>> From Orlando Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2018 brought to you by NetApp. >> Hi, welcome to theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend. We are in Orlando at SAPPHIRE NOW 2018. We're in Vanetta booth talking to all sorts of guests and we're welcoming to theCUBE for the first time, Anand Chellam at KPIT, the Global Leader for SAP at KPIT. Welcome to theCUBE Anand. >> Thank you, thank you so much for having me here. >> So you have been working with SAP in some capacity for twenty years or so. You've no doubt seen a lot of transformation that SAP has undergone, since then. You're now with KPIT, who was just named yesterday a Hybris America Service Delivery Partner of the Year. Congratulations. Talk to us about one, the evolution that you've seen at SAP and two, how that excites you being on the the KPIT partner site. >> Absolutely, absolutely. It's been interesting. This is my 20th Sapphire, so you know it's been a long journey, and while today in the keynote while watching some of the demos, it goes back to, we saw a demo by Hasso Plattner when they launched mysap.com in Philadelphia. There was a big storm and there was a lot of notion that is SAP going back because internet was new and SAP was not in the bandwagon and SAP was trying to prove themselves that no they are, and they are an internet friendly software and there's a lot of debate whether that's going to be transformed or not, but looking at today, they've done a phenomenal job. I really think the last 10 years, the 50 billion dollar investments, which SAP has done through acquisitions, I feel it's been very rewarding to a lot of our customers, our partners and it's really truly the next generation software, which all of us can look forward to to get the most value. So I'm personally very excited to see how SAP has really looked ahead and done these acquisitions, and more importantly integrating them. I think one of the keys at least in the ecosystem I've seen companies, they acquire a lot of software, but the biggest challenge is integrating them and making them seamless to the customers, and I think a lot of credit goes to SAP for being able to have a plan and integrate that, so it's very seamless. So net-net I'm very excited about what's ahead of us. >> Tell us about KPIT, what do you guys do and then what do you do specifically with SAP? >> We're in Sapphire and KPIT's theme this year is elevate IT, elevate IT or elevate IT. And it's basically elevating to the next level at every level, whether it's from front office to back office, whether it's integrating the connected devices, whether it's building some intelligent automation in the ERP, whether it is adopting and rolling out a personalized cloud model. All of it we are in, and we're very fortunate to being able to you know one is obviously, we planned this. We had a planned strategy on which are the focus areas we're very focused. S/4, we are one of the leaders in the S/4. We have over 120 HANA implementations which is pretty sizeable. If you see there is gonna be some press releases coming out, that has been some piracy where we are the leaders in S/4. And we're excited to see how much of that automation is going to come into the picture. So S/4 is a big area of growth for us. Connected devices is because we're a very strong engineering firm, so it comes very naturally how those two, engineering and IT come together and that comes along very well. In Hybris as you said thank you again we were very excited to get the delivery partner of the year for Americas, which is a pretty amazing accomplishment given you know the last four years our focus has been, but I think what's more exciting for us is the co-innovation we're doing with our customers. As an example you know we are co-innovating building the dealership portals for a lot of their dealers for their customers and see how that's integrating well. The other aspect is CPQ. Big in configuring products and how they can one, bring it to market and two, position that so that their customers are able to configure their products, so we're able to doing a lot of that. We are uberizing service to see on an on demand model how is it that they can provide. So lots of activity around that area as well. >> Anand talk to us, 20 years it's a long time to have observed and participated in the SAP ecosystem. I think it would be fair to say that 20 years ago the conversation in a typical enterprise would be you know what, we're waiting on SAP, whether it's some innovation, practically some batch foul process to end to now we're in a market that SAP is driving business. Can you talk to us about the importance of the relationship of this trifecta of SAP, NetApp, KPIT, how do you guys bring this new business capability? What's the critical components of you bringing this new critical capability to customers, where you can now say that innovations that KPIT, whether it's Hybris or S/4 coupled with NetApp is able to bring innovation to digital transformation. >> Excellent, good point. I think we're not, I'm stating the obvious. There has been so much changes happening in the IT world