(upbeat music) >> Hello, brilliant cloud community, and welcome back to AWS re:Invent. We are here in Las Vegas, Nevada. I'm Savannah Peterson, joined by my co-host Dave Vellante. Dave, how you doing? >> I'm doing well, thanks, yeah. >> Yeah, I feel like... >> I'm hanging in there. >> you've got a lot of pep in your step today for the fourth day. >> I think my voice is coming back, actually. >> (laughs) Look at you, resilient. >> I was almost lost yesterday, yeah. >> Yeah. (laughs) >> So, I actually, at a Hitachi event one time almost completely lost my voice. The production guys pulled me off. They said, "You're done." (Savannah laughing) They gave me the hook. >> You got booted? >> Dave: Yeah, yeah. >> Yeah, yeah, you actually (laughs) got the hook, wow. >> So, I have good memories of Hitachi. >> I was going to say (Dave laughing) interesting that you mentioned Hitachi. Our two guests this morning are from Hitachi. Sid and KP, welcome to the show. >> Thank you. >> Savannah: How you guys doing? Looking great for day four. >> Great. Thank you. >> Great. >> Hanging in there. >> Thank you, Dave and Savannah. (Savannah laughing) >> Dave: Yeah, cool. >> Savannah: Yeah. (laughs) >> Yeah, it was actually a Pentaho thing, right? >> Oh, Pentaho? Yeah. >> Which kind of you guys into that software edge. It was right when you announced the name change to Hitachi Vantara, which is very cool. I had Brian Householder on. You remember Brian? >> Yeah, I know. >> He was explaining the vision, and yeah (indistinct). >> Yeah. Well, look at you a little Hitachi (indistinct). >> Yeah, I've been around a long time, yeah. >> Yeah, all right. (Dave laughing) >> Just a casual flex to start us off there, Dave. I love it. I love it. Sid, we've talked a lot on the show about delivering outcomes. It's a hot theme. Everyone wants to actually have tangible business outcomes from all of this. How are customers realizing value from the cloud? What does that mean? >> See, still 2007, 2008, it was either/or kind of architecture. Either I'm going to execute my use cases on cloud or I'm going to keep my use cases and outcomes through edge. But in the last four or five years and specifically we are in re:Invent, I would talk about AWS. Lot of the power of hyperscalers has been brought to edge. If you talk about the snowball family of AWS, if you talk about monitor on edge devices, if you talk about the entire server list being brought into Lambda coupled inside snowball, now the architecture premise, if I talk about logical shift is end. Now the customers are talking about executing the use cases between edge and cloud. So, there is a continuum rather than a binary bullion decision. So, if you are talking about optimizing a factory, earlier I'll do the analytics at cloud, and I'll do machine on edge. Now it is optimization of a factory outcome at scale across my entire manufacturing where edge, private cloud, AWS, hyperscalers, everything is a continuum. And the customer is not worried about where, which part of my data ops, network ops, server ops storage ops is being executed. >> Savannah: It's like (indistinct). >> The customer is enjoying the use cases. And the orchestration is abstracted through an industrial player like Hitachi working very collaboratively with AWS. So, that is how we are working on industrial use cases right now. >> You brought up manufacturing. I don't think there's been a hotter conversation around supply chain and manufacturing than there has been the last few years. I can imagine taking that guessing game out for customers is a huge deal for you guys. >> Big because if you look at the world today, right from a safety pin, to a cell phone jacket, to a cell phone, the entire supply chain is throttled. The supply chain is throttled because there are various choke points. >> Savannah: Yeah. >> And each choke points is surrounded by different kind of supply and geopolitical issues. >> Savannah: 100%. >> Now, if we talk about the wheat crisis happening because of the Ukraine-Russia war, but the wheat crisis actually creates a multiple string of impacts which impact everything. Silicon, now we talk about silicon, but we then forget about nickel. Nickel is also controlled in one part of that geopolitical conflict. So, everything is getting conflagrated into a very big supply issue. So, if your factories are not performing beyond optimum, if they are not performing at real, I'm, we are talking about factory, hyperscale of the factory. The factory needs to perform at hyperscale to provide what the world needs today. So, we are in a very different kind of a scenario. Some of the economists call it earlier the recession was because of a demand constraint. The demand used to go down. Today's recession is because the supply is going down. The demand is there, but the supply is going down. And there is a different kind of recession in the world. The supply is what is getting throttled. >> And the demand is somewhat unpredictable too. People, you know, retailers, they've... >> Especially right now. >> kind of messed up their inventory. And so, the data is still siloed. And that's where, you know, you get to, okay, can I have the same experience across clouds, on-prem, out to the edge? Kind of bust those silos. >> Yep. >> You know, I dunno if it's, it's certainly not entirely a data problem. There's (laughs), like you say, geopolitical and social issues. >> Savannah: There's so much complexity. >> But there's a data problem too. >> Yes. >> Big. >> So, I wonder if you could talk about your sort of view of, point of view on that cross-cloud, hybrid, out to the edge, what I call super cloud? >> Absolutely. So, today, if you look at how enterprises are adopting cloud or how they're leveraging cloud, it's not just a hosting platform, right? It is the platform from where they can draw business capabilities. You heard in the re:Invent that Amazon is coming up with a supply chain service out of the box in the cloud. That's the kind of capabilities that business wants to draw from cloud today. So, the kind of multicloud or like hybrid cloud, public cloud, private cloud, those are the things which are kind of going to be behind the scenes. At the end of the day, the cloud needs to be able to support businesses by providing their services closer to their consumers. So, the challenges are going to be there in terms of like reliability, resilience, cost, security. Those are the ones that, you know, many of the enterprises are grappling with in terms of the challenges. And the way to solve that, the way how we approach our customers and work with them is to be able to bring resilience into the cloud, into the services which are running in cloud, and by driving automation, making autonomous in everything that you do, how you are monitoring your services, how we are making it available, how we are securing it, how we are making it very cost-effective as well. It cannot be manually executed; it has to be automated. So, automation is the key in terms of making the services leveraged from all of this cloud. >> That's your value add. >> Absolutely. >> And how do I consume that value add? Is it sort of embedded into infrastructure? Is it a service layer on top? >> Yeah, so everything that we do today in terms of like how these services have to be provided, how the services have to be consumed, there has to be a modern operating model, right? I think this is where Hitachi has come up with what we are calling as Hitachi Application Reliability Center and Services. That is focusing on modern operating, modern ways of like, you know, how you support these cloud workloads and driving this automation. So, whether we provide a hyper-converged infrastructure that is going to be at the edge location, or we are going to be able to take a customer through the journey of modernization or migrating onto cloud, the operating model that is going to be able to establish the foundation on cloud and then to be able to operate with the right levels of reliability, security, cost is the key. And that's the value added service that we provide. And then the way we do that is essentially by looking at three principles: one, to look at the service in totality. Gone are the days you look at infrastructure separately, applications separately, data and security separately, right? >> Savannah: No more silos. >> No more silos. You look at it as a workload, and you look at it as a service. And number two is to make sure that the DevOps that you bring and what you do at the table is totally integrated and it's end to end. It's