at the code inside of them. They can have a look at the operating system. So it's quite easy to find vulnerabilities on these IOT devices. >> Lauren: Oh yeah. >> So that is definitely a growing area. Also the level for harm on those kind of vulnerabilities, if we are talking about Internet-connected healthcare, Internet-connected hospital equipment, you know, control valves for factories that may or may not be dealing with certain kind of materials. That is definitely a focus both from a security industry perspective, and also kind of where we are seeing hackers targeting. >> That's great. So tell me a little bit about what else you're working on right now. I think, I always find it interesting to hear from you what you're kind of hacking with and-- >> Yeah, sure. So that's my, that's my kind of security hobby-cum-part time role I guess within DevNet. >> Lauren: Love it. >> I quite like that kind of hands-on security evangelism. A lot of other stuff I'm doing is all around kind of open source and micro services and containers. So we're doing lots of work internally with Kubernetes Right now. Proof of concepting, some new user space networking code. >> Lauren: Oh great. >> Which would allow basically the network your traffic takes from your application in the container, write out to the network card, to be a user space app. So, you know, you're not stuck with the networking that a cloud provider gives you. If you want to test your application fully like packet to app back to the wire, and know that that network is also going to go with you when you deploy anywhere, we're going to be able to do that. >> That's fabulous. >> And there's also some real performance benefits to kind of not going in and out of the Linux kernel, so we can kind of saturate 40 gigabits a second from a container, straight down to the wire on kind of commodity compute like UCS what like any x86 service. So really excited about that. It's in development at the moment. That's all open source. >> Lauren: It will be all open source. >> It's all open source already under the FD.io project, FD dot io. >> Oh. >> The integration into Kubernetes is ongoing. And obviously will be open sourced as it gets developed. But that's super exciting. Also just the whole Merakifi, Merakification if I can say that. This idea of turning on-prem devices into kind of black box, you know, cloud managed, cloud updated. You have an IT team. They're just remote and kind of paid for in a SaaS model rather than having to manage and patch those devices on-prem. >> Lauren: Oh yeah. >> You know, we currently do that with switches and routers and cameras as I'm sure you know that the Meraki product portfolio, I don't see why we don't do that with on-prem compute. Why don't we do that with on-prem, you know, Kubernetes clusters. Why should a Kubernetes cluster, just because it sat in your data center, be any different in terms of usability, billing, management, than the one you get from Google Cloud platform or Azure or AWS? It should have the same user experience. So across those two areas, yeah, that's where I'm spending most of my time at the moment. >> Great, well, we're kind of wrapping up here. Tell me, what is the most exciting thing for you that's coming down the path in the next six months or so? >> Um. >> Can you tell us? >> I cannot tell you the most exciting thing, I'm afraid. It has to do with everything I'm talking about, kind of the networking, the as a service, super excited about user space networking. We have customers that looking to do kind of real-time video pipelines for a broadcast in containers. And being able to do that on-prem or in cloud or wherever, and this FD.io VPP technology, I think will really unlock that. >> Lauren: That's great. >> So real use cases, and yeah, super excited. >> Great. Matt, thank you so much for coming on today. >> It's been pleasure. >> Yeah, my pleasure as well. This is Lauren Clooney and we'll be right back from the show here at Cisco DevNet Create. (jingle)

>> Male Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Veritas Vision 2017. Brought to you by Veritas. >> Welcome back to The Aria in Las Vegas, everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante. I'm here With Stu Miniman. Alicia Johnson is here. She's the managing director at Accenture Operations, and we're going to have a conversation about diversity, women in tech. Alicia, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Appreciate it. >> Delighted to be here today. Thank you. >> Yeah, we're thrilled because we saw some action on Twitter, we saw the WAVE activity going on, we said, "Hey, we got to get some of these folks on theCUBE," so really appreciate you taking the time here. Let's start with your role at Accenture, and then we'll get into WAVE and what that's all about. >> Fantastic. So thank you for having me today, and I'm delighted to represent the Accenture and Veritas partnership and be able to speak at WAVE last evening. Within Accenture, we put a high priority on inclusion and diversity. One of the things that we've come out and publicly announced is that we want a 50% women workforce by 2025. We've been doing research over the last three years, and Accenture is publicly committed to growing that percentage of our women managing directors to at least 25% by 2020, so we really focus on retaining, attaining, and advancing women, and sponsoring them in that pursuit for gender balance. >> So that's an amazing statistic. I mean, I think the average in the tech industry is 17%. Is that about right? >> About that, yeah. And a lot of the fundraising these days actually goes to venture capital men-run firms, and so we're really interested in helping set that gender paradigm as well so that more VC money goes out toward women and women investments and women VCs. >> Well, it's interesting. I mean, we've done some work in this area at siliconANGLE, and we've funded some fellowships to study this problem, and two of the places that were egregious offenders, Silicon Valley and Cambridge, Massachusetts, but you have to get it out there and talk about it, right? But so, when you say 50% by 2025, that's a goal? Is that a strict, people would use the term quota? Let's have that discussion. What does that all mean? >> It's a commitment that we're making, and one of the ways that within Accenture we really feel that we can hold to that commitment is making some changes internally and also being very transparent. So we have set that transparency goal across not only sponsoring women in P&L goals, but coming forward and making that commitment to transparency by publicly making the announcement. So the company has already set these clear, published, measurable targets to grow the number of women. We publish our workforce demographics, and we do this across many countries, including U.S., Canada, South Africa, Japan, India, and also our Asian countries. We also launch initiatives that are very focused on high-demand, short-supply, high-performing women in technical architect roles, and so what we do is we not only collaborate with the teams across our business and government, but we look at the programs that we have internally, and we set metrics internally as well about hiring and promoting, and so we're really committed to this through the transparency, so answering your question directly, it is not only a goal that we're after, but we are on a clear transaction path to make that happen, and hopefully we can make it happen sooner. >> Yeah, so, many events have some piece at the conference. THey'll have a panel, they'll have breakfast. We actually at theCUBE covered many Women in Tech events. Here at the Veritas Vision, they have it the Women At Vision Empowered, or WAVE Program, which there's a workshop, there's networking, there's some other things, maybe. Walk us through a little bit of it. There was the panel last night. What's the breadth of the experience here at the show? >> The experience yesterday was very much about empowering women in technology. We went through some discussions around not only gender balance, but also how to empower women and support women in your careers. We also talked about women in technology, other groups that we can align to. We also talked about some of the gender balance conversations that you often don't get to have when you're not meeting, and we encourage men to also join us in these WAVE events, but really, it's about professionally and successfully being fulfilled in your career. Within Accenture, we actually created what we call a B operations program to foster, really, this inclusive culture, and I think that the WAVE event is also looking toward fostering this inclusive culture. The