that it's very important I believe to coexist with partners, and that's where I see the SAP, NetApp, KPIT partnership is a very critical one right, because all of them bring such critical components to bear that we really can use the software, the infrastructure, the disaster recovery the implementation services and the IP, which brings to the table, bundle it together to see some very fast outcomes. I'll give you an example. We just went live with an S/4 implementation. And day one, day one we had a 40% increase in order entry, which is phenomenal so the point being 20 years back that would be unheard of. It would be like oh if we go live and we still can (all talking) were great, so the velocity aspect has increased tremendously. That comes through all these partnership, the underlying infrastructure, which supports the software and the people and the processes, which come into bear. So it's very important that the trifecta effect is seen in outcomes which customers really benefit from. >> Who are you talking to when you guys are going in together as this partnership that you just articulated. Who are you talking to? I mean because the C suite has has shifted so much right? I was reading from the CMO council that 67% of marketing execs rank marketing and commerce technology is critical to their overall performance. We've got the chief digital officer who have to drive cultural change, the CIO who needs to be bimodal. When you guys are talking with customers, what are are those conversations like? What's driving the innovation that KPIT needs to deliver for these customers? >> Very good point. So we've started adopting some of the newer areas to see some of the benefits, which customers are looking for. As an example, one of our customers who make packaging machines, they wanted to see how they can overall reduce their service costs by 20% and how they can implement, an IOT based solution on Leonardo Connected Goods to help reduce and build a new business model, so what in this new age it's just not about implementing a software. It's about how does it drive efficiency by reducing cost, but more importantly how does it spur and build new business models, so it's no longer restricted to an IT solution. I think in this digital era, it's more important how does how does it look differently, how are the models which we never thought about before are being brought in and we were part of the Medallion select group of Leonardo partners and we're very proud to see how that grows. >> What excites you about that because I just saw that announcement come out yesterday. Tell us a little bit about the KPIT's SAP Leonardo innovation portfolio and what you're delivering or will be delivering to customers with respect to that? >> We're focusing in many areas, but the couple which come to mind is Connected Goods. This is an example where we talk about how we reduce the overall service cost by 20% right by just implementing something around that lines. We're also doing a lot of work on the predictive maintenance side of things, where being able to predict failures, before it happens to reduce the downtime and increase the overall productivity, where KPIT is big in automotive and the vehicle insights are something, which we are working with closely to build some of those outcome based models, which I think will be very much beneficial to lot of the customers we have being seeing. >> So if we were live, John Fourier would be DM'ing us and saying this is a perfect opportunity to ask about blockchain in general, so let's not jump on a blockchain bandwagon. Let's talk about other enabling applications including blockchain. As you look out into the next few years, how important is SAP becoming a true platform company that embraces technology such as blockchain? Or they're reaching out to Internet of Things and manufacturing companies, the solutions, other supply chain integration points, how important is SAP's participation in the larger ecosystem and technology? How important is that to the overall success of this partnership? >> You know I think the concept of intelligent enterprise is truly evolving in SAP. What it's helping I think a lot of customers do is it's connecting the dots between their customer experiences, the 360-degree view of their customers. It's looking at connected devices where there's so many devices out there, how do we bring that to the table. it's building a lot of intelligent automation. It's building connected factories so that the production efficiency is where I think there's a lot of emphasis in the next few years going to happen and of course supply chain right, where there has been the case. I think what it's bringing it all together to really have an intelligent enterprise where using whether it's blockchain, using machine learning, to be able to bring that together, because I think in isolation there are benefits, but I think the power of all of this is how do we bring it together in a very seamless manner, and that's what's very exciting. >> When they announced that this morning speaking of integration that C/4 HANA, they talked about that. I thought they did