>> Male Voice: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube. Covering Adobe Summit 2019. Brought to you by Adobe. Well, welcome back everyone. Cube's live coverage here in Las Vegas for Adobe Summit 2019. I'm John Furrier my cohost Jeff Frick,. For these next two days our next guest is Cynthia Stoddard CIO Adobe, former CIO of NetApp. When you were on the cube last time we were on >> That's right. AT&T now called Oracle Field ironically. >> Wow. >> I mean that is a transformation in itself. Welcome to the cube. >> Yeah, I'm glad to be back. >> Thanks for coming on with you, appreciate it. So your keynote, you had an amazing conversation around with the CIO from Intuit. >> Yes. >> You guys talked about changing the culture of the company. Talk about that conversation. >> Yeah, so I, we have similar, I would say, our companies has similar paths and that we both used to be box software and now we're, you know, we're operating out of cloud SaaS providers. And you know, it's really interesting and actually Atticus and I were just on another panel talking about this. When you sell a box, you don't really know who your customer is, right? But when you sell through a SaaS or an e-commerce site, you know a lot about your customer. 'Cause you know first of all, who they are. Then as you go through the customer journey, you can understand the different touch points. You can understand, you know, what the pain points are, what they're using, what they're not using and really gear your product and your information to really make that experience a lot better for the customer. >> Yeah, and even even more than that 'cause when you ship the box, you ship the box. And bye bye box he has no idea how it's being used, when it's being, he's not only the who, but the how and the whats. Now that you're connected to all your users and the way they use their products, the amount data that you have to make continuous adjustments, to pick your feature prioritization. It's completely different ballgame. >> It's exactly right. So you really take an outside view and outside in view of the customer versus an inside out. And you know, the customer and their experience becomes front and center and you focus in on that. And then additionally, you know, that impacts all of your processes inside of the company because they were all geared for that. You know, we don't know who the customer was before. Now you have to gear to knowing who the customer is, providing that right level of information through a number of different, you know, different functions, consistent information so that everybody can operate to the, you know, the same level of knowledge and same level of understanding. And when you look at your IT infrastructure as well, it's gotta be geared for that experience. So what you used to do on a cycle, now becomes real time. So if you think about, you know, downtime or invoicing or you know, customer lookups whatever, you need to have that always on, experience for the customer. So your operational excellence, your resiliency again, changes dramatically with that customer view, the outside in. >> One of the things you mentioned in the keynote I thought was really an important point was about the cloud journey and the role that data plays in the integration of data. And you had a couple of key tenants. >> That's right. >> That you talked about. Can you just quickly explain that, 'cause I think that's a point that everyone's talking about right now and it's really hard to do. And you guys have an interesting angle on this. Can you share your a prospective on that? >> Absolutely. So the tenants are commonality of data, consistent measurement, actionable insights and I focus in on the actionable, you know, the action part and then data governance. And when you think about it, you know, you have all this data around the organization, you know, it can be in different data lakes, it could be under, you know, somebody's under somebody's PC, you know, under their desk or whatever. And when you start getting into looking at that customer journey, what initially happens is everybody brings their own data to the table. So my data is different than your data but of course my data is the one that is best and correct, right? So what you need to be able to do is really get that consistency and definition. So, you know, if we're going to have, you know, even just define what customer is, what is, you know, what does that term? But when you get that, then how do you measure it? And you know, you may have a term but, you know, you have to put the boundaries around how do you measure it? How are we going to look at it? You know, what's good, what's bad and that sort of thing. So that's the consistency of measurement. The actionable insights is, you know, you can do a lot with dashboards and I think a lot of IT organizations have a gazillion dashboards that they have. But I would ask how much of that is actually actionable. So what we focused on is let's get the insights, let's get the information into our data, you know, our data repository into these dashboards so that people could act on it proactively as opposed to just say, oh this is great. And then the fourth area is data governance. What we did is we made sure and working with our business people that the metrics that are selected to measure that are consistent have business owners and they are responsible for owning that definition. They're responsible for owning the quality and they're responsible for owning how they're used throughout the entire organization. >> We had for the first time, we have been doing the CUBE for 10 years. We had a guest on this event came on for the first time with a new title we've never seen before. >> Oh Wow. >> Marketing