(soft upbeat music) >> Hello and welcome to this Cube Conversation I'm Lisa Martin. This is going to be a great conversation about corporate social responsibility, and I'm very pleased to have two great guests here with me today. Karen McCloskey joins us the director of internal communications and corporate philanthropy at NETSCOUT and Professor Sally Eaves is here as well the CEO of Aspirational Futures. She's also a professor of emerging tech and a CTO by background. Ladies welcome to the program it's great to have you on today. >> Thank you. >> Absolute pleasure. Thank you, great to join you both. >> We're going to get some great perspectives here. As I mentioned corporate social responsibility we're seeing that emerge across every industry and every company is really focused on that. Karen I want to start with you where tech companies are concerned we see corporate social responsibility really aligning with STEM and STEAM. Why is that? >> There is probably a couple of reasons, I sort of wrap it up as it's what employees do, it's part of their jobs, so they get excited about it and they want to share what they do with the next generation. And the other aspect that helps it align with tech is it involves the educational aspect. So we're teaching and we need up and coming students and employees and entrepreneurs with those skills. And the other part about STEM is when you think of it, it's typically K to 12 and then it rolls into college and it's working with students and the next generation. So the education and the pipeline or the education and the students speak to the pipeline aspect and then you add in people getting excited about their job and what they do and that's the employee engagement aspect so it really brings the two pieces together. >> I want to dig into that employee engagement in a minute but Sally I would like to get your perspective. Tell us a little bit about Aspirational Futures and then let's talk about the alignment between that and STEM and STEAM. >> Absolutely, so yeah, Aspirational Futures, is a non-profit kind of working across tech education and social impact and really looking at kind of opening up opportunities to the industry to a diversity of experience and using tech and data as a force for good. We do projects locally and across the world I'm kind of breaking down those barriers. It's going to be all about democratization of opportunity I would say. And in terms of STEM to STEAM that's where I see the journey going at the moment and effectively with that STEAM focus you're bringing the arts to an equal stage to the tech skills as well. So for me that's really important because it comes down to curiosity, encouraging people to get into the sector, showing what you can do, building creative confidence, emotional intelligence, those types of skills alongside the tech skills to actually build it. So it's that combination There's complimentary factors that come together. So for me STEAM is a great way to get holistic learning for life With the rate of change we've got at the moment kind of gives you that tool set to work from to be empowered and confident for the future. >> That confidence is so critical. >> Its really. >> For anybody of any age, right? But one of the things that we've seen that is in the inaugural ESG report that NETSCOUT just published is this digital divide. We've seen it for quite a while now but we also saw it grow during the pandemic, Sally from your perspective, what is that and how can tech companies help to fill that gap? >> It's a great point. I think one other thing that the pandemic did was made it more visible as well. So I think particularly we're working in certain spaces we've seen it more, but I think for everybody it's affected our daily lives in education from home, for example for the first time it's made gaps more visible. So absolutely huge to focus on that. And I think we're seeing it from the organizational perspective as well. We're seeing gaps around certain types of roles. We're seeing higher churn because of a lack of data literacy skills. So it's becoming something that's becoming a CUBE Conversation, you know, in day-to-day family life but in organizations across the world as well. And also it's about challenging assumptions. And it just a few weeks ago there was some research that came out at the University of Reading in the UK in conglomerate with other universities as well. And it was kind of showing that actually you can't make the assumption, for example, that teenagers that kind of call digital natures all the time actually have full confidence in using data either, It was actually showing there were gaps there too. So we've got to challenge assumptions. So literacy in all its forms whether it's data, whether it's financial is absolutely key and we've got to start earlier. So what I'm seeing more of is better outreach from tech companies and other organizations in the primary schools through to universities as well kind of internships and placements, but also another really interesting area that we do with the nonprofit is looking at data waste as well. You know, 90% of data there's archive isn't touched again after kind of three months, you think about the amount of data we're producing at the moment how can we reuse that as a force for good as a training opportunity? So let's think creatively let's be pragmatic address some of these data literacy gaps, but we have to do it at all levels of the community and also for adult learners too. That's usually important. >> Right, there's no, it knows no age and you're right that the visibility on it I think it can be a very good thing shining that light finally going we've got to do something. Karen talked to us about what NETSCOUT is doing. The digital divide is there you guys are really focused on helping to mitigate that. >> That's right. That's right. So as guardians of the connected world, that's our job with our customers and our products, but also with our people in our communities is getting people connected and how can we do that? And in what ways are we able to do that? And recently we engaged with Tech Goes Home which is based in Boston and they provide those first three pillars that everybody needs access to a device, access to the internet and skills to use that. And they work with families and students and they say their programs go from nine to 90. So they've got everybody covered. And what's exciting for us is it kind of falls from a volunteer perspective right in our wheelhouse. So they had to transition from in-person to distance learning with the pandemic and suddenly their program materials needed to be online and they needed to get people up and running without the benefit of an in-person class. What NETSCOUT volunteers were able to do was create those tutorials and those programs that they needed and we also have people all over the world and then we translated them into a bunch of different languages and they were able to then move forward with their programs. So Tech Goes Home and programs like that are really that first step in bridging the digital divide. And then once you've got the basics, the toolkit and the skills what else can you do? And Sally mentioned visibility it's what are the opportunities? What can I do now? I didn't realize there was a career path here, I need these skills to build a business help me learn more. So then there's that whole other aspect of furthering what they can do now that they have those skills and the learning and something like a hackathon might be a fun way to engage kids in those skills and help them go a little further with the tools they have. >> And NETSCOUT has done a number of hackathon programs last year I know you had an All-Girls Hackathon virtually in 2020. Talk to me about some of that and then I want to get Sally I'm going to get your perspectives on what you're doing as well. So our hackathons and I'll try and keep this brief because we've done a lot. There were actually brought forward as an employee idea. So that also speaks to our culture. It's like, hey, we should do more of this. We have partner with Shooting Star Foundation and one of our employees is one of their, or is their board chair. And the hackathons what they do and these are beginners hackathons. So we're talking middle high school and the theme is civic. So something good for society. And what we do is over a course of 12 hours not to mention all the pre-planning. When we had the in-person ones they were in our office they got to see employees up close run around the building to the extent that they could and build their project. And Sally I think you had also mentioned that creativity in that confidence. I mean what those kids did in a day was amazing. You know, they came in and they're all kind of looking around and they don't really know what to do. And at the end of the they had made new friends, they were standing up in front of executive judges, presenting their idea, and they all felt really good about it and they had fun. So I think it can be a fun impactful way to both engage employees because it's a heck of a team building experience and sort of bring students in and give them that visibility to what's possible in their tech career. >> And that confidence. Sally talked to me about hackathons from your perspective and what you're involved in? >> Absolutely, funny now I've just come from one. So I'm a Cop 26 at the moment and I've been involved in one with a university again, using that talent and building that empowerment around STG challenges. So in this particular case around sustainability, so absolutely love that and really echo Karen's thoughts there about how this is a reciprocal relationship, it's also super rewarding for all the employees as well, we're all learning and learning from each other's, which I think is a fantastic thing. And also another point about visibility. Now seeing someone in a role that you might want to do in the future, I think is hugely important as well. So as part of the nonprofit I run a series called 365 and that's all about putting visibility on role models in tech every single day of the year. So not for example just like International Women's Day or Girls in ICT Day, but every single day and for a diversity of experience, because I think it's really important to interview people for C-suite level. But equally I just did an interview with a 14 year old. He did an amazing project in their community to support a local hospital using a 3D printer. It makes it relatable, you can see yourself in that particular role in the future, and you can also show how tech can be used for good business, but also for good for society at the same time. I think that can challenge assumptions and show there's lots of different roles, there's lots of different skills that make a difference in a tech career. So coding could be really important but so is empathy, and so is communication skills. So again, going back to that STEAM focus there's something for everyone. I think that's really important to kind of knock down those boundaries, challenge assumptions, and drop the the STEM drop off we say make it a little bit more STEAM focused I think that can help challenge those assumptions and get more people curious, creative, confident about tech. >> I couldn't agree more, curious, creative and confident. The three Cs that will help anyone and also to sell it to your point showing the breadth and diversity of roles within tech coding is one of them. >> Sally: Absolutely. >> As might be the one of the ones that's the most known but there's so many opportunities to allow these kids to be able to see what they can be is game-changing, especially in today's climate. Karen talk to me about you mentioned in the beginning of our interview Karen, the employee engagement, I know that that environmental social governance is core to NETSCOUT's DNA but we're talking over 2,400 employees in 35 countries. Your folks really want to be engaged and have a purpose. Talk to me about how you got the employees together, it sounds like it was maybe from within. >> That's absolutely right. We have a to support employees when they bring forth these good ideas and the hackathon was one example of that. And the cool thing about the hackathons is that it leads to all these other community connections and people bring forth other ideas. So we had an in-person hackathon at our Allen office in 2019. Some of the employees there met staff from Collin College who were said, "Hey, we'd like to bring this hackathon to us." So then the employees said, "Hey, can we do a hackathon with Collin College?" It's so really it's employee driven, employee organized, supported by the company with the resources and other employees love to be part of that. And the event at Collin College brought out all those skills from the students. It was on climate change so relatively hot topic. And they did a fantastic job while they were there, but that employee engagement as you said, it comes from within. So they have the idea we have a way and a path that they can find what is needed in their community and deliver on that. And it really becomes a sense of pride and accomplishment that it wasn't a top-down mandate that you must go volunteer or paint this wall. They identified the need in the community, propose the project, get the volunteers, get the corporate support and go forth and do it. And it's really amazing to see what people do in their community. >> Well, it's incredibly rewarding and fulfilling but also very symbiotic. There's one thing that's great about the students or those that are from nine to 90, like you said, having a mentor or mentors and sponsors but it's also another thing for employees to be even more productive and proud of themselves to be able to mentor and sponsor those folks in the next generations coming up. I can imagine that employee productivity would likely increase because the employees are able to fulfill have something fulfilling or rewarding with these programs. Karen talk to me a little bit about employee productivity as a kind of a side benefit of this. >> Well, I was going to say during the hackathons I don't know how productive we are 'cause there's a lot of planning and pre-work that goes into it. But I think what happens is it's an incredible team building experience across the company. So you reaching out to executives hey would you be a judge for this event? And you know you're explaining what it is and where it is. And you're roping your coworkers into spending 12 hours with you on a Sunday. And then you're finding somebody who has access to a speaker. So you're talking to people about it it's outside your day-to-day job. And then when it's over, you're like, "Oh yeah, hey, I know somebody in that group I worked with them on the hackathon or I can go up and talk to this executive because we hung out in the hackathon room for X many hours on a Saturday." So it's another way to build those relationships which in the end make you more or help you be more productive as a whole across the company. >> Absolutely relationship building, networking, those are all critical components to having a successful career. Whether we're talking about STEAM or not. I want to unpack something Sally that you said in our remaining few minutes you talked about challenging assumptions. And I guess suppose I'm one of those ones that always assumes if I see a gen Z or they're going to know way more about how to use my phone than I do but you bring up a really good point that there are these assumptions that we need to focus on, shine the light on, address them and crack them wide open to show these folks from nine to 90 that there are so many opportunities out there, there are limitless out there I would say. >> Absolutely, it's all about breaking down those barriers. And that research I mentioned something like 43% of teenagers about kind of 16 to 21 years of age we're saying they don't feel data literate. And that assumption is incorrect so gain so making sure we include everyone in this conversation. So going as young as possible in terms of introducing people to these opportunities but making sure we don't leave any particular age group behind it's that breadth of engagement with all ages is absolutely key. But again showing there are so many different routes into tech as a career. There isn't one linear path, you can come from a different area and those skills will be hugely valid in a tech career. So absolutely challenging assumptions, changing the narrative about what a tech career looks like, I think is absolutely hugely important hence why I do that series because you want to see someone that's relatable to you, at your next level potentially, it's something you need a three steps ahead. It just makes it so important. So for me democratization of opportunity, breaking down barriers, showing that you can go around different ways and it's absolutely fine. And you know what that would probably you can learn from that experience, you can learn from mistakes all those things make a difference so don't be put off and don't let anyone hold you back and reach out for mentor. You mentioned sponsorship earlier on as well I think that's another thing as well kind of using the sphere of influence we develop in our careers and maybe through social media and can helping people along the way not just through mentorship but through active sponsorship as well. There's so many things we can do together. I think organizations are really listening to this is better embedding around DEI initiatives now than ever before and as Karen has been describing fantastic outreach into communities through hackathons, through linking up with schools. So I think we're getting a real contagion of change that's positive here. And I think the pandemic has helped. It's helped us all to kind of pause and reflect, what we stand for as people, as organizations all the way through and I'm really excited that we can really harness this energy and take it forward and really make a difference here by coming together. >> And that is such a great silver lining all of those points Sally that you mentioned. Karen, I want to wrap with you. There's great momentum within NETSCOUT I mentioned, over 2,400 employees actively so many people in the employee community actively engaging in the hackathons and the opportunities to show from nine year olds to 90 year olds the opportunities that STEAM delivers. So what's next for NETSCOUT, what can we anticipate? >> More hackathons, more focused on the digital divide. I just want to, as Sally was speaking, something occurred to me when you said it's never a clear path on the tech journey. I would love to be listening to one of those conversations 10 years from now and have somebody say, oh, when you were asked that question that you're always asked what got you on your journey? What started? I'd love to hear someone say, "Oh, I went to this hackathon once "and it is something and ever since then I got interested in it." That would be a lot of fun. I would love to see that. And for NETSCOUT we're going to continue to do what we do best. We focus on where we can make a difference, we go in wholeheartedly, we engage with volunteers and we'll just keep doing what we're doing. >> Excellent ladies what a great conversation. I love the lights that you're shining on these very important topics there. You're right, I talked to a lot of people about their career paths and they're very, zig-zaggy. Its the exception to find one, you know, that we're studying computer science or engineering, but Karen I have no doubt with the focus that NETSCOUT's putting that Sally that your organization is putting on things like hackathons, getting people out there, educated becoming data literate that no doubt that the narrative will change in the next few years that I went to this hackathon that NETSCOUT did and here I am now. So great work, very important work. I think the pandemic has brought some silver linings there to what your organizations are both doing and look forward to seeing the next generation that you're inspiring. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Real pleasure. >> Likewise. For Sally Eaves and Karen McCloskey, I'm Lisa Martin you're watching theCUBE Conversation. (soft upbeat music)

>> Woman: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Okay welcome back already Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in our Palo Alto Studios here. Can't believe we just turned the calendar on September the 1st of 2020. What a year, it's cruising by. And one of the big topics obviously is working from home, we're seeing more and more companies telling everybody to expect to work from home through the end of the year or into next year, some are even saying indefinitely. And we've got an expert coming on the show that we're excited to have back. It's Dr. Karen Sobel Lojeski. She is the founder and CEO and author of "Virtual Distance and the Virtual Distance Company". Karen, great to see you. >> Great to see you too Jeff, thanks for having me. >> Absolutely, so I wanted to get you back on for a couple reasons. One is we first met at the ACGSV, Association for Corporate Growth Silicon Valley 2018 Awards, about two years ago was summer of 2018. And at that point, you introduced me to the concept and our audience, to the concept of virtual distance, which if I can summarize is basically communicating through devices versus face-to-face, like we're doing here. And the bad things that come from that and challenges and this and the other. Who knew that two years from then we would all be forced and not asked, but forced to basically go to a work-from-home environment and increase the frequency and use of using electronic devices to communicate not only for work, but also for social stuff, for school, for everything, so, oh my goodness, you happen to be in the right place at the right time for not necessarily the greatest of reasons, but wow, I mean, how amazing this transformation that we've all been forced to since the middle of March. First off, get your thoughts on that and then we'll dive into what people should be thinking about, what people should be doing about it and how they can, I want to say make the most, but it does kind of make the most of, not necessarily the greatest situation. >> Yeah, well, I could have never imagined when we were sitting out at that round table outside the room where we had dinner that we'd be here two years later, right, talking about virtual distances, you said in the context of everyone having to be isolated from each other and working from home. Obviously, like everyone on the planet, I think I would never have wanted to see this happen. But I feel fortunate in a way to have put this out there many years ago because today it's serving a lot of different organizations, corporations, schools, even government organizations to have a very steady framework that's based on 15 years of data, to understand how to make the best, as you said, of this situation and to reduce some of the negative consequences of virtual distance and actually use the framework as a way to get to know people better and really see them more as human beings in a way that helps them through not just their work life, but also through the family challenges that they're having with every kid now, sort of going back to school, many of them online, there's a lot of virtual distance that can crop up even in the house. But I guess I just, I'm glad that I discovered virtual distance, and that it's useful in this time. >> Right, right. So let's jump into it. And actually I want to skip to the end of the book before we get into the beginning of the book because you talked about leadership and when this thing first hit, we had a number of leaders from the community, talking about leading through trying times. And most great leaders know that their primary job is really communication, right? Communication to their teams, communication to their constituents, communication to their customers. COVID has really changed the communication challenges and increase them dramatically and most of the stuff we're hearing is that leaders need to communicate more frequently and in more variety, both in terms of topics as well as communication forms. How does that kind of jive with your studies on virtual distance and leadership, given the fact that there aren't a lot of other options in terms of face-to-face or a little bit more intimate things? They have to use these electronic means. So what tips do you have for leaders, as they suddenly were told everybody's working from home starting like tomorrow? >> Yeah, well, it's funny that you asked me that because we learned early on when I started looking at this phenomenon in the early 2000s. We learned early on that it actually takes a lot more work and time to lead virtually than it does in more traditional environments. And the reason is because a leader really has to bring forward a lot of context that tends to go underground or become invisible about other people when we're working virtually. So the leader already was under a lot of pressure if you will, to communicate much more than they had been in more traditional settings because a lot of the information and knowledge and intelligence if you will, about the company was available in the context of the environment and other people. So leaders were already on track to having to communicate much more in order to make make remote work and virtual work work. Well, which of course it can. >> Right. >> But what happened was, we found that when suddenly a light switch is turned off, leaders needed to communicate even more. And that is kind of standard crisis management leadership. We talked a little bit about that in the past, right? So we can look at the situation we're in as not just an acute crisis that came to bear in early January and then sort of everything locking down in March. But we can kind of look at this as a long-term leadership crisis management strategy on top of just over communicating to do better in virtual space. And in a crisis management situation you definitely want to have even more communication, but it's also an opportunity actually to develop other leaders behind you on teams that can also communicate as well, to share that responsibility, to share that leadership commitment to a lot of communication during times like this, that actually works really well. >> Right, 'cause one of the things you talked about that's super, super important, more important actually than physical distance or the virtual distance is what you called the affinity distance, and I think it ties back to another point in the book in terms of clarity of communication from the leadership. What are the goals, what is the vision? And reinforcing that at a rate and frequency much higher than they've ever done before to build that affinity so people can continue to feel like they're part of something beyond more just the tasks and the roles and the assignments that I have to do every day. >> Yeah, that's exactly right, Jeff. So again, we found early on. And it was a surprise to us at first, but then became kind of obvious that people tend to think that the real challenge with virtual work is physical distance, right, sort of the space between us in terms of a geography or a geographic separation. And what we learned early on through the statistics, as well as sort of common sense was that actually physical distance had the least impact on corporate outcomes than any of the other three factors. So the affinity distance piece is really all about, how do I gain an affinity for someone when I really don't know that much about them. And I don't know much about their context in the moment that we're talking, and I also just know less about them in general when we're virtual. >> Right. >> So affinity distance is much more important than the physical separation because it's what holds us together and allows us to build very, very deep relationships which we can count on and trust no matter what the situation is. And yeah, doing that in these times is very important. >> So it's funny, right? 'Cause so much of the problems that we have with communications are in the subtle feedback mechanisms that aren't necessarily in the overt communication and as you said, those can be lost in a lot of channels. What's kind of (chuckles) interesting that's going on with COVID is we're actually seeing a side of people that we never did see in the physical space, right. Now we're literally being invited into everyone's home. I mean, I'm in your home office, I can see your books on your bookshelf and people are bringing people into their home which they may not have done before or been comfortable. Not only that, but the spouse is there, he or she is working from home. The kids are there, they're doing their school from home, the occasional dog or pet or other thing kind of jumping through the screen. So it's this weird kind of juxtaposition. On one hand you've lost a whole lot of kind of subtle communication reinforcers. On the other hand, you're getting kind of a whole new kind of the human side aspect in terms of who these people are and what they're all about, that you never necessarily had before. So I think the blending of the whole self is probably been elevated, even though the communication challenges without having kind of all these subtle feedback loops that we really rely on, are gone. So when you think about communication and communication methods based on communication messages and what you're trying to do, how do you tell people to think about that? What types of communications should be done in which ways to make them the most effective and avoid some of the real problems that come from the wrong type of communication on the wrong type of channel? >> Yeah, so first of all, you make some great points. Because it really is when we invite people into our home via these kind of video links, people see a different side of us, a contextualized side to us that they normally wouldn't see. And that opens the door, as you said, to having other communications. I think before I get directly to your question, one thing that strikes me about what you say is that this is truly a shared experience, right? So all of us are being impacted by COVID-19, the economics of the situation, the childcare issues that are raised by the situation, the community issues that we all have in our towns or cities. And we're sharing that experience, which is a great jumping off point in terms of communications because we actually have a very similar context from which were working. In terms of which communications to use when. This is a really important question, I had a person from a very, very large tech company that people use every day to go look for things on the Internet, call me and tell me at one point early, sort of early on in the pandemic that some of his people were starting to beg him to turn off the video screens. (chuckles) And just use audio because sometimes when we're overwhelmed with a crisis the video can be helpful, but it can also sort of be overwhelming. So it's important to understand sort of when to discern, when to use audio and when to use visual, when to use email and when to use tax. And the basic tips here is that email has really never been good to explain ourselves to other people. It's been great to set up lunch dates or an appointment and things like that. So email should be used pretty sparingly. Audio is really great if we don't have video, but we also just kind of need a rest from video. And we also need to really focus on a person's voice very, very intensely. So if we're trying to solve a really critical problem that's a little bit conceptual, sometimes audio can can be more helpful. Video is obviously great because it gives us all this context and it allows people to see into our home and hear our cats kind of screaming at each other which is happening right now in my house. But it also lets us see each other's expressions and a little bit of the facial communication that we need in order to know if people are okay with what we're saying, if they're quizzical and looking like they kind of don't understand et cetera, The overarching goal of communications in a situation like this, that I talk a lot about in the book, is to mix up modes of communication as much as you can think about that, right? Because we get context as I've just explained in different ways through different modes. And so if we mix it up, if I say well, I've talked to Jeff a lot over video maybe I'll just give him a call today. Or I've been using a lot of email to talk to one of my colleagues in Norway, maybe I should really try to set up a video call that is very helpful because it gives us dimensionality to someone's personality as well as their context. >> Yeah, that's a really interesting point. I think most people are always saying turn on the video, turn on the video, we want to see everybody's face but as this thing continues to go and go and go and it's going to go for the foreseeable future, and people are going to get fatigue, right, people are getting Zoom fatigue. That's a really interesting and simple way to I think, kind of lessen the stress a little bit by telling people, let's just turn the video off. We don't necessarily need to see each other, we know what we look like. And if you feel some reason to turn it on, you can turn it on, but having that as an option, I think that's a really insightful. And the other thing I want to focus on is it's not all negative, right? I mean, there's a lot of studies about the open office plan, which didn't necessarily work so well, and we've had conversations with a lot of people that say, just because you throw everybody in a room together doesn't mean that they're necessarily going to communicate more and there aren't necessarily the water cooler chatter that you're kind of hoping for. And in fact, you have a bunch of stats in the book here about remote workers having actually a lot of success. They have less trouble with technology, they can cope best with multiple projects. There's so many less interruptions, (chuckles) assuming the rest of the family has a place to work. But you don't get kind of the work interruptions that you would in terms of actually getting projects done. So, it's not all bad. And I think there's a lot of things that we can help people think about to really take advantage or make the most of the opportunity, to take advantage is probably the wrong word. So, vary communications, frequency in communications is certainly a good one. What are other ways that people kind of build trust? 