not a product team developing a feature and then ops team trying to keep the lights on. It has to be a common backlog with the error budget that looks at you know, product releases, product functionalities, and even what ops needs to do to evolve the product as well. And then the third is to make sure that reliability and resiliency is inbuilt. Cloud offers native durability, native availability. But if your service doesn't take advantage of that, it's kind of going to still be not available. So, how do you kind of ingrain and embed all of these things as a value add that we provide? >> There's a lot of noise. We've got hybrid cloud. We've got multicloud. We've got a lot going on. It adds to the complexity. How do you help customers solve that complexity as they begin their transformation journey? I mean, I'm sure you're working with the biggest companies, making really massive change. How do you guide them through that process? >> So, it is to look at the outcome working backwards, like what AWS does, right? Like, you know, how do you look at the business outcome? What is the value that you're looking to drive? Again, it's not to be pinned through one particular cloud. I know there is lot of technology choices that you can make and lot of deployment models that you can choose from. But at the end of the day, having a common operating model which is kind of like modern, agile, and it is kind of like keeping the outcomes in the mind, that is what we do with our customers to be able to create that operating model, which completes the transformation, by the way. And cloud is just one part of the LEGO blocks which provides that overall scheme and then the view for driving that overall transformation. >> So, let's paint a picture. Let's say you've got this resilient foundation; you've kind of helped the customers build that out. How do they turn that into value for their customers? Do you have any examples that you can share? That'd be great. >> Yeah, I can start with what we're doing for one of the, you know, world's largest facility, infrastructure, power, cooling, security, monitoring company that has their products deployed in 2,000 locations across the globe. For them, and always on business means you are monitoring the temperature. You are monitoring the safety of people who are within the facility, right? A temperature shift of one to two degree can affect even the sustainability goals of NARC, our customer, but also their end consumers. So, how do you monitor these kind of like critical parameters? How do you have a platform? >> Savannah: Great example, yeah. >> How you have cloud resources that are going to be always on, that are going to be reliable, that are going to be cost-effective as well is what we are doing for one of our customers. Sid can talk about another example as well. >> Great. >> Yeah, go for it, Sid. >> So, there are examples: rail. We are working with a group in England; it's called West Coast Partnership. And they had a edge device which was increasing in size. Now, this edge device was becoming big because the parameters which go into the edge device were increasing because of regulation and because the rail is part of national security infrastructure. We have worked with West Coast Partnership and Hitachi Rail, which is a group company, to create a miniaturization of this edge device, because if the size of the edge device is increasing on the train, then the weight of the train increases, and the speed profile, velocity profile, everything goes down. So, we have miniaturized the edge device. Secondly, all the data profiles, signal control, traction control, traction motors, direction control, timetable compliance, everything has been kept uniform. And we have done analytics on cloud. So, what is the behavior of the driver? What is a big breaking parameter of the driver? If the timetable has being missed, is there an erratic behavior being demonstrated by the driver to just meet the timetable? And the timetable is a pretty important criteria in rail because if you miss one, then... So, what we have done is we have created an edge-to-cloud environment where the entire rail analytics is happening. Similarly, in another group company, Hitachi Energy, they had a problem that arguably one of the largest transformer manufacturer in the world. The transformer is a pretty common name now because you're seeing what is happening in Ukraine. Russia went after the transformers and substations before the start of the winter so that their district heating can be meddled with. Now, the transformer, it had a lead time of 17 weeks before COVID. So, if you put me an order of a three-phase transformer, I can deliver it to you in 17 weeks. After and during COVID, the entire lead time increased to 57 to 58 weeks. In cases of a complex transformer, it even went up to something like two years. >> Savannah: Ooh! >> Now, they wanted to increase the productivity of their existing plant because there is only that much sheet metal, that much copper for solenoid, that much microprocessor and silicon. So, they wanted to increase the output of their factory from 95 to 105, 10 more transformers every day, which is 500 and, which is 3,650 every- >> Savannah: Year. >> Year. Now, to do that, we went to a very complex machine; it's called a guard machine. And we increased the productivity of the guard machine by just analyzing all the throttles and all the wastages which are happening there. There are multiple case studies because, see, Hitachi is an industrial giant with 105 years of body of work. KP and I just represent the tip of the digital tip of the arrow. But what we are trying to do through HARC, through industry cloud, through partnership with AWS is basically containerizing and miniaturizing our entire body of work into a democratized environment, an industrial app store, if I may say, where people can come and take their industrial outcomes at ease without worrying about their computational and network orchestration between edge and cloud. That's what we are trying to do. >> I love that analogy of an industrial app cloud. Makes it feel easier in decreasing the complexity of all the different things that everyone's factoring into making their products, whatever they're making. So, we have a new challenge here on theCUBE at AWS re:Invent, where we are looking for your 30-second hot take, your Instagram reel, sound bite. What's the most important story or theme either for you as a team or coming out of the show? You can ponder it for a second. >> It might be different. See, for me, it is industrial security. Industrial OT security should be the theme of the Western world. Western world is on the crosshairs of multiple bad actors. And the industrial security is in the chemical plants, is in the industrial plants, is in the power grids, is in our postal networks and our rail networks. They need to be secured; otherwise, we are geopolitically very weak. Gone are the days when anyone is going to pick up a battle with America or Western world on a field. The battle is going to be pretty clandestine on an cyber world. And that is why industrial security is very important. >> Critical infrastructure and protecting it. >> Absolutely. >> Well said, Sid. KP, what's your hot take? >> My take is going to be a modern operating model, which is going to complete the transformation and to be able to tap into business services from cloud. So, a modern operating model through HARC, that is going to be my take. >> Fantastic. Well, can't wait to see what comes out of Hitachi next. Sid, KP... >> KP: Thank you. >> thank you so much for being here. >> Sid: Thank you. >> Absolutely. >> Dave: Thanks, guys. >> Savannah: This is I could talk to you all about supply chain all day long. And thank all of you for tuning in to our continuous live coverage here from AWS re:Invent in fantastic Sin City. I'm Savannah. Oh, excuse me. With Dave Vellante, I'm Savannah Peterson. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in high tech coverage. (digital xylophone music)