CIO. >> Marketing CIO. >> One of the customers, Metlife, talked about how marketing and IT are coming together and how the CIO has to be aligned with the marketing CMO if they wanted to serve the business unit. This was a criteria that he said is what organizations should look like, if they're ready to to be transformed. >> Yeah, yeah. Can you comment on that because you're looking at it from you're at Adobe, so you kind of have the inside view. There's a confluence of the worlds coming together. Business and tech. >> That's right. That is, and it is and it used to be, I would say an organization's that there was walls between departments, right? IT was behind this huge wall. And that can't be any more. Technology is pervasive and the organization and when I look at marketing, I would say that the marketing discipline probably has some of the most mature data and analytic skills of anybody in the company. That's what their roles are, right? Is to analyze the customer marketing campaigns, how can they bring this value into the organization? So they've got that skill. What IT has is the big data skills. We know how to process, we know how to govern, we know how to make sure that the data is there. So, you know, bringing the two worlds together is actually really a perfect marriage because you're bringing the big data discipline together with the people who know how to look and analyze that data and come together. You know, to really deliver those really great actionable, I'll use actionable, again, actionable insights. So when I look at how my team works with our marketing organization is blended. You go into a room, you would not know who is IT, you would not know who the marketing. You won't be able to tell. It's interdisciplinary. From the time, I mean from staff meetings, from the time of working on, you know, a new idea, all the way through to sprints of getting it done. They are hooked at the hip together and marketing and IT are working jointly. I mean we have joint sprint teams and things like that >> So I gotta ask you the kind of historical question. You look back, CIO roles evolving over time. You've seen a couple of key points. Obviously, security, cloud, data, big data these kinda changed a little bit of the direction trajectory of IT organizations. And now you've got Adobe with a platform and integrating data across of it is gonna yield some new capabilities. It's always hard to operationalize new. >> Yeah. >> Your customers, for Adobe's customers who have not just Adobe products, they might have other, other stuff. >> Right. >> So they have multivendors out there. A lot of different data, a lot of diversity data. So the kinda pull it all together. Is a really hard task. So how does a CIO have to deal with that now? Because you're gonna use first party data now we got privacy, you got GDPR kinds of things. You mentioned governance, so it sounds really hard. How does it get easier? >> It's not easy. It's not easy, that's for sure. But I would say, I mean a few different ways. I would say first and foremost the CIO has to be out there with their business partners, you know, with the CMO, with the CFO, with, you know, with everybody in the business. And you know, really understand, you know, what their business goals and objectives are so that they can bring their knowledge to the table. Relationships are really key. I mean or you can do so much for the relationships. So, you know, being that collaborative agent I think is really key. In order to solve the hard technology issues, I would say that architecture is absolutely the first and foremost thing CIOs could think about. Is you should have your architecture in place, know what that data with that common data model is going to look like. Figure that out. Know how you're going to operate it. And then, you know, as I said this morning, you can't do it alone. So figure out who your key partners are and then bring them into the fold. With the right architecture and the right partners and the right relationships internally, you're going to overcome those issues. >> An the operating model dashboards that Shannon was mentioning earlier can be a key point but also people could, you know, see too many dashboards and not see the real issues. >> That's right. >> So the dashboard is not the silver bullet per se but it's an instrumentation panel. >> That's right. The dashboard is not a solution. The solution is really the insights that you're providing. And then getting people on board with the insights and then getting alignment across different disciplines that need to action the insights. Now, they may action them in different ways. So finance may action different than marketing, than different than sales. But it's important to have that common definition and really look at how I'm gonna use this in my day-to-day operations. >> John and I thought you were going down a different path. I'll ask a question. You're gonna bring up the new fun toy, which is AI and machine learning. >> Yes. So how are you, you know, it's gonna solve all, you know, peace in the Middle East and hunger in Africa. As you look at, you know, why some of these new technologies? You know, how are you trying to get kind past the hype and really find great places to get great value return on applying AI machine learning. >> Yeah, there is hype for sure but there is a lot of value to when you apply a correctly. And you know, when I look at what I do within my organization, we use the techniques for actually using it in some of our data-driven operating model to look at abnormalities and how data moves through the cycle and point those out because it'd be, you know, in some respects like finding a needle in a haystack. So we're using, you