(upbeat music) >> Hello and welcome to theCube's coverage of International Women's Day. I'm John Furrier, your host of "theCUBE." We've got great two remote guests coming into our Palo Alto Studios, some tech athletes, as we say, people that've been in the trenches, years of experience, Lena Smart, CISO at MongoDB, Cube alumni, and Tara Hernandez, VP of Developer Productivity at MongoDB as well. Thanks for coming in to this program and supporting our efforts today. Thanks so much. >> Thanks for having us. >> Yeah, everyone talk about the journey in tech, where it all started. Before we get there, talk about what you guys are doing at MongoDB specifically. MongoDB is kind of gone the next level as a platform. You have your own ecosystem, lot of developers, very technical crowd, but it's changing the business transformation. What do you guys do at Mongo? We'll start with you, Lena. >> So I'm the CISO, so all security goes through me. I like to say, well, I don't like to say, I'm described as the ones throat to choke. So anything to do with security basically starts and ends with me. We do have a fantastic Cloud engineering security team and a product security team, and they don't report directly to me, but obviously we have very close relationships. I like to keep that kind of church and state separate and I know I've spoken about that before. And we just recently set up a physical security team with an amazing gentleman who left the FBI and he came to join us after 26 years for the agency. So, really starting to look at the physical aspects of what we offer as well. >> I interviewed a CISO the other day and she said, "Every day is day zero for me." Kind of goofing on the Amazon Day one thing, but Tara, go ahead. Tara, go ahead. What's your role there, developer productivity? What are you focusing on? >> Sure. Developer productivity is kind of the latest description for things that we've described over the years as, you know, DevOps oriented engineering or platform engineering or build and release engineering development infrastructure. It's all part and parcel, which is how do we actually get our code from developer to customer, you know, and all the mechanics that go into that. It's been something I discovered from my first job way back in the early '90s at Borland. And the art has just evolved enormously ever since, so. >> Yeah, this is a very great conversation both of you guys, right in the middle of all the action and data infrastructures changing, exploding, and involving big time AI and data tsunami and security never stops. Well, let's get into, we'll talk about that later, but let's get into what motivated you guys to pursue a career in tech and what were some of the challenges that you faced along the way? >> I'll go first. The fact of the matter was I intended to be a double major in history and literature when I went off to university, but I was informed that I had to do a math or a science degree or else the university would not be paid for. At the time, UC Santa Cruz had a policy that called Open Access Computing. This is, you know, the late '80s, early '90s. And anybody at the university could get an email account and that was unusual at the time if you were, those of us who remember, you used to have to pay for that CompuServe or AOL or, there's another one, I forget what it was called, but if a student at Santa Cruz could have an email account. And because of that email account, I met people who were computer science majors and I'm like, "Okay, I'll try that." That seems good. And it was a little bit of a struggle for me, a lot I won't lie, but I can't complain with how it ended up. And certainly once I found my niche, which was development infrastructure, I found my true love and I've been doing it for almost 30 years now. >> Awesome. Great story. Can't wait to ask a few questions on that. We'll go back to that late '80s, early '90s. Lena, your journey, how you got into it. >> So slightly different start. I did not go to university. I had to leave school when I was 16, got a job, had to help support my family. Worked a bunch of various jobs till I was about 21 and then computers became more, I think, I wouldn't say they were ubiquitous, but they were certainly out there. And I'd also been saving up every penny I could earn to buy my own computer and bought an Amstrad 1640, 20 meg hard drive. It rocked. And kind of took that apart, put it back together again, and thought that could be money in this. And so basically just teaching myself about computers any job that I got. 'Cause most of my jobs were like clerical work and secretary at that point. But any job that had a computer in front of that, I would make it my business to go find the guy who did computing 'cause it was always a guy. And I would say, you know, I want to learn how these work. Let, you know, show me. And, you know, I would take my lunch hour and after work and anytime I could with these people and they were very kind with their time and I just kept learning, so yep. >> Yeah, those early days remind me of the inflection point we're going through now. This major C change coming. Back then, if you had a computer, you had to kind of be your own internal engineer to fix things. Remember back on the systems revolution, late '80s, Tara, when, you know, your career started, those were major inflection points. Now we're seeing a similar wave right now, security, infrastructure. It feels like it's going to a whole nother level. At Mongo, you guys certainly see this as well, with this AI surge coming in. A lot more action is coming in. And so there's a lot of parallels between these inflection points. How do you guys see this next wave of change? Obviously, the AI stuff's blowing everyone away. Oh, new user interface. It's been called the browser moment, the mobile iPhone moment, kind of for this generation. There's a lot of people out there who are watching that are young in their careers, what's your take on this? How would you talk to those folks around how important this wave is? >> It, you know, it's funny, I've been having this conversation quite a bit recently in part because, you know, to me AI in a lot of ways is very similar to, you know, back in the '90s when we were talking about bringing in the worldwide web to the forefront of the world, right. And we tended to think in terms of all the optimistic benefits that would come of it. You know, free passing of information, availability to anyone, anywhere. You just needed an internet connection, which back then of course meant a modem. >> John: Not everyone had though. >> Exactly. But what we found in the subsequent years is that human beings are what they are and we bring ourselves to whatever platforms that are there, right. And so, you know, as much as it was amazing to have this freely available HTML based internet experience, it also meant that the negatives came to the forefront quite quickly. And there were ramifications of that. And so to me, when I look at AI, we're already seeing the ramifications to that. Yes, are there these amazing, optimistic, wonderful things that can be done? Yes. >> Yeah. >> But we're also human and the bad stuff's going to come out too. And how do we- >> Yeah. >> How do we as an industry, as a community, you know, understand and mitigate those ramifications so that we can benefit more from the positive than the negative. So it is interesting that it comes kind of full circle in really interesting ways. >> Yeah. The underbelly takes place first, gets it in the early adopter mode. Normally industries with, you know, money involved arbitrage, no standards. But we've seen this movie before. Is there hope, Lena, that we can have a more secure environment? >> I would hope so. (Lena laughs) Although depressingly, we've been in this well for 30 years now and we're, at the end of the day, still telling people not to click links on emails. So yeah, that kind of still keeps me awake at night a wee bit. The whole thing about AI, I mean, it's, obviously I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination in AI. I did read (indistinct) book recently about AI and that was kind of interesting. And I'm just trying to teach myself as much as I can about it to the extent of even buying the "Dummies Guide to AI." Just because, it's actually not a dummies guide. It's actually fairly interesting, but I'm always thinking about it from a security standpoint. So it's kind of my worst nightmare and the best thing that could ever happen in the same dream. You know, you've got this technology where I can ask it a question and you know, it spits out generally a reasonable answer. And my team are working on with Mark Porter our CTO and his team on almost like an incubation of AI link. What would it look like from MongoDB? What's the legal ramifications? 'Cause there will be legal ramifications even though it's the wild, wild west just now, I think. Regulation's going to catch up to us pretty quickly, I would think. >> John: Yeah, yeah. >> And so I think, you know, as long as companies have a seat at the table and governments perhaps don't become too dictatorial over this, then hopefully we'll be in a good place. But we'll see. I think it's a really interest, there's that curse, we're living in interesting times. I think that's where we are. >> It's interesting just to stay on this tech trend for a minute. The standards bodies are different now. Back in the old days there were, you know, IEEE standards, ITF standards. >> Tara: TPC. >> The developers are the new standard. I mean, now you're seeing open source completely different where it was in the '90s to here beginning, that was gen one, some say gen two, but I say gen one, now we're exploding with open source. You have kind of developers setting the standards. If developers like it in droves, it becomes defacto, which then kind of rolls into implementation. >> Yeah, I mean I think if you don't have developer input, and this is why I love working with Tara and her team so much is 'cause they get it. If we don't have input from developers, it's not going to get used. There's going to be ways of of working around it, especially when it comes to security. If they don't, you know, if you're a developer and you're sat at your screen and you don't want to do that particular thing, you're going to find a way around it. You're a smart person. >> Yeah. >> So. >> Developers on the front lines now versus, even back in the '90s, they're like, "Okay, consider the dev's, got a QA team." Everything was Waterfall, now it's Cloud, and developers are on the front lines of everything. Tara, I mean, this is where the standards are being met. What's your reaction to that? >> Well, I think it's outstanding. I mean, you know, like I was at Netscape and part of the crowd that released the browser as open source and we founded mozilla.org, right. And that was, you know, in many ways kind of the birth of the modern open source movement beyond what we used to have, what was basically free software foundation was sort of the only game in town. And I think it is so incredibly valuable. I want to emphasize, you know, and pile onto what Lena was saying, it's not just that the developers are having input on a sort of company by company basis. Open source to me is like a checks and balance, where it allows us as a broader community to be able to agree on and enforce certain standards in order to try and keep the technology platforms as accessible as possible. I think Kubernetes is a great example of that, right. If we didn't have Kubernetes, that would've really changed the nature of how we think about container orchestration. But even before that, Linux, right. Linux allowed us as an industry to end the Unix Wars and as someone who was on the front lines of that as well and having to support 42 different operating systems with our product, you know, that was a huge win. And it allowed us to stop arguing about operating systems and start arguing about software or not arguing, but developing it in positive ways. So with, you know, with Kubernetes, with container orchestration, we all agree, okay, that's just how we're going to orchestrate. Now we can build up this huge ecosystem, everybody gets taken along, right. And now it changes the game for what we're defining as business differentials, right. And so when we talk about crypto, that's a little bit harder, but certainly with AI, right, you know, what are the checks and balances that as an industry and as the developers around this, that we can in, you know, enforce to make sure that no one company or no one body is able to overly control how these things are managed, how it's defined. And I think that is only for the benefit in the industry as a whole, particularly when we think about the only other option is it gets regulated in ways that do not involve the people who actually know the details of what they're talking about. >> Regulated and or thrown away or bankrupt or- >> Driven underground. >> Yeah. >> Which would be even worse actually. >> Yeah, that's a really interesting, the checks and balances. I love that call out. And I was just talking with another interview part of the series around women being represented in the 51% ratio. Software is for everybody. So that we believe that open source movement around the collective intelligence of the participants in the industry and independent of gender, this is going to be the next wave. You're starting to see these videos really have impact because there are a lot more leaders now at the table in companies developing software systems and with AI, the aperture increases for applications. And this is the new dynamic. What's your guys view on this dynamic? How does this go forward in a positive way? Is there a certain trajectory you see? For women in the industry? >> I mean, I think some of the states are trying to, again, from the government angle, some of the states are trying to force women into the boardroom, for example, California, which can be no bad thing, but I don't know, sometimes I feel a bit iffy about all this kind of forced- >> John: Yeah. >> You know, making, I don't even know how to say it properly so you can cut this part of the interview. (John laughs) >> Tara: Well, and I think that they're >> I'll say it's not organic. >> No, and I think they're already pulling it out, right. It's already been challenged so they're in the process- >> Well, this is the open source angle, Tara, you are getting at it. The change agent is open, right? So to me, the history of the proven model is openness drives transparency drives progress. >> No, it's- >> If you believe that to be true, this could have another impact. >> Yeah, it's so interesting, right. Because if you look at McKinsey Consulting or Boston Consulting or some of the other, I'm blocking on all of the names. There has been a decade or more of research that shows that a non homogeneous employee base, be it gender or ethnicity or whatever, generates more revenue, right? There's dollar signs that can be attached to this, but it's not enough for all companies to want to invest in that way. And it's not enough for all, you know, venture firms or investment firms to grant that seed money or do those seed rounds. I think it's getting better very slowly, but socialization is a much harder thing to overcome over time. Particularly, when you're not just talking about one country like the United States in our case, but around the world. You know, tech centers now exist all over the world, including places that even 10 years ago we might not have expected like Nairobi, right. Which I think is amazing, but you have to factor in the cultural implications of that as well, right. So yes, the openness is important and we have, it's important that we have those voices, but I don't think it's a panacea solution, right. It's just one more piece. I think honestly that one of the most important opportunities has been with Cloud computing and Cloud's been around for a while. So why would I say that? It's because if you think about like everybody holds up the Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, back in the '70s, or Sergey and Larry for Google, you know, you had to have access to enough credit card limit to go to Fry's and buy your servers and then access to somebody like Susan Wojcicki to borrow the garage or whatever. But there was still a certain amount of upfrontness that you had to be able to commit to, whereas now, and we've, I think, seen a really good evidence of this being able to lease server resources by the second and have development platforms that you can do on your phone. I mean, for a while I think Africa, that the majority of development happened on mobile devices because there wasn't a sufficient supply chain of laptops yet. And that's no longer true now as far as I know. But like the power that that enables for people who would otherwise be underrepresented in our industry instantly opens it up, right? And so to me that's I think probably the biggest opportunity that we've seen from an industry on how to make more availability in underrepresented representation for entrepreneurship. >> Yeah. >> Something like AI, I think