>> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at the Twitter headquarters for Data Privacy Day. An interesting collection of people coming together here at Twitter to talk about privacy, the implications of privacy... And I can't help but think back to the classic Scott McNeely quote right, "Privacy is dead, get over it", and that was in 1999. Oh how the world has changed, most significantly obviously mobile phones with the release of the iPhone in 2007. So we're excited to really kind of have the spearhead of this event, Michael Kaiser. He's the executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance in from Washington D.C.. Michael, great to see you. >> Thanks for having us in. >> For the folks that aren't here, what is kind of the agenda today? What's kind of the purpose, the mission? Why are we having this day? >> Well Data Privacy Day actually comes to us from Europe, from the EU which created privacy as a human right back in 1981. We've been doing it here in the United States since around 2008. NCSA took over the effort in 2011. The goal here really is just help educate people, people and businesses as well, about the importance of respecting privacy, the importance of safeguarding information, people's personal data. And then really hopefully with an end goal of building a lot more trust in the ecosystem around the handling of personal data which is so vital to the way the internet works right now. >> Right, and it seems like obviously companies figured out the value of this data long before individuals did and there's a trade for service. You use Google Maps, you use a lot of these services but does the value exchange necessarily, is it equal? Is it at the right level? And that seems to be kind of the theme of some of these privacy conversations. You're giving up a lot more value than you're getting back in exchange for some of these services. >> Yeah, and we actually have a very simple way that we talk about that. We like to say that personal information is like money and that you should value it and protect it. And so, trying to encourage people and educate people to understand that their personal information does have value and there is an exchange that's going on. They should make sure that those transactions are ones that they're comfortable in terms of giving their information and what they get back. >> Right, which sounds great Michael but then you know you get the EULA, you know you sign up for these things and they don't really give you the option. You can kind of read it but who reads it? Who goes through? You check the box and you move on. And or you get this announcement, we changed our policy, we changed our policy, we changed our policy. So, I don't know if realistic is the right word but how do people kind of navigate that? Because, let's face it my friends told me about Uber, I want to get an UBER. I download UBER. I'm stuck in a rainy corner in D.C. and I hit go and here comes the car. I don't really dig into the meat. Is there an option? I mean there's not really, I opt for privacy one, two, three and I'm opting out of five, six, seven. >> Yeah, I think we're seeing a little bit more granular controls for people on some of these things now but I think that's what we'd advocate for more. When we talk to consumers they tell us mostly that they want to have better clarity about what's being collected about them, better clarity about how that information's being used, or if it's, how it's being shared. Equally importantly, if there are controls where are they, how easy are they to use, and making them more prominent so people can engage in sort of making the services tailored to their own sort of privacy profile. I think we'd like to see more of that for sure, more companies being a little more forthcoming. Yeah you have the big privacy policy that's a long complicated legal document but there may be other way to create interfaces with your customers that make some of the key pieces more apparent. >> And do you see a trend where, because you mentioned in some of the notes that we prepared that privacy is good for business and potentially is a competitive differentiator. Are you starting to see where people are surfacing privacy more brightly so that they can potentially gain the customer, gain respect of the customer, the business of the customer over potentially a rival that's got that buried down? Is that really a competitive lever that you see? >> Well I think you see some extremes. So you see some companies that say we don't collect any information about you at all so that's part of, out there, and I think they're marketing to people who have extreme concerns about this. But I also think we're seeing again some places where there are more higher profile ability to control some of this data right. Even in you know places like the mobile setting where sometimes you'll just get a little warning saying oh this is about to use your location, is that okay, or your location is turned off you need to turn it back on in order to use this particular app. And I think those kinds of interfaces with the user of the technology are really important going forward. We don't want people overwhelmed like every time you turn on your phone you're going to have to answer 17 things in order to get to do x, y, and z but making people more aware of how the apps are using the information they collect about you I think is actually good for business. I think actually sometimes consumers get confused because they'll see a whole list of permissions that need to be provided and they don't understand how those permissions apply to what the app or service is really going to do. >> Right, right. >> Yeah, that's an interesting one. I was at a, we were at Grace Hopper in October and one of the keynote speakers was talking about how mobile data has really changed this thing right because once you're on your mobile phone it uses all the capabilities that are native in the phone in terms of geolocation, accelerometer, etc. All these things that a lot of people probably didn't know were different on the mobile Facebook app than were on the desktop Facebook app. Let's face it, most this stuff is mobile these days, certainly with the younger kids. As you said, and that's an interesting tack, why do you need access to my context? Why do you need access to my pictures? Why do you need access to my location? And then the piece that I'm curious to get your opinion, will some of the value come back to the consumer in terms of I'm not just selling your stuff, I'm not monetizing it via ads, I'm going to give some of that back to you? >> Yeah, I think there's a couple things there. One quick point on the other issue there, without naming names I was looking at an app and it said it had to have access to my phone, and I'm like why would this app need access to my phone? And then I realized later well it needs access to my phone because if the phone rings it needs to turn itself off so I can answer the phone. But that wasn't apparent right? And so I think it can be confusing to people like maybe it's innocuous in some ways. Some ways it might not be but in that case it was like okay yeah because if the phone rings I'd rather answer my phone than be looking at the app. >> Right, can I read it or can I just see it. You know the degree of the access too is very confusing. >> Yeah and I think in terms of the other issues that you're raising here about how the value exchange on data, I think the internet of things is really going to play a big role in this because it's really... You know in the current world it's about you know data, delivering ads, those kinds of things, making the experience more customized. But in IoT where you're talking about wearables or fitness or those kinds of things, or thermostats in your home, your data really drives that. So in order for those devices to really work well they have to have data about you. And that's where I think customers will really have to give great thought to. You know is that a good value proposition, right? I mean, do I want to share my data about when I come and leave every day just so my thermostat you know can turn on and off. And I think those are you know can be conscience decisions about when you're implementing that kind of technology. >> Right, so there's another interesting tack I'd love to get your opinion on. You know we see Flo from the Progressive commercials advertising to stick the USB in your cigarette lighter and we'll give you cheaper rates because now we know if you stop at stop signs or not. What's funny to me is that phone already knows whether you stop at stop signs or not and it already knows that you take 18 trips to 7-Eleven on a Saturday afternoon and you're sitting on your couch the balance of the time. As that information that's there somehow gets exposed and potentially runs into say healthcare mandated requirement from the company that you must wear Fitbits so now we know you're spending too much time at the 7-Eleven and on your couch and how that impacts your health insurance and stuff. And that's going to crash right into HIPAA. It just seems like there's this huge kind of collision coming from you know I can provide better service to people at the good end of the scale, and say aggregated risk models, but then what happens to the poor people at the other end? >> Well, I think that's why you have to have opt in, right? I think you can't make these things mandatory necessarily. And I think people have to be extremely aware of when their data is being collected and how it's being used. And so, you know the example of like the car insurance, I mean they can only, really should only be able to access that data about where you're going if you sign up to do that right? And if they want to say to you, hey Michael we might give you a better rate if we can track your, you know driving habits for a couple of weeks then that should be my choice right to give that data. Maybe my rates might be impacted if I don't but I can make that choice myself and should be allowed to make that choice myself. >> So it's funny, the opt in and opt out, so right now from your point of view what do you see in terms of the percentage of kind of opt in opt out on these privacy issues? Where is it and where should it be? >> Well I would like to see some more granular controls for the consumer in general right. I would like to see... And I said a little bit earlier a lot more transparency and ease of access to what's being collected about you and what's being used. You know outside of the formal legal process, obviously you know companies have to follow the law. They have to comply. They have to be, you know write these long EULAs or privacy policies in order to really reflect what they're doing. But they should be talking to their customers and understanding what's the most important thing that you want to know about my service before you sign up for it. And help people understand that and navigate their way through it. And I think in a lot of cases consumers will click yeah let's do it but they should do that really knowingly. If opting in is you're opting in it should be done with true consent right. >> Okay, so before I let you go just share some best practices, tips and tricks, you know kind of at least the top level what people should be thinking about, what they should be doing. >> Yeah, so we really, you know in this kind of space we look at a couple things. One, personal informations like money value and protect it. That really means being thoughtful about what information you share, when you share it, who you share it with. Own your online presence, this is really important. Consumers have an active role in how they interact with the internet. Use the settings that are there right. Use the safety and security or privacy and security settings that are in the services that you have. And then, actually a lot of this is behavioral. What you share is really important yourself so share with care right. I mean be thoughtful about the kinds of information that you put out there about yourself. Be thoughtful about the kind of information that you put about your friends and family. Realize that every single one of us in this digital world is entrusted with personal information about people much more than we used to be in the past. We have that responsibility to safeguard what other people give to us and that should be the common goal around the internet. >> I think we have to have you at the bullying and harassment convention down the road. Great insight Michael and really appreciate it. Have a great day today. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of terrific content that comes out. And for people to get more information go to the National Cyber Security Alliance. Thanks for stopping by. >> Thank you for having us. >> Absolutely. He's Michael Kaiser. I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE, thanks for watching.

>>Okay, welcome back everyone to the Cube's live coverage here in Monaco for the MoCo crypto summit. I'm John fur. You're host of the cube. We got a great guest Dustin plant Boltz who is a crypto advisor, but also the crypto editor for Forbes Monaco here. Seeing the official event, the AAL event of the Monaco crypto summit in Monaco, your coverage area for Forbes, your MCing. Welcome to the >>Cube. Thank you for having me. And it's, it's always fun when I get to have an event in our backyard, cuz I get to hear what others know. And to me I'm very curious. Yeah. Always >>Learning. So you're on the MC on the stage here, you know, queue in the program online great program. So it's innovative event, inaugural event, great name by the way. Crypto summit and mono crypto >>Summit. Yeah, the MoCo crypto summit. >>That sounds like I want to attend every year. >>You're you're more than welcome to attend next year. >>Well, I hope so. Either way. I'm at the Al event with you. So gimme the take on what's on stage. What's been the program, like what's your observations going on here at the event today? >>So what we're starting to see globally is this digitization of things and the people that are part of the innovation side. And so that's what we've been able to see this morning. We're we're now at the break is what sort of companies are out there, the good ones and what are they building? Is this innovation? Is it even innovative and figuring out how they're gonna do it and the roadmaps to getting there from the metaverses to NFTs and even to decentralized finance. >>Yeah, it's the number one question I get is what's legit. What's not legit. And then you're starting to see the, the, the wheat and the shaft separating here and you know, something called crypto winter. But I don't see it. I mean, I see correction for some of the bad things going on in terms of not having the right underpinning infrastructure, the creative ideas are amazing. We're also seeing like digital bits and other platforms kind of coming together to enable the creators and, and the NFT side for instance has been huge. What has been your observation on that enablement? Because you have two schools of thoughts. You have the total nerds we're up and down building everything. Then you have artists and creators, whether it's music, tech apps building, they don't necessarily want to get 'em to the covers. They don't want to deal with all that. Yeah. Have you seen, what's your, what's your take on that? >>So I I'm seeing that a lot of these major brands, you know, they they're striving for excellence. You know, they're being more careful of who they partner with and the types of companies and you know, they, they look at it from reality and a little tough love to figure out should they align their brand. So what we're seeing here is is that there is so much inertia moving forward. That we're just at the beginning of this thing. Yeah. McKinsey recently said that the ecosystem will be over $30 trillion. So when you recognize that we are so early and it's those right now, or some might say are the risk takers. But to me there, aren't taking risk. They're being a part of making history. >>Yeah. You get the pioneers and you get the financial. So as they come together, how do you see the market? Cause what I've noticed with crypto and here in, in this, this market is international. One lot of international finance us is kind of lag behind. You got all kinds of rules, but you got the, the combination of the, the future billionaires. Sure. Okay. The pioneers and then the financeers yeah. Coming the money, the money and the power coming together. What's your reporting show you that's going on right now? What should people know about on how this is evolving? What they shouldn't >>Expect? Well, so you have a group that wants to become cryers they're seeing these individuals globally. They're making lots and lots of money, but what they don't realize is that not everybody is gonna have that outcome, but looking at the technology aspect of it and how it's going to improve a system that many can agree is collectively broken legacy just can't move beyond. It was never designed to you'll see people take shots at certain card companies and I go, but you recognize they developed the assembly line. And so I'm seeing that the smart money they got in long ago, believe it or not. And those now they're looking out for their errors are the ones that saying, I will not have an excuse when my, my grandkids or my, my nieces or my nephews, when they come and ask, where were you when the greatest transformational shift in human history, from both education to jobs, to careers and even wealth was being shifted to a digital world, why were you on the sideline waiting? And so I think what we're gonna see is this tsunami coming, and it's gonna start with one big player and then two and five, you go, go alone. You go far, go together. You go further. And that's what we're seeing is that this collective is moving forward >>And the community, we just had Beth Kaiser on, I've known Beth for many, many years. And she's what she's her journey has done. She's had a great mission and then gets she's a data scientist and came to Analytica. Now she's doing work with Ukraine and the rallying support around it has been impressive. And it's a community vibe, but the community's not just like sympathetic they're hands on together to your point. >>Yeah. It, but it also takes courage. I mean, you look at Britney Kaiser and what she had, and to me, courage is not, not having fear. Courage is not allowing the fear to stop. You, you know, recently asked my executive coach, who's 85 and I'm turning 39. This question of, do you let fear stop you? How do you decide? And he said, you know, you can either let, you can either ride the dragon. And I said, or let the dragon chase you. And Brittany has been one of these that made a decision to do what was right. And it came down to integrity. Yeah. >>So what are you have to these days what's going on in your world? >>What is going on in my world? So I moderate events all over and I connect and I like to ask people questions. So I'm gonna ask you, I'm gonna turn at the interviewer on the >>Interview. It's good. Natural. >>What are you learning? >>I mean, I'm learning, I mean today or this week or this month or this year. Well, I was just talking with Brittany about this. The security world is converging cloud technology, cloud computing. That revolution has just been amazing. Amazon posted their earnings yesterday. They blew it away as far as I'm concerned. So they kind of show there's no tech recession. I've learned that this recession, that we're so called in is the first downturn in tech where there's been cloud players as hyperscalers as an economic engine. Okay. So from a, from a business perspective, Amazon web services, Microsoft Azure now Google cloud, Alibaba's now in, in international version. This is the first time at downturns ever happened with cloud computing as an economic engine. And so therefore what I'm seeing is the digital transformation that's happening across the world for enterprises and entrepreneurs is not stopping. >>It's actually accelerating. So although the GDPs down in inflation is down, you're seeing a massive shift continuing to accelerate, spending and transformation with cloud technologies and decentralized. So you can almost see it kind of in the, this event and other events, even some of the bigger events, the best smartest people are working on it. The applications in all the categories are transforming. If cloud is step one, decentralized gonna be step two. So I see that kind of bridge going from cloud computing, cloud native to decentralized native. And I think a D DAPP market's gonna just explode. I think NFTs are just scratched on the surface. I think that's kind of, I won't say gimmicky, but I think no, but you're right, much more of a much more of a, an illustration that there's more coming. >>There is a lot more coming because people are seeing that there's more to an NFT than an ugly luck and J you know, ugly and JP image that there's, that there's data in there. And that your avatar will be stored as just that as an NFT. And I learned today from go of sing, that decentralization is, is the key to innovation. And I agree with that statement. Holy. >>Yeah. I mean, I think access to stuff is gonna be multidimensional. Like you think about the NFT as, as an ID, whether it's him or UN unstoppable domains is that company just got financing another round where the billion dollars, their concept is like, Hey, one NFT is your access for all of your potential identities in context. >>And isn't that exciting that we're now gonna be at this stage where you travel with you. Yeah. Instead of someone else traveling with you, you get to decide who you will be. And to me, everything you're doing in this world, this reality is now becoming part of your digital asset as a whole. >>I remember when I started my podcasting company in 20 2004, early pioneers, Evan Williams was there with Odo and you had, you know, the blogging revolution going on that whole democratization wave actually didn't happen right then. But all the people that were involved in that web two oh, kind of CRAs was all about democratization. It's kind of happening now. I mean, 15, 20 years later at web services is transformed cloud the democratization for own your own data, putting users in control. And I think in the middle of that, the Facebook's the world, the world garden data, you know, manipulation kind of took it off track a little bit. So I think now I'm, I psych to see that it's back on track to where it was. I mean, Facebook made billions of dollars. Now you got LinkedIn. I mean, LinkedIn's great for your resume, but it's also become a wall's garden with no data export. >>Yeah. And then >>No APIs keep >>Changing. Think about this. That if you wanna apply for a job, just change something quickly. Yeah. Ah, now you're the senior VP. Yeah. Before you were, you're an office manager >>Like to see the immutable block change, >>You don't get to see when did the record change. Yeah. >>Reputation data. You're a digital exhaust people gonna wanna reign that in. And I think the user in charge message that Brit Kaiser was talks about is hugely a mess under, under, under amplified concept. Digital assets are key, but the data ownership is something that I think is, is >>Powerful. So I'm gonna be launching a brand new company in and around September called cryptos. And it's a crypto career center. Think of it like the, the crypto for LinkedIn, that it's an aggregator becoming the industry standard for education, becoming the industry standard for crypto ships, with partners like ledger and moon pay and Casper labs. >>Look at this, we got an exclusive scoop on the cube. This >>Is the first time I will tell you this the first time in, in an environment like this. Yeah. That I'm excited to, I'm excited to talk about, right. Because it's time to be part of the change. Yeah, exactly. You know, as a father, I look at, I know where it's headed in the world of business. I know in the world of this, that we're gonna call the internet of connected things. Yeah. That it's gonna require you to have a certain talent skill or a certain certification. And to me, it's important to have an industry that supports one >>Staff and also, and also history on misinformation, smear campaigns can happen and ruin a career >>Overnight. Can you imagine that one little thing and because the internet never forgets. Yeah. It stays around indefinitely. >>The truth has to come out. Dustin. Great to have you on the queue. Thank you so much. Final question. What have you learned in there is MC what's your takeaway real quick? >>What I've learned is I never tire of learning. Thank you again, to learn more. Dustin plan.com. >>All right. Thanks for coming. Thank you. Cube coverage here at Monaco. I'm Shawn furry. We'll back with more coverage after this short break.

[Music] hello everyone welcome back to the live coverage here in monaco for the monaco crypto summit i'm john furrier host of thecube uh we have a great great guest lineup here already in nine interviews small gathering of the influencers and the people making it happen powered by digital bits sponsored by digital bits presented by digital bits of course a lot happening around decentralization web 3 the metaverse we've got a a powerhouse influencer on the qb ryan gills the founder of openmeta been in the issue for a while ryan great to see you thanks for coming on great to be here thank you you know one of the things that we were observing earlier conversations is you have young and old coming together the best and brightest right now in the front line it's been there for a couple years you know get some hype cycles going on but that's normal in these early growth markets but still true north star is in play that is democratize remove the intermediaries create immutable power to the people the same kind of theme has been drum beating on now come the metaverse wave which is the nfts now the meta verses you know at the beginning of this next wave yeah this is where we're at right now what are you working on tell us what's what's open meta working on yeah i mean so there is a reason for all of this right i think we go through all these different cycles and there's an economic incentive engine and it's designed in because people really like making money but there's a deeper reason for it all and the words the buzzwords the terms they change based off of different cycles this one is a metaverse i just saw it a little early you know so i recognized the importance of an open metaverse probably in 2017 and really decided to dedicate 10 years to that um so we're very early into that decade and we're starting to see more of a movement building and uh you know i've catalyzed a lot of that from from the beginning and making sure that while everything moves to a closed corporate side of things there's also an equal bottom-up approach which i think is just more important and more interesting well first of all i want to give you a lot of props for seeing it early and recognizing the impact and potential collateral damage of not not having open and i was joking earlier about the facebook little snafu with the the exercise app and ftc getting involved and you know i kind of common new york times guy comment online like hey i remember aol wanted to monopolize dial up internet and look the open web obviously changed all that they went to sign an extinction not the same comparable here but you know everyone wants to have their own little walled guard and they feel comfortable first-party data the data business so balancing the benefit of data and all the ip that could come into whether it's a visualization or platform it has to be open without open then you're going to have fragmentation you're going to have all kinds of perverse incentives how does the metaverse continue with such big players like meta themselves x that new name for facebook you know big bully tons of cash you know looking to you know get their sins forgiven um so to speak i mean you got google probably will come in apple's right around the corner amazon you get the whales out there how do is it proprietary is walled garden the new proprietary how do you view all that because it's it's still early and so there's a lot of change can happen well it's an interesting story that's really playing out in three acts right we had the first act which was really truly open right there was this idea that the internet is for the end user this is all just networking and then web 2 came and we got a lot of really great business models from it and it got closed up you know and now as we enter this sort of third act we have the opportunity to learn from both of those right and so i think web 3 needs to go back to the values of web one with the lessons in hindsight of web 2. and all of the winners from web 2 are clearly going to want to keep winning in web 3. so you can probably guess every single company and corporation on earth will move into this i think most governments will move into it as well and um but they're not the ones that are leading it the ones that are leading it are are just it's a culture of people it's a movement that's building and accumulating over time you know it's weird it's uh the whole web 2 thing is the history is interesting because you know when i started my podcasting company in 2004 there's only like three of us you know the dave weiner me evan williams and jack dorsey and we thought and the blogging just was getting going and the dream was democratization at the time mainstream media was the enemy and then now blogs are media so and then all sudden it like maybe it was the 2008 area with the that recession it stopped and then like facebook came in obviously twitter was formed from the death of odio podcasting company so the moment in time in history was a glimmic glimmer of hope well we went under my company went under we all went under but then that ended and then you had the era of twitter facebook linkedin reddit was still around so it kind of stopped where did it where did it pick up was it the ethereum bitcoin and ethereum brought that back where'd the open come back well it's a generational thing if you if you go back to like you know apple as a startup they were trying to take down ibm right it was always there's always the bigger thing that was that we we're trying to sort of unbundle or unpackage because they have too much power they have too much influence and now you know facebook and apple and these big tech companies they are that on on the planet and they're doing it bigger than it's ever been done but when they were startups they existed to try to take that from a bigger company so i think you know it's not an it's not a fact that like facebook or zuckerberg is is the villain here it's just the fact that we're reaching peak centralization anything past this point it becomes more and more unhealthy right and an open metaverse is just a way to build a solution instead of more of a problem and i think if we do just allow corporations to build and own them on the metaverse these problems will get bigger and larger more significant they will touch more people on earth and we know what that looks like so why not try something different so what's the playbook what's the current architecture of the open meta verse that you see and how do people get involved is there protocols to be developed is there new things that are needed how does the architecture layout take us through that your mindset vision on that and then how can people get involved yeah so the the entity structure of what i do is a company called crucible out of the uk um but i i found out very quickly that just a purely for-profit closed company a commercial company won't achieve this objective there's limitations to that so i run a dao as well out of switzerland it's called open meta we actually we named it this six months before facebook changed their name and so this is just the track we're on right and what we develop is a protocol uh we believe that the internet built by game developers is how you define the metaverse and that protocol is in the dao it is in the dow it's that's crucial crucible protocol open meta okay you can think of crucible as labs okay no we're building we're building everything so incubator kind of r d kind of thing exactly yeah and i'm making the choice to develop things and open them up create public goods out of them harness things that are more of a bottom-up approach you know and what we're developing is the emergence protocol which is basically defining the interface between the wallets and the game engines right so you have unity and unreal which all the game developers are sort of building with and we have built software that drops into those game engines to map ownership between the wallet and the experience in the game so integration layer basically between the wallet kind of how stripe is viewed from a software developer's campaign exactly but done on open rails and being done for a skill set of world building that is coming and game developers are the best suited for this world building and i like to own what i built yeah i don't like other people to own what i build and i think there's an entire generation that's that's really how do you feel about the owning and sharing component is that where you see the scale coming into play here i can own it and scale it through the relationship of the open rails yeah i mean i think the truth is that the open metaverse will be a smaller network than even one corporate virtual world for a while because these companies have billions of people right yeah every room you've ever been in on earth people are using two or three of facebook's products right they just have that adoption but they don't have trust they don't have passion they don't have the movement that you see in web3 they don't have the talent the level of creative talent those people care about owning what they create on the on what can someone get involved with question is that developer is that a sponsor what do people do to get involved with do you and your team and to make it bigger i mean it shouldn't be too small so if this tracks you can assume it gets bigger if you care about an open metaverse you have a seat at the table if you become a member of the dao you have a voice at the table you can make decisions with us we are building developing technology that can be used openly so if you're a game developer and you use unity or unreal we will open the beta this month later and then we move directly into what's called a game jam so a global hackathon for game developers where we just go through a giant exploration of what is possible i mean you think about gaming i always said the early adopters of all technology and the old web one was porn and that was because they were they were agnostic of vendor pitches or whatever is it made money they've worked we don't tell them we've always been first we don't tolerate vaporware gaming is now the new area where it is so the audience doesn't want vapor they want it to work they want technology to be solid they want community so it's now the new arbiter so gaming is the pretext to metaverse clearly gaming is swallowing all of media and probably most of the world and this game mechanics under the hood and all kinds of underlying stuff now how does that shape the developer community so like take the classic software developer may not be a game developer how do they translate over you seeing crossover from the software developers that are out there to be game developers what's your take on that it's an interesting question because i come to a lot of these events and the entire web 3 movement is web developers it's in the name yeah right and we have a whole wave of exploration and nfts being sold of people who really love games they're they're players they're gamers and they're fans of games but they are not in the skill set of game development this is a whole discipline yeah it's a whole expertise right you have to understand ik retargeting rigging bone meshes and mapping of all of that stuff and environment building and rendering and all these things it's it's a stacked skill set and we haven't gone through any exploration yet with them that is the next cycle that we're going to and that's what i've spent the last three or four years preparing for yeah and getting the low code is going to be good i was saying earlier to the young gun we had on his name was um oscar belly he's argo versus he's 25 years old he's like he made a quote i'm too old to get into esports like 22 old 25 come on i'd love to be in esports i was commenting that there could be someone sitting next to us in the metaverse here on tv on our digital tv program in the future that's going to be possible the first party citizenship between physical experience absolutely and meta versus these cameras all are a layer in which you can blend the two yeah so that that's that's going to be coming sooner and it's really more of the innovation around these engines to make it look real and have someone actually moving their body not like a stick figure yes or a lego block this is where most people have overlooked because what you have is you have two worlds you have web 3 web developers who see this opportunity and are really going for it and then you have game developers who are resistant to it for the most part they have not acclimated to this but the game developers are more of the keys to it because they understand how to build worlds yeah they do they understand how to build they know what success looks like they know what success looks like if you if you talk about the metaverse with anyone the most you'll hear is ready player one yeah maybe snow crash but those things feel like games yeah right so the metaverse and gaming are so why are game developers um like holding back is because they're like ah it's too not ready yet i'm two more elite or is it more this is you know this is an episode on its own yeah um i'm actually a part of a documentary if you go to youtube and you say why gamers hate nfts there's a two-part documentary about an hour long that robin schmidt from the defiant did and it's really a very good deep dive into this but i think we're just in a moment in time right now if you remember henry ford when he he produced the car everybody wanted faster horses yeah they didn't understand the cultural shift that was happening they just wanted an incremental improvement right and you can't say that right now because it sounds arrogant but i do believe that this is a moment in time and i think once we get through this cultural shift it will be much more clear why it's important it's not pure speculation yeah it's not clout it's not purely money there's something happening that's important for humanity yeah and if we don't do it openly it will be more of a problem yeah i totally agree with you on that silent impact is number one and people some people just don't see it because it's around the corner visionaries do like yourselves we do my objective over the next say three to six months is to identify which game developers see the value in web 3 and are leaning into it because we've built technology that solves interoperability between engines mapping ownership from wallets all the sort of blueprints that are needed in order for a game developer to build this way we've developed that we just need to identify where are they right because the loudest voices are the ones that are pushing back against this yeah and if you're not on twitter you don't see how many people really see this opportunity and i talked to epic and unity and nvidia and they all agree that this is where the future is going but the one question mark is who wants it where are they you know it's interesting i talked to lauren besel earlier she's from the music background we were talking about open source and how music i found that is not open it's proprietary i was talking about when i was in college i used to deal software you'd be like what do you mean deal well at t source code was proprietary and that started the linux movement in the 80s that became a systems revolution and then open source then just started to accelerate now people like it's free software is like not a big deal everyone knows it's what it was never proprietary but we were fighting the big proprietary code bases you mentioned that earlier is there a proprietary thing for music well not really because it's licensed rights right so in the metaverse who's the proprietary is it the walled garden is the is it is it the gamers so is it the consoles is it the investment that these gaming companies have in the software itself so i find that that open source vibe is very much circulating around your world actually open maps in the word open but open source software has a trajectory you know foundations contributors community building same kind of mindset music not so much because no one's it's not direct comparable but i think here it's interesting the gaming culture could be that that proprietary ibm the the state the playstation the xbox you know if you dive into the modding community right the modding community has sort of been this like gray area of of gaming and they will modify games that already exist but they do it with the values of open source they do it with composability and there's been a few breakthroughs counter-strike is a mod right some of the largest games of all time came from mods of other games look at quake had a comeback i played first multiplayer doom when it came out in the 90s and that was all mod based exactly yeah quake and quake was better but you know i remember the first time on a 1.5 cable mode and playing with my friends remember vividly now the graphics weren't that good but that was mod it's mod so then you go i mean and then you go into these other subcultures like dungeons and dragons which was considered to be such a nerdy thing but it's just a deeply human thing it's a narrative building collective experience like these are all the bottom-up type approaches modding uh world building so you're going to connect so i'm just kind of thinking out loud here you're going to connect the open concept of source with open meta bring game developers and software drills together create a fabric of a baseline somewhat somewhat collected platform tooling and components and let it just sell form see what happens better self form that's your imposing composability is much faster yeah than a closed system and you got what are your current building blocks you have now you have the wallet and you have so we built an sdk on both unity and unreal okay as a part of a system that is a protocol that plugs into those two engines and we have an inventory service we have an avatar system we basically kind of leaned into this idea of a persona being the next step after a pfp so so folks that are out there girls and boys who are sitting there playing games they could build their own game on this thing absolutely this is the opportunity for them entrepreneurs to circumvent the system and go directly with open meta and build their own open environment like i said before i i like to own the things i built i've had that entrepreneurial lesson but i don't think in the future you should be so okay with other companies or other intermediaries owning you and what you build i think i mean opportunity to build value yeah and i think i think your point the mod culture is not so much going to be the answer it's what that was like the the the the dynamic of modding yes is developing yes and then therefore you get the benefit of sovereign identity yeah you get the benefit of unbanking that's not the way we market this but those are benefits that come along with it and it allows you to live a different life and may the better product win yeah i mean that's what you're enabling yeah ryan thanks so much for coming on real final question what's going on here why are we here in monaco what's going on this is the inaugural event presented by digital bits why are we here monaco crypto summit i'm here uh some friends of mine brittany kaiser and and lauren bissell invited me here yeah i've known al for for a number of years and i'm just here to support awesome congratulations and uh we'll keep in touch we'll follow up on the open meta great story we love it thanks for coming on okay cube coverage continues here live in monaco i'm john furrier and all the action here on the monaco crypto summit love the dame come back next year it'll be great back with more coverage to wrap up here on the ground then the yacht club event we're going to go right there as well that's in a few hours so we're going to be right back [Music] you

