(bright music) >> Welcome back to AWS re:Invent. You're watching theCUBE. And we're here with Steve Mullaney, who is the president and CEO of Aviatrix. Steve, I got to tell ya, great to see you man. >> We started the whole pandemic, last show we did was with you guys. >> Steve: Don't say we started, we didn't start it. (steve chuckles) >> Right, we kicked it off (all cross talking) >> It's going to be great. >> Our virtual coverage, that hybrid coverage that we did, how ironic? >> Steve: Yeah, was as the world was shutting down. >> So, great to see you face to face. >> Steve: Great to see you too. >> Wow, so you're two years in? >> Steve: Two and a half years yeah. >> Started, the company was standing start $2 billion valuation, raised a bunch of dough. >> Steve: Yeah. >> That's good, you got to feel good about that. >> We were 38 people, two and a half years ago, we're now 400. We had a couple million in ARR, we're now going to be over a 100 million next year, next calendar year, so significant growth. We just raised $200 million, three months ago at a $2 billion valuation. Now have 550 customers, 54 of them are fortune 500, when I started two and a half years ago, we didn't have any fortune 500s, we had probably about a 100 customers. So, massive growth, big growth (indistinct). >> Awesome, I got to ask you, I love to ask CEO's, entrepreneurs, how did you know when to scale? >> You just know it, when you see it. (indistinct) Yeah, there's no formula, you just know it and what you look for is that point where you say, okay, we've now proven the model and until you do that you minimize things and we actually just went through this. We had 12 sales teams, four months ago, we now have 50. 50, five zero and it's that step function as a company, you don't want to linearly grow 'cause you want to hold until you say, it's happening. And then once you say it's happening, okay, the dogs are eating the dog food, this is good then you flip the other way, and then you say, let's grow as fast as we possibly can and that's kind of the mode we're in right now. >> Okay, You've... >> You just know it when you see it. >> Other piece of that is how fast do you scale? And now you're sort of doing that step function as your going. >> Steve: We are going as fast as we possibly can. >> Wow, that's awesome, congratulations and I know you've got to long way to go. So okay, let's talk about the big trends that you're seeing that Aviatrix has taken advantage of, maybe explain a little bit about what you guys do. >> Yeah. So we are, what I like to call Multi- Cloud Native Networking and Network Security. So, if you think of... >> David: What is multicloud native? You got to explain that. >> I got to to explain that. Here's what's happened, it's happening and what I mean by it's happening is, enterprises at two and a half years ago, this is why I joined Aviatrix, all decided for the first time, we mean it now, we are going into Cloud 'cause before that they were just mouthing it. And they said, "We're going into the Cloud." And oh by the way, I knew two and a half years ago of course it was going to be multicloud, 'cause enterprises run workloads where they run best. That's what they do, it's sometimes it's AWS, sometimes it's ads or sometimes it's Google, it's of course going to be multicloud. And so from an enterprise perspective, they love the DevOps, they love the simplicity, the automation, the infrastructure is code, the Terraform, that Cloud operational model, because this is a business transformation, moving to Cloud is not a technology transformation it's the business. It's the CEO saying we are digitizing we have an existential threat to the survival of our company, I want to grow a market share, I want to be more competitive, we're doing this, stop laying across the tracks technology people, will run you over, we're doing this. And so when they do that as an enterprise, I'm BNY Mellon, I'm United Airlines, you name it, your favorite enterprise. I need the visibility and control from a networking and network security perspective like I used to have on-prem. Now I'm not going to do it in the horrible complex operational model the Cisco 1994 data center, do not bring that crap into my wonderful Cloud, so that ain't happening but, all I get from the Native constructs, I don't get enough of that visibility and control, it's a little bit of a black box, I don't get that. So where do I get the best of the Cloud from an operational model, but yet with the visibility and control that I need, that I used to have on-prem from networking network security, that's Aviatrix. And that's where people find us and so from a networking and network security, so that's why I call it multicloud Native because what we do is, create a layer basically an abstraction layer above all the different Clouds, we create one architecture for networking and network security with advanced services not basic services that run on AWS, Azure, Google, Oracle, Ali Cloud, Top Secret Clouds, GovClouds, you name it. And now the customer has one architecture, which is what enterprises want, I want one network, I want one network security architecture, not AWS Native, Azure Native, Google Native. >> David: Right. >> We leverage those native constructs, abstract it, and then provide a single common architecture with demand services, irrespective of what Cloud you're on. >> Dave, I've been saying this for a couple of years now, that Cloud Native... >> Does that make sense Dave? >> Absolutely. >> That abstraction layer, right? And I said, "The guys who do this, who figure this out are going to make a lot of dough." >> Yeah. >> Snowflakes obviously doing it. >> Yeah. >> You guys are doing it, it's the future. >> Yeah. >> And it's really an obvious construct when you look back at the world of call it Legacy IT for a moment... >> Steve: Yeah. >> Because did we have different networks to hookup different things in a data center? >> No, one network. >> One network of course. I don't care if the physical stack comes from Dell, HP or IBM. >> Steve: That's right, I want an attraction layer above that, yeah. >> Exactly. >> So the other thing that happens is, everybody and you'll understand this from being at Oracle, everybody wants to forget about the network. Network security, it's down in the bowels, it's like plumbing, electricity, it's just, it has to be there but people want to forget about it and so you see Datadog, you see Snowflake, you see HashiCorp going IPO in early