people are really at the center of everything that we do, and so having a culture that's really respectful of women, their careers, their personal goals, and the culture that focuses on work-life choices, that's really very important, because those aspirations, we encourage you to become who you really can be. Some of our Accenture operations and B operations goals are focused around being limitless, driving business outcomes, being relevant, being part of others' successes and failures because you learn through growing with success and failure, be caring, and then really be yourself. Be authentic, and bringing that to the WAVE conference and that empowering diversity initiative is really key to the success of that event. We do hope next year that we'll have an opportunity to have the event actually more during the conference so that we can really get more attendants and drive much more passion and invigoration to the event, but we really believe that the opportunity above all is to get the initiative out there, start talking about it, and really make a difference. >> So let's have a conversation about the why. We can all agree it's the right thing to do, but let's have a business case conversation. What's the business benefit of inclusion? >> Well, obviously, we all come from different backgrounds and different walks of life, and bringing those experiences to the business, it's been proven time and again with all of the factors that you can look at that women make different choices, and women can be different types of role models, and in business, you actually are more successful as an organization by having women lead oftentimes in a scenario where sometimes men have been typically the leaders, and so creating more women role models will change the dynamic of the business, and as a diverse culture, you probably watched the Emmys last night. Diversity and inclusion was a hot topic, so we're changing the world as we're going through and changing technology, and this is an area that we can control, and I think that it's time for us to take control and make that difference, and really going after, really going after the fact of the matter is why wouldn't we already be there, right? And if we can make a difference to really be effective, be good communicators, be authentic, be inspiring, why wouldn't we want women bringing that to the table? >> Yeah, we were having a conversation on theCUBE a couple weeks ago, and you bring up the P&L manager, and it was interesting to talk about some of the stereotypes. I wonder if you could comment as a woman. P&L managers tend to be leaders, and somebody did an analysis of performance reviews, and the adjectives for the male leaders tended to be assertive, great leader, and the adjectives for the female leaders tended to be things like abrasive, okay? But both high-performing individuals. As a woman, I mean, I'm sure you've experienced that in your career, and your colleagues have, as well. I wonder if you could comment on that. Are things changing, and where do you want to see it all go? >> Sure. That's a really great topic, and yes, I mean, in the work world you often see if a woman is assertive, she's referred to in a negative tone, and oftentimes you'll find women, the higher power they are in organizations, they're not looked upon as being friendly individuals, and I think that that's a cultural dynamic that goes back to probably maternal instinct, that you're trained to think, oh, well, we don't see empowered women as wildly successful, and that's something that we need to change as a culture. You mentioned you have a daughter, so seeing your daughter in an empowered position is going to be something that you want as a father. And then being able to proactively build upon why we look at males in a position of power as being someone who is assertive, but if the woman says the same thing, she's maybe looked at in a negative connotation, these are the questions we need to start asking, right, and is there a reason for that? There shouldn't be a reason for that. Equally intelligent, equally able to succeed. And so assertive and powerful is that gender balance, and that's really what we should start questioning in business, and it will make us better as large organizations, as individuals, and as fathers in going after what we want our children and the rest of our society to achieve. >> Yeah, and you certainly see some high-profile examples of women in leadership positions. Obviously, Accenture, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Enterprise, and some others, but you also see on the masthead, if you will, it's like, man, man, man, man, oh, Head of HR, woman, and so a lot of the P&L managers, it's interesting. That's the first time specifically the P&L management. Why the P&L management? Why that emphasis? Maybe you could share with us. >> Well, within Accenture, one of the things that we can do is actually measure the goals that help us advance internally, and so we sponsored the company's most senior women to advance in P&L roles. We've been doing this for the last six years, and approximately 80% of the women in our global executive leadership program have been promoted and significantly expanded their areas of responsibility, and I think that we looked at the goals we could take within Accenture and really make examples of those goals. We also, the commitment to transparency, which I talked about a bit ago, that's really setting and measuring publicly and holding ourselves accountable, right, to those goals and measurable targets that we can grow to. We publish that, and we also challenge other organizations to come out and publish their workforce demographics, and I think before Accenture did that, there wasn't a lot of companies that were maybe as eager to come out and publish that workplace demographic, and so we're looking to make a change. We really want to launch initiatives within our organization that we can control, and ensuring that we can collaborate and create that gender balance in the workforce is key. One other area that I want to talk briefly about is within Accenture Operations, so just in my realm of Accenture. I did mention that we finished our fiscal year 2017 with 45.9% women, really setting the bar across Accenture. One of the things that I want to mention is what we're doing to sponsor and retain women in our local programs within Accenture and their careers, and we focus on staying true to passion, which I talked about with our B operations initiative. We also introduced a flexible work option, which is really focused on our teams in India. They allow the women to fit work and school around their nursery hours, and that's one of the other reasons that you find often women not staying in the workforce is because they make the choice between family and working and the working hours, and then within Accenture, we focus on hosting our International Women's Day, very similar to the WAVE event, and we would be delighted for you guys to join us this year at the upcoming event in March. And then we also sponsor what's called a woman stream, which is internally, to our 400+ thousand employees, at major events, we're able to promote women in cloud, we're able to promote WAVE events, we're able to promote our women in IT initiatives, and on a grassroots level, we'll go out and sponsor programs that are around Girls Who Code and get involved in NPower and other initiatives which bring people into the technical workforce, be it women or men, families, looking at how can we empower and help grow our society including all inclusion and diversity. >> Alicia, how about compensation? I feel like, actually, ironically, one of the best things that happened for women was when Satya Nadella put his foot in his mouth a couple of years ago at the Grace Hopper Conference. Since then, you've seen a much heightened awareness of compensation levels. Many companies have come out and said okay, we're going to, it should be transparent. States' Attorneys General have come out with strong advocates, in some cases laws mandating equal compensation. Maybe you could make some comments there, and what specifically is Accenture doing? >> Accenture is actually looking at the salaries of MDs and down through the food chain. We weigh what the percentage of men are paid versus the percentage of women, highest percentage-earning, and we also do adjustments based on that. I do find it interesting you had mentioned that the comments were made. Yes, that's true, and it's a very common fact that women make $0.49 on the dollar for what a man makes, and I can tell you, I don't believe that I'm only worth $0.49 on the dollar. It's really important