(upbeat music) >> Okay, welcome back everyone to the Cube's live coverage in Monaco. I'm John Furrier, host of theCube. Monaco Crypto Summit is the event and there's a big conversation later at the yacht club with Prince Albert and everyone else will be there, and it'll be quite the scene. And Rachel Wolfson is here. She's with Cointelegraph. They're the media partner of the event, the official media partner of the Monaco Crypto Summit. She's also MCing the event on stage, presented by DigitalBits. Rachel, thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having me, John. >> So I know you're busy, thanks for taking the time cause' you got to go jump back in and moderate, and keep things on track. This isn't an inaugural event. So DigitalBits has exploded on the scene. I just saw a thing on YouTube news around this soccer player in Rome, has DigitalBits logo on their jersey. They're a big to do cause everyone's popular and they got a couple teams. So real world, kind of, assets coming together, what's going on in the event that you're MCing? What's the focus? What's the agenda? What's some of the conversations like? >> Yeah, definitely. Well, it's a great event. It's my first time here in Monaco and I'm loving it. And I think that Monaco is really becoming the next crypto hotspot. Definitely in terms of Metaverse and Web3 innovation, I think that we're going to start seeing a lot of that here. That's what we're seeing today at the Summit. So a lot of the presentations that we're seeing are really focused on Web3 and NFT platforms, so for instance, obviously what DigitalBits is doing. We watched a video before the break on Ecosystem and the Metaverse that people can join and be a part of, in terms of real estate, but we're seeing a lot of innovation here today with that. I moderated a great panel with Britney Kaiser, Lauren Bissell, Taross, I'm blanking on his last name, but it was about blockchain and how governments are implementing blockchain. So that was also really interesting to hear about what the Ukrainian government is doing with blockchain. So there's kind of a mix, but I'd say that the overall theme is Web3 and NFTs. >> Yeah. Britney was mentioning some of that, how they're going to preserve buildings and artifacts, so that in case they're looted or destroyed, they can preserve them. >> Right. I think it's called the Heritage Fund. And I just think it's such an interesting use case in terms of how governments are using blockchain because the best use for blockchain in my opinion, is recording data, and having that data be permanent. And so when we can have artifacts in Ukraine recorded on the blockchain, you know by being scanned, it's really revolutionary. And I think that a lot of governments around the world are going to see that use case and say, "Oh wow, blockchain is a great technology for things like that." >> So DigitalBits had a press conference this morning and they talked about their exchange and some other things. Did you attend that press conference or did you get briefed on that? >> I did not attend the press conference. I was prepping for my MC role. >> So they got this exchange thing and then there's real interest from Prince Albert's foundations to bring this into Monaco. So Monaco's got this vibe, big time. >> Rachel: Right. There's a vibe (John chuckles) >> What does it all mean, when you're putting in your reporting? What do you see happening? >> So, I mean, I honestly haven't covered Monaco actually ever in my reporting. And John, you know I've been reporting since 2017, but the vibe that I'm getting just from this summit today is that Web3 and NFTs are going to be huge here. I'm speaking, I haven't... You know, there's a panel coming up about crypto regulations, and so we're going to talk a little bit about laws being passed here in Monaco in terms of Metaverse and digital identity. So I think that there are a few laws around that here that they're looking at, the government here is looking at to kind of add clarity for those topics. >> I had a couple guests on earlier. We were talking about the old days, a couple years ago. You mentioned 2017, so much has changed. >> Yes. >> You know, we had a up and down. 2018 was a good year, and then it kind of dived back and changed a little bit. Then NFTs brought it back up again, been a great hype cycle, but also movement. What's your take on the real progress that's been made? If you zoom out and look at the landscape, what's happened? >> Right. I mean, well, a lot has happened. When I first entered the space, I initially came in, I was interested in enterprise, blockchain and private networks being utilized by enterprises to record data. And then we saw public blockchains come in, like Ethereum and enterprises using them. And then we saw a mix. And now I feel like we're just seeing public blockchains and there's really... (John chuckles) But there's still our private blockchains. But today, I mean, we've gone from that in 2017 to right now, I think, you know, we're recently seeing a lot of these centralized exchanges kind of collapsing. What we've seen with Celsius, for instance, and people moving their crypto to hardware wallets. I think that the space is really undergoing a lot of transformation. It's really revolutionary, actually, to see the hardware wallet market is growing rapidly, and I think that that's going to continue to grow. I think centralized exchanges are still going to exist in custody crypto for enterprises and institutions, and you know, in individuals as well. But we are seeing a shift from centralized exchanges to hardware wallets. NFTs, although the space is, you know, not as big as it was a year ago, it's still quite relevant. But I think with the way the market is looking today, we're only seeing the top projects kind of lead the way now, versus all of the noise that we were seeing previously. So yeah, I think it's- >> So corrections, basically? >> Right. Exactly. Corrections. And I think it's necessary, right. It's very necessary. >> Yeah. It's interesting. You know, you mentioned the big players you got Bitcoin, Ethereum driving a lot. I remember interviewing the crypto kiddies when they first came out, it was kind of a first gen Ethereum, and then it just exploded from there. And I remember saying to myself, if the NFTs and the decentralized applications can have that scale, but then it felt like, okay, there was a lot of jocking for under the covers, under the hood, so to speak. And now you've got massive presence from all the VCs, and Jason Ho has like another crypto fund. I mean, >> Right. you can't go a day without another big crypto fund from you know, traditional venture capitalists. Meanwhile, you got investors who have made billions on crypto, they're investing. So you kind of got a diversity of investor base going on and different instruments. So the investor community's changing and evolving too. >> Right. >> How do you see that evolving? >> Well, it's a really good point you mentioned. So Cointelegraph research recently released a report showing that Web3 is the most sought after investment sector this year. So it was DeFi before, and Web3 is now leading the way over DeFi. And so we're seeing a lot of these venture capitalist funds as you mentioned, create funds allocated just to Web3 growth. And that's exactly what we're seeing, the vibe I'm getting from the Monaco Crypto Summit here today, this is all about Web3. It's all about NFT, it is all about the Metaverse. You know, this is really revolutionary. So I think we're definitely going to see that trend kind of, you know, conquer all of these other sectors that we're seeing in blockchain right now. >> Has Web3 become the coin term for Metaverse and NFTs? Or is that being globalized as all shifted, decentralized? What's the read on it? It seems to be like, kind of all inclusive but it tends to be more like NFT's the new thing and the young Gen Zs >> Yeah want something different than the Millennials and the Xs and the Boomers, who screwed everything up for everybody. >> Yeah. (John chuckles) No, I mean, it's a great question. So when I think of Web3, I categorize NFTs and the Metaverse in there. Obviously it's just, you know the new form of the internet. It's the way the internet is- >> Never fight fashion, as I always say, right? >> Right. Yeah. Right. (John chuckles) It's just decentralization. The fact that we can live in these virtual worlds and own our own assets through NFT, it's all decentralized. And in my opinion, that all falls under the category of Web3. >> Well, you're doing a great job MCing. Great to have you on theCube. >> Rachel: Thanks. I'd like to ask you a personal question if you don't mind. COVID's impacted us all with no events. When did you get back onto the events circuit? What's on your calendar? What have you been up to? >> Yeah, so gosh, with COVID, I think when COVID, you know, when it was actually really happening, (John chuckles) and it still is happening. But when it was, you know, >> John: Like, when it was >> impacting- shut down mode. >> Right. When we were shut down, there were virtual events. And then, I think it was late last year or early this year when the events started happening again. So most recently I was at NFT NYC. Before that, I was at Consensus, which was huge. >> Was that the one in Austin or Miami? >> In Austin. >> That's right, Austin. >> Right. Were you there? >> No, I missed it. >> Okay. It was a very high level, great event. >> Huge numbers, I heard. >> Yes. Massive turnout. (John chuckles) Tons of speakers. It was really informative. >> It feels like a festival. actually. >> It was. It was just like South by Southwest, except for crypto and blockchain. (John chuckles) And then coming up, gosh, there are a lot of events. I'll be at an event in Miami, it's an NFT event that's in a few months. I know that there's a summit happening, I think in Turkey that I may be at as well. >> You're on the road. You're traveling. You're doing a lot of hopping around. >> Yes I am. And there's a lot of events happening in Europe. I'm US-based, but I'm hoping to spend more time in Europe just so I can go to those events. But there's a lot happening. >> Yeah. Cool. What's the most important story people should be paying attention to in your mind? >> Wow. That's... (Rachel chuckles) That's a big question. It's a good question. I think most, you know, the transition that we're seeing now, so in terms of prices, I think people need to focus less on the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum and more on innovation that's happening. So for instance, Web3 innovation, what we're seeing here today, you know, innovation, isn't about prices, but it's more about like actually now is the time to build. >> Yeah. because the prices are a bit down. >> Yeah. I mean, as, you know, Lewis Hamilton's F1 driver had a quote, you know, "It takes a team. No matter who's in the driver's seat, it's a team." So community, Wayne Gretzky skates where the puck is going to be I think is much more what I'm hearing now, seeing what you're saying is that don't try to count the price trade of Bitcoin. This is an evolution. >> Right. >> And the dots are connecting. >> Exactly. And like I said, now is the time to build. What we're seeing with the project Britney mentioned, putting the heritage, you know, on the blockchain from Ukraine, like, that's a great use case for what we're seeing now. I want to see more of those real world use cases. >> Right. Well, Rachel, thanks for coming on theCube. I really appreciate it. Great to see you. >> Thanks, John. >> And thanks for coming out of your schedule. I know you're busy. >> Thanks. Now you get some lunchtime now and get some break. >> Yeah. Get back on stage. Thanks for coming on. >> Rachel: Thank you. >> All right. We're here at the Monaco Crypto Summit. Rachel's MCing the event as part of the official media partner, Cointelegraph. Rachel Wolfson here on theCube. I'm John Furrier. More coverage coming after this short break. >> Thank you. (upbeat music)

>>no real filter and that kind of stuff. But you're also an entrepreneur, right? And you know the business, you've been in software, you detect business. I'm instructing you get a lot of pictures, this entertainment business on our show, we're a bubble. We don't do a lot of tech deals that were talking because it's boring tv tech people love tech consumers love the benefit of text. No consumer opens up their iphone and says, oh my gosh, I love the technology behind my, what's it been like being on the shark tank? You know, filming is fun and hang out just fun and it's fun to be a celebrity at first your head gets really big and you get a really good tables at restaurants and who says texas has got a little possessed more skin in the game today in charge of his destiny. Great robert Herjavec. No, these two stars cube alumni >>welcome back to the cubes coverage of A W. S. Public sector seven. I'm john for your host of the cube got a great segment here on healthcare startup accelerators of course. Sandy carter is co hosting media. This one Vice President Aws. She's awesome on the cuBA and jennifer Blumenthal co founder and C of one record entrepreneur, very successful. Thanks for coming on jennifer. Thank good to see you. Sandy thanks for joining me again. You >>are most welcome, >>jennifer. Before we get into the whole accelerated dynamic, just take a minute to explain what you guys do. One record. >>Sure. So one record is a digital health company that enables users to access aggregate and share their healthcare information. So what that means is we help you as a person get your data and then we also help companies who would like to have workflows were consumers in the loop to get their data. So whether they're sharing it with a provider, researcher payer. >>So, Sandy, we've talked about this amazon web services, healthcare accelerator cohort batches. What do you call cohort batches? Cohorts explain what's going on with the healthcare accelerator? >>Yeah. So, um, we decided that we would launch and partner an accelerator program and accelerator program just provides to a start up a little bit extra technical help. A little bit extra subject matter expertise and introductions to funders. And so we decided we were going to start one for health care. It's one of the biggest disruptive industries in public sector. Um, and so we weren't sure how it's gonna go. We partnered with Kids X. Kids X is part of the Los Angeles system for medical. And so we put out a call for startups and we had 427 startups, we were told on average and accelerating it's 50-100. So we were blown away 31 different countries. So it was really amazing. And then what we've been doing is down selecting and selecting that Top 10 for our first cohort. So we're going from 427 down to 10. And so obviously we looked at the founders themselves to see the quality of the leadership of the company, um the strength of their technology and the fit of the technology into the broader overall healthcare and healthcare ecosystem. And so we were thrilled that jennifer and one record was one of the top 10 start ups in this space that we chose to be in the, in the cohort. And so now we're going to take it to the six weeks intensive where we'll do training, helping them with AWS, provide them A W. S. Credits and then Kid X will also provide some of the health care uh subject matter >>expertise as well. Can I get some of those credits over here to maybe? >>Yes, you can actually, you can talk to me don you can't >>Talk to me, Jennifer, I gotta ask you. So you're an entrepreneur. So doing start doing cos it's like a roller coaster. So now to make the top 10 but also be in the area of his accelerator, it's a partnership, right? You're making a bet. What's your take on all this? >>Well, we've always been partners with a W. S. We started building on AWS in the very beginning. So when I was setting up the company a huge decision early on with infrastructure and when I saw the launch of the accelerator, I had to apply because we're at the point in the company that we're growing and part of growing is growing with the VW. So I was really excited to take advantage of that opportunity and now in the accelerator, it's more of thinking about things that we weren't thinking about the services that we can leverage to fill in the gaps within our platform so we can meet our customers where they are >>using award winning MSP cloud status city, your partners, great relationship with the ecosystem. So congratulations Sandi. What's the disruption for the healthcare? Because right now education and health care, the two top areas we're seeing and we're reporting on where cloud scale developed two point or whatever buzzword digital transformation you want to use is impacting heavily healthcare industry. There's some new realities. What's your, what's your vision, what's your view? >>Hey john before she does that, I have to give a plug to Claudius city because they just made premier partner as well, which is a huge deal. Uh and they're also serving public sector. So I just wanted to make sure that you knew that too. So you can congratulate. Go ahead, jennifer >>Well, so if I zoom in, I think about a P. I. S. Every day, that's what I think about and I think about microservices. So for me and for one record, what we think about is legislation. So 21st century Cures act says that you as a consumer have to be able to access your healthcare data from both your providers and from your players and not just your providers, but also the underlying technology vendors and H. I. E. S. H. I am and it's probably gonna extend to really anyone who plays within the healthcare ecosystem. So you're just going to see this explosion of A. P. I. S. And we're just your one of that. I mean for the payers that we went into effect on july 1st. So I mean when you think about the decentralization of healthcare where healthcare is being delivered plus an api economy, you're just going to have a whole new model developing and then throwing price transparency and you've got a whole new cake. >>I'm smiling because I love the peacocks. In fact, last night I shouldn't have tweeted this but there's a little tweet flames going on around A. P. Is being brittle and all this stuff and I said, hey developer experience about building great software apps are there for you. It's not a glue layer by itself. You got to build software around the so kind of a little preaching to the younger generation. But this health care thing is huge because think about like old school health care, it was anti ap I was also siloed. So what's your take on has the culture is changing health care because the user experience, I want my records, I want my privacy, I want to maintain everything confidential but access. That's hard. >>I think well health care to be used to just be paper was forget about a. P. I. Is it was just paper records. I think uh to me you think about uh patient journey, like a patient journey starts with booking an appointment and then everything after that is essentially an api call. So that's how I think about it is to all these micro transactions that are happening all the time and you want your data to go to your health care provider so they can give you the proper care, you want your data to go to your pair so they can pay for your care and then those two stakeholders want your data so that they can provide the right services at the right time to the right channel. And that is just a series of api calls that literally sits on a platform. >>What's interesting, I'd love to get your take on the where you think the progress bar is in the industry because Fintech has shown the way you got defy now behind a decentralized finance, health care seems to be moving on in a very accelerated rate towards that kind of concept of cloud, scale, decentralization, privacy. >>Yeah, I mean, that's a big question, what's interesting to me around that is how healthcare stakeholders are thinking about where they're providing care. So as they're buying up practices primary care specialty care and they're moving more and more outside of the brick and mortar of the health care system or partnering with your startups. That's really where I think you're going to see a larger ecosystem development, you could just look at CVS and walmart or the dollar store if they're going to be moving into health care, what does that look like? And then if you're seeking care in those settings, but then you're going to Mayo clinic or Kaiser permanente, there's so many new relationships that are part of your hair circle >>delivery is just what does that even mean now, delivery of health >>care. It's wherever you it's like the app economy you want to ride right now, you want a doctor right now, that's where we're heading its ease of use. >>This is this exciting startups, changing the game. Yes, I love it. I mean, this is what it's all about this health >>Care, this is what it's all about. And if you look at the funding right now from VCS, we're seeing so much funding pour into health care, we were just looking at some numbers and in the second quarter alone, the funding went up almost 700%. And the amount of funding that is pouring into companies like jennifer's company to really transform healthcare, 30% of it is going into telehealth. So when you talked about, you know, kind of ai at the edge, getting the right doctor the right expert at the right time, we're seeing that as a big trend in healthcare to >>well jennifer, I think the funding dynamics aside the opportunity for market total addressable market is massive when the application is being decomposed, you got front end, whether it's telemedicine, you got the different building blocks of healthcare being radically reconfigured. It's a re factoring of healthcare. Yeah, >>I think if you just think about where we're sitting today, you had to use an app to prove proof of vaccination. So this is not just national, this is a global thing to have that covid wallet. We at one record have a covid wallet. But just a couple years from now, I need more than just by covid vaccination. I need all my vaccinations. I need all my lab results. I need all my beds. It's opening the door for a new consumer behavior pattern, which is the first step to adoption for any technology. >>So somebody else covid wallet. So I need >>that was California. Did the, did a version of we just have a pen and it's pretty cool. Very handy. I should save it to my drive. But my phone, but I don't jennifer, what's the coolest thing you're working on right now because you're in the middle of all the action. >>I get very excited about the payer app is that we're working on. So I think by the end of the month we will be connected to almost to all the blues in the United States. So I'm very excited when a user comes into the one record and they're able to get their clinical data from the provider organization and then their clinical financial and formulary data from their payers because then you're getting a complete view, You're getting the records for someone who gave you care and you're getting the records from someone who paid for your care. And that's an interesting thing that's really moving towards a complete picture. So from a personal perspective that gets exciting. And then from a professional perspective, it's really working with our partners as they're using our API s to build out workflows and their applications. >>It's an api economy. I'd like to ask you to on the impact side to the patient. I hear a lot of people complaining that hey, I want to bring my records to the doctor and I want to have my own control of my own stuff. A lot of times, some doctors don't even know other historical data points about a patient that could open up a diagnosis and, or care >>or they can't even refer you to a doctor. Most doctors really only refer within a network of people that they know having a provider directory that allows doctors refer, having the data from different doctors outside of their, you know, I didn't really allows people to start thinking beyond just their little box. >>Cool. Well, great to have you on and congratulations on being in the top 10 saying this is a wonderful example of how the ecosystem where you got cloud city, your MSP. You mentioned the shout out to them jerry Miller and his team by working together the cloud gives you advantages. So I have to ask, we look at amazon cloud as an entrepreneur. It's kind of a loaded question, but I'm going to ask it. I love it. >>You always do it >>when you look at amazon, what do you see as opportunities as an entrepreneur? Because I'll see the easy ones. They have computing everything else. But like what's the, what does cloud do for you as an entrepreneur? What does it, what does it make you do? >>Yeah. So for been working with jerry since the beginning for me when I think about it, it's really the growth of our company. So when we start building, we really just thinking about it from a monolithic build and we move to microservices and amazon has been there every step of the way to support us as that. And now, you know, the things that I'm interested in are specifically health lake and anything that's NLP related that we could plug into our solution for when we get data from different sources that are coming in really unstructured formats and making it structured so that it's searchable for people and amazon does that for us with their services that we can add into the applications. >>Yeah, we announced that data health like and july it has a whole set of templates for analytics, focused on health care as well as hip hop compliance out of the box as well. >>The I think I think that's what's important is people used to think application first. Now it's creating essentially a data lake, then analytics and then what applications you build on top of that. And that's how our partners think about it and that's how we try and service them using amazon as our problem. So >>you're honing in on the value of the data and how that conflicts and then work within the whatever application requests might come >>in. Yes, >>it's interesting. You know, we had an event last month and jerry Chen from Greylock partners came on and gave a talk called castles in the cloud. He's gonna be cute before. He's a, he's a veces, they talk about moats and competitive manage so having a moat, The old school perimeter moz how cloud destroyed that. He's like, no, now the castles are in the cloud, he pointed snowflake basically data warehouse in the cloud red shifts there too. But they can be successful. And that's how the cloud, you could actually build value, sustainable value in the cloud. If you think that way of re factoring not just hosting a huge, huge, huge thing. >>I think the only thing he, this was customer service because health care is still very personal. So it's always about how you interact with the end user and how you can help me get to where they need to be going >>and what do you see that going? Because that's, that's a good point. >>I think that is a huge opportunity for any new company that wants to enter healthcare, customer service as a service in health care for all the different places that health care is going to be delivered. Maybe there's a company that I don't know about, but when they come out, I'd like to meet them. >>Yeah, I mean, I can't think of one cover that can think of right now. This is what I would say is great customer service for health care. >>And if there is one out there contacted me because I want to talk to you about AWS. >>Yeah. And you need the app from one record that make it all >>happen. That's where Omni channel customer service across all health care entities. Yeah, that's >>a great billion dollar idea for someone listening to our show right now. >>Right, alright. So saying they had to give you the opportunity to talk more because this is a great example of how the world's very agile. What's the next step for the AWS Healthcare accelerator? Are there more accelerators? Do you do it by vertical? >>What happens next? So, with the healthcare accelerator, this was our first go at the accelerator. So, this is our first set of cohorts, Of course, all 427 companies are going to get some help from a W. S. as well. We also you'll love this john We also did a space accelerator. Make sure you ask Clint about that. So we have startups that are synthesizing oxygen on mars to sending an outpost box to the moon. I mean, it's crazy what these startups are doing. Um, and then the third accelerator we started was around clean energy. So sustainability, we sold that one out to, we had folks from 66 different countries participate in that one. So these have been really successful for us. So it reinvent. When we talk again, we'll be announcing a couple of others. So right now we've got healthcare, space, clean energy and we'll be announcing a couple other accelerators moving forward. >>You know, it's interesting, jennifer the pandemic has changed even our ability to get stories. Just more stories out there now. So you're seeing kind of remote hybrid connections, ap ideas, whether it's software or remote interviews or remote connections. There's more stories being told out there with digital transformation. I mean there wasn't that many before pandemic has changed the landscape because let's face it, people were hiding some really bad projects behind metrics. But when you pull the pandemic back and you go, hey, everyone's kind of emperors got no clothes on. Those are bad projects. Those are good projects that cloud investment worked or I didn't have a cloud investment. They were pretty much screwed at that point. So this is now a new reality of like value, you can't show me value. >>It's crazy to me when I meet people who tell me like we want to move to the cloud of like, why are you not on the cloud? Like this really just blows my life. Like I don't understand why you have on prem or while you did start on the cloud, this is more for larger organizations, but younger organizations, you know, the first thing you have to do, it's set up that environment. >>Yeah. And then now with the migration plans and seeing here, uh whereas education or health care or other verticals, you've got, now you've got containers to give you that compatibility and then you've got kubernetes and you've got microservices, you've got land. Uh I mean, come on, that's the perfect storm innovation. There's no excuses in my opinion. So, you know, if you're out there and you're not leveraging it, then you're probably gonna be out of business. That's my philosophy. Thank you for coming up. Okay. Sandy, thank you. Thank you, john Okay. Any of his coverage here, summit here in D. C. I'm john ferrier. Thanks for watching. Mm >>mm mm mhm. I have been in the software and technology industry for over 12 years now, so I've had >>the opportunity