>>Hi, everyone. And thanks for joining us today for our session on the 2020 Data Drivers Award winners. I'm excited to be here today with you. I'm a lease. Bergeron, vice president, product marketing for snowflake. Thes rewards are intended to recognize companies and individuals for using snowflakes, data cloud to drive innovation and impact in their organizations. Before we start our conversations, I want to quickly congratulate all of our award winners. First in the business awards are data driver of the year is Cisco. Our machine learning master is you Nipper, Our data sharing leader is Rakuten. Our data application of the year is observed and our data for good award goes to door dash for the individual and team awards. We first have the cost. Jane, Chief Digital officer of Paccar. We have a militiamen, director of cybersecurity and data science winning our data science Manager of the Year award at Comcast for a date. A pioneer of the year. We have Faisal KP, who's our senior manager of enterprise data Services at Pizza Hut. And lastly, we have our best data team going to McKesson, led by Jimmy Herff Data and Analytics platform leader Huge congratulations to all of these winners. It was very difficult to pick them amongst amazing set of nominations. So now let's dive into our conversations. We'll start with the data driver of the year. Representing Cisco today is Robbie. I'm a month do director data platform, data and analytics. >>Let me welcome everybody to the wonderful. Within a few years before Cisco used to be a company, you know, in making the decisions partly with the data and partly with the cuts. Because, you know, the data is told in multiple places the trading is not done right and things like that. So we, you know, really understood it. You know what was a challenge in the organism? By then we defined the data strategy on we put in a few plants in place, and it is working very well. But what is more important is basically how we provide the data towards data scientists and the data community in Cisco. I'm making them available in a highly available scalable on the elastic platforms. That's where you know, snowflake came into picture really very well for arrest, along with the other data strategies that we have had in place more importantly, data. Democratization was a key. You know, you along with the simplification, something technologies involved in the past. Our clients need to be worrying, laudable the technologies involved, you know, for example, we used to manage her before we make it. Snowflake Andi Snowflake, in a solve all of these problems for us with the ease on it. Really helping enabling a data data given ordinances in our >>system. In the data sharing leaders category, Rockhampton was our winner. We have mark staying trigger VP of analytics here to share their story. I >>wanna thank Snowflake for the award, and it's an honor to be a today. The ease of use of snowflake has allowed projects to move forward innovation to move forward in a way that it simply couldn't have done on old Duke systems or or or other platforms. And I think the truth the same is true for us on a lot of the similar topics, but also in the data sharing space, data sharing is a part off innovation. Like I think, most of the tech companies we work with certainly are business partners, merchants, but also with a range of other service providers and other technology vendors, um on other companies that we strategically share data with 2 May benefit of their service or thio to allow data modeling or advanced data collaboration or strategic business deals using the data and evaluated with the data on. But I think if you look Greece snowflake, you would see a lot of time and effort money going to just establishing that data connection that often involved substantial investments in technology data pipelines, risk evaluation, hashing, encrypt encryption. Security on what we found with snowflakes sharing functionality is that we can not eliminate those concerns, but that the technology just supports the ability to share data securely easily, quickly in a way that we could never do >>previously. Now we have a really inspiring winner of the data for good award door dash with their Project Dash Initiative here to speak about their work is act shot near Engineering manager >>Thank you sports to snowflake for recognizing us for this initiative. Eso For those of you who don't know, Dash, the logistics technology platform company that connects people with the best in their cities and Project Dash, our flagship social impact program, uses the door dash logistics platform to tackle the challenges like hunger and food waste. It was launched in 2018 on over the first two years in partnership with food recovery organizations, we powered the delivery off over £2 million of surplus food from businesses to hunger relief agencies across the U. S. And Canada. Andi simply do Toko with tremendous need has a much we were ableto power. The delivery often estimated 5.8 million meals to food insecure communities and frontline workers across 48 states on the 3.5 million off. These meals have been delivered since much. We do all of our analysis for our business functions from like product development to skills and social impact in snowflake On the numbers I just provided here actually have come from Snowflake on. We have used it to provide various forms of reporting, tow our government and non profit partners on this snowflake. We can help them understand the impact, analyzed friends and ensure complaints in cases where we are supporting efforts for agencies like FEMA, our USDA onda. Lastly, our team is really excited to be recognized by snowflake for using data for good. It has reminded us to continue doubling down on our commitment to using our product and expertise to partner with communities we operated. Thank you again. >>The winner of the machine Learning Master's word is unit for Energy. Viola Sarcoma Data Innovation leader is here on behalf of unit for >>Hello, everyone, Thanks for having me here. It's really a pleasure. And we were really proud to get this award. It means a lot for you. Nipper. It's huge recognition for our effort since last couple of years assed part of our journey and also a celebration off our success now for you. Newport. It would not be possible to start looking at Advanced Analytics techniques, not having a solid data foundation in place. And that's where we invested a lot in our cloud data platform in the cloud back by snowflake. Having this platform allowed us to employ advanced analytics techniques, combining data from Markit from fundamental data, different other sources of data like weather and extracting new friends, new signals that basically help us to partly or even in some cases fully automate some trading strategy. And we believe this will be really fundamental for for the future off raiding in our company and we will definitely invest in this area in the future. >>Our data application of the year is observed. Observers recognizes the most innovative, data driven application built on Snowflake and representing observed today is their CEO, Jeremy Burton. >>Let me just echo the thanks from the other folks on the coal. I mean snowflakes, separation of storage. Compute. I can't overstate what a really big deal it is. Um, it means that we can ingest in store data. Really? For the price of Amazon s three on board, we're in a category where vendors of historically charged for volume of data ingested. So you can imagine this really represents huge savings. Um, in addition, and maybe on a more technical note, snowflakes, elastic architectures really enables us to direct queries appropriately, based on the complexity of the query. So small queries or simple queries weaken director extra small warehouses and complex queries. We can direct, you know, for Excel. Or I think even a six x l is either there are on its way. The key thing there is that users they're not sitting around waiting for results to appear regardless of the query complexity. So I mean, really? The separation storage compute on the elastic architectures is a really big deal for us. >>Turning to the data Pioneer of the Year Award, I'm excited to be here with Faisal KP, senior manager of Enterprise Data Services from Pizza Hut. >>First of all, thank you, Snowflake, for giving this wonderful person. I think it means a lot for us in terms of validating what we're doing. I think we were one of the earlier adopters of Snowflake. We saw the vision of snowflake, you know, stories. Russell's computer separation on all the goodies, right? Right from back in 2017, I believe what snowflake enabled us is to actually get the scale with very little manpower, which is needed to man the entire system. So on the Super Bowl day, we have, you know, the entire crew literally a boardroom where the right from the CME, most of the CEOs to all the folks will be sitting and watching what is happening in the system. And we have to do a lot of real time analytics during that time. So with snowflake, you know, way used