for us to bring about these initiatives. You also hear people make excuses that maybe women aren't as good at negotiating, or maybe we don't go out and ask for the same balance, but it makes me say, well, why should women go out and have to ask for the same treatment, equal treatment? So I don't think it comes down to that. We all have to fight for what we want. We all have to go after how successful we want to be, and I think empowering and collaborating and really being authentic in that pursuit is really key, so yeah, good point. >> Well, and I think it's a bit self-fulfilling. Because women have historically been paid less than men, certainly in our industry, their expectations are perhaps lower, so that when they switch a job, if they're offered something lower, they're more apt to take it, and the hiring person says, "Okay, fine, that's good," so the only way out of it is if companies proactively adjust, and understandably, that can't happen overnight because there's economic realities, but it can and it feels like it's beginning to happen, slowly, maybe not as fast as you'd like. >> Yeah, and I would love to see women and girls getting more involved in tech. I watched a bit of a program last evening, actually, that referred to around in 4th grade, we start giving boys toys to work with and we start giving girls dolls to play with and different things like that. We can change that. Starting from the basic skills that you aspire for your children, you can start on paradigm, you can start with teaching others about technology. Women might always say it's not super sexy to be a technical architect, but I might disagree, with my background as a CIO. So I think it's really talking about the inclusion culture, getting more people interested in it from the beginning, and bringing more women with the opportunity to really fulfill that gender equality, and whether we promote them, within Accenture, you had asked me about the P&L case, that's something we can control as an organization, so each organization I would challenge to look at the ways that you can balance gender equality, and within Veritas, obviously, there's a very strong WAVE program that's being driven and Accenture's delighted to partner with and support, and that's a commitment to being a champion for change. >> Well, congratulations on being a champion for change and all the progress you're making at Accenture. Very impressive story, so thanks for coming on theCUBE and sharing it. >> Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here today, and thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak with you gentlemen. >> It's our pleasure. All right, keep it right there, everybody. Stu and I will be back with our next guest. It's theCUBE. We're live from Veritas Vision 2017. We'll be right back. (intelligent electronic theme)

>> Announcer: Live from San Francisco. It's the CUBE, covering Oracle Open World 2016. Brought to you by Oracle. Now here is your host, John Furrier and Peter Burris. >> Okay welcome back everyone we are here live in San Francisco for The Cube. This Silocon Angle Media's flagship program, where we go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, the co-CEO of Silicon Angle Media with Peter Burris, head of research for Silicon Angle Media. He's also the general manager of Wikibon Research. Check out wikibon dot com for all the latest research and cloud, big data infrastructure. And we're at Oracle OpenWorld 2016. I'm excited to have our next guest, Don Johnson, VP of engineering for product development for the Infrastructures as a Service for Oracle Cloud. Welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you. >> John: Thanks for spending the time to come on. We really appreciate it. >> My pleasure. >> And obviously Oracle's cloud last year was obviously the announcement they're marching to the cloud. A big building block in this, was Infrastructure as a Service. They had the sass. They're taking names, kicking butt in there and they're transforming. Platform as a service developing nicely this year, showed some progress. But the upgrade if you will, or reboot or reset, however you want to call it, was fundamentally to introduce the new stuff with Infrastructures as a Service, to kind of round everything off. Give us the update. What's the key new news for Infrastructure as a Service and why is it important? >> Well a couple things. Let me start with the last part of your question, why is it important. So, very broadly, I would say, There's kind of two strata of cloud. There's cloud platform and there's everything that's up above, apps, sass, etc. Cloud platform I think is a big category. It's broad spectrum but it's IaaS and Paas and then there's lots of stuff that falls inside of there. Iaas is a fundamental and foundational building block and all of the characteristics, that everything up above, relies on or requires is basically enabled by infrastructure If you want to run at massive scale, if you want network connectivity between place A and place B if you want intrinsic security, that's all things that are foundational characteristics and you either have them or you don't based on whether infrastructure IaaS gives them to you. And so, for us, for Oracle, we're a cloud platform company. This is a foundational piece, and we're investing in this very aggressively and we're driving in a very innovative direction on this. So, >> You've been at Amazon since 2005, just recently joined Oracle on the engineering side and you know, infrastructure right now we're seeing is a cost and performance game. Drive the cost down as low as possible while preserving scale and performance, real critical. And almost hardening the top if you will, creating a hardened infrastructure so that you can enable dev-ops and some coolness around agility all that good stuff above, on top of the could. So what's the key things this year that you guys filled in terms of product? What was the key innovations and, on the development side, what was the key sprint for you guys? >> Well, so what we've been announcing at IaaS is really our next generation infrastructure, which is two-fold. It is the infrastructure itself, what are data centers and networks and virtual network looks like and then it's a new suite of products that we put on top of this, bare metal cloud services. And this is the fruit of a big kind of back to basics foundational exercise where we have gone and redesigned everything from the ground up. We've done it with a focus on a bunch of core, core criteria. Core things that we wanted to, that we wanted to capture and that we wanted to do better, better than have been done in the industry to date. And I would characterize those as two-fold. First, we are bringing along, all of the best characteristics of the cloud and why the cloud is compelling and what people, use it for, Self-service, pay for to use. It's elastic; it's easy to use. It's, there's low friction. It's high-scale, etc. But there's a number of things that for our core customer-base, actually are very challenging in moving to the cloud. And when I say our core customer-base, if you have a large existing, you know, if you're an enterprise and you have a large existing infrastructure and deployment, typically on premise, you have a lot of constraints and it's difficult to actually move into this new environment and take advantage of all that it has to offer. And there are, this applies to how your applications will run there, the assumptions that they make, your security and controls. And so we've identified a number of areas that we fundamentally wanted to do better than they've been done before. Security, reliability, governance, the ability to manage, if you're a large complex organization, you have a large complex footprint and deployment in the cloud, the ability to manage it. Performance, performance is a broad spectrum. Peak performance, raw performance, predictable performance in a particular price performance. You're talking about performance and cost. And sort of an adjunct to performance is the ability to harness modern technologies because if you look at where storage is going, non-volatile RAM and technologies like Intel Crosspoint. How can you actually enable customers to get access to that and use it and harness what it offers, very, very quickly. And most, most of all really, flexibility. Sort of the choice and what I mean by that is when you're a cloud provider you, you kind of pick a, you pick a certain level at which you implement and define and build your abstractions, and then, that has consequences in what choices you actually offer. So let me be a little bit more precise about this. A core thing that we did, sort