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube presenting Cuban Cloud brought to you by Silicon Angle. >>Welcome back to the Cubes. Special Presentation on the Future of Cloud. Three years ago, Alan Nance said to me that in order to really take advantage of Cloud and Dr Billions of dollars of value, you have to change the operating model. I've never forgotten that statement have explored it from many angles over the last three years. In fact, it was one of the motivations for me actually running this program for our audience. Of course with me is Alan Nance. He's a change agent. He's led transformations that large organizations, including I N G Bank, Royal, Philips, Barclays Bank and many others. He's also a co founder of Citrus Collab. Alan, great to see you. Thanks for coming on the program. >>Thanks for having me again there. >>All right. So when we were preparing for this interview you shared with me the following you said enterprise, I t often hasn't really tapped the true powers that are available to them to make real connections to take advantage of that opportunity. Connections to the business, That is What >>do >>you mean by that. >>Well, I think, you know, we've been saying for quite a long time that enterprise. It is certainly a big part of our past in technology. But you know, just how much is it going to be in the future on, you know, enterprise, I t has had a difficult time under The pressure's off being a centralized organization with large expanse of large Catholics, while at the same time we see obviously the digital operations growing oftentimes in separate reporting structures and closer to the business on. And what I'm thinking right now is enterprise i t. If it has made this transition to cloud operating models, whether they are proprietary or whether they are public cloud, there's a huge opportunity for enterprise. I t. Thio connect the dots in a way that no other part of the organization can do that. And when they connect those dots working closely with the business, they unleash a huge amount of value that is beyond things like efficiency or things like just just just providing cloud computing to be flexible. It has to be much more about value generation. Andi. I think that a lot of leaders of enterprise I t have not really grasped that, Andi. I think that's the opportunity is sitting right in front of them right now. >>You know what I've seen lately? I wonder if you could. Comment is You know, obviously we always talk about the stove pipes, but you've you've seen, you know, the CEO, >>the chief >>data officer that you just mentioned the chief digital officer, the chief information security officer. They've largely been in their own silos. I'm definitely seeing a move to bring those together. I'm seeing a lot of CDOs and CEO roles come together and even the chief information or the head of security reporting up into that where there's there seems to be as your sort of suggesting just a lot more visibility across the entire organization. Is it Is it an organizational issue? Is it? Ah, is it a mindset? But only if you could comment. >>Well, I would say it zits, two or three different things, but certainly it's an organizational issue. But I think it starts off with a cultural issue. Andi, I think what you're seeing, and if you look at the more progressive companies that you see, I think you are also seeing a new emergence off the enlightened technology leader s O. With all respect to me and my generation, our tenure as the owners off the large enterprise, it is coming to an end. And we grew up trying to master the complexity of the off the silos. As you so definitely pointed out, we were battling this falling technology, trying to get it under control, trying to get the costs down, trying to reduce Catholics. And a lot of that was focused on the partnerships that we had with technology suppliers on DSO. That mindset of being engineers struggling for control. Having your most important part of being a technology company itself that now I think is giving way is giving way to a new generation of technology leaders who haven't grown up with that culture. Onda. Oftentimes what I see is that the new enlightened CEOs are female, and they are coming into the role outside of the regular promotion change. So they're coming to these rolls through finance H R marketing on their bringing. A different focus on the focus is much more about how do we work together to create an amazing experience for our employees and for our customers on an experience that drives value. So I think there's a reset in the culture. And clearly, when you start talking about creating a value chain to improve experience, you're also talking about bringing people together from different multidisciplinary backgrounds to make that happen. >>Well, that's kind of, you know, it makes me think about Amazon's mantra of working backwards. You know, start with the experience and and and a lot of a lot of CEOs that I know would love tow beam or involved in the business. But they're just so busy trying to keep the lights on like you said, trying to manage vendors. And like, you know, I had a discussion the other day, Allen with an individual. We were talking about how you know, you got a shift from a product mindset to a platform mindset. But you know, you've said that that platform thinking you're always ahead of the game platform, thinking it needs to make way for ecosystem thinking, you know, unless you're Internet giant scale business like Amazon or Spotify, you said you're gonna be in a niche market if you really don't tap that ecosystem again. If you could explain what you mean by that. >>I think right now if this movement to experience is fundamental, right? So Joe Pine and Gilmore wrote about the experience economy as far back in 1990. But the things that they predicted then are here now. And so what we're now seeing is that consumers have choice. Employees have choice. I think the pandemic has accelerated that. And so what happens when you, when you when you put an enterprise under that type of external pressure, is that it fragments and even fragment into ways it can fragment dysfunctional E so that every silo tries to go into a a defensive mode protective mode? That's obviously the wrong way to go. But the fragmentation that's exciting is when it fragments into ecosystems that are actually working together to solve an experience problem. And those are not platforms. They're too big, you know, When I was Phillips, I was very enthusiastic about working on this connected health care platform, but I think what I started to realize was it takes too much time. It requires too much investment on you are bringing people to you based on your capability. Where is what the market needs is much more agile than that. So if we look in health care, for instance, and you want to connect patients at home with patient with the doctors in the hospital, in the old model you so I'm gonna build a platform for this. I'm gonna have doctors with a certain competence and they're gonna be connecting into this. And so are the patients in some way. And so are the insurers. I think what you're going to see now is different. We're going to say, Let's get together A small team that understands it's called, For instance, let's get a an insurance provider. Let's get a health care operator. Let's get a healthcare tech company on. Let's pull their data in a way that helps us to create solutions now that that can roll out in 30 60 or 90 days. And the thing that that makes that possible is the move to the public crowd because now there are so many specialized supplier, specialized skill sets available that you can connect to through Amazon through Google, through through azure that that these these things that we usedto I think we're very, very difficult are now much easier. I don't want to minimize the effort, but these things are on the table right now. Thio Revalue. >>So you're also a technologist and I wanna ask you and and everybody always says, it's the technology is easy part. It's the people in the process and, you know, way we can all agree on that. However, sometimes technology could be a blocker. And the example that you just mentioned, I have a couple of takeaways from that. First of all, you know the platform thinking it sounds like it's more command and control, and you're advocating for Let's get the ecosystem who are closest to the problem. To solve those problems, however, they decide and leverage the cloud. So my question is from a technology standpoint, does that echo have system have to be on the same cloud with the state of today's technology? Can it be across clouds can be there pieces on Prem? What's your thinking on that? >>I think I think exactly the opposite. It cannot be monolithic and centralized. It's just not practical because that was that was that would cause you too much time on interoperability and who owns what you see The power behind experience is data. And so the most important technical part of this is dealing with data liquidity. So the data that for instance, um, somebody like Kaiser has or the the Harvard Health Care have or the Philips have that's not going to be put into a central place. But for the ecosystem mobilization, there will be subsets of that data flowing between those parties. So the technical, the heart there is how do we manage data liquidity? How do we manage the security around the data liquidity on How do we also understand that what we're building is going to be ever changing and maybe temporary, because on idea may not work, eh? So you've got this idea that the timeliness is very, very important. The duration is very uncertain. The motor the energy for this is data liquidity data transfer, data sharing. But the vehicle is the combination off. Probably crowd in my mind. >>Somebody said to me, Hey, that data is like water. It'll go. It'll go where it wants to go where it needs to go. You can't try to control it. It's let it go. Uh, now, of course, many organizations, particularly large incumbent organizations there. They have many, many data pipelines. They have many processes, many roles, and they're struggling toe actually kind of inject automation into those pipelines. Maybe that's machine intelligence, uh, really doom or data sharing across that pipeline and and ultimately compress the end and cycle. Time to go from raw data insights that are actionable. What are you seeing there and what's your advice? >>Well, I think the the you make some really good points. But what I hear also a little bit in your observation is you're still observing Enterprises on the end of the focus of the enterprise has been on optimizing the processes within the boundaries of its own system. That's why we have s a P. And that's why we have a sales force and, to some degree, even service. Now it's all been about optimizing how we move data, how we create products and services on. That's not the game. Now that's not an important game. Three important game right now is how do I connect to my employees? How do I connect to my customers in a way that provides them a memorable experience? And the realization is we've seen this already a manufacturing for some years. I can't be allowed things to people. So I have to understand where the first part of data comes in. I have to understand who this person is that I am trying to target. Who is the person that needs this memorable experience on what is that memorable experience gonna look like? And I'm going to need my data. But I'm also going to need the data of other actors in that ecosystem. And then I'm gonna have to build that ecosystem really quickly to take advantage off the system. So this throws a monkey wrench in traditional ideas of standardization. It throws a monkey wrench in the idea that enterprise I t is about efficiency on. But if I may, I just want to come back to the day I because I think we're looking in the wrong places. Things like a I let me give you an example. Today there are 2.2 million people working in call centers around the world. If we imagine that they work in three shifts, that means that any one time there are 700,000 people on the phone to a customer on that customer is calling that company because they're vested. They're calling them with advice. They're calling them with a question. They're calling them with a complaint. It is the most important source off valuable data that any company has. And yet what have we done with that? What we've done with that is we have attacked it with efficiency. So instead of saying these are the most valuable sources of information, let's use a I to to tag the sentiment in the recordings that we make with our most valuable stakeholders on this and analyze them for trends, ideas, things that need to change. We don't do that. What we do is we were going to give every call agent two minutes to get them off the phone. For God's sake, don't ask so many import difficult questions. Don't spend money talking to the customer. Try to make them happy so they get a score and say they hire you at the end of the core and then you're done. So so where the AI and automation needs to come in is not in improving efficiency but in mining value. And the real opportunity with a I Is that Joe Pine says this. If you are able to understand the customer rather than interpret them, that is so valuable to the customer that they will pay money for that. I think that's where the whole focus needs to be in this new teaming of enterprise I t. And that's true business. >>It's a great observations. I think we can all relate to that in your call center example, or you've been in a restaurant. You're trying to turn the tables fast and get you out of there. And that's the last time you ever go to that restaurant and you're you're taking that notion of systems thinking and broadening it to ecosystems thinking. And you've said ecosystems have a better chance of success when they're used to stage an experience for whether it's the employees for the brand and of course, the customer and the partners. >>That's it. That's exactly yet. So every technology leader should be asking themselves what contribution can can my and my organization makes of this movement because the business understands the problem, they don't understand how to solve it, and we've chosen a different dialogues. We've been talking a lot about what cloud could do and the functionality that clown has and the potential that clown has on those aerial good things. But it really comes together now when we work together and we, as the technology group brings in, they know how we know how toe connect quickly through the public cloud. We know how to do that in a secure way. We know how to manage data, liquidity at scale, and we can stand these things up through our, you know, our new learning of agile and devils we can stand. These ecosystems are fairly quickly now. There's still a whole bunch of culture between different businesses that have to work together through the idea that I have to protect my data rather than serve the customer. But once you get past that, there's a whole new conversation enterprise. It you can have that, I think, gives them a new lease of life, new value. And I just think it's a really, really exciting time. Yes, >>so you're seeing the intersection of a lot of different things. You talk about cloud as you know, an enabler for sure, and that's great. We could talk about that, but you've got this what you're referring to before is, you know, maybe you're in a niche market, but you have your marketplace and like you're saying, you can actually use that through an ecosystem to really leave her a much, much broader available market and then vector that into the experience economy. You know, we talk about subscriptions, the AP economy. That really is new thinking, >>yes, and I think what you're seeing here is it zits, not radical. Inasmuch as all of these ideas have been around, some of them have been around since the nineties. But what's radical is the way in which we can now mix and match these technologies to make this happen. That's gone so quickly on, I would argue to you, and I've argued this before. Scale scale is a concept within an organization is dead. It doesn't give you enough value. It gives you enough efficiency, and it gives you a cloud. But it doesn't give you three opportunity to target the niche experiences that you need to do. So. If we start to think off an organization as a a combination off known and unknown potential ecosystems, you start to build a different operating model, a different architectural idea you start to look outside more than you start to look insight. Which is why the cultural change that we were talking about just now goes hand in hand with this because people have to be comfortable thinking in ecosystems that may not yet exist on partnering with people where they bring to the table there, you know, 2030 years of experience in a new and different way. >>Let me make sure I understand that. So you're basically if I understand you're saying that if you're sort of end goal is scale and efficiency at scale, you're you're gonna have a vanilla solution for your customers and your ecosystem. Whereas if you will allow this outside in thinking to come in, you're gonna be able to actually customize those experience experiences and get the value of scale and efficiency. >>Right? So, I mean, Rory Sutherland, who is ah, big finger in the in. The marketing world has always said, ultimately, scale standardization and best practice lead to mediocrity because you are not focused on the most important thing for your employees or your brand, or you're you're focused on the efficiency factors on. They create very little value in fact, we know that they subvert value. So, yes, we need to have a very big mindset change. >>Yeah, You're a top line thinker, Allen. And and always at the forefront. I really appreciate you coming on to the to the Cuban. Participate in this program. Give us the last word. So if you're a change agent, I wanna I'm an organization, and I want to inject this type of change. Where do I >>start? Well, I think it starts by identifying. Are we going to? Is it are we gonna work on the employee experience? Do we feel that we have a model where the employees that are on stage with customers are so important that the focus has to be employees? We go down that route and we look at what happened to the pandemic. What type of experiences are we going to bring to those employees around their ability to have flow in their work, to get returned on energy, to excite the customers? Let's do that. Let's figure out what experience are we driving now? What does that experience need to be if we're the customer side? As I said, let's look ALS. The sources of information that we already have. You know, I know companies to spend hundreds of millions a year trying to figure out what consumers what. And yet if we look in their call centers, you will call up and and they will say to Your call may be recorded for quality purposes and training on this is not true. Less than 10% of those calls that ever listened to on if they are listening to its compliance that's driving that, not the burning desire to better understand the consumer. So if we change that, then we say Okay, so what can we change? What is the experience that we are now able to stage with all we know and with all weaken dio on debts? Start there. Let's start with what is the experience you want to stage? What's the experience landscape look like now? And who do we bring together to make that happen? >>Allen. Fantastic. Having you back in the Cube, it's always a pleasure. And, uh, and thanks so much for participating. >>Thank you, Dave. It's always a pleasure to speak with you. >>Thank you. Everybody, this is Dave Volonte. The Cuban cloud will be right back right after this short break. Stay with

>>From around the globe. It's the queue with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel, AWS and our community partners. >>Welcome back to the cubes. Live coverage for ADFS reinvent 2020 I'm John Ford with the cube, your host. We are the cube virtual. We're not there in person this year. We're remote with the pandemic and we're here for the keynote analysis for Verner Vogels, and we've got some great analysts on and friends of the cube cube alumni is Rob Hirschfeld is the founder and CEO of Rakin a pioneer in the dev ops space, as well as early on on the bare metal, getting on the whole on-premise he's seen the vision and I can tell you, I've talked to him many times over the years. He's been on the same track. He's on the right wave frog. Great to have you on. I'm going to have to start Veatch, come on. Y'all come on as well, but great to see you. Thanks, pleasure to be here. Um, so the keynote with Verna was, you know, he's like takes you on a journey, you know, and, and virtual is actually a little bit different vibe, but I thought he did an exceptional job of stage layout and some of the virtual stage craft. Um, but what I really enjoyed the most was really this next level, thinking around systems thinking, right, which is my favorite topic, because, you know, we've been saying, going back 10 years, the cloud is just, here's a computer, right. It's operating system. And so, um, this is the big thing. This is, what's your reaction to the keynote. >>Wow. So I think you're right. This is one of the challenges with what Amazon has been building is it's, you know, it is a lock box, it's a service. So you don't, you don't get to see behind the scenes. You don't really get to know how they run these services. And what, what I see happening out of all of those pieces is they've really come back and said, we need to help people operate this platform. And, and that shouldn't be surprising to anyone. Right? Last couple of years, they've been rolling out service, service service, all these new things. This talk was really different for Verner's con normal ones, because he wasn't talking about whizzbang new technologies. Um, he was really talking about operations, um, you know, died in the wool. How do we make the system easier to use? How do we expose things? What assistance can we have in, in building applications? Uh, in some cases it felt like, uh, an application performance monitoring or management APM talk from five or even 10 years ago, um, canaries, um, you know, Canary deployments, chaos engineering, observability, uh, sort of bread and butter, operational things. >>We have Savi Joel, who's a influencer cloud computing Xtrordinair dev ops guru. Uh, we don't need dev ops guru from Amazon. We got Sarpy and prop here. So it'd be great to see you. Um, you guys had a watch party. Um, tell me what the reaction was, um, with, of the influencers in the cloud or ADI out there that were looking at Vernon's announcement, because it does attract a tech crowd. What was your take and what was the conversation like? >>Yeah, we kinda geeked out. Um, we had a watch party and we were commenting back and forth, like when we were watching it. I think that the general consensus is that the complexity of AWS stack itself is, is increasing. Right. And they have been focused on developers a lot, I think a lot longer than they needed to be a little bit. I think, uh, now they need to focus on the operations. Like we, we are, we all love dev ops talks and it's very fancy and it's very modern way of building software. But if you think deep down that, like once we developed software traditionally and, and also going forward, I think we need to have that separation. Once you develop something in production, it's, it's, it's operating right. Once you build a car, you're operating car, you're not building car all the time. Right? >>So same with the software. Once you build a system, it should have some stability where you're running it, operating it for, for a while, at least before you touch it or refactoring all that stuff. So I think like building and operating at the same time, it's very good for companies like Amazon, AWS, especially, uh, and, and Google and, and, and Facebook and all those folks who are building technology because they are purely high-tech companies, but not for GM Ford Chrysler or Kaiser Permanente, which is healthcare or a school district. The, they, they need, need to operate that stuff once it's built. So I think, uh, the operationalization of cloud, uh, well, I think take focus going forward a lot more than it has and absorbable Deanna, on a funny note, I said, observability is one of those things. I, now these days, like, like, you know, and the beauty pageants that every contestant say is like, whatever question you asked, is it Dora and the answer and say at the end world peace, right? >>And that's a world peace term, which is the absorbability. Like you can talk about all the tech stuff and all that stuff. And at the end you say observability and you'll be fine. So, um, what I'm making is like observability is, and was very important. And when I was talking today about like how we can enable the building of absorbability into this new paradigm, which is a microservices, like where you pass a service ID, uh, all across all the functions from beginning to the end. Right. And so, so you can trace stuff. So I think he was talking, uh, at that level. Yeah. >>Let me, let's take an observer Billy real quick. I have a couple of other points. I want to get your opinions on. He said, quote, this three, enabling major enabling technologies, powering observability metrics, logging and tracing here. We know that it would, that is of course, but he didn't take a position. If you look at all the startups out there that are sitting there, the next observability, there's at least six that I know of. I mean, that are saying, and then you got ones that are kind of come in. I think signal effects was one. I liked, like I got bought by Splunk and then is observability, um, a feature, um, or is it a company? I mean, this is something that kind of gets talked about, right? I mean, it's, I mean, is it really something you can build a business on or is it a white space? That's a feature that gets pulled in what'd you guys react to that? >>So this is a platform conversation and, and, you know, one of the things that we've been having conversations around recently is this idea of platforms. And, and, you know, I've been doing a lot of work on infrastructure as code and distributed infrastructure and how people want infrastructure to be more code, like, which is very much what, what Verna was, was saying, right? How do we bring development process capabilities into our infrastructure operations? Um, and these are platform challenges. W what you're asking about from, uh, observability is perspective is if I'm running my code in a platform, if I'm running my infrastructure as a platform, I actually need to understand what that platform is doing and how it's making actions. Um, but today we haven't really built the platforms to be very transparent to the users. And observability becomes this necessary component to fix all the platforms that we have, whether they're Kubernetes or AWS, or, you know, even going back to VMware or bare metal, if you can't see what's going on, then you're operating in the blind. And that is an increasingly big problem. As we get more and more sophisticated infrastructure, right? Amazon's outage was based on systems can being very connected together, and we keep connecting systems together. And so we have to be able to diagnose and troubleshoot when those connections break or for using containers or Lambdas. The code that's running is ephemeral. It's only around for short periods of time. And if something's going wrong in it, it's incredibly hard to fix it, >>You know? And, and also he, you know, he reiterated his whole notion of log everything, right? He kept on banging on the drum on that one, like log everything, which is actually a good practice. You got to log everything. Why wouldn't you, >>I mean, how you do, but they don't make it easy. Right? Amazon has not made it easy to cross, cross, and, uh, connect all the data across all of those platforms. Right? People think of Amazon as one thing, but you know, the people who are using it understand it's actually a collection of services. And some of those are not particularly that tied together. So figuring out something that's going on across, across all of your service bundles, and this isn't an Amazon problem, this is an industry challenge. Especially as we go towards microservices, I have to be able to figure out what happened, even if I used 10 services, >>Horizontal, scalability argument. Sorry. Do you want to get your thoughts on this? So the observability, uh, he also mentioned theory kind of couched it before he went into the talk about systems theory. I'm like, okay. Let's, I mean, I love systems, and I think that's going to be the big wake up call here for the next 10 years. That's a systems mindset. And I think, you know, um, Rob's right. It's a platform conversation. When you're thinking about an operating system or a system, it has consequences when things change, but he talked about controllability versus, uh, observability and kinda T that teed up the, well, you can control systems controls, or you can have observability, uh, what's he getting at in all of this? What's he trying to say, keep, you know, is it a cover story? Is it this, is it a feature? What was the, what was the burner getting at with all this? >>Uh, I, I, I believe they, they understand that, that, uh, that all these services are very sort of micro in nature from Amazon itself. Right. And then they are not tied together as Rob said earlier. And they, he addressed that. He, uh, he, uh, announced that service. I don't know the name of that right now of problem ahead that we will gather all the data from all the different places. And then you can take a look at all the data coming from different services at this at one place where you have the service ID passed on to all the servers services. You have to do that. It's a discipline as a software developer, you have to sort of adhere to even in traditional world, like, like, you know, like how you do logging and monitoring and tracing, um, it's, it's your creativity at play, right? >>So that's what software is like, if you can pass on, I was treating what they gave an example of Citrix, uh, when, when, when you are using like tons of applications with George stream to your desktop, through Citrix, they had app ID concept, right? So you can trace what you're using and all that stuff, and you can trace the usage and all that stuff, and they can, they can map that log to that application, to that user. So you need that. So I think he w he was talking about, I think that's what he's getting too. Like we have to, we have to sort of rethink how we write software in this new Microsoft, uh, sort of a paradigm, which I believe it, it's a beautiful thing. Uh, as long as we can manage it, because Microsoft is, are spread across like, um, small and a smaller piece of software is everywhere, right? So the state, how do we keep the state intact? How do we, um, sort of trace things? Uh, it becomes a huge problem if we don't do it right? So it it's, um, it's a little, this is some learning curve for most of the developers out there. So 60 dash 70% >>Rob was bringing this up, get into this whole crash. And what is it kind of breakdown? Because, you know, there's a point where you don't have the Nirvana of true horizontal scalability, where you might have microservices that need to traverse boundaries or systems, boundaries, where, or silos. So to Rob's point earlier, if you don't see it, you can't measure it or you can't get through it. How do you wire services across boundaries? Is that containers, is that, I mean, how does this all work? How do you guys see that working? I just see a train wreck there. >>It's, it's a really hard problem. And I don't think we should underestimate it because everything we toast talked about sounds great. If you're in a single AWS region, we're talking about distributed infrastructure, right? If you think about what we've been seeing, even more generally about, you know, edge sites, uh, colo on prem, you know, in cloud multi-region cloud, all these things are actually taking this one concept and you're like, Oh, I just want to store all the log data. Now, you're not going to store all your log data in one central location anymore. That in itself, as a distributed infrastructure problem, where I have to be able to troubleshoot what's going on, you know, and know that the logs are going to the right place and capture the data, that's really important. Um, and one of the innovations in this that I think is going to impact the industry over the next couple of years is the addition of more artificial intelligence and machine learning, into understanding operations patterns and practices. >>And I think that that's a really significant industry trend where Amazon has a distinct advantage because it's their systems and it's captive. They can analyze and collect a lot of data across very many customers and learn from those things and program systems that learn from those things. Um, and so the way you're going to keep up with this is not by logging more and more data, but by doing exactly what we're talking through, which was how do I analyze the patterns with machine learning so that I can get predictive analysis so that I can understand something that looks wrong and then put people on checking it before it goes wrong. >>All right, I gotta, I gotta bring up something controversial. I can't hold back any longer. Um, you know, Mark Zuckerberg said many, many years ago, all the old people, they can do startups, they're too old and you gotta be young and hungry. You gotta do that stuff. If we're talking systems theory, uh, automated meta reasoning, evolvable systems, resilience, distributed computing, isn't that us old guys that have actually have systems experience. I mean, if you're under the age of 30, you probably don't even know what a system is. Um, and, or co coded to the level of systems that we use to code. And I'm putting my quote old man kind of theory, only kidding, by the way on the 30. But my point is there is a generation of us that had done computer science in the, in the eighties and seventies, late seventies, maybe eighties and nineties, it's all it was, was systems. It was a systems world. Now, when you have a software world, the aperture is increasing in terms of software, are the younger generation of developers system thinkers, or have we lost that art, uh, or is it doesn't matter? What do you guys think? >>I, I think systems thinking comes with age. I mean, that's, that's sort of how I think, I mean, like I take the systems thinking a greater sort of, >>Um, world, like state as a system country, as a system and everything is a system, your body's a system family system, so it's the same way. And then what impacts the system when you operated internal things, which happened within the system and external, right. And we usually don't talk about the economics and geopolitics. There's a lot of the technology. Sometimes we do, like we have, I think we need to talk more about that, the data sovereignty and all that stuff. But, but even within the system, I think the younger people appreciate it less because they don't have the, they don't see, um, software taught like that in the universities. And, and, and, and by these micro micro universities now online trainings and stuff like sweaty, like, okay, you learn this thing and you're good at it saying, no, no, it's not like that. So you've got to understand the basics and how the systems operate. >>Uh, I'll give you an example. So like we were doing the, the, the client server in early nineties, and then gradually we moved more towards like having ESB enterprise services, bus where you pass a state, uh, from one object to another, and we can bring in the heterogeneous, uh, languages. This thing is written in Java. This is in.net. This is in Python. And then you can pass it through that. Uh, you're gonna make a state for, right. And that, that was contained environment. Like ESBs were contained environment. We were, I, I wrote software for ESPs myself at commerce one. And so like, we, what we need today is the ESP equallant in the cloud. We don't have that. >>Rob, is there a reverse ageism developers? I mean, if you're young, you might not have systems. What do you think? I, I don't agree with that. I actually think that the nature of the systems that we're programming forces people into more distributed infrastructure thinking the platforms we have today are much better than they were, you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, um, in the sense that I can do distributed infrastructure programming without thinking about it very much anymore, but you know, people know, they know how to use cloud. They know how to use a big platform. They know how to break things into microservices. I, I think that these are inherent skills that people need to think about that you're you're right. There is a challenge in that, you know, you get very used to the platform doing the work for you, and that you need to break through it, but that's an experiential thing, right? >>The more experienced developers are going to have to understand what the platforms do. Just like, you know, we used to have to understand how registers worked inside of a CPU, something I haven't worried about for a long, long time. So I, I don't think it's that big of a problem. Um, from, from that perspective, I do think that the thing that's really hard is collaboration. And so, you know, it's, it's hard people to people it's hard inside of a platform. It's hard when you're an Amazon size and you've been rolling out services all over the place and now have to figure out how to fit them all together. Um, and that to me is, is a design problem. And it's more about being patient and letting things, uh, mature. If anything might take away from this keynote is, you know, everybody asked Amazon to take a breath and work on usability and, and cross cross services synchronizations rather than, than adding more services into the mix. And that's, >>That's a good point. I mean, again, I bring up the conversation because it's kind of the elephant in the room and I make it being controversial to make a point there. So our view, because, you know, I interviewed Judy Estrin who helped found the internet with Vince Cerf. She's well-known for her contributions for the TCP IP protocol. Andy Besta Stein. Who's the, who's the Rembrandt of motherboards. But as Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, I would say both said to me on the cube that without systems thinking, you don't understand consequences of when things change. And we start thinking about this microservices conversation, you start to hear a little bit of that pattern emerging, where those systems, uh, designs matter. And then you have, on the other hand, you have this modern application framework where serverless takes over. So, you know, Rob back to your infrastructure as code, it really isn't an either, or they're not mutually exclusive. You're going to have a set of nerds and geeks engineering systems to make them better and easier and scalable. And then you're going to have application developers that need to just make it work. So you start to see the formation of kind of the, I won't say swim lanes, but I mean, what do you guys think about that? Because you know, Judy and, um, Andy better sign up. They're kind of right. Uh, >>Th th the enemy here, and we're seeing this over and over again is complexity. And, and the challenge has been, and serverless is like, those people like, Oh, I don't have to worry about servers anymore because I'm dealing with serverless, which is not true. What you're doing is you're not worrying about infrastructure as much, but you, the complexity, especially in a serverless infrastructure where you're pulling, you know, events from all sorts of things, and you have one, one action, one piece of code, you know, triggering a whole bunch of other pieces of code in a decoupled way. We are, we are bringing so much complexity into these systems, um, that they're very hard to conceive of. Um, and AIML is not gonna not gonna address that. Um, I think one of the things that was wonderful about the setting, uh, in the sugar factory and at all of that, you know, sort of very mechanical viewpoint, you know, when you're actually connecting all things together, you can see it. A lot of what we've been building today is almost impossible to observe. And so the complexity price that we're paying in infrastructure is going up exponentially and we can't sustain infrastructures like that. We have to start leveling that in, right? >>Your point on the keynote, by the way, great call out on, on the, on the setting. I thought that was very clever. So what do you think about this? Because as enterprises go through this transformation, one of the big conversations is the solution architecture, the architecture of, um, how you lay all this out. It's complexity involved. Now you've got on premise system, you've got cloud, you've got edge, which you're hearing more and more local processing, disconnected systems, managing it at the edge with visualization. We're going to hear more about that, uh, with Dirk, when he comes on the queue, but you know, just in general as a practitioner out there, what, what's, what's your, what do you see people getting their arms around, around this, this keynote? What do they, what's your thoughts? >>Yeah, I, I think, uh, the, the pattern I see emerging is like, or in the whole industry, regardless, like if you put, when does your sign is that like, we will write less and less software in-house I believe that SAS will emerge. Uh, and it has to, I mean, that is the solution to kill the complexity. I believe, like we always talk about software all the time and we, we try to put this in the one band, like it's, everybody's dining, same kind of software, and they have, I'm going to complexity and they have the end years and all that stuff. That's not true. Right. If you are Facebook, you're writing totally different kind of software that needs to scale differently. You needs a lot of cash and all that stuff, right. Gash like this and cash. Well, I ain't both gases, but when you are a mid size enterprise out there in the middle, like fly over America, what, uh, my friend Wayne says, like, we need to think about those people too. >>Like, how do they drive software? What kind of software do they write? Like how many components they have in there? Like they have three tiers of four tiers. So I think they're a little more simpler software for internal use. We have to distinguish these applications. I always talk about this, like the systems of record systems of differentiation, the system of innovation. And I think cloud will do great. And the newer breed of applications, because you're doing a lot of, a lot of experimentation. You're doing a lot of DevOps. You have two pizza teams and all that stuff, which is good stuff we talk about, well, when you go to systems of record, you need stability. You need, you need some things which is operational. You don't want to touch it again, once it's in production. Right? And so the, in between that, that thing is, I think that's, that's where the complexity lies the systems are, which are in between those systems of record and system or innovation, which are very new Greenfield. That, that's what I think that's where we need to focus, uh, our, um, platform development, um, platform as a service development sort of, uh, dollars, if you will, as an industry, I think Amazon is doing that right. And, and Azura is doing that right to a certain extent too. I, I, I, I worry a little bit about, uh, uh, Google because they're more tilted towards the data science, uh, sort of side of things right now. >>Well, Microsoft has the most visibility into kind of the legacy world, but Rob, you're shaking your head there. Um, on his comment, >>You know, I, I, you know, I, I watched the complexity of all these systems and, and, you know, I'm not sure that sass suffocation of everything that we're doing is leading to less is pushing the complexity behind a curtain so that you, you, you can ignore the man behind the curtain. Um, but at the end of the day, you know what we're really driving towards. And I think Amazon is accelerating this. The cloud is accelerating. This is a new set of standard operating processes and procedures based on automation, based on API APIs, based on platforms, uh, that ultimately, I think people could own and could come back to how we want to operate it. When I look at what we w we were just shown with the keynote, you know, it was an, is things that application performance management and monitoring do. It's, it's not really Amazon specific stuff. There's no magic beans that Amazon is growing operational knowledge, you know, in Amazon, greenhouses that only they know how to consume. This is actually pretty block and tackle stuff. Yeah. And most people don't need to operate it at that type of scale to be successful. >>It's a great point. I mean, let's, let's pick up on that for the last couple of minutes we have left. Cause I think that's a great, great double-down because you're thinking about the mantra, Hey, everything is a service, you know, that's great for business model. You know, you hand it over to the techies. They go, wait a minute. What does that actually mean? It's harder. But when I talk to people out there and you hear people talking about everything is a service or sanctification, I do agree. I think you're putting complexity behind the curtain, but it's kind of the depends answer. So if you're going to have everything as a service, the common thesis is it has to have support automation everywhere. You got to automate things to make things sassiphy specified, which means you need five nines, like factory type environments. They're not true factories, but Rob, to your point, if you're going to make something a SAS, it better be Bulletproof. Because if you're, if you're automating something, it better be automated, right? You can measure things all you want, but if it's not automated, like a, like a, >>And you have no idea what's going on behind the curtains with some of these, these things, right. Especially, you know, I know our business and you know, our customers' businesses, they're, they're reliant on more and more services and you have no idea, you know, the persistence that service, if they're going to break an API, if they're going to change things, a lot of the stuff that Amazon is adding here defensively is because they're constantly changing the wheels on the bus. Um, and that is not bad operational practice. You should be resilient to that. You should have processes that are able to be constantly updated and CICB pipelines and, you know, continuous deployments, you shouldn't expect to, to, you know, fossilize your it environment in Amber, and then hope it doesn't have to change for 10 years. But at the same time, we'll work control your house. >>That's angle about better dev ops hypothetical, like a factory, almost metaphor. Do you care if the cars are being shipped down the assembly line and the output works and the output, if you have self-healing and you have these kinds of mechanisms, you know, you could have do care. The services are being terminated and stood up and reformed as long as the factory works. Right? So again, it's a complexity level of how much it, or you want to bite off and chew or make work. So to me, if it's automated, it's simple, did it work or not? And then the cost of work to be, what's your, what's your angle on this? Yeah. >>I believe if you believe in systems thinking, right. You have to believe in, um, um, the concept of, um, um, Oh gosh, I'm losing over minor. Um, abstraction. Right? So abstraction is your friend in software. Abstraction is your friend anyways, right? That's how we, humans pieces actually make a lot more progress than any other sort of living things here in this world. So that's why we are smart. We can abstract complexity behind the curtains, right? We, we can, we can keep improving, like from the, the, you know, wooden cart to the car, to the, to the plane, to the other, like, we, we, we have this, like when, when we see we are flying these airplanes, like 90% of the time they're on autopilot, like that's >>Hi, hiding my attractions is, is about evolution. Evolvable software term. He said, it's true. All right, guys, we have one minute left. Um, let's close this out real quick. Each of you give a closing statement on what you thought of the keynote and Verner's talk prop, we'll start with you. >>Uh, you know, as always, it's a perf keynote, uh, very different this year because it was so operationally focused and using the platform and, and helping people run their, their, off their applications and software better. And I think it's an interesting turn that we've been waiting for for Amazon, uh, to look at, you know, helping people use their own platform more. Um, so, uh, refreshing change and I think really powerful and well delivered. I really did like the setting >>Great shopping. And when we found, I found out today, that's Teresa Carlson is now running training and certification. So I'm expecting that to be highly awesomely accelerated a success there. Sorry, what's your take real quick on burners talk, walk away. Keynote thoughts. >>I, I, I think it was what I expected it to be like, he focused on the more like a software architecture kind of discussion. And he focused this time a little more on the ops side and the dev side, which I think they, they are pivoting a little bit, um, because they, they want to sell more AWS stuff to us, uh, to the existing enterprises. So I think, um, that was, um, good. Uh, I wish at the end, he said, not only like, go, go build, but also go build and operate. So can, you know, they all say, go build, build, build, but like, who's going to operate this stuff. Right. So I think, um, uh, I will see a little shift, I think, going forward, but we were talking earlier, uh, during or watch party that I think, uh, going forward, uh, AWS will open start open sourcing the commoditized version of their cloud, which have been commoditized by other vendors and gradually they will open source it so they can keep the hold onto the enterprises. I think that's what my take is. That's my prediction is >>Awesome and want, I'll make sure I'm at your watch party next time. Sorry. I missed it. Nobody's taking notes. Try and prepare. Sorry, Rob. Thanks for coming on and sharing awesome insight and expertise to experts in cloud and dev ops. I know them. And can firstly vouch for their awesomeness? Thanks for coming on. I think Verner can verify what I thought already was reporting Amazon everywhere. And if you connect the dots, this idea of reasoning, are we going to have smarter cloud? That's the next conversation? I'm John for your host of the cube here, trying to get smarter with Aus coverage. Thanks to Robin. Sarvi becoming on. Thanks for watching.