'Cause you talk a lot about trust and feeling part of something bigger and not letting the individual tasks and the little day-to-day things that we do get in the way of still feeling like you belong to something that's important, that you care about, with your teammates that you want to move forward. >> Yeah, so the it's a great question, and again I think, obviously, amongst sort of the darkness there's always sort of opportunities to see some light. And I think one of the ways that we can see light through working this way at this time is to expand our understanding of the people that we're working with, right? And we can do that in a framework, it doesn't have to be haphazard. So when we look at affinity, what we really want to do is to bring forward the way people feel about their value systems, what's important to them about work in sort of pre-COVID or BC, right before COVID, but also what's important to them about their family life or about the situation that's happening, that's interacting with and integrating with their work life. So asking those questions in ways that are not guised, but sort of directly asking them things about what they value? How they feel that they're interdependent on other people? Why other people are important to them in their work, as well as just in their day-to-day lives? Those are the kinds of opportunities for questions around things that are not work related, are not party Friday, which are also kind of fun things right? But that get more to the core of who a person is, that whole person that you were talking about. And that allows us to see so much more deeply, ironically, into that human being. And when you talk about purpose, and really wanting to feel like we're part of something bigger than ourselves, those kinds of insights that build affinity help us help other people. So, we tend to focus on task orientation and goals and deliverables and all that which is absolutely critical for business continuity, and to get through the day and focus our attention. But actually what makes people feel really good about their day as a person is often how they can help other people. And so if we draw this closer affinity, we can actually figure out ways to help other people. And that just lifts everybody up and makes the work product actually even better. >> Right, right, I've always ascribed to the theory that right, if you spend your work helping other people do their work better, easier, get roadblocks out of the way, whatever, be an enabler, then you're getting this multiplier effect because I'm doing my work and I'm helping somebody else be more efficient. And it's a very different way to kind of think about work in terms of helping everybody be more effective, more efficient, and as you said, you get this great multiplier effect, but I want to shift gears a little bit. And this sentence, just jumped out of your book. I'm actually going to read from it, that despite the fact that many leadership challenges are new, we continue to over rely on management thinking and solutions that are fundamentally designed around outdated assumptions. I mean, to me this is such a huge thing. We had Martin Mikason at the beginning of this process and his great line, and he's managed remote companies for years and multiple companies. And he said, it's so easy to fake it in the office, right? It's so easy to look busy. (Karen chuckles) Whereas when you're working from home, the only thing you have to show is your output. And that's what you're graded on, your output. And yet when this thing first hit, we saw all types of new products coming out that are basically spyware for the employees, how often are you sitting in front of your computer? How often are you on a Zoom call? How often are you, doing these things? And it's striking to me that it's such an outdated way to measure activity, versus a way to measure outcome and output and what are you trying to do? I mean, it just drives me crazy to hear those things, I just love to get your take that people still are mixed up about what they're supposed to be measuring and what the purpose of the whole task is, which is to get output done not just to be busy and sit in Zoom calls all day. >> It's so true. So there's sort of two prongs to that question. And two very important things to look at. So one is how do we measure productivity, right among knowledge workers, which has been the topic of a lot of conversation. And the other thing is, what have leadership models been built off of in the past, right? If you just take the first thing first. Productivity today, if you go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, you will still see productivity defined as how many widgets can I produce in an hour. That's still today, how we measure productivity, even though (chuckles) all of our output or most of our output, right, is coming from our knowledge, our thinking, our problem solving. (clears throat) So the notion of productivity feels very heavy handed to a lot of people, because it's still rooted literally economics wise in this notion of x widgets per hour, which just doesn't fit. And that comes through the second point, which is our leadership models, right? So I talked in the book and I've been talking about this for many years, because it just jumped out at me when I started to do this research, is that if you look at most leadership models today, any one of them, pick whatever one you like, transformational leadership, transactional leadership, situational leadership or whatever it might be. Those leadership models were built mainly in the 1950s. And some of them came later in the 80s. We have a few new ones, (clears throat) excuse me that have come after the internet, but not too many. And fundamentally, if you look at the communication mode of leaders in the 50s, and the 80s, it was face-to-face or phone. I mean, just by definition, was in person or via phone. But that assumption doesn't hold true anymore and hasn't held true for a good 15 years. And yet, in every business school today, we still use those leadership models as sort of our first run at how to lead. It's not that they're not useful and helpful and don't have extremely good words of advice for leaders. But the main thing leaders do is communicate. So if the fundamental channel over which leaders are communicating has completely changed, it seems natural that we should be looking for new leadership models (chuckles) that fit our times a little bit better. Taking pieces of the best of those leadership models, but really turning them on their head and saying, what's really a better approach when fundamentally our communication mode itself, it has completely changed. >> Right right. >> And that's what we do as leaders. >> And I do just want to say a word. We're talking about working from home and knowledge workers and unfortunately, there's a whole lot of people going through COVID right now that don't have that option, right. If you're in the travel industry, if you're in the hospitality industry, if you're in a lot of services industries, if you are a plumber, you can't go virtual as a plumber, unfortunately. So just to acknowledge that, what we're talking about applies to a lot of people, but certainly not everyone and everyone doesn't have these options. So I just wanted to mention that but before we wrap, Karen, the thing that struck me, as you're talking about kind of the 50s and the organizational structure, was it was really command and control and just top down hierarchies that dictated what people did. And then you as you said, your job was to put so many widgets on the widget receiver per hour, and that's what you were graded on. Where in knowledge workers, it's a very different thing. And in fact, you shouldn't tell people how to do things, you should tell people what the objectives are, and then see what they come up with. And hopefully, they'll come up with lots of different ways to achieve the objective, most of which that management has never thought of, they're not down in the weeds, and you get all kinds of interesting and diversity of opinion and different approaches. And kind of a DevOps mentality where you try lots of things and you'll find new ways to get it done. So I want to close out on this final kind of communication piece for leadership. And this is the why. I think back in the 50s, I don't know that the why we was that important. Or maybe it was and I'm not giving it enough credit. But today the why is so important. That is such a big piece of why do I come to work every day? And why am I important to work with my colleagues and move this mission forward. And so whenever you can just share, how important the why is today, and then how important the why is in trying to build a culture and hold people together when they are now by rule distributed all over the place. Talk a little bit about the why. >> Yeah, I love that question, Jeff. Because in the book, I talk a lot about Taylorism. And Taylor was the founder of like bureaucratic management and leadership and he actually despised the worker. (chuckles) There's actually a little piece in the book where he's testifying to Congress and saying that the man who handles pig iron, a type of steel, wasn't intelligent enough to understand what pig iron really was, he got a lot of flak for that. (chuckles) So as we've evolved, right, and as we've grown as organizations into knowledge workers, and I think your point about not everyone is a quote unquote, knowledge worker, is really, really important. The bottom line is, we're trying to measure our output and the value of our work by these older standards. And so people are struggling a little bit with that sort of disconnect, and looking for why, what purpose do they have? What is their bigger purpose? How are they connected to the organization in new ways? And there's actually an excellent analogy in the Navy. Is has its traditions in the Navy, called Commander's Intent which I talk about. So if you think of ships that used to sail, right out to sea, and they had lots of goals about either taking over a certain country or whatever it was they were doing, they couldn't be together, right. So we've been working remotely for a very long time. So the commander would gather all of his lieutenants, and basically tell them what his or, there were no hers at that time, but what his intentions were. And the lieutenants, the captains of the other ships, would go out to each ship, and they wouldn't follow a blueprint tactical plan they would just have the Commander's Intent as their guide. And then they were free actually, to use whatever strategies and tactics that they thought of and that worked in their context in order to fulfill the Commander's Intent, but they weren't given a blueprint. Their goal was really to use their own smarts, their own critical thinking in order to carry forward that intent. And I think that idea is very powerful today because I think if leaders can focus on helping their workers, their employees, their ecosystem partners, supply chain partners, whatever it may be, understand what the intent of the company is, and show that they trust the employees or the partner to deliver on that intent, with whatever means and creativity and imagination, guided by the intent, can be used and selected from on their day-to-day lives, people will feel so much more empowered and still get to the same outcome or actually better, than if they're told do A, B, C and D. So this idea of leader intent, I think would serve companies really well during this time, and if I could just add one other quick thing. There's another idea that comes out of sort of the military that I used and doing some work with leadership crisis management after 9-11. Around this notion of net-centricity. Net-centricity is sort of allowing people on the ground to sort of form their own networks and push information up to leadership so that they can make certain decisions and then push those decisions down with an intention back to the ground, so that this network can operate with some freedom and flexibility. And I think corporations can put net-centricity actually into place in a structured way and they'll find themselves with a lot more flexibility, higher levels of business continuity and effectiveness, and perhaps, most importantly, giving a sense of more meaningfulness and purpose and powerfulness, or self actualization back to the worker. >> Right, right, as you're speaking the word I just can't get out of my head is trust, right? It's so much about trust. And then giving people the power, enabling people the power that you trust to go do the jobs that you've hired them to do. And then to the other point that we talked about, then as a leader, help them remove roadblocks. Give them the tools, do the things that you can do to help them do their job better, versus to your point, being super prescriptive on the road actions that you wish that they would do, and then managing to the completion of the road, actions versus the accomplishment of the bigger task. It seems so simple, it's so hard for so many people to grok. It just, it still just amazes me that so many folks are unfortunately still stuck in that old paradigm. But you can't anymore 'cause everybody's (chuckles) working from home, so you better get with the program. >> (clears throat) Yeah, I'm sorry, I have a little frog in my throat. But you can. And just to add to what you're saying. I think the best thing that leaders can do is also expand their understanding of the worker as no longer just coming to work in some kind of bubble. They're coming to work with all kinds of personal situations. And I've had clients who have sort of tried to get away from that and keep the worker in a bubble. And I think, to be successful as we get through this sort of long-term leadership crisis, I think it's important to lean in to the chaos. Lean into the complexities that COVID, the pandemic, the economic situation bring and see the corporation and their role as leaders as trying to help that whole person with the complexities of their life, as opposed to trying to divorce them from their life, because that has not worked. And what works best, and I've seen this over and over again, is that companies that lean into the crisis, embrace it, and really try to help that whole employee who's coming to work in their house, really, really works very well. >> Yeah, it's going to be interesting as we come out of the summer and go back into the fall, which is the traditional season of kids going back to school and everybody kind of going back to work, and in our world conferences, and it's kind of the ramp up of a busy activity until we get kind of to the Christmas season again coming off of summer, now knowing that isn't a temporary situation, this isn't going away anytime soon. I mean, we used to talk about the new normal in March or April and May. Well now talking about the new normal in September, October, November and into 2021 is a whole different deal. So to your point, I think that's a great tip, lean in, do the best you can, learn from the experts. You don't need to do it by yourself. There's lots of documentation out there. Darren Murph has stuff up from GitHub. Or excuse me GitLab. There's lot of good information. So you do have to kind of buy into it and embrace it, 'cause it's not it's not going away. So these are great tips Karen and I give you this, the last word before we sign off. Of all the work you've done, all the clients you've worked with, a couple of two or three really good nuggets that are really simple things that everybody should be thinking about and doing today. >> I think, there's the Waldorf Schools out by you on the west coast, right, have a motto that they use for education. And it it says in through the heart out through the mind. And I think more than ever, leadership and business can borrow that idea. I think we have to sort of look at things in through the heart. And then, distribute our directions and our leadership out through the mind. At the end of the day (chuckles) we're all human beings that are all struggling in this shared experience, something that has literally never happened on planet earth with 8 billion people, connected through technology with a global pandemic. And so if we kind of can make a shift and think about taking things in through the heart and then delivering out through the mind. I think that a lot of people will feel that compassion. And that will translate into the kind of trust that we're trying to build between all of us to get through it together. And I think when we do that, I have a lot of confidence in the human spirit that we will get through it. People will be able to look back and say, yes, this was very difficult and horrific on many levels, but at the end of the day, maybe there's a little bit of a renaissance in how we sort of look at each other and treat each other with compassion and some love and joy, even in the worst of times. I think that translates over any communication medium (chuckles) including the one we're using today. >> Well, Karen, thank you for the time and thank you for closing this with a little bit of light. Congrats again on the book, "The Power of Virtual Distance", I'm sure it's available everywhere. And again, great to see you. >> Thank you so much Jeff, you too. >> All right. >> Take care. >> She's Karen, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (soothing music)

>>Hi. I'm Karen Madeira, global portfolio product marketing manager for data ops and cataloging governance and quality solutions. Here at IBM, I'm excited to invite toward Data Ops in Action Event, where we'll dig deeper into how to evolve your big >>ups practice. >>In my opinion, it all starts with the data catalog to deliver business ready data with it. You'll autonomy organization, provide consistent definitions and enable self service management of enterprise data hope to explore more with you on May 27.

hi I'm Karen Madera global portfolio product marketing manager for data ops and cataloging governance and quality solutions here at IBM I'm excited to invite you to our data ops in action event where we'll dig deeper into how to evolve your data ops practice in my opinion it all starts with a data catalog to deliver business ready data with it you'll automate organization provide consistent definitions and enable self-service management of enterprise data hope to explore more with you on May 27th

>>Live from Copenhagen, Denmark. It's the cube covering Nutanix dot. Next 2019. Brought to you by Nutanix. >>Welcome back everyone to the cubes live coverage of dot. Next Nutanix. We are here in Copenhagen. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. Along with my cohost Stu Miniman. We're joined by Karen Openshaw. She is the head of engineering at Zen intranet and Justin fielder, the CTO at Zen internet. Thank you both so much for your first timers on the cube. So welcome. We're gonna. We're really excited to have you. Why don't you start by telling our viewers a little bit about Zen internet, who, who you are, what you're all about. >>Yeah, sure. So, um, Zen is um, a UK based where up in near Manchester, um, managed service provider. Um, we turned over this year about 76 million pounds, um, which is, um, a great achievement for us that spout. Um, that's double digit growth we've had for the last few years. So we're really starting to motor as a business. Um, we employ about 550 people. Um, we have about 150,000 customers split across retail, um, indirect. So we have a very big channel business. We have a wholesale business where we sell our infrastructure, um, that then other people productize and put into, um, solutions for their customers. And then we have a corporate business, which is where Nutanix really comes in. Um, so we offer managed services both in networking, um, hosting the value added services that are required to make all of that safe and secure and, um, a solution for a corporate. Great. >>So managed service provider, uh, your company has been around for quite awhile. Predates when everyone was talking about cloud. Maybe give us a kind of the update today as to where you really see yourself fitting. What differentiates your, uh, your, your company in the marketplace? >>So I suppose, um, I mean Karen can add sort of what her team does, but I suppose the, the big difference is Zen is a very people first company. So Richard Tang, our founder, he founded the company nearly 25 years ago. Um, he stated publicly, he's never going to sell it. It's, it's, it's a, it's a very, very people orientated company, which of course has great, um, affinity to Newtanics his own, um, people first values. And fundamentally we believe that we always want to do the right thing for the customer even if that is difficult. Um, and so I still do whatever you want to say about, you know, how you pick up some of the, the, the hardness about keeping up with customers. >>Yeah. So we have customers that come to us asking for things that we don't necessarily sell at the time. And uh, we, we put quite a lot of effort into adapting our products at the time to deliver them what they need. Um, some of those challenging conversations can be about making sure the customer is getting the right product for what they want. So understanding what they need, making sure that we can support them not only in taking that product, but coming onto the product in the first place. And that's what we use a lot of our Nutanix infrastructure for. >>Good. Can you maybe, can you dig us in a little bit? Do you know, what does Nutanix enable for your business that ultimately then has an impact on your ultimate end user? >>It's done two things for us. So the first is our it operations. So we've been on a journey, I guess over the last three, four years, consolidating all our legacy and um, physical 10 onto virtual, uh, services. We've used Nutanix to do that. So with, with collated all of our services, we've got about 90 odd percent of all our legacy services on that it infrastructure now. So operationally it saves us a lot of time, effort, uh, costs, et cetera, much more reliable as well. But conversely to that, we also use it for our, our products offerings as well. So we used to be, um, managed hosting where a customer would come, give us a spec and we'd, we'd go and build a physical server hosted in our data center, host their applications on there, support them with that. We don't really do that anymore. We now use Nutanix as our hosting environment. So we've reduced our environmental footprint, we've reduced the amount of space that we need in a data center. And the power that we put through there again, operating that is, is it's easier for us because we can consolidate where the skills are from in terms of both it ops and in terms of the infrastructure for the managed services as well. >>One of the things that you said Justin, is that you're very people first company and that really fits in well with the culture at Nutanix. Can you, can you riff on that a little bit and just describe what it is to be working so closely with a company like Nutanix and how important it is that your cultures mesh? >>Yeah, sure. Um, I mean Nutanix has been part of Zen for, for many, many years. Um, and you know, we work in Israel, watched this industry for 25 years. Nothing stands still, literally nothing stands still. And therefore whatever you fought was a good idea last year, probably is now the worst possible idea because there's some great new idea. And I think it's that pace of change. And so what we've really found with Nutanix is as, as they've got to know us and we've got to know them and they can see that we're starting to really be able to take some solutions to the market that really resonate the, what they've done is they've literally embedded their people in our company. So we have, um, our systems engineers or account managers, they come up to our offices, they sit down, they understand our people, they understand where we're trying to go, they understand our propositions. >>And this is a journey for Nutanix. I mean Nutanix in the MSP land is not where it really, where they started. They started like Karen just said like we use them. That's actually where we started was Oh my God, I've got a thousand servers or this is just too much. Yeah, it's too much hassle to try and segment it yourself. Um, and it, it, it's that, it's that sort of hypervisor of hypervisors of hypervisors type approach. It just makes it easier. But conversely, it's therefore really important that you work out how take that value proposition to a customer. Because if you can't explain it, cause it's so easy, how do they know where, whether this is going to solve their problems. So that's been a fantastic part. Nutanix, it's really the Nutanix team felt like the Zen team and they're saying that they also feel the same. >>So you know, things like nothing ever goes 100% right. But it's always, you know who to call. They're all work because you've got that personal relationship and that's really important to us. >> It's more than that. So what we found with the Nutanix guys is that they'll help us fix problems that aren't necessarily Nutanix problems as well. So that's something we don't get from any of the, uh, of our suppliers. It's normally, no, that's nothing to do with me. You need to phone someone else, get support on that. It's done. It's guys will, they'll bring in their own experts on that particular combo and they'll support us through that. So that's good. >> At six speaks very much to the partnership that you're saying. They're not just a supplier of a product to you. Um, no, no. When I talked to the customer base, one of the biggest challenges and you know, any company has these days is a really understanding their application portfolio. >>What needs to change, what needs to stay the same, you know, Microsoft pushing everybody to office three 65, you know, changed a lot of companies out there. You know, what do I Salsify, what do I put in managed service provider? What do I just, you know, build natively in the public cloud. Can you bring us through kind of, you know, what you're seeing at your customer base and you know, where, where that does interact with the journey that Nutanix is bringing people on? Yeah, I mean maybe I can say that like the, all of our customers are on a journey, um, and they need help. They seriously need help for the, exactly. That reason that you've said. Um, I mean, this is, this is my, this is my job to understand this stuff. That's, that's what a CTO of an MSP is required to do. Um, the problem is is if you're a CIO of, we were really good in construction, you can revolutionize the construction in C by the application of it, particularly during the sales cycle. You know, the ability to VR walk through, you know, argument or, all of that sort of really cool stuff. >>And then you've got a thousand sub-contractors that you're trying to manage from an it perspective. And that juxtaposition of the problem is really problematic I think for a lot of people. And so what we've done is we said the first step you can do is just take what you've got and get rid of the management overhead. That's the easiest, simplest, straightforward. And some of the Nutanix, the sort of lift and shift capability that has got that, they will go and inspect a work load somewhere else. They will work out what resources are required for it. They will pick it up and then we'll move it. And we've had some fantastic success of our customers. They're, they're, they're our greatest advocates. They just say, Oh my God, it just happened one day it was over that and next day it was over there. Um, and then you can start to analyze what that is, what's happening. >>And that's where we can really add value because this is not as simple as just an application because it's about your security posture. It's about your Dar requirements. It's about what, what your appetite for risk versus reward versus cost. And that's really hard to do when you don't have the simple thing which is there, which is, Oh, that serve, that piece of tin costs me $10,000 and therefore you can work that out yourself. So I think the key to all of this is giving tools to the end users so that the CIO in that company and their it team so that they can make those choices in collaboration with an MSP like us. Um, and that goes back to what you were saying. It's about, you know, when we hit problems, we might not even know there's a problem before we've hit it. And therefore having Nutanix deeply embedded within us is really important to them. Being able to go back to the customer and sometimes to the customer, you actually have to go, what are you doing that isn't going to work in the longterm? >>And, and, and as you said, you also have to provide the value so that the customer understands what they're actually getting to in terms of a customer's future needs are we are living in this multicloud world. How are we, how would you describe the customer mindset and how are you coming in with solutions that work for the customer and then having to break that, break the news to them on occasion that what on earth are you trying to do here? This is not gonna work. >>Yeah, we have a few, um, interesting. I sort of like, okay, are you going or am I going to tell them? You know, and I actually can tell, I always send Karen, I'll be going. He doesn't. Um, I, I think it, it's, and, and this is where I think we weren't really, well, you know, it is about what is going on. Karen. Work with your engineering teams. Try and understand deeply actually what is going, why is it not a good idea to do that? And that's the, that's the thing. Once you're going to explain why most of it, Oh God, thank God for that. Finally someone's telling me why what I'm trying to achieve isn't the best way to do it. Because I think a lot of, a lot of people's just sort of, you know, it's a bit buzzwordy and they just think that they need to do this. And you know, it's, I mean, talk about, you know, the journey we've been through. Just sort of how do we move stuff onto there? What's that for years. I mean, you know, it's a huge amount of work. Carry any, any lessons learned maybe that you could do it for one 50 years. >>Are there any that I could repeat here as practices? Okay. It is, I think one of the biggest challenges is the, the reskilling of your teams. So I'm guessing everybody, first of all, to understand this, this bright new future that you're moving into. And then getting them trained upon it and training is >>not just going and sitting in a classroom. It's going and working on this thing and seeing problems occur and understanding how to fix them. That's the, that's the biggest problem that we, that we probably went through. I guess we want our customers to not have that though. So we, we want them to give us the, their work loads in there. It will solve that for them and that that's where we wanna we want to take it, I think in the future, helping them understand what they can do with cloud. So we, we don't just do private cloud, we do public cloud as well. So we could introduce um, opportunities and concepts from a public cloud perspective as well. Um, that will, that will, AWS is a, is a really good one and we are looking at other providers as well, so we help customers solve their problems, whatever that problem is. >>One of the things that's so salient about Zen internet is that it has a really strong culture. You said it's a people, people first culture, but it's also a very diverse culture. Uh, bringing in multiple perspectives, uh, women in technology, LGBTQ, uh, other races. Can you talk a little bit about what it means to work at a diverse company and how it changes how you think about problems and go about solving, >>solving them? Yeah, I guess it's a good question. I guess working in a company we're not as diverse as we'd like to be. We were not where we're at in terms of balancing out the number of women in the tech roles in particular. Um, and, and the diversity. If we give everybody a voice, which is the main thing, then uh, we will see a more, a more wide range in set of inputs there. So, um, developing our teams, high performing teams, you need that mixture of input there, not just about women by the way. It's about, it's about, we have a private zone network for example, where we try to ensure that diverse diversity and diverse people feel included in what we do as a business and work as well and have an opportunity to have an input into that. So where does it add for us? >>I guess people just think differently when they're from different cultural backgrounds. They're from different, um, different nationalities, different, um, races I guess different sexuality, different gender. They've all got different life experiences. So solving problems is probably the main thing that you get the benefit from that. And this industry is full of people trying to solve problems, um, and bring in diverse teams, not just about women in tech. Cause w we saw three women speaking this morning or the keynote, which was fantastic to see. Um, but it is about the diversity as well. So, uh, innovation is the key there, I guess. And I think, I think it's, it's not just about your staff. Um, if you've got the ability to think differently, that applies for out >>the entire ecosystem. Um, and you, you know, you can, you can take a different view. So we work very closely with the TM forum because you know, that that's sort of our industry and it's the sort of the, the, the whole application stack about how you approach that. And the TM forum of have really done some fantastic research that that now proves that the output is different if you have a diverse input. And that I think for our customers is really different. It's really important because then it's different. We're not one of the big guys. We're not BT, we're not Deutsche Telekom, we're not, you know, we're not one of these people. We think differently. We act differently, we behave differently. We have a different approach and the people first, I mean, you know, that doesn't mean we're, you know, we're, we're just here for a good fun time. >>We're here to drive this business forward, to try to generate profitability that we can reverse back in the business to enable us to get onto bigger and greater things. And we've got a five year plan which will see us, you know, at least double revenues quite happily. And we've very confident now that we can execute that. Assuming we can get that diversity in the business. And it's a huge challenge. It's how do you reach out to those people? How do you use the right language? How do you overcome unconscious bias? Yeah, that's a massive thing and it's great. Again, it Newtanics just resonates with us. Just some of the little stickers around that they are diverse, they've got different representations of people and it shows that someone has fought about that and that will resonate. And it's always the classic thing that, you know, you do something wrong once people remember it forever. You do a hundred things right. People won't even notice it. And that's the, that's the type of approach. So, um, for us, we, you know, we think it's a really exciting bear and it's something that the entire executive at Zen are absolutely focused on is getting this right because we know it will secure off. >>It'll make all the difference. Great. Justin and Karen, thank you so much for coming on the cube. That's great. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. Stay tuned for more of the cubes live coverage of.next from Copenhagen.