that's actually going to take us backwards if we're not careful. >> Yeah. >> Because of we're reinforcing that socialization. >> Well, also the bias. A lot of people commenting on the biases of the large language inherently built in are also problem. Lena, I want you to weigh on this too, because I think the skills question comes up here and I've been advocating that you don't need the pedigree, college pedigree, to get into a certain jobs, you mentioned Cloud computing. I mean, it's been around for you think a long time, but not really, really think about it. The ability to level up, okay, if you're going to join something new and half the jobs in cybersecurity are created in the past year, right? So, you have this what used to be a barrier, your degree, your pedigree, your certification would take years, would be a blocker. Now that's gone. >> Lena: Yeah, it's the opposite. >> That's, in fact, psychology. >> I think so, but the people who I, by and large, who I interview for jobs, they have, I think security people and also I work with our compliance folks and I can't forget them, but let's talk about security just now. I've always found a particular kind of mindset with security folks. We're very curious, not very good at following rules a lot of the time, and we'd love to teach others. I mean, that's one of the big things stem from the start of my career. People were always interested in teaching and I was interested in learning. So it was perfect. And I think also having, you know, strong women leaders at MongoDB allows other underrepresented groups to actually apply to the company 'cause they see that we're kind of talking the talk. And that's been important. I think it's really important. You know, you've got Tara and I on here today. There's obviously other senior women at MongoDB that you can talk to as well. There's a bunch of us. There's not a whole ton of us, but there's a bunch of us. And it's good. It's definitely growing. I've been there for four years now and I've seen a growth in women in senior leadership positions. And I think having that kind of track record of getting really good quality underrepresented candidates to not just interview, but come and join us, it's seen. And it's seen in the industry and people take notice and they're like, "Oh, okay, well if that person's working, you know, if Tara Hernandez is working there, I'm going to apply for that." And that in itself I think can really, you know, reap the rewards. But it's getting started. It's like how do you get your first strong female into that position or your first strong underrepresented person into that position? It's hard. I get it. If it was easy, we would've sold already. >> It's like anything. I want to see people like me, my friends in there. Am I going to be alone? Am I going to be of a group? It's a group psychology. Why wouldn't? So getting it out there is key. Is there skills that you think that people should pay attention to? One's come up as curiosity, learning. What are some of the best practices for folks trying to get into the tech field or that's in the tech field and advancing through? What advice are you guys- >> I mean, yeah, definitely, what I say to my team is within my budget, we try and give every at least one training course a year. And there's so much free stuff out there as well. But, you know, keep learning. And even if it's not right in your wheelhouse, don't pick about it. Don't, you know, take a look at what else could be out there that could interest you and then go for it. You know, what does it take you few minutes each night to read a book on something that might change your entire career? You know, be enthusiastic about the opportunities out there. And there's so many opportunities in security. Just so many. >> Tara, what's your advice for folks out there? Tons of stuff to taste, taste test, try things. >> Absolutely. I mean, I always say, you know, my primary qualifications for people, I'm looking for them to be smart and motivated, right. Because the industry changes so quickly. What we're doing now versus what we did even last year versus five years ago, you know, is completely different though themes are certainly the same. You know, we still have to code and we still have to compile that code or package the code and ship the code so, you know, how well can we adapt to these new things instead of creating floppy disks, which was my first job. Five and a quarters, even. The big ones. >> That's old school, OG. There it is. Well done. >> And now it's, you know, containers, you know, (indistinct) image containers. And so, you know, I've gotten a lot of really great success hiring boot campers, you know, career transitioners. Because they bring a lot experience in addition to the technical skills. I think the most important thing is to experiment and figuring out what do you like, because, you know, maybe you are really into security or maybe you're really into like deep level coding and you want to go back, you know, try to go to school to get a degree where you would actually want that level of learning. Or maybe you're a front end engineer, you want to be full stacked. Like there's so many different things, data science, right. Maybe you want to go learn R right. You know, I think it's like figure out what you like because once you find that, that in turn is going to energize you 'cause you're going to feel motivated. I think the worst thing you could do is try to force yourself to learn something that you really could not care less about. That's just the worst. You're going in handicapped. >> Yeah and there's choices now versus when we were breaking into the business. It was like, okay, you software engineer. They call it software engineering, that's all it was. You were that or you were in sales. Like, you know, some sort of systems engineer or sales and now it's,- >> I had never heard of my job when I was in school, right. I didn't even know it was a possibility. But there's so many different types of technical roles, you know, absolutely. >> It's so exciting. I wish I was young again. >> One of the- >> Me too. (Lena laughs) >> I don't. I like the age I am. So one of the things that I did to kind of harness that curiosity is we've set up a security champions programs. About 120, I guess, volunteers globally. And these are people from all different backgrounds and all genders, diversity groups, underrepresented groups, we feel are now represented within this champions program. And people basically give up about an hour or two of their time each week, with their supervisors permission, and we basically teach them different things about security. And we've now had seven full-time people move from different areas within MongoDB into my team as a result of that program. So, you know, monetarily and time, yeah, saved us both. But also we're showing people that there is a path, you know, if you start off in Tara's team, for example, doing X, you join the champions program, you're like, "You know, I'd really like to get into red teaming. That would be so cool." If it fits, then we make that happen. And that has been really important for me, especially to give, you know, the women in the underrepresented groups within MongoDB just that window into something they might never have seen otherwise. >> That's a great common fit is fit matters. Also that getting access to what you fit is also access to either mentoring or sponsorship or some sort of, at least some navigation. Like what's out there and not being afraid to like, you know, just ask. >> Yeah, we just actually kicked off our big mentor program last week, so I'm the executive sponsor of that. I know Tara is part of it, which is fantastic. >> We'll put a plug in for it. Go ahead. >> Yeah, no, it's amazing. There's, gosh, I don't even know the numbers anymore, but there's a lot of people involved in this and so much so that we've had to set up mentoring groups rather than one-on-one. And I think it was 45% of the mentors are actually male, which is quite incredible for a program called Mentor Her. And then what we want to do in the future is actually create a program called Mentor Them so that it's not, you know, not just on the female and so that we can live other groups represented and, you know, kind of break down those groups a wee bit more and have some more granularity in the offering. >> Tara, talk about mentoring and sponsorship. Open source has been there for a long time. People help each other. It's community-oriented. What's your view of how to work with mentors and sponsors if someone's moving through ranks? >> You know, one of the things that was really interesting, unfortunately, in some of the earliest open source communities is there was a lot of pervasive misogyny to be perfectly honest. >> Yeah. >> And one of the important adaptations that we made as an open source community was the idea, an introduction of code of conducts. And so when I'm talking to women who are thinking about expanding their skills, I encourage them to join open source communities to have opportunity, even if they're not getting paid for it, you know, to develop their skills to work with people to get those code reviews, right. I'm like, "Whatever you join, make sure they have a code of conduct and a good leadership team. It's very important." And there are plenty, right. And then that idea has come into, you know, conferences now. So now conferences have codes of contact, if there are any good, and maybe not all of them, but most of them, right. And the ideas of expanding that idea of intentional healthy culture. >> John: Yeah. >> As a business goal and business differentiator. I mean, I won't lie, when I was recruited to come to MongoDB, the culture that I was able to discern through talking to people, in addition to seeing that there was actually women in senior leadership roles like Lena, like Kayla Nelson, that was a huge win. And so it just builds on momentum. And so now, you know, those of us who are in that are now representing. And so that kind of reinforces, but it's all ties together, right. As the open source world goes, particularly for a company like MongoDB, which has an open source product, you know, and our community builds. You know, it's a good thing to be mindful of for us, how we interact with the community and you know, because that could also become an opportunity for recruiting. >> John: Yeah. >> Right. So we, in addition to people who might become advocates on Mongo's behalf in their own company as a solution for themselves, so. >> You guys had great successful company and great leadership there. I mean, I can't tell you how many times someone's told me "MongoDB doesn't scale. It's going to be dead next year." I mean, I was going back 10 years. It's like, just keeps getting better and better. You guys do a great job. So it's so fun to see the success of developers. Really appreciate you guys coming on the program. Final question, what are you guys excited about to end the segment? We'll give you guys the last word. Lena will start with you and Tara, you can wrap us up. What are you excited about? >> I'm excited to see what this year brings. I think with ChatGPT and its copycats, I think it'll be a very interesting year when it comes to AI and always in the lookout for the authentic deep fakes that we see coming out. So just trying to make people aware that this is a real thing. It's not just pretend. And then of course, our old friend ransomware, let's see where that's going to go. >> John: Yeah. >> And let's see where we get to and just genuine hygiene and housekeeping when it comes to security. >> Excellent. Tara. >> Ah, well for us, you know, we're always constantly trying to up our game from a security perspective in the software development life cycle. But also, you know, what can we do? You know, one interesting application of AI that maybe Google doesn't like to talk about is it is really cool as an addendum to search and you know, how we might incorporate that as far as our learning environment and developer productivity, and how can we enable our developers to be more efficient, productive in their day-to-day work. So, I don't know, there's all kinds of opportunities that we're looking at for how we might improve that process here at MongoDB and then maybe be able to share it with the world. One of the things I love about working at MongoDB is we get to use our own products, right. And so being able to have this interesting document database in order to put information and then maybe apply some sort of AI to get it out again, is something that we may well be looking at, if not this year, then certainly in the coming year. >> Awesome. Lena Smart, the chief information security officer. Tara Hernandez, vice president developer of productivity from MongoDB. Thank you so much for sharing here on International Women's Day. We're going to do this quarterly every year. We're going to do it and then we're going to do quarterly updates. Thank you so much for being part of this program. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for having us. >> Okay, this is theCube's coverage of International Women's Day. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>>from around the globe. It's the cue with digital coverage of active EO data driven 2020. Brought to you by activity. We're back. This is the cubes coverage. Our ongoing coverage of active FiOS data driven. Of course, we've gone virtual this year. Ash. Ashutosh is here. He's the founder, president and CEO of Active Eo. Great to see you again. >>Likewise, They always always good to see you. >>We have We're in a little meet up, You and I in Boston. I always enjoy our conversations. Little did we know that, You know, a few months later, we would only be talking at this type of distance and, uh and of course, it's sad. I mean, a data driven is one of our favorite events is intimate, its customer content driven. The theme this year is you call it the next normal. Some people call it the new abnormal, the next normal. What's that all about? >>I think it's pretty pretty fascinating to see when we walked in in March, all of us were shocked by the effect of this pandemic. And for a while we all scrambled around trying to figure out How do you react to this one, and everybody reacted very differently. But most people have this tendency to think that this is going to be a pretty broom environment with lots of unknown variables, and it is important for us to try to figure out how to get a get our hands on this. By the time we came on. For six weeks into that, almost all of us have figured out this is Ah, this is not something you fight again. This is not something you wait, what, it to go away? But this is one. Did you figure out how to live in and you figured out how to work around it? And that, we believe, is the next long. It's not about trying to create a new abnormal. It's not about creating a new normal, but it's truly one that basically says that is it. That is a way, perhaps packed forward. There's a is a way to create this next normal, and you just figured out how to live with the environment, behalf and the normal outcomes of companies that have done remarkably well as a result of these actions. Fact. If you're being one of them, >>it's quite amazing isn't it? I mean, I've talked to a lot of tech companies, CEOs and their customers, and it's almost like they feel the first reaction was course they cared about their there, their employees and their broader families. Number one number two was many companies, as you know, saw a tailwind, and it initially didn't want to be seen as ambulance chasing. And then, of course, the entrepreneurial spirit kicked in and they said, Okay, we can only control what we can control and tech companies in particular just exceedingly Well, I don't think anybody really predicted that early >>on. Yeah, I, um I think of the heart, We're all human beings, and the first reaction was to take it off. Four constituencies, right? One. Take care of your family. Take it off your community, take care of your employees, take care of your customers. And that was the hardest part. The first 4 to 6 weeks was to figure out How do you do each of those four. Once you figured that part out or you figured out ways to get around to making sure you can take it off those you really found the next mom, you really start forgetting our out of continue to innovate Could, you know to support each of those four constituencies and people have done different things. I know it's amazing how, um, Cuba continues to operate As far as a user is concerned, they're all watching anymore. Yes, we don't have the wonderful desk, and we all get to chat and look in the eye. But the content of the messages asked powerful as what it waas a few months ago. So I'm sure this is how we're all going to figure out how to make through this new next normal >>and digital transformation kind of went from from push to pull. I mean, every conference you go to, they say, Well, look at uber, you know, look at Airbnb and it put up the examples you have to do this to, and then all of sudden the industry dragged you along. Some Curis esta is toe. How