December. Guess what? That next layer underneath that, I call it the horsemen of the multicloud infrastructure is networking and network security, that's going to be Aviatrix. >> Well, you guys make some announcements recently in that space, every company is a security company but you're really deep into it. >> Well, that's the interesting thing about it. So I said multicloud Native Networking and Network Security, it's integrated, so guess where network security is going to be done in the Cloud? In the network. >> David: Network. >> Yeah in the network. >> What a strange concept but guess what on-prem it's not, you deflect traffic to this thing called a firewall. Well, why was that? I was at Synoptics, I was at Cisco 'cause we didn't care about network security, so that's why firewall companies existed. >> Dave: Right. >> It should be integrated into the infrastructure. So now in the Cloud, your security posture is way worse than it was on-prem. You're connected to the internet by default so guess what? You want your network to do network security, so we announced two things in security; one, we're now a security competency partner for AWS, they do not give that out lightly. We were networks competency four years ago, we're now network security competency. One of the few that are both, they don't do that, that took us nine months of working with them to get there. And they only do that for the people that really are delivering value. And then what we just announced what we call, 'ThreatIQ with ThreatGuard.' So again, built into the network because we are the network, we understand the traffic, we're the control plane and the data plane, we see all traffic. We integrate into the network, we subscribe to threat databases, public databases, where we see what are the malicious IPS. If we have any traffic anywhere in your overall, and this is multicloud, not just AWS, every single Cloud, if we see that malicious traffic going some into IP guess what? It's probably BIT Mining, Bitcoin, crypto mining, it's probably some sort of data ex filtration. It could be some tour thing that you're connected to, whatever it is, you should not have traffic going. And so we do two things we alert and we show you where that all is and then with ThreatGuard, we actually will do a firewall rule right at that gateway, at that point that it's going out and immediately gone. >> You'll take the action. >> We'll take the action. >> Okay. >> And so every single customer, Dave and David, that we've shown this new capability to, it lights up like a Christmas tree. >> Yeah al bet. Okay, but now you've made some controversial statements... >> Steve: Which time? >> Okay, so you said Cisco, I think VMware... >> Dave: He's writing them down. >> I know but I can back it up. >> I think you said the risk, Cisco, VMware and Arista, they're not even in the Cloud conversation now. Arista, Jayshree Ullal is a business hero of mine, so I don't want to... >> Steve: Yeah, mine too. >> I don't want to interrogate her, she's awesome. >> Steve: Yeah. >> But what do you mean by that? Because can't Cisco come at this from their networking perspective and security and bring that in? What do you mean by they're not in the Cloud conversation? >> They're not in the conversation. >> David: Okay, defend that. >> And the reason is they were about four years ago. So when you're four years ago, you're moving into the Cloud, what's the first thing you do? I'm going to grab my CSR and I'm going to try to jam it in the Cloud. Guess what? The CSR doesn't even know it's in the Cloud, it's looking for ports, right? And so what happens is the operational model is horrendous, so all the Cloud people, it just is like oil and water, so they go, oh, that was horrendous. So no one's doing that, so what happens in the Cloud is they realize the number one thing is the Cloud operational model. I need that simplicity, I have to be a single Terraform provider, infrastructure is code. Where do I put my box with my wires? That's what the on-prem hardware people think. >> David: The selling ports your saying? >> The selling boxes. >> David: Yeah. >> And so they'll say, "Oh, we got us software version of it, it runs as a VM, it has no idea it's in the Cloud." It is not Cloud Native, I call that Cloud naive, they don't understand so then the model doesn't work. And so then they say, "Okay, I'm not going to do that." Then the only other thing they can do, is they look at the Cloud providers themselves and they say, "All right, I'm going to use Native constructs, what do you got?" And what happens basically is the Cloud providers say, "Well, we do everything and anything you'll ever need and networking and network security." And the customers, "Oh my God, it's fantastic." Then they try to use it and what they realize is you get very basic level services, and you get no visibility and control because they're a black box, you don't get to go in. How about troubleshooting, Packet Captures, simple things? How about security controls, performance traffic engineering, performance controls, visibility nothing, right? And so then they go, "Oh shit, I'm an enterprise, I'm not just some DevOps Danny three years ago, who was just spinning up workloads and didn't care about security." No, that was the Cloud three years ago. This is now United, BNY, Nike. This is like elite of elite. So when my VC was here, he said, "It's happening." That's what he meant, it's happening. Meaning enterprises, the dogs are eating the dog food and they need visibility and control, they cannot get it from the Cloud providers. >> It's happening in early days Dave. >> So Steve, we're going to stipulate that you can't jam this stuff into Cloud, but those dinosaurs are real and they're there. Explain how you... >> Steve: Well you called them dinosaurs not me but they're roaming the earth and they're going to run out of food pretty soon. (all laughing) The comet hit the earth. >> Hey, they're going to go down fighting. (all laughing) >> But the dinosaurs didn't all die the day after the comet hit the earth... >> Steve: That's right. >> They took awhile. >> Steve: They took a while. >> So, how are you going to saddle them up? That's the question because you're... >> Steve: It's over there walking dead, I don't need to do anything. >> Is it the captain Kirk to con, let them die. >> Steve: Yeah. >> Because you're in the Cloud, you're multicloud... >> Steve: Yeah. >> That's great, but 80% of my IT still on-prem and I still