>> From the cube studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cube conversation. >> Hello everyone, welcome back to the cubes. Special presentation on the future of cloud. Three years ago, Alan Nance said to me that in order to really take advantage of cloud and drive billions of dollars of value, you have to change the operating model. I've never forgotten that statement and have explored it from many angles over the last three years. In fact it was one of the motivations for me actually running this program for our audience. Of course with me is Alan Nance. He is a change agent. He's led transformations at large organizations, including ING bank, Royal Phillips, Barclay's bank, and many others. He's also a co-founder of CitrusCollab. Alan, great to see you. Thanks for coming on the program. >> Thanks for having me again, Dave. >> All right, so when we were preparing for this interview, you shared with me the following, you said enterprise IT, often hasn't really tapped the true powers that are available to them to make real connections, to take advantage of that opportunity, connections to the business that is. What do you mean by that? >> Well I think we we've been saying for quite a long time that enterprise IT is certainly a big part of our past in technology. But just how much is it going to be in the future? And enterprise IT has had a difficult time under the cost pressures of being a centralized organization with large, expensive, large topics. While at the same time we see obviously the digital operations for growing oftentimes in separate reporting structures and closest to the business. And what I'm thinking right now is enterprise IT, if it has made this transition to a cloud operating models, whether they are proprietary or whether they are public cloud, there's a huge opportunity for enterprise IT to connect the dots in a way that no other part of the organization can do that. And when they connect those dots, working closely with the business, they unleash a huge amount of value that is beyond things like efficiency or things like just providing cloud computing to be flexible. It has to be much more about value generation. And I think that a lot of leaders of enterprise IT have not really grasped that. And I think that's the opportunity sitting right in front of them right now. >> You know what I've seen lately? I wonder if you could comment, is obviously we always talk about the stove pipes, but you've seen the CIO, the chief data officer that you just mentioned, the chief digital officer, the chief information security officer, they've largely been in their own silos of definitely seeing a move to bring those together. I'm seeing a lot of CDOs and CIO roles come together. And even the chief information or the head of security reporting up into that, where there seems to be as you're sort of suggesting just a lot more visibility across the entire organization. Is it an organizational issue? Is it a mindset? Go on if you could comment. >> Well I would say it's two or three different things. Certainly it's an organizational issue, but I think it starts off with a cultural issue. And I think what you're seeing, and if you look at the more progressive companies that you see, I think you are also seeing a new emergence of the enlightened technology leader. So with all respect to me and my generation our tenure as the owners of the large enterprise IT is coming to an end. And we grew up trying to master the complexity of the silos as you so deftly pointed out. Out we were battling this soaring technology, trying to get it under control, trying to get the costs down, trying to reduce CapEx. And a lot of that was focused on the partnerships that we had with technology suppliers. And so that mindset of being engineers struggling for control, having your most important part of being a technology company itself, I've got now, I think is giving way, giving way to a new generation of technology leaders who haven't grown up with that culture. And oftentimes what I see is that the new enlightened CIOs are female and they are coming into the role outside of the regular promotion chain, so they're coming to these roles through finance, HR, marketing, and they're bringing a different focus. And the focus is much more about how do we work together to create an amazing experience for our employees and for our customers and an experience that drives value. So I think there's a reset in the culture. And clearly when you start talking about creating a value chain to improve experience, you're also talking about bringing people together from different multidisciplinary backgrounds to make that happen. >> Well that's kind of, it makes me think about Amazon's mantra of working backwards, start with the experience. And then a lot of CIOs that I know would love to be more involved in the business, but they're just so busy trying to keep the lights on. Like you said, trying to manage vendors and in the like. I've had a discussion the other day with an individual, we were talking about how, you got to shift from a product mindset to a platform mindset, but you've said that the platform thinking you're always ahead of the game. Platform thinking it needs to make way for ecosystem thinking. Unless you're into that, it'd be giant scale business like Amazon or Spotify you said, you're going to be in a niche market if you really don't tap that ecosystem again . If you could explain what you mean by that? >> Well I think right now, if this movement to experience is fundamental. Right? So Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore wrote about the experience economy as far back in 1990, but the things that they predicted then are here now. And so what we're now seeing is that consumers have choice. Employees have choice. I think the pandemic has accelerated that. And so what happens when you put an enterprise under that type of external pressure, is that it fragments. And if it can fragment in two ways. It can fragment dysfunctionally so that every silo tries to go into a defensive mode, protective mode. That's obviously the wrong way to go. But the fragmentation that's exciting is when it fragments into ecosystems that are actually working together to solve and experience problem. And those are not platforms they're too big. When I was at Phillips, I was very enthusiastic about working on this connected healthcare platform. But I think what I started to realize was it takes too much time. It requires too much investment and you are bringing people who tune you based on your capability, whereas what the market needs is much more agile than that. So if we look in healthcare, for instance and you want to connect patients at home, with patients, with the doctors in the hospital. In the old model when you said, I'm going to build a platform for this, I'm going to have doctors with a certain competence, so they're going to be connecting into this. And so are the patients in some way. And so are the insurers. I think what you're going to see now is different. We're going to say let's get together a small team that understands its competence. So for instance, let's get an insurance provider, let's get a healthcare operator, let's get a healthcare tech company and let's pull their data in a way that helps us to create solutions now that can roll out in 30, 60 or 90 days. And the thing that makes that possible is the move to the public cloud. Because now there are so many specialized suppliers, specialized skillsets available that you can connect to through Amazon, through Google, through Azure, that these things that we used to think were very, very difficult, are now much easier. I don't want to minimize the effort, but these things are on the table right now to read value. >> So you're also technologist. And I want to ask you and everybody always says, technology is easy part of the people and the process. We can all agree on that. However sometimes technology can be a blocker. And the example that you just mentioned, I have a couple of takeaways from that. First of all the platform thinking is somewhat, sounds like it's more command and control and you're advocating for let's get the ecosystem who are closest to the problem to solve those problems. However they decide and they'll leverage the cloud. So my question is from a technology standpoint. Does that ecosystem have to be in the same cloud, with the state of today's technology? can it be across clouds? Can be there pieces on prem? What's your thinking on that? >> I think exactly the opposite. It cannot be monolithic and centralized. It's just not practical because that would cause you too much time on interoperability. And who owns what. You see the power behind experience is data. And so the most important technical part of this is dealing with data liquidity. So the data that, for instance somebody like Kaiser has or the Harvard Mental Healthcare have or the Phillips have, that's not going to be put into a central place for the ecosystem mobilization. There will be subsets of that data flowing between those parties. So the technical, the hardware. Is how do we manage data liquidity? How do we manage the security around data liquidity? And how do we also understand that what we're building is going to be ever changing and maybe temporary, because an idea may not work. And so you've got this idea that the timeliness is very very important. The duration is very uncertain. The mojo energy for this is data liquidity, data transfer, data sharing. But the vehicle is the combination of public cloud, in my mind. >> Somebody said to me, hey that data's like water. It'll go where it wants to go, where it needs to go and you can't try to control it. It's let it go. Now of course many organizations, particularly large incumbent organizations they have many many data pipelines. They have many processes, many roles, and they're struggling to actually kind of inject automation into those pipelines. Maybe that's machine intelligence really do more data sharing across that pipeline and ultimately compress the end and cycle time to go from raw data to insights that are actionable. What are you seeing there? And what's your advice? >> Well I think you make some really good points, but what I hear also a little bit in your observation is you're still observing enterprises. And the focus of the enterprise has been on optimizing the processes within the boundaries of its own system. That's why we have SAP and this why we have Salesforce. And to some degree even service now. It's all been about optimizing how we move data, how we create production services. And that's not the game now. That's not an important game. The important game right now is how do I connect to my employees? How do I connect to my customers in a way that provides them a memorable experience? And the realization is, I'm assuming it's already manufacturing for some years. I can't be all things to all people. So I have to understand this is where the first part of data comes in. I have to understand. Who this person is that I am trying to target? Who is the person that needs this memorable experience? And what is that memorable experience going to look like? And I'm going to need my data, but I'm also going to need the data of other actors in that ecosystem. And then I'm going to have to build that ecosystem really quickly to take advantage of the system. So this throws a monkey rage in traditional ideas of standardization. It throws a monkey rage in the idea that enterprise IT is about efficiency. If I may, I just want to come back to the AI because I think we're looking in the wrong places. Things like AI. And let me give you an example today, there are 2.2 million people working in call centers around the world. If we imagine that they work in three shifts, that means that anyone time there are 700,000 people on the phone to a customer, and that customer is calling that company because they're vested, they're calling them with advice. They're calling them with a question they're calling them with a complaint. It is the most important source of valuable data that any company has. And yet, what have we done with that? What we've done with that is we've attacked it with efficiency. So instead of saying, these are the most valuable sources of information, let's use AI to tag the sentiment in the recordings that we make with our most valuable stakeholders. And let's analyze them for trends, ideas things that needs to change. We don't do that. What we do is we're going to give every cool agent two minutes to get them off the phone. For God's sake, don't answer many important, difficult questions. Don't spend money talking to the customer, try to make them happy. So they get a score and say, they hire you at the end of the call, and then you're done. So where the AI automation needs to come in is not in improving your efficiency, but in mining value. And the real opportunity with AI is that Joe Pine says this. "If you are able to understand the customer, rather than interpret them, that is so valuable to the customer, that they will pay money for that". And I think that's where the whole focus needs to be in this new team in enterprise IT, and they're still in the business. >> That's a great observation. I think we can all relate to that in your call center example, or you've been a restaurant, and you're trying to turn the tables fast and get out of there. And it's the last time you ever go to that restaurant. And you're taking that notion of systems thinking and broadening it to ecosystems thinking. And you've said, ecosystems have a better chance of success when they're used to stage and experience for whether it's the employee for the brand. And of course the customer and the partners. >> That's it that's exactly it. So every technology leader should be asking themselves what contribution can I and my organization make to this movement, because the business understands the problem. They don't understand how to solve it, and we've chosen a different dialogue. So we've been talking a lot about what cloud can do and the functionality that cloud has and the potential that cloud has. And those are all good things, but it really comes together. Now when we work together and we as the technology group brings in the know how we know how to connect quickly through the public cloud, we know how to do that in a secure way. We know how to manage data liquidity at scale, and we can stand these things up through our new learning of agile and DevOps. We can stand these ecosystems up fairly quickly. Now there's still a whole bunch of culture between different businesses that have to work together. The idea that I have to protect my data rather than serve the customer. But once you get past that, there's a whole new conversation enterprise IT can have, that I think gives them a new lease of life, new value. And I just think it's a really really exciting time. >> (inaudible) The intersection of a lot of different things. You talk about cloud as an enabler for sure. And that's great. We can talk about that, but you've got this. What you were referring to before is maybe you're in a niche market, but you have your marketplace. And like you're saying, you can actually use that through an ecosystem to really leave a much, much broader available market. And then vector that into the experience economy. We talk about subscriptions, the API economy, that really is new thinking. >> It is and I think what you're seeing here it's not radical in as much as all of these ideas have been around. Some of them have been around since the nineties, but what's radical is the way in which we can now mix and match these technologies to make this happen. That's growing so quickly. And I would argue to you and I've argued this before. Scale, scale as a concept within an organization is dead. It doesn't give you enough value. It gives you enough efficiency and it gives you a cloud. And it doesn't give you the opportunity to target the niche experiences that you need to do. So if we start to think of an organization as a combination of known and unknown potential ecosystems, you start to build a different operating model, a different architectural idea. You start to look outside more than you start to look inside. Which is why the cultural change that we were talking about just now goes hand in hand with this because people have to be comfortable thinking in ecosystems that may not yet exist and partnering with people where they bring to the table. There 20, 30 years of experience in a new and different way. >> So let me make sure I understand that. So you basically, if I understand it, you're saying that if your sort of end goal is scale and efficiency at scale you're going to have a vanilla solution for your customers in your ecosystem. Whereas if you will allow this outside in thinking to come in, you're going to be able to actually customize those experience, experiences and get the value of scale and efficiency. >> Right, so I mean Rory Sutherland, who is a big thinker in the marketing world has always said, "ultimately scale standardization and best practice lead to mediocrity". Because you are not focused on the most important thing for your employee or your brand. You're focused on the efficiency factors and they create very little value. In fact we know that they subvert value. So yes we need to have a very big mindset change. >> Yeah you're a top line thinker Alan and always at the forefront. I really appreciate you coming on to the cube and participate in this program. Give us a last word. So if you're a change agent, I'm an organization and I want to inject this type of change. Where do I start? >> Well I think it starts by identifying. Are we going to work on the employee experience? Do we feel that we have a model where the employees that are on stage with customers are so important that the focus has to be employees. We go down that route and then we look at what's happened to the pandemic. What type of experiences are we going to bring to those employees around their ability to have flow in their work, to get return on energy, to excite the customers? Let's do that. Let's figure out what experience are we driving now? And what does that experience need to be? If we're the customer side. As I said let's look at all the sources of information that we already have. I know companies that spend hundreds of millions a year trying to figure out what consumers want. And yet if we look in their call sentences, you will call up and they will say to you, your call may be recorded for quality purposes and training. And it's not true, less than 10% of those calls are ever listened to. And if they listened to, it's compliance, that's driving that, not the burning desire to better understand the consumer. So if we change that, then we shall get to. What can we change? What is the experience we are now able to stage with all we know and with all we can do. And let's start there, let's start with, what is the experience you want to stage? What's the experience landscape look like now? And who do we bring together to make that happen? >> Alan fantastic. Having you back in the cube, it's always a pleasure and thanks so much for participating. >> Thank you, Dave. It's always a pleasure to speak with you. >> And thank you everybody. This is Dave Vellante the cube on cloud. We'll be right back right after this short break, stay with us. (soft music)

>> Announcer: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a Cube Conversation. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in our Palo Alto Studios today, having a Cube Conversation, you know, with the COVID situation going on we've had to change our business and go pretty much 100% digital. And as part of that process, we wanted to reach out to our community, and talk to some of the leaders out there, because I think leadership in troubling times is even more amplified in it's importance. So we're excited to be joined today by two leaders in our community. First one being John Chambers, a very familiar face from many, many years at Cisco, who's now the founder and CEO of JC2 Ventures. John, great to see you. >> Jeff, it's a pleasure to be with you again. >> Absolutely. And joining him is Umesh Sachdev, he's the co-founder and CEO of Uniphore. First time on theCUBE, Umesh, great to meet you. >> Jeff, thank you for having me, it's great to be with you. >> You as well, and I had one of your great people on the other day, talking about CX, and I think CX is the whole solution. Why did Uber beat cabs, do you want to stand on a corner and raise your hand in the rain? Or do you want to know when the guy's going to come pick you up, in just a couple minutes? So anyway, welcome. So let's jump into it. John, one of your things, that you talked about last time we talked, I think it was in October, wow how the world has changed. >> Yes. >> Is about having a playbook, and really, you know, kind of thinking about what you want to do before it's time to actually do it, and having some type of a script, and some type of direction, and some type of structure, as to how you respond to situations. Well there's nothing like a disaster to really fire off, you know, the need to shift gears, and go to kind of into a playbook mode. So I wonder if you could share with the viewers, kind of what is your playbook, you've been through a couple of these bumps. Not necessarily like COVID-19, but you've seen a couple bumps over your career. >> So it's my pleasure Jeff. What I'll do is kind of outline how I believe you use an innovation playbook on everything from acquisitions, to digitizing a company, to dealing with crisis. Let's focus on the playbook for crisis. You are right, and I'm not talking about my age, (John laughing) but this is my sixth financial crisis, and been through the late 1990s with the Asian financial crisis, came out of it even stronger at Cisco. Like everybody else we got knocked down in the 2001 tech bubble, came back from it even stronger. Then in 2008, 2009, Great Recession. We came through that one very, very strong, and we saw that one coming. It's my fourth major health crisis. Some of them turned out to be pretty small. I was in Mexico when the bird pandemic hit, with the President of Mexico, when we thought it was going to be terrible. We literally had to cancel the meetings that evening. That's why Cisco built the PLAR Presence. I was in Brazil for the issue with the Zika virus, that never really developed much, and the Olympics went on there, and I only saw one mosquito during the event. It bit me. But what I'm sharing with you is I've seen this movie again and again. And then, with supply chain, which not many people were talking about yet, supply chain crisis, like we saw in Japan with the Tsunami. What's happening this time is you're seeing all three at one time, and they're occurring even faster. So the playbook is pretty simple in crisis management, and then it would be fun to put Umesh on the spot and say how closely did you follow it? Did you agree with issues, or did you disagree, et cetera, on it. Now I won't mention, Umesh, that you've got a review coming up shortly from your board, so that should not affect your answer at all. But the first playbook is being realistic, how much was self-inflicted, how much was market. This one's largely market, but if you had problems before, you got to address them at the same time. The second thing is what are the five to seven things that are material, what you're going to do to lead through this crisis. That's everything from expense management, to cash preservation. It's about how do you interface to your employees, and how do you build on culture. It's about how do you interface to your customers as they change from their top priority being growth and innovation, to a top priority being cost savings, and the ability to really keep their current revenue streams from churning and moving. And it's about literally, how do make your big bets for what you want to look like as you move out of this market. Then it's how do you communicate that to your employees, to your shareholders, to your customers, to your partners. Painting the picture of what you look like as you come out. As basic as that sounds, that's what crisis management is all about. Don't hide, be visible, CEOs should take the role on implementing that playbook. Umesh to you, do you agree? And have fun with it a little bit, I like the give and take. >> I want to see the playbook, do you have it there, just below the camera? (Jeff laughing) >> I have it right here by my side. I will tell you, Jeff, in crisis times and difficult times like these, you count all the things that go right for you, you count your blessings. And one of the blessings that I have, as a CEO, is to have John Chambers as my mentor, by my side, sharing not just the learning that he had through the crisis, but talking through this, with me on a regular basis. I've read John's book more than a few times, I bet more than anybody in the world, I've read it over and over. And that, to me, is preparation going into this mode. One of the things that John has always taught me is when times get difficult, you get calmer than usual. It's one thing that when you're cruising on the freeway and you're asked to put the brakes, but it's quite another when you're in rocket ship, and accelerating, which is what my company situation was in the month of January. We were coming out of a year of 300% growth, we were driving towards another 300% growth, hiring tremendously, at a high pace. Winning customers at a high pace, and then this hit us. And so what I had to do, from a playbook perspective, is, you know, take a deep breath, and just for a couple of days, just slow down, and calmly look at the situation. My first few steps were, I reached out to 15 of our top customers, the CEOs, and give them calls, and said let's just talk about what you're seeing, and what we are observing in our business. We get a sense of where they are in their businesses. We had the benefit, my co-founder works out of Singapore, and runs our Asia business. We had the benefit of picking up the sign probably a month before everyone else did it in the U.S. I was with John in Australia, and I was telling John that "John, something unusual is happening, "a couple of our customers in these countries in Asia "are starting to tell us they would do the deal "a quarter later." And it's one thing when one of them says it, it's another when six of them say it together. And John obviously has seen this movie, he could connect the dots early. He told me to prepare, he told the rest of the portfolio companies that are in his investment group to start preparing. We then went to the playbook that John spoke of, being visible. For me, culture and communication take front seat. We have employees in ten different countries, we have offices, and very quickly, even before the governments mandated, we had all of them work, you know, go work from home, and be remote, because employee safety and health was the number one priority. We did our first virtual all-hands meeting on Zoom. We had about 240 people join in from around the world. And my job as CEO, usually our all-hands meeting were different functional leaders, different people in the group talk to the team about their initiatives. This all-hands was almost entirely run by me, addressing the whole company about what's going to be the situation from my lens, what have we learned. Be very factual. At the same time, communicating to the team that because of the fact that we raised our funding the last year, it was a good amount of money, we still have a lot of that in the bank, so we going to be very secure. At the same time, our customers are probably going to need us more than ever. Call centers are in more demand than ever, people can't walk up to a bank branch, they can't go up to a hospital without taking an appointment. So the first thing everyone is doing is trying to reach call centers. There aren't enough people, and anyways the work force that call centers have around the world, are 50% working from home, so the capacity has dropped. So our responsibility almost, is to step up, and have our AI and automation products available to as many call centers as we can. So as we are planning our own business continuity, and making sure every single employee is safe, the message to my team was we also have to be aggressive and making sure we are more out there, and more available, to our customers, that would also mean business growth for us. But first, and foremost is for us to be responsible citizens, and just make it available where it's needed. As we did that, I quickly went back to my leadership team, and again, the learning from John is usually it's more of a consensus driven approach, we go around the table, talk about a topic for a couple of hours, get the consensus, and move out of the room. My leadership meetings, they have become more frequent, we get together once a week, on video call with my executive leaders, and it's largely these days run by me. I broke down the team into five different war rooms, with different objectives. One of them we called it the preservation, we said one leader, supported by others will take the responsibility of making sure every single employee, their families, and our current customers, are addressed, taken care of. So we made somebody lead that group. Another group was made responsible for growth. Business needs to, you know, in a company that's growing at 300%, and we still have the opportunity, because call centers need us more than ever, we wanted to make sure we are responding to growth, and not just hunkering down, and, you know, ignoring the opportunity. So we had a second war room take care of the growth. And a third war room, lead by the head of finance, to look at all the financial scenarios, do the stress tests, and see if we are going to be ready for any eventuality that's going to come. Because, you know, we have a huge amount of people, who work at Uniphore around the world, and we wanted to make sure their well being is taken care of. So from being over communicative, to the team and customers, and being out there personally, to making sure we break down the teams. We have tremendous talent, and we let different people, set of people, run different set of priorities, and report back to me more frequently. And now, as we have settled into this rhythm, Jeff, you know, as we've been in, at least in the Bay area here, we've been shelter in place for about a month now. As we are in the rhythm, we are beginning to do virtual happy hours, every Thursday evening. Right after this call, I get together with my team with a glass of wine, and we get together, we talk every but work, and every employee, it's not divided by functions, or leadership, and we are getting the rhythm back into the organization. So we've gone and adjusted in the crisis, I would say very well. And the business is just humming along, as we had anticipated, going into this crisis. But I would say, if I didn't have John by my side, if I hadn't read his book, the number of times that I have, every plane ride we've done together, every place we've gone together, John has spoken about war stories. About the 2001, about 2008, and until you face the first one of your own, just like I did right now, you don't appreciate when John says leadership is lonely. But having him by our side makes it easier. >> Well I'm sure he's told you the Jack Welch story, right? That you've quoted before, John, where Jack told you that you're not really a good leader, yet, until you've been tested, right. So you go through some tough stuff, it's not that hard to lead on an upward to the right curve, it's when things get a little challenging that the real leadership shines through. >> Completely agree, and Jack said it the best, we were on our way to becoming the most valuable company in the world, he looked me in the eye and said "John, you have a very good company." And I knew he was about to give me a teaching moment, and I said "What does it take to have a great one?" He said a near death experience. And I thought I did that in '97, and some of the other management, and he said, "No, it's when you went through something "like we went through in 2001, "which many of our peers did die in." And we were knocked down really hard. When we came back from it, you get better. But what you see in Umesh is a very humble, young CEO. I have to remember he's only 34 years old, because his maturity is like he's 50, and he's seen it before. As you tell, he's like a sponge on learning, and he doesn't mind challenging. And what what he didn't say, in his humbleness, is they had the best month in March ever. And again, well over 300% versus the same quarter a year ago. So it shows you, if you're in the right spot, i.e. artificial intelligence, i.e. cost savings, i.e. customer relationship with their customers, how you can grow even during the tough times, and perhaps set a bold vision, based upon facts and a execution plan that very few companies will be able to deliver on today. So off to a great start, and you can see why I'm so honored and proud to be his strategic partner, and his coach. >> Well it's interesting, right, the human toll of this crisis is horrible, and there's a lot of people getting sick, and a lot of people are dying, and all the estimations are a lot more are going to die this month, as hopefully we get over the hump of some of these curves. So that aside, you know, we're here talking kind of more about the, kind of, the business of this thing. And it's really interesting kind of what a catalyst COVID has become, in terms of digital transformation. You know, we've been talking about new ways to work for years, and years, and years, and digital transformation, and all these kind of things. You mentioned the Cisco telepresence was out years, and decades ago. I mean I worked in Mitsubishi, we had a phone camera in 1986, I looked it up today, it was ridiculous, didn't work. But now, it's here, right. Now working from home is here. Umesh mentioned, you know, these huge call centers, now everybody's got to go home. Do they have infrastructure to go home? Do they have a place to work at home? Do they have support to go home? Teachers are now being forced, from K-12, and I know it's a hot topic for you, John, to teach from home. Teach on Zoom, with no time to prep, no time to really think it through. It's just like the kids aren't coming back, we got to learn it. You know I think this is such a transformational moment, and to your point, if this goes on for weeks, and weeks, and months, and months, which I think we all are in agreement that it will. I think you said, John, you know, many, many quarters. As people get new habits, and get into this new flow, I don't think they're going to go back back to the old ways. So I think it's a real, you know, kind of forcing function for digital transformation. And it's, you can't, you can't sit on the sidelines, cause your people can't come to the office anymore. >> So you've raised a number of questions, and I'll let Umesh handle the tough part of it. I will answer the easy part, which is I think this is the new normal. And I think it's here now, and the question is are you ready for it. And as you think about what we're really saying is the video sessions will become such an integral part of our daily lives, that we will not go back to having to do 90% of our work physically. Today alone I've done seven major group meetings, on Zoom, and Google Hangouts, and Cisco Webex. I've done six meetings with individuals, or the key CEOs of my portfolio. So that part is here to stay. Now what's going to be fascinating is does that also lead into digitization of our company, or do the companies make the mistake of saying I'm going to use this piece, because it's so obvious, and I get it, in terms of effectiveness, but I'm not going to change the other things in my normal work, in my normal business. This is why, unfortunately, I think you will see, we originally said, Jeff, you remember, 40% maybe as high as 45% of the Fortune 500 wouldn't exist in a decade. And perhaps 70% of the start-ups wouldn't exist in a decade, that are venture capital backed. I now think, unfortunately, you're going to see 20-35% of the start-ups not exist in 2 years, and I think it's going to shock you with the number of Fortune 500 companies that do not make this transition. So where you're leading this, that I completely agree with, is the ability to take this terrible event, with all of the issues, and again thank our healthcare workers for what they've been able to do to help so many people, and deal with the world the way it is. As my parents who are doctors taught me to do, not the way we wish it was. And then get your facts, prepare for the changes, and get ready for the future. The key would be how many companies do this. On the area Umesh has responsibility for, customer experience, I think you're going to see almost all companies focus on that. So it can be an example of perhaps how large companies learn to use the new technology, not just video capability, but AI, assistance for the agents, and then once they get the feel for it, just like we got the feel for these meetings, change their rhythm entirely. It was a dinner in New York, virtually, when we stopped, six weeks ago, traveling, that was supposed to be a bunch of board meetings, customer meetings, that was easy. But we were supposed to have a dinner with Shake Shack's CEO, and we were supposed to have him come out and show how he does cool innovation. We had a bunch of enterprise companies, and a bunch of media, and subject matter expertise, we ended up canceling it, and then we said why not do it virtually? And to your point, we did it in 24 different locations. Half the people, remember six weeks ago, had never even used Zoom. We had milk shakes, and hamburgers, and french fries delivered to their home. And it was one of the best two hour meetings I've seen. The future is this now. It's going to change dramatically, and Umesh, I think, is going to be at the front edge of how enterprise companies understand how their relationship with their customers is going to completely transform, using AI, conversational AI capability, speech recognition, et cetera. >> Yeah, I mean, Umesh, we haven't even really got into Uniphore, or what you guys are all about. But, you know, you're supporting call centers, you're using natural language technology, both on the inbound and all that, give us the overview, but you're playing on so many kind of innovation spaces, you know, the main interaction now with customers, and a brand, is either through the mobile phone, or through a call center, right. And that's becoming more, and increasingly, digitized. The ability to have a voice interaction, with a machine. Fascinating, and really, I think, revolutionary, and kind of taking, you know, getting us away from these stupid qwerty keyboards, which are supposed to slow us down on purpose. It's still the funniest thing ever, that we're still using these qwerty keyboards. So I wonder if you can share with us a little bit about, you know, kind of your vision of natural language, and how that changes the interaction with people, and machines. I think your TED Talk was really powerful, and I couldn't help but think of, you know, kind of mobile versus land lines, in terms of transformation. Transforming telecommunications in rural, and hard to serve areas, and then actually then adding the AI piece, to not only make it better for the front end person, but actually make it for the person servicing the account. >> Absolutely Jeff, so Uniphore, the company that I founded in 2008. We were talking about it's such a coincidence that I founded the company in 2008, the year of the Great Recession, and here we are again, talking in midst of the impact that we all have because of COVID. Uniphore does artificial intelligence and automation products, for the customer service industry. Call centers, as we know it, have fundamentally, for the last 20, 30 years, not have had a major technology disruption. We've seen a couple of ways of business model disruption, where call centers, you know, started to become offshore, in locations in Asia, India, and Mexico. Where our calls started to get routed around the world internationally, but fundamentally, the core technology in call centers, up until very recently, hadn't seen a major shift. With artificial intelligence, with natural language processings, speech recognition, available in over 100 languages. And, you know, in the last year or so, automation, and RPA, sort of adding to that mix, there's a whole new opportunity to re-think what customer service will mean to us, more in the future. As I think about the next five to seven years, with 5G happening, with 15 billion connected devices, you know, my five year old daughter, she the first thing she does when she enters the house from a playground, she goes to talk to her friend called Alexa. She speaks to Alexa. So, you know, these next generation of users, and technology users will grow up with AI, and voice, and NLP, all around us. And so their expectation of customer service and customer experience is going to be quantum times higher than some of us have, from our brands. I mean, today when a microwave or a TV doesn't work in our homes, our instinct could be to either go to the website of the brand, and try to do a chat with the agent, or do an 800 number phone call, and get them to visit the house to fix the TV. With, like I said with 5G, with TV, and microwave, and refrigerator becoming intelligent devices, you know, I could totally see my daughter telling the microwave "Why aren't you working?" And, you know, that question might still get routed to a remote contact center. Now the whole concept of contact center, the word has center in it, which means, in the past, we used to have these physical, massive locations, where people used to come in and put on their headsets to receive calls. Like John said, more than ever, we will see these centers become dispersed, and virtual. The channels with which these queries will come in would no more be just a phone, it would be the microwave, the car, the fridge. And the receivers of these calls would be anywhere in the world, sitting in their home, or sitting on a holiday in the Himalayas, and answering these situations to us. You know, I was reading, just for everyone to realize how drastic this shift has been, for the customer service industry. There are over 14 million workers, who work in contact centers around the world. Like I said, the word center means something here. All of them, right now, are working remote. This industry was never designed to work remote. Enterprises who fundamentally didn't plan for this. To your point Jeff, who thought digitization or automation, was a project they could have picked next year, or they were sitting on the fence, will now know more have a choice to make this adjustment. There's a report by a top analyst firm that said by 2023, up to 30% of customer service representatives would be remote. Well guess what, we just way blew past that number right away. And most of the CEOs that I talked to recently tell me that now that this shift has happened, about 40% of their workers will probably never return back to the office. They will always remain a permanent virtual workforce. Now when the workforce is remote, you need all the tools and technology, and AI, that A, if on any given day, 7-10% of your workforce calls in sick, you need bots, like the Amazon's Alexa, taking over a full conversation. Uniphore has a product called Akira, which does that in call centers. Most often, when these call center workers are talking, we have the experience of being put on hold, because call center workers have to type in something on their keyboard, and take notes. Well guess what, today AI and automation can assist them in doing that, making the call shorter, allowing the call center workers to take a lot more calls in the same time frame. And I don't know your experience, but, you know, a couple of weekends ago, the modem in my house wasn't working. I had a seven hour wait time to my service provider. Seven hour. I started calling at 8:30, it was somewhere around 3-4:00, finally, after call backs, wait, call back, wait, that it finally got resolved. It was just a small thing, I just couldn't get to the representative. So the enterprises are truly struggling, technology can help. They weren't designed to go remote, think about it, some of the unique challenges that I've heard now, from my customers, is that how do I know that my call center representative, who I've trained over years to be so nice, and empathetic, when they take a pee break, or a bio break, they don't get their 10 year old son to attend a call. How do I know that? Because now I can no more physically check in on them. How do I know that if I'm a bank, there's compliance? There's nothing being said that isn't being, is, you know, supposed to be said, because in a center, in an office, a supervisor can listen in. When everyone's remote, you can't do that. So AI, automation, monitoring, supporting, aiding human beings to take calls much better, and drive automation, as well as AI take over parts of a complete call, by the way of being a bot like Alexa, are sort of the things that Uniphore does, and I just feel that this is a permanent shift that we are seeing. While it's happening because of a terrible reason, the virus, that's affecting human beings, but the shift in business and behavior, is going to be permanent in this industry. >> Yeah, I think so, you know it's funny, I had Marten Mickos on, or excuse me, yeah, Marten Mickos, as part of this series. And I asked him, he's been doing distributed companies since he was doing MySQL, before Sun bought them. And he's, he was funny, it's like actually easier to fake it in an office, than when you're at home, because at home all you have to show is your deliverables. You can't look busy, you can't be going to meetings, you can't be doing things at your computer. All you have to show is your output. He said it's actually much more efficient, and it drives people, you know, to manage to the output, manage to what you want. But I want to shift gears a little bit, before we let you go, and really talk a little bit about the role of government. And John, I know you've been very involved with the Indian government, and the French government, trying to help them, in their kind of entrepreneurial pursuits, and Uniphore, I think, was founded in India, right, before you moved over here. You know we've got this huge stimulus package coming from the U.S. government, to try to help, as people, you know, can't pay their mortgage, a lot of people aren't so fortunate to be in digital businesses. It's two trillion dollars, so as kind of a thought experiment, I'm like well how much is two trillion dollars? And I did the cash balance of the FAANG companies. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Alphabet, just looking at Yahoo Finance, the latest one that was there. It's 333 billion, compared to two trillion. Even when you add Microsoft's 133 billion on top, it's still shy, it's still shy of 500 billion. You know, and really, the federal government is really the only people in a position to make kind of sweeping, these types of investments. But should we be scared? Should we be worried about, you know, kind of this big shift in control? And should, do you think these companies with these big balance sheets, as you said John, priorities change a little bit. Should it be, keep that money to pay the people, so that they can stay employed and pay their mortgage, and go buy groceries, and maybe get take out from their favorite restaurant, versus, you know, kind of what we've seen in the past, where there's a lot more, you know, stock buy backs, and kind of other uses of these cash. As you said, if it's a crisis, and you got to cut to survive, you got to do that. But clearly some of these other companies are not in that position. >> So you, let me break it into two pieces, Jeff, if I may. The first is for the first time in my lifetime I have seen the federal government and federal agencies move very rapidly. And if you would have told me government could move with the speed we've seen over the last three months, I would have said probably not. The fed was ahead of both the initial interest rate cuts, and the fed was ahead in terms of the slowing down, i.e. your 2 trillion discussion, by central banks here, and around the world. But right behind it was the Treasury, which put on 4 trillion on top of that. And only governments can move in this way, but the coordination with government and businesses, and the citizens, has been remarkable. And the citizens being willing to shelter in place. To your question about India, Prime Minister Modi spent the last five years digitizing his country. And he put in place the most bandwidth of any country in the world, and literally did transformation of the currency to a virtual currency, so that people could get paid online, et cetera, within it. He then looked at start-ups and job creation, and he positioned this when an opportunity or problem came along, to be able to perhaps navigate through it in a way that other countries might struggle. I would argue President Macron in France is doing a remarkable job with his innovation economy, but also saying how do you preserve jobs. So you suddenly see government doing something that no business can do, with the scale, and the speed, and a equal approach. But at the same time, may of these companies, and being very candid, that some people might have associated with tech for good, or with tech for challenges, have been unbelievably generous in giving both from the CEOs pockets perspective, and number two and three founders perspective, as well as a company giving to the CDC, and giving to people to help create jobs. So I actually like this opportunity for tech to regain its image of being good for everybody in the world, and leadership within the world. And I think it's a unique opportunity. For my start-ups, I've been so proud, Jeff. I didn't have to tell them to go do the right thing with their employees, I didn't have to tell them that you got to treat people, human lives first, the economy second, but we can do both in parallel. And you saw companies like Sprinklr suddenly say how can I help the World Health Organization anticipate through social media, where the next spread of the virus is going to be? A company, like Bloom Energy, with what KR did there, rebuilding all of the ventilators that were broken here in California, of which about 40% were, out of the stock that they got, because it had been in storage for so long, and doing it for all of California in their manufacturing plant, at cost. A company like Aspire Foods, a cricket company down in Texas, who does 3D capabilities, taking part of their production in 3D, and saying how many thousand masks can I generate, per week, using 3D printers. You watch what Umesh has done, and how he literally is changing peoples lives, and making that experience, instead of being a negative from working at home, perhaps to a positive, and increasing the customer loyalty in the process, as opposed to when you got a seven hour wait time on a line. Not only are you probably not going to order anything else from that company, you're probably going to change it. So what is fascinating to me is I believe companies owe an obligation to be successful, to their employees, and to their shareholders, but also to give back to society. And it's one of the things I'm most proud about the portfolio companies that I'm a part of, and why I'm so proud of what Umesh is doing, in both a economically successful environment, but really giving back and making a difference. >> Yeah, I mean, there's again, there's all the doctor stuff, and the medical stuff, which I'm not qualified to really talk about. Thankfully we have good professionals that have the data, and the knowledge, and know what to do, and got out ahead of the social distancing, et cetera, but on the backside, it really looks like a big data problem in so many ways, right. And now we have massive amounts of compute at places like Amazon, and Google, and we have all types of machine learning and AI to figure out, you know, there's kind of resource allocation, whether that be hospital beds, or ventilators, or doctors, or nurses, and trying to figure out how to sort that all out. But then all of the, you know, genome work, and you know, kind of all that big heavy lifting data crunching, you know, CPU consuming work, that hopefully is accelerating the vaccine. Because I don't know how we get all the way out of this until, it just seems like kind of race to the vaccine, or massive testing, so we know that it's not going to spike up. So it seems like there is a real opportunity, it's not necessarily Kaiser building ships, or Ford building planes, but there is a role for tech to play in trying to combat this thing, and bring it under control. Umesh, I wonder if you could just kind of contrast being from India, and now being in the States for a couple years. Anything kind of jump out to you, in terms of the differences in what you're hearing back home, in the way this has been handled? >> You know, it's been very interesting, Jeff, I'm sure everyone is concerned that India, for many reasons, so far hasn't become a big hot spot yet. And, you know, we can hope and pray that that remains to be the case. There are many things that the government back home has done, I think India took lessons from what they saw in Europe, and the U.S, and China. They went into a countrywide lockdown pretty early, you know, pretty much when they were lower than a two hundred positive tested cases, the country went into lockdown. And remember this is a 1.5 billion people all together going into lockdown. What I've seen in the U.S. is that, you know, California thankfully reacted fast. We've all been sheltered in place, there's cabin fever for all of us, but you know, I'm sure at the end of the day, we're going to be thankful for the steps that are taken. Both by the administration at the state level, at the federal level, and the medical doctors, who are doing everything they can. But India, on the other hand, has taken the more aggressive stance, in terms of doing a country lockdown. We just last evening went live at a University in the city of Chennai, where Uniphore was born. The government came out with the request, much like the U.S., where they're government departments were getting a surge of traffic about information about COVID, the hospitals that are serving, what beds are available, where is the testing? We stood up a voice bot with AI, in less than a week, in three languages. Which even before the government started to advertise, we started to get thousands of calls. And this is AI answering these questions for the citizens, in doing so. So it goes back to your point of there's a real opportunity of using all the technology that the world has today, to be put to good use. And at the same time, it's really partnering meaningfully with government, in India, in Singapore, in Vietnam, and here in the U.S., to make sure that happens on, you know, John's coaching and nudging, I became a part of the U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum, which is truly a premier trade and commerce body between U.S. and India. And I, today, co-chaired the start-up program with, you know, the top start-ups between U.S. and India, being part of that program. And I think we got, again, tremendously fortunate, and lucky with the timeline. We started working on this start-up program between U.S. and India, and getting the start-ups together, two quarters ago, and as this new regulation with the government support, and the news about the two trillion dollar packages coming out, and the support for small businesses, we could quickly get some of the questions answered for the start-ups. Had we not created this body, which had the ability to poll the Treasury Department, and say here are questions, can start-ups do A, B, and C? What do you have by way of regulation? And I think as a response to one of our letters, on Monday the Treasury put out an FAQ on their website, which makes it super clear for start-ups and small businesses, to figure out whether they qualify or they don't qualify. So I think there's ton that both from a individual company, and the technology that each one of us have, but also as a community, how do we, all of us, meaningfully get together, as a community, and just drive benefit, both for our people, for the economy, and for our countries. Wherever we have the businesses, like I said in the U.S., or in India, or parts of Asia. >> Yeah, it's interesting. So, this is a great conversation, I could talk to you guys all night long, but I probably would hear about it later, so we'll wrap it, but I just want to kind of close on the following thought, which is really, as you've talked about before John, and as Umesh as you're now living, you know, when we go through these disruptions, things do get changed, and as you said a lot of people, and companies don't get through it. On the other hand many companies are birthed from it, right, people that are kind of on the new trend, and are in a good position to take advantage, and it's not that you're laughing over the people that didn't make it, but it does stir up the pot, and it sounds like, Umesh, you're in a really good position to take advantage of this new kind of virtual world, this new digital transformation, that's just now waiting anymore. I love your stat, they were going to move X% out of the call center over some period of time, and then it's basically snap your fingers, everybody out, without much planning. So just give you the final word, you know, kind of advice for people, as they're looking forward, and Umesh, we'll get you on another time, because I want to go deep diving in natural language, I think that's just a fascinating topic in the way that people are going to interact with machines and get rid of the stupid qwerty keyboard. But let me get kind of your last thoughts as we wrap this segment. Umesh we'll let you go first. >> Umesh, you want to go first? >> I'll go first. My last thoughts are first for the entrepreneurs, everyone who's sort of going through this together. I think in difficult times is when real heroes are born. I read a quote that when it's a sunny day, you can't overtake too many cars, but when it's raining you have a real opportunity. And the other one that I read was when fishermen can't go out fishing, because of the high tide, they come back, and mend their nets, and be ready for the time that they can go out. So I think there's no easy way to say, this is a difficult time for the economy, health wise, I hope that, you know, we can contain the damage that's being done through the virus, but some of us have the opportunity to really take our products and technology out there, more than usual. Uniphore, particularly, has a unique opportunity, the contact center industry just cannot keep up with the traffic that it's seeing. Around the world, across US, across Asia, across India, and the need for AI and automation would never be pronounced more than it is today. As much as it's a great business opportunity, it's more of a responsibility, as I see it. There can be scale up as fast as the demand is coming, and really come out of this with a much stronger business model. John has always told me in final words you always paint the picture of what you want to be, a year or two out. And I see Uniphore being a much stronger AI plus automation company, in the customer service space, really transforming the face of call centers, and customer service. Which have been forced to rethink their core business value in the last few weeks. And, you know, every fence sitter who would think that digitalization and automation was an option that they could think of in the future years, would be forced to make those decisions now. And I'm just making sure that my team, and my company, and I, am ready to gear to that great responsibility and opportunity that's ahead of us. >> John, give you the final word. >> Say Jeff, I don't know if you can still hear me, we went blank there, maybe for me to follow up. >> We gotcha. >> Shimon Peres taught me a lot about life, and dealing with life the way it is, not the way you wish it was. So did my parents, but he also taught me it always looks darkest just before the tide switches, and you move on to victory. I think the challenges in front of us are huge, I think our nation knows how to deal with that, I do believe the government has moved largely pretty effectively, to give us the impetus to move, and then if we continue to flatten the curve on the issues with the pandemic, if we get some therapeutic drugs that dramatically reduce the risk of death, for people that get the challenges the worst, and over time a vaccine, I think you look to the future, America will rebound, it will be rebounding around start-ups, new job creation, using technology in every business. So not only is there a light at the tunnel, at the end of the tunnel, I think we will emerge from this a stronger nation, a stronger start-up community. But it depends on how well we work together as a group, and I just want to say to Umesh, it's an honor to be your coach, and I learn from you as much as I give back. Jeff, as always, you do a great job. Thank you for your time today. >> Thank you both, and I look forward to our next catch up. Stay safe, wash your hands, and thanks for spending some time with us. >> And I just want to say I hope and pray that all of us can get together in Palo Alto real quick, and in person, and doing fist bumps, not shake hands or probably a namaste. Thank you, it's an honor. >> Thank you very much. All right, that was John and Umesh, you're watching theCUBE from our Palo Alto Studios, thanks for tuning in, stay safe, wash your hands, keep away from people that you're not that familiar with, and we'll see you next time. Thanks for watching. (calm music)