of the keys, the special sauce in any cloud platform is the virtual network. And we made a fundamental choice that the way in which we're going to do virtual networks is to pull the virtualization into the network itself where we think it belongs. >> John: So no hypervisor? >> It's not in the hypervisor. And so, what that means is first it means we're able to like the, the requirement that we have of something that we can plug into our cloud, your cloud, your virtual network is, it has an ethernet port. This means that we put, we can put anything into a virtualized network. Our whole infrastructure, you know the presentation to the customers is everything runs in a virtual overlay. It's all virtual network. But we could put any class of resource in there. We could do bare metal. We could do an engineered system. We can, honestly, we can take an arbitrary middle box from you know, any third party vendor. This lets us give our customers bare metal. Giving our customers bare metal means we can, we can take, so we provide bare metal, compute with NVME drives. They are phenomenal. There is nothing, like we're literally giving you a server in the cloud with a, you know, provision in minutes paid by the hour. And you get, in our biggest shape, you get in excess of four million 4k read-high ops. Like this is phenomenal power. So really there is nothing that stands between us, between the technology and us giving it to you. >> So that was the key design criteria, then? >> That was the key design criteria and so this you know, in terms of sort of, flexibility and preserving choice, this means, you know, principle you can bring any OS. You can bring any hypervisor. If you have some old stuff that's difficult to move, you can't break up our hypervisor. >> So you let the performance, everyone kind of speak for themselves if you will. So, the customer can put anything on this thing >> Yeah. And these are phenomenally powerful boxes. >> Okay so now, how does that compare with Amazon and Azure because the number one question I get is, and let me see if you can put some color around this. Obviously Amazon had a different thing. You guys had a clean sheet of paper and you took smaller steps, computed storage and built services and scaled up there. Azure had, kind of backed into it with their existing business and there portals and all their services and then now are moving their customers on there. So, the number one question I get is, well what's different with the IaaS on Oracle vis-à-vis AWS and Microsoft Azure. How do you answer that question? Is there a distinct difference? Is there a design philosophy? Is it? >> Well, the design philosophy for Iaas is what I was just articulating. And in essence it, it looks and acts very, very similar from the perspective of the customer, the user experience at scale. As well as, it preserves choice and flexibility and is amenable. Basically it is it is much more friendly to the large enterprise or large business that is outside of the, often times and typically, outside of the sweet spot of what an infrastructure like say Amazon was originally designed for. So as a principle, we are trying to meet our customers where they're at. From, they want to migrate over some apps and do it cautiously and maybe not change too much about them. And not see that as a constraint or an obstacle to get to all of the, all of the promise and power of, running modern applications in high-scale, highly available. >> Look in many respects, in many respects, cloud is naturally a network-centric compute model. >> Don: Yes. >> By putting more, by not putting network virtualization above the network but putting it into the network, does that also at some point in time give you greater flexibility, the option to bring even more of, >> Don: Absolutely. >> core work that's gone down into the network? So that you can actually start liberating some of the power of a real network computing model. Others can't do that right now. So if you think about it, what kinds of applications might that make possible in the future? Thinking about IOT for example, the ability to use a network model to describe how work gets allocated within a cloud of services? >> Well, I think the, the network ultimately, what you need it to do, there's a few things you need it to do. You need to very reliably and quickly move bits from place a to place b. You need it to it to have the flexibility sort of, as a topology to be able to put things in. And you need it to preserve, privacy and plugability. So the fundamental thing that I see our virtual network supporting and enabling, is basically building up a fabric of services, and letting us say, so everyone runs in a private overlay. We want to make it easy for any provider, ourselves as well as any third party provider, to inject micro-services into your, into your private network. We want to make it easy to be able to bring over traditional security controls, where, you want to, set up bastions and set up taps and be able to introspect you know, do, you know traditional IDS, IPS. So, I see network virtualization really as an enabler of, you know it's providing a fabric that lets you, that gives you great flexibility in wiring things together. I hope that answered your questions. >> So final question for you, what's next? So what's on the, what's the priorities on the to-do list for you guys as you go down, a two point five, a two point one? As they say at Microsoft, never make it an odd, an even number, make it a, you know. Two point one or two point five or three point o. What's next? >> There's a ton of things. So we're building up data centers and new geographies. We're going big. We're going to add a ton of skews. We're going to make bigger things, smaller things, adding, a ton more features really all across the board. So I don't know that I see it as there's a two point five. There's going to a rapid pace. >> So more slew of announcement >> Very similar >> Don: Yes. >> to the cadence we've been seeing at Oracle and Amazon traditionally had started that trend. Larry couldn't even finish the keynote on Sunday because the announcement stream was so large >> No we have a, you'll see a constant string of releases on a, you know, a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis. There's just a ton of stuff coming. We have a ton of features to add. We have a ton of interesting new services to add. >> So the pace is fast. You're running hard? >> Don: The pace is very fast. >> Well, congratulations and looking forward to following you guys and your success. Love the agile mindset. Love to see that cadence of shipping stuff, moving really, really fast and appreciate, >> Alright. >> you spending the time. >> Don: Thank you very much. >> Sharing your insights. The Cube live here at OpenWorld. You're watching The Cube. Back with more live coverage here in San Francisco after this short break. (softly intense techno music)

(soothing music) >> Hey everyone, welcome to this event, "Build Your Cloud Center of Excellence." I'm your host, Lisa Martin. In the next 15 minutes or so my guest and I are going to be talking about redefining cloud operations, an application modernization for customers, and specifically how partners are helping to speed up that process. As you saw on our first two segments, we talked about problems enterprises are facing with cloud operations. We talked about redefining cloud operations as well to solve these problems. This segment is going to be focusing on how Hitachi Vantara's partners are really helping to speed up that process. We've got Johnson Controls here to talk about their partnership with Hitachi Vantara. Please welcome both of my guests, Prem Balasubramanian is with us, SVP and CTO Digital Solutions at Hitachi Vantara. And Suresh Mothikuru, SVP Customer Success Platform Engineering and Reliability Engineering from Johnson Controls. Gentlemen, welcome to the program, great to have you. >> Thank. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> First question is to both of you and Suresh, we'll start with you. We want to understand, you know, the cloud operations landscape is increasingly complex. We've talked a lot about that in this program. Talk to us, Suresh, about some of the biggest challenges and pin points that you faced with respect to that. >> Thank you. I think it's a great question. I mean, cloud has evolved a lot in the last 10 years. You know, when we were talking about a single cloud whether it's Azure or AWS and GCP, and that was complex enough. Now we are talking about multi-cloud and hybrid and you look at Johnson Controls, we have Azure we have AWS, we have GCP, we have Alibaba and we also support on-prem. So the architecture has become very, very complex and the complexity has grown so much that we are now thinking about whether we should be cloud native or cloud agnostic. So I think, I mean, sometimes it's hard to even explain the complexity because people think, oh, "When you go to cloud, everything is simplified." Cloud does give you a lot of simplicity, but it also really brings a lot more complexity along with it. So, and then next one is pretty important is, you know, generally when you look at cloud services, you have plenty of services that are offered within a cloud, 100, 150 services, 200 services. Even within those companies, you take AWS they might not know, an individual resource might not know about all the services we see. That's a big challenge for us as a customer to really understand each of the service that is provided in these, you know, clouds, well, doesn't matter which one that is. And the third one is pretty big, at least at the CTO the CIO, and the senior leadership level, is cost. Cost is a major factor because cloud, you know, will eat you up if you cannot manage it. If you don't have a good cloud governance process it because every minute you are in it, it's burning cash. So I think if you ask me, these are the three major things that I am facing day to day and that's where I use my partners, which I'll touch base down the line. >> Perfect, we'll talk about that. So Prem, I imagine that these problems are not unique to Johnson Controls or JCI, as you may hear us refer to it. Talk to me Prem about some of the other challenges that you're seeing within the customer landscape. >> So, yeah, I agree, Lisa, these are not very specific to JCI, but there are specific issues in JCI, right? So the way we think about these are, there is a common issue when people go to the cloud and there are very specific and unique issues for businesses, right? So JCI, and we will talk about this in the episode as we move forward. I think Suresh and his team have done some phenomenal step around how to manage this complexity. But there are customers who have a lesser complex cloud which is, they don't go to Alibaba, they don't have footprint in all three clouds. So their multi-cloud footprint could be a bit more manageable, but still struggle with a lot of the same problems around cost, around security, around talent. Talent is a big thing, right? And in Suresh's case I think it's slightly more exasperated because every cloud provider Be it AWS, JCP, or Azure brings in hundreds of services and there is nobody, including many of us, right? We learn every day, nowadays, right? It's not that there is one service integrator who knows all, while technically people can claim as a part of sales. But in reality all of us are continuing to learn in this landscape. And if you put all of this equation together with multiple clouds the complexity just starts to exponentially grow. And that's exactly what I think JCI is experiencing and Suresh's team has been experiencing, and we've been working together. But the common problems are around security talent and cost management of this, right? Those are my three things. And one last thing that I would love to say before we move away from this question is, if you think about cloud operations as a concept that's evolving over the last few years, and I have touched upon this in the previous episode as well, Lisa, right? If you take architectures, we've gone into microservices, we've gone into all these server-less architectures all the fancy things that we want. That helps us go to market faster, be more competent to as a business. But that's not simplified stuff, right? That's complicated stuff. It's a lot more distributed. Second, again, we've advanced and created more modern infrastructure because all of what we are talking is platform as a service, services on the cloud that we are consuming, right? In the same case with development we've moved into a DevOps model. We kind of click a button put some code in a repository, the code starts to run in production within a minute, everything else is automated. But then when we get to operations we are still stuck in a very old way of looking at cloud as an infrastructure, right? So you've got an infra team, you've got an app team, you've got an incident management team, you've got a soft knock, everything. But again, so Suresh can talk about this more because they are making significant strides in thinking about this as a single workload, and how do I apply engineering to go manage this? Because a lot of it is codified, right? So automation. Anyway, so that's kind of where the complexity is and how we are thinking, including JCI as a partner thinking about taming that complexity as we move forward. >> Suresh, let's talk about that taming the complexity. You guys have both done a great job of articulating the ostensible challenges that are there with cloud, especially multi-cloud environments that you're living in. But Suresh, talk about the partnership with Hitachi Vantara. How is it helping to dial down some of those inherent complexities? >> I mean, I always, you know, I think I've said this to Prem multiple times. I treat my partners as my internal, you know, employees. I look at Prem as my coworker or my peers. So the reason for that is I want Prem to have the same vested interest as a partner in my success or JCI success and vice versa, isn't it? I think that's how we operate and that's how we have been operating. And I think I would like to thank Prem and Hitachi Vantara for that really been an amazing partnership. And as he was saying, we have taken a completely holistic approach to how we want to really be in the market and play in the market to our customers. So if you look at my jacket it talks about OpenBlue platform. This is what JCI is building, that we are building this OpenBlue digital platform. And within that, my team, along with Prem's or Hitachi's, we have built what we call as Polaris. It's a technical platform where our apps can run. And this platform is automated end-to-end from a platform engineering standpoint. We stood up a platform engineering organization, a reliability engineering organization, as well as a support organization where Hitachi played a role. As I said previously, you know, for me to scale I'm not going to really have the talent and the knowledge of every function that I'm looking at. And Hitachi, not only they brought the talent but they also brought what he was talking about, Harc. You know, they have set up a lot and now we can leverage it. And they also came up with some really interesting concepts. I went and met them in India. They came up with this concept called IPL. Okay, what is that? They really challenged all their employees that's working for GCI to come up with innovative ideas to solve problems proactively, which is self-healing. You know, how you do that? So I think partners, you know, if they become really vested in your interests, they can do wonders for you. And I think in this case Hitachi is really working very well for us and in many aspects. And I'm leveraging them... You started with support, now I'm leveraging them in the automation, the platform engineering, as well as in the reliability engineering and then in even in the engineering spaces. And that like, they are my end-to-end partner right now? >> So you're really taking that holistic approach that you talked about and it sounds like it's a very collaborative two-way street partnership. Prem, I want to go back to, Suresh mentioned Harc. Talk a little bit about what Harc is and then how partners fit into Hitachi's Harc strategy. >> Great, so let me spend like a few seconds on what Harc is. Lisa, again, I know we've been using the term. Harc stands for Hitachi application reliability sectors. Now the reason we thought about Harc was, like I said in the beginning of this segment, there is an illusion from an architecture standpoint to be more modern, microservices, server-less, reactive architecture, so on and so forth. There is an illusion in your development methodology from Waterfall to agile, to DevOps to lean, agile to path program, whatever, right? Extreme program, so on and so forth. There is an evolution in the space of infrastructure from a point where you were buying these huge humongous servers and putting it in your data center to a point where people don't even see servers anymore, right? You buy it, by a click of a button you don't know the size of it. All you know is a, it's (indistinct) whatever that name means. Let's go provision it on the fly, get go, get your work done, right? When all of this is advanced when you think about operations people have been solving the