have Cisco switches. Isn't that just not your market or? >> When IBM and DEC did we have to do anything with IBM and DEC in the 90s, early 90s, when we created BC client server, IP architectures? No, they weren't in the conversation. >> David: Yeah. >> So, we dint compete with them, just like whatever they do on-prem, keep doing it, I wish you the best. >> But you need to integrate with them and play with them. >> Steve: No. >> Not at all? >> No, no we integrate, here is the thing that's going to happen, so to the on-prem people, it's all point of reference. They look at Cloud as off-prem, I'm going to take my operational model on-prem and I'm going to push it into the Cloud. And if I push it into multiple Clouds, they're going to call that multicloud, see we are multicloud. You're pushing your operational model into the Cloud. What's happening is Cloud has won, it won two and a half years ago with every enterprise. It's like a rock in the water. And what's going to happen is that operational model is moving out to the edge, it's moving to the branch, it's moving to the data center and it's moving into edge computing. That's what's happening... >> So outpost, so I put an outpost in my data center... >> Outpost looks like... >> Is that Aviatrix? >> Absolutely, we're going to get dragged with that... >> Dave: Okay, alright. >> Because we're the networking and network security provider, and as the company pushes out, that operational model is going to move out, not the existing on-prem OT, IT branch office then pushing in. And so, what's happening is you're coming at it from the wrong perspective. And this wave is just going to push over and so I'm just following behind this wave of AWS and Azure and Google. >> Here's the thing, you can do this and you don't have a bunch of legacy deductible debt... >> Steve: Yeah. >> So you can be Cloud Native, multicloud native, I think you called it? >> Steve: Yeah, yeah. >> I love it, you're building castles on the sand. >> Steve: Yeah. >> Jerry Chen's thing. >> Steve: Yeah. >> Now, the thing is, today's executives, they're not as naive as Ken Olsen, UNIX as, "Snake oil," who would need a PC, so they're not in denial. >> They're probably not in denial, yeah. >> Right, and so they have some resources, so the problem is they can't move as fast as you can. So, you're going to do really well. >> Steve: Yeah. >> I think they'll eventually get there Steve, but you're going to be, I don't know how many, four or five years ahead, that's a nice lead. >> That's a bet I'll take any day. >> David: Then what you don't think they'll ever get there? >> No, 10 years. (steve laughing) >> Okay, but they're not going out of business. >> No, I didn't say that. >> I know you didn't. >> What they're doing, I wish them all the best. >> Because a lot of their customers move... >> I don't compete with them. >> Yeah. We were out of time. >> Yeah. >> What did you mean by AWS is like Sandals? You mean like cool like Sandals? >> Steve: Oh, no, no, no. I don't want to... >> You mean like the vacation place? >> Have you ever been to Sandals? >> I never done it. What do you mean by that? >> There coming, there coming. Which version of sandals (indistinct)? (people cross talking) >> This is for an enterprise by the way, and look, Sandals is great for a lot of people but if you're a Cloud provider, you have to provide the common set of services for the masses because you need to make money. And oh, by the way, when you go to Sandals, go try it, like get a bottle of wine, they say, "We got red wine or white wine?" "Oh, great, what kind of red wine?" "No, red wine and it's in a box." And they hope that you won't know the difference. The problem is some people in enterprises want Four Seasons, so they want to be able to swipe the card and get a good bottle of wine. And so that's the thing with the Cloud, but the Cloud can't offer up a 200 bottle of wine to everybody. My mom loves box wine, so give her box wine. Where ISBs like us come in, is great but complimentary to the Cloud provider for that person who wants that nice bottle of wine because if AWS had to provide all this level of functionality for everybody, their instant sizes would be too big, >> Too much cost for that. (people cross talking) You're right on. And as long as you can innovate fast and stay ahead of that and keep adding value... >> Well, here's the thing, they're not going to do it for multicloud either though. >> David: I wouldn't trust them to do it with multicloud. >> No. >> David: I wouldn't. >> No enterprise would and I don't think they would ever do it anyway. >> That makes sense. Steve, we've got to go man. You're awesome, love to have you on theCUBE, come back anytime. >> Awesome, thank you. >> All right, keep it right there everybody. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech coverage. (bright music)

>> Narrator: From theCUBE's studios in Palo Alto, in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a CUBE conversation. >> Hey everybody, this is Dave Vellante and welcome to this episode of "CXO Insights." As you know, we've been grabbing the perspectives of leaders throughout this pandemic and assessing their tips for managing in a crisis and of course, managing in good times as well. But now, as we enter the post-isolation economy, we really want to look at not just how you manage through the crisis but how you manage beyond the crisis. And I'm really excited to have Chris Riley here. He's the newly minted Chief Revenue Officer at Automation Anywhere. Chris, my friend, how you doing? I hope you and the family are well. >> Thank you, David. I wish the same for you. I think getting by as most folks are, it's the new normal, we're all getting used to it but I'm happy to be here and happy to be at Automation Anywhere. >> Yeah, I want to talk about that in detail. Eddie Walsh calls it the new abnormal but so congratulations on the new role. I want to start with your career. I met you in 1987, which ironically was the same year I met Dave Donatelli, the same year I met Michigan I. and Saul Koi, talk about great timing. And then, you came into the industry at a time, really different time. It was, the IBM people don't remember this but IBM was the dominant player and you guys unseated them amazing 12-year career at EMC and then you kind of went to the .com boom. That was amazing. You relive that ride, did a stint at HP and really turned that business around and then came back to Dell, top go to market executive. One