>> Woman's Voice: From the CUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hey, welcome back already. Jeff Rick here, with theCUBE. We're having Palo Alto studios, during these kind of crazy times and really taking a moment with the time that we have to reach out to some of the leaders in our community, to give us some insight, to give us some advice, to share their knowledge about some of the things that are going on and some of the specific challenges that really the coronavirus and the COVID 19 situation are causing for all of us. So, we're really excited to have a CUBE alumni, haven't talked to him for a couple of years. Joining us from his house, he's Marten Mickos, the CEO of Hacker One. Marten, great to see you. >> Good to see you, Jeff. Good to be back. Thank you. >> So first off, just a quick check in. How are you doing? How things going at Hacker One? How's the team doing? How are you guys kind of getting through this time of difficulty? >> Well, we are fortunate in our company that we have a business that may be doing even better in these times, because we do security don't need to go into the office and we do it in a distributed way. And so, all of that is wonderful for the company. We do have our first positive case of COVID 19 in the company. He is now fully recovered after a few weeks. He's back at work. So, it means it came pretty close to us and we have others who might be in the danger zone. But overall, we are doing very well and paying a lot of attention on health and staying safe and working from home and making sure we don't take risk because these are serious things that we shouldn't play with. >> Yes. Well, I'm glad to hear that, that person is recovering. And I think April is the month of six degrees of separation where all of us are going to know someone or someone who knows someone who's got this thing, is it? The curves, unfortunately, are still going up in the United States. So, I don't think that's going to change. But, on a lighter note, one of the reasons I wanted to reach out to you is you've got a long history of working with distributed companies. This COVID thing is kind of a forcing function around work from home and it never fails to amaze me how many people are on their first Zoom, and they don't even know what WebEx is, and they've never heard of Skype. And I think we get spoiled in the tech world. We use these tools all the time. But this is a forcing function. It's at the grade schools, the middle schools, the high schools, besides just regular companies. So, when you were running MySQL, back in the day, you had a distributed company, not only across buildings, but across oceans and continents. So, I wonder if you can share kind of, did that start that way? Did you move into that way? Kind of what are some of the early days as you move from everybody in the office to more of a distributed network? >> Yeah, it did start that way at MySQL back in Scandinavia. And I joined. There were 12 people, everybody working from home. The CTO lived just half an hour away from me, but we never saw each other. I worked from home, he worked from home. And I remember when I as the new CEO said that, hey, we will need an office. We need a headquarters where we can have meetings and archives or contracts and stuff. And he said, no office, over my dead body. It will kill the company culture. That was the view >> Why! >> Of the founder. >> That is so progressive. Where did that view come from, Cause that is certainly was not the kind of standard thinking. >> It was weird. It was back in, that was the year 2000, and they had developed a way of working with open source contributors all over the world, over email and IRC back then, which is a predecessor to slack you could say. And they just developed that method of working together and making sure everything is digital, everything is written down. You are honest and forthright in writing as well. So it worked beautifully and they didn't like offices. We ended up having offices and we had many people working from the office but there was nowhere, at no time was it more than 30% of our headcount of about 500 people who work from an office. 70% work from home in 32 different countries across 16 time zones. >> Wow, that's very, very distributed. So, in getting ready for this, I saw some other interviews that you've done and some other conversations on the topic. And one of the things that you brought up that I think is really topical is that this is really more of a mental challenge than really a physical challenge. The tools are there, we have internet, we're very fortunate that way. Didn't have these things in 2000, like we do today. But you talked about the mental challenge, both from a leadership perspective, as well as maybe from the employee perspective. I wonder if you can dig into that a little deeper as you kind of look at your peers that are treading into unchartered waters, if you will. >> Well, I think it's a transition where you become one with the media, like with your laptop or whatever you're looking at and you sort of you invest yourself in what you have in front of you and you give off all of yourself into it. Just like, if somebody is taking a portrait of you with a camera, you have to sort of love the camera and show yourself to the camera for the portrait to be really, really good. Like that's what great photographers do. They get you to open up, even though it's a machine and not another human being. And we have to develop this skill digitally to sit in front of a laptop or a phone or something, and be our whole genuine selves, showing all dimensions and aspects of our personality. Because we don't realize it but when you go to an office, people are paying attention to how you walk, where you stop, what you look like, whether you look angry or happy, whether you look tired or not, when you go to the restroom, when you don't, like who knows all these things that people pay attention to that give away how you feel and how you are. And then somebody may come and say, Hey, Jeff seems to be in a bad mood today or Jeff seems to be in a good mood today. And those are vital functions of a group that works together. So, you must allow the digital world to have the same. You have to bring that part of yourself into the digital reality and sort of open up. And people make the mistake that they just bring their professional selves. They just say, okay, what's the task? What's the work? Let's agree on something, let's listen to everybody. And they don't reserve room for the social side and showing who you are. Because people won't ultimately trust you until they know that you are a human being and you have weaknesses and vulnerabilities and you can be silly and sometimes you look good, and sometimes you don't look good, and sometimes you are to your advantage, and sometimes you aren't. And until you have covered the whole range of your own expressions, you're not believable. >> Yeah. Another topic that came up is measurement, right? In KPIs, and how do you measure people's performance? It wasn't that long ago that Ginni Rometty at IBM came out and said, we don't want remote workers anymore. We want everybody to come check into the office. Well, that's changed a little bit. But, you mentioned that, we're so used to measuring things the way that we've always measured in the past. Are they there at eight? Do they stay till five or six? Do they look busy, as opposed to really focusing on outputs? And you talked about really shifting your mindset with a distributed workforce to make sure you're focusing on the right outcomes, not necessarily focusing on the things that maybe, as you said, as much as subconsciously, you're paying attention to as much as anything. >> It's so easy to fake it in an office. >> I love that. >> You go in there, you look busy and people think you're amazing. But when you work from home, the only thing you have to show for is your work results. So, it becomes much more objective. And of course, you have to create metrics that can be tracked in a way that others can understand what you're doing. But it actually makes it more straightforward because you can't fake it. >> Right. >> The only thing you can be measured by is what you're actually producing. >> It's got to be interesting when we come out of this, right? Cause there's a lot of psychology done around habits and how things become habits. And the way things become habits is you do them for a while, in sequence repeatedly and then that becomes kind of part of your routine. And before, even here at theCUBE, right? Remote interviews were probably, I don't know, 5% of our total output. And now they're going to be 100% for the foreseeable future. So, as you look at kind of people that are new to this, world of remote learning and remote working, it's going to be wild after they do this for a couple weeks hopefully get into the habit, to then, as you said in some prior things, this becomes the new normal and go into the office is the once every so often, when we actually have to have a big team meeting or some specific events. So you think this is going to probably be that tipping point till this becomes the new normal. >> I do think so. I think it will flip so that now, you may think that you and I are having a virtual conversation and it would be a real conversation, if we were in the same room. That will flip. Soon, this will be the real conversation. And if we meet in person, then it's an anomaly, and that's the virtual thing. >> Right. >> Because most of the time, we will connect like this and we will figure out ways to understand each other and know whether we can trust each other and sort of all these things will evolve on the digital side. And there's no reason why they wouldn't. >> Right. >> Other than the reluctance of human beings to change their behavior. >> Inertia is a powerful thing. So let's say >> As they say that, first we form habits, then habits form us. >> There you go. >> And that's how it happens. You create some habit and then you become prisoner of that habit. If you create that and you can't get rid of it. But you just have to force yourself out of it. >> Right, and this is a forcing function, like none other in terms of this whole world. >> Exactly. >> So, shifting gears a little bit to kind of your day job, beyond just leading but actually worrying about security. RSA was the last big show we went to, late January, early February. All about security, Hacker One's all about security. I would imagine now that everybody's working from home and the pressure on bringing your own devices and we're seeing all this funny stuff about Zoom. It's the greatest thing since sliced bread. And now of course everybody's jumping on all of the vulnerabilities, etc. What are you seeing in kind of the hacker world and security world as this huge shift has moved to people working from home and remote schools, etc. >> Well, it's clear that society now has to work from home and figure out distributed ways of getting education or work done. And as a result, criminality will go there as well. So we have to protect ourselves well. The first of the problems is, how do you protect yourself when you work from home? So then you talk about VPNs and how do you handle credentials and authentication and multi factor authentication to make sure that the connection is authentic and protected. So, that's the first one. The first order challenge that we have right now going on. But on a little bit longer scale, we are seeing now companies deciding to start using cloud services even more than before, because they realize that this could come back as evasion like, we are having now, could come back and you will again be at home. And then they say, how do we build our software and ICT infrastructure, such that we are not needed in the office? And the answer is move to the cloud. And when you move to the cloud, you again, the security posture changes somewhat. You don't have to worry about network security anymore, but you do have to worry much more about app sec, application security. So, whatever happens here, they are useful transitions, but they will put demands on security teams and business leaders to re-evaluate what they spend money on in security. We are very fortunate at Hacker One to be on the winning side here. Our services are exactly for this distributed virtual digital world. So, we are needed even more every day more and more because things are going online. But companies will need to rethink those things and stop spending on things that don't make sense anymore. >> Yeah. It is just wild, right? How this forcing function is really making everybody evaluate things a little bit closer and pushing them through that inertia that before you could kind of put it off, put it off, put it off. You can't put it off anymore. Time's now. >> Right. >> Yeah. >> Well, we had a similar like when Y2K happened. We also had a hard limit, and we had to get stuff done. Now it's coming in a different way, sort of the punishment came without announcement, but we are in a similar crunch to get it done. And we will. >> Yeah. But, it will be difficult and it will put a lot of strain to people under the systems. But I do believe it's doable. >> Good. So, I want to shift gears one last time. We talked really about open source. >> Right. >> You've built your career on open source. My SQL was obviously open source and got bought by Sun eventually now, part of Oracle's portfolio then you did Eucalyptus. That was open source, right? Eventually got bought by hp. And now Hacker One, you're using really a network of hackers all over the world, to really help deliver the service. I'm just curious to get your take on the role of open source. It's been such a creative force for development. It's been such a creative force for kind of moving technology forward. How do you see it playing out now? What's the role of open source? Are you seeing projects? Are you seeing people rallying around, bringing the power of data and analytics and cloud to this problem? Cause to me, there's clearly a human toll of people being sick. But it's also a big data problem in terms of resource allocation, trying to sequence this thing and accelerate vaccine development. There's a lot of kind of big data, opportunities here to attack this thing. >> I think open source is even bigger now than it used to be. And it is a very powerful example of the fact that no matter how much we are threatened that we feel like we have to hunker down and isolate ourselves from others and foreign groups or people are dangerous. In reality, the biggest accomplishments in society are always about collaboration by large groups of really intelligent driven people. Because software is eating the world, open source is eating the world. And today, if you don't use open source software, you're just plain stupid. So, it has really taken over the whole world. And it is now enabling all these new innovations and initiatives that we didn't do before in big data, collecting big data, analyzing data. We see it in the whole area of DNA medicine, where the researchers are sharing their findings with everybody. And that's very much like open source software. They don't call it open source software, but the mechanisms are the same. Everybody is doing it for their own good, but by sharing it, they multiply the value of what they did, and it speeds up innovation, so that it outperforms anything done in a closed laboratory or a closed source company. So it's wonderful to have been part of the open source revolution because it is spawning so many other initiatives and phenomena on a societal level. And this is just the beginning. It will go into politics, it will go into news, it will go into the assessment of fake news. Reddit is completely self moderate. They don't hire the moderators. The moderators are provided by the community and they self moderate. And understanding how to self govern, self moderate, at very large scale. That's the key to success in many areas. So, open source software is enormous and yet, it's just one little part of the whole world of community driven innovation. >> Right. Such a great lesson though, because, as we think back to kind of the last kind of national rally around say, World War Two, where Kaiser started building ships, and Ford was building airplanes. And we've got some of that going on with with Elon Musk, and people building respirators and some of these physical things, but there's this whole kind of software and big data, AI, machine learning thing that's happening on the background, around the genome and in the vaccine development that's not quite as visible, but really such an important part of this battle that we haven't seen. And then, of course, the other place is no place to hide. The fact that this is happening all over the globe, at the same time to everyone, regardless of your religion, your politics, your geography. It's really a unique moment in time. Hopefully one that we're not going to... >> It could be our best hope against Coronavirus. The fact that the scientists are right now working together and sharing their findings, quickly going from one test to the next and figuring out what works. And mankind hasn't had that capacity before. But now we do. So, we can't know whether it will take a long time or a short time, but at least we are getting all the resources to bear and we put them together and people share. >> Right. >> Which is what's driving the innovation here. >> Right, Martin. I guess, just a last kind of topic before I let you go, kind of circling fully back to leadership. One of the comments you talked about, about these types of times really favoring the bold. I really liked that line that is, don't be scared. It's really an opportunity for the people who have it together and are making the right priorities, to shine and to really kind of rise above the fray. I wonder if you can share a little bit more your thoughts about that from a leadership point of view. It's a time of challenge, but it's really also a time of opportunity. >> I think it's exactly like you said. It's like the Stockdale paradox. Admiral Stockdale who was a prisoner of war, over seven years, and was tortured during those years. Every day, he decided to, on one hand, be ready to face any brutal reality he might face, but on the other hand, never give up hope that one day, he will come out and have no regrets, not looking back and be a free man again. And that's exactly what happened. Of course, we are not in as dire situation as he was, but society has a similar situation. That we must have the courage to face the exact brutality of and the reality of coronavirus right now, without thinking that we won't come out of it. We will absolutely come out of it. And we will come out of it with innovations and new models that will outshine whatever we had before. And we must be able to maintain this duality of, okay, I'm ready to face the reality and I'm ready to be in isolation, I'm ready to use a face mask, whatever it takes. But also, I will never give up hope about what will come once we come out of this. And with that mindset, as a company, as a family, an individual human being or a society, you can get through any problem. And this is what Admiral Stockdale taught us through his experience, and by sharing it with everybody. >> Well, Marten. Thank you for sharing that story, and thank you for sharing your experience and kind of your point of view. We really appreciate it. These are tough times and it's great to be able to look out to the leaders and to kind of share the burden, if you will, and hear from smart folks that have a point of view. So, thank you very much for your time. Best to your employee. Glad that person is recovering. And as you said, we will get through this and we'll come out stronger the other side. Thanks a lot. >> Absolutely. Thank you, Jeff. Good chatting with you. >> All right, thanks Marten. Jeff Rick here, signing off from the Palo Alto studios from the CUBE. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (soft music) (soft music)