and and I guess the other point there is digital means data. We've said that many, many times. If you didn't have a digital strategy during the height of the lock down, you couldn't transact business and still many restaurants is still trying to figure this out, But so how did it affect you and your customers? >>Yeah, it's very interesting. And I we spend a lot of time with several of our customers were managing some of the largest I T organizations. We talk about very interesting phenomena that happened some better beginning of this year. About 20 years ago, we used to worry about this thing called the Digital Divide, those who have access the network and Internet and those who don't. And now there is this beta divide, the divide between organizations that know how to leverage, exploit and absolutely excellent the business using data and those adorable. I think we're seeing this effect so very clearly among organizations that unable to come back and address some of this stuff. And it's fascinating. Yes, we all have the examples off the lights off. People are doing delivery. People are doing retailing, but there are so many little things you're seeing organizations. And just the other day, he had a video from Century Days Is Central Data System, which is helping accelerate Cohen 19 research because it will get copies of the data faster than they would get access to data so that these are just much, much faster. Sometimes you know, several days to a few minutes. It's that that level of effect, it's not just down to some seven. You know, you almost think of it as nice to have, but it's must have life threatening stuff. Essential stuff or just addressing. Korea was running a very pretty in a wonderful article about this supercomputer in That's Doing an Aristo covert 19 and how it's figured out most of these symptoms they're able to figure out by just crunching a ton of data. And almost every one of those symptoms that the computer has predicted Supercomputer is predicted has being accurate. It's about data. It is absolutely about data, which is why I think this is a phenomenal time for companies. Toe Absolutely go change. Make this information about data exploration, data leverage, exploitation. And there's a ton of it all over all around us. >>Yeah, and and part of that digital transformation, the mandate is to really put data at the core. I mean, we've we've certainly seen this with the top market cap companies. They've got dated at the core, and and now, as they say it's it's become a A mandate. And, you know, there's been several things that we've clearly noticed. I mean, you saw the work from home required laptops and, you know, endpoint security and things of that. VD. I made a comeback, and certainly Cloud was there. But I've been struck by the reality of multi Cloud. I was kind of a multi cloud skeptic early on. >>Yeah, >>I said many times I thought it was more of a symptom than it was a strategy, but it's that's completely flipped. Ah, recently in r e t r surveys, we saw multi cloud popping up all over the place. I wonder what you're seeing when you talk to your customers and other CEOs. >>Yeah, So fascinating, though really is the first flower part of sometime in 2018. End of 2018 >>Go right, Yeah, >>the act if you'll go on world, which is a phenomenal way to completely change the way you think about the using object storage in the flower for two years that we saw about 20% of our business. By the end of two years, the beginning of this year, 20% of our business was built on never it in the cloud since March. So that was end of our almost ended the Q one. So now we just limit left you three in six months. We added 12 more percent of the business literally weeded in six months. What we did not do before for 18 months before that, right? Significantly more than what we did for a year and a half before that. And there are really three reasons and we see this old nor again, we have a large customer. We closed in January. Ironically, were deploying out of UK, a very large marketing organization. Got everything deployed, running the they're back up and beyond and a separate data center. And they had a practical problem of not being able to access the second sight literally in the middle of deployment. Mystere that customer, Did you see me Google Cloud? Because they were simply no way for them to continue protecting their data, being able to develop new applications with that data that simply had no access. So there was. This was the number one reason the inability for already physically access, but put their their employees at rest and have before the plow would be the infrastructure. That's number one, so that first of all, drove the reason for the cloud. And then there's a second reason there are practical reasons. And why some clerk platforms that good one working the other ones are not. So where, uh, some other more fuels. And so if I'm an organization that has that spans everything, I've got no power PC and X 86 machine A vm I got container platforms. I got Oracle. They got a C P. There is no single cloud platform that supports all my work loaders efficiently. It's available in all the agents I want. So inevitably I have to go at our different about barefoot. So that's a second practical visa. And then there's a strategic reason. No, when no customer what's really locked into anyone card back at least two. You're gonna go pear more likely? Three. So those are the reasons. And then, interestingly enough, have you were on a panel with as global Cee Io's and in addition to just the usual cloud providers of you all know and love inside the U. S. Across the world, in Europe, in Asia, there's a rise off the regional flower fire. See you take all this factor. So have you got absolute physical necessity? You got practical constraints of what can the club provided support the strategic reasons on why either Because I don't want to be locked into a part for better or because there is a rise off data nationalism that's going on, that people want to keep their data within the country bombs all of these reasons. But the foundations or why multiplier is almost becoming a de facto. It's impossible. What a decent size organization to assume. They were just different on one car ready. >>The big trend we're seeing, I wonder if you could comment. Is this this notion of the data life cycle of the data pipeline? It's a very complex situation for a lot of organizations, their data siloed. We hear that a lot. They have data scientists, data engineers, developers, data quality engineers, just a lot of different constituencies and lines of business. And it's kind of a mess. And so what they're trying to do is bring that together. So they've done that data. Scientists complain they spend all their time wrangling data, but but ultimately the ones that are succeeding to putting data at the core is, we've just been discussing are seeing amazing outcomes by being able to have a single version of the truth, have confidence in that data, create self serve for their for their lines of business and actually reduce the end and cycle times. It's driving your major monetization, whether that's cost cutting or revenue. And I'm curious as to what you're seeing. You guys do a lot of work. Heavy work in Dev ops and hard core database those air key components of that data Lifecycle. Yeah, you're seeing in that regard regarding that data pipeline. >>Yeah, it's a It's a phenomenal point if you really want to go back and exploit data within an organization. If you really want to be a data driven organization, the very first thing you have to do is break down the silos. Ironically, every organization has all the data required to make the decisions they want to. They just can't either get to it or it's so hard to make the silos. That is just not what trying to make it happen. And 10 years ago we set out on this mission rather than keep this individual silos of data. Why don't we flip it open and making it a pipeline, which looks like a data cloud where essentially anybody who's consuming it has access to it based on the governance rules based on the security rules that the operations people have said and based on the kind of format they want to see data. Not everyone even want to see the data in a database. Former, maybe you want the database for my convert CSP for my before you don't analytics And this idea of making data, the new infrastructure, this idea of having the operations people provide this new layer for data, it's finally come to roost. I mean, it's it's fascinating. I was the numbers last quarter. We just finished up. You do now. 45% of our customer base is uses activity or for reuse is the back of data for things that excellent. The business things that make the business move faster, more productive or you will survive. That was the mission. That was what we set out to do 10 years ago. We were talking to an analyst this morning, and now this is question off. You know, it looks like there's a team of backup data being reused, said Yeah, that's kind of what we've been saying for 10 years. Backup cannot be an insurance back up in order to your destination. It has to be something that you could use as an asset and that I think it's finally coming to the point with you can use back up a single source of truth only if you designed it right from the beginning. For that purpose, you cannot just lots of lots of ways to fake it. Make it try to pretend like you're doing it. But that was a trooper was off making date of the new infrastructure, making it a cloud, making it something that is truly an ask. And it's fascinating to see our businesses. You take any of our larger counts and the way they've gone about transforming not just basic backup. India. Yes, we are the world's glasses back up in most Kayla will be our solution. That's that's a starting point. But do we will be used after Devil applications 8, 10 times faster? Ron Analytics, 100 ex pastor. The more data you have, the more people who use data you have, the better this return makeups. >>You know, that is interesting to hear you talk about that because that has been the holy Grail of backup. Was toe go beyond insurance to actually create business value. And you're actually seeing some underlying trends We talked about that data pipeline in one of the areas that is the most interesting is in database, which was so boring for so many years. Ah, and you're seeing new workloads emerge. Take the data warehouse beyond your reporting. Never really lived up to its Ah, it's promise of 360 degree view. You mentioned analytics. That's really starting toe happen. Ah, and it's all about data John, for Used to say that your data is that is the new development kit. You call it the new infrastructure, and it's sort of the same same type of theme. So maybe some of the trends you're seeing in ah in database enoughto talk about that for a little bit and then pick your brains and some other tech like object storage is another one that we've really seen takeoff? >>Yeah. So I think our journey with object story began in 16 4017 as we started or Doctor Cloud platform in response to the user requirements, Uh, we did more like most companies have done and unfortunately continue to do to take the in print product. And then it's smooth under the cloud. And one of the things we saw was there was a fundamental difference off how the design points of flower engineering is all about what they're designed it for object story, that one of those one of those primitives fundamental stories, primitives that the cloud providers actually produced that we know really exploited. There was. It was used as a graveyard for data. It's a replacement for me, please, where data goes to die. And then we look at it really closely and say, Well, this is actually a massively scalable, very low cost storage, but it has some problems. It has an interface that you cannot use with traditional servers. Uh, it has some issues around not being able to read, modify right the data. So it feels like a consuming a lot of stories. So we're going to solve those problems because a good two years to come back with something on world that fundamentally creeds objects the lady like this massive use capable high performer disk? Yes, except it is ridiculously low cost and optimize the capacity. So this finger on world that patented has really become the foundation of how everything in our works without using CPU Ray, that is simply nothing at a lower PCO that if you wanted to basic backup, the, uh, more importantly, use that to do this a massive analytics and you don't know more data warehouse data leaks. It is not a good deal of Lake House aladi. All of these are still silent. All of these are people trying to take some data from somewhere put into one of the new construct and have it being controlled by somebody else. This is artist thing. It's just you just move the silos from some place to another place instead of creating a pipeline. If you want to really create a pipeline object story has been integral part of the pipeline, not a separate bucket by itself. And that's what we did. And same thing with databases, you know, most business, most of the critical business and I was on a daily basis, and the ability to find a way to leverage those. Move them on our leverage in terms of whichever format databases access. Which location or Saxes doesn't know how big it is. Lots of work has gone into trying to figure figure that one out. And we we had some very, very good partners in some of the largest customers who help take the journey with us. I'm pretty much all of the global 2000 accounts you see across the board, but an integral part of a process. >>You mentioned the word journey and triggered a thought. Is your discussion with Robbie, the CEO of of Seeing >>A. It was a customer years. >>Ah, and what he said. I liked what he said. He course he used the term journey. We all do. But he said, You know what? I kind of don't like that term because I want to inject the sense of urgency essentially what he was saying. I want speed, you know, journeys like Okay, kids get in the car, were in a drive across country. We're gonna make some stops. And so, while there's a journey, he also was was really trying to push the organization hard and he talked about culture. Ah, as some of the most difficult things and it goes like many. See, I said, Now the technology is almost the easy part. It's true when it works. Oh, I thought that was a great discussion that you had. What were some of your takeaways >>with thinking? Robbie's is very astute. Ah, I t executive was being around the block for so long and one of the fascinating things, but a asking this question about what's the biggest challenge was just gone through this a couple of times. What is the biggest challenge? Taking an organization as vulnerable as well known A C gate is. I mean, this is a data company. This is This is the heart of the Oliver Half the world's data is on seeing stuff. How are you today was, or company has been around for long in the middle of Silicon Valley and make it into ah into a fast growing transformation company that's responding to the newer challenges. And I thought he was going to come back with Well, you know, I gotta go to the abuses. I picked this technology that techno in. Surely that is exactly what I expected he would end up with. There's nothing through technology in this day and age when you can have an Elon Musk and send a card of Mars. It's not many technologies that we can really solve many covered 19 ism. Next one Do we gotta go solve? Well, frankly, he kid upon the one thing that matters to every company. It is the fundamental culture to create a biased of action. It's a fundamental culture where you have to come back and have a deliverable that moves the ball forward every day, every month, every quarter, as opposed to have this CDs off. Like you said, a journey that say's and we all know this right? People talk about, we're going to do this in face one. We're gonna do this and face to and good food release and face three nothing and what happens Invasive. Nobody gets a number feast. I think he did a great job of saying I fundamentally had to go change the culture that was my biggest take away, and this I've heard this so many times the most effective I D execs wait a transformation. It actually shows in the people that they have. It's not the technology, it's the people. And some. This history is replete with organizations that have done remarkably well, not by leveraging the heck out of the technology, but truly by leveraging the change in the people's mindset. And, of course, that at that point that leverages technology where a proper here. But Robbie's a insightful person, always such a They lied to talk them, said they like for him to have chosen us as a its information technology for him to go pull his data warehouses and completely transformed how I was doing manufacturing across the globe. >>You know, I want to have some color of what you just said because some key keep takeaways that from what you just said, ashes is You know, you're right when you look back at the history of the computer industry used to be very