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering Dell Technology's World 2019. Brought to you by Dell Technologies and it's ecosystem partners. >> Hi, welcome to theCUBE Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman and we are live at Dell Technologies World 2019 in Las Vegas with about 15,000 or so other people. There's about 4,000 of the Dell Technologies community of partners here as well. Day one as I mentioned, we're very pleased to welcome back one of our cube alumni, Karen Quintos, EVP and Chief Customer Officer from Dell Technologies, Karen, welcome back to theCUBE. >> Thank you, thank you. Always great to be with you all. >> So one of the things you walk down on stage this morning with Michael Dell and and the whole gang and you started to share a story that I'd love for you to share with our audience about this darling little girl, Phoebe from Manchester, England that has to do with this Dell Technologies partnership with Deloitte Detroit and 3D prosthetics. Can you share this story and what it meant about this partnership. >> Well we wanted to tell this story about Phoebe because we really wanted the audience to understand the innovation and all of what's done it with social good is really about the individual, You know, technology plays a key role but the face behind the technology and the innovation are people and you know, as you mention Phoebe is from Manchester, U.K. Her father wrote this blog about Phoebe's experience. Phoebe's aunt, Claire works for Deloitte. She had access to a lot of what they could do in terms of 3D printing and basically came to Dell and we were able to take it and scale it and accelerate it and speed it up with a engineer by the name of Seamus who saw what the precision workstation could do. So it was this small idea to help an amazing little girl like this that has now turned into this movement around how do we more rapidly, quickly scale 3D prosthetics so these children and adults can have a chance at a normal life so. >> What kind of prosthetics did you guys build for her? >> It's an arm, so the very first arm that we built for her when she was about five years old had the frozen Disney theme painted on it. I asked her father Keith what is the one that she's wearing now because she's now this like really super cool seven-year-old that goes to school and all of her classmates and friends around her see her as this rock star and the one that she has today is printed with unicorns and rainbows. So if you know anything about seven-year-old girls, it's all about unicorns and rainbows and she's done an amazing thing and she's inspired so many other people around the world, individuals, customers, partners like Deloitte and others that we're working with to really take this to a whole new level. >> Karen, I think back to Dell you know, if you think back a couple of decades ago you know, drove a lot of the some of the waves of technology change you know, think back to the PC, but in the early days it was you know supply chain and simple ordering in all these environments and when I've watched Dell move into the enterprise, a lot of that is, I need to be listening to my customer, I need to be much closer to them because it's not just ordering your SKU and having it faster and at a reasonable price but there's a lot more customization. Can you talk about how you're kind of putting that center, that customer in the center of the discussion and that feedback loops that you have with them, how that's changed in Dell. >> Yeah sure, so all of the basic fundamentals around you got to order, deliver, make the supply chain work to deliver for our customers still matters but it's gone beyond that to your point and probably the best way to talk about it is these six customer award winners that we recognized last night. I've gotten to know all six of those over the last year and while they are doing amazing things from a digital transformation using technology in the travel business, the automotive business, banking, financial services, insurance, kind of across the board, the thing that they say consistently is look, we didn't always have the answer in terms of what we needed but you came in, you listened, you rolled up your sleeves to try to figure out how you could design a solution that would meet the needs that we have and they said, that's why you're one of the most strategic partners that we have. Now you can do all those other things, right? You can supply chain ride and build and produce and all that but it's the design of a solution that helps us do the things that will allow us to be differentiated and you look at that list of six customers and brands that they represent, right, Carnival Cruise Lines, USAA, Bradesco, McLaren I mean, the list kind of goes on, they are the differentiators out there and we're really honored to be able to be working with them. >> So we're only a day one and it's only just after lunchtime but one of the things I think somatically that I heard this morning in the keynote with Michael and Pat and Jeff and Satya and yourself is, it's all about people. A couple interviews I did earlier today, same sort of thing, it's like we had the city of Las Vegas on. This is all driven by the people in for the people so that sense of community is really strong. I also noticed this year's theme of real transformation, parlays off last year's theme of make it real, it being digital transformation, IT, security, workforce transformation, what are some of the things that were like at Dell Technologies. Cloud this morning for example, VMware Cloud on Dell EMC that you guys specifically heard say from last year's attendees that are manifesting in some of the announcements today and some of the great things the 15 or so thousand people here are going to get to see and feel and touch at this year's event? >> Well, Lisa you nailed it. What you heard on stage today is what customers have been telling us over the last year. We unveiled about a month ago with a very small group of CIOs in Amia, our cloud strategy, our portfolio, the things that we're going to be able to do and one customer in particular immediately chimed in and said, we need you in the cloud and we need you in there now because you offer choice, you offer open, you offer simplicity, you offer integration and they're like, there's just too many choices and a lot of them are expensive. So what you heard on stage is absolutely a manifestation of what they told us. The other pieces, look, I think I think the industry and CIOs are very quickly realizing their workforce matters, making them happy and productive matters having them enabled that they can work flexibly wherever they want to really, really matters and you know, our Unified Workspace ONE solution is all about how we help them simplify, automate, streamline that experience with their workforce so their employees stick around. I mean, there's a war on talent and everybody's dealing with it and that experience is really, really important in particular to the gensies and the millennials. >> Karen, I love that point. Actually, I was really impressed this morning. In the press and analyst session this morning, there was a discussion of diversity and inclusion and the thing that I heard is, it's a business imperative, it's not, okay it's nice to do it or we should do it but no, this is actually critical to the business. Can you talk about what that means and what you hear from your customers and partners. >> Yes, yes, well, we're seeing it in spades and all of these technology jobs that are open, right. So look, all the research has shown that if you build a diverse team, you'll get to a more innovative solution and people generally get that but what they really get today is here in the U.S. alone, there's 1.1 million open technology jobs by the year 2024, half of them, half of them are going to be filled by the existing workforce. So there is this war in talent that is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger and I think that's what really has given a wake-up call to corporations around why this matters. I think the other piece that we're starting to see, not just around diversity but in our other social impact priorities around the environment as well as how we use our technology for good, look, customers want to do business with a corporation that has a soul and they stand for something and they're doing something, not just a bunch of talking heads but where it's really turning into action and they're being transparent about the journeys and where they're at with it. So it matters now to the current generation, the next generation, it matters to business leaders, matters to the financial services community, which you start to see you know, some of the momentum around you know, the black stones and state street. So it's really exciting that we're part of it and we're leading the way in a lot of number of areas. >> And it's something to that we talked about a lot on theCUBE, diversity and inclusion from many different levels, one of them being the business imperative that you talked about, the workforce needing to compete for this talent, but also how much different products and technologies and apps and APS and things can be with just thought diversity in and of itself and I think it's refreshing to what Stu was saying, hey, we're hearing this is a business imperative but you're also seeing proof in the pudding. This isn't just, we've got an imperative and we're going to do things nominally, you're seeing the efforts manifest. One of the, Draper Labs who was one of the customer award winners. That video that was shown this morning struck probably everyone's heart with the campfire in Paradise California. >> Tragic. >> I grew up close to there and that was something that only maybe, I get goosebumps, six months ago, so massively devastating and we think you know, that was 2018 but seeing how Dell Technologies is enabling this laboratory to investigate the potential toxins coming from all of this chart debris and how they're working to understand the social impact to all of us as they rebuild, I just thought it was a really nice manifestation of a social impact but also the technology breadth and differentiation that Dell has enabling. >> That was also why this story today was so great about Phoebe, right because it's where you can connect the human spirit with technology and scale and have an even bigger impact and there's so much that technology can help with today. You know, that that story about Phoebe. From the time that her aunt from Deloitte identified, you know, what we could do, all the way to the time that Phoebe got her first arm was less than seven months, seven months and you think about you know, some of the other prototypes that were out there, times would take years to be able to do it. So I love that you know, connection of human need with the human spirit and connecting and inspiring and motivating so many children and adults around the world. >> And what what are some of the next, speaking of Phoebe and the Deloitte digital 3D prosthetics partnership, what are some of the other areas we're going to see this technology that this little five-year-old from Manchester spurned. >> Well, I'll give you another example. So we, there was an individual in India, actually an employee of ours that designed an application to help figure out how to deploy healthcare monitoring in some of the remote villages in India where they don't have access to basic things that we take for granted. Monitoring your blood pressure, right, checking your cholesterol level and he created this application that a year later now, we have given kind of the full range of the Dell portfolio technology suite. So it is you know our application plus Pivotal plus VMware plus Dell EMC combined with the partnering that we've done with Tata Trust and the State of India, we've now deployed this healthcare solution called Life Care Solution to nearly 37 million rural residents, citizens in India. >> Wow 37 million. >> 37 million, so a small idea, you take from a really passionate individual, a person, a human being and figure out how you can really leverage that across the full gamut of what Dell can do, I think the results are incredible. >> Awesome, you guys also have a Women in Technology Executive Summit that you're hosting later this week. Let's talk about that in conjunction of what we talked a minute ago about, it's a business imperative as Stu pointed out, there are tangible, measurable results, tell us about this. >> Well, I'm kind of done honestly with a lot of the negativity around, oh, we're not making any progress, oh, we need to be moving fast and if you look at the amount of effort, energy and focus that is going into this space by so many companies and the public sector, it's remarkable and I've met a number of these CIOs over the last year or two, so we basically said let's invite 20 of them, let's share our passion, have made progress, care about solving this across their organization. A lot of us are working on the same things so if we simply got in a room and figured out, are their power in numbers and if we worked collectively together, could we accelerate progress. So that's what it's all about. So we have about 15 or 20 CEOs, both men and women and we'll be spending you know, six or seven hours together and we want to walk away with one or two recommendations on some things that we could collaborate on and have a faster, bigger impact. >> And I heard that, you mentioned collaboration, that's one of the vibes I also got from the keynote this morning when you saw Michael up there with Pat and Jeff and Satya, the collaboration within Dell Technologies, I think even talking with Stu and some of the things that have come out and that I've read, it seems to be more symbiosis with VMware but even some the, like I said, we're only in, I wouldn't even say halfway through day one and that is the spirit around here. We talk about people influence, but this spirit of collaboration is very authentic here. You are the first chief customer officer for Dell, if you look back at your tenure in this role, could you have envisioned where you are now? >> No, because it was like the first ever chief customer officer at Dell and you know, it really gave me a unique opportunity to build something from scratch and you know, there's been a number of other competitors as well as other companies that have announced in the last year or so the need to have a chief customer officer, the need to figure out how, which is a big remit of mine across Dell Technologies, how do we how do we eliminate the silos and connect the seams because that's where the value is going to be unlocked for our customers. That's what you saw on stage today. You saw the value of that with Jeff, with Pat, with Satya, some you know, one of our most important partners out there. Our customers don't want point solutions, they want them to be integrated, they want it to be streamlined, they don't be automated, they want us to speed time to value, they want us to streamline a lot of the back-office kind of mundane things that they're like, I don't want my people spending their time anymore and doing that and that's where we see Dell Technologies being so much more differentiated from other choices in the market. >> Yep, I agree with you. Well Karen, thank you so much for joining Stu and me on theCUBE this afternoon, sharing some of the stories, look forward to hearing next year what comes out of this year's as Women in Tech Exec Summit. Thank you so much for your time. >> Thank you very much, thank you. >> with Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE, live day one of Dell Technology World from Las Vegas, thanks for watching. (light electronic music)

[Music] hey welcome back everybody Jeff freek here with the cube we're in Reno Nevada at the inner bike show it's a big show all about bikes and mountain bikes but we're really to talk about ebike skuzzy bikes is this new class of really transportation not really new turns out that gazelles been making them since 2002 so we're at the Royal Dutch gazelle event that adjective in next to enter bike and we're excited to see they're releasing a bunch of new bikes and really dig into what are these e bikes all about we've been told that the United States a little bit behind you're starting to see them show up is it a last mile vehicle is it you know a primary vehicle what are the laws and regulations or we're really excited to have our first guest she's been dealing with this for years and years and years it's current wiener she is a co-owner of the new wheel Carn great to see you thanks thanks for having me absolutely so give us a little background on the new wheel where are you guys how long have been around what's your what's your focus yeah and the new wheel is located in San Francisco and Marin County and Larkspur we opened in 2010 so about eight years ago out of our excuse me out of our apartment because we realized that nobody was really seeing the opportunity in this transportation alternative right and so we were seeing what was happening in Europe which like you said has been happening for a while and we realized that gosh San Francisco is the perfect place it's it's an obvious match an electric bike which basically amplifies your pedaling power acts exactly like a bicycle except for you're always in your best shape and having your best day and having the most fun and so um we started with basically one bike who are three bikes and we had a mobile shop that we would ride from farmers market to farmers market then we opened our first store in 2012 and we're still in that location in Bernal Heights in San Francisco and we focus on curating high quality electric bikes that are going to work really well in San Francisco which as you know is a really rugged especially in terms of elevation gain environment right so what if you could talk about some things some miss or not miss so one thing is why we came here is we were really looking at e-bikes is really a last bio vehicle and that's kind of in the in the line of smart cities and in kind of multimodal transportation do you'd have a lime scooter to the Cal train maybe it's your car maybe you've got your own bike but what I'm hearing here is these things are a lot more than last mile vehicles these are actually substitution vehicles for a significant amount of car rides not just the two miles run down to the store to get some milk or to get some cereal or to get some coffee but a much heavier load on these things yeah it's very very interesting so if we look to Europe the ebike started as a replacement for bicycle trips in kind of urban environments for people who are maybe getting older or whatever and the Bison and any bike works really well for just in in turn inner-city transportation there's been an interesting kind of development in Europe in the last say four or five years which is the rise of the speed electric bike you can with a very small battery you can ride 40 to 60 miles 40 to 60 months yeah and that means that you can ride from one city to another so now what we're seeing is a clerk across the Netherlands actual bicycle super highways that cover maybe you know five to 20 miles and that becomes a reasonable bicycle ride on the daily basis and that's really exciting it's something that is unlike basically any other form of transportation it's not a motorcycle it's not that heavy-duty you don't need license or insurance or anything like that you're still getting exercise and you're getting where you need to get right so it's talked about the speed because the speed is interesting thing and I think the speed is what dictates some of the regulation so we see in San Francisco got inundated with the Lyme scooters and there's boosted boards and one wheels and all sorts of kind of contraptions with these great high-capacity batteries and these itty-bitty little little motors so the form factors are numerous but all of them seem to be gated around 20 miles an hour which I think is the regulation to keep them from being considered a scooter you know a internal-combustion scooter so you're talking about speed bikes so they've got bikes here today that goes like 28 miles an hour so how are the regulations keeping up with us a bike that goes 28 miles an hour so it's developing slowly it's developing based on models that have already been tested and used in Europe in California there was actually a model legislation passed I think three years ago which defined three types of electric bikes and defines them as bicycles so type 1 is a bicycle that goes to 20 miles an hour and basically it has to be you have to be pedaling type 2 is a bicycle it also goes to 20 miles an hour but can have a throttle now this is a very Asian type of electric bike it's not quite as polished but usually they're lower-cost okay and then type three is this 27 mile an hour type still a bicycle you're required to wear a helmet and there are some places that you're not allowed to ride them like on shared pedestrian paths right and so what's good about this is it's creating a model for different local and regional governments to create rules it's taking time from but what's exciting is that there is a model so the scooters and the one wheels are all operating under cut-ins this DMV law that is kind of this type of as you describe it is kind of type 1 but it's also kind of skirt like it seems really unclear right I think there's an opportunity and electric bikes for it to be very clear and I think we're on the way to that it's just going to take something right now in terms of the actual utility obviously this is a Dutch company they don't have great weather in Holland as we know San Francisco as you mentioned is a rugged place not to mention the fact it's about as rough as it gets for parked cars getting broken into so what do you see from your customers in terms of the actual utility carrying stuff home from the store survivability in the streets you know not getting stolen inexpensive pieces of gear so what's kind of the experience you've seen with your kind of long history in this space in the city so what I've seen is that what you use matters a lot so the type of bike that you choose out of the gate is going to dictate first of all how well it's going to last and second of all how well it's gonna work in the first place right the other thing is that the way it's not only the bicycle you also have to have the right lock and you have to have the right bag and the right set up to give you the actual full utility potential of the bicycle and that's where you know specialists and retailers really come in you also need service so most people have owned bicycles in their lifetime and it may be stretched one train stretching a chain takes about 2,000 miles on a bike okay an e bike rider usually stretches a train in a little under a year because suddenly your bicycle is your preferred mode of transportation for thousands of miles of errands and and urban duties and and pleasure right that you never had before on a bicycle so it's a switch in terms of how people understand the maintenance that they need on their bike but also what kind of tools they need like a great lock and it turns out that you actually can lock a bike safely not overnight on the street but at any time of day there are locks that work really really well through the bike safe so next day on touch bases kind of the evolving technology yeah so we're hearing over and over that really the the battery technology is getting this just huge boost from autonomous cars because now there's huge investments in battery you've probably seen tremendous developments both in the batteries and the propulsion systems and the technology and these bikes since you've been out that's four for eight years how is that kind of changing and how is that opening up you know maybe the opportunity to people that maybe didn't wanna a shorter range you know six a 10 a 12 a 15 wherever the older kind of range models were battery technology that that originated in laptops and I was being used in cars and autonomous vehicles totally changed the potential for electric bikes and it changes it will change so many things about your bicycle for example not too far down the road I believe that there will be anti-theft devices on every electric bicycle that you buy you're gonna be able to track your bicycle you're gonna be able to track your heart rate you're gonna be able to do all these things seamlessly just as part of your life so when you put a battery on a bike it changes everything about what it can do right now it's assist in the future will be many things there was this switch about eight years ago from old very heavy very polluting batteries to lithium-ion batteries and it it means that you can have a bicycle that is that you can lift you know that weighs between maybe 35 and 60 pounds that will take you anywhere from 25 to 100 miles right right and that's a game-changer right so last question for you what is like the biggest surprise when somebody comes in the store you know you sit him down so any bike and they come back for their first maintenance whatever that they say how this thing has really impacted their lives integrating activity into your life can change your life in all sorts of ways it can reduce stress the funniest one was this this guy came in they'd had this family that had a baby like six months ago guy comes in buys a bike and he comes back for his new tuna and he goes Karen my wife owes you a big one she's a much happier woman now people love their bikes what surprises them I think the most most often is just how many miles they're accruing on their odometer and that makes them excited from a health standpoint from an environmental standpoint and just from a joy in your daily life standpoint when we all live with a lot of stress at a lot of multitasking and taking 20 minutes on your bike and just having a great relaxing time is unbeatable right well thanks for a card take it a few minutes and and sharing the story and nothing but success for the store alright cheese Caron I'm Jeff you're watching the cube we're at the Royal Dutch gazelle bike event outside of Interbike in Reno Nevada thanks for watching [Music]

>> From Boston, Massachusetts it's theCUBE covering LiveWorx 18. Brought to you by PTC. >> Welcome back to Boston, everybody. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. I'm Dave Vellante with Stu Miniman. This is day one of LiveWorx, theCUBE's special coverage of the PTC-sponsored conference. Karen Leavitt is here. She's the CMO of Locus Robotics. Karen, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks so much for coming on. >> Thanks for having me, Dave. >> So, tell us about Locus Robotics. Most people in our audience might not be familiar with it. >> No, I think when most people think about robots they either think about things that clean their house or something from The Jetsons. But these days robots are really anything that can autonomously fulfill the needs of the job requirements. In our case we build robots that work in e-commerce warehouses. Anybody whose ever purchased anything online realizes that the magic is you click the button, you pay for it, and then two days later it magically shows up at your door. >> How'd that happen? >> Yeah, exactly. Well the magic is the raw materials of most of those goods that you get at your door is human labor. They're actually people who walk through warehouses 10, 15 miles a day pushing glorified shopping carts picking items off of shelves in order to put into a box to ship to you. Well e-commerce has been growing like wildfire and we have actually a labor shortage in this country and so what we need to do is we need to figure out ways of automating the warehouse so that the merchandise can get picked efficiently, cost-effectively, and get it out to the consumers. So let's summarize. The big drivers in the business, the demand drivers you're talking about e-commerce spurring the need for automation, lack of labor, >> Yep. >> or a lot of sort of low level tasks that can be replaced by machines. Is that right? Maybe talk about that a little bit. >> Well, you know there are a few different tasks involved. Humans are still best at the ones requiring manual dexterity. Actually physically picking an item off of a shelf or out of a bin and putting it into a tote, humans are still the best at that. But robots are really the best at transporting merchandise through the warehouse and they not only transport the merchandise, they also transport the instructions. So instead of a worker having to snake her way for 15 miles a day through the warehouse, the worker simply needs a robot at a pick location and a robot displays the information that the worker needs. It shows her a photograph of the item to be picked, tells her the bin location to take it from, then she just does the pick, drops it in, and the robot moves on but it means she can be twice or three times as effective. So we built our robots that are collaborative with humans that make the humans work much better. We created sort of an external bionics, if you will. You know this is like the six million dollar warehouse worker but working with a robot friend. >> And the other trend is there is a labor shortage you're saying >> Absolutely. >> Maybe double click on that a little bit. >> We hear all the time about the labor gap in this country. First of all, we have virtually full employment in this country. When we hear about the labor gap when people say there are six million workers who are unemployed and six million jobs that need to be filled but there's a mismatch. I think a lot of people think well maybe what we need to do is we need to retrain these workers to fill the jobs that need filling and our perspective is maybe we should be doing is training the jobs not to require any training on the part of the humans. So by putting the robots in the warehouse, the robot knows what action needs to be taken, knows what task needs to be performed, and has a really bright, friendly screen to be able to inform the worker. So the entire training is you say to the worker, "Hey whenever you see a robot with it's light turned green, approach the robot and do whatever it tells you to do." And that's the whole training and since we're operating in an industry, e-commerce has a lot of spikes. The last three months of the year, last two months of the year really make up probably 40 percent of all the volume in a typical e-commerce warehouse and so the warehouse operators will often hire temporary workers and those are people that may not be trained on the full layout of the warehouse. But now, with the use of the robots, a warehouse operator can bring in even temporary labor and the training can be minimized to within say 15 minutes so that the robot is really creating an environment where the humans work better and they're more engaged. The work is less cumbersome. They're not having to push or pull a heavy cart and we can use the screen on the robot to really create some gamification to keep that worker engaged and make their job more fun. >> Karen, could you give us a little insight into your business. >> Sure. >> The clients that you sell to, who do you sell to? Are there challenges about them? Do you help them with the kind of the training of the robots aren't going to come put you out of work? >> Absolutely. Sure. The generic form of who our customers are; are warehouse operators, these are large retailers that are operating warehouses from which they do direct shipment to consumers or what are called 3PLs, third-party logistics providers. I'll give you an example. One of customers is DHL. DHL runs thousands of warehouses in which they house other people's