a good job of showing integrations and talking about that, but if I kind of distill that down to one of the things that their CEO has been really vocal about it's got to modernize Legacy CRM and connect, synchronize the supply chain with the demand chain. With what they're doing this momentum that the SAP is carrying through, how do you see that as a differentiator for KPIT's business to be a partner with SAP? >> Absolutely, you know, fortunately for us we've been very strong in the three-generation CRMs. I know we are now talking about the fourth generation CRM, which is C4/HANA. But having lived through the journey of the three generations, I think KPIT has a very unique proposition in the market place. We know very importantly what not to do, what are the things which did not work. I think that's a very important aspect, which I think SAP themselves have learned and that's probably why they're talking about the fourth generation CRM. And I think we are in a very unique position and that's the example. We have implemented this for a long time, and I see that with their integration what they've done with some of the other softwares like Callidus, this is gonna be a complete portfolio of solutions, which they can offer, which I think KPIT is in a very unique position, whether it's cloud for service, cloud for sales, Hybris Commerce, the Callidus, commissions. We're very well positioned to be able to provide all of this to our customers, so the portfolio is a lot more enriched, and I think it's going to be very rewarding. >> What are some of the things in terms of all those announcements that you're looking forward to at Sapphire this year in terms of I can imagine there's a wealth of, I think there's a thousand SAP sessions alone, from an education perspective? Is your team here ready to, you said your theme was Elevate IT? >> Yes. >> What are some of the things that you're excited to learn how to do for those boots on the ground? >> I think one of the areas we are excited about is we're seeing the S/4 adoption going up. I think we're very excited about that. >> I think you said 1800 customers. >> Yes and there's lots... >> And counting. >> Lot's to go but I think yeah. >> Lot of opportunity here. >> Exactly, so I think that's one we want to make sure and then I think the intelligent Enterprise. I think we're very excited about that, along with the data hub. I know it's early days, but we'll closely be watching that because data is going to be a critical aspect for all of this to be successful. So I think we're right on very excited to see those three, four areas and I think we're well positioned to really be able to take this momentum to the next level. >> So you said this was your 20th Sapphire. I think when I was doing some research on this event, it looks like they had done this for about 25 years. Wow, so do you remember back 20 years ago like how many people were at Sapphire back then compared to the... >> Absolutely. >> 20 some thousand that are just here physically this week. >> Yeah I still remember I think it was '99 Sapphire in Las Vegas, that was the only Sapphire happened Vegas. It's easier for me. I don't know why they don't do that. >> Really? >> Yeah, so there I was sitting and one of the big areas we were very excited was, if I was able to enter sales order in HP Jornada. Believe it or not, it was one of the handheld devices. >> I remember that. >> And we were very excited to see oh we are able to enter an order in an HP Jornada. And today we're talking about virtual reality where we are able to look at stuff, change the colors, and be able to order just looking at what you like. >> Transparently. >> Yeah it is unbelievable the change, so to your point, lots have changed, all the way around, whether it's technology, whether it's expectations, whether it's the number of people, number of sessions, and you know we ourselves have got about 12 sessions, customer sessions in this Sapphire. We used to have two or three at the most. >> Wow there's customer centers here and theaters. >> Yes absolutely. >> So another 20-year perspective and looking towards the future. One of the great things about SAP is, also one of the challenges. 46 years of technology and moving customers along, SAP HANA, no question it changes businesses. The stat you gave earlier 40% more orders in one single day, day one. However, what are some of the major barriers that customers face with Legacy infrastructure and moving into taking advantage of S/4 HANA? Is it customization of environments that they did? Is that business processes? Like what's the top one or two challenges customers are facing? >> Very, very good point actually. I'm glad you brought this up. We've been at this for four years. In fact one of the first HANA migrations was done by KPIT at Varian Medical, one of the very early days. So from my perspective, the customers are looking to reduce risk, because they've been working on SAP for such a long time. They built it, it's evolved, it's customized. So how do we reduce risk? In fact KPIT has built a monetization tool, which automatically correct codes, so that it takes