well known processes, but the technology was the big mystery and the and the big risk and you think about with Cove it were it not for Technology Way didn't know what was coming. We were inventing new processes literally every day, every week, every month. It's so technology was pretty well understood. It and enabled that. And when you when you think when we talked earlier about putting data at the core, it was interesting to hear Robbie. He basically said, Yeah, we had a big data team in the U. S. A big tainted TV in Europe. We actually organized around silos and and so you guys played a role you were very respectful about, you know, touting active video with him. You did ask him, You know what role you play, But it is interesting to hear and talk about how he had to address that both culturally. And of course, there's technology underneath to enable that unification of data that silo busting, if you will. And you guys played a role in that. >>Yeah, I always enjoy, um, conversation with folks who have taken a problem, identified what needs to be done and then just get it done. And its That's more fascinating than you. Of course, I video plays a small part in a lot of things, and we're proud to have played a small part in his big initiative, and that's true of know the thousands of customers we talk about. But it's such a fascinating story to have leaders who come back and make this transformation happen, and to understand how they went about making those decisions, how they identified where the problem with these are so hard. We all see them in our own life, right? We see there is a there's a problem, but sometimes it takes a wider don't understand. How do you identify them and what do you have to do and more importantly, actually do it? And so whenever use, whenever I get an opportunity with people like Robbie, I think understanding that there's a way to help, uh, we always make sure that we play our own small part, and we're privileged to be a part of those kinds of journeys. >>Well, I think what's interesting about activity on the company that you created is essentially that. We're talking about the democratisation of data, that whole data pipeline, that discussion, that we had the self service of that data to the lines of business and, you know, you guys clearly play a role there. The multi cloud discussion fits into that. I mean that these air all trends that are tail winds for companies that can that can help sort of you know, flattened the data globe. If you if you will, your final thoughts. >>Yeah, I know you said something that is so much at the heart of every idea Exactly that you're talking to, if they truly is. The fundamental asset that I finally end up with is an organization. The democratization of data. Where I do not lock this into another silo, another platform, another ploughed. Another application has to be part of my foundation design and therefore my ability to use each of this cloud platform for the services they provide. While I and they were to move the data to where I needed to be. That is so critical. So you almost start to think about the one possession and organization now has. And we talked about this with a group of CEOs. They might be some pretty soon. Not too far off, but data stolen asset. I might actually have our data mark data market, just like you. I was stopped working, but I can start to sell my data. You know, imagine a coup in 19. There's so many organization that have so much data, and many of them have contributed to this research because this is an existence of issue. But you can see this turning into a next level. So, yes, we've got activities, will move the data toe one level higher where it's become a foundation construct for the organization. The next part is gonna actually done. This is the one asset would actually monetize someone stuff. And it will be not too long when you need to talk about how there's this new exchange and what's the rate of data for this company? Was, is that company in the future trading options? Who knows is gonna be really interesting. >>Well, I think you're right on this notion of a data. Marketplaces is coming, and it's not not that far away, Blash. It's always great to talk to you. I hope next year a data driven weaken we could be face to face. But I mean, look, this has been we we've dealt with it. It's it's actually created opportunities for us toe to reinvent ourselves. So congratulations on the success that you've had and ah, and thank you for coming on the Cube. >>No, thank you for hosting us and always a big fan off Cube. You guys, you engage with you since early days, and it is fascinating to see how this company has grown. And it's probably many people don't even know how much you've grown behind the seats, technologies and culture that you created yourself. So it's hopefully one day we'll strict the table that I would be another side and asking of our transformation. Digital transformation of Cuban cell >>I would love to. I'd love to do that index again. And thank you, everybody for watching our continuous coverage of active fio data driven keeper Right there. We'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. >>Thank you.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering HP Discover Virtual experience Brought to you by HP >>Hey, welcome back to the Cube's coverage of HP Discover. 2020. The virtual experience Pradeep Kumar is here. He's the senior vice president and general manager of Point Next services for our things in Houston. Welcome. >>Very good. It's a Z usual. It's warm and sunny, so I'm good. Thank you. Thanks for having me. >>You're very welcome. So now let's set this up. So when HP split into two companies formed H, P E and HP, it did a spin merge with E DS. It's large services business, and one of the things that came out of that was the point. Next services brand and group within HP, and this was very important. I want to share this with our audience because it really streamlined H H PS services Messaging is offering. It opened up new partnering opportunities and produced. This is really the business that you run. So maybe add any color to my little narrative upfront and talk about your role there. >>No, absolutely. I think what HP wanted to make sure is they have ah white portfolio of services. So also, we we have advisory and professional services as well as operational services in the back end. So we just streamline everything for the customer from a services point of view. And that's what the next stands for. You described it pretty validated >>now as you as you know, because you can imagine a lot of these virtual events that we've been doing. The pandemic, of course, has been a topic of discussion. But really, the discussion thus far has been on. Okay, how are you handling it? What kinds of things are you doing to support clients? And I want to understand that from you. But now we're at a point. We're really talking about the post isolation economy and what that all means. So what are you seeing for deep in your client base? >>Yeah, the point you made is a very critical one, right? During the pandemic, everybody Waas Hey, can I business continuity plans, right? Can I manage my business in that? In that scenario day? Really? Preparation was everything right? Things that we take it for granted, like remote working capabilities, parts having parts at the right places. Right now we have more pastors to describe. It's more. What is the new normal? What is business going to look like in the future? And how can technology help you to achieve that, right, If I give an example off, you know how many people were working from offices, including HB substantial portion off the team Members of the workforce was working from an office. Now probably about 1/3 will be working from the office, and about one toe probably will work from home. And there's another one who will come to the office in a infrequent basis for collaboration. So the whole landscape off the new normal has changed forever. >>So what I'd like to do for Deep is if we could bring up some data that we have and to really just set the context and drill in a little bit in terms of what you guys are seeing you again, point next is critical. Not only was it a business that Antonio Neri kind of ran the services business, so he understands it well, but it really is the touch point to customers. Now, when you talk to CIOs, this is data from our data partner CTR. In a survey of 700 CIOs and I t pros is that what they see is the shape of the recovery. And you can see here 44% expect a U shaped recovery. Now you've got in the 16%. There's a tailwind, businesses, their health supplies, video conferencing. You work from home or remote workers. What you were talking about, these companies actually saw a tailwind of their business. And then, of course, you've got essential businesses, and you've got, you know, businesses are just now coming back, and then you've got businesses that are really struggling Airlines, hospitality restaurants, mall. So it's really a very much fragmented recovery. So I'm wondering what you guys are specifically seeing because you are so close to so many of these customers. >>Yeah, so we see that mix bag right? So I feel like whether it's a UI or where they it's a U shaped recovery, it's sort of a more point, right, because it's not going to be the same as before. The right things have changed. Even if you are, um, in a particular business, let me take just It's the worship right house of worship, right? So it could be a temple, a synagogue, church, a mosque. It doesn't matter, right? They had a particular constituency that we had before. Who used to come? Let's take a church, for example, Who used to come to mass on A on a Sunday, Right. And in my case, my family would get out and go out there to the Mass at the last minute, right? I have 22 teenage boys, and, you know, my wife wants to go on time to mass, but we will never make it. You know, we'll be last minute worshippers going in there. And then, um, you know, find appeal, dissident. Right now, if we look at it, how it has changed for these worshippers, it's very different now, right? A set of worshippers >>who, uh, >>who watch it live stream that comes from the church will never go back or very go back, very seldom. And then there's a set of worshippers who want to go back. But now they got to sign up a week early, which particular mass they're going to and, um, and identify a pew to sit on. So the whole thing has changed for for a company for its customers the way people would consume in the future. And people who are ready for this and have managed and be prepared make use of that opportunity. And for my church, for example, in this case, I think to survival is the constituents donations on a weekly basis, right? So have they're being very digital, you know, My church, unfortunately, was very digital 100% digital. Therefore, they didn't see a huge deep on their collections, which was survival for them. So if you equate that Dave into different businesses, right, it's changed in many different ways. And as you pointed out in that shot, it's different from industry to industry business to business on how you cope up with it, how you prepare for it. Um, how you use technology for your advantage would be the winners and loses, >>you know, And that's a great first of all. That's a great example of houses of worship. And there are many. You're seeing sports now Major League baseball struggling to figure out what to do. It seems like basketball figured out. A lot of people have invested in Palestinians, and so, you know, you know, maybe yoga is not as good in the studio, but it's pretty good. You know, A lot of people bought R V, so there's gonna be some permanent changes, you know, to your to your point. And I wanted to show, you know, we've been thinking about Okay, what's the framework for understanding that fragmentation in the recovery? It's, you know, what is the feasibility of physical distancing? How digital are these these businesses? How essential are these businesses? I mean, there are It's a complicated situation to figure out. So again, the key is point Next has to be really close to its customers. You guys have to be digital in doing that. But are you seeing any specific patterns? Emerge? >>Yeah, I think what we're seeing is, um, you know, people working out what the new normal is right? And then saying, How do I get to that new normal? How do I take the advantage? How do I make use of that opportunity to get better? This is where I think point next services is important to talk about what is. We have got 23,000 experts around the world, right, and there's a substantial portion off advisory faults, right? Who will come and work out with you. What? That new normal A's? And what is the answer? What is the strategy that you want? What is the North Star you want to achieve? And how do you transform your whole company, your environment, into that new normal right? And how do we take you on that journey? Be there for you to taking you through that journey into the new normal to to capitalize on those opportunities? A couple of things I would point out here. Dave, I think, definitely. I think building a platform that's a child and resilient for the future, for any disruption is white, right? I think what the pandemic products is If you have a very agile platform and very resilient for any kind of disruption, you're going to be on a winner. So once you've identified what that new normal for you, I think HP point next really can help you be your trusted partner to get there. In the end, >>you know, pretty kind of BC before covert, when the Cube is doing a lot of live events. Everybody's talking about digital transformation, and of course, there are a couple of means floating around the Internet. One is the big wrecking ball going into the building, where the executives saying, You know, not in my lifetime and then you got Cove in 19 and the wrecking ball coming, and there's another one that I want to share with our audience. You guys have bring this up. It's the It's the It's the survey of who's leading the digital transformation of your company. Is that the CEO? Is that the CTO? Well, actually, no, it's it's covert 19. So this is kind of tongue in cheek. It's sort of a sad, stark reality here, but the truth is that if you're not digital now, you're going to really be in big trouble. And so there's a number of fact factors that we've seen are facets that we've seen in the marketplace clearly work from home security. You know, it's not just, ah, video conferencing, it's it's SD win on and certainly cloud so again, what are you seeing? Maybe really. Start with Cloud. What are you seeing in terms of cloud adoption and acceleration? >>Yeah, So we, uh what we're seeing really is Dave the the same priorities for a company exists, right? To get to a very efficient model, too. More than what it is, a cloud or not, I think what people are looking for is an as a service model, very about cost model for their workloads. So people are really pushing for a hybrid environment because the same, um, things exist. Some workloads are well, you know, suited for a public cloud. Some workloads are suited for an on Prem environment where you have Laden's issues, compliance issues, security issues, right. But what they want is when they have that on Prem environment, it should be as a service, a cloud like environment that you can pay for what you use. So people are really using warning to get into that hybrid environment. What Corbyn has really triggered is to do go on that transformation journey much quicker pace than what they had gone in the past, so the same logic exist. But people want to go through that journey quickly, so you are at the right place, ready for any future disruptions. I think that's what really happened in the marketplace. So we're working with lots of companies are taking them through the journey, identifying which workloads should go there and giving a hybrid environment that satisfies of their future needs. >>So I want to ask you about disruptions because I think it's I think it's a safe bet that while technology has always been a catalyst for disruption, it would appear pretty obvious that that other external factors are gonna gonna create more disruptions in this decade than perhaps technology, not the technology will still be disruptive, but things like pandemics, natural disasters. We've seen social uprising over the over the past couple of weeks. These external factors are really driving other agendas within organizations. And so where does technology fit? What are people who have data centers telling you guys in terms of their priorities and how technology and some of these external factors or maybe blending together? >>Yeah, so sometimes I think during destruction, whether it's a pandemic or, you know, I'm based in Houston way, we're so used to having, you know, floods, right hurricanes. And I think sometimes what people forget is being prepared for a pandemic or the hockey game. Simply pay. Have your candles ready, have your water bottles ready. So when the floods arrive, you at least have something to to rely on