products and they store and they ship those good in response to e-commerce orders that come in online. As I said, there are seasonal peaks and valleys to this and everybody is looking to hire workers the same seasonal peaks. So what our robots do is, and actually we've got one back here. Got a robot spinning around. They don't usually spin for a living but they're usually moving through the warehouse. They're effectively self-driving cars that carry things and they have a tablet interface with large text to be able to describe to the workers what's going on. So there's a curious passerby looking at the robot. But the robots integrate with the software that's managing the warehouse. They take the orders as they come in and then the robot will drive through the warehouse to the locations where the merchandise is located and then ask a worker to please grab one of those items, or more than one, and put it into the robot's bin and then the robot will take it to where it needs to go. To packing, it may need to go a gift wrap station or may need to be express shipped. But a company like DHL has found that by using humans alone they get one level of productivity out of their workers and it's typically measured in units picked per hour and with the robots they're getting two and a half to three times that level of productivity. So the worker is still doing the real core part of the task that only the human can do, for now, which is picking the item but the robot's doing everything else: carrying instructions, transporting the merchandise, prioritizing the tasks and actually even directing the workers' motions. >> So for decades in the technology world the innovation of the industry marched to the cadence of Moore's Law. >> Yes. Absolutely >> Metcalf's Law obviously came in so you had these sort of laws that are very predictable Like the sunrise, they come up and you can draw a straight line on a log-log scale. What's the innovation source in this world? >> And there is a Moore's Law and it's being written today for these autonomous vehicles. For the self-driving robots. What we're seeing is the hard tech has really been developed for the automotive industry by and large and we're drafting off of that. So a company our size in this nascent industry of warehouse robotics the price of a robot would be out of reach were it not for the fact that there's been critical mass established in the automotive industry. So they key hard tech items are laser in the form of LIDAR and laser cameras and tactile sensors. So all the things that you would imagine you would equip your self-driving passenger car with the robot gets equipped with and of course this hard tech is advancing along the lines of Moore's Law where it's doubling in functionality or capacity every period and it's dropping in cost. So it gives us the opportunity of either holding the cost steady while continuing to improve the functionality of the robot or holding the functionality steady while dropping the cost and because we offer our robots as a service you're effectively hiring a robot as a worker. There's no capital investment. You don't go and buy this as if you were buying a fork truck, for example. You go and you hire a robot and you pay a monthly salary to the robot and so you're instantly seeing a drop in your operating expense because you've got robots that are able to do the work of a couple of humans and you're paying them a little bit less so that you're able to really make your operating expense that much more predictable and lowering it. >> Presumably with less complaints. >> We were really kind of nervous, honestly, a year and half ago that the workers would revolt but the workers are telling us that they're really enjoying it and so it's also allowing the warehouse operators to retain their workers better because they happier workers. >> So software's the lynchpin as well. You're taking advantage . . . >> It's all software >> . . . of the advances in hard tech and then you've got non-recurring engineering costs and then you've got software-like economics driving the business. >> Yeah, apart from the hard tech robots are probably 90 percent software. They look adorable and they're running around and they have a physical manifestation which is obvious to everyone but it really is all about the software. It's about enabling the robots to move fluidly in an environment that's often very congested and gets more congested at times that are most critical because as the volume rises you need to have more workers, more robots, there's higher volume of product moving through and the robots have to be able to move fluidly through very narrow spaces between people. It's very easy to get a robot to totally avoid a human but in this case because the robots are collaborating with the humans we need them to kind of nuzzle up to you kind of like a service animal and work with you in very close quarters and that's all software. >> So, we've got this demo that I've been mesmerized by, your robot behind us. Do you think that the trend toward robotics will reverse the trend towards offshore manufacturing? Maybe bring some of that back or not? >> So our robots are not manufacturing robots however we sort of play in the same world. We see different robots. One of the interesting characteristics of this display that we're looking at here is you'll notice those robots are hidden behind glass. They're expressly being cordoned off so that they're not working with the humans who are deriving the benefits. [Dave] Much different from what you guys are doing. >> So yeah, ours is really designed to work as closely as you would with a human collaborator, perhaps maybe even more closely. (coughing) Excuse me. What I think we are seeing is we've seen automation again, particularly in large scale manufacturing like the automotive industry, for years as that automation has replaced the need for workers. And of course we now see the automotive industry, even offshore manufacturers, offshore headquartered manufacturers are doing their manufacturing here in the United States and I think because they're able to use this automation to get a more consistent cost of production worldwide. I'm not an expert on the automotive industry but I would imagine that the automation allows them to more consistently predict their costs. >> How large is this market? Can you give us a sense of that? You're probably asked that all the time. You're probably asking yourselves that all the time but when you think about the TAM, it feels like it's enormous. >> Well it's global. Everybody shops. Everybody around the world has e-commerce. It depends on how we slice it, of course. If I just looked at the e-commerce industry today, it's at roughly close to two trillion dollars worldwide in e-commerce top line revenue growing to probably three and a half trillion in just the next four or five years. It's growing about 10 percent a year here in the U.S.. Everybody is seeing the stores disappearing from their malls because people are choosing to buy things online rather than walk into a store to do shopping and we're seeing that trend continue at about ten percent growth every year. So that's growing and then at the same time we can look at it and say in terms of how many robots you need, it's a function of how many humans are required to keep up the pace and the robots sort of represent a fraction of that. The robots are designed to hold payload of varying sizes. Our robots are perfectly-sized for things like consumer packaged goods, clothing, medical devices, things like that. They're not designed to carry large building supplies, for example, but we're seeing robots with different form factors all over. But we're looking at probably a multi-billion dollar market over just the next few years. >> Obviously product costs in e-commerce is huge but the labor costs are quite substantial. >> Labor is the single biggest variable cost. >> So you're attacking a portion of that variable cost. >> Absolutely. >> Be interesting to see as this plays out, sports analogy if I may, what inning are we in here? >> I think we just had the coin-flip. >> Okay, so the national anthem just played. >> Actually, we're a little bit further than that because we have established that they serve their purpose well. We already have 10 customers, four of whom are going on record and saying I'm doubling and tripling my productivity and we expect to see this expanded dramatically over the course of just the next year. I'm seeing this grow at a very rapid pace very similar to the early days of the PC. >> Okay. >> So we've had kickoff, I would say, and the ball is moving downfield. >> And how large are you guys? Headcount-wise. >> Our company is about 70 employees. >> Seven-zero? >> Seven-zero. >> And you're VC-funded presumably? >> We're VC-funded. We're angel-funded. Fairly recently, we took on an additional 25 million dollars about six months ago. >> So that was your A round? >> That was our A round. >> Excellent. Who was in? Who was it? Do you remember offhand or could you tell us? >> Actually, most of the round was taken by a combination of around-the-table folks and a company . . . . . .great I'm going to forget my . . . >> Local VC or East Cost, West Coast? >> No, no. West Coast VC. >> But you guys are a Boston-based company. Just north of Boston, right? >> Yes, just north of Boston. >> Well I guess you're now bi-coastal. Kind of like theCUBE. >> Well, we're international. Our largest customers are DHL, which is obviously a German-domiciled company, and GEODIS, which is a French-domiciled company. So we will be moving offshore very quickly. >> Excellent. Well, Karen, thanks so much for coming to theCUBE. >> Thank you for having me Really interesting story and thanks for bringing your robot here behind us. Really appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Alright, you're welcome. Keep right there. Stu and I will be back with our next guest right after this short break. You're watching theCUBE live from LiveWorx in Boston. We'll be right back. (electronic music)

>> Host: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell Technologies World 2018, brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. We are live, day three of Dell Technologies World. I'm Lisa Martin, back hosting with Dave Velante and we're very excited to welcome back to theCUBE Karen Quintos, Chief Customer Officer at Dell EMC. Hey, welcome back. >> Thank you, thank you. It's great to be here with you both. >> Dave: Good to see you again. >> So, we saw you on stage on Monday, recognizing innovators and trailblazers. I always love, as a marketer, when customers are recognized for their achievements because the voice of the customer is the best brand validation that you can get. Talk to us about the customer awards program and highlight a few of the winners that were on stage. >> Well, first of all, I agree with you, Lisa, that the best way to talk about your products and your solutions is to do it through the eyes of the customer, so being able to honor eight of our super most inspiring customers on stage was great. We had hundreds of submissions from our sales teams working with our customers. We really wanted to bring the transformation stories to life. The stories that we were able to tell and the evolution that these customers have done in their industry and their business, was remarkable, so, you think about Ford and the autonomous car. You think about J and J and the work they're doing around securing their customer data. You think about Volvo and Zenuity, and the opportunities that they have had with technology and then some of my favorite, Arrowfarms, >> Love that. >> Teleconnected farm, and they're using technology in Newark, New Jersey, to transform the way that farming is done, conserving our natural resources, using 95% less water, and being able to do it, and, this, the IOT of farming, they're just all super rich and really really great stories. >> And then, you got, I have to ask you to say it, to pronounce, I loved your pronunciation of, Unidad, come on, help me. >> I know it was the first one, right? >> Dave: Unidad de Conocimiento. (laughing) >> Yes, yeah, you got it right, you got it right. >> Okay. >> They're a great story, too, right, I mean, here's an organization in Colombia that is a consolidation of different industries that are providing these services across Colombia and Latin America. They've absolutely figured out how to take a country like Columbia out of the perils of what has happened there with the drug cartel, really thrive on economic prosperity and they're absolutely kicking butt when it comes to the services that they're providing to all of their, their customers, so it's... >> And the state bank of India, was that the other one? >> State bank of India. >> They really had a global representation, it's awesome. >> Well, we looked hard for that. We looked hard for the global representation. We also looked really really hard and gave extra points to companies that had a purpose and a soul, so what they were doing, either with the technology or with the services that they're providing to their end customers, what's that, that purpose side? And, you know, you saw that in a number of these really awesome organizations. >> I'm going to ask you, so I'm going to ask a leadership question. When we first met, I think it was at Dell World. It might have been 2012, I think you were CMO of Dell at the time, so you, like a lot of leaders, you chair hop, that's kind of what you do. So you've now, playing it up. >> But 18 years at Dell, so, you know. >> Right, but, right, so, you take your best leaders and you say, alright, go fix this problem, go fix this problem, go, go inspire some people to do that, so, you've been, and also it's the, is it the chief customer office that you started? >> I did. Well, actually, Michael started it. >> A year and a half ago? >> Right. >> Well, what's that all about? How's the progress going? Give us the update there. >> Well, you know, I have to tell you, I give a ton of credit to Michael because he saw an opportunity in something that was quite new and quite novel, and now you look a year and a half later at what some of our competitors and others are doing. You know, Microsoft just named somebody that sits at their executive leadership team meeting, recognizing that customer relationships are the ultimate prize. Our ability to deliver a great customer experience is going to be the, is the next battleground, and, we've been leading in that area now for a year and a half, so, I'm the first chief customer officer ever at Dell Technologies, and our mission is really to make sure that we continue to push the needle, and drive an even better end to end customer experience. We're doing a lot around taking our top, most important customers, and there's a couple of thousand of them at Dell. I'm not talking about five or six, I'm talking about like thousands of customers that have consistently honored us with their business over the years so how do we put high touch, high loyalty kind of programs in place? The customer awards were a great way to recognize some of those top customers and put them on the stage and tell their story, and the piece that gets me even more excited is what we're doing around our customer data, so, how do we unleash the power of our customer data? How do we integrate it? How do we automate it? How do we put real time predictive analytics? By looking at a customer end to end and being able to figure out if that account is going to go red, because they've had a combination of things, go figure out what are the sources of value for them and unleash those, so, we're living in this AI big data world and living it realtime with, under the remit of the chief customer office. >> And if I heard you correctly, at the leadership team, you're kind of the voice of the customer? >> I am, I am. There's a lot of voices for the customer. >> Well, yeah, because the head, the head of sales are going to be doing that and. >> But they all come with their own bias, right? Or their own lens, right, so, we're actually, my team is a very very strong partner to our heads of sales, because sometimes heads of sales, I mean, they see these things clearly the same way that we do, but sometimes the voice around, well, this isn't working, we need to get better at this, our customers want us to go faster here, tends to get lost in, you know, business performance and close rates and all of that, and we have this unique ability to look at this end to end, and help to really advocate on behalf of customers and really do the right thing for them at the end of the day. >> Independent of the transaction metrics, is what you're saying. >> Yes. >> And it's different perspective, right? We talked about the voice of the customer being an objective brand validation, and you come from a different perspective. One of the things that, we had your CIO on earlier today, Bask, and he said, "We drink our own champagne." And then we had Ravi Pentaconti and he says, we eat our own dog food, we're right next to the therapy dogs. So I like that, but from what you're saying, you're using customer data to help make Dell Technologies differentiated, be able to revolutionize the customer experience, listening to those customers is key. Can you tell us a little bit more about how some of that data is being applied to revolutionize that experience? >> Sure, so, some of it's basic, some of it can be pretty transformational, so, and by the way Baz Guyer has been a significant partner with me on this journey, because he understands it. Listen, Dell's the only technology company out there today that has the rich, direct data that we have, combined with rich channel partner data. So, we have all of it, right? And some of our competitors do everything through the channel, a few of them do everything all direct, we do both. So, we have a huge advantage when it comes to that. We can look at the amalgamation of all of the listening posts that we have for our customers. We have a booth here, where we've brought in hundreds, thousands of customers, and we've asked them a series of questions. We have voice of the field surveys that we do with our sales team, we do NPS surveys, this survey, all of that. We can bring all of that together using big data and insights and we can prioritize the big things that matter. So one of the things that I see a lot of my peers at other companies get caught up in, is they're chasing 15 or 20 things. You know, at any given moment, we're chasing 3 to 5. And we want to move the needle on those 3 to 5 and then we want to get, capture and address the next ones. So that's what I would call kind of the basic, fundamental pieces. What I think is exciting, is, we can now take a view of a customer, a complete view of that customer, we know what they bought, we know who they bought it from, we know the number of escalations they've had, we know what their delivery performance has been, we know how many times they've changed the AE on the account we know what their corporate responsibility priorities are, and we can look at that in totality, and we can put an outreach kind of program in place for them, or, we can look at it and go, this one is about to go south, and we need to put our best people to go call on the account and help the account executive, who in a lot of ways sees this also, and help to figure out how to turn it around. >> So, and you can do that across the integrated company today? >> We have piloted across the integrated set of companies, and in the Q3 period of time, working closely with Baz, we're going to automate this and turn it into like an Amber Alert, early warning type of system, so that we can help the AE and our customers before things happen. And the other piece that we can do, is we know, we know the ten levers of customer value. And, you know, for the most part we do those generally well. But in some cases, some of the reasons that our customers come back to us is because we've discovered things at their account that they didn't even know was happening. So we're, we've got this power of big data sitting right in front of us with Chief Customer Office that can really, really light it up. >> Well the other thing you said is the account teams know when there's a problem, but the executive teams, they have limited resources. So you don't know where to prioritize. >> Right, and some of our AE's have more than one account. >> Dave: Yeah, right. >> So, you know, some of them are handling 20 accounts. So where this thing becomes really interesting is as you think about scaling it, down through the organization, not just at the top ones. The top accounts, they're one to, one-to-one kind of engagement, and those types of things. It gets really interesting when you start to get below that and you start to really use it in a more scaleable way. >> Plus, as you go more channel, right, and you go more to edge, you get all these complexities beyond just product portfolio. You're dealing with that stuff, but then the channel complexities, and then the new markets that are emerging, particularly in edge, and the channels that that's going to precipitate. >> Right, right. >> To me, this is even more important. >> So 18 months into this new role that Michael Dell created, lots of accomplishments, it sounds like you're really leveraging it to partner with customers to help, not just them, but also your internal teams, be able to identify where there needs to be escalations. What are some of the things that you're opening up with respect to diversity and inclusion, because that's also under your purview? >> That's right, that's right Lisa. What I think is really interesting is how much our sales teams now is coming to my team, to use some of these other platforms to open doors and have conversations with CIOS that they could not get before. So I'll give you a perfect case in point. The sales leader in the U.K. came to me and said, "I have a particular account in London, "I haven't really been able to make any progress, "the CIO is a woman, their head of infrastructure is a woman "you're going to be there in London, would you send her a note "and let's have a conversation around some of the things "that we have some mutual interest in." Technology being one, as well as getting more women involved in to technology. So we had this conversation, an hour in, she said, you know, if Dell would host a session with other female CIOs in the U.K area, I will open up my Rolodex and we will get other women to come. Two months later, we did it, in London in January. I was there, Michael was there, our heads of sales were there, we had about 15 or 20 of these super impressive women in the public sector, the private sector, higher education universities, big brands, we just did a similar one here at Dell Technologies World. We just hosted, as a matter of fact yesterday, 20 women, we actually had a couple of men that were there, too, all just coming together talking about areas that we deeply care about. How do we get more women and minorities interested in these technology fields. >> And here we are in 2018, this is still such an issue, and it's something that's still surprising when we get to see females on stage in keynotes, like yourself, like Allison Doo who was just chatting with you, Dave, and Stu. It's still, we're actually kind of going, hey, we're starting from a deficit whereas 20 30 years ago we were kind of going up. What are some of the things that you hear from your male peers in terms of the importance of showing multiple generations of girls and women you do belong here, if this is something that you're interested in, do not be afraid. >> Yeah, what I find remarkable in these conversations is there's clearly a number of key themes that are emerging. One of the biggest ones is, this is an economic imperative. You think about, there's going to be 1.1 million jobs in the computer science technology field over the next ten years. 45% of those jobs are going to be filled by U.S. college grads. It's a gap 55%. Women that are graduating in the area of computer science and technology is down, significantly, from like 30% down to like 18% right now. You are simply not going to have enough of what has been the traditional workforce in order to fill these jobs. So, that's one, and that's one that we at Dell care about a lot. Second piece that we care about, is, we just know that when you bring together a diverse group of individuals, always get to a better answer for your customers, you do. Research has proven it, we can prove it, we can see it, all of that. And then the third piece is, I just think women bring unique skills in a collaborative global context that can really bust through some of the big, complex, thorny opportunities that corporations are working through. >> So, ladies, let me jump in here, if I may. So there's two sides to this coin is, one is yes, we've got to get young women excited, but the other is you've got to promote women to leadership positions. Obviously Dell does a good job of that, clearly IBM gets high marks for that, I mean one of the sad things about seeing Meg Whitman go was that you had a dynamic woman leader. Maybe not the greatest speaker in the world, but one-on-one, super strong, and I think an inspiration to a lot of young women. And I think our industry clearly, Silicon Valley, Boston, just not doing enough. Particularly in smaller companies, larger companies I think do a better job, so your thoughts on that? >> My thought on that is it's a hard problem, but at its very basic, it's actually quite simple. And these are the things that we're doing at Dell, it takes commitment from the top, and at all levels of the company to make change, drive the accountability, set goals. To your point, go place some bets on the younger generation up-and-coming diverse talent, put them in roles, and then surround them with a support system that they need to be successful. And, we've done that, you know, Michael has done that, he did it with me. When, six or seven years ago, he called me and said how'd ya like to be Dell's next Chief Marketing Officer? And then you know, called me 18 months ago and said, how'd ya like to be Dell's first Chief Customer Officer. You need people that see things in that talent and you need that commitment. You need a culture that supports that. You need more role models. You need to get rid of and totally eliminate the harassment and the bullying and the old boys kind of club. You've got to create places where women and minorities feel like they can be themselves. Culture plays a huge, huge, huge role. And then, you know, communities play a huge role. So we have a very, very growing and thriving employee resource group set of networks. We have 14 of them across Dell and Dell EMC. And they're just a safe haven for where people of color, women, LGBT, veterans, disabilities can come and just be themselves, and be with others that they feel safe with. So, some level, it's not that hard. It really does take the commitment and the wherewithal and the sense of urgency that says we've got to fix it, and we have to fix it now. >> I feel like 2017 was a milestone year, I'd love to know what your thoughts are. You had that incident in the tech industry, with that poor misguided soul from Google who decided to write this Jerry Maguire memo and just brought a lot of attention to the issue, and then the #MeToo movement, so I feel like 2018 is a more optimistic year, but still, a lot of that stuff that you were talking about goes on, and it needs to be exposed. Again, I think the #MeToo movement brings that out and a lot of people are thinking uh-oh, wow. This really has to stop. Your thoughts, do you agree with that, or do you just think, no Dave, we're still way too far away. >> I think what #MeToo has done is opened a lot of eyes around how pervasive all of this is. I know, in the case of Dell, we have a zero tolerance zero tolerance policy when it comes to all of that. What was so shocking to us is how pervasive it still was in either other companies or other industries. To me, what is encouraging now, is the conversation is going beyond harassment, to aggression and bullying and culture and some of the things that have happened over the years, and by the way, it happens across all genders. There's articles that are being written now about women that are bullying and have bullied, so. This is something that all corporations need to be setting the tone around what are the right behaviors and those types of things, and we've been doing that now, for years. The other piece that I feel very strongly about, is, if men retreat from this conversation, that is a huge problem, a huge problem. Leaders like you have to be part of it. They have to be part of, this has to change. I want to be part of the solution. I have daughters, or wives, or nieces or whatever it is that I know that they have just as much capability as boys and men do, and my job is to help them. So I love it, I love the way that men and women are both coming together and engaging in this conversation. And we are seeing progress. I think everybody wants it to be faster, but we are seeing progress. Hey, yesterday at this CIO round table that we have, one of my favorite quotes, we got into this whole conversation around, well what is the next generation feeling? And one of the women that was there said, "hey, my daughter told me three weeks ago, "you know mom, she goes, I really think, "to me it's really simple. "I want to be a mom and I want to be a CEO." It's that simple. >> Wow, I love that. So in the last few seconds or so, Karen, you've made a tremendous amount of progress impact as the Chief Customer Officer in 18 months. What are you looking forward to accomplishing the rest of 2018? >> Well I think the thing that gets me really energized, too is how we're applying our technology in the area of corporate responsibility and innovation. So, you know, you saw our plastic bottle demo that we had here, that fish moves from one event to another, we got really serious around how do we play a really key role in stopping the plastics from entering the ocean? So there's 86 million metric tons of plastic that is in the ocean today. By the year 2050, there will be more pieces of plastic in the ocean than there are fish. You have to stop the plastic from entering the ocean, which is a pilot project that we did about a year ago, and we recently announced an expansion of that called next wave, where we have our customers that are partnering with us to figure out how do we scale that? So, General Motors, Herman Miller, are just a couple of examples. And then, at CES this year, we announced an effort that we're doing around how do you extract gold out of motherboards, and using that, and recycling that back into our motherboards and using it in jewelry manufacturing. So we partnered with a jewelry manufacturer out of the West Coast, Nikki Reed. She is creating this jewelry, these rings, through recycled gold, and it's 99% more environmentally friendly. So, I love the fact that we can use our technology to innovate, change the world, use, reuse the stuff that we're putting into the economy. So, scaling these is a big, big priority for me in 2018. >> Dave: Awesome. >> Wow, momentum is the only word I can think of to describe what you've achieved, what you're doing so far. Karen, thank you so much for stopping by and chatting with Dave and me, and congratulations on what you've accomplished, and we look forward to talking to you next year. >> Thanks, thank you. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE we are live, finishing up day three at Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas, I am Lisa Martin for Dave Vellante, thanks for watching.