away, reduce the risks and reduces the time. So that's one aspect is, customers are very worried about the risks aspect. Second is of course the cost, because they don't want to be spending time in just implementing another system. They want to take leverage about the intelligence, which can built in the different processes, the advantage, so they do want to make sure that that aspect is there, but I think the biggest aspect is, they are looking for the business nuggets. You know what we talked about can this propel them into different business models. Can this be relevant for the next 20 years? Because this is a big investment and that's one of the big roadmap discussions we are having with a lot of our customers. >> Relevance, you know, you really hit the nail on the head. Customers have to be relevant. They have to be able to compete and become intelligent in order to do that. Well and I wish we had more time, but we're out of time. Thank you so much for joining us on theCUBE, and again congratulations on the award, the service delivery partner of the year for Hybris that KPIT has won. >> Thank you, thank you so much. Thanks for getting me here. >> Our pleasure. We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend, and we are at Sapphire Now 2018. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> From Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering SAP Sapphire Now 2018, brought to you by NetApp. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, I am Lisa Martin, with Keith Townsend. We have been here all day at SAP Sapphire 2018. Keith, this venue in Orlando is so huge. It's the equivalent of 16 American football fields. >> Yeah, probably should not have worn a pair of new shoes. >> No, but you did close your rings, so it's a trade-off, right? >> It's a trade-off, yeah. >> So, the keynote this morning started out with a bang. Bill McDermott, the CEO of SAP, is probably the most energetic, evangelical, C-level I've ever seen on stage. You really could feel the excitement, the momentum. They also followed that with some great announcements. You know, they've been saying for awhile, being pretty bullish about wanting to not just disrupt the Sierra market, but wanting to become one of the world's most valuable brands. They wanna be up there with the Apples, and the Googles, and Coca-Cola and Mercedes-Benz, who all have products that we all see, and touch, and feel, and buy. And they announced that the brands e-rankings just came out the other day, that they're number 17, up four spots from last year. So, their momentum is, they're really putting their money where their mouth is. >> Yeah, so SAP is the cash register of the world. 70% of the world's transactions go through SAP, but most of us don't see it. So, it's amazing to see that they're ranked number 17 on those brands that are very, you know, if you told somebody you worked for SAP, they'd be like, oh, okay, I think I might have heard of that. >> Right. >> Or, I've heard that that was the reason why manufacturing is down, because the SAP system was down. So, it is a bold statement to say that you're gonna go from that, to a household name. Interestingly enough, part of that is becoming an ecosystem. So, becoming a platform. What we've heard today was a lot of talk about how SAP is transforming from a product company. You know, a point-of-sale system is one thing, but to say that you've built a ecosystem, and a platform around that, is the goal that I think I heard today from the stage floor. >> And you're right, you talk about, you know, them becoming a household name, with a product that's basically invisible to most people who probably use it. They have amassed 390,000 customers in 46 years. They've been around for a long time. This event, though, is massive. The partner area alone is huge. There's probably more than 20,000 people not just that are here, in Orlando, but, he said, Bill McDermott, a million people engaging with SAP Sapphire via the online experience. That's enormous. But to your point, it's all really fundamentally due to the partnerships, the systems integrators, the technology partners and more who have helped them on their transformation. >> Yeah, we had KPIT on, they said the guest has been on 20 Sapphires for 20 years, the event has gone on for 25 years in some form. He remembered, initially, they might have had one or two sessions. They have 12, KPIT has 12 sessions this year at the Sapphire 2018. There's a huge ecosystem of partners, here on the show floor. Over 500, I think, sessions in general. We had the VP of Community for S/4. They have 1,000 how-to videos on how to just do basic things in S/4. Huge community, huge event. SAP is starting to make end rolls and becoming, again, not just a products company, but an ecosystem company, I think. Sapphire in Orlando is a great example of how they're expanding the brand. >> Yes, and in fact, on the brand part, you know, that's one of the things that their CMO, Alicia Tillman, who was on main stage this morning, that's something that I've heard her talk about before. She's been the CMO for about nine months now, and she said, you