the elasticity of the platform we use, you know, platform you know their solutions, like snow pipe to basically automate the data ingestion coming through various channels, from the commas, from the stores, everything simultaneously. So as soon as the program is done, you know, we can scale scale down to our normal volume, which means we can, you know, way can save a lot. Of course. So definitely it snowflake has been game changer for us in terms of how we provide real time analytics. Our systems are used by thousands off restaurants throughout the country and, you know, by hundreds of franchisees. So the scale is something we have achieved with a lot of ability and success. >>In the category of data science Manager of the Year Award, we have a mission Min, director of cybersecurity and data science at Comcast. >>So thank you for having me and thank you for this wonderful award. So one of the biggest challenges you see in this other security spaces the tremendous amount of data that we have to compute every day to find the gold haystack. So one of the big challenges we overcame with by uniting snowflake was how do we go from like my other counterparts on the panel have said Theo operational overhead of maintaining a large data store and moved to more of results driven and data focused environment. And, you know, part of that journey was really the tremendous leadership. Comcast saying, You know, we want Thio through our day to day lives by relying less on operational work and Maura on answering questions. And so you know, over the last year we've really put Snowflake at the center of our ecosystem, knowing that it's elastic platform and its ability scale infinitely have given us the ability to dream big and use it to drop five cybersecurity. And while it's traditionally used for cybersecurity, we're starting to see the benefits right away and the beauty of the snowflake. Ecos, Miss. We're now able to enable folks that not traditionally have big data skills, but they have standards, sequel skills, and they could still work in the snowflake platform. So, you know, the transition to cloud has been very powerful for us as an organization. But I think the end story, the real takeaways, by moving our secretary operation to the cloud, we're now been able to enable more people and get the results they were looking for. You know, as other people have said fast, people hate to wait. So the scale of snowflake really shines. >>Yeah. Now, let's hear from our data Executive of the year. The Cost. Jane. Chief Digital Officer Packer. >>Thank you very much, Snowflake, for this really incredible recognition and honor of the work we're doing it back. Are we began. The first step in this process was for us to develop an enterprise Great data platform in the cloud capable off managing every aspect of data at scale. This this platform includes snowflake as our analytics data warehouse amongst many other technologies that we used for ingestion of data, data processing, uh, data governance, transactional, uh, needs and others. So this platform, once developed, has really helped us leverage data across the broad pack. Our systems and applications globally very efficiently and is enabling pack are, as a result to enhance every aspect. Selfish business with data. >>Ah, big congratulations again to all of the winners of the 2020 Data Drivers Awards. Thanks so much for joining us for a great conversation. And we hope that you enjoy the rest of the data cloud summit

from the silicon angle media office in Boston Massachusetts it's the queue now here's your host Stu minimun hi I'm Stu minimun and welcome to a special cube conversation here in our Boston area studio and health happy to welcome to the program someone we've known for a long time but actually first time on the program also a Boston area native I believe yes Jim and so it's Jim Sullivan who's the CEO of nwn Jim's thanks so much for joining us let's do it's great to be here watching you guys forever and first time and happy to be here so we've got a lot of shared history we both we overlapped a little bit at a company that some people might remember was EMC before it was the largest acquisition in tech history you've worked for a number of companies we've covered here on the cube XIV actifi oh and the like so tell us first you know nwn it's not a company that you know the vast majority of people are going to know of but you know good-sized company been around for a while Waltham based tell us tell us a little bit about what brought you to nwn thanks to yet nwn is a you know solution service provider been around 10 years hundreds of millions of dollars of revenues 1,300 customers and a lot of really incredible you know platform offering service offerings and so was really excited to be able to kind of get involved with the company and begin to look at we could do for the industry and for customers all right yeah you talk about it you know an area that that's transforming greatly I mean tech in general you know we say that the the only constant in industry is change when you talk about services you talk about platforms that means a lot of things to a lot of people maybe explain a little bit that the spaces that end everyone plays in and where some of the core capability of the company are sure so if you look at as you know this a lot of everything for you know digital transformation is around the end-user experience so we all want to have great access to you know voice video you know clean network the ability to kind of have this great experience to collaborate with customers so India nwn really the core offerings unified communications which has really always been a kind of core of the company the network's underpinning those communications along with a contact center collaboration security and so security really wraps around everything and then those are the core areas where we are but the core IP of the company is the platform that can manage all those environment you know as a self-service function that the customers use or that arts contacts and her team can kind of run okay so when I hear that the solutions that you're talking about the the thing that comes kind of front and center in the industry that I've been hearing about it's the CX it's the customer experience you know what is the ultimate end users how are they interacting with as well as the employees themselves you know if you've got people at the contact centers that are running things how are you making their jobs easier so you know how does that play into you know what you're seeing in the market and how nwn you know delivers offerings in that space so everything's really tied together whether you have a device a a phone system everything's gonna be tied into the network and required really high security so the the management platform that we have allows customers to have that ability to provision in a real secure fashion a device that we can kind of deliver and manage the right phone systems that we can also deliver and manage all tied into a really secure Network and it can be anywhere they want it can be you know private cloud hybrid cloud or hosted cloud is how we deliver it today yeah there's the cloud discussion that's going on right now I was at Enterprise Connect earlier this year and you know everything seemed to be you know cloud enable an AI infused underneath from a customer standpoint you know that they can get a little bit overwhelmed with some of the jargon that's get gets thrown out there so help explain a little bit you know what solutions what is nwn build you know how does it fit in with kind of you know big tech companies that they probably have relationships with and debut and has been part of the channel for many of these products there to talk a little bit about that mix overall we're gonna deliver a solution for the customer in those areas right so in a unified communications area or a network area security so and the solutions going to be required you know some hardware you know a lot of services which is our people and then most importantly this management platform which is going to be the management capability the business analytics the knowledge center that kind of pull off from everybody right so our focus is really delivering the solution delivering it you know kind of a solution as a service so the customer has the ability that it's not outsourcing it's not managed services but we're gonna be running the service but they have the ability to self provision interact with pulling all their own analytics all their own data on