of the top in the industry that I know and now, of course at Automation Anywhere we're going to talk about. My first question to you is, a lot of changes have occurred since 1987. What has changed the most? Now we're talking diversity, we're talking all kinds of your different sales models. From your career looking back, what's changed the most? >> I think everything has changed and candidly for the better, Dave. You just led with one of the key areas in an area I'm deeply passionate about and that is diversity and inclusion and I think there's no stronger time, at least in our country's history where the inequalities that exist have been so exposed. So I view this as an opportunity, as I did at Dell to make a difference, lead from the front and make this a destination and a company whose culture really supports and drives diversity and inclusion. So I'd say that's one area, and I know it's very passionate for you as well. The others, it was a time before laptops, desktops. I think Ken Olsen once said, who would ever need a laptop in their home and boy, the world has changed. So I think some of the things though that haven't changed and this is why I'm so excited about Automation Anywhere. At the manual processes we have our workers doing and I think there is a real opportunity. I've lived through explosive growth at EMC, top company performing stock during the 90s, I get to see VMware firsthand. I've seen what's happened with ServiceNow and I believe this RPA space, as to you is in its infancy. It's seeing 30% compounded annual growth and we're just at the beginning and I think it's going to change the way people work and really lead to that digital transformation that so many of us have been talking about for the last decade. >> Yeah and you know kind of my position. Quick aside, I don't know if you saw the Netflix announcement this morning and I've been wondering as a small business, what can we do? What more can we do for inclusion and diversity? Netflix announced they're going to take 2% of their cash and put it into banks, financial institutions that support black causes and I just talked to our CFO. I said, look, why don't we take some of our cash, let's take 2% and stick it into banks, community banks. There's 30 million small businesses in the United States. If just 1% puts 10 grand in each, that's $3 billion that go into black community. So I'm going to start a mission and I just thought I'd share that 'cause I know it's a passion of yours. >> Yeah, and we all need to be in a position to provide equal opportunity for employment and that is reaching out into those communities and starting early on in creating the opportunities for advancement professionally, mentorship and just the path forward. And I'm excited to see what Netflix is doing. I'm sure you'll come up with the right answer for your company and I think all of us are searching, what's the right answer for our respective companies? >> Yeah, so now let's get into it. You're a month in and I want to talk about this project. I've learned a lot about not only RPA but about automation. I've just had a deep dive with your team and it really brought some things into focus. Guys, if you bring up the first slide, I want to get some thoughts on the table here. So this is a chart that sort of came into my focus with a friend of mine, Dave Moschello, who really big thinker on this stuff and he pointed out, this is data from the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics and the EU and it shows the lackluster productivity that's going on in the past decade. So you can see, we had the boost in the 80s and the 90s, we had this sort of productivity uptick from laptops but now, look what's happened since 2007. And the point that Moschello made on the right hand side is we have all these huge issues that we face, whether it's climate change, we have this massive debt, healthcare, an aging population, feeding everyone, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and his point was, there's no way we're going to be able to solve all these problems by throwing humans at the problem. So I've really begun to sort of think about this just in terms of machines and the roles that machines will play. I think overnight, Chris, we've gone from, wow, I'm afraid that machines are going to take my job to you can't operate if you're not digital. >> Yeah, well digital transformation is not a new term. I think it's meant something different each year for the last 10 years and I look at this as an opportunity. The World Economic Forum projected that IA and RPA will create 58 million new jobs. It's an astounding number. What COVID-19 has exposed is this work from home phenomenon that really exposes the risk of manual processes within the enterprise. So I think those two things combined is almost a perfect storm and I think what it'll do is accelerate the adoption of RPA and IPA. So something that might've taken years or decades to really be adopted in force, in this new normal, I think is going to be accelerated quite dramatically. >> So, the combination of your go to market execution, you managed complex sales motions before. Automation Anywhere obviously has some great product capabilities. Guys, I want to bring up the next slide and Chris, you might have seen this in some of the stuff that I wrote but this is data from ETR Enterprise technology research. They're a data partner of ours. Now it's clear that Automation Anywhere has the right product market fit and you can see on this chart, this is a methodology that we use. ETR goes out and they ask people, are you adopting a platform new? Are you increasing spending relative to last year? Are you flat, decreasing or replacing? And you can see here, there is zero churn in the Automation Anywhere base. And so obviously you got product market fit. Churn is the silent killer, obviously of SAS companies and so, you've picked a winner and I'm learning more about this. At first I thought the team office is quite large, I sized it. I actually think it's bigger than I originally thought. Chris, I thought this was going to be a winner-take-all type of market. I'm really rethinking that after, especially the deep dive I've had with your team in terms of how you guys go to market with an end-to-end sort of life cycle approach as opposed to sort of putting point products in. So I wonder if that narrative that I just laid out, resonates with you, is it sort of consistent with what you're seeing and then maybe