know, and marketers will know, campaigns and messaging will change every quarter, six months, and that is fine. It's the brand narrative that they really started to work on at SAP. So, you're seeing this "Best-run companies run on SAP", it's sharing the value of what SAP can deliver with their partner ecosystem, in terms of how it's helping customers transform their businesses, transform industries, save lives. They've done a very focused job on showing how this invisible technology is really revolutionizing the world. They're now going, you know, full-force, embedding A.I., and really being quite bold, they're saying. I loved what Bill McDermott had on the slide this morning, of augmented intelligence. And there's always a lot of concern with A.I, right? Jobs being replaced. And he talked about what he, and some of the other world leaders, were talking about. And I liked augmented intelligence, to augment humanity, this connection of humans and machines working together. They're really being quite bold, and focused, in that area. I'm just curious what your take was from an advanced analytics A.I. perspective. >> So, there's a lot of talk around advanced A.I. analytics. At the end of the day, it's about actual business results. We're here in the booth of NetApp, who has done a great job, frankly, of transforming their image from a storage company in the middle of a transformation to being known as a data-driven company. So, NetApp has gone through a similar change that SAP is looking to do, from a brand perspective. Reasonably enough, we had the CIO, Bill, from NetApp, that talked about that transformation, and how data is a key part of their own transformation, internally. And, how SAP could probably hold NetApp up as a great example of a company that's using the predecessor to C/4HANA, which was just announced, on the staged hypers of taking data, analyzing that data, applying A.I, machine learning, more like machine learning in reality. Machine learning to that data, and then getting insights, so that humans can make better decisions. >> Right. You know, on that front, one of the themes I heard today, Keith, from not just Bill Miller, the CIO of NetApp, who was on here with us earlier, but some of their other partners, NetApp and SAP's partners, all talk about their own transformations, internally, as essential for them to become intelligent enterprises, which is a lot of what SAP's talking about. But I also thought that was quite valuable, from an external perspective, to hear NetApp talk so candidly about their transformation, and share that with their customers who are in similar positions. I think, when vendors will, say, drink their own champagne, and there's real proof there in the pudding. I think that's tremendously valuable for these brands. And we've just heard that kind of consistently throughout the day today, of companies that are showing how they're transforming to then help their customers also transform. >> So, one of the things that we like to ask on theCUBE is not just about current customer base, but, what new customers are you attracting? So, one of the interesting conversations is one of the last ones we had with WorkSpan, and how they're a small company, and they started out the gate with SAP, and how the brand has gone beyond this, oh, this is a manufacturing, supply chain, you must be a Fortune 500 company to even consider rolling it out to. You know what? We're a brand new company, providing a data-driven product, and out of the gate, we're selecting a S/4HANA and the platform to create this new product that's consumed by not necessarily technologists, that powers an alliance platform to find and curate business alliances. I thought that was an extremely interesting interview that shows the power of expanding beyond just a focus on traditional enterprise, but the power of data. And once you've become a platform, how you can power your partner ecosystem. >> I thought that was a great example, as well, of a company that's only been in business for three years, less than four years. How they saw this gap in the market, where they said, you know, we're surrounded by alliance partners of SAP's in this 16 football fields location that we're in. And WorkSpan found that 60 to 75% of announced alliances fail. Huge opportunity for them to then get in from a systematic perspective and align, you know, two companies' marketing automation systems, for example, and sales automation systems. And they really saw this big opportunity to, like you were saying, create an entirely new product, and probably create a new market as a result. I thought that was a really modern example of an idea that saw a huge gap, and can be transformative. I asked Ahmed, after we stopped rolling the cameras, all right, so you found 60 to 75% of these announced alliances fail, typically. What does WorkSpan think you can do to bring that number down? And he said, within two years, we wanna get that down to about 30%. >> Wow. That is an amazing stat. So, let's look at the companies that are digitally transforming. So we had two guests that I want to highlight, one with Mike McGivney