their own environment so it's a much more interactive relationship than kind of the old-school managed services of the past you know I I like that term solutions as a service because we've learned the the failings of just pure outsourcing it was like oh can I get my mess for Less well no no you don't want your mess what customers need is they need to be able to deploy something today and as the business changes adjust that and you can't have something that you have to throw over the wall and say oh hey can you do this oh yeah we'll get back to you in six months maybe and here's your new bill and how that changes in the cloud era I need to be able to deploy something today and stay flexible to be able to take advantage of new technologies new innovations as they come along how do your offerings help customers stay current and you know drive that innovation adoption right so a huge part of we talk about this in a lot of industries particularly our old kind of infrastructure of days and that everything becoming more software-defined is is really everywhere or cloud offerings really everywhere and with software these changes are happening so fast so the customer gets an environment that's stable and secure deployed and managed by us but as changes happen our team and our kind of best practices capabilities allows to interact with their end users so you kind of drive the adoption which a lot of time it's more getting and training and making sure the new practices sort of happened because the efficiencies gained are huge that's sort of one and then two is is it's beginning to get adopted you're beginning to kind of roll that out across the entire enterprise so the customer gets that end user experience which it helps with employee retention you know really helps with business ROI and ultimately the investments they made are now being used and they're getting what they want so it might be excellent you know lying quality with great business analytics in a secure environment but it goes back down to you know is the network being utilized all the software capabilities being deployed and managed and really what's the business outcome for the customer so these this world is very much less speeds and feeds or technology or all of that versus okay where's the customer stand today and where do they want to bring the business to and what business outcomes they looking to drive the adoption services you know ensures that they get the business outcomes all right Jim you know what what industries what geographies gives a little bit of kind of the scope and breadth of your team right so it's 1,300 customers more than half the customers are really large enterprises you know companies like eversource the other half of the business is sled state local education so Yale University really big customer state of California we manage over 200,000 endpoints over 400 agencies so really some huge scale but it really maps to a great balance in the business of sled and enterprise accounts okay and you talked about cloud you have some of your own data centers how do you play with some of the public cloud and customer environments what's right what's kind of that mix and what are you yeah so so today customers want to have like I don't think they quite care but they want to have fast deployments really agile environments consistent costs really effective and so for us we able to provide that because we can provide private cloud on-premise we can service any public cloud for these deployments and we also have three data centers where we can provide a cloud solution for them or hybrid clouds lifts and really mapping particularly the enterprise accounts as we know they're beginning to learn like all public clouds little scary you know but if you get into a fireman where you can have really a shop that has you know private clouds that delivers a hybrid cloud environment for them much more flexible much more agile for them it's been a perfect scenario where the predominance of our customers are deployed in a cloud scenario managed by us but in their data centers in our cloud as well yeah right I think a really good point their customers are still sorting out where everything goes and you've got to have flexibility to say okay it's not one or the other it's usually more of an and right in helping customers you know move through what I do in there and for us most of these environments are you know really mission-critical applications that are gonna be rolled out whether it's the voice systems which really kind of backing and the underpinning the whole the whole customer experience it might be device as a service so when we kind of talk about end user experience it starts with really the voice that devices it's got to be really secure which is becomes a kind of a compliance issue and a lot of this is all tied together into the network so the the big differentiator for it end WN is the ability that we can have the management portal that really manages all these five environments together into one seamless into one seamless platform that they can pull the data from okay so talked about you've got team you've got technology you've got really important you've got a lot of good customers seems like you have a good relationship nwn is going through a bit of a transformation here since you've been on board just a few months now I've had a chance to look at the website and the biggest thing for me is I'll tell you from the old one to the new one the new one is simpler I really kind of grasped much faster what any of the wnd does so maybe speak a little bit to you know what nwn of today how that's different from how we might have thought of nwn in the past sure nwn been around 10 years as nwn but they've been acquiring companies and really had has incredible employees great customers really loyal customers and big accounts that were strategic too but as we really went through kind of the assessment of what's really resonating with customers we were able to really focus all the offerings down to these five core offerings that we've been talking about and then really have the right investments around all the IP that we've developed and really wanted to put against those five offerings and then have the customer success teams be able to be organized around that so the company has really focused on where 95% of the business was the ability to really put all the wood behind the arrow you know for those environments and for our customers to really focus and that's about a 50 billion dollar market in the u.s. right so that focus area is a big space big opportunity for growth and a lot of it was in the predominance of our 1,300 customers they buy one or two of these offerings from us and now the ability to really expand that but so many of these customers are so happy we're gonna kind of take it in those industries we're in probably about five core industries to really kind of take it to their peer their peer companies and really expanded in that account-based marketing sort of kind of program okay so five specific offerings we've talked about a couple of them already unified communications as a service of course we talked about contact center we touched on device as a service you talked about some of the devices security and advanced technology solutions maybe start with security you know I think one of the you know you know most important topic being discussed I looking back at my career and you know 10 or 15 years ago security was what I would call top of mind bottom of budget all right and today it is often a board level discussion there are lots of dollars lots of investment lots of concern around security so what piece is the security market does nwn playing you know what we're what's good you know what what do you what are you creating and what are you working with the ecosystem and where do we need to go sure enough space so for unified communications for the 80s you know practice around the supporting network and device as a service our security offerings are for the environment right and a lot of it is where there's a lot of tools deployed but customers you know are really okay once something happens an incident happens they have a tool that identifies something that happens but a lot of the security will be really really mapping those environments that they have a secure platform but Incident Response is really where we're gonna really be doubling down on so something's happened in one of those environments what happened and then how do you respond to that that's going to be the big focus of