>> Announcer: From Sand Hill Road in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's "theCUBE," presenting the People First Network, insights from entrepreneurs and tech leaders. (upbeat electronic music) >> Hi, everyone, welcome to this special "CUBE" conversation. I'm John Furrier, co-host of "theCUBE" and co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media. We are on Sand Hill Road at Mayfield Fund, the venture capitalist funding startups. We're here with Tara Vaishnav, who is the vice president of technology, innovation, and advanced analytics at The Clorox Company, as part of the People First Network co-creation of content with SiliconANGLE and Mayfield. Tara, welcome. >> Well, thank you very much for having me! And congratulations to Mayfield on 50 amazing years, wow! >> 50 years they have been in Sand Hill Road, they've been investing in some great startups. They really have a great philosophy about people first. >> Yep. >> And you've had a very distinguished career in technology, IT, in big companies. Long tenures, too, like, you know, decades. >> Yes, oh, yes. >> And now at Clorox, a consumer company. So talk about your journey, where your experience is, where you started, tell us about your background. >> Yeah, well, I grew up in India, if it's not obvious already. I came to the United States after I finished my undergrad in India, I had an undergrad in electrical engineering. Came over here, got my electrical engineering master's at the University of Southern California, go Trojans. And after that, I worked for several companies, but mostly in health care and life sciences. So the past four years, I have been the vice president of IT at The Clorox Company, which is a CPG company, so quite a bit of a learning curve there. >> Health care, serving patients, now you're serving consumers. >> That's right, that's right. >> Clorox is well-known for their analytics, well-known for technology, innovation. >> Tara: Yes, yeah. >> I've interviewed a bunch of folks at Clorox, they've always been at the head of the curve. >> Tara: Yeah. >> Like Procter & Gamble, you guys, consumer companies have to be. >> Tara: Definitely. >> Now, more than ever, digital disruption is an opportunity for companies to have a better relationship with their customers. >> Tara: Absolutely. >> And changes the makeup of their brand as well, since it touches the customer. How do you see that evolving? What's the current state of the art of some of the things you're working on? >> Yeah, it's pretty fascinating, actually. And I hate to use cliches, but things like consumer experience is really at the heart of it. We're a brand company, at the end of the day, and how people feel about us is really, really important. It's not so much, it is about the products, and we make amazing products, but how do they feel about us as a company, and how do they engage with us differently than they did before? We do not buy the same way as we did even five years ago. And so, learning that, learning the new, evolving consumer, and getting really close to what's important to them, that's really on the forefront of how we think about our digital transformation. >> One of the cool things that's great about the People First Network that we've been doing-- >> Tara: Yeah. >> This content, is that we have a lot of luminaries who have had a storied career, like yourself, have looked at the changes and the waves of innovation that have come before, and now, more than ever, omnichannel, how you advertise and reach customers, how they interact, how they buy and consume. When you look at health care and some of the things you've been involved in, in the '90s, remember, client-server was big, they had computers. >> Tara: (laughs) Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. >> IT has changed a lot. >> It has. >> What is the most striking thing that you see from those changes in this new wave that we're living now? >> You know, so, (sharply exhales) I was fortunate in that I decided that data was where it was at, right from the beginning of my career. That's how I kind of made my way up my career ladder, is really that focus on data. I had a software engineering background, but really felt the power of data to change things. What has happened, if I think about some of the big changes, or the key milestones, if you will, in my career, one of the first real big changes came about when data, which was up until that point really sort of coming along for the ride, you had applications, applications had data, when data actually became the mainstay and the applications kind of came and went. I remember one of my mentors in the past, a past CIO, actually, telling me that applications come and go, but data is forever. And when that really started to become a thing was when big data and big data technologies became, came of enterprise age, if you will, along with cloud technologies. That marriage really, that was, I think, the tipping point where the things that you could do with data and the way that you could get insights from data really took on a life of its own, if you will. >> You know, one of the things, that's a great point. I'd love to get your insights as a leader and as you grew with data, because it wasn't really obvious at that time. Certainly, people had databases and that, the big data, the applications had data. >> Tara: Sure, sure, yeah. >> But it was always kind of old-school data. "Hey, get some data, let's look at the demographics, "let's look at the Consumer Price Index," blah, blah, blah, all kinds of data. But access to data became driven by the database. >> Tara: Correct. >> So there might've been data available-- >> Tara: Yeah. >> But getting it in the hands of the practitioners even now is hard, but even back then, you might not have had the data. So as a leader who's sought data-- >> Tara: Yeah. >> As a strategic advantage. By the way, that's rare early, isn't it? So, (laughs) awesome for you. >> You know, I got lucky. >> How did you get through that? How did you lead the organization to make data at the center of things? >> It is a very good question. There were a few things that started to take shape once big data and the marriage of the cloud started to happen. It started to open up doors, break down organizational silos. When you brought that data together, the business value, or the potential business value that could be unlocked, became obvious. The way that we approached it, though, under my leadership, I always believe in small steps. I believe in leapfrog, but I believe that you have to feed innovation or innovative thinking out in small doses. People are not always ready to consume it in one big (laughs) fell swoop, if you will. So doing things incrementally, but with an idea towards transformation, was, I think, the secret sauce that I used to approach these things. So as a couple of examples, in Kaiser Permanente, when I worked there for almost seven years, I was instrumental in bringing their big data platform to life. But it was not just a matter of, "Here's the technology "for technology's sake." It was a matter of, "Here are some real problems "that we are having a lot of difficulty in solving today. "Let's show you how we can solve those differently "in an amazing way." And we proved that. It was an experiment, that we proved that, and that really started to get us those adopters, if you will. >> John: So take baby steps. >> Yep. >> Don't try to do wholesale changes hardcore. >> Correct, correct. >> Let people get used to it. >> Yeah. >> This must've had an impact on culture. >> Yes, yes. >> And this comes up a lot in the DevOps culture we've seen in the past decade, even now. >> Yeah. >> Getting people to change has become very difficult. >> Yes! >> John: We all know that person-- >> Yes. >> Has their project that's their baby, adding features, "No, don't take my "baby away from me." >> Tara: Yes, yes, yes. >> "I don't want to change." >> (laughs) Oh, yeah. >> How do you make that happen? How do you lead people through that very difficult transformation at an emotional level, on a business level? What's the strategy there? What's your technique? >> Yeah, so, again, back to, you have to show results. And you have to show results incrementally in a way that people can appreciate them and consume them. You have to look at technology from a business value perspective. Business value comes first, technology is just along for the ride. That's how people see it, and that's how they should see it. >> John: Mm-hm. >> It's what you can do with the technology that makes a difference. So, some of the techniques that I have used in the past have been, number one, you do have to find like-minded people in the organization. You can't go at it alone. You have to start to build your clan, if you will, of innovators, so you've got a target audience that you're chippin' away at, slowly, but you've got to build credibility. Because results build credibility. Credibility builds trust. Trust removes barriers. So that's kind of the way that I approach things. I bring like-minded people together, I find people in the organization, of the people that are resistant, that I can bring onto "my side," if you will, and I use their knowledge, their insights, their knowledge of how this person who is obviously a stakeholder, and an important stakeholder, how they think and what's important to them, and I use that language and that person to be able to approach individuals in different ways. It's about culture. >> And it's always good to make them, you know, success has many fathers, if you will-- >> Yep. >> Is always an expression. Making them feel part of the solution. >> Absolutely. >> So I got to ask you a question. Is having a software background, coming into the tech world and the business world, this, now, you're starting to see applications really dictate to the infrastructure. Elastic clouds are out there. >> Tara: Yes. >> You have data as a resource now. If you were entering the market as a young software engineer today, and you were asked to come in and make an impact, knowing what you know, how do you see the world today? Because, you know, a lot of software engineers creating value from men, and, now, a lot more women are coming on board. >> Yeah, yeah. >> It's still lower numbers, but still, software's not just that software engineer. >> Yeah. >> It's software architecture, it's software engineering, software development, UX, UI-- >> Tara: Yeah. >> Analytics, a lot of range-- >> Tara: Yeah, yeah. >> Of software opportunities. How would you attack the marketplace today if you were coming in and entering the workforce or in the middle of your career? >> Yes, you know, when I look at my career, which is a little longer than I'd like to admit, I see myself as a young undergraduate student in India. I was one of six girls in a class of about 50. I was striving to get a degree in what was called, actually, electronics and telecommunication. I was in a minority. I came over here to the United States, and I continued to be in the minority. I look at my career, which is more than 25 years old. I have also continued to stay in the minority throughout that career. The biggest difference between where I am now in my career versus where I was then is I don't care as much anymore that I'm in the minority. (both laugh) Right? What is fascinating to me, though, John, is when I look at some of the very young students, actually, we had a high school intern program for the first time this year at Clorox, which is actually interesting. We typically have college interns, but this year, Clorox, a 105-year-old company in the middle of the Silicon Valley, having the ability to see that the very, very young generation can think very differently, and bringing in the high school intern, or a set of high school interns, to help with that journey, I think, was forward-thinking for the company. And those kids, the confidence that they have? They are not shackled by knowing too much, you know? >> John: Yes. >> But they know what's relevant, they know how to make things happen, and boy, do they know how to use technology to make problems that we consider problems that would take months, happen so quickly. They were with us for four weeks. In four weeks, they developed an app, a website. They developed our logo. They developed a PR video for us. They had an innovation showcase. In four weeks, four little students. >> It's interesting, for the first time (Tara laughs) in my career, I can admit that, from a self-awareness standpoint, "Well, I really don't know what I'm talking about." These young kids have a different view, because now their experiences are different. >> Tara: Yes. >> And so, the insight coming out of this new generation really is pretty compelling. >> Tara: It is. >> They are adding a lot more because there's been a shift in expectations, there's been a shift in experiences-- >> Tara: Yes. >> For this new generation, and they're at the forefront, so it's a big wave coming. What's your thoughts on that? Because analytics is a big part of your career now, and it always-- >> Tara: Yes, yes. >> Has been, but now, more than ever-- >> Yeah. >> The younger generation, they want instant gratification, they want value. >> They do. >> They don't want to wait and be told-- >> They do. >> They want to see the immediacy. >> They do. >> Talk about this new shift, this new younger generation. >> Yeah, yeah. You know, there used to be the good old days, where we could, say, put a product out there and, you know, eventually it kind of works its way into the consumer ecosystem, and then we'd get to hear back, over the course of time. Customers would call in with a recommendation or a complaint. It's very different now. Things are out there instantaneously. We put something out there, you're getting comments and reviews, some of them good, some of them not so good. It's out there, and it's out there instantly. And that also, the modern consumer is not shy. They kind of hide behind the keyboard, and they're putting their comments out there, right? (both laugh) They're the keyboard warriors! >> John: (laughs) Yeah. >> So being able to respond to that and having not just the data, but the ability to extract insights from data and to extract insights in real time, that is crucial. And so, gone are the days where you had months to do your analytics. You have to be able to do your analytics in the flow, you have to be able to take in new information, incorporate it into your models, be able to do predictive analytics on it. So technology and the way that it is evolving is super critical for survival these days. >> So, survival, and also competitive advantage, we've heard-- >> Oh, for sure. >> From other CIOs, and also CSOs, from a security standpoint-- >> Yes, yes. >> There's business risks involved. How real-time do you see the advantage being? Obviously, near real time is pretty much what people talk about. >> Yeah. >> Real time is to the second, and self-driving cars will certainly need that. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> But as a leader chasing the real-time holy grail-- >> Yeah. >> Seems to be a theme we hear. How do you react to that, and how do you view real-time data? >> There is definitely something that builds up to the richness of data that you can take advantage of in "real time." And I am saying "real time" in quotes because there is a contextuality associated with it. The wonder of modern advanced analytics and machine learning is that you have an existing model that you're tweaking and evolving with new information, and that model is serving as your guide as you receive new information. So, does it have to be reactive, or can it be proactive? You're building the insights, and then you're adding on new information as you see it. And you're using technology to help you make more holistic decisions. And at the end of the day, there is something to be said about the human aspect of it. The machine can give you guidance-- >> John: Yes. >> But the human being needs to make the decision. >> I'd love to ask you a quick question on that, because I think this is something that we talk about all the time. >> Yeah. >> Humans are critical in the equation, machines augment the humans. >> Yes. >> In the data world, if you're "data-driven," which has been (laughs) a cliche, "We're data-driven!" >> Tara: Yes, yes. >> It takes on multiple forms. >> Tara: Yes. >> I've seen multiple actors saying, "We're data-driven," but they're really just correlating data. >> Tara: Yeah. >> The causation side of it is, what's causing things, that's more of a management thing. >> Tara: Yeah. >> So causation and correlation are two different variables-- >> Tara: Yes. >> In the analytics field right now-- >> Tara: Yeah. >> That are being amplified as, you got to know the distinction between correlation, because you can correlate anything, causation is something that might be more designed towards figuring out something, and you really can't rest on one more than the other. >> Yeah. (laughs) >> Your thoughts on the balance between the two. >> You're talking to someone who worked in health care for-- (laughs) >> John: (laughs) I probably won't get you to continue. >> For almost seven years. Causation and correlation are-- >> John: More important than ever. >> Are more important than ever. And I think more and more, the boundary between what machines can do and how they can augment human beings, versus actually having the machines help you make decisions, it's getting fuzzier, and machines are able to do more and more. I mean, all of the knowledge that you could read about 24 hours a day cannot sit in your head. You have to be able to leverage machines to help you make those decisions. So as far as causation and correlation, I think the correlation is something that the machine can be the master of. It can see patterns where you may not even think to look for patterns. So I think that, let's give it up to the machines. Correlation is where-- >> John: They got that. >> The machines have got that, and you got to set them up so that they can do that for you. Causation is where the tricky area starts to happen. Because there is a lot to say, especially when you talk about doctors, about experience and working with individuals. Each individual is different. You can't say that the causation for this person is the same as that because the correlations are similar. No, you have to look, there are so many factors that go into what is causing-- >> John: Yeah. >> A disease or a condition in a person. So I think that is where the human element and experience really, really still make a difference. >> In the media business, we call it behavioral and contextual. >> Yes. >> Context is really important for really aligning-- >> It is. >> With whatever the problem statement may be. >> Yes, yes. >> Correlation, behavior, machines can do that. >> Correct. >> That's awesome, great, great, great insight there. A final question for you is, for other folks out there, CIOs or IT executives, as they look at the digital transformation journey, which, again, very cliche, but very real, there's a lot of opportunities, but also potential pitfalls if not executed properly. >> Tara: Yeah. >> Your thoughts on general roadmaps or best practices around how to tackle transformation, if they're doing it, coming in for the first time or at the beginning, or if they're in the middle of a digital transformation, and they're stuck in the mud-- >> Yeah, yeah. >> Or "Oh my God, "my head person quit. "I got to get more people." >> Yeah. >> "I need developers," or people on the back end of the transformation, different parts of the journey. What's your advice? >> Yeah, I've got a couple of, again, from the scars of my past, a couple of things that I think are important. Number one, when I joined Clorox, I had the stretch goal of actually building out their cybersecurity program. I had not done that in the previous part of my career. I was an enterprise architect, that's where I would spend most of my many years. But cybersecurity, and I hired the CSO and built out that program for Clorox, it puts a whole different lens on how you look at your transformation, and it is an important lens. And I think I would not have been rounded, as either an enterprise architect who's developing technology strategy or a digital technology innovator, if I did not have that lens of, there is risk that you need to consider. Now, the point to remember is that you can't over-rotate one way or the other. You have to consider risk and opportunity, and there's a fine line. And I think the smartest CIOs and senior executives know where that fine line exists, and are able to tell when you need to go this way or that way. So that's one thing that I would say, is don't lose that lens. Technology can do wonderful things for you, but so can the hackers from a different-- >> You got to be aware-- >> You've got to be aware. >> And then, you've got to shape it, too, as it evolves. Is that something that you see as important? >> You have to have that lens of, you're doing this wonderful, amazing thing, however, what if the unintended audience is able to access whatever you're doing? And what can they do with it? So that's one thing that I would say, is keep that balance in mind. Again, don't over-rotate one way or the other, but keep that balance in mind. The other thing that I would say is, innovation is a state of mind that needs to be nurtured and developed, and it needs to be sought from every part of the organization. The only way to scale innovation is to have everybody be an innovator in the organization. So that would be my advice, is innovation can come from the youngest high school intern, or, we actually just had someone at Clorox celebrate their 50th year at Clorox. So, you know-- >> John: Yeah. >> Innovation can come from anywhere in the organization. You have to always be ready, open-minded, and prepared to grab that opportunity when it happens. >> My final takeaway for this is in context to where we are now, we're on Sand Hill Road-- >> Yes. >> At Mayfield Fund, they're a venture capitalist. >> Yes. >> They fund early-stage and growth. >> Yep. >> The younger generation, we just talked about the insights that they can have, new shifts that are happening in experiences, expectations. The startups, more than ever, have an opportunity to have customers like Clorox. >> Tara: Yes, yes. >> What used to be, "Well, a startup, "risk, don't go through the, go through TSA, "and when you get approved, "then we'll talk to you," kind of thing. (Tara guffaws) It's a big, painful process. >> Used to be? >> Now, more than ever, startups want to land the big Clorox deals. >> Yes, yes. >> They want to show the value proposition, time to value, shortening, with cloud and other things. What's your advice to startups who want to sell to you or hope to, aspire to, be successful in the marketplace? >> You know, I love startups, and I spent a lot of time with them. What I have seen as differentiating in the startups that I have seen is, some of them, they're out there, they want your business. So they are looking at you from that, "Can I get your business?" And then there are other startups that, I'm sure they've got that lens, but they don't make it obvious to you. To them, the value is in working with you. You're a company that is well-reputed. You've got a ton of amazing data that can be used to develop your models. You've got a ton of insights and understanding of the business that you can get by just working with this "reputed" company, like Clorox. Those in itself, you can't put a tangible, material value on that, but that is what helps startups build relevant and amazing products. And that, in itself, is "payment." The money will come, but look to the experiences, look to the ability to leverage data, and, above all, look to how you can position your product in a way that it is solving a business problem. Don't do technology for technology's sake. >> So, your advice would be, don't focus on on the PO. If they're venture-backed, they probably have some runway. >> Yes. >> Focus on the value proposition. >> Absolutely, and learning how companies operate and what's important to them, take the time to do that. >> How about scale? Do you hear that a lot with startups, they want to try to use the value proposition? One, they have to get in the door and show value, so that's one. >> Tara: Of course. >> Kind of table stakes, get through the door. >> Okay, yep. >> Then it's more about how they can be operationalized. That becomes something I've seen with startups. What's your thoughts on that? Because one of the benefits of getting in the door is getting (laughs) in the door, but staying in-- >> Yeah. >> Is about operationalizing that new value proposition. How do you look at that as a leader? >> (sharply exhales) Yeah, the word operationalization is an interesting one. So, companies like Clorox, I mean, while I love to work with startups, I will tell you that I do experiments, four, six, eight weeks, we've got a metric. If we go beyond that, it's probably a project that needs to go through a different route. But we do these experiments, and we do them quickly. The thing that we do worry about is, "Okay, great startup, great product. "Is it enterprise-ready?" You know? And I think that is where a lot of startups struggle a little bit, is, can they prove to you that their product is Fort Knox, that it won't be a way through which your systems get hacked? Can they prove to you that they've got a good handle on where they are going, what their roadmap is, what capabilities they are developing in their roadmap? Can they showcase that to you in a way that makes sense to you? We're looking for companies that are not just here today and gone tomorrow, companies that are here for the long run. And then, even if they can't do all of that, show that you integrate really well with our other products. Because, guess what, if you don't work out so well for us, little startup, we want to be able to replace you. We want to have that option. And if you don't integrate seamlessly and can be plucked out and put back in again, then we're stuck with something that we can't extract from our environment. So they've got to think how we think, is what I would advise them. (laughs) >> Tara, thanks so much for this great insight. For startups out there, for folks entering their career, for other women who are looking to break into tech, we have a great inspirational leader here. >> Thank you. >> John: Thank you for spending the time, we really appreciate it. >> Thank you very much, really appreciate it. >> Thank you very much. I'm John Furrier. You're watching the People First program with SiliconANGLE and Mayfield. Thanks for watching. (upbeat electronic music)

>> Live from Anaheim, California It's the queue covering nutanix dot next twenty nineteen. Brought to you by Nutanix >> Welcome back, everyone to the Cubes Live coverage of nutanix dot Next here in Anaheim, I'm your host, Rebecca Night, along with my co host, John Furrier. We are joined by Victoria Hurtado. She is the director I t operations at current Health Care System's Welcome, Victoria. I think >> you've having me >> So for our viewers that are not familiar with current to tell us a little bit about what you do and what you're all about. >> Sure. So we're a health payer provider. So we are managed care medical plan. We have a contract with the state of California to provide medical services. Teo, about two hundred fifty five thousand members, and Kern County, located in Bakersfield, California s. So if you really think no one to know more about this like a Kaiser without the provider network and so we pay, uh, the services, the bills that come in a swell is authorized the services that need to be rendered for members. >> So talk about your decision to move from traditional storage to H. C. I. >> So really, where decisions stemmed from was our road map. And over the last several years we have had a three tier traditional storage, Um, and the daily task of our system administrators have increased over time with integration and as technology increases, there's more integration. And so we really wanted to focus on how do we decrease that as well as increased efficiencies so that we can for her by the services that we need Teo, for our internal customers as well as our external customers are members and providers >> and and the efficiency. Suppose the project plan. How did you go? Proud. You approach it? >> Sure, So her strategy was really a three phase approach. So we wanted to implement VD I for our internal employees. So we started off with VD. I Once we have transition to that, we will be migrating or in the process of right now, our core claim system, which is that are our bread and butter really on DH? So we'll do a six plant a month plan on that, see how that goes and then once that is successful, which I feel will be successful, we will migrate our entire infrastructure over >> and you're happy with the new tactics so far? >> Yes. So the first deployment was nutanix with Citrix and VM Where that entire combination I've had a few consultants come in and they're like, Oh, you've got the Ferrari of Edie I. And I'm like, Yes, we absolutely dio s Oh, yes, >> when you're thinking about efficiencies. I mean, one of the things Before the cameras were rolling, you were talking a little bit about what it means for employees. Can you talk a little bit about how they then structure of their day? They structure how which projects they work on and how they are more productive given these different changes? >> Sure. So unorganised ation like us, we are always challenged with guidelines changing from the state. They have a tendency to want to change things very frequently. So we often have a lot of critical projects that were doing on an everyday basis, and that work really gets them consumed. And so what we're able to do with nutanix is alleviate those responsibility so that we can focus on the more critical, you know, impacting scenarios versus, you know, managing alone and moving a volume and making sure the system is up and running. We're really focused on providing care to our members because our members or what count, Um and, you know, it also allows for, you know, a member to get the services that they need while they're sitting in the doctor's office waiting for a response from our organization. >> How's the cops world these days? Because there's so much tech out there. When you look at the landscape because you got you got unique situation, you got care and you got payments were relying on this so you don't have a lot of room for mistakes. Crap. What do you guys see in that Operations suppliers out there, Other people you looked at, what was some of the solutions and why need nutanix? >> So it actually took us a while to make that decision. We made a collaborative decision with our engineers, uh, my CEO and some of our business units. We compared different technologies that were out in the landscape of both storage and hyper converged. What was the right path for us? We did a very thorough cost analysis of five year ten year what that road map looks like for us. And, um, like you said. Mistakes. We can't make mistakes. And with growing security risk and healthcare industry and more people wanting that data, it's really important for us to protect it and have it secure. Eso nutanix really offered us a lot of the key components that we were looking for in our grading system. When we you know, we're looking for a storage solution, >> how's the event here? What's what you would have you learned? Tell us your experience. Nutanix next. >> Sure. So coming to this event, I really thought that we would be looking into new technologies. What other integration? Like typical conferences, I think. Sitting in the initial Kino, I heard a lot of great positive things that are aligned with the industry. The buzz words right now in technology as well as our own road mount for technology going to the cloud convergence, using multiple technologies for integration so really kind of paved what this conference was going to be. In addition, I think the sessions having thie cheered approach of you can follow a pathway throughout the conference was a brilliant idea and planning. Um, so I think there's much to learn about how this conference was put on. So >> I want to ask you about your role as the as the director of operation. I mean, somewhere. So you're hearing so much that these roles air really being dramatically transformed that it's not just about keeping the lights on, it really is. You're taking a much more strategic role in the business. How would you say you approach your job differently? How would you say it is changed? Your leadership style And And how much? How much time do you spend thinking about being more visionary? More forward? Thinking versus this is what we're doing each day. >> Yeah, s o I think Historically traditional technology departments and and management within technology of really focused on technology on Lee. Um, over the last several years, I've made it a point to learn our business units so that we can apply good technology, Teo, a good process. I'm a true believer in an advocate for our technology department and our staff to really know the business so that we're not putting technology on a bad process and because that doesn't really help anyone to be successful. So I would say the shift in transition is being merged and converges ight hee in business entity a ce faras approach Getting the business to come uphill with us has been really important. I'm not on ly for technology for the the underlying infrastructure, but systems today systems there so much ability to customize it to your heart's content, which also leads to different issue. So using technology with business process to gain efficiencies is really the road that is ahead of us. >> One of the things that the senior execs that nutanix talk about it their value propositions about, you know, helping consolidate little bit. Here is one of the side benefits. But there's a new role in the kind of looking for spent the new kind of persona person with nutanix solution is a new kind of operator. Yes. What? What? What do you think he means by that? >> So I really think it means And I had this challenge internally, actually, a cz You know, we we have a lot of technical engineers that have grown up with the mentality that I have to know everything about this one silo topic. Right? I need to be the expert in this Andre. Really? Where we're going is you don't have to worry about that. I need you to know about the business. I need you to know about how you can make change, inefficiencies, to help us be successful. And that is a transition for a lot of technologist. And we will get there. I truly believe that because we have Tio. >> It's a cultural thing. >> It is definitely a culture >> of an old dog. New tricks? Kind of >> Yes, Absolutely. How do you hire? I mean, look, what's weirder that what air to you? An applicant comes into your office. What? What do you want to see? >> So technology has historically been the focus of what do you know? How well can you do it? To what experience? You have enterprise grade level experience and now that's really shifting. Teo, are you able to participate on our project? Can you build requirements? Do you understand what your customers asking for? A swell is asking the questions of Is this the right thing to Dio? I'm not just doing what our customer asked us to dio. Does it make sense? If we're going archive data Do we need to secure it when we're transferring that in and out of the organization. Uh, does that make sense? And so they were looking for people that are going to be out spoken a little bit and ask those hard questions. >> Now, we have always talk about Ransomware because healthcare's been targeted. You got your mission's security earlier. Thinking broadly. You got data? Yes. Got the crown jewels, bread in butter. As you said, the data are you Have you experience ransom? Where you guys ready for it? What's the strategy? >> So we've actually take a layered approach to security. Obviously, in health care, there is no single pane of glass for security. We've really stepped into the world of having our data encrypted at rest in transit. Uh, multi layers. We do audits every >> year >> to make sure that we're compliance. We pay people to try to hack us, you know, legally because we want to know where are our possibilities are s o wait. Do that purposefully with intent to make sure that we have the technologies and place that are going to provide us what we need for our data. >> Fascinating. Victoria, Thank you so much for coming on the Cube. It was a pleasure having you. Thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight for John Farrier. You are watching the Cube