from SAP SuccessFactors, which is SAP's people-focused cloud, and then Wolfgang Hopfes, the head of SAP Business for EMEA. And they're on a unique challenge. SAP has been around for 46 years, and in IT years, that's like, you know, 1,000. So, there's a lot of technical debt, that companies are now paying for. You know, back in the nineties, early 2000s, customizing SAP was all the rage. Now, customers are faced with, they have to digitally transform their organizations, how do they do so? Well, it's not so easy to move from a customized SAP to S/4. Bill trumpeted the numbers of 1,800 SAP HANA customers, which is great, well over a billion dollars in sales for an in-memory database. However, SAP has over 300,000 customers. So there's a lot of opportunity, but a lot of challenge. So, the ecosystem of partners, Fujitsu, NetApp, other infrastructure companies looking to help simplify the infrastructure so that technologists within these customer organizations can focus on the higher stack of those larger business challenges of basically pulling apart what they've built. Bill from NetApp shared how difficult their transformation was from their CRM to >> Hypers? >> Hypers. He called it painful, a painful six months. And what we saw today, I think, was a reality check. A lot of enterprises have a lot of pain ahead of them. >> Well, it's pain in a number of areas, and one of them is cultural. And I really thought, you know, you say, SAP being 46 years old is like, 1,000 in IT, or dog years. They're like the Gandalf of IT, right? But one of the things that I found quite remarkable is 46 year-old history, 390,000 customers. But clearly, they have been able to evolve their culture to be able to support what their customers need, and go from just being a supply chain procurement-focused type of business. And I thought that was really quite compelling, to see how they must have had to transform their culture, so that they can help businesses transform. They make it look easy, with the messaging and the momentum, but that was something that for a company that's an incumbent like that, is a bit of, you might say, even a model for how to do that right. >> Yeah, we talked to Joe Lazar, he's the SAP VP of Global Technology Partners. He talked about how SAP likes to be pushed to be a little uncomfortable by their partners, and we asked him the tough questions. You know, there's been tweets and there's been announcements from all the ACI vendors. I've talked to customer after customer that says, you know what, S/4HANA on HCI is what we want. A very quotable comment that he made was, we're not doing S/4 on HANA because we want to, we're doing S/4 on HANA because customers demand it. So, SAP is definitely listening to customer demand, S/4 on HANA is one of those things. You know, he tried to stay away from the bad word of certified on 4HANA, and validated, and focused on solutions, but SAP has a little ways to go. And that's kind of a, you talk to any HCI customer, validated and certified 4HANA is a bad word today, but SAP understands it and they're moving to certify the platform for HCI, so I thought that was a great example of them listening to customers and continuing to transform over the years. >> You're absolutely right. In fact, you know, if you look up digital transformation, one of the first pillars that you're gonna see is you gotta become customer-centric. And we really heard that a lot today. Even NetApp, when you were talking with Bill Miller about ONTAP in the cloud, going it's okay guys, maybe we have to listen to our customers. If we don't we won't be in business. That's a hallmark of an enterprise that is digitally transforming. >> Yeah, I'd argue that Dave Hitts was the one who forced that, that kind of cultural change. You had to bring in the founder to talk to the engineers and that had very engineer-driven thinking And I think Dave was very direct, like you know, we have to make the change or we won't be in business. The pendulum has changed to cloud. The SAP, which is not by any stretch of the mind, was never designed to run in the cloud, but they're adopting the technology for what customers are demanding. There's an AWS booth here, Fujitsu was the first one to say that, you know what, if customers need fail-fast environments, that's exactly where they should go, and put S/4 implementations, and then steady states should be moved to RMPRAM or private dating center or hosted solutions. So, the ecosystem seems to be embracing this change. >> Definitely. Anything that you're particularly looking forward to tomorrow for Day 2? >> You know what? I love talking to customers, so I'm looking forward to more customer conversations, talking about how is this being used? We haven't really talked a lot about Leonardo much. So, you know, IoT, A.I., how are these things that get a lot of press being perceived by actual customers? How are they being implemented? What's their true adoption rate? >> Awesome. Well, I look forward to hosting with you tomorrow, Keith. Thanks so much. >> I appreciate it. >> Thanks for watching. Keith and I have been at SAP Sapphire, bringing you some hopefully great informative content. From the NetApp booth, Lisa Martin for Keith Townsend. Thanks for watching.