and cos continuously worn a preparedness business continue to plan state. Right, That is the number one priority to make sure that you have a business continuity plan that does not affect your business, then secondarily. Okay, um, I want to preserve my cash, and I want to make sure I am prepared and getting ready for the future where the future technology is different to what I had before. And I may not have the experts and the skills for that future technology. This is where the HP point next really helps either give people that expertise, skill set or augment with your teams to get you into that future technology. The third thing I would say is clearly, I think once you got on to that technology, our platform, how do you maintain that, right. How do you continuously optimize that? And you might need training or your people? It's ah, it's a continuous management of HCI, and your next again is available to you either toe optimal continuously optimize your new platform or, you know, educate your people on how to manage their platform. So I think you need to look at it as a continuum you have a business continue to plan? Did you try ons transform into the new environment you wanted to the 13 years Are you continuously optimizing and be ready for the next disruption around the corner? >>You know, I think the point you were making about business continuance of very important and I wonder if you could comment on a lot of CEOs have told us flat out just honestly, our business continuity plans were way to d are focused. And so now we're going to retool those. We are re tooling those It's work from home, which has this, this permanence to it, and it's being able to kind of anticipate some of these changes. The network changes are pretty significant. I have no doubt you guys are seeing that are participating in that sort of, you know, re revised or revitalized business continuity. >>Yeah, and you have to reimagine right? Askew pointed out correctly that it was all disaster. Recovery is all what you had you didn't think about. Hey, you know, maybe 50% off your workforce is not going to come back. And you need a way to collaborate among that workforce, right? Plus, as you pointed out. Connectivity is an issue, and but you got to think it's not just connectivity. You need to be able to enable your works force to be able to collaborate amongst each other, be positive and fanatical about your customers. That's crucial. People who are coming back. Think about it. Right? Um, you know, um, Kayla's access is important. Do we measure The temperature is important. How the team members are, you know, going around in your facility. You have contact Tracy. All that becomes widely important, right? And they they sound very basic, but they become might be important because a >>lot of learnings jammed into the last quarter. Yeah, a lot of a lot of learnings jammed into the last 90 days. Let me ask you if you could summarize for our audience the point next advantage. I mean, why HP point? Next? What do you guys bring? That that's unique and differential from all the other companies out there? >>Yeah, the breadth of point next is is very important. Point next, have got 23,000 employees really dedicated and fanatical about customers and customers. Well, being customers experience. So we are very outcome based on the people >>who who >>are here, who are different in a sense to find out what makes best sense for you and then take you through that transformation and there will be bumps on the road. Dave, Um, you know when you're working with a partner, is the partner really trusted? That will stay with you when there are bumps on the road and and make sure that your end goal is achieved. I think that's crucial. We are not like any other company. We're very, very motivated. Workforce. Very passionate workforce. Who wants to make sure you know customers in goals are achieved, right? So we are not we We look at it in a holistic way. They've compared to anybody else. And we have an extremely trusted partner who's there always with you. >>Last question for people watching this segment. Of course, we have the Discover virtual experience going on any any areas where they should focus on the when they hit the site. Where should they go? Any. Any sessions that you would recommend >>there are because it's work you're there are so many sessions, plenty of sessions, plenty of availability in many, many different areas, definitely if you're interested in what is the new normal connectivity for your employees bringing back employees? You want to look at those areas? There's there's ah ah lot of availability off decisions in the point next side of things that talks about how to cope up with the new normal. I would strongly recommend you look at those things because that gives you allows you to build in a very agile platform, that Brazilian for the next disruption that's going to come in. >>But pretty pretty. Kumar, Thanks so much for coming on the Cube and, uh, and have a great discover. Stay safe. Be well. >>Thank you, Dave. >>Alright, Keep it right there. Everybody. We'll be back with our next guest. The Cube's continuous coverage of HP Discover 2020. The virtual experience right back. Right after this short break. >>Yeah, yeah,

>>live from Las Vegas. It's the Q covering AWS executive. Something brought to you by extension. >>Welcome back, everyone to the cubes. Live coverage of the ex Censure Executive Summit here in AWS. Reinvent I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We have three guests for this segment. We have Fang Deng. She is the big data and an Advanced Analytics program. Lead analytic Seo hee at Novartis. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you. We have low eq zero. He is Novartis head of Analytic Seo Hee. Thanks so much. Look, and Vika sinned. Wan Hee hee is applied intelligence delivery lead at Accenture. Thank you so much. Thank you. So I want to start with you. Look, no. Novartis, of course, is a household name. It's one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. But that left you to just walk our viewers a little bit through your business and sort of the pain points you were looking to solve with this journey Thio to the cloud >>you think you ever care? So I think if I if we look at the company, I think Wayne realized that it is more and more difficult to bring new trucks to market, so it takes about 12 years and on $1.2 billion to find a new trick. So at the same time, we see that there's more and more patient that need access to medicines. So in the last two years, I think we tried toe clear the new strategy where we're trying to re imagine medicine for user's data and technology. So in 2018 we've recruited a new studio that's came and I tried to build a digital ambition which is around fabulous, which is the innovation, the operation and the engagement on the innovation. What we're trying to do is to find new compound, will application off existing compounds into our business, make sure that I think patients can get access to drugs much faster and earlier on in the operation. We are trying to optimize the backbone off day to day processes, beat in the manufacturing or in the supply chain, or in the commercialization to ensure that the patient also get access to that much faster in the engagement. We're trying to healthy a cheapie and the players and then the and the patients to better understand the tracks reproduce as well as on the medication they need to have to receive treatment. So if you look at these three pillars, the cloud strategy is an essential portion of it. Because in all of its processes we have a lot of data and full cloud. I think we can make use off his data to help to innovate, open, right and engage. >>So as you as you said, it's really about reimagining medicine. I mean, from the drug discovery process to how it's helping patients live, live longer, healthier lives. Thanks. So talk about the vision for the Formula One platform. >>Yeah, aside, like a mission before we trying to re imagine our products for the patient. And we're trying to use more the more data history data and also the public data try to support our products. And the Formula One is our future enterprise data and the next perform for our new artists. So our objective is trying to love you all the new technology and also trying to consolidate over data in our Macleod and build up this platform for the whole notice Users support our business, do better products full patient. >>So when it comes to these these new new platforms, new technologies that are being introduced. We know that oftentimes the technology is the easy part. Or at least the more straightforward part I should say. But it's it's sort of getting people on board the change management. What are some of the challenges that you that you know of artists faced in terms of of the culture and the skills for your for your workforce? >>So if you look at that, the are in disgrace, very traditionally nature. And when we embarking the details confirmation, I think the first thing we had to change the culture of the company. So when you when you listen to our CEO, I think you tried to promote this invoice culture where all of us are Syrian leaders. And then we walk, you know, as a thing as an organization where we try to help each other and more and more collaborate when it comes to digital transformation. When we started this having this period, we've realised actually that workforce was not trained, so the first few things that we did disease is a tight wire new workforce, but also try to actually identify the advocate ambassadors. I could go and then go into residual confirmation early on to be able to help and to guide the office to get for that. So it's actually it's totally immaterial, Johnny. And then we are now in the second year and we've seen already a tremendous four guys, right? >>Can you describe some of the changes that you've seen him? I mean, I'm really interested in what you talk about. The ambassador's, the people who are going to spread the good word. What are what are some of the changes that you've seen in your workforce? Yeah, we can mention >>that. It's like you mentioned before. Um, like, talking about regarding overall catch a bus back to tried to leverage a new attack. Knowledge like the delivery perspective. We trying to do more automation, and the May 1 side is trying to get more efficiency and also another side. Try to ensure the intern responsibility for one product to be produced and also at the same time, let me through more automation to think about this secret inside the compound inside. Help us a lot of in pulling that part also, because >>maybe I can compliment that so I think if you look at it when the initial studying part of our journey, I think that a lot of people were reluctant to go and then tie to work on a cloud and to work with digital technology. So we found few projects where we felt there's a good ready for money. And as we can deliver fast in fact, Andi to things like, I don't get reviewed t piece every. Make sure that when we went, our field falls, go then and talk to the hippies. They know what to talk about an orphan, and then which format. We also look at that we can reduce costs internally and for the food, different projects and then on product that we've established, we build credibility within the organization that helped to disseminate the cultural transformation. >>So once others air seeing, seeing the benefits that that captured, they're more likely to to feel good about the cloud work. >>Yeah, that's that's the true and also notes of the news. Things like our teams, they are interesting about that. You see more and more people talking about our driveway and also talk about the UAV's and how can we improve the did he re efficiency and the same time is come back to say that teams think about how to make themselves to be a product owner and the product the way of the great. Let's the glistening for the whole team >>because I want to bring you in here a little bit. So talk to me about how ex Center is helping Novartis, particularly in in this eight of us. Caught initiative. >>Six incher is a leader in business and technical i t transformation programmes. So what we're bringing on the table is in the expertise with not only the technology and the AWS elements, but also the business and technical transformation expertise that have we have over the years in the firm. On additionally, I think you know, it's not only about technology change. As you mentioned, it's all a lot of change and operating model and and also kind of working with a very blended team. Across that expertise and experience is what you bring to the table >>a blended team, culturally, regionally, actually, all of it >>one of that belief. I mean, just to give an example. We are working across steams in roughly about six geography ese from various cultures. Where's countries? And it's it's, ah, various time zones, which makes it quite challenging to make it all work together. So you started the journey. I hope you succeed in it. And, uh, you know, it's working well, so far, >>so Cloud is is really a megatrend right now. What are the differences that you're seeing across Regions, countries, industries? >>So I think it's this many answers many parts of the answer to the question. So I think if I talk about, um, industries So you know, initially when clouds started, we had seen a major up take off the cloud technology and the company that manufactured the clown technology and telecommunications, and you know where the older infrastructure and technology aspects were, Whereas companies like health care and media and metals and mining, We're kind of behind the curve in adoption rates because off their respective, you know, concerns around compliance and security of data. But I think that trends is slowly shifting. US. Companies are becoming more open. I think I've seen how the public cloud has matured. The security models, you know, are speaking for themselves. People can understand the benefits from moving to the cloud in terms off, you know, cost rationalization from producing maintenance costs, focusing their proteins on things that they were not able to divert their attention on. >>The fact we had, I think I will say for me and then where I've seen a Novartis if it is access to innovation. So I think loud offering brings a lot off innovation at happy face. That's one hand and also access to extend our collaboration. So when you're in, you know, inside focus I think the relatives from over there wants to walk and collaborate with you. But when you work on the cloud, everybody goes on the cloud. So that's really a stream manifested ate a collaboration with Nextel Partners. >>So how is that changing the culture of Novartis itself? In terms of there, there are more opportunities to collaborate. And it also is maybe changing the kinds of workers you attract because it is is people who want to be doing that in their day to day. >>Well, if you look at it, um, in the past, I think we used to have our own workforce, and then we tried to do a lot of things with our own workers, but I think he's in the on Monte. Workers are full of us, so we have more and more partnerships being announced, and this publishing, I mean used actually to help the company to in revenge himself. So that's actually on one hand on the other side. As you said, I think that to attract with talents I think you need. You also need to have a different future. But you need also to be able to give them the flexibility to work and do the things they like, and we're in a context and a framework. >>One of the things that we hear about so much at the's technology conference is this buzzword of digital transformation and of artisans obviously embarking on its own digital transformation as well as his journey to the cloud. There happen. They're powering each other, they're accelerating each other. How would you describe what is happening to the industry and to know Vargas with it within this, the pharmaceutical industry? >>Yeah, I think, based on our knowledge, to send the why this may be the first. The company can't be trying to build this kind of enterprise level data and also an Alex platform, and based on that, we will be able to counseling date off the history potato intended date on public date, huh? And the Human Industry Day. Then they tried to help us to produce the better products for the patient the same time it gave also the team a chance as you mentioned before, and the look at former more opportunities and the China to leverage in your technology particles of Kayla. >>It's also changed the way that we work every day. So if you look at it now, um, we won't be virtual assistant. We I think we use machine learning elements politics to be able to talkto you are a cheap piece. We actually monitor clickers, Kyle real time having using common centers. So every single day, I think the use off, digital at work and atom in the physical man thinks. And I think we have seen that the adoptions has increased since we have I ever to launch successful products. And I think >>one of the things which, which I really like about working in the