some of the reasons why you joined Automation Anywhere? >> Yeah, I would say the most aggressive software growth that I've seen in the last decade or so, and two companies stand out for me. That's VMware and ServiceNow. They don't have a point product, they have a platform and that's what attracted me to Automation Anywhere is this platform approach. And Dave as you know, I've spent most of my career calling on the enterprise' strong relationships with those types of companies and they aren't looking to develop a point product solution and then cobble together lots of disparate islands of solutions. They're looking for a platform that can grow as they grow. They can extend from the back office to the front office but all centered around workforce, transformation, productivity and just as importantly, resiliency. And as we start to develop more and more capabilities that will be delivered through this platform approach, I think we're going to see explosive growth as the industry goes through its explosive growth. >> Well, I know your approach and your approach is to stay very close to customers. So as you were doing your due diligence on Automation Anywhere and as you enter your sort of first part of your 100-day journey here, I'm sure you've talked to a lot of customers. What are they telling you? What are the big takeaways right now that you're hearing? >> Yeah, so I think some of the data you pointed out with 4,000 customers in essence, zero churn, the opportunity to upsell those customers with more products and solutions clearly is there. New account acquisition has been a tremendous source of growth for the company in a strong professional services organization that actually is able to deliver the outcomes that our customers expect. From an enterprise perspective, I couldn't have come into a better situation with 4,000 customers, 50% of the fortune 500, 2 million bots deployed, those types of strategic relationships are going to be more and more critical as this company continues to accelerate its growth. Most of the RPA solutions really got in through the back office and candidly, really weren't even a component of an IT solution. Now, as you go to the front of the house, where you're looking at customer facing applications and worker productivity, these are CEO, CFO, COO and IT initiatives. So I really believe we're coming into our own, at the front of the house with senior executives that really want to create a better working environment for their employees and de-risk a lot of these manual processes that have existed for years. >> So I know why you chose Automation Anywhere. My question is, why did Automation Anywhere choose Chris Riley? I know your capabilities but obviously when somebody hires a executive like yourself, they say, "Hey, Chris, we want you to help us "get to the next level," but what does that mean? Are we talking about changes in the go to market? Are we talking about your ability to recruit and coach, to manage complex of sales motions? What is it that you want to bring to Automation Anywhere? >> I think it's all those, Dave. Having built a reputation throughout my 30 plus year career around a people-centric focus, a customer-centric focus and those two things kind of aren't interchangeable. When you look at customers, they put their faith and confidence in people and they put their faith and confidence in companies. And what I see here at Automation Anywhere is that the ability to kind of expand upon the great culture that the company already has but do it with someone whose role in a company at scale globally and can put a lot of the best practices and disciplines in place to do that 'cause it is difficult but also, how do we start to do larger, more complex deals and build relationships with the CIO, the CFO, the CEO? And I think a big reason why I'm here is, that experience in doing that, doing large complex multi-year opportunities but also being able to deliver upon the outcomes that we told our customers we could achieve and do that together with our customers and again we have a strong professional services organization and an incredible ecosystem of partners that have demonstrated year over year, the company's ability to actually deliver upon its promise. >> That was my next question to you, was the ecosystem. One of the big changes from when you started in this business, was it used to be just belly to belly, hardcore, direct sales, the importance and leverage that you get from a partner ecosystem. You point out VMware. In fact ServiceNow, it's interesting. When we first started covering ServiceNow, one of the things we said is we want to see as an indicator of success, the partner ecosystem evolve and then sure enough, it exploded with the SIs and all the kinds of developers. So maybe talk about AA's ecosystem, The Partner System. You obviously have a lot of experience there in your career, how do you see that as a leverage point? >> Yeah, it's huge. This market is far larger than we can cover with a direct sales organization and requires substantial services engagements that go well beyond the kind of professional services organization we want to build out organically in the company. So when you look at that, the company today has 1,900 partners. The global systems integrators are key, especially those with VPO type practices, the regional SIs and candidly, the regional VARs who've built out a strong service malpractice, a strong VMware practice and have the professional services capabilities to do some of these complex automation or automation type work that have also built the trust and confidence of their customers. So, in partnership with these types of companies, we believe we can expand our reach. We believe we can offer a more comprehensive outcome and solution to our customers and we, what I'm going to be looking at is, how do we enhance our channel programs to be the kind of company that the channel partners want to engage with, built upon the reputation of the company, the leadership position we have in the technology and also our willingness to go after this space together. >> So I got to go but last question is, what can you share with us about your 100-day plan? Where are you going to focus? >> On the people. There is a strong culture here, there's incredible sales talent and there's talent throughout the organization. I think Dave, you've seen for me over the years, a clarity of our mission, keep things simple and try and drive a repetitive process to deliver results. I'm very accountability focused. So I think what I'm going to look to assess is where the organization is today, how to get more out of the great talent we have, build stronger and deeper relationships with our customers and really scale and grow through our ecosystem of channel partners. >> Well, Chris, I'm super excited for you. A great hire by Automation Anywhere obviously got my attention. I think it'll get the industry's as well. Best of luck, and of course we'll be watching. >> Good, always great to see you, Dave, take care. >> Yeah, ditto, thanks so much for coming on and thank you for watching everybody. Keep it here because this month we're going to be really digging into the ETR data we've been reporting on that horse race between Automation Anywhere and UI Path. The ETR data is in the field and we'll be reporting on that. So look for that. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE and we'll see you next time. (gentle music)

>> from Austin, Texas. It's Theo Cube, covering your storage. Accelerate 2019. Brought to you by pure storage. >> Welcome to Austin, Texas. I'm Lisa Martin at Pure Accelerate 2019. This is the fourth pure accelerate. I'm here with my co host, David. Dante and David are pleased to be welcoming back to the Cube, the chairman and CEO of Pier storage. Charlie Giancarlo. Charlie, Welcome back to the Cube. >> Thank you. Such a pleasure to be here >> already. Getting loud on the keynote. Just rapping about 3000 folks here. Standing room only. We just came from the keynote. Something symbolic. Besides, the location of this event is that you are just about to celebrate the 10th anniversary of pure storage >> of our founding. October 1st. >> Yes, just around the corner. Tremendous innovation. As you say it. Overnight success in 10 years delivering 10 X and prevents us a little bit of a preview about what you shared in the Kino. What's to come in the next 10 years? >> Exactly right. It is wonderful to be able to sell. They celebrated birthday and able to talk about what you've delivered over the 1st 10 years. But it also gave us the opportunity to really say Okay, what's the second decade going to be about? What is it gonna be like? And way were planning not only for this, but for the year that we were gonna put in place of development. We said, Well, you know, we've brought a lot of things to storage and to the storage array. We made it much simpler. We made it upgradeable, non disruptive Lee, meaning that customers would have a continuously new product in their environment. Andi started to bring it into the cloud. And we said, You know, for our second decade, we want to transform the entire storage experience. We don't want it to be about boxes and a raise. We wanted to be about a storage system for the entire enterprise. That's multi protocol, multi cloud, multi tearing or what we call storage classes and entirely automated so that when an application calls for storage, service is it's delivered automatically without humans getting involved. That is completely as a service consumed as a service, delivered as a service entirely automated in the back end. So this is the goal that we have for our second decade. We think we're going to deliver it over the next several years. But of course, for us to go down the entire customer journey is a great mission for us for next decade. >> So in terms of, you know, I don't want to make it sound like the first decade was easy because you were really the only all flash array company. Thio reach escape velocity and many. But at the same time you caught DMC flat footed. You drove a truck through their install base and obviously the rest is history. I feel like the main job of the CEO is too. Is Tam expansion, right? You're focused on that. There's a I there's new workloads. There's the cloud, there's multi cloud. And in your entering new territory now, yes, maybe no. Guys like eight of us, they're not flat footed, right? You've got Europe against Google and Cisco and Microsoft in the multi cloud arena. But you're a specialist on one. If you could talk about your vision in terms of tam expansion, >> thank you very much for that question. The TAM expansion really is following where solid state takes us. You know, we've gone from a world that was where believe it or not, most computers still had mechanical systems operating them. It's sort of like having a mechanical calculator rather than Elektronik calculator, right? We had mechanical discs in our computers literally spinning rust, right? And it's only been in the last decade where a semiconductor, you know, where solid state has taken the place of that called Flash, right? Well, as that continues to get less expensive, we now can bring not only flash performance into disc economics, but more importantly, now we can finally have modern software that is driving the need for having greater flexibility with our data. As data grows it. Now we say it has gravity. That is, it gets heavy. It gets hard to manage hard, hard to move between different environments. And now a lot of infrastructure operators are spending much more time managing their data, managing the storage systems for their data than they are managing anything else in the data center environment. We want to eliminate all that. We want to automate all of that, you know, on the theme of decades. Two decades ago, every application had its own individual communication stack. There were dozens of different protocols and a dozen different networks in every company. One decade ago, every application had its own custom hardware stack and custom operating system stack. Well, today there's one network. It's called the Internet. Today, everything, every application, every server is virtualized, allowing mobility. And yet storage is still static way want this decade a bit to be about making storage and data dynamic and really responsive to the needs of the application environment? >> So >> what if you >> could compare this opportunity to some other mega trends that you've been part of? You were there in the early days of wireless when nobody wanted to buy wireless saw the I P changeup. People think the minicomputer was killed by the microprocessor in apart. It was, but it was I p. It was destroyed. Many computer everybody had their own networks. >> Where do you >> put so that the trend that you're after? How do you compare and what are your expectations? >> I think it's an analogous trend, and it's you know, this long