(techno music) >> Announcer: It's the Cube, covering Sapphire Now 2017, brought to you by SAP Cloud Platform, and HANA Enterprise Cloud. >> Hey, welcome back to our exclusive SAP coverage here in our studio in Palo Alto, our 4,500 square foot studio. I'm John Furrier. Our three days, we're on third day, of Sapphire Now 2017 coverage. I'm on the phone with RJ Bibby, who's the SAP Global Alliance Manager for SAP. Handles the relationship. RJ, great to have you on the phone and thanks for calling in from Orlando, really appreciate it. >> RJ: You bet, John. Love the Cube. Love SiliconANGLE. We're great partners. It's been a great week and looking forward to talking to you about it. >> Tell us what's going on on the ground. First, give us the updates on day three. So, pretty much everyone's coming-- And always a great activities at night as well. So, SAP, a lot of business done during the day. They work hard. They play hard. But, day three, what's it like? What's settling in as the storylines for Sapphire 2017? >> RJ: Yeah, absolutely. So, you're starting to feel-- You've gone through about-- We're in our third tour. For the partner's community, we're in day four, cause we had the partner day. Last night was the big partner night. We actually NetApped with our partners with Cisco and KPIT did a private event at Universal Studios at the Jimmy Fallon Theme Park that was highly successful. What was great about today, was in the morning, we kicked off will Bill McDermott on stage with Kobe Bryant and Derek Jeter. And it was all about leadership and mentorship and experience in being in the business, whatever industry that you're in for so long and how you just stay creative, hungry, and passionate. And it was packed. One of the comments was they couldn't believe, on the day after the big party night of all the partners that you still have a lot of energy on the floor. Ultimately, it's still about data, which is great for our business that we can get into at NetApp. There's a lot of buzzword bingo going on here, John, all week, whether it's machine to machine, blocked chain, Cloud-- And at the end of it, it's still our customers who we've talked to a lot this week, and wow. What are we going to do with out data? How do we analyze it? And how do we improve that user experience based on all this data that we have? And I think that's one of the things that I see on the floor that's almost overwhelming with the amount of people, 30,000, all the partners. Just a lot of information. And lastly, I'll say, the good news with that is everybody is hungry for content. Whether it's a mini-theater, whether it's at one of the booths, interactions one-on-one, it's people are hungry for what is happening in the industry. And I think that's exciting for all of us. >> Well, we do our part and try and get as much coverage as possible, even if we are going to do it from Palo Alto. Question for you on NetApp. I mean, you guys have been-- The scuttlebutt in Silicon Valley is that NetApp is doing very well with the Hyperscale (mumbles). I know for a fact. I've interviewed the former CEO and others within NetApp. They were really on early with AWS. And obviously, AWS a big part of the announcement at Sapphire. So, you guys are kind of like getting these relationships with these key players. It's changed a little bit of the business model, or culture within NetApp. What's different about NetApp right now? With resect to some of the big players that you've had relationships with. It's not this new relationship with SAP. You guys have a deep relationship. What's changing as the CloudWave hits, as the DataWave hits? Those are the biggest waves hitting the world right now. How are you guys playing in that world? And share some insight there. >> RJ: Absolutely. Great question. 'Cause the world is going through digital transformation and so is NetApp. So, we are actually celebrating our 25th year as a company right now and we've been a traditional, global technology and data management company. And, the digital shift to Hybrid Cloud is where we're moving. So, specifically with partners like AWS, Microsoft and Azure, the Hyperscalers like CenturyLink, it's how we can help our customers really collect, transport, analyze, protect data, in whatever environment they want to hold their data. Whether it's On-Premises, if your in a Cloud, you can choose whatever Hyperscaler you want. You still have to deal with the data. And then, how do we manage it? How do we consume it? Where is dead data that needs to be taken out? So, data's the currency and with our data fabric methodology and tools from software, hardware, we're really able to help manage that complete life cycle, whether it's SAP, or any other type of environment we hold. So, the exciting thing for us, and the stock prices is showing that at an all time high, is what Bill McDermott said on Monday, in the keynote, or excuse me, Tuesday, "Data is the currency. "Our new mission statement is we're trying "to empower our customers to change the world with