bodies, is also I think there's there's an ambition to drive business value quickly. So you know you take a very agile use case, best approach on things rather than having to wait for very long years of time. Plus, the company kind of encourages a culture which is based on mutual cooperation and sharing knowledge, which is great >>because Novartis is really on the vanguard of companies in terms of how much it's embraced, the cloud and how much it's using it. What do you think? Other companies, pharmaceutical companies, but maybe even in other industries as well could learn from the nerve artists example. >>I think one thing people really shy about is, you know, when they moved to the cloud is the security aspect. I think what people probably had failed to realize in the past that there's been so much developments on security in the public cloud, which has bean key focus areas, something nobody's has taken the challenge and has understood that very well. And I think companies can learn from all the different aspects of security that you know were built into our entire transformation work, starting from ingesting data, the user management to access and all of that thing, so that's kind of one thing. Similarly, compliance related aspects as well, you know, So we've g x p compliance is at the core off how we're building our solution. So I think on dhe, if you understand how we built the rules around compliance. But in architecture, I think couples can learn from that a swell and build that is integral part off your not only technology solution, but the process that goes along with it. >>We started our conversation talking about Novartis and its quest to reimagine medicine. How How do you think that your industry is gonna look 5 10 years from now? I mean, the drug discovery process is slow on purpose. I mean, we need to think of patient health and safety for most. But how do you think it really could change the course of how we treat people? >>If if you look at it is more and more treatment required that actually I used and required data as a service or are being actually process for data. So when I am, when we look at the things the way that the industry is changing, I think the times to develop drugs, yes, takes longer. But I think for your use off the data that you have. I think you can try to reduce I cycle. So one of the objective is to reduce the cycle by one firm. Between that, we could bring the day. Is a new director market in eight years, rescues 12 years Today. The other thing is that way for user's data. You can monitor them patient, and you can recommend it the treatment of 80% off foundation. They don't go in and finish her treatment. So I think if we can show the audience to treatment, then there's a lower risk off the admissions to the season and sickness that they have. >>So it's not even not not just Novartis seeing the value of the date. It's the patients themselves, efficiency >>and the d. A r C as well, right? Because I think if you're if the situation is not six and I think the insurance doesn't have to pay. So I think all the value chances is being comes from >>well, sang Loic, because thank you so much for coming on the Cube. It was a really fascinating segment. Thank you. I'm Rebecca night. Stay tuned for more of the cubes. Live coverage of the Ex Center Executive Summit coming up in just a little bit

>> from our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley. HOLLOWAY ALTO, California It is a cube conversation. >> Hi! And welcome to the Cube studios from the Cube conversation, where we go in depth with thought leaders driving innovation across the tech industry on hosted a Peter Burress. What are we talking about today? One of the key indicators of success and additional business is how fast you can translate your data into new value streams. That means sharing it better, accelerating the rate at which you're running those models, making it dramatically easier to administrate large volumes of data at scale with a lot of different uses. That's a significant challenge. Is going to require a rethinking of how we manage many of those data assets and how we utilize him. Notto have that conversation. We're here with Le'Ron v. Bell, who was the CEO of work a Iot leering. Welcome back to the Cube. >> Thank you very much for having >> me. So before we get to the kind of a big problem, give us an update. What's going on at work a Iot these days? >> So very recently we announced around CIA financing for the company. Another 31.7 a $1,000,000 we've actually had a very unorthodox way of raising thiss round. Instead of going to the traditional VC lead round, we actually went to our business partners and joined forces with them into building a stronger where Collier for customers we started with and video that has seen a lot of success going with us to their customers. Because when Abel and Video to deploy more G pews so they're customers can either solve bigger problems or solve their problems faster. The second pillar off the data center is networking. So we've had melon ox investing in the company because there are the leader ofthe fast NETWORKINGS. So between and Vidia, melon, ox and work are yo u have very strong pillars. Iran compute network and storage performance is crucial, but it's not the only thing customers care about, so customers need extremely fast access to their data. But they're also accumulating and keeping and storing tremendous amount of it. So we've actually had the whole hard drive industry investing in us, with Sigi and Western Digital both investing in the company and finally one off a very successful go to market partner, Hewlett Pocket enterprise invested in us throw their Pathfinder program. So we're showing tremendous back from the industry, supporting our vision off, enabling next generation performance, two applications and the ability to scale to any workload >> graduations. And it's good money. But it's also smart money that has a lot of operational elements and just repeat it. It's a melon ox, our video video, H P E C Gate and Western Digital eso. It's It's an interesting group, but it's a group that will absolutely sustain and further your drive to try to solve some of these key data Orient problems. But let's talk about what some of those key day or data oriented problems where I set up front that one of the challenges that any business that has that generates a lot of it's value out of digital assets is how fast and how easily and with what kind of fidelity can I reuse and process and move those data assets? How are how is the industry attending? How's that working in the industry today, and where do you think we're going? >> So that's part on So businesses today, through different kind of workloads, need toe access, tremendous amount of data extremely quickly, and the question of how they're going to compare to their cohort is actually based on how quickly and how well they can go through the data and process it. And that's what we're solving for our customers. And we're now looking into several applications where speed and performance. On the one hand, I have to go hand in hand with extreme scale. So we see great success in machine learning, where in videos in we're going after Life Sciences, where the genomic models, the cryo here microscopy the computational chemistry all are now accelerated. And for the pharmacy, because for the research interested to actually get to conclusion, they serve to sift through a lot of data. We are working extremely well at financial analytics, either for the banks, for the hedge funds for the quantitative trading Cos. Because we allow them to go through data much, much quicker. Actually, only last week I had the grades to rate the customer where we were able to change the amount of time they go through one analytic cycle from almost two hours, four minutes. >> This is in a financial analytics >> Exactly. And I think last time I was here was telling you about one of their turn was driving companies using us taking, uh, time to I poke another their single up from two weeks to four hours. So we see consistent 122 orders of monk to speed time in wall clock. So we're not just showing we're faster for a benchmark. We're showing our customer that by leveraging our technology, they get results significantly faster. We're also successful in engineering around chip designed soft rebuild fluid dynamics. We've announced Melon ox as an idiot customer. The chip designed customers, so they're not only a partner, they have brought our technology in house, and they're leveraging us for the next chips. And recently we've also discovered that we are great help for running Noah scale databases in the clouds running ah sparkles plank or Cassandra over work. A Iot is more than twice faster than running over the Standard MPs elected elastic clock services. >> All right, so let's talk about this because your solving problems that really only recently have been within range of some of the technology, but we still see some struggling. The way I described it is that storage for a long time was focused on persisting data transactions executed. Make sure you persisted Now is moved to these life life sciences, machine learning, genomics, those types of outpatients of five workloads we're talking about. How can I share data? How can I deploy and use data faster? But the historian of the storage industry still predicated on this designs were mainly focused on persistent. You think about block storage and filers and whatnot. How is Wecker Io advancing that knowledge that technology space of, you know, reorganizing are rethinking storage for the types, performance and scale that some of these use cases require. >> This is actually a great question. We actually started the company. We We had a long legacy at IBM. We now have no Andy from, uh, metta, uh, kind of prints from the emcee. We see what happens. Page be current storage portfolio for the large Players are very big and very convoluted, and we've decided when we're starting to come see that we're solving it. So our aim is to solve all the little issues storage has had for the last four decades. So if you look at what customers used today, if they need the out most performance they go to direct attached. This's what fusion I awards a violin memory today, these air Envy me devices. The downside is that data is cannot be sure, but it cannot even be backed up. If a server goes away, you're done. Then if customers had to have some way of managing the data they bought Block san, and then they deployed the volume to a server and run still a local file system over that it wasn't as performance as the Daz. But at least you could back it up. You can manage it some. What has happened over the last 15 years, customers realized more. Moore's law has ended, so upscaling stopped working and people have to go out scaling. And now it means that they have to share data to stop to solve their problems. >> More perils more >> probably them out ofthe Mohr servers. More computers have to share data to actually being able to solve the problem, and for a while customers were able to use the traditional filers like Aneta. For this, kill a pilot like an eyes alone or the traditional parlor file system like the GP affair spectrum scale or luster, but these were significantly slower than sand and block or direct attached. Also, they could never scale matter data. You were limited about how many files that can put in a single, uh, directory, and you were limited by hot spots into that meta data. And to solve that, some customers moved to an object storage. It was a lot harder to work with. Performance was unimpressive. You had to rewrite our application, but at least he could scale what were doing at work a Iot. We're reconfiguring the storage market. We're creating a storage solution that's actually not part of any of these for categories that the industry has, uh, become used to. So we are fasted and direct attached, they say is some people hear it that their mind blows off were faster, the direct attached, whereas resilient and durable as San, we provide the semantics off shirt file, so it's perfect your ability and where as Kayla Bill for capacity and matter data as an object storage >> so performance and scale, plus administrative control and simplicity exactly alright. So because that's kind of what you just went through is those four things now now is we think about this. So the solution needs to be borrow from the best of these, but in a way that allows to be applied to work clothes that feature very, very large amounts of data but typically organized as smaller files requiring an enormous amount of parallelism on a lot of change. Because that's a big part of their hot spot with metadata is that you're constantly re shuffling things. So going forward, how does this how does the work I owe solution generally hit that hot spot And specifically, how are you going to apply these partnerships that you just put together on the investment toe actually come to market even faster and more successfully? >> All right, so these are actually two questions. True, the technology that we have eyes the only one that paralyzed Io in a perfect way and also meditate on the perfect way >> to strangers >> and sustains it parla Liz, um, buy load balancing. So for a CZ, we talked about the hot sport some customers have, or we also run natively in the cloud. You may get a noisy neighbor, so if you aren't employing constant load balancing alongside the extreme parallelism, you're going to be bound to a bottleneck, and we're the only solution that actually couples the ability to break each operation to a lot of small ones and make sure it distributed work to the re sources that are available. Doing that allows us to provide the tremendous performance at tremendous scale, so that answers the technology question >> without breaking or without without introducing unbelievable complexity in the administration. >> It's actually makes everything simpler because looking, for example, in the ER our town was driving example. Um, the reason they were able to break down from two weeks to four hours is that before us they had to copy data from their objects, George to a filer. But the father wasn't fast enough, so they also had to copy the data from the filer to a local file system. And these copies are what has added so much complexity into the workflow and made it so slow because when you copy, you don't compute >> and loss of fidelity along the way right? OK, so how is this money and these partnerships going to translate into accelerated ionization? >> So we are leveraging some off the funds for Mohr Engineering coming up with more features supporting Mohr enterprise applications were gonna leverage some of the funds for doing marketing. And we're actually spending on marketing programs with thes five good partners within video with melon ox with sick it with Western Digital and with Hewlett Packard Enterprise. But we're also deploying joint sales motion. So we're now plugged into in video and plugged, anted to melon ox and plugging booked the Western Digital and to Hillary Pocket Enterprise so we can leverage their internal resource now that they have realized through their business units and the investment arm that we make sense that we can actually go and serve their customers more effectively and better. >> Well, well, Kaio is introduced A road through the unique on new technology into makes perfect sense. But it is unique and it's relatively new, and sometimes enterprises might go well. That's a little bit too immature for me, but if the problem than it solves is that valuable will bite the bullet. But even more importantly, a partnership line up like this has got to be ameliorating some of the concerns that your fearing from the marketplace >> definitely so when and video tells the customers Hey, we have tested it in our laps. Where in Hewlett Packard Enterprise? Till the customer, not only we have tested it in our lab, but the support is going to come out of point. Next. Thes customers now have the ability to keep buying from their trusted partners. But get the intellectual property off a nor company with better, uh, intellectual property abilities another great benefit that comes to us. We are 100% channel lead company. We are not doing direct sales and working with these partners, we actually have their channel plans open to us so we can go together and we can implement Go to Market Strategy is together with they're partners that already know howto work with them. And we're just enabling and answering the technical of technical questions, talking about the roadmap, talking about how to deploy. But the whole ecosystem keeps running in the fishing way it already runs, so we don't have to go and reinvent the whales on how how we interact with these partners. Obviously, we also interact with them directly. >> You could focus on solving the problem exactly great. Alright, so once again, thanks for joining us for another cube conversation. Le'Ron zero ofwork I Oh, it's been great talking to you again in the Cube. >> Thank you very much. I always enjoy coming over here >> on Peter Burress until next time.