>> Announcer: From the Computer Museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE covering ACG Silicon Valley GROW! Awards brought to you by ACG Silicon Valley. >> Welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the 14th Annual ACG SV GROW! Awards. There's about 300 people coming together. It's their once-a-year big event for the awards. They do about two events a month for the balance of the year. And we're really excited to have one of the speakers on. She's Dr. Karen Lojeski, the founder and CEO of Virtual Distance International. Karen, great to meet you. >> It's great to be here, Jeff. Thanks for having me. >> Absolutely, so virtual distance. What does virtual distance mean? >> Well, that's a long story but the short answer is virtual distance is actually a measure that I discovered that basically describes what's lost when the human being gets translated through our devices and it actually shows up as an emotional and social detachment that grows unconsciously when we are constantly talking through mediated communications. >> Jeff: Right. >> And when virtual distance is high, it has a very significant impact on things we care about as business leaders. But we can predict virtual distance, we can reduce it, we can manage it, and therefore we can improve performance while maximizing the technology but minimizing the impact it's having on human beings. >> So before we jump into that, so virtual distance can be really close physical distance, right? >> Karen: Yeah. >> I think I saw something >> Exactly >> in one of your research, doing some research where people are sending IMs and emails to somebody who's sitting right across the way. >> Yeah. >> So it's just so prolific because we're so used to communicating via these devices. >> That's right. I mean we see it all the time. You go out to restaurant to have dinner and you and I could be sitting just this close and both of us are doing this, there's virtual distance right at that table. >> Right. Right, or the kids not doing what what they're supposed to >> That's right. >> And you text them, "Hey, look up." You know? >> Yeah. >> "Let's pay attention." >> And then it's actually affecting how that child develops or how we feel about each other >> Right. >> but it's invisible. >> So, how do you measure it and what are some of the really key indicators that leaders should be looking for, measuring, keeping track of to try to minimize some of the negative impacts of this? >> Well, we measure through the Virtual Distance Index Assessment and our clients take that and then we generate analytics reports and we actually give them predictive solutions on how to reduce it so that they can impact performance in a positive way. >> So what are some of the examples? Some of these cases you can share that where it just went way one way >> Yeah. >> or way the other way? >> I'm glad you brought up, it can sort of be, virtual distance can be even as close as we are and also between people who are thousands and thousands of miles apart. And we've also seen virtual distance very low between people who sit oceans away and who've never met. For example, I had a large financial services company that actually had 90% of their employees clock in to the same location every day and we went in and measured virtual distance and we found that it had caused multimillion dollar losses in a strategic IT project even though the people on that project were literally as close together as you and I. So, we were able to show that. We knew exactly where it was coming from and we could prescribe solutions to reduce it which they did >> Right. >> And they saw immediate bumps in performance. >> So what are some of the things you can do because we're so addicted to these things? The stats of the number of times we touch them and look at them, it's mind-boggling actually. So what are some of the things you tell people to reduce that virtual distance? >> Well, I actually start by telling them that what they have to realize is that when they're talking to the screen, they're actually talking to themselves. And I know it sounds crazy but that's actually how we operate as human beings. >> Right, right. >> So just by becoming aware that that's what we're doing actually pulls people back and makes them stop and think, "Do I really know what this person means?" Because in essence what happens is we lose all the context we need as human beings to actually figure out what people really mean. So I work with leaders to bring that context back and constantly be explicitly referring to it because unconsciously it's all disappeared behind these virtual curtains. >> Right, and consciously we actually see evidence of it all the time. Email I think is one of the worst communication vehicles of all time. It's certainly convenient but so many times the nuance is not carried through. The intention or the degree of pissed-off-ness, I'll just use which is probably not a vocabulary word but that's okay. >> That's okay. >> It doesn't really come through either way over-positive or way over-negative depending on a whole bunch of factors when you read that or just bad choice of words. >> That's right. >> Or unintentional affect onto those words. >> That's right. >> It's not a great form of communication. >> Well, I would add to that that it actually is a good form of communication but in certain circumstances. So what Virtual Distance analytics, measurable, quantifiable things tell us is that email is great for things like, "Jeff, let's have lunch at 12 and meet "at the Computer History Museum." or, "Here's the file you wanted. "Please have a look and give me a call." It is actually a very good tool for things like that. But what we do all the time is we try to explain ourselves in email and that is not a good use of email because as you're saying, what happens is since we have no context we use our own context and that's not good because it's usually wrong. >> Usually wrong. >> And then we misinterpret everything and people think other people are just jerks or something when in fact it's really just virtual distance. >> Now what about Zoom and Webex and the virtual meeting rooms that are so prolific now as an alternative to the actual phone call? Do those things work from your point of view? Do they not work, are they a nice substitute and better than the alternative with all these distributed teams? What's your take on video conferencing? >> Yeah, so the first thing I would say is virtual distance is actually not about the technology, it's about the people, so we have to recenter ourselves on that notion. But things like Zoom and Webex and things can be helpful but only if they work properly when we need them. If they don't, one of the ways to reduce virtual distance in the operational sense is we need to have plan A, plan B, plan D, plan C if that technology goes down because the problem with it is it's not always reliable and you know, you've been on calls, right? >> Right. >> Where if there's a problem, it takes about 10 seconds maybe before you're off doing something else while someone is trying to fix it and that actually adds to virtual distance. >> Still one of my favorite YouTube videos, and very sad that it's still so relevant is the joke one about the Webex meeting or the virtual meeting, especially at the end where it's like, "Bob, you've been here the whole time?" >> Yeah (laughs). >> And it's still the same. It's so much wasted time trying to get the thing to work. So I want to wrap it up with what are the consequences from leadership skills? What should leaders be thinking about? It's the world we live in. We're still connected to these things. What are some of the concrete things that they can do to reduce the virtual distance and have better comms amongst their people? >> Yeah, so the first thing we have to do is to know, I've been collecting data on this for 14 years, more, and virtual distance is now everywhere. It's not a matter of geographic distance as we said in the beginning. First, they have to understand that they have to be managing it all the time. The second thing is that there are issues created operationally day to day that we have to always be on the watch for readiness instants or these technologies failing. But the big thing they have to understand is that they things that cause the most significant and negative impact to performance are the things about us as human beings that lie underneath the surface and that disappear behind virtual curtains. So what leaders need to do is make those explicit in everything they do and we have specific tactics on how to do that so that everybody can see each other in a deeper way because when virtual distance is high we get much lower trust by 90% and it's not just lower trust, it's distrust. >> Jeff: Right. >> So if we reduce virtual distance, we increase trust, we get better performance and it's immediately seen by executives all over the world. >> And trust is one of these foundational things. >> Absolutely. >> That if you don't have trust it just crushes everything. >> No, and without giving away what I'm about to go talk about tonight, I can tell you that we're at the point where we have so much data that statistically speaking, high virtual distance is the statistical equivalent of distrust. So if we lower virtual distance, we statistically get the equivalent of strong trust. >> All right, well if you want to see Karen speak, you got to go watch her key note or I think you've got books and all kinds of great, great research around this. >> Yeah, and they can visit us at virtualdistance.com and all kinds of good places. >> All right, she's Dr. Karen Lojeski, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from ACG SV. Thanks for watching. >> Karen: Thank you. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: Silicon Angle Media presents TheCUBE! Covering Alibaba Cloud's annual conference. Brought to you by Intel. Now, here's John Furrier.... >> Hi, I'm John Furrier of Silicon Angle Media based in the United States in Silicon Valley in Palo Alto, California. I'm also co-host of TheCUBE where we go out through the event and extract the signal from the noise. We're here in China, we are here with a business development director of America's for Alibaba Cloud International, Karen Lu. Thanks for taking the time. >> Karen: Sure, absolutely. >> So, it's exciting for us from the US to come to China to hear the (mumbles), but I'm blown away by the culture. It's not a B-to-B tech conference. It's not boring. It's exciting. Talk about the Alibaba Cloud. What's so special about Alibaba Cloud? >> Sure. Alibaba Cloud is actually the encumbered cloud provider in China, and further more we extend our reach into global market since two years ago, and our strategy for globalize our cloud services is really to bridge up the business communities from overseas to China, from US to China, from US to Asia-Pacific, and to connect the rest of the world as well. Our goal is set up the platform to enable our enterprise customers, our SMEs, small and medium customer base be able to utilize our platform to develop their applications, their vertical solutions to benefit their end users. >> Alibaba Cloud has come such a long way since 2009. So much has happened, Alibaba grew up as a company. It's not just e-commerce. It's intersecting e-commerce, entertainment and web services, which is the magical formula that consumers want. They don't want just a business solution or just do e-commerce. You guys have weaved that formula together. What's special about that formula, and why is Alibaba important to the folks in the United States? >> I think it's all about the ecosystem and what makes the people, the people's community, and business community benefit from the services we provided to the world, right? Not just the e-commerce platform that have been running for the past 18 years, but also entertaining, to the map services, location services, the data services like Ali Cloud is providing, and be able to put out those elements together, and benefit people's lives, and help to improve users' experience from globally. >> It's been impressive here in China. Now as you go outside of China in the globalization plan, what's the strategy, what's the tactics? What are you going to do? >> I think our value is to, as I mentioned earlier, bridge up the business communities, especially to enable the outside world benefit a huge market from Mainland China and rest of the world as well, so I think I think our key value is to enable the business communities and be able to help them reach out outside the world. That being said, one of our key globalization strategy is to be able to help the SME's, small and medium companies to benefit the new technologies to the level that they won't be able to get in the past. It's the old technologies. >> John: What's some of the statistics or facts, fun facts, or Alibaba stats in the US, North America, your presence there, can you share what the current situation is? >> Sure. I think things about two years ago, when we extend our reach in two your market, we now have more than two thousand customers from individual to startup, to medium enterprises, and to some very large enterprises in the world as well. People are from the communities get to know Alibaba Cloud and get to know Alibaba not only provide to the e-commerce services, the EWTP platform to the world. We're also brought the data technologies. We also provided the technologies to the world that benefit their reach to the world. >> Everyone talks about data-driven. You guys have a very specific data formula, data fueling, not just getting the data from engagement data and user data, but fueling data in for user experience. The question is as you go outside of China into the US, certainly you have a developer ecosystem, you have a business ecosystem. >> Correct. >> How do the folks benefit locally in the US, to our business, do they have have access to China? Is it the services, is it the technology? Can you share the benefits to the developers and to the businesses? >> Sure absolutely. We ran a program called the China Connect, and that's the program we help the business communities you have, from the IVs, the independent after vendors, from the sales providers and developers' opportunity of communities to be able to develop their applications and software, and bring those benefits to China market. Through this process, it's hard to navigate a brand new market, especially in China, without knowing the people, the communities, the culture, the business practices here, right? We actually provide a platform, a program to help them to get to know the market, and help them to land their business in China through this program, and help them, of course, expertise their business roles in China. >> A lot of people want to know what's inside their cloud. It's one of those things where this mysterious cloud. The security's a concern, but partnerships are critical. Talk about what's inside your cloud. Intel's a big partner. What's the Alibaba-Intel partnership like? >> It's a fantastic partnership. We have been established over the past years, and Intel is one of our strategic alliance in the marketplace. They provide us a lot from hardware to technology, in terms of helping us to establish the platform with the business communities, not only China, but globally, so we really appreciate Intel's partnership, and moving forward we are looking for more reciprocal partnership with Intel to be able to form more strategic partnership to be able to benefit the business communities, and people's communities as well. >> For the folks in the US, I'll say that this is an amazing conference. It's got a million people here. I don't even know the numbers. I'm sure you have the numbers handy, but it's a mix of developers. You have a crowded house here with developers, but you also have some business people. You have key partners. I saw some US companies here. What's the vibe at the event? What's the feeling here? You got a music festival three nights. It's not a boring tech conference. Is that by design? Share the stats, how many people are here? >> I guess this is the excitement of this, the conference, annually, we actually invite a lot of our customers from US, and the rest of the world to join us to share the excitement from China, to share the experience from Alibaba. Just like Jack said, the vision for us is to make people's lives more healthier and happier. The 2H strategy from us, right, is not just the hardworking. It's also the fun. It's also the the excitement for us to share these technologies, to share this platform, and to enable people to enjoy this technology. >> The scene I see here is interesting. I've seen at Apple, in the late 90's when Steve Jobs transformed that company, he had the vision of technology meeting liberal arts. That became their calling card. You guys have art and science come in together. It's not just scientists and developers. You have artists here because user experience is super important >> exactly. >> Is that part of the culture as science and art comes together because Jack is a charismatic leader. He's a culptive personality. Young Company. >> Karen: It is. >> Share the culture. >> It is. Just like Jack and other topic executives has been sharing with the community, we want to make sure technology is inclusive elements to everyone in the community, not just for the programmers or developers, or the very high-tech companies, right? It should benefit the entire society, and fun, of course, always as part of it to make people's life happier, and to make users' experience more satisfied. >> You had a career in international technology industry for a while. You see how it's played out in the past. We're in a different now. It's a global world. The internet has opened up a lot of good things, and sometimes not so good things. The US have the selection in fake news, but as the culture starts connecting, a new kind of normal is evolving. How does Alibaba see themselves in this new world order? >> I think we see ourselves as the enabler and platform to bring the technology, and bring the people, and bring the happiness together to benefit everyone in the world, not just the tech sectors, or just the e-commerce sectors, or just one of the single verticals. We are trying to bring the technologies, and the enablement, the platform that everybody can enjoy. That's the core value for us as the inclusive technology provider. >> For the folks in the United States that will see this video, share something that they may not know about Alibaba. Might be the first time in getting to see some of the culture and some of the commentary, what should they know about Alibaba as you guys move in and become global? They're going to see some services. Is it the services, is it the people, the culture, what should they engage with Alibaba at cloud? How should they see Alibaba Cloud? >> First of all, we are one of the top three cloud providers in the world. If you look at the latest (speaks in foreign language) released a couple of weeks ago, and that's why globalization is critical for us, and we want to be able to reach out to the overseas communities, and we want to build up the trust and the confidence with the local business communities, like the rating, where in US market for instance. For us, become the global family is critical for us, and this is our vision to bring the values to them as well. >> That's fantastic, spectacular culture, and the ecosystem is just now growing, open-source software is growing exponentially, global fabric of communities developing. It is opportunities for US companies and developers to access China. Talk a little bit more about the potential that entrepreneurs and businesses could have in this global framework. >> Sure. The beauty of cloud is actually the ecosystem. It's not just one company or one vertical. For us, for instance, we try to enable the small business, especially those startup business by offering them the free resources from our infrastructure at global level, be able to enable those young peoples, especially, to create their own ideas, to be innovative, and to utilize our resources, be able to access the technologies like the way the big companies has been invested into. This is, I think, as an example for us to commit to this global market. I think for us to be part of that family, especially in Silicon Valley is critical because of the technologies, because of innovations, and because of the mindset in Silicon Valley. That's why we set up our R&D centers, we set up our frontend back office in Silicon Valley as well be able to part of that reach in, and not only to learn the technologies, but sense the mindset in our reach in. I think that's critical for us as well as the Chinese headquarter of the company, but with a global vision. >> And where in Silicon Valley is your office? >> We're headquartered in San Mateo, California for US operations. >> And entrepreneurship is changing, and it's global. It's exciting. What's the benefit to entrepreneurship? Certainly, ventured capitalists are highly interested in the China market. They've been in here for a while. Is it coming together? >> Yes, it is indeed. Actually, not only we funding a lot of the new tech companies, we also been able to help them to find their partners to build up a extended ecosystem. In Silicon Valley, in West Coast reach ins, as well as extend from the inner US, in mid-western reach in, Chicago for instance, to New York coastal areas as well. >> I noticed on the sponsorship list and partner list in your ecosystem, a logo that is new, but it's super important in the US. It's growing like crazy. The Cloud Native Compute Foundation's here, and that's the Linux Foundation. They're partnering with you. The cloud native developer market is evolving very, very quickly. They're different than the old classic IT developers. A new generation, it's not IT anymore. It's data that's driving it, and it's open-source. How do you guys engage with that community because, clearly, they win with you. >> Yes. We're actually working with a lot of open-source partners like Docker, (mumbles), and others, be able to help them to bring the communities to bring their customers onto our infrastructures and create this platform to help the developer communities to develop their applications. It's a lot of vertical focus, the solution department tasks right now. >> Excuse me, you mentioned small, medium size enterprises and business, but the big enterprises are transforming as well. How do you see Alibaba helping them because they're going cloud native? They're going private cloud on premise. You have quantum computing. You even have IOT. You have a lot of things. How's the digital transformation message for enterprises and for small businesses that don't want to pay the technology tax. >> I think for large enterprises, the most strategy you have been seeing from the marketplace, one is multi-cloud strategy. People need redundancy. People want to reduce the dependencies for one or two cloud providers, and we work with other cloud providers in the community to provide interval qualities to support this multi-cloud strategies. On the other side, couple years back, people didn't know what's in a cloud. And then, people rush to cloud for everything. And now, people come back and review the strategies and find out hybrid-cloud strategy is more suitable for large enterprises. They have their on-prem architect and infrastructure. Meanwhile, they move some of their applications to cloud. It's a good combination of on-prem physical infrastructure cloud topology. We have been seeing a trend for both for large enterprise clients. For small business, especially for small business, they don't have the upfront huge investment paying to the infrastructure, and we provide them the instant access to the infrastructure, not only from computing storage network and the database perspective, more importantly from security perspective. >> The Alibaba Infrastructure services, I saw a part of the display here, very prominent in that equation. You guys have the scale. What can you share about the under-the-hood? What's the technology look like? What's the engine of Alibaba Cloud? How mature is it? What's to do? Where's the strategic direction? Block-chain is important, but now, that's changing everything It's all this new wave's coming. >> Just like the (speaks in foreign language) indicated two months ago, if you look at the overall qualifications to be a world lead cloud provider, we're number four, after AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, but if you look at market share and revenue, we're number three. That being said, we actually provide a very comprehensive technology, and the infrastructure to the business communities, and people's communities. For instance, from the global footprint perspective, right now, we have 14 reach ins, pretty much cover all the major market in the world. By end of this year into beginning of next year, we're going to activate two to three reach ins, make it 16 to 17 reach ins globally, that we can offer the global cloud solutions for the big and small businesses. >> That's exciting, and Silicon Valley certainly import our home base. Are you guys hiring, is there expanding? Share a little bit of a public service announcement on what's going on in the Silicon Valley area. You guys hiring, looking for engineers, what kind of people are you looking for? >> Yes, (laughs) great question. Actually, we are hiring, and we're looking for talented professionals join us from those marketing, business development, to cloud architect, to technical account management, to marketing premises, so we want to build up a business that we can truly build up the trust towards the local business communities. That's why we hire a lot of local talented young professionals, and to help them to be able to fit in to the culture, the unique culture of Alibaba, and also be able to contribute to this journey, very exciting journey... >> China has always been big. Everyone in the United States knows. The numbers are big here in terms of mobile deployment, app size. A lot of the people in the US look at China and say, "Wow, we can collaborate with China." It's a very nice distribution system, but they got to take care of their needs at home. >> Exactly. >> This is a big part of the undercurrent we're hearing. How do you guys help? >> Globalization is always critical for any business, even for some small business. Just like Jack Ma said this morning at his speech, even for small business, they need to globalize. They need to reach out to more business communities, and more customers. For us, because of the huge market in China, because of the EWTP platform we set up globally, because Alibaba Cloud Infrastructure and our global footprint, we're actually being able to help our customers, not only access the infrastructure from cloud perspective, but also help them to leverage our ecosystem from different business unit, and more partnership, to be able to help them to expertise their business in China and globally. >> That's exciting. Finally, developers are a big hot button. Everyone always says, I hear comments like, "We have to own the developer community," not that you could own the developer. No one wants to be owned, but what they mean is they want to win over the hearts and minds of developers. A lot of competition, and developers want programmable infrastructure. In dev ops world, that's called dev ops. That is really the new normal in developer community. How do you guys attack that developer market? >> We actually want to enable the developers community, not own or just win over. We want constantly enable them with the new platform, the new business models, the new programs that we can bring them together. That's our mission, enablement. >> Congratulations on a spectacular formula. Thanks for having us here, TheCUBE and Silicon Angle, and thanks for your time. >> Thank you so much for the opportunity. >> Karen Lu here in China with TheCUBE. Exclusive coverage in China, bringing the stories of the most important trends and tech in Alibaba Cloud. Really changing the game with their formula of e-commerce, entertainment, and entertainment. This is not B-to-B, boring to boring. It's exciting, in a music festival. 60 thousand people are here at this conference. Developers in the world watching, I'm John Furrier with Silicon Angle. Thanks for watching. (techno music)

(upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We're having the Cube conversation in our Palo Alto studio. The conference season is taking a little bit of a break, so now we can do interviews in the studio which is a little bit more comfortable situation, and we're really excited to have first time guest Karen Steele. She's the GVP of corporate marketing at Marketo. Karen, welcome. >> Thank you, very happy to be here Jeff. >> Absolutely. So, you are talking about something that I've seen in the research coming up to this about engagement. And right, everybody talks about engagement. What is engagement? People are trying to measure engagement, >> Karen: Yep. >> But then it seems like so many people are still stuck though on the mass broadcasting kind of numbers. The want big numbers which is a very different number than engagement. So You guys are getting really into this. Obviously Marketo a leader in marketing innovation and marketing platform. Is this new? Is it renewed focus? I mean, how do you guys deal with this whole concept of engagement? >> Yeah, so thanks. It's a great opening question because we are passionate about engagement. And in fact, we believe that today, people, human beings want to be engaged with as opposed >> to marketed to. >> Right. >> So our CEO created a vision of this idea called The Engagement Economy. And the idea is that everybody and everyone is connected. Today with the digital transformation happening around us, you can touch people, touch customers anywhere and everywhere throughout their journey. You know, before they buy from you, during the sales process and post sale. So, it's all about creating experience and we think the way to do that is through engagement. >> But it's kind of interesting 'cuz the dichotomy is we're in this Google world, right? And the Google world is, you know, build great engineering, people will come. It's all about the data. It's cookies and where have you been and you know, recommendation engines. And more of this kind of, feels more machine-y And not necessarily engage-y, Which is more of a person to person than necessarily a machine to person. >> Karen: Correct. >> But yet, even the person to person is still supported by and enabled by a lot of this technology. So it's this inter, intertwining of both kind of a person to machine, or machine to person, >> excuse me. >> Yep. >> Versus really connecting with, whether it be the brand, Whether it be a person that represents >> the brand >> Right. >> So how, how do you see this kind of evolving and how can people not get too wrapped up >> in the machine-y part? >> Right. >> And actually build a relationship, another word instead of engagement, with their customers, or even take it another step, with their constituents, if you will? >> Yes. >> And their community, >> even more passionate. >> Yes. Yeah, so I think it's interesting you brought up the machine aspect, 'cuz there's sort of a positive and negative. So if you think about the space we're in, it's called Marketing Automation. And it does feel sort of process oriented and machine-like. But at the end of the day, marketing has always been about the human being and building that relationship. And technology has just simply helped facilitate that and do it through multiple channels like never before. But it still comes down to the marketer's primary role is to connect with, in a personalized way, in an authentic way and create a relationship. A relationship that's going to generate advocacy for the brand, that's going to ultimately generate revenue for their business. So it's really important that engagement is about the human being and it's about how you can create positive experience throughout the lifecycle of the journey. >> Right, it's interesting you say experiences too, 'cuz we've seen a huge shift in into customers wanting really more of an experience or an engagement that's potentially tied to a brand. But you look at great experience marketers like Red Bull, >> Yep. >> To pull one out. >> That you know, buying and drinking a Red Bull, the way they've positioned that in the marketplace is really being part of this really cool thing. It's visually stimulating, it's you know, a lot of >> adrenaline, >> Yes. >> and a lot of cool stuff. And then the other one I always think of is Harley Davidson. And the passion that that community has around that motorcycle. But it's so much more than driving that motorcycle, >> You know? >> Yep. >> It's the open road and it's all the accessories and stuff that they put. You know people brand it on their arm. >> A lot of people. >> Right. >> So, in terms of you know how, how does that translate with newer brands? How do you try to get that type of connection with your customers, hold it, and I think you've mentioned in some of the things I've looked up for the interview you know, really thinking about the lifetime value of the customer as opposed to a transactional relationship? >> Right. >> That's a one time shot. >> Yeah, I mean a lot of the examples you, you just gave are very experiential in terms of the physical aspects of seeing, and feeling, and touching a brand. But a lot of digital marketing is, is not physical. And so you're communicating with people through a lot of channels that that are bits and bytes, and they're not looking somebody in the eye. And so I think being in touch with your brand and the messages you want to deliver. Making sure they're relevant and they carry your brand promise forward, and they connect with what that person wants to hear at exactly the right times. So for us engagement is, is about being smart in terms of reaching the person. If I use a social, or excuse me, a mobile device and that's my preferred way of communicating with you, I want you to reach me through that device, and not try and get me through direct mail or an email campaign. I might not pay attention to any of those things. So having that intelligence about your customer, or your prospect, or your partner, or even your employee is going to give you a better option to engage with them and create that one to one while you're still marketing one to many. >> Right. >> In terms of >> the actual relationship. >> And the other challenge a marketer obviously has too, is, I don't know who said it, we do too many shows. But you know, when it's done well, when suggestive selling is done well and recommendation engines are working well, it's magical. >> Yep. >> Right? >> It's what I want, when I want and it's presented to me. >> Yep. >> If it's done poorly, >> it's creepy, right? >> Yep. >> I don't necessarily >> know that you want to know that that was, you know what I was looking at. And obviously the target example which now is way far in the rear view mirror. But you know just because you have all the data, doesn't mean you can use all the data. And the challenge and the nuance of knowing what to use, when and where. >> Right. >> Well now you have >> so much more, kind of ammunition in >> your quiver if you will. >> Yep. >> Is a whole different type of a challenge. >> Yeah I think it's, it's a good point, and I think you're right. You don't want it to feel like big brother and somebody's following or stalking you, that's the last thing you want. But I think paying attention to the response, paying attention to a personalized message, testing that message, seeing what comes back, and helping execute the next thing that you do. And so there's sort of a fine line, but I definitely think the marketers are using the analytics today and it's just getting smarter and smarter. And we're going to talk about adaptive coming up here, >> I hope? >> Right, right. >> And you know, the big buzz right now which is AI, you know, what does AI mean for engagement? And we have some ideas around that >> as well. >> Right. >> Okay, so you broke it down to >> the big threes >> Yep. >> of the engagement economy. So the art of story telling. >> Karen: Yep. >> Adaptive engagement, >> as you just mentioned. >> Yep. >> And then advocacy. >> Karen: Yep. >> Which you talked about earlier before. So let's, let's kind of touch base on each one of those >> things. >> Great. >> How do you define 'em? Why are they important? So start out with the story telling. >> Yeah so it comes back to what we've already been talking about, which is the one to one relationship. Understanding who you're talking to. Crafting a message that, that resonates. Having that message be front and central to what your brand value is. You know, we are more prone to buy from somebody if we value their brand. You might make choices and pay a price premium if you care about a brand or how a brand interacts with you. So crafting the art of story telling is the right message, making sure it resonates, understanding your audience, and connecting it to the brand so you can make that >> emotional connection. >> Right, right. >> So how do you >> So, done, done well, >> you can do a very good job. >> Right, and it's always interesting to me, I always think, I watch sports on TV, right? I always think of the poor guy that just got assigned, I got to do a car commercial. Like, how many car commercials have been created up till now? And I got to think of a new one. >> Right. >> But, >> But you know, kind of traditional, kind of high end TV broadcast commercials are really story telling. I mean, some of them are fascinating what they can actually convey in a 30 second >> ad. >> Right. >> Or whether it's a Coke commercial and makes you cry at the end. So that, that, and that format has, has pretty well developed. But how are you seeing it translated into all these various digital formats and really short engagements, or it's a Snapchat, or it's (snaps fingers) you know a quick hit on Instagram, or it's a Facebook post. >> Karen: Yep. >> How are you seeing some of that story telling evolve into these different kind of communication mediums, if you will? >> Yep. >> And, and you >> you have so many that you have >> to >> Right. >> Jeff: to manage, right? A huge challenge. >> Yeah, and again, I think it's the authenticity as I said, but also the personalized nature of it. I want to deliver a message that matters to you. Where you want to receive that message. I might want to deliver something different to somebody else through an entirely different channel. So, but crafting the story, having the story be based on what you stand for as a brand, and the value for that customer, or whoever the message is, you're attempting to land it on >> Right. >> is still foundational and fundamental. And I think that a lot of the marketing, because technology's automated so much, we've lost a little bit of the art of the story. And really making the story connect back to you as a brand so you deliver the best message to your customer. >> Right. So that kind of feeds into your second one which you described as adaptive engagement. Which I presume is situational, contextual. >> Correct. >> That defines the how, the when, the where, the why. >> Yeah. Yeah, and I think in terms of our vision, so yes it is about delivering the right message, at the right time, to the right person to get the response you want. That's sort of the basics of adaptive and being able to do that very flexibly with technology. But when we think about adaptive and the next generation of it, we think about the impact that AI will have on engagement or marketing. So imagine a marketer today could say to their engagement platform, let's say the Marketo engagement platform, "I want to understand an outcome "and the best way to go about it. "I want to know how I can increase sales "in a particular region, in a particular quarter." And the engagement platform, based on that outcome that I want, will help determine what the right campaign is, what creative elements you put in that campaign based on the assets you've created, and importantly, who you target. And what is the audience? And think of almost just creating that outcome, having the platform deliver that whole experience when you push a button. And that entire campaign gets executed. >> Right, right. >> So that, I think is the future of adaptive. >> Because you'll be able to run you know, A/B test is probably not a very accurate description, >> right? >> Right. >> 'Cuz it's a multi, much more multivariate test that you can run and really >> start to optimize >> Right. >> for a much tighter group of attributes of your customer. >> Than >> Right. >> you ever could >> Yeah, and we >> in the past. >> Jeff: Or try to think of every kind of variable. >> And we do that today, but I think, I think now what we're saying is the marketer's going to truly be in the power seat where they can say not just, "Here's two ideas, test one against the other." It's basically, here's the outcome I want. >> Jeff: Right. >> Tell me exactly the best way to put that message out. What channel it should go through, who it should be delivered to, and run it. And so I think that's going to be the future of adaptive. >> Interesting. And then the third A, that you have, of engagement economy is advocacy. >> Heart and soul of any brand strategy. You know customers, loyal customers, are great customers and you want to create advocacy and relationships. I think when companies talk about advocacy, they talk about "I want a customer reference. "I want somebody who's going to approve a customer story "or a quote in a press release." We go far beyond that when we think about advocacy. We want customers that are going to partner with other customers and make the community around us better. >> And so, >> Right. >> they're speaking on behalf of our brand, Marketo, but they're also making our brand stronger and the relationships they're creating around Marketo. So we have a program called Purple Select, which has about 1200 customers, that every single day you know, we're putting challenges forward for them. We're offering them places to go, you know, generate conversations in community. And as a result they give stuff back to us. >> And they >> Right, right. >> make things available to us that otherwise wouldn't be. >> It's really kind of analogous to open source, right? The fact that you know >> all the smartest people >> Yep. >> in the world, don't happen to reside in your four walls. >> And >> Yep. >> you know, if you can use your product service offering platform, store, as a basis point for an engaged community to engage around, through, with. >> Correct. >> You know, >> you get you know, one plus one makes three, or ten for that, so huge. >> Absolutely. >> Huge kind of shift in, in thinking to really kind of open it up and to share and be collaborative and find out what other people >> are doing. >> And let, >> I think that's a great point. And let the advocates be your heroes. Let them advance their careers based on learning your technology, participating in your community and taking you know, their businesses forward in terms of success from a marketing standpoint. >> So I'm just curious in terms of the holy grail of measuring engagement. You know, kind of your thoughts on that. I mean there are obviously engagement measures out there. >> Karen: Right. >> How do you, you know, what are some of the things you look at to measure engagement. Or that you tell people they should look at to measure engagement. And how do you see engagement as a metric, as an actionable metric kind of evolving? Now that we have so many more potential touchpoints, >> datapoints, >> Right. >> other ways to measure. >> Yeah, so I think in the traditional marketing automation world, which we have played a big part in over the years, the true measurement has always been about pipeline. >> 'Cuz you're >> Right. >> you're doing campaigns to generate revenue for your business. I don't think that goes away, but it gets extended to across the entire lifecycle. So it's not just new customer acquisition. It's up-sell, it's cross-sell, it's renewals if you're in a softwares as service business. So it's lifetime value, not just revenue. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> It's advocacy, not just references. It's you know, peer to peer. There's this whole idea of voice of the customer. There're new companies out there like TrustRadius and G2 Crowd which provide platforms now for customers to do reviews on products and rank companies. And making that available to users gives everybody a voice in the process. >> So. >> Right. >> There's a whole bunch of new metrics, many of them are going to be, you know, very, very much around emotional connections back to your brand. And participation in the community. Today we have the marketing nation which is a 60,000 person community. The way I can cultivate content on that and grow people's roles in participating in that dialogue, is certainly an engagement measure for us. And it will lead to stronger sales, it will lead to stronger you know, preference in terms of our brand. It will lead to premium pricing if we want to do that in the future, et cetera. >> And then I wonder too, if you could just speak to the evolving role of marketing. Not only within the company, but specifically within IT spend, and business analytics spend, and really as a driver. >> Because before >> Yep. >> the analytics was really a service provider to the rest of the company >> and we gave you >> Yep. >> your quarterlies and your weekly sales reports and you know, that was kind of the role of IT. Now we're seeing IT as a business partner stepping in to say, "Here's all these cool technologies." But now marketing and the marketing automation which is way ahead of the automation >> Right. >> in a lot of >> the other places, is really driving that, and you've got measure, measurable results, and you can connect to all the different channels that are new that weren't there two years ago when you just had newspaper and >> Yep. >> and billboards and TVs. >> So you know, as that has evolved how have you seen, you know, marketing's role change in terms of kind of, power seat at the table, driving IT, investment decisions and those types of things? >> Obviously Marketo's >> Yep. >> were those decisions for a lot of companies. >> Yeah and it's a great conversation because there's been a lot of talk about the, the hybrid CMO, and what does that look like today? Because the CIO and the CMO now have to be in lockstep. In many cases now, the CMO's technology budget is looking as large as the CIO's technology budget. >> Right, right. >> And so. >> And then there's this other notion of if marketing owns the customer experience, or all things around customer engagement, are they not, in fact, the chief customer officer? And so, there's a whole bunch of things that I think are crossing lines. But I think it's great news for the marketer, because they need to be more customer centric, they need to be more data centric, and ultimately they sit in a really pivotal place in the organization to achieve many of those things. >> Right. And it's still interesting, and for all the soft things, I'll call it a soft thing, of engagement and lifetime value and some of these, some of these things that aren't necessarily tied to the bottom line at the end of the quarter, >> Right. >> every quarter. >> We still have to respond to that. And at the end of the day there has to be some, some ties, some connection, some demonstrated >> value of these efforts. >> Right. >> It can't just be for you know, apple pie and lemonade, I forget the expression. But anyway (laughs). So, 'cuz it still has to tie back to business, right? >> Absolutely. >> Still has to pay the bills, >> still has to get more sales. >> Absolutely. >> But what you're >> saying is, is it does. Engagement does translate into sales. >> Engagement translates to sales. Engagement translates to brand preference. Engagement translates to price premium. Engagement translates to advocacy. I mean, engagement is, it's such an active way to move the market forward that I think there's going to be a whole set of new metrics that combine sales enablement and sales processes as well because as marketing and sales partner, you know, from a sales engagement standpoint to go after named accounts, the ones that are most strategic to the business we're going to see a huge shift in terms of sales, sales engagement metrics as well. >> Just as you're saying that, I'm thinking of brands, right? And always the debate about the power of brand, and does brand still have power? And I think it does, but the market's really kind of bifurcated where either the brand is super powerful, or has zero power, you know, kind of depending on the product or the engagement. It sounds like really, engagement is probably the best way to make sure your brand can't be replaced by the old white label stuff that they used to have at the grocery store. >> Karen: Yeah. >> 'Cuz people got to be connected. >> Karen: Yep. >> Jeff: Not just a label. >> And they need to care about, people need to ultimately care about the relationship. Not the one thing. You know it used to be you dropped a direct mail, it was sort of an episode and you were never having a dialogue. Today, there's so many ways and so many channels to reach people, you have to have a consistent way to engage and a consistent way to look at, did I move the needle forward? Am I ultimately renewing that customer? Or generating more loyalty from that customer? Or you know, referenceability or advocacy. And so, engagement helps you do that through all the channels. >> It's interesting 'cuz the customer can engage with you, whether you, or communicate with you, whether you >> necessarily want it or not. >> That's right. >> And in new ways that were heretofore nonexistent. >> Karen: That's right. >> Fun stuff. >> Yeah. >> Great place to be. >> Well Karen, I loved >> Yeah. >> sitting down and talking about engagement. It's a thing we talk about here all the time. >> Great. >> It's really how we should measure success, it's how we know we're getting through and look forward to a follow up. I know you have some research coming out, and some books coming out, and Marketo's up to all kinds of stuff. So we will look for that in the not so distant future. >> Awesome. >> Alright. >> Thank you. >> We look forward to it. >> Absolutely, she's Karen >> Thanks a lot. >> Steele from Marketo, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching the Cube. Thanks for watching, we'll see ya next time. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: The Cube presents On the Ground. (techno music) >> Hello and welcome to a special Cube presentation of Oracle On the Ground here at the headquarters in Redwood City. I'm John Furrier, host of the Cube. I'm here with Karen Sigman with Oracle. Great to see you again. Give us an overview what we're doing here with this program. What's the update with Oracle with Big Data and cloud? >> It's pretty exciting, you know. We've been continuing to innovate as you know. We've been expanding our portfolio and the big focus is on choice. So with the Big Data appliance and the Big Data now taking that to the cloud at customer strategy, we're able to now give customers choice of doing their Big Data analytics on premise, in the cloud, or as a cloud service behind their firewall. It's a huge innovation, a whole new change to the way you can do things for our customers. >> So about the operational impact to customers for this, because on premise obviously is key. Cloud economics are right there. But getting something operational has been a big problem for many people with Big Data. How does the Oracle solutions innovate and help solve that problem? >> Well, I think that's the whole value proposition around what we've done with the Big Data plans. What we heard from a lot of our customers is they can build their own, and they can put it all together, but then they have to maintain it. They have to manage it. They have to make sure that everything that they, all the software that they put together, is going to work together. And they're going to be able to keep it up to date. We actually eliminate all the steps. A vast majority of the steps it takes to bring it up online. So we can bring the time to value for doing your data analytics down to days instead of weeks. >> What do you say to customers that have come to you, Oracle customers and potentially new customers, "Hey I have Oracle database" or "I'm considering Oracle database, but I have to use Hadoop. I want to use Hadoop and some of these open source technologies. Can I do that?" >> Of course you can. Oracle is absolutely all about choice. It's the ability for you to be able to use both Oracle and non-Oracle source data in a single appliance and do your analytics against that. That's the value of the Big Data plans. >> What about cloud? The cloud machine? How does that fit into this? >> Yeah, it's all again, it's about, you know, making sure a lot of customers have different ways that they want to do business. They're worried about data sovereignty issues. They can't take it to the cloud, but they want the ability and the agility that goes with a cloud story. The ability to just access a service and run it. What we're doing with the Big Data cloud machine is we're actually allowing customers to take that cloud service and access it just behind their firewalls. So it's the same as if you're logging in to our public cloud. You just log into it in your own data center. >> Karen, so you've been traveling around the globe talking to customers. What are the main things that you're seeing bubbling up from the different conversations from all around the world? Top three things you're hearing from customers? >> I think it's a couple things. One, they don't want to spend their time becoming IT experts anymore. And so the value of an appliance like technology or a cloud service, either one, is exactly what their looking for. Because they want to simplify their IT infrastructure and they want to focus on the things that matter most, which is the applications that drive the business. So that's number one. Number two is they're worried about cost. And so they would like to have cost be specific and more transparent. So they want to make sure that whatever their spending they can actually allocate back to the business units, that's coming from the IT side. So having cloud based models actually helps quite a bit with cost transparency. And I think the third thing is that overall they want to make sure that they can get things done faster. And so the idea of having cloud services gives them that agility that they need. And as I know you only asked for three, but I would say the fourth thing is they're looking for choice. They really want to understand. They want to make sure that if they choose one model, that they're going to be able to flip and they're not going to be locked in. And what Oracle's done with this is given them the capability to either deploy on Oracle, work with Oracle or non-Oracle data, and you can do it on a cloud or you can do it on prim. It's all up to you. >> I sat down with Dave Donatelli for an exclusive interview and then publishing on Forbes and then SiliconANGLE, and he talked about how the traditional infrastructure mainly storage and server vendors, really weren't positioned for success. So I want to ask you, a year now into the Oracle real push and growth of infrastructure products, engineered systems and other things powering all the software and the database and all the good stuff with Big Data cloud. What's changed over the past years? What can you point to has been the big, you know, the needle moving? Was it been performance? Has it been hardware? Number of units? Integration? What's your view on where has the needle moved for the infrastructure engineered systems? >> I think the big thing is that we've really fill out the portfolio. We've made sure that whether you're choosing to do a build your own solution or go for the, you know, fastest time to value with an appliance like technology or you're trying to get the maximal capabilities out of our systems our engineered systems. we've actually built out our portfolio so that you can do all of that on prim or in the cloud or on your premise with a cloud service. We've made sure that whether it's database workloads, application workloads, or analytics workloads, that we have a complete portfolio of solutions that give you that choice. And that's quite different than anything I see in the market. >> Karen, thanks so much for spending time with On the Ground. Appreciate it. >> Thanks. >> I'm John Furrier. We are On the Ground here at Oracle's headquarters. Thanks for watching (techno music)

>>Welcome back to The Cube's coverage of Supercomputing Conference 2022, otherwise known as SC 22 here in Dallas, Texas. This is day three of our coverage, the final day of coverage here on the exhibition floor. I'm Dave Nicholson, and I'm here with my co-host, tech journalist extraordinaire, Paul Gillum. How's it going, >>Paul? Hi, Dave. It's going good. >>And we have a wonderful guest with us this morning, Dr. Panda from the Ohio State University. Welcome Dr. Panda to the Cube. >>Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot to >>Paul. I know you're, you're chopping at >>The bit, you have incredible credentials, over 500 papers published. The, the impact that you've had on HPC is truly remarkable. But I wanted to talk to you specifically about a product project you've been working on for over 20 years now called mva, high Performance Computing platform that's used by more than 32 organ, 3,200 organizations across 90 countries. You've shepherded this from, its, its infancy. What is the vision for what MVA will be and and how is it a proof of concept that others can learn from? >>Yeah, Paul, that's a great question to start with. I mean, I, I started with this conference in 2001. That was the first time I came. It's very coincidental. If you remember the Finman Networking Technology, it was introduced in October of 2000. Okay. So in my group, we were working on NPI for Marinette Quadrics. Those are the old technology, if you can recollect when Finman was there, we were the very first one in the world to really jump in. Nobody knew how to use Infin van in an HPC system. So that's how the Happy Project was born. And in fact, in super computing 2002 on this exhibition floor in Baltimore, we had the first demonstration, the open source happy, actually is running on an eight node infinite van clusters, eight no zeros. And that was a big challenge. But now over the years, I means we have continuously worked with all infinite van vendors, MPI Forum. >>We are a member of the MPI Forum and also all other network interconnect. So we have steadily evolved this project over the last 21 years. I'm very proud of my team members working nonstop, continuously bringing not only performance, but scalability. If you see now INFIN event are being deployed in 8,000, 10,000 node clusters, and many of these clusters actually use our software, stack them rapid. So, so we have done a lot of, like our focuses, like we first do research because we are in academia. We come up with good designs, we publish, and in six to nine months, we actually bring it to the open source version and people can just download and then use it. And that's how currently it's been used by more than 3000 orange in 90 countries. And, but the interesting thing is happening, your second part of the question. Now, as you know, the field is moving into not just hvc, but ai, big data, and we have those support. This is where like we look at the vision for the next 20 years, we want to design this MPI library so that not only HPC but also all other workloads can take advantage of it. >>Oh, we have seen libraries that become a critical develop platform supporting ai, TensorFlow, and, and the pie torch and, and the emergence of, of, of some sort of default languages that are, that are driving the community. How, how important are these frameworks to the, the development of the progress making progress in the HPC world? >>Yeah, no, those are great. I mean, spite our stencil flow, I mean, those are the, the now the bread and butter of deep learning machine learning. Am I right? But the challenge is that people use these frameworks, but continuously models are becoming larger. You need very first turnaround time. So how do you train faster? How do you do influencing faster? So this is where HPC comes in and what exactly what we have done is actually we have linked floor fighters to our happy page because now you see the MPI library is running on a million core system. Now your fighters and tenor four clan also be scaled to to, to those number of, large number of course and gps. So we have actually done that kind of a tight coupling and that helps the research to really take advantage of hpc. >>So if, if a high school student is thinking in terms of interesting computer science, looking for a place, looking for a university, Ohio State University, bruns, world renowned, widely known, but talk about what that looks like from a day on a day to day basis in terms of the opportunity for undergrad and graduate students to participate in, in the kind of work that you do. What is, what does that look like? And is, and is that, and is that a good pitch to for, for people to consider the university? >>Yes. I mean, we continuously, from a university perspective, by the way, the Ohio State University is one of the largest single campus in, in us, one of the top three, top four. We have 65,000 students. Wow. It's one of the very largest campus. And especially within computer science where I am located, high performance computing is a very big focus. And we are one of the, again, the top schools all over the world for high performance computing. And we also have very strength in ai. So we always encourage, like the new students who like to really work on top of the art solutions, get exposed to the concepts, principles, and also practice. Okay. So, so we encourage those people that wish you can really bring you those kind of experience. And many of my past students, staff, they're all in top companies now, have become all big managers. >>How, how long, how long did you say you've been >>At 31 >>Years? 31 years. 31 years. So, so you, you've had people who weren't alive when you were already doing this stuff? That's correct. They then were born. Yes. They then grew up, yes. Went to university graduate school, and now they're on, >>Now they're in many top companies, national labs, all over the universities, all over the world. So they have been trained very well. Well, >>You've, you've touched a lot of lives, sir. >>Yes, thank you. Thank >>You. We've seen really a, a burgeoning of AI specific hardware emerge over the last five years or so. And, and architectures going beyond just CPUs and GPUs, but to Asics and f PGAs and, and accelerators, does this excite you? I mean, are there innovations that you're seeing in this area that you think have, have great promise? >>Yeah, there is a lot of promise. I think every time you see now supercomputing technology, you see there is sometime a big barrier comes barrier jump. Rather I'll say, new technology comes some disruptive technology, then you move to the next level. So that's what we are seeing now. A lot of these AI chips and AI systems are coming up, which takes you to the next level. But the bigger challenge is whether it is cost effective or not, can that be sustained longer? And this is where commodity technology comes in, which commodity technology tries to take you far longer. So we might see like all these likes, Gaudi, a lot of new chips are coming up, can they really bring down the cost? If that cost can be reduced, you will see a much more bigger push for AI solutions, which are cost effective. >>What, what about on the interconnect side of things, obvi, you, you, your, your start sort of coincided with the initial standards for Infin band, you know, Intel was very, very, was really big in that, in that architecture originally. Do you see interconnects like RDMA over converged ethernet playing a part in that sort of democratization or commoditization of things? Yes. Yes. What, what are your thoughts >>There for internet? No, this is a great thing. So, so we saw the infinite man coming. Of course, infinite Man is, commod is available. But then over the years people have been trying to see how those RDMA mechanisms can be used for ethernet. And then Rocky has been born. So Rocky has been also being deployed. But besides these, I mean now you talk about Slingshot, the gray slingshot, it is also an ethernet based systems. And a lot of those RMA principles are actually being used under the hood. Okay. So any modern networks you see, whether it is a Infin and Rocky Links art network, rock board network, you name any of these networks, they are using all the very latest principles. And of course everybody wants to make it commodity. And this is what you see on the, on the slow floor. Everybody's trying to compete against each other to give you the best performance with the lowest cost, and we'll see whoever wins over the years. >>Sort of a macroeconomic question, Japan, the US and China have been leapfrogging each other for a number of years in terms of the fastest supercomputer performance. How important do you think it is for the US to maintain leadership in this area? >>Big, big thing, significantly, right? We are saying that I think for the last five to seven years, I think we lost that lead. But now with the frontier being the number one, starting from the June ranking, I think we are getting that leadership back. And I think it is very critical not only for fundamental research, but for national security trying to really move the US to the leading edge. So I hope us will continue to lead the trend for the next few years until another new system comes out. >>And one of the gating factors, there is a shortage of people with data science skills. Obviously you're doing what you can at the university level. What do you think can change at the secondary school level to prepare students better to, for data science careers? >>Yeah, I mean that is also very important. I mean, we, we always call like a pipeline, you know, that means when PhD levels we are expecting like this even we want to students to get exposed to, to, to many of these concerts from the high school level. And, and things are actually changing. I mean, these days I see a lot of high school students, they, they know Python, how to program in Python, how to program in sea object oriented things. Even they're being exposed to AI at that level. So I think that is a very healthy sign. And in fact we, even from Ohio State side, we are always engaged with all this K to 12 in many different programs and then gradually trying to take them to the next level. And I think we need to accelerate also that in a very significant manner because we need those kind of a workforce. It is not just like a building a system number one, but how do we really utilize it? How do we utilize that science? How do we propagate that to the community? Then we need all these trained personal. So in fact in my group, we are also involved in a lot of cyber training activities for HPC professionals. So in fact, today there is a bar at 1 1 15 I, yeah, I think 1215 to one 15. We'll be talking more about that. >>About education. >>Yeah. Cyber training, how do we do for professionals? So we had a funding together with my co-pi, Dr. Karen Tom Cook from Ohio Super Center. We have a grant from NASA Science Foundation to really educate HPT professionals about cyber infrastructure and ai. Even though they work on some of these things, they don't have the complete knowledge. They don't get the time to, to learn. And the field is moving so fast. So this is how it has been. We got the initial funding, and in fact, the first time we advertised in 24 hours, we got 120 application, 24 hours. We couldn't even take all of them. So, so we are trying to offer that in multiple phases. So, so there is a big need for those kind of training sessions to take place. I also offer a lot of tutorials at all. Different conference. We had a high performance networking tutorial. Here we have a high performance deep learning tutorial, high performance, big data tutorial. So I've been offering tutorials at, even at this conference since 2001. Good. So, >>So in the last 31 years, the Ohio State University, as my friends remind me, it is properly >>Called, >>You've seen the world get a lot smaller. Yes. Because 31 years ago, Ohio, in this, you know, of roughly in the, in the middle of North America and the United States was not as connected as it was to everywhere else in the globe. So that's, that's pro that's, I i it kind of boggles the mind when you think of that progression over 31 years, but globally, and we talk about the world getting smaller, we're sort of in the thick of, of the celebratory seasons where, where many, many groups of people exchange gifts for varieties of reasons. If I were to offer you a holiday gift, that is the result of what AI can deliver the world. Yes. What would that be? What would, what would, what would the first thing be? This is, this is, this is like, it's, it's like the genie, but you only get one wish. >>I know, I know. >>So what would the first one be? >>Yeah, it's very hard to answer one way, but let me bring a little bit different context and I can answer this. I, I talked about the happy project and all, but recently last year actually we got awarded an S f I institute award. It's a 20 million award. I am the overall pi, but there are 14 universities involved. >>And who is that in that institute? >>What does that Oh, the I ici. C e. Okay. I cycle. You can just do I cycle.ai. Okay. And that lies with what exactly what you are trying to do, how to bring lot of AI for masses, democratizing ai. That's what is the overall goal of this, this institute, think of like a, we have three verticals we are working think of like one is digital agriculture. So I'll be, that will be my like the first ways. How do you take HPC and AI to agriculture the world as though we just crossed 8 billion people. Yeah, that's right. We need continuous food and food security. How do we grow food with the lowest cost and with the highest yield? >>Water >>Consumption. Water consumption. Can we minimize or minimize the water consumption or the fertilization? Don't do blindly. Technologies are out there. Like, let's say there is a weak field, A traditional farmer see that, yeah, there is some disease, they will just go and spray pesticides. It is not good for the environment. Now I can fly it drone, get images of the field in the real time, check it against the models, and then it'll tell that, okay, this part of the field has disease. One, this part of the field has disease. Two, I indicate to the, to the tractor or the sprayer saying, okay, spray only pesticide one, you have pesticide two here. That has a big impact. So this is what we are developing in that NSF A I institute I cycle ai. We also have, we have chosen two additional verticals. One is animal ecology, because that is very much related to wildlife conservation, climate change, how do you understand how the animals move? Can we learn from them? And then see how human beings need to act in future. And the third one is the food insecurity and logistics. Smart food distribution. So these are our three broad goals in that institute. How do we develop cyber infrastructure from below? Combining HP c AI security? We have, we have a large team, like as I said, there are 40 PIs there, 60 students. We are a hundred members team. We are working together. So, so that will be my wish. How do we really democratize ai? >>Fantastic. I think that's a great place to wrap the conversation here On day three at Supercomputing conference 2022 on the cube, it was an honor, Dr. Panda working tirelessly at the Ohio State University with his team for 31 years toiling in the field of computer science and the end result, improving the lives of everyone on Earth. That's not a stretch. If you're in high school thinking about a career in computer science, keep that in mind. It isn't just about the bits and the bobs and the speeds and the feeds. It's about serving humanity. Maybe, maybe a little, little, little too profound a statement, I would argue not even close. I'm Dave Nicholson with the Queue, with my cohost Paul Gillin. Thank you again, Dr. Panda. Stay tuned for more coverage from the Cube at Super Compute 2022 coming up shortly. >>Thanks a lot.