term trend of vertical, whether it's vertical industries or vertical technology's going to becoming horizontal. So let's just give a couple of examples again. Networking was tightly tied to the application, and every application had its own network and its own set of protocols right that was vertically tied. Now networking is horizontal. It's all I P. Right again, we'll go back to applications. Applications had a vertical stack. The entire stack hardware and software was tied to specific application today that's been made virtualized and therefore horizontal. You could move applications among different servers. Storage is still vertical. It's still tied very tightly to the to the rack. And there are a lot of good reasons for that. You needed a high speed interface. High speed networking didn't exist. Disks were slow. They could only support one application at a time, with solid state that no longer exists. So now weaken, make storage free. We can make it ah, horizontal layer rather than tightly tied to any individual application. And that's what the next decades gonna be about >> Business leaders today, I feel there's so much more open than when we started in this. In this industry, where you know the famous line about Ken Olsen, Unix is snake oil and those that you old enough to remember that business leaders today they recognize the trend is your friend right. So gentleman from AWS at 88% of the customers and a gardener survey said their cloud first, but 86% are still spending on Prem. Right In the old days, when I said I'll keep it on Prime and Amazon so we'll keep it in the cloud. And yet you guys, customers, they're sort of forcing you to come together. Yes, I wonder if you could talk about that dynamic and specifically your cloud strategy? >> Absolutely So our cloud strategy is really quite simple. We want to make the cloud and every cloud appear to an application developer to be the same as it is on Prem. With all the advanced service is the advanced applications. It interfaces the same AP eyes because largely applications have been especially primary to your applications have been developed for with on Prem interfaces and on Prem service is the cloud, while wonderful from the standpoint of being able to be dynamic, does not have sophisticated service is for data. And so by making it appear to be the same to the application into the developer on premise in the cloud, it just makes the entire system or dynamic it allows for for companies to more easily move applications to the cloud or to another cloud or back on Prem. And it changes the dynamic and the decision making of enterprises not to. How much work do we have to do to move something to the cloud? But where is it best placed economically and based on service is we take it out of being a technology decision and make it more of an economic decision. >> Why were you in a unique position relative to your competition? I mean, why can't deli emcee or net app for IBM sort of take that same AP I economy mentality and drive it through their portfolio and get to market fast? And why is your pure unique? >> Well, for one, it takes investment will invest 18% of revenue in R and D this year. Nearly all of our competitors are spending less than 5% there, really viewing storage as an old antiquated market, not as a high tech market. They're reaping, if you will, rather than selling on re really view storage as next frontier off great innovation and our competitors largely don't see that. >> Let's talk about a little bit digging into the evolution of your Amazon Web service is relationship. We talked about that a minute ago when you guys talked about Announce Cloud Block store. There's dozens of customers in beta. Are they viewing it as this bridge, the hybrid cloud? And what are some of the benefits? If you could talk about it from any of those customers that are abated, what are they? What are you starting to see so far? That's really exciting, that this is the delivering or will be the modern data experience Way had >> a great speaker from eight of us onstage today, and I think he summed it up really well. At the end of his talk, he said that now the migration to cloud is easy because pure has done all the heavy listed lifting for you to take your enterprise applications and move them into the cloud. I mean, I think all the cloud players recognize that while they have provided some great capabilities, especially for Dev ops, that the level of of sophistication and the completion of service is for things like very complex enterprise. APS have not been fully accomplished yet, and so they recognize that experts like pure who have been delivering against enterprise primary tier applications for a long time have a lot to add in terms of the sophistication of our product in their environment. I think what they also recognize is that it's hard for customers to rewrite their applications to a completely different set of data. AP eyes and mind. You'd not only does, for example, he ws have different AP eyes in their cloud than customers have on Prem. But Azure has different AP eyes and then Amazon. Google has yet different, and so for a customer to write their application three or four times is really beyond what is in the interest of most customers. We have taken all that heavy lifting and enabled a customer to take their applications. They've already written, whether on cloud or in the print on Prem, and to move it in those other environments with much less investment. >> And let me let me try to explain, as I understand it, and make sure I got a right is essentially, What you've done is take the pure software stack and management framework and then using AWS Service's E C two High Priority E. C two's front ended on s3 cheap Best three created block storage. That's higher availability, probably faster rights, right? Three Real Boat reads and writes, are probably comparable with the pure experience. That's right on, Baby. You got to pay a little bit more for that. But you get you get better availability and there's value there. >> Actually, the beautiful thing is that we create an environment in AWS where it's faster, that is, the storage is faster. That it has a very higher reliability has. All of the service is that customers want tohave such as snapshots, replication and encryption. And the entire bill between what they pay for pure and what they pay for eight of us is no more than what they would pay for A W S on its own. For those storage service is >> because