problem the way they've been solving it 20 years back, right? That's the issue. And Harc was conceived exactly to fix that particular problem, to think about a modern way of operating a modern workload, right? That's exactly what Harc. So it brings together finest engineering talent. So the teams are trained in specific ways of working. We've invested and implemented some of the IP, we work with the best of the breed partner ecosystem, and I'll talk about that in a minute. And we've got these facilities in Dallas and I am talking from my office in Dallas, which is a Harc facility in the US from where we deliver for our customers. And then back in Hyderabad, we've got one more that we opened and these are facilities from where we deliver Harc services for our customers as well, right? And then we are expanding it in Japan and Portugal as we move into 23. That's kind of the plan that we are thinking through. However, that's what Harc is, Lisa, right? That's our solution to this cloud complexity problem. Right? >> Got it, and it sounds like it's going quite global, which is fantastic. So Suresh, I want to have you expand a bit on the partnership, the partner ecosystem and the role that it plays. You talked about it a little bit but what role does the partner ecosystem play in really helping JCI to dial down some of those challenges and the inherent complexities that we talked about? >> Yeah, sure. I think partners play a major role and JCI is very, very good at it. I mean, I've joined JCI 18 months ago, JCI leverages partners pretty extensively. As I said, I leverage Hitachi for my, you know, A group and the (indistinct) space and the cloud operations space, and they're my primary partner. But at the same time, we leverage many other partners. Well, you know, Accenture, SCL, and even on the tooling side we use Datadog and (indistinct). All these guys are major partners of our because the way we like to pick partners is based on our vision and where we want to go. And pick the right partner who's going to really, you know make you successful by investing their resources in you. And what I mean by that is when you have a partner, partner knows exactly what kind of skillset is needed for this customer, for them to really be successful. As I said earlier, we cannot really get all the skillset that we need, we rely on the partners and partners bring the the right skillset, they can scale. I can tell Prem tomorrow, "Hey, I need two parts by next week", and I guarantee it he's going to bring two parts to me. So they let you scale, they let you move fast. And I'm a big believer, in today's day and age, to get things done fast and be more agile. I'm not worried about failure, but for me moving fast is very, very important. And partners really do a very good job bringing that. But I think then they also really make you think, isn't it? Because one thing I like about partners they make you innovate whether they know it or not but they do because, you know, they will come and ask you questions about, "Hey, tell me why you are doing this. Can I review your architecture?" You know, and then they will try to really say I don't think this is going to work. Because they work with so many different clients, not JCI, they bring all that expertise and that's what I look from them, you know, just not, you know, do a T&M job for me. I ask you to do this go... They just bring more than that. That's how I pick my partners. And that's how, you know, Hitachi's Vantara is definitely one of a good partner from that sense because they bring a lot more innovation to the table and I appreciate about that. >> It sounds like, it sounds like a flywheel of innovation. >> Yeah. >> I love that. Last question for both of you, which we're almost out of time here, Prem, I want to go back to you. So I'm a partner, I'm planning on redefining CloudOps at my company. What are the two things you want me to remember from Hitachi Vantara's perspective? >> So before I get to that question, Lisa, the partners that we work with are slightly different from from the partners that, again, there are some similar partners. There are some different partners, right? For example, we pick and choose especially in the Harc space, we pick and choose partners that are more future focused, right? We don't care if they are huge companies or small companies. We go after companies that are future focused that are really, really nimble and can change for our customers need because it's not our need, right? When I pick partners for Harc my ultimate endeavor is to ensure, in this case because we've got (indistinct) GCI on, we are able to operate (indistinct) with the level of satisfaction above and beyond that they're expecting from us. And whatever I don't have I need to get from my partners so that I bring this solution to Suresh. As opposed to bringing a whole lot of people and making them stand in front of Suresh. So that's how I think about partners. What do I want them to do from, and we've always done this so we do workshops with our partners. We just don't go by tools. When we say we are partnering with X, Y, Z, we do workshops with them and we say, this is how we are thinking. Either you build it in your roadmap that helps us leverage you, continue to leverage you. And we do have minimal investments where we fix gaps. We're building some utilities for us to deliver the best service to our customers. And our intention is not to build a product to compete with our partner. Our intention is to just fill the wide space until they go build it into their product suite that we can then leverage it for our customers. So always think about end customers and how can we make it easy for them? Because for all the tool vendors out there seeing this and wanting to partner with Hitachi the biggest thing is tools sprawl, especially on the cloud is very real. For every problem on the cloud. I have a billion tools that are being thrown at me as Suresh if I'm putting my installation and it's not easy at all. It's so confusing. >> Yeah. >> So that's what we want. We want people to simplify that landscape for our end customers, and we are looking at partners that are thinking through the simplification not just making money. >> That makes perfect sense. There really is a very strong symbiosis it sounds like, in the partner ecosystem. And there's a lot of enablement that goes on back and forth it sounds like as well, which is really, to your point it's all about the end customers and what they're expecting. Suresh, last question for you is which is the same one, if I'm a partner what are the things that you want me to consider as I'm planning to redefine CloudOps at my company? >> I'll keep it simple. In my view, I mean, we've touched upon it in multiple facets in this interview about that, the three things. First and foremost, reliability. You know, in today's day and age my products has to be reliable, available and, you know, make sure that the customer's happy with what they're really dealing with, number one. Number two, my product has to be secure. Security is super, super important, okay? And number three, I need to really make sure my customers are getting the value so I keep my cost low. So these three is what I would focus and what I expect from my partners. >> Great advice, guys. Thank you so much for talking through this with me and really showing the audience how strong the partnership is between Hitachi Vantara and JCI. What you're doing together, we'll have to talk to you again to see where things go but we really appreciate your insights and your perspectives. Thank you. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> Thanks Lisa, thanks for having us. >> My pleasure. For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. Thank you so much for watching. (soothing music)