(upbeat music) >> Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to "theCUBE." Lisa Martin here with John Furrier. This is day three of our wall-to-wall coverage of VMware Explore. John and I are pleased to welcome back one of our alumni, Muddu Sudhakar, the CEO of AISERA. Welcome to the program, Muddu. It's great to meet you. >> Thank you, Lisa. Thanks for having me. Thank you, John. >> Great to see you again. You're like an industry analyst coming on "theCUBE". You should be like a guest analyst, breaking down. I know you got your own company to run, and by the way, the recent funding you had, congratulations. >> Thank you. >> In a market that's not getting a lot of funding. You get an up around. Congratulations on that. >> Thank you. >> Business is good? >> Very good, thank you. Look, Goldman Sachs Investing, along with Zoom and Thoma Bravo, it was great for us. >> Great stuff. Well, I'm glad we could get you in. This day three, Lisa and I and Dave Vellante and Dave Nicholson have all been talking to everyone for two days here at VMware Explore, formerly VMworld, our 12th year covering their annual conference, as you know, and we've been telling the executives, but day three is more of, we're going to mix it up. We're going to bring people in and get their opinions about Supercloud, does VMware go post-Broadcom? Obviously, that's going to happen. Looks like nothing's going to stop that from happening. What's next? What's the impact? Who wins? Who loses? VMware certainly not acting like they're going to get gutted. They're all full throttle ahead. They're laying down some announcements, vSphere 8, you got vSAN 8, they got cloud-native, they're talking multi-cloud. VMware's not looking like they're flinching. What's going on, in your view, outside of the bubble that we're here in San Francisco, out in the real world, in the trenches. What are people talking about? What do you see? >> Lot to unpack. (all laugh) >> Start at wherever you want. >> Yes. You know, I was a VMware alumni too. >> Yes >> You sold the company to VMware. You know the inside. Okay, So then, even then- >> I worked with Paul and Pat and Raghu. It's great to be back at VMware now. I think there's a lot going on in VMware. VMware is here to stay. The brand will stay. The VMware customers will stay for years to come. I think Broadcom and VMware, I think it's a great industry consolidation, the way in which I see it. And it is going to help all the customers too, right? Broadcom, having such a large foot play into both CA, the software business, the hardware business. I think what will happen is that Broadcom will try to create a hybrid cloud of their own with VMware. So there'll be a fourth player in the cloud industry. And then back to John, your Supercloud. The Supercloud by definition, there'll be private clouds, public clouds, hybrid clouds. I think Broadcom with VMware will help your vision of the Supercloud and what your customers are asking. >> Yeah, one of the things I want to get your thoughts on, Lisa and I were talking yesterday with the executives, AJ Patel in particular, he's a middleware guy. >> Right. >> So what he did was Oracle. He did a lot of the fusion stuff at Oracle. He now runs Modern Apps. And you came in at the time, I think, when they were just getting that app vision going, and Paul Moritz actually had it early with his 2010 vision, but too early on the app side. But that ended up happening too. So the question is, is Broadcom going to be this middleware layer, and treat the cloud like hardware. And then, apps or apps. Companies are apps. In a digital transformation, technology is the company. >> Right >> So the company is the app. >> That's right, >> Is an application. So apps and hardware, middle, a middleware model emerging. Do you think they're going for that? Or am I just making this up in my head? >> No, I think to me, I see Broadcom as much more, they're like a peer company at the high level. So they're funded by- >> Like a private equity company. >> Private equity company. >> You mean from a dollar standpoint. >> From a dollar standpoint. So Broadcom is going to fund companies. They're going to buy companies. They bought CA, they bought all the other assets. So Broadcom will have always hardware. The middle level could be VMware, but they also have CA, right? They have a bunch of apps here. So I see the Broadcom is also using VMware to run applications. So the consolidation will be they'll create a Supercloud using VMware. They're going to own their own apps. I don't think Broadcom's story is stopped. Its journey to come. They're going to buy more acquisitions, more apps companies. I won't be surprised, in the future, they buy Zendesk. I won't be surprised, in the future, they buy other apps companies, SaaS companies and cloud enterprise companies. Right? So that's where the P is coming. So the broad conversion is, I need a base middleware, like you're saying. There's no other middleware on top of hardware better than VMware. >> So do you think that they'll keep the stuff that's coming out of the other? 'Cause we've been speculating on "theCUBE" this week. They have the core business, but there's all this stuff that's kind of coming out of the oven that's not EBITDA-oriented yet. Do you think they keep that or they let it go? >> I think that's a great question to hang their CEO of Broadcom. But to me, I think, knowing them, they're going to keep, and if you look at Symantec, they kept parts of Symantec, this whole parts of it. So I think all options are on the table for them, right? They'll do whatever it is. But I think it has to be the ones that high growth companies they may give it. It all goes back to is it a profitability to it or not? But his vision is very good. I want to own the middleware, right? He will own the middleware using VMware to your vision, create a Supercloud and own the apps. So I think you'll see Broadcom is the fourth vendor in the cloud race. You have Microsoft, AWS, Google, and Broadcom is actually going to compete with this four. >> So you think there'll be a hyper scale? They'll be in the top three or four. >> There'll be top four. >> Okay. >> Along with Oracle. So now, we are talking about the five vendors will be Amazon, Azure, Google, Oracle, and Broadcom. >> We had Amazon guy on, Steve Jones. I should have asked him that question. I just don't see that happening yet. They have to have the full hardware side. How do you see that coming in? 'Cause Amazon's innovating at the atom level and they're working on stuff that's physical, transit, physics stuff, like down to the root level. >> I think Broadcom figure, look, they own the chips out right, at the end of the day. They also have a lot of chips such to supply to both mobile and this. So if there's anybody who can figure out the hardware, it will be Broadcom. That is their core of area. They didn't have the core in the software and the middleware. VMware is going to give them the OS, the Kubernetes, the VMs. Once you have that layer, I think you can innovate both up and below, right? So I think, John, I think Broadcom VMware will be a force to reckon with and I think these guys are going to get into healthcare space though. So if you see the way they battle, you and me are talking Lisa, like Microsoft bought new ones, Oracle bought Cerner. So they all paid 30 billion each. So the next battle ground will be, they'll start in the healthcare industry. Somebody's going to go look at the healthcare apps like Epic, right? They're going to look at how we can do the hospitals. They're going to look at hospital healthcare professionals. That area will be disrupted a lot in the same. >> What other industries do you think, besides healthcare, are ripe for disruption with Broadcom VMware? >> I think endpoint management, like remember VMware bought AirWatch when I was there back then, right? That whole area is called digital experience management. So that endpoint mainly will be disrupted. So Broadcom with VMware will go again into endpoint. I'm talking endpoint could be the servers, desktops, VMware Max, right? Virtual Desktop VDI. So that whole management of mobile devices to desktop, that whole industry will be disrupted. A lot of players are there trying to do more consulting services. I think VMware is a great assets and tools. If I'm Broadcom, my chip sets are going into the endpoint. So that area will be disrupted a lot with Broadcom in VMware. >> Yeah, one of the things that VMware, people have been talking about, is that the CA acquisition that Broadcom did was the playbooks public. Everyone saw what they did. They killed sales and market and they killed all the execs, metaphorically speaking. They fired them. VMware's got a different vibe here. I'm feeling like it could go one way or the other. I think they should keep them, personally. But you don't know. If they're a PE company, they EBIDA driven, maybe it's just simply numbers. >> Right. >> If that's the case, then I'm worried. But VMware's got pride, they got mojo, and they've got expertise in software. Maybe a little bit different circumstance? What's take on this? Or do you think it's going to be black and white to the numbers? >> I think, knowing Hank's playbook, if he knows what he's going to do, right? His playbook will be consistent with Symantec. >> You think he already knows what he wants to do? >> I think so. I think at that level, both with Simulink and Broadcom, they already know the playbook. At this stage the games, people already know their game. It's like a chess move. They already know. They'll look at VMware and see which assets to keep, which one not to keep, which organization, but I think Hank is a master at this one. To me, I'm personally excited with the VMware Broadcom combination. It's a great thing for the industry. It's great for VMware and VMware customers and partners. >> Well, John, you and Dave had a chance to sit down with Raghu. What were some of the things that he unpacked about the Broadcom acquisition? >> He was on talking points. He was on message. He was saying the things that any CEO was going to make a lot of cash on this deal. And he's proud. I think it wasn't about the money for him. I sensed that he's certainly going to make a lot of cash on this deal as an executive, but he's a long time VMware employee and a well loved and revered person. He's done a lot of great work, technically set the agenda. So I think their mindset is we're going to just continue to do an amazing job as VMware as we are and then let Broadcom, let the chips fall where they may, and hopefully, if they do a good job, maybe they'll either refactor some of their base plans or they laid it all out in the field, so to speak. So that's my vibe. Now specifically, he made some comments, like, "Yeah, we're really proud." And he staying technical. He's still like, "This is really happening." So I think he's going to, essentially, to the very end, be like, "Cross cloud and hybrid cloud. This is our third generation." So there he's hanging onto the VMware third act that they're saying, and he hopes that it comes home. And I think he's going to just deal with it. He didn't seem flustered and he didn't seem overly confident. >> Okay. >> I guess that's my opinion. What do you think? >> Personally worked with Raghu, worked for Raghu, so I think of him as the greatest CEO for VMware ever could have, right? It's a journey. It was Paul Maritz, then Pat Gelsinger, now Raghu. I think he's in the right place, right time to lead VMware, and Raghu's doing a fantastic job. And personally, getting these two companies married, I think Raghu did the right partnership with Broadcom. >> Well, I think if this event's any indication if they're just sitting back and waiting, they're not, and this event was well done, it was pulled off. The branding's amazing. I thought they did a good job with the name change. And then in light of all the Broadcom issues, the execution was great. It was not a bad show here. It was a good show. It wasn't terrible at all. People were excited. I think the ecosystem also felt that Broadcom, like an electronic shock to the system, like something's going to happen. Let's wait and see. I'm going to go to the event to see if it's going to be around and kind of getting a feel first party, in person, what's happening. Again, remember VMware didn't have an event since 2019. This is a community that thrives on physical, face to face camaraderie, community. And so, I think the show was a success. And I think that's a result of Raghu and his team. >> Because we have a booth there for AISERA, my company, we have a booth. We are offering coffee and donuts. You guys should come by and tell people. You'll get a free coffee and a donut, but it's one of the best shows I've seen. Well, I think people after pandemic are back, people are interacting. We have 500 people in one day at our booth. So for a startup company like us, getting that much crowd is unheard of. So it's great. We're very excited. >> The vibe from the partner community, I had a chance to talk with a lot of partners, AWS, NetApp, Rackspace, really seems like the partnerships side of VMware is very, very strong and the partners are excited about what's next for VMware. Did you have a chance to talk with any of the partners? >> Actually, look. I'm actually meeting with Karen. So Karen Egan is my contact at VMware too, and Sumit, (indistinct) a bunch of the customer success organization. We talk to people in their digital experience management team. We are very excited to be partner with both VMware's customer, partner, and all experts, right? I'll need the VMware ecosystem for my company to thrive. So for us, VMware customers are my customers and leveraging VMware APIs into VMware, that's that's important for us. >> Lisa, that's a great question because that brings us to the question of, okay, clearly this show also proves to us from our conversations and exploring the floor, the wave is coming. This next cloud wave is here. We're calling it Supercloud, whatever you want to call it, it's coming and it's real, and people know it. And also the lines of sight into economics around where people can fit in this next level ecosystem is becoming clear. So I think people kind of know what's the right side of the street to be on in this next shift. So that's coming. That's independent of Broadcom. So the floor represents to me the excitement for not only the VMware workload powering software, with or without Broadcom, but the next wave. So the question is if Broadcom goes down their path and Hank does what he does, who wins and who loses on where things flow? Because this energy is going to flow somewhere. Is it going to flow to AWS? Is it going to flow to Microsoft? Is it going to flow to HPE with Green Lake getting some great traction? NetApp's doing great. We just heard from them. So the partners aren't hurting. It's only going to get better. re:Invent's right around the corner. That's a packed house. Their ecosystem's growing like a weed. Who wins? 'Cause the customers at VMware are enterprise customers. They're used to being serviced. They have sales reps from Microsoft, they got sales reps from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, real senior enterprise stakeholders there. So someone's going to end up filling in as VMware settles into their broad composition. Who wins and who loses, in your mind? >> A Very good question. So my thing is, I think it's... Well, I put Microsoft and Amazon the winners. In that way, actually mean Microsoft will win because in a true Supercloud, your vision, back to hybrid cloud on-prem and public cloud, VMware disruption with Broadcom, as if there's any bridge in the market, Microsoft will take advantage of it. Azure, right? Amazon VMware is there. Then, you have Google and VMware. So I think Azure will probably try to take advantage of this, but very next will be Amazon, right away there. That leaves you with Google Cloud, right? Google Cloud is the one. So they're the people that are able to figure out what to do in this equation. And then, obviously, the other one is Oracle. Oracle has no hearts in this game. So to me, the people who are going to probably lose impact model will be Oracle if the Broadcom and VMware will happen. So it's Azure, Amazon winning the race, probably Google is right behind them. Oracle will be distinct. Other side is Dell. Actually, Dell has no game in this. Our Broadcom and VMware, Dell should be the one. >> Dell might have a little secret sauce on the table with Michael Dell. >> That's true. >> If he convert his shares, he might be the largest shareholder at Broadcom. >> That's true. >> He could end up owning all the back. >> So he may be the winner all the time. (all laugh) >> Don't count him out. Well, this is a good question. I want to just double click on this. So you get customer dynamic. Where do they go? You get the community, which is a big force multiplier in this world, and if you had to bet on community between Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, Amazon trumps Microsoft on force multiplier community. Ecosystem, AWS beats Microsoft on that one. So it's interesting because it's now multiple dimensions we're talking about here. It's customers. That's the top order, right? The customers. But also, you got community, the people who put on sessions, the people in the community that are the influencers that are leading the trends, and developers are very trending, relative to what kind of code they use, what's their environments? So the developers is changing that landscape and, ultimately, the ecosystem of partners, right? 'Cause there's a lot more overlap between AWS and VMware's ecosystem than there is between Microsoft and that. And HPE is just starting an ecosystem. So it's going to be very interesting. >> It is. It is. I think Broadcom and VMware cannot be any best time for the industry, right? As you said. HP is coming in. Oracle is coming in. And to your point, VMware and AWS are another best partners. Now, this going to create any gap for Microsoft to enter for Azure? I think that's where the market is saying that it's going to open up a hybrid cloud player for Microsoft to enter what is to be a tight relationship with VMware and Amazon. Right? So people will rethink through their apps. And more importantly, the end point to me. See, the key is, like you talk about with Supercloud, nobody's talking about Supercloud for the endpoint. >> You mean Edge or security? >> Not an Edge endpoint. Endpoint could be your devices, laptop, desktop. >> Or a building or a light bulb or whatever. >> Desktop or VDI desktop services servers, right? So we call it endpoint cloud. There's no endpoint Supercloud. John, that's an area that you should double click on. Super cloud for the servers is different from Supercloud for endpoint. >> Well, SuperCloud.World is the URL out there. If you're interested in Supercloud, we are adding tracks to that body of work. So we had our event on August 9th. It was virtual event, where Dave and I are going to add a data track, we're going to add a security track, and we should add, maybe, an endpoint workspace, work. >> That's a VMware brand, Workspace and Horizon. So that whole workspace endpoint for Supercloud is going to happen. >> Yes. >> Right. That kind of deviates from- >> Do you like Supercloud? Are you bullish on Supercloud? >> I'm very bullish on Supercloud because I, myself, is running on-prem in VPCs, public clouds, private clouds. Supercloud kind of composites it so app should be designed. 'Cause I don't want to design an app for one cloud. It's not going to work. So it's like how Java came and I can run it on any platform. The ideas you build it on Supercloud, run it, whatever you want. Right? >> That's exactly it. So what would you want to see in Supercloud as it evolves? And we were part of this open conversation. This is our point for today. We're going to have a great panel come up later today. We're going to have the influencers come on to debate what Supercloud should or shouldn't be. If you want to add to the contribution, we'll add this into the work, what should what's needed in Supercloud? What's table stakes. >> I think we need a Java compiler that will happen for Supercloud. I build it once, execute in any place I want, right? Using the Terraform, HashiCorp (indistinct) So what I don't want is keep building this thing for every cloud. I want to abstract that out. The whole idea of Supercloud is how Java gave me the abstraction for hardware 20 years back or 30 years back, we need the same abstraction for the cloud today. Otherwise, I'm customizing for VM Cloud, I'm customizing for AWS, Azure, Google Cloud. We, as an application vendor, it's too hard to keep doing it. I have now thousand tuners. I don't need thousand DevOps people. I need maybe 10 DevOps people. So there's a clear abstraction complexity that industry should develop, and your concept Supercloud with everybody thinking that, and it has to start from the grassroots with ecosystem. >> What do you think about the participants in this abstraction layer? Because someone said on "theCUBE" here this week, the people in the abstraction layer shouldn't be participants in the below or above the abstraction. >> I think it should be everybody, right? It's all inclusive. You need the apps guys to come in. You need the OS players to come in. You need the cloud vendors to come in, infrastructure. So you need everybody. >> Okay, let's just say that you were the spokesperson for the Supercloud organization, Supercloud.World. How would you sell AWS on why it's important for them? >> It's because they can build it and sell it in AWS and multiple AWS Gov Cloud, AWS On-prem, VPCs. It's even important for them, their expansion, their market time upfront. If I'm (indistinct), if I'm built on Supercloud, I can increase my time share. Otherwise I'm bringing only to public cloud. >> Okay, so I'll say, I'm Amazon and we have a concept called "One Way Doors." We don't want to go through a one way door. Is Supercloud a one way door for them? What's in it for them? Do they make more? Does it help their ecosystem? And the same question from Microsoft Azure and Google cloud. >> They're make more money. They're making their apps run in multiple places. It's a natural expansion. You are solving your customer problems for Amazon and DGC, right? My job is give people choices. I give choice to Lisa. Lisa can run it on public cloud. John, you can run it on VPC, AWS. >> So you're saying, so you think customers are asking for this right now? >> Everybody's asking. >> But don't really know how to say it? >> Customers are asking. Partners are asking. All of us are asking. >> Okay, what's the ask? >> Ask is give me a one place to build applications and run it anywhere without adding the complexity. >> Okay. Done. That's Supercloud. It'll ship tomorrow. (Lisa laughs) Well done. (John laughs) All right, well done. Final question for you. Lisa and I have been talking with folks here. What advice would you give the folks that are in here? 'Cause we have a lot of activity, people with marketing their solutions and products. They're trying to put a voice out there around thought leadership and trying to figure out what side of the street they should be on relative to the next 10 years as they're here at VMware Explore, as the next gen cloud comes around. What's the right narrative? What's the right positioning for companies to be on right now to be the most relevant and in the flow? >> I don't know about 10 years, but right now we are in difficult economic times, right? Markets are down. Inflation is up. So I think the fastest cost, people should focus on cost. How can it take cost? Automation is the key, right? Whether you use AI or automation , like you and me talking, John, last week, right? That's important. Every CEO I talk to is focused on cost. How do I cut my cost? How can I do with fewer resources? How can I do with fewer people, right? So the new budget right now is cut your budget in half. So every company, every exec should think about how can you be a good citizen? How can I get growth and scale? How can I do more with less? And that should be the next 12 months. >> That was a lot of the theme of conversations that I had with the VMware ecosystem, doing more with less. So that's definitely on everyone's minds. >> Right, and that's what my company is fully focused on. AISERA is all about AI automation. How can we solve your thing? We want to be solving customer problem. We are like your automation engine for your enterprise, right? We are a platform of platform. That's why I like the Supercloud. I can run AISERA as a platform on top of Supercloud. >> Excellent. >> Wow! If only we had more time! I know that you guys could really dig into Supercloud and take it even further. So you have to come back, Muddu. >> I will. >> He always wants to come back. >> I will be back. >> He's on the team. He's has contributed to the open source effort of Supercloud. Thank you. >> Yes. >> All right, thank you so much for joining John and me and kind of breaking down your vision on VMware Broadcom and the future. Next step, we've got to get some customers on here. I really want to understand what the customer experience is going to be like, but we'll have to another segment on that one. >> We will do that. Thank you, Lisa, for having me. >> My pleasure. >> John. >> Thank you very much. Thank you. >> For our guest and John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching "theCUBE" live on day three of our coverage of VMware Explore. We'll be back after a short break. (upbeat corporate music)