what nwn it's been doing and kind of what will invest more in its really Incident Response okay great advanced technology solutions talk to us a little bit about that so a lot of the core the core expertise in the company for years has been around the network but then that really expanded with doing you know full you hosted unified communication so the company today can deploy any type of networking solutions for customers along with all the connectivity so the bandwidth you know any type of a next generation networks like 5g so all of that really tied together that you have the network you know the right connectivity to kind of get to the the right performance and then mapping it to the SL A's that have to go with the the offerings of unified communications and devices of service because everything's going to be inter intertwined and you think about any like collaboration technologies I mean how many times have we been in a meeting where a collaboration technologies not really working but the performance is not really there it's not that software it's something that was tied beneath that so nwn can really bridge the two together to have that the right networking capability the right connectivity so you're getting the fast connectivity right away of what really matters to the end user experience which is that collaboration system yeah you know we talked a little bit about innovation you know where where are your customers what's exciting you that's helping your customers move forward and you know where are those areas that were still struggling a little bit you know III think back you know I worked in the you know Telecom Unified Communication space you know back in the late 90s and you know by now we were supposed to have the flying cars with the ubiquitous video everywhere and well FaceTime you know and some some things have us there a little bit sure I use my you know my webcam way more than I did five or ten years ago but yeah maybe speak a little bit where were having success and where if we still need to go number one thing for me that I learned of one of the most unique assets that NW and has is the business analytics and data capability right so a lot of these environments have been deployed we've got all these multiple different vironment but what I learned of the nwn capability is we have every piece of data of all those different environments in every customer in every customer environment so we have the ability now with our portal and they've had the ability to do this it's really any type of function that the customer wants to learn more about in kind of an automated fashion that they can self provision this data themselves we have the data so it could be billing capabilities of really what what groups are being built it could be any type of compliance so what type of calls are being made and who's doing calls any type of productivity for call centers of what capabilities we have so I think the the the biggest thing to answer your question is one the nwn capability is all the business data that we have that maps across multiple industries to deliver best practices but people have been to plot deploying networks deploying devices deploying phone systems but never really having the intelligence of what you're gonna do with that data to drive the business forward and so one it's like got to have the end user experience be like that's like table stakes where the end user experience is great but now how the business use the data of how all those systems are working together to really bring forward like okay what business decisions do we make to move forward in terms of what's working what's not working and comes back to driving the right business outcomes alright so a lot a lot of effort in the last few months yeah focus and execution doing the relaunch here let's look forward a little bit Jim as you know six or twelve months from now as we look back what are some of the key KP at KP is how for those of us the outside do we know that nwn is executing and meeting you know where you want the company to go its 100% about customer satisfaction right so it's the as we continue to expand the offerings inside customers and then add new customers will be you know solely how we're going to manage the business and that's really where it's as customers do upgrades with us the the predominance of our customers is long-term contracts so as customers continue to do renewals and add new offerings and kind of new capabilities that we bring to the table and as they tell their peer companies which is people are really excited about being references for us then we'll continue to add more companies into the mix and more more customers and grow the 1302 mm great and you know for for potential customers out there there any of the kind of key things that you would call out that they said oh I've got this issue or I'm looking to do this kind of project I want to make sure to have nwn on my short list I see a couple areas right it's it's everyone is it's a 50 billion dollar market so everyone is dealing with unified communications issues right in terms of what decisions are gonna make were an expert in that space the device is a service you know really like we manage two hundred thousand endpoints with the state of California so that's a device of the service is really a space that not a lot of people are in a lot of people doing devices but really as an end end service not really you know strong you know kind of capability and then the security requirements are for everybody so I think for these solutions than to have the right service people the right network expertise so that that five areas is kind of the core space and I think the biggest thing that I would say to customers is everything's intertwined right so it's like you can have you know one person to talk about one if you don't really tie it all together that's where the challenges and the problems usually kind of come from and we're also really sizable Ike the companies you know you know a lot a lot of large customers but the companies hundreds of millions of dollars with a lot of forty's over the last 10 years yeah so Jim last thing talk about the team in the culture you know talk about what you you want to build on what NW always has and you know are you doing some hiring either here locally in the Boston area or you know in other geographic areas sure so companies Nate you know national company so we'll be hiring sales reps solution engineers nationally and really kind of continue to scale that out the service desk function that we have and really the customer success team is continuing to expand and really supporting the growth of the business and really kind of driving it so those are really the key areas the rest of the company that people are the people and the and the culture of the company are amazing the passion commitment to customer success people have been here a long time and so they have a lot of experience and a lot of kind of patch with the company so a lot of the changes we made all came from within side right so everyone really rallied to be like hey here the things were good at then we want to get great at and that sort of been kind of the big focus and we have really strong presence in in in the Carolinas all over the Northeast California Texas and so we're gonna really look to kind of connect all those geographies together to have one national you know kind of powerhouse player across the country all right Jim Sullivan thank you so much for the updates congratulations on the progress and look forward to watching the continued growth of NW thank great to be here all right and lots more coverage here as always on the cube net on to minimun and thank you for watching the Q