data." So, back to the buzzWord bingo comment I made earlier, we're still dealing with fact that we have all these great technologies: all these censors, machine-to-machine, On-Print to Cloud. At the heart of everything is the data and what you do with it. And I think that one of the things that NetApp does and the best in the world of, is we continually evolve digital transformations with the tools on how we deal with data. So, that's high level. >> How about the data dynamic? >> Data is the fundamental story, in my opinion. Cloud has been around, the Clouderati. We were part of that from the beginning. Now, Cloud is mainstream. Amazon stock prices looking like a hockey stick now, it's going straight up. But, that took years of development, right? I mean, you saw the Cloud formation coming, really, in the mid-2000s and then, really at 2008, -09, -10 was the foundational years and then the rest is history. Data's now going through the same thing. As people get over themselves and say, "Okay, big data's not a dupe. It's everything." IOT is certainly highlighting a lot of that. SAP has recognized that legacy systems have to move to a MultiCloud and certainly multi-vendor world in a whole new way. But, at the end of the day, you still got to store this stuff. So, that's your business. How are you keeping up with the moving train of data as is architecturally shifts in the marketplace? >> RJ: Great question. I think that we have some of the best minds in Silicon Valley. Again, been there 25 years. I think with the deep relationships we have with companies like SAP. On the front end, I think the one thing that we bring as a value to SAP is the consumption model, life exists. Through owning the data and the user experience, we're able to enable and accelerate the license consumption to the edge. Right from application in to the system. From an architectural standpoint, it still comes down to the thing that we are creating and blabs and launching around, like the data fabric, the tool system, really software. The software that can help from an analytical perspective affect the user experience. Everybody wants it live. And the other part is the data protection and the DR aspect of it. And I think that's another core competency that we're continuing to develop as a service for the customer. So, I hop I've answered your question. >> Yup. >> RJ: But if-- >> (mumbles) a bottom line then, why NetApps? Say I'm a customer. Okay, I get the SAP. Why should I go with you guys over new the Delium see powerhouse over there, or the White-Box Storage? >> RJ: At the end of the day, we are best at capitalizing the value of data in the Hybrid Cloud. Nobody can help collect, analyze, test, and do life-cycle management live like NetApp can. And that's the reason that we are going more upstream, selling like we say at EPC, always selling to the CXO. I think we're changing the landscape from a true storage company on the infrastructure side to a full end-to-end Hybrid Cloud data management portfolio company. And it's been proven by the acquisition of Salazar from bringing Slash in to the portfolio, our cloning, and snapshot capabilities. So, anywhere in the stack at any time during the day when you're looking live at your operations or your data that you can take live snapshots. Just so if there's a glitch from a data protection side, or there's some type of spike from a request on the ticketing side or demand side of your system. So, I think that's some of the things that we're differentiating. And that's the reason that the AWSs and the Azures and the SAPs are so excited about co-innovating together to again, improving the customer experience with their data. >> RJ, final question. What's the net-net? What's the bumper sticker for you this year at Sapphire 2017? What's the walk-away revelation? >> RJ: Well, I think from the SAP side, it's the revelation on the push of Leonardo. I think that SAP-- I'd like to see them continue to hone out the 'what' and the 'if' from partners with Leonardo from blotching in machine-to-machine and IOT. For us, it is the beautiful fact that now at the center of everything that SAP and the ecosystem is trying to do is around the data side of it and it's the actual currency. And the fact that we have kind of the leading-edge tools to enhance the customer experience with our platform for customers' and partners' data is really, really exciting for us. And we're excited. We're all psyched to be partnered with the Cube. And everything we do is in the Cloud. So, I'm here to help. >> Alright. >> RJ, thanks so much for takin' the time callin' in from Orlando. RJ Bibby, SAP Global Alliance Executive with NetApp. He runs the the relationship with NetApp. And again, it's been a long-term relationship. I remember takin' photos on my phone, way back in the day, years ago. So, not a new relationship and continued momentum. Congratulations and thanks for sharing the insight from Orlando. 'Preciate it. >> RJ: You bet. Thanks for the partnership. Have a great day. >> 'Kay, more coverage from the Cube in Palo Alto on SAP, Sapphire 2017 after this short break. Stay with us. (techno music)