>>Welcome back to the cubes coverage of women in data science, 2022. We've been live all day at Stanford at the Arriaga alumni center. Lisa Martin, John furrier joins me next, trying to, to cure your FOMO that you have. >>I love this events. My favorite events is 2015. We've been coming, growing community over 60 countries, 500 ambassadors and growing so many members. Widths has become a global phenomenon. And it's so exciting to be part of just being part of the ride. Judy and Karen, the team have been amazing partners and it's been fun to watch the progression and international women's day is tomorrow. And just the overall environment's changed a lot since then. It's gotten better. I'm still a lot more work to do, but we're getting the word out, but this year seems different. It seems more like a tipping point is happening and real-time cultural change. A lot of problems. COVID pulled forward. A lot of things, there's a war going on in Europe. It's just really weird time. And it's just seems like it's a tipping point. >>I think that's what we felt today was that it was a tipping point. There was a lot of our guests on the program that are first time with attendees. So in seven, just seven short years, this is the seventh annual width it's gone from this one day technical conference to this global movement, as you talked about. And I think that we definitely felt that women of all ages and men that are here as well understand we're at that tipping point and what needs to be done next to push it over the edge. >>Well, I'm super excited that you are able to do all the amazing interviews. I watched some of them online. I had to come by and, and join the team because I have FOMO. I love doing the interviews, but they're including me. I'm happy to be included, but I got to ask you, I mean, what was different this year? Because it was interesting. It's a hybrid event. It's in part, they didn't have it in person last year, right? So it's hybrid. I showed the streams where everywhere good interviews, what was some of the highlights? >>Just a very inspiring stories of women who really this morning's conversation that I got to hear before I came to set was about mentors and sponsors and how important it is for women of any age and anybody really to build their own personal board of directors with mentors and sponsors. And they were very clear in the difference between a mentor and a sponsor and John something. I didn't understand the difference between the two until a few years ago. I think it was at a VMware event and it really surprised me that I have mentors do ask sponsors. And so that was a discussion that everybody on this onset talked about. >>It was interesting. We're doing also the international women's day tomorrow, big 24 interviews, including the winds of content, as well as global women leaders around the world and to new J Randori, who runs all of AWS, Amy are your maps. And she told me the same thing. She's like, there's too many mentors, not enough sponsors. And she said that out loud. I felt, wow. That was a defining moment because he or she is so impressive. Worked at McKinsey, okay. Was an operator in, in running businesses. Now she heads up AWS saying out loud, we have too many mentors, this get down to business and get sponsors. And I asked her the same thing and she said, sponsors, create opportunities. Mentors, give feedback. And mentors go both ways. And she said, my S my teenage son is a mentor to me for some of the cool new stuff, but ventures can go both ways. Sponsors is specifically about opportunities, and I'm like, I felt like that comment hit home. >>It's so important, but it's also important to teach girls. And especially the there's younger girls here this year, there's high school and middle, I think even middle school girls here, how to have the confidence to, to find those mentors, those sponsors and cultivate those relationships. That's a whole, those are skills that are incredibly important, as important as it is to understand AI data science, machine learning. It's to be able to, to have the confidence in a capability to create that and find those sponsors to help you unlock those opportunities. >>You know, I feel lucky to do the interviews, certainly being included as a male, but you've been doing a lot of the interviews as females and females. I got to ask you what was the biggest, because every story is different. Some people will it's about taking charge of their career. Sometimes it's maybe doing something different. What some of the story themes did you see in your interviews out there? What were some of the, the coverings personal? Yeah. >>Yeah. A lot of, a lot of the guests had stem backgrounds and were interested in the stem studies from when they were quite young and had strong family backgrounds that helps to nurture that. I >>Also heard that role models. Yes, >>Exactly, exactly. A strong family backgrounds. I did talk to a few women who come from different backgrounds, like international business and, but loved data and wanted to be able to apply that and really learn data analytics and understand data science and understand the opportunities that, that it brings. And also some of the challenges there. Everybody had an inspiring story. >>Yeah. It's interesting. One of the senior women I interviewed, she was from Singapore and she fled India during a bombing war and then ended up getting her PhD. Now she's in space and weld and all that stuff. And she said, we're now living in nerd, native environment, me and the younger generation they're nerds. And I, you know, were at Stanford dirt nation. Of course we're Stanford, it's nerd nerd nation here. But her point is, is that everything's digital now. So the younger generation, they're not necessarily looking for programmers, certainly coding. Great. But if you're not into coding, you can still solve society problems. There's plenty of jobs that are open for the first time that weren't around years ago, which means there's problems that are new to that need new minds and new, fresh perspectives. So I thought that aperture of surface area of opportunities to contribute in women in tech is not just coding. No, and that was a huge, >>That was, and we also, this morning, I got to hear, and we've talked about, we talked with several of the women before the event about data science in healthcare, data science, in transportation equity. That was a new thing for me, John, that I didn't know, I didn't, I never thought about transient equity and transportation or lack thereof. And so w what this conference showed, I think this year is that the it's not just coding, but it's every industry. As we know, every company is a data company. Every company is a tech company. If they're not, they're not going to be here for a long. So the opportunities for women is the door is just blown. >>And I said, from my interviews, it's a data problem. That's our line. We always say in the cube, people who know our program programming, we say that, but it actually, when we get the data on the pipeline and the pipeline, it has data points where the ages of drop-off of girls and young women is 12 to 14 and 16 to 18, where the drop-off is significant. So attack the pipelining problem is one that I heard a lot of. And the other one that comes out a lot, it's kind of common sense, and it's talked about it, but it's nuanced, but it became very elevated this year in the breaking, the bias theme, which was role models are huge. So seeing powerful women in leadership positions is really a focus and that's inspires people and they can see themselves. And so I think when people see role models of women and, and folks on in positions, not just coded, but even at the executive suite huge focus. So I think that's going to be a next step function in my mind. That's that's, if I had to predict the trend, it would be you see a lot more role modeling, flexing that big time. >>Good that's definitely needed. You know, we, we often used to say she can't be what she can't see, but one of the interviews that I had said, she can be what she can see. And I loved the pivot on that because it put a positive light, but to your point, there needs to be more female role models that, that girls can look up to. So they can see, I can do this. Like she's doing leading, you know, YouTube, for example, or Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook. We need more of these role models to show the tremendous amount of opportunities that are there, and to help those, not just the younger girls, those even that are maybe more mature find that confidence to build. >>And I think that was another king that came out role models from family members, dad, or a relative, or someone that could see was a big one. The other common thread was, yeah. I tend to break stuff and like to put it together. So at a young age, they kind of realized that they were kind of nerdy and they like to do stuff very engineering, but mind is where math or science. And that was interesting. Sally eaves from in the UK brought this up, she's a professor and does cyber policy. She said, it's a stems gray, but put the arts in there, make it steam. So steam and stem are in two acronyms. Stem is, is obviously the technical, but adding arts because of the creativity needs, we need creativity and problem solving with technical. Yes. So it's not just stem it's theme. We've heard that before, but not as much this year, it's amplified big >>Time. Sally's great. I had the chance to interview her in the last couple of months. And you, you bring up creativity, which is an incredibly important point. You know, there are the, obviously the hard skills, the technical skills that are needed, but there's also creativity. Curiosity being curious to ask a question, there's probably many questions that we haven't even thought to ask yet. So encouraging that curiosity, that natural curiosity is as important as maybe someone say as the actual technical knowledge, >>What was the biggest thing you saw this year? If you zoom out and you look at the forest from the trees, what was the big observation for you this year? >>I think it's the growth of woods. We've decided seven years. It's now in 60 countries, 200 events, 500 ambassadors, probably 500 plus. And the number of people that I had on the program, John, that this is their first woods. So just the fact that it's growing, we, we we've seen it for years, but I think we really saw a lot of the fresh faces and heard from them today had stories of how they got involved and how they met Margo, how she found them. I had a younger Alon who'd just graduated from Harvard back in the spring. So maybe not even a year ago, working at Skydio, doing drone work and had a great perspective on why it's important to have women in the drone industry, the opportunities Jones for good. And it was just nice to hear that fresh perspective. And also to S to hear the women who are new to woods, get it immediately. You walk into the Arriaga alumni center in the morning and you feel the energy and the support and that it was just perpetuated year after year. >>Yeah, it's awesome. I think one of the things I think it was reflecting on this morning was how many women we've interviewed in our cube alumni database now. And we yet are massing quite the database of really amazing people and there's more coming in. So that was kind of on a personal kind of reflection on the cube and what we've been working on together. All of us, the other thing that jumped out at me was the international aspect this year. It just seems like there's a community of tribal vibe where it's not just the tech industry, you know, saying rod, rod, it's a complete call to arms around more stories, tell your story. Yes. More enthusiasm outside of the corporate kind of swim lanes into like more of, Hey, let's get the stories out there. And the catalyst from an interview turned into follow up on LinkedIn, just a lot more like viral network effect so much more this year than ever before. So, you know, we just got to get the stories. >>Absolutely. And I think people given what we've been through the last two years are just really hungry for that. In-person collaboration, the opportunity to see more leadership to get inspired and any level of their career. I think the women here this today have had that opportunity and it's been overwhelmingly positive as you can imagine as it is every year. But I agree. I think it's been more international and definitely much more focused on teaching some of the other skills, the confidence, the creativity, the curiosity. >>Well, Lisa, as of right now, it's March 8th in Japan. So today, officially is kicking off right now. It's kicking off international women's day, March 8th, and the cube has a four region portal that we're going to make open, thanks to the sponsors with widths and Stanford and AWS supporting our mission. We're going to have Latin America, AMIA Asia Pacific and north America content pumping on the cube all day today, tomorrow. >>Exactly. And we've had such great conversations. I really enjoyed talking to the women. I always, I love hearing the stories as you talked about, we need more stories to make it personal, to humanize it, to learn from these people who either had some of them had linear paths, but a lot of emergency zig-zaggy, as you would say. And I always find that so interesting to understand how they got to where they are. Was it zig-zaggy, was it zig-zaggy intentionally? Yes. Some of the women that I talked to had very intentional pivots in their career to get them where they are, but I still thought that story was a very, >>And I like how you're here at Stanford university with winds the day before international Wednesday, technically now in Asia, it's starting, this is going to be a yearly trend. This is season one episode, one of the cube covering international women's day, and then every day for the rest of the year, right? >>What were some of your takeaways from some of the international women's day conversations that you had? >>Number one thing was community. The number one vibe was besides the message of more roles or available role models are important. You don't have to be a coder, but community was inherently the fabric of every conversation. The people were high energy, highly knowledgeable about on being on point around the core issue. It wasn't really politicized was much more of about this is really goodness and real examples of force multipliers of diversity, inclusion and equity, when, what works together as a competitive advantage. And, you know, as a student of business, that is a real change. I think, you know, the people who do it are going to have a competitive advantage. So community competitive advantage and just, and just overall break that bias through the mentoring and the sponsorships. >>And we've had a lot of great conversations about, I loved the theme of international women's day, this year breaking the bias. I asked everybody that I spoke with for international women's day and for width. What does that mean to you? And where are we on that journey? And everyone had a really insightful stories to share about where we are with that in their opinions, in their fields industries. Why, and ultimately, I think the general theme was we have the awareness now that we need, we have the awareness from an equity perspective, that's absolutely needed. We have to start there, shine the light on it so that the bias can be broken and opportunities for everybody can just proliferate >>Global community is going to rise and it's going to tend to rise. The tide is rising. It's going to get better and better. It was a fun year this year. And I think it was relief that COVID kind of going out, people getting back into physical events has been, been really, really great. >>Yep, absolutely. So, John, I, I appreciate all the opportunities that you've given me as a female anchor on the show. International women's day coverage was fantastic. Widths 2022 coming to an end was fantastic. Look forward to next year. >>Well, Margo, Judy and Karen who put this together, had a vision and that vision was right and it was this working and when it gets going, it has escape, velocity unstoppable. >>It's a rocket ship. That's a rocket. I love that. I love to be part of John. Thanks for joining me on the wrap. We want to thank you for watching the cubes coverage of international women's day. The women's showcase as well as women in data science, 2022. We'll see you next time.

>>Live from Stanford university on your host. Lisa Martin. My next guest joins me with many I, our corporate vice president at Microsoft, Rick Minnie. It's great to have you on the program. Thank you for having me. Tell me a little bit about your background. So you run Microsoft advertising, engineering organizations. You also manage a multi-billion dollar marketplace globally. Yes. Big responsibilities. >>A little bit >>About you and your role at Microsoft. >>So basically online advertising, you know, funds a lot of the consumer services like search, you know, feeds. And so I run all of the online advertising pieces. And so my team is a combination of machine learning in theory, software engineers, online services. So you think of you think of what needs to happen for running an online advertising ecosystem? That's billions of dollars. I have all these people on my team when I get to work with these fantastic people. So that's my >>Roles. We have a really diverse team. >>Yes. My background itself is in AI. So my PhD was in language modeling and natural language processing. That's how I got into the space. And then I did, you know, machine learning. Then I did some auctions and then I'd, you know, I basically have touched almost all pieces of the puzzle. So from, I appreciate what's required to run a business the size. And so from that perspective, you know, yeah, it is a lot of diverse people, but at the same time, I feel like I know what they do >>Right then interdisciplinary collaboration must be incredibly important and >>Powerful. It is. I mean, for machine learning engineer or machine learning scientists to be successful, when you're running a production system, they have to really appreciate what constraints are there, you know, required online. So you have to look at how much CPU you use, how much memory you need, how fast can your model inference run with your model. And so they have to work very closely with the soft, soft engineering field. But at the same time, the software engineering guys need to know that their job is not to constrain the machine learning scientists. So, you know, as the models get larger, they have to get more creative. Right. And if that balance is right, then you get a really ambitious product. If that balance is not right, then you end up with a very small micro micro system. And so my job is to really make sure that the team is really ambitious in their thinking, not always liking, pushing the borders of what can be done. >>I like that pushing the borders of what can be done. You know, we, we often, when we talk about roles in, in stammered technology, we've talked about the hard skills, but the soft skills you've mentioned creativity. I always think creativity and curiosity are two soft skills that are really important in data science and AI. Talk to me about what your thoughts are. There >>Definitely creativity, because a lot of the problems that you, you know, when you're in school, the problems you face are very theoretical problems. And when you go into the industry and you realize that you need to solve a problem using the theory you learned, then you have to either start making different kinds of assumptions or realize that some assumptions just can be made because life is messy and online. You know, users are messy. They don't all interact with your system the same way. So you get creative in what can be solved. And then what needs to be controlled and folks who can't figure that piece out, they try to solve everything using machine learning, and they become a perfectionist, but nothing ever gets done then. So you need this balance and, and creativity plays a huge role in that space. And collaboration is you're always working with a diverse group of people. So explaining the problem space to someone who's selling your product, say someone is, you know, you build this automated bidding engine and they have to take this full mouth full and sell it to a customer. You've got to give them the terminology to use, tell, explain to them what are the benefits if somebody uses that. So I, I feel people who can empathize with the fact that this has to be explained, do a lot better when they're working in a product system, you know, bringing machine learning to a production system. >>Right. There's a lot of enablement >>There. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. >>Were you always interested in, in stem and engineering and AIS from when you were small? >>Somewhat? I mean, I've been, I got to my college degree. I was very certain by that point I wanted to be an engineer and my path to AI was kind of weird because I didn't really want to do computer science. So I ended up doing electrical engineering, but in my last year I did a project on speech recognition and I got introduced to computer programming. That was my first introduction to computer programming at the end of it, I knew I was going to work in the space. And so I came to the U S with less than three or four months of a computer engineering background. You know, I barely knew how to code. I had done some statistics, but not nearly enough to be in machine learning. And, but I landed in a good place. And I came to be in Boston university and I landed in a great lab. And I learned everything on my feet in that lab. I do feel like from that point onwards, I have always been interested and I'm never satisfied with just being interested in what's hot right now. I really want to know what can be solved later in the future. So that combination, I think, you know, really keeps me always learning, growing, and I'm never happy with just what's being done. >>Right? Yeah. We here, we've been hearing a lot about that today at weds. Just the tremendous opportunities that are here, the opportunities for data science, for good drones, for good data science and AI in healthcare and in public transportation. For example, you've been involved in with winds from the beginning. So you've gotten to see this small movement grow into this global really kind of is a >>Phenomenon. It is, >>It's a movement. Yes. You talk to me about your involvement with winds from the beginning and some of the things that you're helping them do. And now, >>So I, I first met Karen and marble initially when I was trying to get students from ICME to apply for roles in Microsoft. I really thought they had the right mix of applied and research mindset and the skill sets that were coming out of ICME rock solid in their math and theoretical foundations. So that's how I got to know them. And then they were just thinking about bids at that point in time. And so I said, you know, how can I help? And so I think I've been a keynote speaker, Pam list run a workshop. And then I got involved with the woods high school volunteer effort. And I'd say, that's the most rewarding piece of my visit involvement. And so I've been with them every year. I never Ms. Woods. I'm always here. And I think it is, you know, Grace Hopper was the technology conference for women and, and it's, it's, it's an awesome conference. I mean, it's amazing to sit next to so many women engineers, but data science was a part of it, but not a critical part of it. And so having this conference, that's completely focused on data science and making it accessible. The talks are accessible, making it more personable to, to all the invitees here. I think it creates a great community. So for me, I think it's, I hope they can run this and grow this for >>Yeah. Over 200 online events this year in 60 countries, they're aiming to reach a hundred thousand people annually. It's, it's grown dramatically in a short time period. Yes, >>Absolutely. Yeah. It hasn't been that long. It hasn't been that long and every year they add something new to the table. So for this year, I mean last year I thought the high schoolers, they started bringing in the high schoolers and this year again, I thought the high school. >>Yeah, >>Exactly. And I think the mix of getting data science from across a diversity, because a lot of the conferences are very focused. Like, you know, they, they will be the focused on healthcare and data science or pure AI or pure machine learning. This conference has a mix of a lot of different elements. And so attendees get to see how it's something is being used in healthcare and how something is being used in recommendations. And I think that diversity is really valuable. >>Oh, it's hugely valuable that the thought diversity is this is probably the conference where I discovered what thought diversity was if only a few years ago and the power and the opportunities that it can unlock for people everywhere for businesses in any industry. Yes. >>I want to kind of play off one of the things you said before, you know, data science for good, the, the incredible part of data sciences, you can do good wherever you are with data science. So take online advertising, you know, we build products for all advertisers, but we quickly figured out that are really large advertisers. They have their own data science teams and they are optimizing and, you know, creating new ads and making sure the best ads are serving at all times. They have figured out, you know, they have machine learning pipelines, so they are really doing their best already. But then there's this whole tale of small advertisers who just don't have the wherewithal or the knowledge to do any of that. Now, can you make data, use data science and your machine learning models and make it accessible for that long table? Pretty much any product you build, you will have the symptom of heavy users and then the tail users. And can you create an experience that is as valuable for those tailored users as it is for the heavy users. So data science for good exists, whatever problem you're solving, basically, >>That's nice to hear. And so you're going to be participating in some of the closing remarks today. What are some of the pearls of wisdom that you're going to enlighten the audience with today? >>Well, I mean the first thing I, to tell this audiences that they need to participate, you know, in whatever they shaped form, they need to participate in this movement of getting more women into stem and into data science. And my reasoning is, you know, I joined the lab and my professor was a woman and she was very strong scientists, very strong engineer. And that one story was enough to convince me that I belong. And if you can imagine that we create thousands of these stories, this is how you create that feeling of inclusion, where people feel like they belong. Yeah. Look, just look at those other 50 people here, those other a hundred stories here. This is how you create that movement. And so the first thing I want the audience to do is participate, come back, volunteer, you know, submit papers for keynote speeches, you know, be a part of this movement. >>So that's one. And then the second is I want them to be ambitious. So I don't want them to just read a book and apply the theory. I really want them to think about what problem are they solving and could they have solved it in the, in the scale manner that it can be solved. So I'll give a few examples and problems and I'll throw them out there as well. So for instance, experimentation, one of the big breakthroughs that happened in a lot of these large companies in data science is experimentation. You can AB experiment pretty much anything. You know, we can, Google has this famous paper where they talk about how they experimented with thousands of different blues just to get the right blue. And so experimentation has been evolving and data scientists are figuring out that if they can figure out interactions between experiments, you can actually run multiple experiments on the same user. >>So at any given time, you may be subject to four or five different experiments. Now, can we now scale that to infinity so that you can actually run as many experiments as you want questions like these, you shouldn't stop with just saying, oh, I know how AB experimentation works. The question you should be asking is how many such experiments can I run? How do I scale the system? As one of the keynote speakers initially talked about the unasked questions. And I think that's what I want to leave this audience with that don't stop at, you know, answering the questions that you're asked or solving the problems. You know, of you think about the problems you haven't solved your blind spots, you know, those blind spots and that I think I want ambitious data scientists. And so that's the message I want to give this audience. >>I can feel your energy when you say that. And you're involved with, with, with Stanford program for middle school and high school girls. If we look at the data and we see, there's still only about a quarter of stem positions are filled by females, what do you see? Do you see an inspiring group of young women in those middle school and high school girls that, that you see we're, we're on trend to start increasing that percentage. >>So I had a high schooler who just went, you know, she, she, she just, she's at UCLA now shout out to her and she, but she just went through high school. And what I realized is it's the same problem of not having enough stories around you, not having enough people around you that are all echoing the sentiment for, Hey, I love math. A lot of girls just don't talk about us. Yeah. And so I think the reason I want to start in middle school and high school is I think the momentum needs to start there. Yes. Because they get to college. And actually you heard my story. I didn't know any programming until I came here and I had already finished my four years of college and I still figured it out. Right. But a lot of women lose confidence to change fields after four years of college. >>Yes. And so if you don't catch them in early and you're catching them late, then you need to give them this boost of confidence or give them that ramp up time to learn, to figure out, like, I have a few people who are joining me from pure math nowadays. And these kids, these kids come in and within six months they're off and running. So, you know, in the interview phase, people might say, oh, they don't have any coding skills. Six months later, if you interview them, they pick up coding skills. Yeah. And so if you can get them started early on, I think, you know, they don't have this crisis of confidence of moving, changing fields. That's why I feel, and I don't think we are there yet, to be honest, I don't think yet. I think >>You still think there are plenty of girls being told. Now you can't do computer science. No, you can't do physics. No, you can't do math. >>Actually. They are denying it to themselves in many cases because they say, Hey, I go to physics class and there are two boys, two girls out of 50 boys. And I don't think girls are in, you know, you get the stereotype that maybe girls are not interested in physics. And it's not about, Hey, as a girl, I'm doing really well in physics. Maybe I should take this as my career. So I do feel we need to create more resounding stories in the area. And then I think we'll drum up that momentum. That's >>A great point. More stories, more and names to success here so that she can be what she can see exactly what many it's been great having you on the program. Thank you for joining me and sharing your background and some of the pearls of wisdom that you're gonna be dropping on the audience shortly today. We appreciate your insights. Thank you. My pleasure. Who Rick, Minnie, I are. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes coverage weds 2022. We'll be right back after a short break.