>> Live from Las Vegas. It's the queue covering Adobe Summit twenty nineteen brought to you by Adobe. >> Hello and welcome back to the keeps. Live coverage in Las Vegas for Adobe Summit. Twenty nineteen. I'm John for Jeffrey from the Cube. Our next guest, Bradley Jenkins, was the marketing CEO and vice president. Met Life, part of the global technology and operations group. Innovative title. But thank you, >> Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me. >> So we're here to do the summit. A lot of things are happening. It's really interesting because you have a convergence of two worlds and it looks like a cloud world. It's it's it's the creative cloud. It's the experience Cloud now called The whole World shares a lot of devil's mindset in there. Got a platform? The whole world's changed. Now marketing has a full blown class, not just marketing class, so it's a whole system. So as a marketing seo, what does that mean? Is now a new role emerging in organizations? Is this where we're team? >> I think it's a It's an emerging role. I think it's one of those things where in the in the market and technology space, the lines are blurring, and part of the role of people like me are the ones you could be the bridge makers between the two functions and bring in products like we see all around us here today. Cloud based Solutions How do we activate marketing tactics faster, quicker on. Then combine things like experiences with tools and technologies in different ways. I think it's a specialty skill, and it's coming out now and emerging >> well. One of the patterns is that marketing departments that have a technical and also a relationship seems to be more agile, transformed faster. This seems to be the same thing you guys are looking at right? >> Exactly. It's all about speed to market. So agility is this one co looking and combining everything from creative to the developers, all in one Teo product resource person all the wine and we get in and try to solve business problems. Fastest possible. But you're almost kind of a personification of the story we hear all the time, which is? CEOs get a seat at the table right now. They're no longer just keeping the lights on in the system's lit. But it's a fundamental way the company goes the business of fundamental way the company interact with their customers. So to actually put a marketing CEO title. That's a pretty unique thing I don't think we've ever had one on. So you come at it, no doubt about it. I'm here about customer engagement, customer experience, not keeping the light on. That's right. That's right. First, one side, like a unicorn. >> How's it been? So tell us some of the things you do. I love how you're part of a global technology and operations group. Noticed the word operations and tech together again, back to this cloud theme of Dev ops, which changed the game on the world >> it has. >> So we're seeing that same thing happening playing out in the creative market, whether it's content for here, same thing. Explain some of the things you're doing. >> It's the same thing, and it is Everything's very cloud based today, obviously. So everything from building out content, platforms and services and kind of services framework switch, which is which is key to what what we want to do but also campaign and analytics and, uh, you know, social and what the emerging capabilities are in social. How do we tie all those together but do in a way, we're capturing data and insights across all of our channels in a more creative, quicker way, then activating that across new new experiences. >> You know, Bradley, one thing I wanted to ask you, And I'm glad you came on because I've been really kind of riffing on this idea and trying to get a date in actual year kind of a before cloud after cloud demarcation line because, you know, we're in Silicon Valley. We cover a lot of startups and literally ones go big or go home is kind of the mantra. But if you were born before Amazon, you're pretty much either aren't around or got acquired. If you're born after Amazon, where clouds scale and all this stuff happened, you tend to thrive in a whole new kind of shift. So in Martek, which is heavily funded, sector on the ecosystem map of pure play applications was pretty dense. >> Is very dense. Yeah. >> Did that live up to its name? Did it shift and shape? What's your thoughts on that mark Tech landscape could? Certainly, it's relevant when you're marking CEO. You want to put technology in place. Has the platform shifted? What's that? What's going on? Tell us. >> Yeah. So you know, I think has it lived up to his name? Uh, yes, and it's created challenges that the same thing at the same time. So what is still in the Martek landscape is seventeen thousand or whatever tens of thousands of products. Now Mr Wescott fingers latest one shows every year it doubles or quadruples in there. And I think one of the biggest challenges we have now is just navigating, never getting the landscape, but then be able to pick out and say, Here are the five things and you focus on Here is how I'm going to tie them together and in great demand. And there's a lot of noise and you have to break through a lot of that to build a craft. These solutions together. So in a lot of ways, I think it's lived up, Uh, a lot of ways. I think it's create a lot of new challenges that things like markets he has you to think about. Be aware of the bread, the people that are out there. But that's just the capabilities. How do you stitch them together and you become more of a weaver? Then thin a specific domain >> class early adopter proves the model. And now reality as operational izing things becomes clear. The wheat from the chaff, as they say, kind of get figured out >> exactly friendly. I want to get your kind of thoughts on a CZ. The relationship between the company and the customer has shifted from sitting down with an agent or maybe talking to it. Agent on the phone to really Elektronik means how you've been able to kind of continue a certain type of brand experience. And I'm also just curious your feedback on the theme here where it's not really the transaction. It's the experience of which the transaction is a piece of How are you seeing that play out in the way that you guys interact with your customers? Yeah, and I think for us we're in evolving state to we have agencies and brokers that we worked through, and so it's a bit of the model in some cases, in some cases it turns, and we're about to see targeting >> B to B >> group customers as an example, and so the experience is very a bit so for us, it's experience of the customer, and how do we service some? How do we treat them. What's the purchasing servicing capabilities look like? What's our customer service look like? But also the experience of agents and brokers. And are we providing the right service and products to them to build equipped them to go help in resell product? So we look at it from a couple different angles and depends a lot on context and where we're operating in product and servicing products at Is it easy to maintain kind of the voice of the brand, if you will, through these alternate channels or, you know, how do you kind of stay true to the brand? Yet go to market through these. He's a myriad of channels. Yeah, it's no Isaac, a question that we're really working through the same kind of things now of what can we What can we help provide agents and brokers with, and that helps with our brand? Our friend promised up. Some sell better. That it's it's a work in progress, but technical challenge? Yeah, I don't >> really have >> all the answers. >> Take a minute to explain the MetLife transformation. What you guys have done. Where are you now? In the jury? Your journey will be customer. You're here at their event. Where are you on that Progress bar? How far along are you? It seems to be a theme of transforming. Continue to transform is what successful company doing. Our iterating are raising the bar. Whatever term used where you guys at, Can you take us through? >> Yeah. So a few years ago, we we refreshed our enterprise strategy. We placed a customer in digital on data at the center of our enterprise strategy. And we have pillars around different transformation aspects that we're working on everything from customer service too. Right? Products simplifying our product messaging the way we talked about product specially in insurance can be complicated. And so we're trying to get a little a little more concise and clear and package things differently. But But at the core, our strategy now is placing digital placing diddle data at the center of it. Uh and then how do we enact data and new and different ways Everything from not only knowing customers, but how do we use data to great better and smarter products or even the risk different products that we have waken me price competitive in certain market areas. >> So Data's lifeblood of your transformation. It is. What's the strategy? How you guys enabling that internally? What some of the results will take us through experiences, zealously numbers. But I'm sure it's helping. If you do it right. It's challenging, though it's not easy. >> It is. Yeah, it's challenging, and it will take a while to sort it out. So we'LL say we've solved everything. Uh, but But I think we look at a few different things. What one is knowing the customer? And so you know, we're investing heavily and try and doing things like customer profile and a customer. Three sixty. Whatever you want to call it different in different, different areas. Uh, but how do we know them? And then how do we then act? There's the data's insights into different channels. So we've had a lot of a lot of good successes in there, in particular markets on creating more engaging experiences and lifting customer retention and loyalty. So we have good, good insights there. We're planets in different areas, so things like we go to bid for new products and or new new customers around a new product area. What can we do it for our pricing models on. How do we love its data around Where is geographic or whatever it might be? Or demographics and fly it to be more price competitive? And we're starting to see a lot of fruition there and how it gets applied. Tto win New business >> One of the things that we've been talking about on the Q through got a lot of events, and the theme that comes up all the time when you have these new shifts is new. Things are emerging. New capabilities, different economic points, scales different. So all good. Now the hard part is making it work. Operationalize ing Something new is a huge challenge. It is. Did you share your view on that? And reaction to that because this is seems to be not about the tech about either skills, gaps or culture gap. There's a lot of things in the way of operational izing, something new. What's what people do to operationalize something? >> Yeah, no, it's a good question. I'm glad you brought it up because that's actually one of the things that I have a caper. A lot is a lot of times we lead with the tech and then we place it And then we say, Well, now what? And then everything you know is what it comes to a standstill. And, yeah, you have to leave with people. Process so again in for a transformation, understand exactly what it is you're trying to solve. How are you going to solve it afterwards? Do you have the skill sets and place to do it and then follow up with the tech? And then I think a lot of a lot of companies do a little bit reverse where they go in acquiring, like we're going to solve this and bring the cheque in and in your little literally left standing at the end of day of How do you have the operational ises? So something we focus on a lot is it is the people process piece of enablement training, the skills that are required. How do you turn it into a machine after you bring the tech in to really start pumping up? Whether it's a growth objective or call status, I've never where the object it might be. But you have to you have to almost produce this into ah life machine of its own that cannon live and breathe after you bring the second. >> What should more marketing CEOs as it becomes a price? I think it will be. In my opinion, I think it will be a roll because it's really critical because of the opportunity. What should they be doing? That's this New persona evolves. You're pioneering it. What is the job function? What does it do in your opinion? Has this take shape? >> Yeah, I think Number one. Learn the business. And I think you have to speak the same language. And that's one of the biggest challenges translating so different languages across different groups. In the first thing, any market so you could do is go learn the business, speak the same language, then what company you know. We're in insurance company and a risk management companies. So understanding, finance, understanding, mark objectives. Your customer detectives is key and then figure out how to start mapping the solutions in. But, yeah, I think it's it's It's a fridge, a role. We have to be able to be a navigator in away across solution options, but always in context of understand the business and how you confessed, apply, and in a specific way, >> Data wrangler of course, because you're wrangling a lot >> of data. If I don't have a lot of intersection with, you know, kind of actuarial side of the house, which is, you know, kind of always been data driven, right since the early earliest days. But I mean, are you seeing you know, kind of that side of the house? Kayla, you know, can we get we get some of these new tools? Could we get some of these kind of new ways to approach the data problem than we historically did? I think now, now? Yes. I think it has been an evolution. I think in the early days of data, it was a bit more of a scary thing. And so I feel like we're, you know, as advocates in the sea of space that we were pushing a little more than, you know, being pulled in. And I think I think lately in the last couple of years. But I know at least until we've seen a shift of demand side of requests coming in, saying we need to partner way ideas of how to accelerate and be competitive, which is great. Now it's almost become a supply demand trick. Where you just can't keep up. Because the level of segmentation on kind of classy the insurance, you know, kind of breakdown is really high, right? Sex age, you know, a couple other factors. But you know, now that the amount of data that's available, that amount of real time data, it's available on changing, they've got to be going bananas over on that side. >> You know, one of the things that we've been seeing on the side again. I want to bring a question in the marking CEO piece is on. We've had many CEOs talk about this on the Cuba and direct interviews is they've outsourced everything, and they really had no core competency, had all the big size running stuff you had global outsourcing development. And as cloud became important, they had the build applications internally, didn't have the skills, so they had to quickly reset and rebuild and in house capability. And the result of that is ongoing and seen. The ones who've done that well with cloud are doing great. They still use outsourced off. Now, on the marketing side, you saw that same thing happen where agencies run everything. The agency does this, you got the creative agency, you got a PR firm, you all these things going on and some say that marketing has been outsource a lot. And so the question is, what mix of in house skill, an agency relationships? Because now you're gonna see that application developer. No problem. But core competency becomes a super important question. Yeah, And how are you funding it And what should be in house on what should be outsourced. >> Yeah. Yeah, and we have We're going to the same evolution. We had a position than a few years ago where it was almost entirely outsourced, and we in sourced a bunch of it. And now we're right sizing what's unsourced and not in sources. So I think one is Think about, uh, what your differentiation is. And how do you want to be competitively different competitively and having create advantage and then in source those things. And then you had to find a way. That's one thing. I think every year you talk to Rick Wright size and reassess. And so for us, we insourced a lot of things around. Um, first around, build side, so platforms being cloud. But then how do you enact and activate them? So we've brought some of those inside internally on we started marrying those up with creativity. This is just the last words of the great, But we were married them up and get these, uh, you know, more agile lean teams cross blended skill sets and go on, go to market quicker with new experiences. I think over time we'LL see a start and sourcing more of the agency side, maybe shedding some of the you know, the left side as we started becoming more pattern base and whatnot. So I think it's one of those things that you evolve every year as the right size. But the key is trying to tie it back to you. How do you wantto create differentiation? What, you're competitive advantage and then make sure that you have that internal first and foremost. And don't outsource here, your smarts to >> another. I think the key point is by re factoring or Ria's re sizing. That's the interest generation that you get with cloud and scale. If you don't do that, scale can also hurt. You >> can yeah, yeah, >> comes come back and impression. It's right, really. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate the insights from great to hear from Practitioner Love the new child. I think it's a game changer. I think it's going to be a standard final question to end the segment learnings over the over the past couple of years. What some key learnings that you take away from the process that you're going to carry forward. >> Yeah, I think one one is as a company being being a blend roll between marketing the technology. One is, uh, be willing to change and adapt and be willing to bring the rest of the company with you could You can't do everything yourself. So I think you have to be a change agent for the company. I figure out that that everybody is in the journey with you and then how do you create that scale to get the get the mass moving? Because it takes it takes a village thing. Get things done. >> Bradley. Jake is making history on the Cuba's, the first marketing CIA we've interviewed super excited, great insights. This is going to be a position we think's going around for a while, of course. The Cube coverage here on Adobe Summit. Jeffery, Jeffery Thanks for watching Stay with us from or Day one of two day coverage here in Las Vegas. After this short break