you're using cheaper s3. To me, this is brilliant. Eight others is happy because they're selling E. C. To an s3. You're happy because you're making money on your software. Stock was happy because they get the pure experience in the cloud. It's exactly actually quite innovative. >> It's almost matching >> quickly. Talk about Nan pricing. I know that was an issue this quarter. It hurt revenues a little bit on the stock drop, but then when you saw everybody else announced, the stock went back up because you're was 28% growth to everybody else's minus 16 minus 21 0 was the best. But to me, lower Nan pricing is a is an opportunity for you. It's a tailwind to go eat into more of the spinning dis market. Do you see it that way? >> No. Absolutely right. I mean, when it all hits in 1/4 it could be a challenge. But over time, the consistent and fast decrease in Nan pricing simply means that we will eventually get to solid state for all storage. I have no doubt about that. The days of disk are certainly numbered, and what that does is open up the entire storage market. Today, disc is only by terabytes. 15% of the storage market flashes only 15%. So it eventually we have 85% of storage market still to go after, and we believe that one day that will be all solid state. >> I want to ask you about the macro you guys said on the call. You really not concerned about the macro. You don't win on pricing. You don't lose on pricing that even a downturn. You guys feel like you can gain share. And I would agree with that. By the way, of course, we don't want a downturn. Got it? But if you don't have a downturn, But what are your thoughts on your ability to compete independent of Of of the macro. >> Right. So, you know, we have from day one, obviously, we had no sales when we got started. Right? So every sale we've made has always been a competitive sale. There was always someone that we had to displace, right? Some some incumbent. And that speaks to the type on the quality of the sales and marketing team that we have, right? Not only they aggressive, but you know, in the parlance of the industry, they're hunters. I think a lot of companies, once you become more mature, you develop more farmers in your in your sales force, right? Managing the customer account, managing the install base and so forth. And when the macro is flat or down, you suffer. You know, from you suffer overall from that because you haven't been used to expanding your footprint. In our case, I think even when the Makri is down not that we won't be hurt by it. We will. But because we have a team of hunters, we continue to gain market share away. Will >> you >> change it? It's hard to predict, right, But But Frank's Lupin once told me, Hey, if things change, I can turn this on. And we could become an a T. M when he was running the service. Now, right now, you're going for growth in the street rewards growth. You got a three plus X revenue multiple. Everybody else is lucky to get one X so that they're rewarding you for growth. Do you feel like if things change that you might turn those knobs a little bit? Or is it you know, >> So I don't expect things to change for quite some time, but, you know, we produce 70% gross margin in the last quarter, right? I mean, most of our competitors are in the fifties, right? If not, if not the forties. So clearly growth costs money in this business, right? You have to build your sales force before they start producing for you. You have to invest in marketing before they start producing. And because of our high focus around R and D right, which is all about new products again, your front ending your costs before the before the growth actually comes in. So now we're gonna continue to focus on growth. And as long as we believe that the medium to long term growth for us is in the thirties, you know, high twenties, thirties, even maybe even forties, we're going to continue to operate profitably but relatively lower profit once growth slows down. Yeah. I mean, it will all start flowing. >> Reassess it at that time. At least our data and the data shows that pure is in a position from a spending intention standpoint to continue to gain share. We don't see any change to that in the next several quarters. >> Last question for you, Charlie. We got to talk about a I we talked about at every conference. When we're looking at pure and customer conversations, it's about data data. Is oil lifeblood gold, currency, whatever you wanna call it? How? What is that conversation that that tape, urine and video have together in customers about? How can data ignite our workloads. Help companies identify new products. New service is deliver more automation. This is >> probably one of my favorite topics. When I'm talking to customers is how to make data actually useful. Not so much the, you know, the bits and bytes of how do you actually store it? But you know, what does it mean to them is a business but also to their customers because a lot of times they're using it for overall customer benefit. And the great part of that conversation and whether it's us or in video or both of us together, is we both use it for our to improve our business and our customers lives as well. You know, we talk today about how we have 15 petabytes of operational data from our customers, a raise, right, how they're performing. And we analyze that on a on an hour by hour basis toe look to see. Is the customer getting to the point where they need where they didn't need to modify how they're operating or where they need to upgrade, or where they need to add or even reduce more capacity so that they don't fall? You know they don't trip over things that will get their business in trouble. So it And now we even allow the customer to analyze their business. And do what if scenario plant planning to say, Well, if I'm going to double the amount of customer transactions I have, you know, what will that mean from an infrastructure Sandpoint? You know? Well, I need to change your upgrade. So, you know, this has been great fun because we are in the same boat as our customers, depending on a I to improve our our mutual customers experience. But >> this conversation is best. Very insightful. Charlie, Thank you for joining David Me on the Cube today. Again. Happy 10th anniversary. Here we look forward to the next two days >> and happy 10th year to you. >> Thanks very much. >> That's right for day, Volante. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube from pure accelerate. 19