know, some AI techniques there but we're also using it in core IT and how we run IT. So I'm in our operations we've used a lot of automation but automation supplemented by artificial intelligence and machine learning. So if a problem occurs and it can be fixed by human, then it goes into a knowledge base and the next time around that problem occurs it could be fixed programmatically. So, and that has saved us a tremendous amount of time and you know, our return to service statistics have improved considerably. >> One of the exciting things in covering the tech industry for so long and seeing the cloud has done, >> Yeah, >> You have the whole Dev ops movement infrastructures code >> Infrastructure, really key. >> Very good point. It makes the infrastructure programmable versus the old model. I remember back when I was working at HP back in the late 80s, early 90s you were limited by what you could provision and deploy as tech networking, compute and storage and you kinda had to operate that, okay. Now, it's other way around. So what I see when I see the slides up on this keynote today and the architecture slides, I look at it, I'm like, it looks like Amazon to me. But it's marketing provisioning. So it's content developers, it's creative developers, it's the user not programmers. So when you start to get down that road, you (mumbles) about large scale. So the question I have for you is as workloads and use cases become the determinant of the architecture, having that dynamic of versatility and that ability to provision either other services becomes an interesting part of the architecture. That's where I think we're data I see fitting in. Can you just kinda react how you see that world? Because if this continues to happen, the terms being dictated down will be coming from the use cases and the workloads. >> They will be coming from the use cases and the workloads. And it's interesting that you mentioned your days at HP because I just actually gave a little talk about operational excellence. And the analogy that I used is people used to come to me and say, I want a server, right? Or I need additional space. And I would say, no, you're not efficient. Go back and clean up the stuff. And you know, then maybe I'll give you additional capacity. Well now that infrastructure is absolutely in the code, it sitting in the hands of the developer, it's in the hands of the engineer. And they need to understand how the decisions that they make, you know, impact, you know, performance, impact costs, impact a lot of different things. Impact data, right? So, it's a whole different world. And I think that part of it is really education and awareness, working with the engineering teams so that they understand that, you know, having your ops embedded in your code is a lot of responsibility, a lot of responsibility. And we need to understand how we're making decisions and how they affect, not only what I'm doing here in my piece of code, but actually the whole into end, right? The whole into end flow. It certainly changes your role because now you're not saying no, you're saying yes but you're not even saying yes. You just saying do it. >> That's right. So we, I think our roles changed to, yeah, we're not saying yes or no, we're saying you can go do it. >> With policy. >> Yeah. With policy and then also with, you know, the right level of information so that they can, you know, the right standards, the right architecture so that you can use the standards and architecture to make the right decisions in the code. >> My final question before we break for the day, you interviewed on stage Atticus decent from intuit and you were asking some questions. I could see you wanting to answer them yourself. I'm gonna ask you the questions you asked him since you know the questions coming. >> Oh Wow. >> Acceleration, transformation doesn't happen in the silo. I think it was your comment. >> Yeah. >> The specific questions are how do you build a team to accelerate? How do you increase the velocity of change and how does it impact culture? >> Yeah. So that's yeah, that was one of my favorite questions actually to talk to Atticus about 'cause he's done a tremendous amount of work within Intuit to kinda revamp. And actually, you know, within Adobe and other places, you know, I've gone through a culture change with my team and it's really getting them to take the customer view. One of the things we've done within Adobe is we've said we wanted to have cloud-like characteristics in our DNA. And people kinda looked at me and said, you know, what does that really mean? Cloud-like characteristics, is it a set of cloud. It was easy to use. It's extensible. And the way that I describe it to them is we really want to take IT out of the equation. So when you build, think about self service, think about APIs, think about the right architecture and then also, you know, organize around not a project because projects has start and finishes and then, you know, things never get taken care of but organize around the concept of products and life cycles. And that's what we're doing. So, and that's a lot of fun. >> And now with the Adobe platform, you can stand up solutions, >> That's right. >> very quickly. Sounds like cloud. It's easy to use. >> It is cloud and it is easy to use. >> Easy to buy, you can buy it all at once. You can buy a Juco. >> You can. >> This is the new business model. >> That's right. That's right. >> Thank you for coming on the cube and sharing. >> Thank you so much. Always my pleasure. >> Great insights, great data on the queue. Thanks for sharing the data. >> Thank you. Bringing all the dated insights here at Adobe Summit 2019 I'm John and Jeff Frick. Thanks for watching. Day Two is tomorrow. (gentle music)