(dramatic music) >> Narrator: Live from Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. It's theCube. Covering IBM Chief Data Officer Strategy Summit Spring 2017. Brought to you by IBM. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frank here with theCube. We are wrapping up day one at the IBM CEO Strategy Summit Spring 2017 here at the Fisherman's Wharf Hyatt. A new venue for us, never been here. It's kind of a cool venue. Joined by Peter Burris, Chief Research Officer from Wikibon, and we're excited to have practitioners. We love getting practitioners on. So we're joined by this segment by Bruce Tyler. He's a VP Data Analytics for IBM Global Business Services. Bruce, nice to see you. >> Thank you. >> And he's brought along Fawad Butt, the Chief Data Governance Officer for Kaiser Permanente. Welcome. >> Thank you, thank you. >> So Kaiser Permanente. Regulated industry, health care, a lot of complex medical issues, medical devices, electronic health records, insurance. You are in a data cornucopia, I guess. >> It's data heaven all the way. So as you mentioned, Kaiser is a vertically integrated organization, Kaiser Permanente is. And as such the opportunity for us is the fact that we have access to a tremendous amount of data. So we sell insurance, we run hospitals, medical practices, pharmacies, research labs, you name it. So it's an end to end healthcare system that generates a tremendous amount of dataset. And for us the real opportunity is to be able to figure out all the data we have and the best uses for it. >> I guess I never really thought of it from the vertical stack perspective. I used to think it was just the hospital, but the fact that you have all those layers of the cake, if you will, and can operate within them, trade data within them, and it gives you a lot of kind of classic vertical stack integration. That fits. >> Very much so. And I didn't give you the whole stack. I mean, we're actually building a medical school in Southern California. We have a residency program in addition to everything else we've talked about. But yeah, the vertical stack does provide us access to data and assets related to data that are quite unique. On the one side, it's a great opportunity. On the other side, it has to be all managed and protected and served in the best interest of our patrons and members. >> Jeff: Right, right. And just the whole electronic health records by themselves that people want access to that, they want to take them with. But then there's all kinds of scary regulations around access to that data. >> So the portability, I think what you're talking about is the medical record portability, which is becoming a really new construct in the industry because people want to be able to move from practitioner to practitioner and have that access to records. There are some regulation that provide cover at a national scale but a lot of this also is impacted by the states that you're operating in. So there's a lot of opportunities where I can tell some of the regulation in this space over time and I think that will, then we'll see a lot more adoption in terms of these portability standards which tend to be a little one off right now. >> Right, right. So I guess the obvious question is how the heck do you prioritize? (laughter) You got a lot of things going on. >> You know, I think it's really the standard blocking/tackling sort of situation, right? So one of the things that we've done is taken a look at our holistic dataset end to end and broken it down into pieces. How do you solve this big problem? You solve it by piecing it out a little bit. So what we've done is that we've put our critical dataset into a set of what we call data domains. Patient, member, providers, workers, HR, finance, you name it. And then that gives us the opportunity to not only just say how good is our data holistically but we can also go and say how good is our patient data versus member data versus provider data versus HR data. And then not only just know how good it is but it also gives us the opportunity to sort of say, "Hey, there's no conceivable way we can invest "in all 20 of these areas at any given point." So what's the priority that aligns with business objectives and goals? If you think about corporate strategy in general, it's based on customers and demand and availability and opportunities but now we're adding one more tool set and giving that to our executives. As they're making decisions on investments in longer term, and this isn't just KP, it's happening across industries, is that the data folks are bringing another lens to the table, which is to say what dataset do we want to invest in over the course of the next five years? If you had to choose between 20, what are the three that you prioritize first versus the other. So I think it's another lever, it's another mechanism to prioritize your strategy and your investments associated with that. >> But you're specifically focused on governance. >> Fawad: I am. >> In the health care industry, software for example is governed by a different set of rules as softwares in other areas. Data is governed by a different set of rules than data is governed in most other industries. >> Fawad: Correct. >> Finance has its own set of things and then some others. What does data governance mean at KP? Which is a great company by the way. A Bay Area company. >> Absolutely. >> What does it mean to KP? >> It's a great question, first of all. Every data governance program has to be independent and unique because it should be trying to solve for a set of things that are relevant in that context. For us at KP, there are a few drivers. So first is, as you mentioned, regulation. There's increased regulation. There's increased regulatory scrutiny in pressure. Some things that have happened in financial services over the last eight or ten years are starting to come and trickle in to the healthcare space. So there's that. There's also a changing environment in terms of how, at least from an insurance standpoint, how people acquire health insurance. It used to be that your employer provided a lot of that, those services and those insurances. Now you have private marketplaces where a lot of people are buying their own insurance. And you're going from a B2B construct to a B2C construct in certain ways. And these folks are walking around with their Android phones or their iPhones and they're used to accessing all sorts of information. So that's the customer experience that you to to deliver to them. So there's this digital transformation that's happening that's driving some of the need around governance. The other areas that I think are front and center for us are obviously privacy and security. So we're custodians of a lot of datasets that relate to patients' health information and their personal information. And that's a great responsibility and I think from a governance standpoint that's one of the key drivers that define our focus areas in the governance space. There are other things that are happening. There's obviously our mission within the organization which is to deliver the highest coverage and care at the lowest cost. So there's the ability for us to leverage our data and govern our data in a way which supports those two mission statements, but the bigger challenge in nuts and bolts terms for organizations like ours, which are vertically integrated, is around understanding and taking stock of the entire dataset first. Two, protecting it and making sure that all the defenses are in place. But then three, figuring out the right purposes to use this, to use the data. So data production is great but data consumption is where a lot of the value gets captured. So for us some of the things that data governance facilitates above all is what data gets shared for what purposes and how. Those are things that an organization of our size deliver a tremendous amount of value both on the offensive and the defensive side. >> So in our research we've discovered that there are a lot of big data functions or analytic functions that fail because they started with the idea of setting up the infrastructure, creating a place to put the data. Then they never actually got to the use case or when they did get to the use case they didn't know what to do next. And what a surprise. No returns, lot of costs, boom. >> Yep. >> The companies that tend to start with the use case independently individual technologies actually have a clear path and then the challenge is to accrete knowledge, >> Yes. >> accrete experience and turn it into knowledge. So from a governance standpoint, what role do you play at KP to make sure that people stay focused in use cases, that the lessons you learn about pursuing those use cases then turn to a general business capability in KP. >> I mean, again, I think you hit it right on the head. Data governance, data quality, data management, they're all great words, right? But what do they support in terms of the outcomes? So from our standpoint, we have a tremendous amount of use cases that if we weren't careful, we would sort of be scatterbrained around. You can't solve for everything all at once. So you have to find the first set of key use cases that you were trying to solve for. For us, privacy and security is a big part of that. To be able to, there's a regulatory pressure there so in some cases if you lose a patient record, it