(soothing music) >> Hey everyone, welcome to this event, "Build Your Cloud Center of Excellence." I'm your host, Lisa Martin. In the next 15 minutes or so my guest and I are going to be talking about redefining cloud operations, an application modernization for customers, and specifically how partners are helping to speed up that process. As you saw on our first two segments, we talked about problems enterprises are facing with cloud operations. We talked about redefining cloud operations as well to solve these problems. This segment is going to be focusing on how Hitachi Vantara's partners are really helping to speed up that process. We've got Johnson Controls here to talk about their partnership with Hitachi Vantara. Please welcome both of my guests, Prem Balasubramanian is with us, SVP and CTO Digital Solutions at Hitachi Vantara. And Suresh Mothikuru, SVP Customer Success Platform Engineering and Reliability Engineering from Johnson Controls. Gentlemen, welcome to the program, great to have you. >> Thank. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> First question is to both of you and Suresh, we'll start with you. We want to understand, you know, the cloud operations landscape is increasingly complex. We've talked a lot about that in this program. Talk to us, Suresh, about some of the biggest challenges and pin points that you faced with respect to that. >> Thank you. I think it's a great question. I mean, cloud has evolved a lot in the last 10 years. You know, when we were talking about a single cloud whether it's Azure or AWS and GCP, and that was complex enough. Now we are talking about multi-cloud and hybrid and you look at Johnson Controls, we have Azure we have AWS, we have GCP, we have Alibaba and we also support on-prem. So the architecture has become very, very complex and the complexity has grown so much that we are now thinking about whether we should be cloud native or cloud agnostic. So I think, I mean, sometimes it's hard to even explain the complexity because people think, oh, "When you go to cloud, everything is simplified." Cloud does give you a lot of simplicity, but it also really brings a lot more complexity along with it. So, and then next one is pretty important is, you know, generally when you look at cloud services, you have plenty of services that are offered within a cloud, 100, 150 services, 200 services. Even within those companies, you take AWS they might not know, an individual resource might not know about all the services we see. That's a big challenge for us as a customer to really understand each of the service that is provided in these, you know, clouds, well, doesn't matter which one that is. And the third one is pretty big, at least at the CTO the CIO, and the senior leadership level, is cost. Cost is a major factor because cloud, you know, will eat you up if you cannot manage it. If you don't have a good cloud governance process it because every minute you are in it, it's burning cash. So I think if you ask me, these are the three major things that I am facing day to day and that's where I use my partners, which I'll touch base down the line. >> Perfect, we'll talk about that. So Prem, I imagine that these problems are not unique to Johnson Controls or JCI, as you may hear us refer to it. Talk to me Prem about some of the other challenges that you're seeing within the customer landscape. >> So, yeah, I agree, Lisa, these are not very specific to JCI, but there are specific issues in JCI, right? So the way we think about these are, there is a common issue when people go to the cloud and there are very specific and unique issues for businesses, right? So JCI, and we will talk about this in the episode as we move forward. I think Suresh and his team have done some phenomenal step around how to manage this complexity. But there are customers who have a lesser complex cloud which is, they don't go to Alibaba, they don't have footprint in all three clouds. So their multi-cloud footprint could be a bit more manageable, but still struggle with a lot of the same problems around cost, around security, around talent. Talent is a big thing, right? And in Suresh's case I think it's slightly more exasperated because every cloud provider Be it AWS, JCP, or Azure brings in hundreds of services and there is nobody, including many of us, right? We learn every day, nowadays, right? It's not that there is one service integrator who knows all, while technically people can claim as a part of sales. But in reality all of us are continuing to learn in this landscape. And if you put all of this equation together with multiple clouds the complexity just starts to exponentially grow. And that's exactly what I think JCI is experiencing and Suresh's team has been experiencing, and we've been working together. But the common problems are around security talent and cost management of this, right? Those are my three things. And one last thing that I would love to say before we move away from this question is, if you think about cloud operations as a concept that's evolving over the last few years, and I have touched upon this in the previous episode as well, Lisa, right? If you take architectures, we've gone into microservices, we've gone into all these server-less architectures all the fancy things that we want. That helps us go to market faster, be more competent to as a business. But that's not simplified stuff, right? That's complicated stuff. It's a lot more distributed. Second, again, we've advanced and created more modern infrastructure because all of what we are talking is platform as a service, services on the cloud that we are consuming, right? In the same case with development we've moved into a DevOps model. We kind of click a button put some code in a repository, the code starts to run in production within a minute, everything else is automated. But then when we get to operations we are still stuck in a very old way of looking at cloud as an infrastructure, right? So you've got an infra team, you've got an app team, you've got an incident management team, you've got a soft knock, everything. But again, so Suresh can talk about this more because they are making significant strides in thinking about this as a single workload, and how do I apply engineering to go manage this? Because a lot of it is codified, right? So automation. Anyway, so that's kind of where the complexity is and how we are thinking, including JCI as a partner thinking about taming that complexity as we move forward. >> Suresh, let's talk about that taming the complexity. You guys have both done a great job of articulating the ostensible challenges that are there with cloud, especially multi-cloud environments that you're living in. But Suresh, talk about the partnership with Hitachi Vantara. How is it helping to dial down some of those inherent complexities? >> I mean, I always, you know, I think I've said this to Prem multiple times. I treat my partners as my internal, you know, employees. I look at Prem as my coworker or my peers. So the reason for that is I want Prem to have the same vested interest as a partner in my success or JCI success and vice versa, isn't it? I think that's how we operate and that's how we have been operating. And I think I would like to thank Prem and Hitachi Vantara for that really been an amazing partnership. And as he was saying, we have taken a completely holistic approach to how we want to really be in the market and play in the market to our customers. So if you look at my jacket it talks about OpenBlue platform. This is what JCI is building, that we are building this OpenBlue digital platform. And within that, my team, along with Prem's or Hitachi's, we have built what we call as Polaris. It's a technical platform where our apps can run. And this platform is automated end-to-end from a platform engineering standpoint. We stood up a platform engineering organization, a reliability engineering organization, as well as a support organization where Hitachi played a role. As I said previously, you know, for me to scale I'm not going to really have the talent and the knowledge of every function that I'm looking at. And Hitachi, not only they brought the talent but they also brought what he was talking about, Harc. You know, they have set up a lot and now we can leverage it. And they also came up with some really interesting concepts. I went and met them in India. They came up with this concept called IPL. Okay, what is that? They really challenged all their employees that's working for GCI to come up with innovative ideas to solve problems proactively, which is self-healing. You know, how you do that? So I think partners, you know, if they become really vested in your interests, they can do wonders for you. And I think in this case Hitachi is really working very well for us and in many aspects. And I'm leveraging them... You started with support, now I'm leveraging them in the automation, the platform engineering, as well as in the reliability engineering and then in even in the engineering spaces. And that like, they are my end-to-end partner right now? >> So you're really taking that holistic approach that you talked about and it sounds like it's a very collaborative two-way street partnership. Prem, I want to go back to, Suresh mentioned Harc. Talk a little bit about what Harc is and then how partners fit into Hitachi's Harc strategy. >> Great, so let me spend like a few seconds on what Harc is. Lisa, again, I know we've been using the term. Harc stands for Hitachi application reliability sectors. Now the reason we