>> Live from San Francisco. It's the cube covering IBM thing twenty nineteen brought to you by IBM. >> Run. Welcome back to the Cubes live coverage here in San Francisco. Mosconi North while you're here as part of our exclusive covers. The Cube for IBM think twenty nineteen, their annual conference of customers and employees coming together to set the agenda for the next year. For IBM and its ecosystem. I'm John for a student. Um, in day. Volonte and Lisa Martin co hosting all week This week. Four days of wall to wall coverage. Day two of our kind Really Day one of the show Kickoff. We're here ending out that day and just had the CEO's keynote, and we're going to a review and analysis. David's do. We had a lot of interviews. Coming up to this theme is pretty clear. It's a I cloud and everything else going underneath that classic development application. Developers, developers in general, making applications That's classic, but eyes the big story. And, like like Always Cloud and the promise of Where That's Going, which is hybrid and multi cloud Dave, You set on the keynote. Any surprises from Ginny Rometty? >> I wouldn't say there were any surprises. First of all, I like Jenny. I think she she's a great presenter. I'd like to hang out with their like we were kids. That was what I wanted to hang out with us. He's a time person. I think I would feel comfortable talking to, you know, sports or business. She looked good. She had a really nice, sharp white suit on. She's self deprecating. She was drinking Starbucks. You know, they're obviously a client of IBM. I got the best moment was when Jim White hearse came on stage. He said, It's great to be here So he was like, Yeah, given thirty four billion reasons why it's great to be here kind of thing, So that was pretty funny. And she had. She made the comment. We've been dating Red Hat for twenty years before we decided to get married. She was trying to make a case You normally in Jenny's presentation, she she makes a really solid, puts forth the solid premise and then sort of backs it up with her guests. Today, I thought her premise, which was we're entering Chapter two. It's all about scaling and embedding a I everywhere. It's about hybrid. It's about bringing mission critical APS, you know, move those forward. And she had a number of other lessons learned. I thought she laid it out, but I think it sort of missed the back end. I don't think they punctuated the tail end of Jenny's talk. The guests were great and they had guys on from Kaiser Permanente E. T. And they were very solid. Well, think they made the case as strong as the premises that she put forward. And you know, we could talk more about that. >> And Stewart see red hat on stage. We've been commenting. We've been analyzing the acquisition of Red Hat, big number, thirty four billion dollars critical point you guys talk about in your opening on day one, the leverage they need to get out of that. This is the Alamo for them with the cloud. In my opinion, IBM is a lot to bring to the bear in the cloud. They I anywhere telegraphs that they wanna have their stuff with containers and multiple clouds. They want to be positioned as a multi cloud company but still have their cloud, providing the power for the workload. That makes sense, right? Bm. This is their last stand. This is like, you know, the Alamo for them. They They need to make cloud work right now. Watson, move from a product or brand ballistically open step. Is it tied together? Stew your thoughts on open stack and how this fits into their narrative. >> So I think you mean open shift, right, John s o from red hat standpoint. Absolutely what they're doing. They are involved in open stack, but open stack. You got a small, >> but they're one of the few that are sanguine on Open, Zachary read. >> I mean, read had open shift. My bad >> way it absolutely. And it is complicated in the multi cloud world and lots of different pieces. We've had a number of conversations with the IBM people that have worked with side by side, red hat in the open source communities, IBM, no stranger to open source and a CZ we talked about in our open on yesterday. It's the developers is really what where IBM needs to go and where Red Hat has a bevy of them on DH John. What you said about Multi Cloud? Absolutely. It's if IBM thinks that buying Red hat will make them the Goebel Global player in Cloud. I think that's wrong, and I don't think that's what they're doing. When I wrote a block post when it came, and I said, Is this move going to radically change the cloud landscape? No. Can this acquisition radically change IBM and change the trajectory of where they fit into Multi cloud? Absolutely. So there's cultural differences. We had Ah, Stephanie sheriffs on who's a longtime IBM er who now runs the biggest business inside of Red Hat. And she talked about the passion of open source. This is not lip service. I've many friends that have worked for it. Had I've, you know, worked with them, partner with them and cover them for most of those twenty years on DH? Absolutely. You've got over ten thousand people that are passionate involved in communities on DH. When you talk about the developer world, you talk about the cloud native world. This is what you know. Really. Red Hat moment has been waiting. >> It was interesting. John and I would like one if you could comment on this is you hearing IBM? Jenny talked about Chapter two. She took a digital reinvention. Here's yet another company using the reinvent terminology. I think that's what sort of pointed she talked. About forty percent of the world is going to be private. Sixty percent is going to be public Cloud. The sort of that's the first time I've heard those that she said It's flipped if you're ah, regulated industry. But what do your thoughts on people essentially using and Amazons narrative on reinvention? >> Everyone's using Amazons narrative. Here's the bottom line. Amazon is winning impact large margins. I think the numbers airway skewed in the favor of the people trying to catch up. I think that's more of a game. If vacation by the analyst firms, Amazon is absolutely blowing away the competition when it comes to public loud. The only game at the table right now for the Oracle's, IBM, Sze and Microsoft and Google is the slow down the adoption of Amazon. And you see the cloud adoption of Amazon, whether it's in the government sector, which I think is more acute. And Mohr illustrative, the Jet I contract a ten billion dollar contract. That is a quote sole source deal. But it was bid as a multi source deal means anyone could bid on it. Well, guess what? That is a going to be an award and probably to Amazon as the sole winner because IBM doesn't have the certification. Nor does Microsoft notice Oracle. Nobody's got Amazons winning that, and that begs the argument. Can you use one cloud? And the answer is Yes, you can. If the APP worked, Load works best for it, and procurement does not decide output for the cloud. For example, if it's a Jet I contract, it's a military application. So, like a video game, would you want to play a video game and be lagging? Would you want our military to be lagging? Certainly, the D O d. Says no. So one cloud makes sense. If you're running office three sixty five, you want to use azure. So Microsoft has taken that, and their earnings have been phenomenal by specialising around their workloads. That makes sense for Azure, and they're catching up. IBM has an opportunity to do the same for their workload. The business workload. So aye, aye, anywhere is interesting to me. So I think this is a good bet. If they can pull it off, that's the strategy, and the world will go multi cloud, where certain clouds will be sold for the apple sole source for the workloads. That makes sense for those workload. So this is where the market's going, right? So this whole notion of there won't be multi class. It's going to be multi cloud and it's gonna winner, winner take most. And the game right now is to stop ama's. That is clearly the case, and you're seeing it in the bids you see in the customer base. And IBM is catching Oppa's fast as they can. They got the people and the technology. The question is, how much do they catch up and level up? Tamas on? >> Well, stew despite Jenny, you know, invoking the reinvent terminology, they're her. Kino was starkly different than what you would expect from an Amazon Kino. They may. She mentioned a couple of the announcements, Watson anywhere, which, by the way, is about time. It's about time that Watson ran on other people's clouds of it, which should have been a while ago and in hyper protect is the world's most secure cloud. But we don't have any really details on that. And then I'd be in business automation with Watson, and that was really it. I think it was by design not to give a big product pitch, you know, very non Steve jobs. Like very done, Andy Jazzy like which is all product product product. I mean, kind of surprising in a big show with all these customers. You think they'd be pitching, but I think their intent was to really be more content. Orient >> Well, So Dave, you know, goes back at the core. What is IBM's biggest business? IBM biggest businesses. So services. So I've done a number of interviews this week already talking about how IBM is helping with digital transformation, how they're helping people move to more agile and development for environments. You know, the multi cloud world. How do they know IBM has a long history with C. S, P s and M s peace? So they have large constituencies And sure, they have products. You know, great stuff talking about, You know, how do they have the best infrastructure to run your workloads and the strength that they haven't supercomputing in HPC. And how they can leverage that? Because IBM knows a thing or two about scale. But, you know, Dave, one of the questions I have for you is we've seen the big services organizations go through radical downsizing. You know, HP spun off their business. Del got rid of the Perot business. You know, IBM still is, you know, services. At its core, it is IBM built for the multi cloud cloud native. You know, Ai ai world, Or do they still need to go through some massive changes? >> Well, multi Cloud is complicated and complex. IBM does complicated services, you know, deal with complexity, but I still can't help but feel like, >> Well, I well, I thought, wouldn't comment on them. I think the services. If the Manual Services Professional Services dropped down, IBM has a great opportunity to move them to cloud based services, meaning I can write software. And this is where I think they have an advantage. They could really nail the business applications, which will become services, whether its domain expertise in a vertical. And I think this is their cloud opportunity. IBM could capture that they could take entirely new category of applications. Business applications and services, automate them with machine learning, automate them with cloud scale their cloud scale while making them portable on multiple clouds. So the notion of services will be the professional services classic your grandfather's services, too. Cloud based services at scale. >> Yeah, well, I think you're right. Look, that's one. IBM is biggest strengths, and Jenny did that acquisition. By the way. The PwC acquisition is one hundred thousand. People instantly brought IBM into that deep vertical industry expertise, and they're not going to give that up any time soon. And this so many opportunities to code. If I those services or that song you know, through software and make them repeatable services, I mean, they're at as a service. Business is one of the fastest growing parts of IBM, you know, revenue stream. So I don't see that going. Wait. All I do think there was a missed opportunity and maybe they can't talk about it for was some regulatory reason. They're just paranoid. But you had white hearse up on the stage. You just spent thirty four billion dollars. I would have liked to hurt Mohr about the rationale, even though we've heard it before. They did. You know, Jim and Jeannie did a tour there on all the big TV shows You're on Kramer. But I would have liked to heard sort of six months on what that rationale is and how they're going to help transform with this in this new chapter and what that role that red hat was going play, I thought it was a missed opportunity. >> Well, speculate on that. I think of things. Probably. They probably don't have their answer yet. IBM is very good on messaging. You know, they're pretty tight, but I think Arvin Krishna talked to assert this morning. On our first interview. He brought up the container ization and Coburn Eddie's trend. I think that's where red hat fits and melons and give them cloud Native developers in Enterprise Fortune one thousand. They also got the cloud native ecosystem behind that the C in C F etcetera. But Containers does for Legacy Container ization, and Cooper daddies really preserves legacy. It allows developers to essentially keep the old while bringing in the new and managing the life cycle of those applications, not a ribbon replace. This is an opportunity for IBM, and if I think the messaging folks and the product dies or probably figure out okay, how do we take the red hat and open shift and be cloud native and take all the goodness that comes in with cloud Native the new developers, the Devil Infrastructures code, make under the covers infrastructure programmable and is Rob Thomas pointed out, having horizontal data layer that enables new kinds of business services. So to me, container ization, it's kind of nerdy Cooper netease. But this is really a new linchpin to what could be a sea change for IBM in terms of revenue. Keeping the Legacy customs happy because then the pressure to move to Amazon goes away because I can say, Whoa, wait. If the question is, why adopt if customs have an answer for that that gives IBM time, This is what they want otherwise, cloud native worlds could move very, very fast. We've seen the velocity of the momentum, and I think that's a key move. >> I think your point about slowing down the Amazon momentum is a good one, and I want to talk about five things that Ginny said that lessons learned, she said. One. You can approach the world from outside in and focus on customer experience. Or you could do inside out, identify new ways to work and new work flows, you know, kind of driving change. The third lesson learned was You need a business platform fueled by data with invented A I. The fourth is you need an ai ai platform. And in the fifth is Rob Thomas is you can't have a eye without a word that you needed information, architecture, which, by the way, I believe it to be true. So those are business oriented discussions. It's not something that you necessarily here from Amazon there kind of chewy. There's the services component to all that. The big question I have is Well, Watson, be that ai ai platform. >> Yeah, I mean something, You know, I look at is why Doe I choose a platform and a partner. So we understand Amazon, you know, they want to be the leader and everything. They have a lot more services in anyone. But, you know, if I want data services, first cloud that comes to mind to me is Google. You know, Google has a real strength there, You know. Where does IBM have a leadership compared to Google business productivity? IBM has a lot of strength there, but Microsoft also has a place so you know, customers. If they're going to live, Multi cloud, they're going Teo in many ways go backto best of breed on DH. Therefore, where will IBM differentiate themselves from some of those? >> We have visibility down. It's clear now that the industry the fog is lifting, starting to see Cem clear lines of sight and a few major trends. And it's pretty clear on where the industry's going for the next ten years. Application developers at the top of the stack gonna build APS The infrastructures cloud cloud something multi cloud cloud, native infrastructures, code and data. And a I see that Amazon reinvent sage maker. You're seeing all the major innovations happening around APS using data power advice, cloud scale, that's it. Everything else to me is glue or some sort of fabric component. Or a piece of that distributed architecture and its cloud. Aye, aye, and an apple. >> A CZ. Dave is often said, it's the innovation sandwich of today. >> Yeah, well, so I guess the things I want to mention it because of me. There's been some high profile failed failures with Watson, But watching was trying to do some things that were not, you know, voice response to Alexa, you know, solve cancer, you know, world problems and so I think IBM is actually earned the right to be in the discussion, and the Red had acquisition gives IBM instant credibility in this game, especially in this a multi cloud game. >> Well, they got me. They have the right to be the zillions of customers. They have a lot of a lot of business model innovations with that that their customers are innovating on. And if they keep the cloud innovate, they gotta match the specs. Specs of the cloud. They gotta be there with Cloud. If they don't make the cloud work, they're going to be subservient to the other clouds. They have to make it in the top three. This is clear. Hey, I think I think we're working a lot of experience and data. I think Watson kind of finding his home is a brand's natural fit. Got a portfolio of data? I think IBM will do very well in the data front. It's the cloud game that they got a really sure up. They got to make sure that IBM cloud conserved. They're custom, >> but the good news is there is there. In the game we saw HPD tried to get into HPD, tried to get the cloud it failed. Cisco, for a while, was trying to get with Sawyer. AMC make of numerous attempts. VM were made, made numerous attempts. IBM spent two billion dollars in software. They they they've got a cloud. You know, they've transformed what was essentially a bare metal hosting platform, you know, into a cloud. They've jammed all there as a service products in there. They're SAS portfolio. So there, at least in the game and, you know, again, I've said often, I think they're very Oracle like it's not the biggest cloud. It's not going to scale to the Amazon levels, but they've got a cloud, and it's a key part of the strategy. >> Innovation Sandwich applications Cloud What data? In the middle of a I. That's the formula, David said on the Q beer. All right day to coverage for the Cuba. Four days were here in the lobby of Mosconi North, part of the new refurbished Mosconi Center in San Francisco. Howard Street's closed. It feels like Salesforce. Dreamforce event. Big event in San Francisco. I'm John First Amendment Dave along. They were here for four days Day, two of four days of coverage for IBM think back tomorrow. Thanks for watching.

>> Live from San Francisco. It's the cube covering IBM thing twenty nineteen brought to you by IBM. >> Hello and welcome back to the Cubes. Live coverage here and savor still were alive for IBM. Think twenty nineteen. The Cubes Exclusive contract. Jon for a stimulant in our next two guests of the Cloud gurus and IBM and VM Where A. J. Patel senior vice president general manager Cloud Providers Software Business Unit. Good to see you again. Baron. Scram A general manager. IBM Cloud Guys. Thanks for Spend the time. Get to the cloud gurus. Get it? They're having What's going on? Having privilege. Osti Cloud's been around. We've seen the public Cloud Momentum hybrid Certainly been around for a while. Multi clouds of big conversation. People are having role of data that is super important. Aye, aye, anywhere you guys, an IBM have announced because I've been on this. I'm on >> a journey or a >> library for awhile. On premise. It was on VM, where all the good stuff's happening. This the customers customers want this talk about the relationship you guys have with IBM. >> You know, the broad of'em were IBM relationship over nine, ten years old. I had the privilege of being part of the cloud the last couple years. The momentum is amazing. Over seventeen hundred plus customers and the Enterprise customers, not your you know, one node trial customer. These are really mission critical enterprise customers using this at that scale, and the number one thing we hear from customers is make it easy for me to leverage Plowed right, operate in the world when I'm using my own prim and my public cloud assets make it seamless, and this is really what we've talked about a lot, right? How do we provide that ubiquitous digital platform for them to operate in this hybrid world? And we're privileged to have IBM Of the great partner in this journey >> are some of the IBM cloud, Ginny Rometty said on CNBC this morning. We saw the interview with my friend John Ford over there. Aye, aye. Anywhere means going run on any cloud. Watson with containers. That's cloud DNA. Sitting the cloud with good Burnett ease and containers is changing the game. Now you can run a lot of things everywhere. This's what customers want. End to end from on. Premise to wherever. How has that changed the IBM cloud posture? Its products? You share a little bit of that. >> You absolutely so look I mean, people have their data in different places, and as you know, it's a really expensive to move stuff around. You gotta make sure it's safe, etcetera, So we want to take our applications and run them against the data wherever they are right? And when you think about today's landscape in the cloud industry, I think it's a perfect storm, a good, perfect storm and that containers and Kubernetes, you know, everyone's rallying around at the ecosystem that consumers, the providers. And it just makes us easy for us to take that capability and really make it available on multicloud. And that's what we're doing. >> to talk about your joint customers. Because the BM where has a lot of operators running, running virtually change? For a long time, you guys have been big supporters of that and open source that really grew that whole generation that was seeing with cloud talk about your customers, your mo mentum, Howyou, guys air, just ballpark. How many customers you guys have together? And what if some of the things that they're doing >> all right? So I know this is a really interesting story. I was actually away from IBM for just over two years. But one of the last things I did when I was an IBM the first time around was actually start this Veum where partnership and seated the team that did it. So coming back, it's really interesting to see the uptake it's had, You know, we've got, like, seven hundred customers together over seventeen hundred customers. Together, we've moved tens of thousands of'em workloads, and as I just said, we've done it in a mission. Critical fashion across multiple zones across multiple regions. On now, you know, we want to take it to the next level. We want to make sure that these people that have moved their basic infrastructure and the mission critical infrastructure across the public cloud can extend those applications by leveraging the cloud near application that we have on our cloud. Plus, we want to make it possible for them to move their workloads to other parts of the IBM ecosystem in terms of our capabilities. >> Any one of the things we found was the notion of modernizer infrastructure, first lift and then transform. He's starting to materialize, and we used to talk about this has really the way the best way to use, cowed or use hybrid cloud was start by just uplifting your infrastructure and whether it's west back, you ask for some customers. I respect a great example. I think that we're talking about it in the Parisian. I joined presentation tomorrow or you look at, you know, Kaiser, who's going to be on stage tomorrow? We're seeing industries across the board are saying, You know, I have a lot of complexity sitting on aging hardware, older versions of infrastructure software. How do I modernize A platform first lifted, shifted to leverage a cloud. And then I could transform my application using more and more portable service that'S covering decides to provide a kind of infrastructure portability. But what about my data, Right. What about if I could run my application with the data? So I think we're starting to see the securing of the use of cloud based on workloads and averaging that's that's >> Yeah, a J. What wonder if we could dig a little love level deeper on that? Because, you know, I think backto, you know, fifteen years or so ago, it was bm where allowed me to not have to worry about my infrastructure. My, you know OS in my you know, server that I was running on might be going end of life. Well, let me shove it in a V M. And then I couldn't stand the life, and then I can manage how that happens. Course. The critique I would have is maybe it's time to update that that application anyway, so I like the message that you're saying about Okay, let me get a to a process where I'm a little bit freer of where, and then I can do the hard work of updating that data. Updating that application, you know, help us understand. >> It's no longer about just unlocking the compute right, which was worth trying the server. It's What about my network we talked about earlier? Do I need a suffered If our network well, the reality is, everything is going programmable. If you want a program of infrastructure, it's compute network storage all software defined. So the building block for us is a suffer to find data center running on the infrastructure that IBM pride sixty plus data centers bare metal at Scholastic and then leering that with IBM cloud private, whether it's hosted or on premise, fear gives you that full stack that nirvana, the people talk about supportable stack going, talk about >> right and adding to what he said, right? You said, You know, it's not about just moving your old stuff to the to the cloud. Absolutely. So as I said in one of the earlier conversations that we have, we had is we have a whole wealth of new services, whether it's Blockchain R. I o. T or the that used. You spoke about leveraging those capabilities to further extend your app and give it a new lease of life to provide new insights is what it's all about. >> What? Well, that that that's great, because it's one thing to just say, Okay, I get it there. Can I get better utilization? Is that change my pricing? But it's the services, and that's kind of the promise of the cloud is, you know, if I built something in my environment, that's great and I can update and I can get updates. But if I put it in your environment, you can help manage some of those things as well as I should have access to all of these services. IBM's got a broad ecosystem can you give us? You know what are some of the low hanging fruit is to people when they get there, that they're unlocking data that they're using things like a I What? What What are some of the most prevalent services that people are adding when they go to the IBM clouds? >> So when you look at people who first moved their work list of the cloud, typically they tend to dip their toe in the water. They take what's running on Prem. They used the IRS capabilities in the cloud and start to move it there. But the real innovation really starts to happen further up the stock, so to speak. The platform is a service, things like a II OT blocked and all the things that I mentioned, eso es very natural. Next movement is to start to modernize those applications and add to it. Capability is that it could never have before because, you know it was built in a monolith and it was on prim, and it was kind of stuck there. So now the composition that the cloud gives you with all of these rich services where innovation happens first, that is the real benefit to our customers. >> Every she said, you took a little hiatus from IBM and went out outside IBM. Where did you go and what did you learn? What was that? Goldman Jack. JP Morgan, Where were you? >> So it was a large bank. You know, I'm not not allowed to say the name of the bank. >> One of those two. It >> was a large bank on, and it wasn't the U S. So that narrows down the field. Some >> What is it like to go outside? They'll come inside. U C Davis for cutting edge bank. Now you got IBM Cloud. You feel good about where things are. >> Yeah. You know, if you look at what a lot of these banks are trying to do, they start to attack the cloud journey saying we're going to take everything that ran in the bank for years and years and years. And we're going to, you know, make them micro services and put them all on public cloud. And that's when you really hit the eighty twenty percent problem because you've got a large monolith that don't lend themselves to be re factored and moved out. Tio, eh, Public cloud. So you know again, Enter communities and containers, etcetera. These allow you a way to modernize your applications where you can either deploy those containerized You know, piers you go type models on prim or on public. And if you have a rich enough set of services both on Prem in on the public loud, you can pretty much decide how much of it runs on Trevor's is becoming much more clouds >> moment choice. So really, it's finding deployment. So basically, what you're saying is that we get this right. I want to get your reaction. This You don't have to kill the old to bring in the new containers and Cooper netease and now service measures around the corner. You can bring in new work clothes, take advantage of the cutting edge technology and manage your life cycle of the work loads on the old side or it just can play along. I >> think what we're finding is, you know, we moved from hybrid being a destination to an operating model, and it's no longer about doing this at scale like my multi clark. Any given applications tied to a cloud or destination? It's a late binding decision, but as an aggregate. I may be amusing multiple close, right. So that more model we're moving to is really about a loving developer. Super your workload centric and services centric to see Where do I want to run in Africa? >> Okay, what one of the challenges with multi cloud is their skill sets. I need to worry about it. It can be complex. I want to touch on three points and love to get both your viewpoints, networking, security and management. How do we help tackle that? Make that simple >> right off customers? >> Yeah, sure. So you know, I think when you think about clouds, public clouds especially it's beyond your data center and the mindset out there as if it's beyond my data center. It can be safe. But when you start to build those constructs in the modern era, you really do take care of a lot of things that perhaps you're on Prem pieces that not take into consideration when they were built like many decades ago. Right? So with the IBM public Cloud, for example, you know, security's at the heart of it. We have a leadership position. There was one of the things that we've announced is people keep protect for not only Veum, where workload visa and we sphere etcetera, but also for other applications making use off our public cloud services. Then, when you talk about our Z, you know we have a hardware as security model, which is fifty one forty, level two or dash to level four, which nobody else in the industry has. So when you put your key in there on ly, the customer can take it out, not him. Azaz clouds of his providers can touch it. It will basically disintegrate, you know, sort of speak >> H ey. Talk about VM wears customer base inside the IBM ecosystem. What's new? What should they pay attention to? As you guys continue the momentum. >> So I think if you look at the last two years, it's been around what we call these larger enterprise. Dedicated clouds. Exciting thing in the horizon is we're adding a multi tenant IRS on top of this BM, we're dedicated. So being able to provide that Brett off access thing with dedicated multi tenant public out I, as fully programmable, allows us to go downmarket. So expect the customer kind of go up being able to consume it on a pay as you go basis leveraging kind of multi tenant with dedicated, but it's highly secure or for depth test. So are the use cases kind of joke. We're going to see a much larger sort of use cases that I'm most excited about >> is the bottom line. Bottom line me. I'm the customer. Bottom line me. What's in it for me? What I got >> for the customers with a safest choice, right? It's the mission critical secure cloud. You can now run the same application on Prem in a dedicated environment in public, Claude on IBM or in a multi tenant >> world. And on the Klaxon match on the cloud sign. I could take advantage of all the things you have and take advantage of that. Watson A. I think that Rob Thomas has been talking about Oh yeah, >> absolutely. And again. You know the way that we built I c P forty, which is IBM plowed private for data. You know, it's all containerized. It's orchestrated by Coop, so you can not only build it. You can either run it on crime. You can run it on our public loud or you can run it on other people's public clouds as well >> nourished for customers and for people. They're looking at IBM Cloud and re evaluating you guys now again saying Or for the first time, what should they look at? Cloud private? What key thing would you point someone to look at, IBM? They were going to inspect your cloud offering >> so again, and it's back to my story in the bank. Right? It's, uh you can't do everything in the public cloud, right? There are just certain things that need to remain on creme On. We'll be so for the foreseeable future. So when you take a look at our hybrid story, the fact that it is has a consistent based on which it is built on. It is a industry standard open source base. You know, you build your application to suit the needs of an application, right? Is it low lately? See, Put it on. Crim. You need some cloud Native services. Put it on the public cloud. Do you need to be near your data that lives on somebody else's cloud? Go put it on their cloud. Right. So it really is not a one. Size fits all its whatever your business >> customer where he is, right? That's often >> the way flexibility, choice, flexibility. Enjoy the store for all things cloud. >> Yeah, last thing I want to ask is where to developers fit in tow this joint Solucion >> es O. So I think the biggest thing is that's trying to change for us is making these services available in a portable manner. When do I couldn't lock into the public cloud service with particular data and unlocking that from the infrastructures will be a key trend. So for us, it's about staying true to Coburn eddies and upstream with the distribution. So it's portable for wanting more and more services and making it easy for them to access a catalogue of services on a bagel manner but then making operation a viable. So then you're deployed. You can support the day two operations that are needed. So it's a full life cycle with developers not having to worry about the heavy burden of running an operating. What >> exactly? You know, it's all about the developers. As you well know in the cloud world, the developer is the operator. So as long as you can give him or her, the right set of tools to do C. I C. Dev ops on DH get things out there in a consistent fashion, whether it is on a tram or a public cloud. I think it's a win for all. >> That's exactly the trend We're seeing operations moving to more developers and more big time operational scale questions where your programming, the infrastructure. Absolutely. Developers. You don't want to deal with it >> and making it work. Listen tricks. So you know when to deploy. What workload? Having full control. That's part of the deployment >> exam. Alright, final question. I know we got a break. We're in tight on time. Final point share perspective of what's what's important here happening. And IBM. Think twenty nineteen people who didn't make it here in San Francisco are watching. You have to top cloud executives on VM wear and IBM here as biased towards cloud, of course. But you know, if you're watching, what's the most important story happening this week? What's what's going on with IBM? Think Why is this conference this week important? >> I think for us, it's basically saying We're here to meet you where you are, regardless, where you on your customer journey. It's all about choice. It's no longer only about public Cloud, and you now have a lot of capably of your finger trips to take your legacy workloads or your neck, new workplace or any app anywhere we can help you on that journey. That would be the case with >> you, and I wouldn't go that right, said it slightly differently. You know, a lot of the public service of public cloud service providers kind of bring you over to their public loud, and then you're kind of stuck over there and customers don't like that. I mean, you look at the statistics for everybody has at least two or more public clouds. They're worried about the connective ity, the interoperability, the security costs, the cost, the skills to manage all of it. And I think we have the perfect solution of solutions that really start Teo. Speak to that problem. >> So the world's getting more complex as more functionalities here, Software's gonna distract it away. Developers need clean environment to work in programmable infrastructure. >> And you know where an IBM Safe Choice, choice, choice. >> We have to go on top to cloud executives here. Inside the cue from IBM of'em were bringing all the coverage. Was the Cube here in the lobby of Mosconi North on Howard Street in San Francisco for IBM? Think twenty. Stay with us for more coverage after this short break. Thank you. Thank you.

>> Hi, I'm Lisa Martin with theCUBE, on the ground at Google for the sixth annual CloudNOW Top Women in Cloud Awards. And we're very excited to be joined by one of the winners this year, Caroline Wong, the Vice President of Security Strategy at Cobalt.io. Welcome to theCUBE, Caroline. >> Thank you for having me. >> It's great to have you here for many reasons, and we know that we're both dog lovers and they're not going to let us talk about dogs for the whole time, but I love that. So, you have previously been at eBay, Zinga, Symantec. Were you a STEM kid from grade school, and always interested in IT? Or is this something that you sort of zig-zagged career-wise, and made this career that you have now? >> So when I was 16 years old, my dad asked me what I wanted to study in college. And I told him Dance or Psychology. >> Wow, that's a different from >> It's different because I was like well, "What do I like? What do I enjoy doing?" And he said you're going to study Engineering, and you're going to do it at the best school that you could get into. And I studied Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley. I really struggled with the curriculum, but I'm so glad that I do have a formal background in technology. I ended up in Cyber Security pretty randomly, to be honest. I did an IT project management internship at eBay, and when I graduated, I asked my manager if I could work for them full time. And they said there was a hiring freeze in IT, but they had an open position in Information Security. Which at the time, I didn't know what that even meant. The night before my interview, I looked up Information Security on Wikipedia and I memorized the definition. >> (laughter) You know, that just speaks to, and look what you're doing now. You didn't know, and there's probably many other people who are in the same situation, whether they're 16 and wanting to major in Dance or whatnot. I love that, that you were confident enough in yourself, probably in your education to, "let me try that out". When you were studying though, at UC Berkeley, you said there were some challenges there. This brings me back to my own days of studying Physics, which I wasn't good at. What were some of the things that surprised you? For the good? >> Sure, so I'll tell you a story about one of my Electrical Engineering lab courses. Of course, I make friends with the one other student in the class who's like, not quite sure what's going on. And we have teams of three, and so we have to find someone who really knows how to do it. So, what happens is, one of my colleagues fetches the materials for our lab assignment. My other colleague does the lab, and I write the report. And at the time, I'm a little bit embarrassed that I can't do all three. But after all, it is about team work and it turns out, what has helped me tremendously in my career has been my ability to write and to work well with others, and to communicate both verbally and in written form what's going on technically. >> That's outstanding. Just great advice again for others that it's not just about understanding engineering. There's other components that are really critical and will help you be successful. So in addition to the award that you're getting today from CloudNOW, you've been recognized as an Influencer by Women in IT Security, and as a One to Watch Women of Influence. You've also had a lot of publications. So I'm curious, what inspires you to be involved in the community and share your expertise? Not just your education in Engineering and what you're doing with cyber security, but also your path to success? >> Yeah, so for me, I'll contrast it with my sister. She's a Kaiser Pediatrician. And she's known for her whole life that she wanted to be a doctor, and she just went for it. And she was like, here's my target, and I'm just going to make it. I have always been very, sort of go with the flow, like what's right in front of me and what's an interesting problem to solve and how can I just put my whole self into it and apply what I know and try and learn something new. And I've approached my entire career that way. Not really knowing what was going to happen next, but sort of, looking around, trying to see, "Okay, "what does the industry need right now "and how can I apply my skills to try and add value?" >> I love that, that's great. My brother was the same way. Wanted to be a pilot from the time he was probably eight. And there's me, zig-zagging along. But I think that's also, it speaks to, if you have enough confidence in yourself and try things, you can be successful. So I love that. So tell us about your role at Cobalt.io and app security and what you're doing there. >> Yeah so, Cobalt, we provide application security services for cloud companies. Specifically, we provide on-demand manual penetration testing for web apps, mobile apps, and APIs. So we're really trying to help organizations to secure their applications. As a consumer of cloud applications, as a person who works for a company that works with so many different cloud companies, it's critical that security be in place. Because right now, it's not like, any organization, certainly no technology organization, works in a vacuum. Just like a car sources parts from many different organizations, every software, every cloud company sources from many different places. And at each step along that supply chain, you want to make sure that security has been built in. >> Outstanding. Tell me a little bit about your team there, and some of the key elements, to you, for managing a diverse team of folks at Cobalt. >> So we started four years ago. We actually have four Danish founders and so it's really interesting to be in Silicon Valley but have a little bit of a different culture. As a mom of a toddler and expecting in May, it was really important to me to find a job where I really liked the people, and I really respected them, where they liked and respected me, and where I felt I could make a big impact. And what's great about working with this team is, I feel like all of the people I work with actually have a life outside of work. I feel like, in Silicon Valley, so many people work for companies and it's like, that's all they do. And I respect that. If you're super passionate about something and you want to make your whole life about it, fantastic. But my colleagues are extremely brilliant and great at what they do, and then they do other stuff as well. >> It's refreshing to hear that because being in Silicon Valley can take so much time and effort but to be able to have a little bit of balance there, I think, you probably see an impact in productivity? >> Oh, definitely. I mean, people come into our office and they're like, wow people are happy, people seem well rested, people seem really focused and like they're hardworking, and they're excited about what they do, but they're not so stressed out. They're not burning out. People aren't needing to take emergency medical leave because of severe anxiety. So these are just things that I think really benefits the company and also our customers. >> Oh, definitely from a customer perspective. So, tell us a little bit about what winning this Top Women in Cloud Award means to you? >> So I'm just thrilled and totally surprised. For me to have an opportunity to share my story, and to also attend an event like this and be inspired by other women's stories, I mean, I think the mission of CloudNOW is so incredibly important. I don't think there's anything so special about any of the women that won awards tonight. And what I mean by that is, we're not extraordinary, we didn't necessarily overcome any crazy challenges or barriers. I want young women, and people of all types, to know that this is possible. And I think by sharing our stories and how different we are, and how we came from all sorts of different places, I think that can really be inspiring, for the next generation. And that's exactly what technology needs. We need a strong and diverse pipeline if we're going to continue innovating and continue creating. >> That's brilliant advice and I couldn't agree more. I think that some of the stories that we're going to hear from some of the fellow winners such as yourselves show that some really doing groundbreaking work, but others who just persevered, who had an interest in something and followed through with it. And learned along the way, made mistakes, had the opportunity to fail, learn from that, and continue going forward. I personally find that very inspiring. So, Caroline thank you so much for joining us on theCUBE and sharing your story. Best of luck with your new addition. >> Thank you. >> And your dogs, as well as congratulations, again, on the award. >> Thank you so much. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin on the ground at Google for the CloudNOW Top Women in Cloud Awards event. Bye for now. (techno music)