may end up costing you $250,000 for a record. So I think it's clear and critical for us to be able to continue to support that function in an outstanding way. The second thing is agility. So for us one of the things that we're trying to do with governance and data management in general, is to increase our agility. If you think about it, a lot of companies go on these transformation journeys. Whether it's transforming HR or trying to transform their finance functions or their business in general, and that requires transforming their systems. A lot of that work, people don't realize, is supported and around data. It's about integrating your old data with the new business processes that you're putting out. And if you don't have that governance or that data management function in place to be able to support that from the beginning or have some maturity in place, a lot of those activities end up costing you a lot more, taking a lot longer, having a lower success rate. So for us delivering value by creating additional agility for a set of activities that as an organization, we have committed to, is one for of core use cases. So we're doing a transformation. We're doing some transformation around HR. That's an area where we're making a lot of investments from a data governance standpoint to be able to support that as well as inpatient care and membership management. >> Great, great lessons. Really good feedback for fellow practitioners. Bruce, I want to get your perspective. You're kind of sitting on the other side of the table. As you look at the experience at Kaiser Permanente, how does this equate with what you're seeing with some of your other customers, is this leading edge or? >> Clearly on point. In fact, we were talking about this before we came up and I'm not saying that you guys led, we led the witness here but really how do you master around the foundational aspects around the data, because at the end of the day it's always about the data. But then how do you start to drive the value out of that and go down that cognitive journey that's going to either increase value onto your insights or improve your business optimization? We've done a healthy business within IBM helping customers go through those transformation processes. I would say five years ago or even three years ago we would start big. Let's solve the data aspect of it. Let's build the foundational management processes around there so that it ensures that level of integrity and trusted data source that you need across an organization like KP because they're massive because of all the different types of business entities that they have. So those transformation initiatives, they delivered but it was more from an IT perspective so the business partners that really need to adopt and are going to get the value out of that were kind of in a waiting game until that came about. So what we're seeing now is looking at things around from a use case-driven approach. Let's start small. So whether you're looking at trying to do something within your call center and looking at how to improve automation and insights in that spec, build a proof of value point around a subset of the data, prove that value, and those things can typically go from 10 to 12 weeks, and once you've demonstrated that, now how do can you scale? But you're doing it under your core foundational aspects around the architecture, how you're going to be able to sustain and maintain and govern the data that you have out there. >> It's a really important lesson all three of you have mentioned now. That old method of let's just get all the infrastructure in place is really not a path to success. You getting hung up, spend a lot of money, people get pissed off and oh by the way, today your competitors are transforming right around you while you're >> Unless they're also putting >> tying your shoes. >> infrastructure. >> Unless they're also >> That's right. (laughter) >> tying their shoes too. >> Build it and they will come sounds great, but in the data space, it's a change management function. One of my favorite lines that I use these days is data management is a team sport. So this isn't about IT, or this isn't just about business, and can you can't call business one monolith. So it's about the various stakeholders and their needs and your ability to satisfy them to the changes you're about to implement. And I think that gets lost a lot of times. It turns into a technical conversation around just capability development versus actually solving and solutioning for that business problem set that are at hand. >> Jeff: Yeah. >> Peter: But you got to do both, right? >> You have to. >> Bruce: Absolutely, yeah. >> Can I ask you, do we have time for another couple of questions? >> Absolutely. >> So really quickly, Fawad, do you have staff? >> Fawad: I do. >> Tell us about the people on your staff, where they came from, what you're looking for. >> So one of the core components of data governance program are stewards, data stewards. So to me, there are multiple dimensions to what stewards, what skills they should have. So for stewards, I'm looking for somebody that has some sort of data background. They would come from design, they would come from architecture, they would come from development. It doesn't really matter as long as they have some understanding. >> As long as you know what a data structure is and how you do data monitoring. >> Absolutely. The second aspect is that they have to have an understanding of what influence means. Be able to influence outcomes, to be able to influence conversations and discussions way above their pay grade, so to be able to punch above your weight so to speak in the influence game. And that's a science. That's a very, very definitive science. >> Yeah, we've heard many times today that politics is an absolute crucial game you have to play. >> It is part of the game and if you're not accounting for it, it's going to hit you in the face when you least expect it. >> Right. >> And the third thing is, I look for people that have some sort of an execution background. So ability to execute. It's great to be able to know data and understand data and go out and influence people and get them to agree with you, but then you have to deliver. So you have to be able to deliver against that. So those are the dimensions I look at typically when I'm looking at talent as it relates particularly to stewardship talent. In terms of where I find it, I try to find it within the organization because if I do find it within the organization, it gives me that organizational understanding and those relationship portfolios that people bring to the table which tend to be part of that influence-building process. I can teach people data, I can teach them some execution, I can't teach them how to do influence management. That just has to-- >> You can't teach them to social network. >> Fawad: (laughing) That's exactly right. >> Are they like are the frustrated individuals that have been seen the data that they're like (screams) this is-- >> They come from a lot of different backgrounds. So I have a steward that is an attorney, is a lawyer. She comes from that background. I have a steward that used to be a data modeler. I have a steward that used to run compliance function within HR. I have a steward that comes from a strong IT background. So it's not one formula. It's a combination of skills and everybody's going to have a different set of strengths and weaknesses and as long as you can balance those out. >> So people who had an operational role, but now are more in an execution setup role. >> Fawad: Yeah, very much so. >> They probably have a common theme, though, across them that they understand the data, they understand the value of it, and they're able to build consensus to make an action. >> Fawad: That's correct. >> That's great. That's perfect close. They understand it and they can influence, and they can get to action. Pretty much sums it up, I think so. All right. >> Bruce: All right thank you. >> Well, thanks a lot, Bruce and Fawad for stopping by. Great story. Love all the commercials on the Warriors, I'm a big fan and watch KNBR. (laughter) But really a cool story and thanks for sharing it and continued success. >> Thank you for the opportunity. >> Absolutely. All right, with Peter Burris, I'm Jeff Frank. You're watching theCube from the IBM Chief Data Officer Strategy Summit Spring 2017 from Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco. We'll be right back after this short break. Thanks for watching. (electronic music)