thought about Harc was, like I said in the beginning of this segment, there is an illusion from an architecture standpoint to be more modern, microservices, server-less, reactive architecture, so on and so forth. There is an illusion in your development methodology from Waterfall to agile, to DevOps to lean, agile to path program, whatever, right? Extreme program, so on and so forth. There is an evolution in the space of infrastructure from a point where you were buying these huge humongous servers and putting it in your data center to a point where people don't even see servers anymore, right? You buy it, by a click of a button you don't know the size of it. All you know is a, it's (indistinct) whatever that name means. Let's go provision it on the fly, get go, get your work done, right? When all of this is advanced when you think about operations people have been solving the problem the way they've been solving it 20 years back, right? That's the issue. And Harc was conceived exactly to fix that particular problem, to think about a modern way of operating a modern workload, right? That's exactly what Harc. So it brings together finest engineering talent. So the teams are trained in specific ways of working. We've invested and implemented some of the IP, we work with the best of the breed partner ecosystem, and I'll talk about that in a minute. And we've got these facilities in Dallas and I am talking from my office in Dallas, which is a Harc facility in the US from where we deliver for our customers. And then back in Hyderabad, we've got one more that we opened and these are facilities from where we deliver Harc services for our customers as well, right? And then we are expanding it in Japan and Portugal as we move into 23. That's kind of the plan that we are thinking through. However, that's what Harc is, Lisa, right? That's our solution to this cloud complexity problem. Right? >> Got it, and it sounds like it's going quite global, which is fantastic. So Suresh, I want to have you expand a bit on the partnership, the partner ecosystem and the role that it plays. You talked about it a little bit but what role does the partner ecosystem play in really helping JCI to dial down some of those challenges and the inherent complexities that we talked about? >> Yeah, sure. I think partners play a major role and JCI is very, very good at it. I mean, I've joined JCI 18 months ago, JCI leverages partners pretty extensively. As I said, I leverage Hitachi for my, you know, A group and the (indistinct) space and the cloud operations space, and they're my primary partner. But at the same time, we leverage many other partners. Well, you know, Accenture, SCL, and even on the tooling side we use Datadog and (indistinct). All these guys are major partners of our because the way we like to pick partners is based on our vision and where we want to go. And pick the right partner who's going to really, you know make you successful by investing their resources in you. And what I mean by that is when you have a partner, partner knows exactly what kind of skillset is needed for this customer, for them to really be successful. As I said earlier, we cannot really get all the skillset that we need, we rely on the partners and partners bring the the right skillset, they can scale. I can tell Prem tomorrow, "Hey, I need two parts by next week", and I guarantee it he's going to bring two parts to me. So they let you scale, they let you move fast. And I'm a big believer, in today's day and age, to get things done fast and be more agile. I'm not worried about failure, but for me moving fast is very, very important. And partners really do a very good job bringing that. But I think then they also really make you think, isn't it? Because one thing I like about partners they make you innovate whether they know it or not but they do because, you know, they will come and ask you questions about, "Hey, tell me why you are doing this. Can I review your architecture?" You know, and then they will try to really say I don't think this is going to work. Because they work with so many different clients, not JCI, they bring all that expertise and that's what I look from them, you know, just not, you know, do a T&M job for me. I ask you to do this go... They just bring more than that. That's how I pick my partners. And that's how, you know, Hitachi's Vantara is definitely one of a good partner from that sense because they bring a lot more innovation to the table and I appreciate about that. >> It sounds like, it sounds like a flywheel of innovation. >> Yeah. >> I love that. Last question for both of you, which we're almost out of time here, Prem, I want to go back to you. So I'm a partner, I'm planning on redefining CloudOps at my company. What are the two things you want me to remember from Hitachi Vantara's perspective? >> So before I get to that question, Lisa, the partners that we work with are slightly different from from the partners that, again, there are some similar partners. There are some different partners, right? For example, we pick and choose especially in the Harc space, we pick and choose partners that are more future focused, right? We don't care if they are huge companies or small companies. We go after companies that are future focused that are really, really nimble and can change for our customers need because it's not our need, right? When I pick partners for Harc my ultimate endeavor is to ensure, in this case because we've got (indistinct) GCI on, we are able to operate (indistinct) with the level of satisfaction above and beyond that they're expecting from us. And whatever I don't have I need to get from my partners so that I bring this solution to Suresh. As opposed to bringing a whole lot of people and making them stand in front of Suresh. So that's how I think about partners. What do I want them to do from, and we've always done this so we do workshops with our partners. We just don't go by tools. When we say we are partnering with X, Y, Z, we do workshops with them and we say, this is how we are thinking. Either you build it in your roadmap that helps us leverage you, continue to leverage you. And we do have minimal investments where we fix gaps. We're building some utilities for us to deliver the best service to our customers. And our intention is not to build a product to compete with our partner. Our intention is to just fill the wide space until they go build it into their product suite that we can then leverage it for our customers. So always think about end customers and how can we make it easy for them? Because for all the tool vendors out there seeing this and wanting to partner with Hitachi the biggest thing is tools sprawl, especially on the cloud is very real. For every problem on the cloud. I have a billion tools that are being thrown at me as Suresh if I'm putting my installation and it's not easy at all. It's so confusing. >> Yeah. >> So that's what we want. We want people to simplify that landscape for our end customers, and we are looking at partners that are thinking through the simplification not just making money. >> That makes perfect sense. There really is a very strong symbiosis it sounds like, in the partner ecosystem. And there's a lot of enablement that goes on back and forth it sounds like as well, which is really, to your point it's all about the end customers and what they're expecting. Suresh, last question for you is which is the same one, if I'm a partner what are the things that you want me to consider as I'm planning to redefine CloudOps at my company? >> I'll keep it simple. In my view, I mean, we've touched upon it in multiple facets in this interview about that, the three things. First and foremost, reliability. You know, in today's day and age my products has to be reliable, available and, you know, make sure that the customer's happy with what they're really dealing with, number one. Number two, my product has to be secure. Security is super, super important, okay? And number three, I need to really make sure my customers are getting the value so I keep my cost low. So these three is what I would focus and what I expect from my partners. >> Great advice, guys. Thank you so much for talking through this with me and really showing the audience how strong the partnership is between Hitachi Vantara and JCI. What you're doing together, we'll have to talk to you again to see where things go but we really appreciate your insights and your perspectives. Thank you. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> Thanks Lisa, thanks for having us. >> My pleasure. For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. Thank you so much for watching. (soothing music)