(energetic music) >> Voiceover: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, Covering Oracle Modern Customer Experience 2017. Brought to you by Oracle. (upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back and we are here live in Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay Convention Center for Oracle's Modern C-EX, Modern Customer Experience Event. Part of Oracle Marketing Cloud, I am John Furrier with SiliconANGLE. My co-host Peter Burris, head of research at Wikibon.com. Our next guest is Adrian Chang, director of customer programs at Oracle Marketing Cloud, also emcee of the Markie and big part of that program. Congratulations on the success of the Markie's awards, which were given out last night. I read your blog post on the site this morning. >> Thank you >> Great to see you again and welcome back to theCUBE. >> Thank you for having me, always great to be here and I love Modern Customer Experience and that marketing is a part of it. >> It's really been a great transformation this year. The simplification of just now narrowing it down to one simple value president, Modern Customer Experience, which encapsulates a lot of stuff. Quickly review what that is and then let's talk about the Markies. >> Absolutely, so I start with the Markies and so we have a history of celebrating excellence in data-driven modern marketing. So, this program has grown tremendously over the past 11 years. When I look at the submissions, they're customers that are focusing on acquisition and loyalty retention. And they read these stories all the time and spend weeks preparing the submissions. So this event is all about how can we share our intent to have our customers have a good experience as part of Oracle and then how can we help them delight their customers in delivering experiences and create value at every touch point. >> One of the thing I really like about the change in the name from Modern Marketing Experience to Modern Customer Experience is you move from the process, the function, to the outcome and the result. So how are the Markies reflecting that this year? >> Absolutely. So if you think about where we started, again it was six categories celebrating excellence in B2B marketing and reaching folks behind a single device, their laptop computer. So cut to 2017, the customers' preferences, their activities are fluid. So great marketing requires you to use a series of channels to reach them everywhere. And so, marketers have to balance brand with action, and then also deliver on intent. So the Markies have had to evolve to think about the habits. So the account-based marketing team of the year was a new award that we gave out that really represented the intent. Are people actually doing this, we have tons of great stories. So we have to balance out a bit of the usage of the product and the technology and embracing the new strategies and what's current within the marketplace. >> So the future of marketing as it goes into data, that's been the theme here. All of our interviews, day one. And certainly the key notes, even Mark was giving a great specific example. Now data is at the heart of it. Adaptive intelligence is the theme. You can see the dots are connecting the convergence of where the Markies are showing traction are some pretty interesting use cases. Any notables you'd like to share that kind of highlight that data piece? >> Absolutely. So our winner for best email campaign was from Jetstar and they're an airline in Austraila. What's great is they have been able to find ways to-- so when you get an email about travel, sometimes you book at one particular point and your preferences and relationship with that airline may change. Your travel destinations may change. So the fact that they can optimize the information at the time of send, sending the weather, curing you to maybe upsell and look at other opportunities to have a pleasant experience, that's amazing. So Laura Ipsen spent some time talking about how we at Oracle are looking to evolve preferences, so going from one to many, to one to one, and the hallmark which is one to you. And I think the Jetstar campaign, they use Oracle responses as a perfect example of that. The first award that we gave out was to Covance for account-based team of the year and by doing, setting up an account-based marketing strategy, putting it in place, getting all the stakeholders in sales in place, getting the discipline on the content. They were able to increase their engagement with key accounts by a significant margin. And they were delighted to be among those that are partners to celebrate that achievement. >> Adrian, I want you to talk about, for the folks that are watching who aren't here, the buzz in the hallways, because the hallways is always a good conversation, certainly the lunch table as well. I'll include that technically at the hallway, but people sitting down. >> Absolutely. >> AI has been front and center, but it's not being painted over, white-washed, "Oh! AI! It's hot so let's jump on the bandwagon." There's some real tech involved. What has been the reaction from customers in used cases that you hear in the hallways? >> Customers are excited about it. I think for a lot of our customers had the opportunity to hear Mark Heard talk about it. Where he embraced and said, "If you think about AI at the core, it's computing done real fast to help people make really rich decisions about what to do next." And so, I think our customers are still grappling with all the technology and how to get value out of their core platforms, how do they deliver on their initial objective and then we have a subset of our most mature, most excited, who are starting to put those data plots together, and start getting more predictive and allow the machine to do the work for you. But in order for you to have, to even think about it, you've got to have great, you've got to fill the cup with great data. And I think people are still getting there so that the machine isn't biased and you don't make the wrong decision about how to treat your customers. >> So just notable trending tweets I wanted to share with you, and again, get your reactions, because this is speaking to the customer in used case. One was from a part from our digitizing panel, Mark wrote "According to digitize, if you're not looking to use chatbots and AI, you're going to be out of business hashtag MME17", a little bit of that, legacy there. And then hashtag Modern CX. And the other one is, "Netflix is a great example of a company creating content combined with powerful AI targeting programs." Little bit of sample of some of the things we're seeing. Chatbots. It's a new interface. It's a new way to use data. Netflix content, which modern marketers need content in this platform. Picking a Netflix approach. So, kind of begs a question. Chatbots? Netflix? Kind of modern. Email? Old? So how do you get a marketer to get you to use the reliability of hardened critical infrastructure, like email, not going away anytime soon but, it's going to be one dimension of Netflix. Content marketing. Binge watching. All this content out there. Netflix and chatbots interface. Your thoughts? >> So my thought is I am, so I was in the room when I watched the chatbot piece and I loved the fact of the, we could live in a world where we could have a fluid customer experience anywhere. You can ask a question. I also support our communities where you ask a question and know you're automatically going to get an answer to the algorithm. So that delivers on that one to you scenario. So I'm super excited about it. When I look at the Netflix example, even to get the information on what the recommendation engine should be, you still need a lot of data. And you still need to know what are the habits of your customers who even land on that decision tree. So I love the fact that folks are thinking Netflix and thinking content, but that chatbot thing, oh my goodness. When people start doing that I can't wait to see those customers that win those Markies. >> Peter: But they have to do it right. >> They have to do it right. >> One of the dangers that marketing always faces is the idea that it's all about collecting information, having the customer give something to me and not giving something valuable in return. >> Adrian: Absolutely >> And the challenge that I see with chatbots is, and I think you agree John, is are chatbots going to be used to further automate information collection at the expense of really presenting value. The new marketing, the Modern Customer Experience, has to be focused on are we delivering value with the customer at every single interaction, not is the customer doing more for us inside of marketing. What do you think about that? >> So I agree. Cause if we do not know that we are creating value and that we're not, that we're adding friction into the problem, you pour that into your algorithm, there's going to bias. And so then, you can't make a decision about how to feed information into the machine and not have the right information that says we don't have the right region, we don't understand the behavior across all products. You can't have bias in the model at all. It has to be complete for you to then look at your customer base holistically. >> Yeah, we don't want to better automate bad marketing practices. >> Adrian: Absolutely. >> We want to use these technologies to continuously drive to use a famous person's parlance a more perfect union between this marketer and the buyer. >> Adrian: Absolutely. >> John: Well you got a great article up on Martechseries, "This year has gone above and beyond, fully leverage and most innovative marketing technology to create customer centric campaigns that deliver outstanding results that Laurie has spent, Senior Vice President Chairman." Okay that's obviously marketing packaging for the quote, from PR, but what she's getting at is customer centric. Again this is the theme, multitude of technologies now in the platform. Very interesting. Are customers responding well to this platform and are they seeing the need to stand up thing quickly in these campaigns? >> Adrian: Absolutely. They are finding that there's more pressure to get interim value. They are absolutely buying into the platform message and we have quite a few customers who also were recognized for the use of multiple products and multiple partner related applications. And so we're actually seeing a nice trend in both. To do great marketing, part of the messaging, or part of Laura's talk track from today was people are freaked out about the data but if you find a way to harness it, you'll create experiences where you'll stop chasing the customers. They'll start chasing you cause you'll find the right way to have the conversation with them. >> And word of mouth gets around too. I'm going to ask you to pick your favorite child of the awards. Was there one that jumps out, without alienating all the winners. Is there one that you like? >> This is a really, really hard question for me. As you know I read all the submissions, I play a heavy role in writing the speech. So it's really hard. >> John: Here we go, the preamble, not picking one. Here we go! I don't like to pick my favorite child. No parent likes to do that. >> I don't like to pick my favorite child. This is a really, really hard thing. >> Okay, audience favorite? >> How are they different this year from last year? How about that? Or is there something general that shows, that kind of reinforces some of this customer experience or are you seeing a progress in how the Markies are evolving? >> Yeah, that's a great question. So I'm happy to answer that one. And so for the first time since 2012, we brought back the dinner. And so having the Markies and our customer celebration, it shows our intent as Oracle Marketing Cloud, for our customers as well. That we love and want them to have a great week and want to celebrate their accomplishments and get other people to the winning circle. So being at a table and feeling that energy, getting that opportunity to sit with an executive or sit with a member of a team is a really, really great lift to then come to an event with over 4,000 people and feel warm and feel included. So I think that was an important part, that was a huge feel. I mentioned that we added a account-based team of the year award. Again, you couldn't be in B2B marketing and hide from account-based marketing. It's everywhere. We also delivered an overall customer experience award, so we had two customer-related awards and we created one category. I personally the videos, so our best video submission categories won where the viewers got to pick. And I would say the reaction of Juniper taking home two trophies last night, if I had to pick one, because that one had bit of a go to it. >> Peter: Juniper? >> Juniper Networks. >> Really? >> John: Two awards. >> They won two awards last night. I loved their reaction as well as the reaction of our folks from Brazil. You know, really, really great stories from their use of data. We also had Chris Diaz, our leader of the year, who not only led really strong customer experience transformations across marketing, sales, and service. >> This is the CMO of Time Warner? >> Uh no, that's Kristin. >> Kristi? >> Uh yeah, that's Kristin at Time Warner. I'm talking about Chris Diaz who is also driving sustainability efforts in Africa. It's really transformational. Huge, huge advocate of Oracle. As is the team at Kenya Airways. There's some really feel good moments. There are really exciting moments, you can feel it. People were hugging each other. People were laughing. People brought their own noise cannons and sparklers. >> Who doesn't love an awards show? When you're giving out great trophies? >> You know, we always get the comparison to the Oscars, and so this year it felt like the Golden Globes. >> So you handed out the wrong award. >> So you had a couple of times when the winner, when the wrong winner was >> We actually did not have that but we actually did joke about it. We embraced it. So Kayla Sullivan helped us with the awards distribution. And that was fun. The trophy itself is actually made by the same designer who makes the Emmy. And I believe I said that last year. But the feel was more like the Golden Globes. There was refreshments and opportunity to have there. >> John: It was well done. It looked great on photos. Big crowd. You had the jibs and all the cameras. Great camera angles. >> We had a drone do the delivery so we played with some new drone deliveries >> John: That's the next one up on Amazon delivering your packages by drone, you know, dropping in. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. So we had one delivered via tweet and then we had one that was delivered via drone and so we covered all their risk management pieces in advance. And I'm just super happy that InVision, who partnered with us in hosting and producing the event, were able to get some of these things cleared. So our intent was let's be futuristic, let's be digital, let's be now. And they managed to incorporate that into the show for us. >> Well, Adrian. Congratulations on all the great work with the Markies and continued success. What's next next year? What do you guys look, I know, processing, you got to have a little fun now. Relax a little bit. But as you look forward to next year's Markies, you're watching, you've got your submission. It's kind of like the college admissions. You want to know who the judge is. Here he is. What are you looking for for next year? Have you though about it, any ideas? Random thoughts? >> Yeah, it's a great question. It takes us about seven months to actually plan. To sit down and actually plan our calendar from submission peer, the content. And so, we tend to create the categories that are aspirational. So we likely will figure out what's the best way to incorporate the trend. Get them out early to drive customers to get really excited about what's next. We're talking about AI now. What will we be talking about in six months? I'm looking forward to to hearing more customers share about the value their getting from Marketing Cloud, the new channels that they're using, how they've overcome barriers within their organizations to do new and great things. And really focus on taking these stories and telling them all year. >> And that's speed and empowerment. >> Yes. Absolutely. >> Adrian Chang. Here in theCUBE back with Markies update with great commentary. Great to see you. Looking great, love the outfit. Lookin' good, as always. Thank you for taking the time and sharing your perspective. >> Thanks for having me. >> Peter: Took me a while to figure out what that was though The flower. What is that thing? From here it's like >> It's good. Looks good on you. Adrian Chang, here inside theCUBE bringing all the Markie action, all the great coverage. It's theCUBE. We'll have more live coverage after the short break. (energetic music)