(upbeat music) >> Hi we're at the Palo Alto studio of SiliconANGLE Media and theCUBE. My name is George Gilbert, we have a special guest with us this week, Veeru Ramaswamy who is VP IBM Watson IoT platform and he's here to fill us in on the incredible amount of innovation and growth that's going on in that sector of the world and we're going to talk more broadly about IoT and digital twins as a broad new construct that we're seeing in how to build enterprise systems. So Veeru, good to have you. Why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background. >> Thanks George, thanks for having me. I've been in the technology space for a long time and if you look at what's happening in the IoT, in the digital space, it's pretty interesting the amount of growth, the amount of productivity and efficiency the companies are trying to achieve. It is just phenomenal and I think we're now turning off the hype cycle and getting into real actions in a lot of businesses. Prior to joining IBM, I was junior offiicer and senior VP of data science with Cable Vision where I led the data strategy for the entire company and prior to that I was the GE of one of the first two guys who actually built the Cyamon digital center. GE digital center, it's a center of excellence. Looking at different kinds of IoT related projects and products along with leading some of the UX and the analytics and the club ration or the social integration. So that's the background. >> So just to set context 'cause this is as we were talking before, there was another era when Steve Jobs was talking about the next work station and he talked about objectory imitation and then everything was sprinkled with fairy dust about objects. So help us distinguish between IoT and digital twins which GE was brilliant in marketing 'cause that concept everyone could grasp. Help us understand where they fit. >> The idea of digital twin is, how do you abstract the actual physical entity out there in the world, and create an object model out of it. So it's very similar in that sense, what happened in the 90s for Steve Jobs and if you look at that object abstraction, is what is now happening in the digital twin space from the IoT angle. The way we look at IoT is we look at every center which is out there which can actually produce a metric on every device which produces a metric we consider as a sense so it could be as simple as the pressure, temperature, humidity sensors or it could be as complicated as cardio sensors and your healthcare and so on and so forth. The concept of bringing these sensors into the to the digital world, the data from that physical world to the digital world is what is making it even more abstract from a programming perspective. >> Help us understand, so it sounds like we're going to have these fire hoses of data. How do we organize that into something that someone who's going to work on that data, someone is going to program to it. How do they make sense out of it the way a normal person looks at a physical object? >> That's a great question. We're looking at sensors as a device that we can measure out of and that we call it a device twin. Taking the data that's coming from the device, we call that as a device twin and then your physical asset, the physical thing itself, which could be elevators, jet engines anything, physical asset that we have what we call the asset twin and there's hierarchical model that we believe that will have to be existing for the digital twin to be actually constructed from an IoT perspective. The asset twins will basically encompass some of the device twins and then we actually take that and represent the digital twin on a physical world of that particular asset. >> So that would be sort of like as we were talking about earlier like an elevator might be the asset but the devices within it might be the bricks and the pulleys and the panels for operating it. >> Veeru: Exactly. >> And it's then the hierarchy of these or in manufacturing terms, the building materials that becomes a critical part of the twin. What are some other components of this digital twin? >> When we talk about digital twin, we don't just take the blueprint as schematics. We also think about the system, the process, the operation that goes along with that physical asset and when we capture that and be able to model that, in the digital world, then that gives you the ability to do a lot of things where you don't have to do it in the physical world. For instance, you don't have to train your people but on the physical world, if it is periodical systems and so on and so forth, you could actually train them in the digital world and then be able to allow them to operate on the physical world whenever it's needed. Or if you want to increase your productivity or efficiency doing predictive models and so forth, you can test all the models in your digital world and then you actually deploy it in your physical world. >> That's great for context setting. How would you think of, this digital twins is more than just a representation of the structure, but it's also got the behavior in there. So in a sense it's a sensor and an actuator in that you could program the real world. What would that look like? What things can you do with that sort of approach? >> So when you actually have the data coming this humongous amount of terabyte data that comes from the sensors, once you model it and you get the insights out of that, based on the insight, you can take an actionable outcome that could be turning off an actuator or turning on an actuator and simple thngs like in the elevator case, open the door, shut the door, move the elevator up, move the elevator down etc. etc All of these things can be done from a digital world. That's where it makes a humongous difference. >> Okay, so it's a structured way of interacting with the highly structured world around us. >> Veeru: That's right. >> Okay, so it's not the narrow definition that many of us have been used to like an airplane engine or the autonomous driving capability of a car. It's more general than that. >> Yeah, it is more general than that. >> Now let's talk about having sort of set context with the definition so everyone knows we're talking about a broader sense that's going on. What are some of the business impacts in terms of operational efficiency, maybe just the first-order impact. But what about the ability to change products into more customizable services that have SLAs or entirely new business models including engineered order instead of make to stock. Tell us something about that hierarchy of value. >> That's a great question. You're talking about things like operations optimization and predicament and all of that which you can actually do from the digital world it's all on digital twin. You also can look into various kinds of business models now instead of a product, you can actually have a service out of the product and then be able to have different business models like powered by the hour, pay per use and kinds of things. So these kinds of models, business models can be tried out. Think about what's happening in the world of Air BnB and Uber, nobody owns any asset but still be able to make revenue by pay per use or power by the hour. I think that's an interesting model. I don't think it's being tested out so much in the physical asset world but I think that could be interesting model that you could actually try. >> One thing that I picked up at the Genius of Things event in Munich in February was that we really have to rethink about software markets in the sense that IBM's customers become in the way your channel, sometimes because they sell to their customers. Almost like a supply chain master or something similar and also pricing changes from potentially we've already migrated or are migrating from perpetual licenses to service softwares or service but now we could do unit pricing or SLA-based pricing, in which case you as a vendor have to start getting very smart about, you owe your customers the risk in meeting an SLA so it's almost more like insurance, actuarial modeling. >> Correct so the way we want think about is, how can we make our customers more, what do you call, monetizable. Their products to be monetizable with their customers and then in that case, when we enter into a service level agreement with our customers, there's always that risk of what we deliver to make their products and services more successful? There's always a risk component which we will have to work with the customers to make sure that combined model of what our customers are going to deliver is going to be more beneficial, more contributing to both bottom line and top line. >> That implies that your modeling, someone's modeling and risk from you the supplier to your customer as vendor to their customer. >> Right. >> That sounds tricky. >> I'm pretty sure we have a lot of financial risk modeling entered into our SLAs when we actually go to our customers. >> So that's a new business model for IBM, for IBM's sort of supply chain master type customers if that's the right word. As this capability, this technology pervades more industries, customers become software vendors or if not software vendors, services vendors for software enhanced products or service enhanced products. >> Exactly, exactly. >> Another thing, I'd listened to a briefing by IBM Global Services where they thought, ultimately, this might end up where there's far more industries are engineered to order instead of make to stock. How would this enable that? >> I think the way we want think about it is that most of the IoT based services will actually start by co-designing and co-developing with your customers. And that's where you're going to start. That's how you're going to start. You're not going to say, here's my 100 data centers and you bring your billion devices and connect and it's going to happen. We are going to start that way and then our customers are going to say, hey by the way, I have these used cases that we want to start doing, so that's why platform becomes so imortant. Once you have the platform, now you can scale, into a scale, individual silos as a vertical use case for them. We provide the platform and the use cases start driving on top of the platform. So the scale becomes much easier for the customers. >> So this sounds like the traditional application. The traditional way an application vendor might turn into a platform vendor which is a difficult transition in itself but you take a few use cases and then generalize into a platform. >> We call that a zone application services. The zone application service is basically, is drawing on perfectly cold platform service which actually provides you the abilities. So for instance like an asset management. An asset management can be done in an oil and gas rig, you can look at asset management in power tub vine, you can can look at asset management in a jet engine. You can do asset management across any different vertical but that is a common horizontal application so most of the time you get 80% of your asset management API's if you will. Then you can be able to scale across multiple different vertical applications and solutions. >> Hold that thought 'cause we're going to come back to joint development and leveraging expertise from vendor and customer and sharing that. Let's talk just at a high level one of the things that I keep hearing is that in Europe industry 4.0 is sort of the hot topic and in the states, it's more digital twins. Help parse that out for us. >> So the way we believe how digital twin should be viewed is a component view. What we mean the component view is that we have your knowledge graph representation of the real assets in the digital world and then you bring in your IoT sensors and connections to the models then you have your functional, logical, physical models that you want to bring into your knowledge graph and then you also want to be able to give the ability of search visualize allies. Kind of an intelligent experience for the end consumer and then you want to bring your similation models when you do the actual similation models in digital to bring it in there and then your enterprise asset management, your ERP systems, all of that and then when you connect, when you're able to build a knowledge graph, that's when the digital twin really connects with your enterprise systems. Sort of bring the OT and the IT together. >> So this is sort of to try and summarize 'cause there are a lot of moving parts in there. You've got you've got the product hierarchy which, in product Kaiser call it building materials, sort of the explosion of parts in an assembly, sub-assembly and then that provides like a structure, a data model then the machine learning models in the different types of models that they could be represent behavior and then when you put a knowledge graph across that structure and behavior, is that what makes it simulation ready? >> Yes, so you're talking about entities and connecting these entities with the actual relationship between these entities. That's the graph that holds the relation between nodes and your links. >> And then integrating the enterprise systems that maybe the lower level operation systems. That's how you effect business processes. >> Correct. >> For efficiency or optimization, automation. >> Yes, take a look at what you can do with like a shop floor optimization. You have all the building materials, you need to know from your existing ERP systems and then you will actually have the actual real parts that's coming to your shop floors to manage them and now base supposing, depending on whether you want to repair, you want to replace, you want an overall, you want to modify whatever that is, you want to look at your existing building materials and see, okay do I first have it do we need more? Do we need to order more? So your auditing system naturally gets integrated into that and then you have to integrate the data that's coming from these models and the availability of the existing assets with you. You can integrate it and say how fast can you actually start moving these out of your shop, into the. >> Okay that's where you translate essentially what's more like intelligent about an object or a rich object into sort of operational implications. >> Veeru: Yes. >> Okay operational process. Let's talk about customer engagement so far. There's intense interest in this. I remember in the Munich event, they were like they had to shut off attendance because they couldn't find a big enough venue. >> Veeru: That's true. >> So what are the characteristics of some of the most successful engagements or the ones that are promising. Maybe it's a little early to say successful. >> So, I think the way you can definitely see success from customer engagement are two fold. One is show what's possible. Show what's possible with after all desire to connect, collection of data, all of that so that one part of it. The second part is understand the customer. The customer has certain requirements in their existing processes and operations. Understand that and then deliver based on what solutions they are expecting, what applications they want to build. How you bring them together is what is, so we're thinking about. That Munich center you talked about. We are actually bringing in chip manufacturers, sensor manufacturers, device manufacturers. We are binging in network providers. We are bringing in SIs, system integrators all of them into the fold and show what is possible and then your partners enable you to get to market faster. That's how we see the engagement with customer should happen in a much more foster manner and show them what's possible. >> It sounds like in the chip industry Moore's law for many years it wasn't deterministic that you we would do double things every 18 months or two years, it was actually an incredibly complex ecosystem web where everyone's sort of product release cycles were synchronized so as to enable that. And it sounds like you're synchronizing the ecosystem to keep up. >> Exactly The saxel of a particular organization IoT efforts is going to depend on how do you build this ecosystem and how do you establish that ecosystem to get to market faster. That's going to be extremely key for all your integration efforts with your customer. >> Let's start narrowly with you. IBM what are the key skills that you feel you need to own starting from sort of the base rocket scientists you know who not only work on machine learning models but they come up with new algorithms on top of say tons of flow work or something like that. And all the way up to the guys who are going to work in conjunction with the customer to apply that science to a particular industry. How does that hold together? >> So it all starts on the platform. On the platform side we have all the developers, the engineers who build these platform all the video connection and all of that to make the connections. So you need the highest software development engineers to build these on the platform and then you also need the solution builders so who is in front of the customer understanding what kind of solutions you want to build. Solutions could be anything. It could be predictive maintenance, it could be as simple as management, it could be remote monitoring and diagnostics. It could be any of these solutions that you want to build and then the solution builders and the platform builders work together to make sure that it's the holistic approach for the customer at the final deployment. >> And how much is the solution builder typically in the early stages IBM or is there some expertise that the customer has to contribute almost like agile development, but not two programmers but like 500 and 500 from different companies. >> 500 is a bit too much. (laughs) I would say this is the concept of co-designing and co-development. We definitely want the ultimate, the developer, the engineers form, the subject exports from our customers and we also need our analytics experts and software developers to come and sit together and understand what's the use case. How do we actually bring in those optimized solution for the customer. >> What level of expertise or what type of expertise are the developers who are contributing to this effort in terms of do they have to, if you're working with manufacturing let's say auto manufacturing. Do they have to have automotive software development expertise or are they more generically analytics and the automotive customer brings in the specific industry expertise. >> It depends. In some cases we have RGB for instance. We have dedicated servers, that particular vertical service provider. We understand some of this industry knowledge. In some cases we don't, in some cases it actually comes from the customer. But it has to be an aggregation of the subject matter experts with our platform developers and solution developers sitting together, finding what's the solution. Literally going through, think about how we actually bring in the UX. What does a typical day of a persona look like? We always by the way believe it's an augmented allegiance which means the human and the machine work together rather than a complete. It gives you the answer for everything you ask for. >> It's a debate that keeps coming up Doug Anglebad sort of had his own answer like 50 years ago which was he sort of set the path for modern computing by saying we're not going to replace people, we're going to augment them and this is just a continuation of that. >> It's a continuation of that. >> Like UX design sounds like someone on the IBM side might be talking to the domain expert and the customer to say how does this workflow work. >> Exactly. So have this design thinking, design sessions with our customers and then based on that we take that knowledge, take it back, we build our mark ups, we build our wire frames, visual designs and the analytics and software that goes behind it and then we provide on top of platform. So most of the platform work, the standard what do you call table state connections, collection of data. All of that as they are already existing then it's one level above as to what the particular solution a customer wants. That's when we actually. >> In terms of getting the customer organization aligned to make this project successful, what are some of the different configurations? Who needs to be a sponsor? Where does budget typically come from? How long are the pilots? That sort of stuff so to set expectations. >> We believe in all the agile thinking, agile development and we believe in all of that. It's almost given now. So depending on where the customer comes from so the customer could actually directly come and sign up to our platform on the existing cloud infrastructure and then they will say, okay we want to build applications then there are some customers really big customers, large enterprises who want to say, give me the platform, we have our solution folks. We will want to work on board with you but we also want somebody who understands building solutions. We integrate with our solution developers and then we build on top of that. They build on top of that actually. So you have that model as well and then you have a GBS which actually does this, has been doing this for years, decades. >> George: Almost like from the silicon. >> All the way up to the application level. >> When the customer is not outsourcing completely, The custom app that they need to build in other words when when they need to go to GBS Global Business Services, whereas if they want a semi-packaged app, can they go to the industry solutions group? >> Yes. >> I assume it's the IoT, Industry Solutions Group. >> Solutions group, yes. >> They then take a it's almost maybe a framework or an existing application that needs customization. >> Exactly so we have IoT-4. IoT for manufacturing, IoT for retail, IoT for insurance IoT for you name it. We have all these industry solutions so there would be some amount of template which is already existing in some fashion so when GBS gets a request to say here is customer X coming and asking for a particular solution. They would come back to IoT solutions group to say, they already have some template solutions from where we can start from rather than building it from scratch. You speed to market again is much faster and then based on that, if it's something that is to be customizable, both of them work together with the customer and then make that happen, and they leverage our platform underneath to do all the connection collection data analytics and so on and so forth that goes along with that. >> Tell me this from everything we hear. There's a huge talent shortage. Tell me in which roles is there the greatest shortage and then how do different members of the ecosystem platform vendors, solution vendors sort of a supply-chain master customers and their customers. How do they attract and retain and train? >> It's a fantastic question. One of the difficulties both in the valley and everywhere across is that three is a skill gap. You want advanced data scientists you want advances machinery experts, you want advanced AI specialists to actually come in. Luckily for us, we have about 1000 data scientists and AI specialists distributed across the globe. >> When you say 1000 data scientists and AI specialists, help us understand which layer are they-- >> It could be all the way from like a BI person all the way to people who can build advanced AI models. >> On top of an engine or a framework. >> We have our Watson APIs from which we build then we have our data signs experience which actually has some of the models then built on top of what's in the data platform so we take that as well. There are many different ways by which we can actually bring the AM model missionary models to build. >> Where do you find those people? Not just the sort of band strengths that's been with IBM for years but to grow that skill space and then where are they also attracted to? >> It's a great question. The valley definitely has a lot of talent, then we also go outside. We have multiple centers of excellence in Israel, in India, in China. So we have multiple centers of excellence we gather from them. It's difficult to get all the talent just from US or just from one country so it's naturally that talent has to be much more improvement and enhanced all the wat fom fresh graduates from colleges to more experienced folks in the in the actual profession. >> What about when you say enhancing the pool talent you have. Could it also include productivity improvements, qualitative productivity improvements in the tools that makes machine learning more accessible at any level? The old story of rising obstruction layers where deep learning might help design statistical models by doing future engineering and optimizing the search for the best model, that sort of stuff. >> Tools are very, very hopeful. There are so many. We have from our tools to python tools to psychic and all of that which can help the data scientist. The key part is the knowledge of the data scientist so data science, you need the algorithm, the statistical background, then you need your applications software development background and then you also need the domestics for engineering background. You have to bring all of them together. >> We don't have too many Michaelangelos who are these all around geniuses. There's the issue of, how do you to get them to work more effectively together and then assuming even each of those are in short supply, how do you make them more productive? >> So making them more productive is by giving them the right tools and resources to work with. I think that's the best way to do it, and in some cases in my organization, we just say, okay we know that a particular person is skilled is up skilled in certain technologies and certain skill sets and then give them all the tools and resources for them to go on build. There's a constant education training process that goes through that we in fact, we have our entire Watson ED platform that can be learned on Kosera today. >> George: Interesting. >> So people can go and learn how to build a platform from a Kosera. >> When we start talking with clients and with vendors, things we hear is that and we were kind of I think early that calling foul but in the open source infrastructure big data infrastructure this notion of mix-and-match and roll your own pipeline sounded so alluring, but in the end it was only the big Internet companies and maybe some big banks and telcos that had the people to operate that stuff and probably even fewer who could build stuff on it. Do we do we need to up level or simplify some of those roles because mainstream companies can't have enough or won't will have enough data scientists or other roles needed to make that whole team work >> I think it will be a combination of both one is we need to up school our existing students with the stem background, that's one thing and the other aspect is, how do you up scale your existing folks in your companies with the latest tools and how can you automate more things so that people who may not be schooled will still be able to use the tool to deliver other things but they don't have to go to a rigorous curriculum to actually be able to deal with it. >> So what does that look like? Give us an example. >> Think of tools like today. There are a lot of BI folks who can actually build. BI is usually your trends and graphs and charts that comes out of the data which are simple things. So they understand the distribution and so on and so forth but they may not know what is the random model. If you look at tools today, that actually gives you to build them, once you give the data to that model, it actually gives you the outputs so they don't really have to go dig deep I have to understand the decision tree model and so on and so forth. They have the data, they can give the data, tools like that. There are so many different tools which would actually give you the outputs and then they can actually start building app, the analytics application on top of that rather than being worried about how do I write 1000 line code or 2000 line code to actually build that model itself. >> The inbuilt machine learning models in and intend, integrated to like pentaho or what's another example. I'm trying to think, I lost my, I having a senior moment. These happen too often now. >> We do have it in our own data science tools. We already have those models supported. You can actually go and call those in your web portal and be able to call the data and then call the model and then you'll get all that. >> George: Splank has something like that. >> Splank does, yes. >> I don't know how functional it is but it seems to be oriented towards like someone who built a dashboard can sort of wire up a model, it gives you an example of what type of predictions or what type of data you need. >> True, in the Splank case, I think it is more of BI tool actually supporting a level of data science moral support on the back. I do not know, maybe I have to look at this but in our case we have a complete data science experience where you actually start from the minute the data gets ingested, you can actually start the storage, the transformation, the analytics and all of that can be done in less than 10 lines of coding. You can just actually do the whole thing. You just call those functions then it will the right there in front of you. So in twin you can do that. That I think is much more powerful and there are tools, there are many many tools today. >> So you're saying that data science experience is an enter in pipeline and therefore can integrate what were boundaries between separate products. >> The boundary is becoming narrower and narrower in some sense. You can go all the way from data ingestion to the analytics in just few clicks or few lines of course. That's what's happening today. Integrated experience if you will. >> That's different from the specialized skills where you might have a tri-factor, prexada or something similar as for the wrangling and then something else for sort of the the visualizations like Altracks or Tavlo and then into modeling. >> A year or so ago, most of data scientists try to spend a lot of time doing data wrangling because some of the models, they can actually call very directly but the wrangling is actually where they spend their time. How do you get the data crawl the data, cleanse the data, etc. That is all now part of our data platform. It is already integrated into the platform so you don't have to go through some of these things. >> Where are you finding the first success for that tool suite? >> Today it is almost integrated with, for instance, I had a case where we exchange the data we integrate that into what's in the Watson data platform and the Watson APIs is a layer above us in the platform where we actually use the analytics tools, more advanced AI tools but the simple machinery models and so on and so forth is already integrated into as part of the Watson data platform. It is going to become an integrated experience through and through. >> To connect data science experience into eWatson IoT platform and maybe a little higher at this quasi-solution layer. >> Correct, exactly. >> Okay, interesting. >> We are doing that today and given the fact that we have so much happening on the edge side of things which means mission critical systems today are expecting stream analysts to get to get insights right there and then be able to provide the outcomes at the edge rather than pushing all the data up to your cloud and then bringing it back down. >> Let's talk about edge versus cloud. Obviously, we can't for latency and band width reasons we can't forward all the data to the cloud, but there's different use cases. We were talking to Matasa Harry at Sparks Summit and one of the use cases he talked about was video. You can't send obviously all the video back and you typically on an edge device wouldn't have heavy-duty machine learning, but for video camera, you might want to learn what is anomalous or behavior call out for that camera. Help us understand some of the different use cases and how much data do you bring back and how frequently do retrain the models? >> In the case of video, it's so true that you want to do a lot of any object ignition and so on and so forth in the video itself. We have tools today, we have cameras outside where if a van goes it detect the particular object in the video live. Realtime streaming analytics so we can do that today. What I'm seeing today in the market is, in the transaction between the edge and the cloud. We believe edge is an extension of the cloud, closer to the asset or device and we believe that models are going to get pushed from the cloud, closer to the edge because the compute capacity and storage and the networking capacity are all improving. We are pushing more and more computing to their devices. >> When you talk about pushing more of the processing. you're talking more about predicts and inferencing then the training. >> Correct. >> Okay. >> I don't think I see so much of the training needs to be done at the edge. >> George: You don't see it. >> No, not yet at least. We see the training happening in the cloud and then once a train, the model has been trained, then you come to a steady, steady model and then that is the model you want to push. When you say model, it could be a bunch of coefficients. That could be pushed onto the edge and then when a new data comes in, you evaluate, make decisions on that, create insights and push it back as actions to the asset and then that data can be pushed back into the cloud once a day or once in a week, whatever that is. Whatever the capacity of the device you have and we believe that edge can go across multiple scales. We believe it could be as small with 128 MB it could be one or two which I see sitting in your local data center on the premise. >> I've had to hear examples of 32 megs in elevators. >> Exactly. >> There might be more like a sort of bandwidth and latency oriented platform at the edge and then throughput and an volume in the cloud for training. And then there's the issue of do you have a model at the edge that corresponds to that instance of a physical asset and then do you have an ensemble meaning, the model that maps to that instance, plus a master canonical model. Does that work for? >> In some cases, I think it'll be I think they have master canonical model and other subsidiary models based on what the asset, it could be a fleet so you in the fleet of assets which you have, you can have, does one asset in the fleet behave similar to another asset in the fleet then you could build similarity models in that. But then there will also be a model to look at now that I have to manage this fleet of assets which will be a different model compared to action similarity model, in terms of operations, in terms of optimization if I want to make certain operations of that asset work more efficiently, that model could be completely different with when compared to when you look at similarity of one model or one asset with another. >> That's interesting and then that model might fit into the information technology systems, the enterprise systems. Let's talk, I want to go get a little lower level now about the issue of intellectual property, joint development and sharing and ownership. IBM it's a nuanced subject. So we get different sort of answers, definitive answers from different execs, but at this high level, IBM says unlike Google and Facebook we will not take your customer data and make use of it but there's more to it than that. It's not as black-and-white. Help explain that for so us. >> The way you want to think is I would definitely paired back what our chairman always says customers' data is customers' data, customer insights is customer insights so they way we look at it is if you look at a black box engine, that could be your analytics engine, whatever it is. The data is your inputs and the insights are our outputs so the insights and outputs belong to them. we don't take their data and marry it with somebody else's data and so forth but we use the data to train the models and the model which is an abstract version of what that engine should be and then more we train the more better the model becomes. And then we can then use across many different customers and as we improve the models, we might go back to the same customers and hey we have an improved model you want to deploy this version rather than the previous version of the model we have. We can go to customer Y and say, here is a model which we believe it can take more of your data and fine tune that model again and then give it back to them. It is true that we don't actually take their data and share the data or the insights from one customer X to another customer Y but the models that make it better. How do you make that model more intelligent is what out job is and that's what we do. >> If we go with precise terminology, it sounds like when we talk about the black box having learned from the customer data and the insights also belonging to the customer. Let's say one of the examples we've heard was architecture engineering consulting for large capital projects has a model that's coming obviously across that vertical but also large capital projects like oil and gas exploration, something like that. There, the model sounds like it's going to get richer with each engagement. And let's pin down so what in the model is sort of not exposed to the next customer and what part of the model that has gotten richer does the next customer get the balance of? >> When we actually build a model, when we pass the data, in some cases, customer X data, the model is built out of customer X data may not sometimes work with the customer Y's data so in which case you actually build it from scratch again. Sometimes it doesn't. In some case it does help because of the similarity of the data in some instance because if the data from company X in oil gas is similar to company Y in oil gas, sometimes the data could be similar so in which case when you train that model, it becomes more efficient and the efficiency goes back to both customers. we will do that but there are places where it would really not work. What we are trying to do is. We are in fact trying to build some kind of knowledge bundles where we can actually what used to be a long process to train the model can ow shortened using that knowledge bundle of what we have actually gained. >> George: Tell me more about how it works. >> In retail for instance, when we actually provide analytics, from any kind of IoT sense, whatever sense of data this comes in we train the model, we get analytics used for ads, pushing coupons, whatever it is. That knowledge, what you have gained off that retail, it could be models of models, it could be metamodels, whatever you built. That can actually serve many different customers but the first customer who is trying to engage with us, you don't have any data to the model. It's almost starting from ground zero and so that would actually take a longer time when you are starting with a new industry and you don't have the data, it'll take you a longer time to understand what is that saturation point or optimization point where you think the model cannot go any further. In some cases, once you do that, you can take that saturated model or near saturated model and improve it based on more data that actually comes from different other segments. >> When you have a model that has gotten better with engagements and we've talked about the black box which produces the insights after taking in the customer data. Inside that black box there's like at the highest level we might call it the digital twin with the broad definition that we started with, then there's a data model which a data model which I guess could also be incorporated into the knowledge graft for the structure and then would it be fair to call the operational model the behavior? >> Yes, how does the system perform or behave with respect the data and the asset itself. >> And then underpinning that, the different models that correspond to the behaviors of different parts of this overall asset. So if we were to be really precise about this black box, what can move from one customer to the next and what what won't? >> The overall model, supposing I'm using a random data retrieval model, that remains but actual the coefficients are the feature rector, or whatever I use, that could be totally different for customers, depending on what kind of data they actually provide us. In data science or in analytics you have a whole platora of all the way from simple classification algorithms to very advanced predictive modeling algorithms. If you take the whole class when you start with a customer, you don't know which model is really going to work for a specific user case because the customer might come and can say, you might get some idea but you will not know exactly this is the model that will work. How you test it with one customer, that model could remain the same kind of use case for some of other customer, but that actual the coefficients the degree of the digital in some cases it might be two level decision trees, in others case it might be a six level decision tree. >> It is not like you take the model and the features and then just let different customers tweak the coefficients for the features. >> If you can do that, that will be great but I don't know whether you can really do it the data is going to change. The data is definitely going to change at some point of time but in certain cases it might be directly correlated where it can help, in certain cases it might not help. >> What I'm taking away is this is fundamentally different from traditional enterprise applications where you could standardize business processes and the transactional data that they were producing. Here it's going to be much more bespoke because I guess the processes, the analytic processes are not standardized. >> Correct, every business processes is unique for a business. >> The accentures of the world we're trying to tell people that when SAP shipped packaged processes, which were pretty much good enough, but that convince them to spend 10 times as much as the license fee on customization. But is there a qualitative difference between the processes here and the processes in the old ERP era? I think it's kind of different in the ERP era and the processes, we are more talking about just data management. Here we're talking about data science which means in the data management world, you're just moving data or transforming data and things like that, that's what you're doing. You're taking the data. transforming to some other form and then you're doing basic SQL queries to get some response, blah blah blah. That is a standard process that is not much of intelligence attached to it but now you are trying to see from the data what kind of intelligence can you derive by modeling the characteristics of the data. That becomes a much tougher problem so it now becomes one level higher of intelligence that you need to capture from the data itself that you want to serve a particular outcome from the insights you get from is model. >> This sounds like the differences are based on one different business objectives and perhaps data that's not as uniform that you would in enterprise applications, you would standardize the data here, if it's not standardized. >> I think because of the varied the disparity of the businesses and the kinds of verticals and things like that you're looking at, to get complete unified business model, is going to be extremely difficult. >> Last question, back-office systems the highest level they got to were maybe the CFO 'cause you had a sign off on a lot of the budget for the license and a much much bigger budget for the SI but he was getting something that was like close you quarter in three days or something instead of two weeks. It was a control function. Who do you sell to now for these different systems and what's the message, how much more strategic how do you sell the business impact differently? >> The platforms we directly interact with the CIO and CTOs or the head of engineering. And the actual solutions or the insights, we usually sell it to the COOs or the operational folks. So because the COO is responsible for showing you productivity, efficiency, how much of savings can you do on the bottom line top line. So the insights would actually go through the COOs or in some sense go through their CTOs to COOs but the actual platform itself will go to the enterprise IT folks in that order. >> This sounds like it's a platform and a solution sell which requires, is that different from the sales motions of other IBM technologies or is this a new approach? >> IBM is transforming on its way. The days where we believe that all the strategies and predictives that we are aligned towards, that actually needs to be the key goal because that's where the world is going. There are folks who, like Jeff Boaz talks about in the olden days you need 70 people to sell or 70% of the people to sell a 30% product. Today it's a 70% product and you need 30% to actually sell the product. The model is completely changing the way we interact with customers. So I think that's what's going to drive. We are transforming that in that area. We are becoming more conscious about all the strategy operations that we want to deliver to the market we want to be able to enable our customers with a much broader value proposition. >> With the industry solutions group and the Global Business Services teams work on these solutions. They've already been selling, line of business CXO type solutions. So is this more of the same, it's just better or is this really higher level than IBM's ever gotten in terms of strategic value? >> This is possibly in decades I would say a high level of value which come from a strategic perspective. >> Okay, on that note Veeru, we'll call it a day. This is great discussion and we look forward to writing it up and clipping all the videos and showering the internet with highlights. >> Thank you George. Appreciate it. >> Hopefully I will get you back soon. >> I was a pleasure, absolutely. >> With that, this George Gilbert. We're in our Palo Alto studio for wiki bond and theCUBE and we've been talking to Veeru Ramaswamy who's VP of Watson IoT platform and we look forward to coming back with Veeru sometime soon. (upbeat music)